Jenny Valentine - The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight

She heard the lie in my voice. A mother would. She would know straight away. I spoke away from the mouthpiece so I’d be harder to hear. “Yes, it’s me.”

Then the weeping, just like with Edie. The strange small noise and the empty feeling of listening to it. I looked at Edie. I gave her back the phone.

“Mum,” she said. “It’s over. He’s coming home.”

Nothing. More sobbing. I thought I heard her say, “ Are you sure? ”

“Got to go. We’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

Edie let the phone drop into her lap. “You OK?” she said.

I tried to keep my eyes on the running grey of the road ahead. I liked the way I had to keep them moving just to stay looking at the same place.

“I’m fine,” I said.

I wanted to find out where we were going. I wanted to ask how long it would take, but I couldn’t. I was supposed to know.

“What are you thinking about?” she said.

I hate that question. If you’re thinking about it, it’s private. If you wanted someone else to know, you’d speak.

“Home,” I said.

She straightened in her seat, looped a strand of hair behind her ear. “I have to tell you something,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“OK.”

She looked over at me. She spoke too fast. “Please don’t be cross. Please don’t mind. Frank bought us a house. We moved.”

It took me a minute to work a few things out.

I didn’t mind. For me this was good news. For me it was a gift.

Edie was holding herself away from me, waiting for a reaction. I couldn’t tell if it was me that made her nervous, or her brother; the person she didn’t know or the one she did.

Cassiel was missing. Weren’t his family supposed to wait for him? Weren’t his loved ones supposed to be right there when he made it home? I pictured him making the journey, knocking on the door to a houseful of strangers, doubly abandoned. Cassiel would mind.

“That’s harsh,” I said. I shook my head.

“It wasn’t up to me,” she said, not looking at me, keeping her eyes on her mirrors, keeping her face towards the road.

“Whose idea was it?”

I listened to myself sounding bothered. I marvelled at my own hypocrisy.

Edie spoke too fast. “Frank found it,” she said. “He thought it was the best thing for Mum, you know. Give her something else to think about.”

“Right.”

“It was her dream house. Remember the one we always used to walk past on our way up to the common? It was up for sale and Frank’s been doing really well and…”

“That was nice of him,” I said.

Who the hell was Frank? A rich uncle? Their dad? Their mum’s boyfriend?

“Yes,” Edie said, smiling. “It was.”

She put her hand on mine and we drove along like that for a while, with me looking at our hands and her looking at the road.

“I thought you’d be angry,” she said.

“Do you want me to be?”

“No,” she said. “God, no. I just thought you would be, that’s all. You’ve every right.”

It made me smile, the idea that I was entitled to anything.

“It’s done,” I said. “I don’t see the point.”

I shut my eyes again and for a while I slept for real. I was looking at my face in the mirror. I was wondering how the hell I’d ended up looking like I did.

It was the killing of the engine that woke me again, the lack of sound, and then the slam of Edie’s door. I opened my eyes, alone on a dirt track surrounded by nothing but green. It was getting dark. It was unreal, like waking from one dream into another. I’d never been in that much space before. The wind blew across the land and straight at me like now I was there it had something to aim for. I could hear it singing through and over and under the car. For less than a second I wondered if Edie had left me here, if she’d worked it out and abandoned me. And then I heard the creak of a gate and she was back, striding through the sheer emptiness, opening and closing the door, bringing a little piece of the gale and the smell of cold grass in with her.

“Welcome home, Cass,” she said.

The car stumbled through the open gate, slicing through wet mud and tractor marks. Edie got out to shut it again behind us. The green plain narrowed into a tree-lined path, and then there it was. Cassiel’s mother’s dream house. There was a light on downstairs and it spilled out warm and yellow into the air. Edie beeped the horn twice and the front door flung open. It wasn’t until the porch light snapped on that I saw her properly, thin and dark and windblown, an older version of Edie, just as fragile-looking, just as small. She put her hands to her mouth the same as Edie did when she first saw me. Then she was jumping and waving, her shouts vanishing into the wind. She ran at the car. I watched her close in on us like a tornado, like water. There was no escaping her.

Edie stared at me. “What’s wrong?” she said. “You look like you’re going to be sick. ”

“Nothing.”

“You’re scared. What are you scared of?”

I didn’t have time to answer. Cassiel’s mother was on us, on me. She wrenched open the door with both hands. The wind grabbed my hair and filled my ears, and she tried to pull me straight out by my arms and throw herself on me at the same time.

I heard Edie get out of the car on the other side, free and unnoticed, like she was invisible, like she wasn’t there. I saw myself suddenly from the outside, in this wind-racked, mud-filled place, pretending to be this woman’s son. I couldn’t breathe.

Wouldn’t she know? Wouldn’t she know as soon as she touched me?

Cassiel’s mother had bangles that clanked and rang, and her nails were bitten so hard, so far down I couldn’t look at them. I tried to get out of the car with her still clinging to me. I tried to stand up.

“My boy,” she said, and then she pulled me into the crook of her neck, my forehead on her shoulder, my back bent over like a scythe. Her clothes smelled of the warm inside, of dog and log fires and cooking, of cigarette smoke. I felt her breathing, thin and weak, like she was worn out from years of doing the same. She laughed into my hair and tightened her thin arms across my back. Her breath smelled of flowers and ash.

I stored it in a quiet and empty place in my mind. So this was what a mum felt like.

Cassiel’s mother drew back to look at me. Her eyes were wild and triumphant, and at the dark centre of them there was something like fear. I tried not to let her see how scared I was. I listened to the countdown in my head that ended with her disappointed scream.

It didn’t come. I got to zero and she hadn’t let go.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” she said, shaking her head, the threat of tears drowning her voice. “I never thought I’d see you.”

She grabbed my shirt, my mended charity-shop shirt, like she thought her hand might go straight through it. “You’re real.” She whispered it.

“Yes.”

“You came back.”

“Yes.”

I don’t know how long we stood there for, in that wet, freezing air. She rocked, like she was holding a baby, but it was me holding her up, I think. Edie had gone in. A dog came out on to the porch, sniffed the air, stretched its back legs and went in again. My car door was still open and the light was on inside. I worried briefly about the battery. The trees thrashed wildly at the house, like they knew there was something to be angry about, like they knew what wrong was being committed there. I glared at them and they thrashed wildly at me too.

When the phone rang inside the house, Cassiel’s mother jumped, like she’d been sleeping, like she’d been miles away.

“That’ll be Frank,” she said, and she wiped her eyes and smoothed her hair back, like whoever Frank was he’d be able to see her. “Let’s go in,” she said. “Let’s talk to Frank.”