Young Writers Society

Somehow, we get through the rest of the evening. Neither me nor Violet says anything more about Gran’s future. I say very little at all, because the TV is loud and it’s too much effort to follow the conversation. Violet goes to the kitchen twice, returning first with bowls of vegetarian shepherd’s pie, then with slabs of courgette cake – Gran insults each course, but eats every scrap as a matter of principle.

I bounce my leg on the velvet sofa, picking at the beads on the curtains, glancing at the bells strung from the window. When it’s finally, finally time to leave, Gran kisses the side of my hand and tells me to come see her tomorrow in an even sort of voice, as if the argument earlier never happened. Forgetfulness? No. This is how she’s always been.

I help Violet guide her to bed, into that stale, lavender water-smelling room. Mercifully, I’m excused from helping her change into her nightie. I go to stand outside in the drizzle, the uncut grass whipping my calves. It’s a long time before Violet joins me.

“You have to do that every day?” I ask.

Violet doesn’t look at me, busy locking the front door. “Sometimes a neighbour helps, or the butcher’s daughter comes down. But most days, yeah.”

“Christ,” I say. “Can’t go on like that.”

“I know. We can try talking with her again in a few days.”

My stomach squeezes at that, thinking about my return ticket. But I keep quiet. We go back through the gate – climb over, like when we were kids, because it’s easier than wrestling with the latch. Then we’re following the dirt track up the hill, to where everything is wilder and quieter, and there are ancient trees to shield us from the rain. It’s not forest, not quite – but it feels enough like one that my pulse jumps.

“God, you’re so twitchy.” Violet gives me a playful push. “It’s fine. We used to play here, remember?”

“Yeah, well, we had a collective IQ of twenty-five.”

“Had?”

“Yeah. That was when we peaked. It’s twenty, now.”

Violet laughs; the noise sends a bird sputtering up from a nearby branch. She sounds out of practice at it.

“Can’t be safe here, though,” I say, nodding to a nearby faerie ring. Somebody’s left some sugar in the centre. “The bells went when I was up in the bathroom. I saw someone under the tree.”

Violet shrugs. “Gran’s way nearer the Road.”

She says it so casually. I wonder if I ever talked like that, so off-hand. I can remember playing here, swinging by my legs from the upper branches, heedless to how they creaked under my weight. It’d have been a dangerous thing to break one. Somehow I never thought of that.

We walk on. The shadows grow longer, the grass honeyed where the sunset hits it. Breeze rattles through the canopy, and Violet chatters about the village goings-on – the miller’s daughter’s son going missing, and all this fuss with a client who didn’t like her frock, and the dresses she’s just sent down the Road, one to be sold, the other enchanted—

“I got something enchanted for you, actually,” she says. “For your birthday.”

My heart sinks. Another thing to shove to the back of the wardrobe. “That’s a few months away.”

“Oh, you know me. Early to being early. And it’s better you have it for autumn, come to think of it. You can open it when we get back.”

My footsteps drag. “Back?”

“To the house.” She stops, wrong-footed. “I’ve got a room made up.”

I bite the inside of my lip. “I’m staying down at the B&B.”

Her shoulders sag. She’s almost thirty, but the hurt in her eyes makes a child of her. “What did you do that for? I said you didn’t have to.”

Something rises in my chest, half-anger, half-disbelief. I don’t have words for it. There’s only the memory of the house, with its stone walls and tiled roof and crooked chimney, the smell of the open fire and ancient wood. There’s my room, half the size of Violet’s. There’s the bed where Mum doesn’t sleep, and the patch of earth where she does.

“I hate the place,” I say. “You know I do.”

“It’s only a few measly nights.” Violet’s face is thrown into dappled shadow by the leaves. “I have to stay there all year round.”

I think of bathroom tiles, gleaming red. “It’s different for you.”

She seams her lips together. “Come for the evening, at least. I’ve rented some really shit horror films. And tons of strawberry laces.”

There’s a pleading note to her voice. Unlike Gran, she never brings up university, never addresses the missed calls and fleeting visits. She just talks to me like nothing’s changed, and I usually play along, because it’s easier for both of us.

But now, I shake my head.

Violet looks as if I’ve slapped her. Then she turns around and starts up the path, too quickly for me to keep up with. When we reach the fork, she carries on up the hill without looking back. I hesitate, watching her retreat – that cloud of charcoal hair; her flapping, hand-sewn skirt – and turn down the branching path to the village.

*

Darkness, stifling heat. I sleep fitfully, in and out and in and out, bouncing between dreams like I’m trapped in a bloody pinball machine. The bells, muffled by the curtains, are chiming, ring-ring-ringing—

No. Not the bells.

It’s my phone.

I jerk awake. First comes the tweak of pain in both ears – fell asleep with my bloody hearing aids in, like I don’t motor through batteries fast enough as it is. Then everything else settles into place - the room is dark angles and pitch, save for the square of light from my phone. The screen says ‘Sister’.

I swipe and put it to my ear.

“Hey,” I slur. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

Silence. I click my watch so the screen lights up – 2:04am, it reads.

“Sis?” My mouth is dry. “Are you there?”

The call ends. I stare at the phone, and Bowie stares back from my home screen, unimpressed. My hand trembles, whether from tiredness or unease I can’t tell. Barely a second later, the phone rings again, buzzing into my palm. I put it straight to my ear once more.

“Hello? What’s going on?” I swallow hard. “You’ve successfully ruined my beauty sleep, if that’s what you were going for.”

Silence, again. I can hear the rasp of my own breath.

And then something else – a faint chiming, a tingling of bells.

The call cuts off again.

*

I fell asleep mostly-clothed, which speeds everything up, but lacing my converse takes twenty years with my fumbling fingers. Can’t find my belt – where did I put the bastard? - so I just hobble along, holding my jeans up in my fist. No time to find my jacket, so I go without, even though the night air makes my arms prickle with goose bumps.

Don’t go out after dusk, Gran always said. Faers are bolder at night; it’s when they come to dance, and walk, and scoop up the fruit bread left on people’s doorsteps, the sugar in the faerie rings. I can’t remember if it’s because they draw power from the moon, or grow weak under the sun. There might be another reason entirely.

But I walk, regardless, sticking to the path. It’s harder to avoid the foxgloves in the dark, and there are so many of them. More than there were a few hours ago, I’m sure. I make it through the centre of the village, past the shuttered butcher’s and hairdresser’s and the fabric shop. The sky is awash with stars. The moon is a slither, smiling over the brow of the moors.

My legs threaten to slow down when I take the path back into the almost-woods. It’s too shadowed to see the track, but despite the years away, my feet remember where to place themselves. I keep glancing at my phone, but it stays silent. I call again, but it goes straight to answerphone.

The end of the track. The woods open out into a clearing and – there it is. The house. Squat, grey-walled, with its crooked chimney. My eyes automatically lift upwards, to the left, where Mum’s bedroom is. The small, frosted window of the en suite. Bathroom tiles, I think – a red like paint—

No. Not now.

I let myself through the gate. I can taste my own pulse. My fingertips press against the front door, gingerly, as if to check that it’s still solid.

It swings open, the hinges keening. It’s a coming-home-from-school sound, obscene under the moonlight. I look into the maw of the house and step inside.

“Sis?” I call, my voice shaking. “Sis? Are you there?”

I click the landing light on, which somehow makes it worse. The bulb turns everything into stark lines and bright surfaces, making it clear that she isn’t hiding somewhere in the shadows. Her shoes have been kicked carelessly against the stairs, her jacket slung over the bannister.

I turn into the living room. On the sofa, a half-empty packet of strawberry laces, spilling gritty sugar. The coffee table sits at a slanted angle, kicked out of place.

My eyes move to the table.

It’s meticulously neat, the coasters stacked, the little glass animals arranged from smallest to largest. At the centre of it sits Violet’s mobile, flashing with umpteen missed calls and texts.

And on top of the phone, a single foxglove.