Jenny Valentine - The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight

I thought about Cassiel watching me from somewhere, from a daydream, from a park bench, from a checkout, from Heaven or Hell or the plain cold grave, wherever he might be.

I wondered how much he would hate me for what I was doing.

I wondered when he was coming to get me back.

“Does it feel weird?” she said.

“A bit,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got this running commentary in my head. My little brother’s home .”

She sounded like an announcer at a railway station. “ My little brother is home and in his room. ”

No, he’s not , the commentary in my head said. No, he isn’t.

“Do you like it?” she said. “Do you like your room?”

I didn’t answer. She didn’t notice.

“It’s bigger than the old one, isn’t it? Do you like the colour? It’s called Lamp Room Grey or something. Mum said it was boring. I think it’s cool.”

I smiled.

“You hate it,” she said.

“I don’t.”

Helen came upstairs and knocked on the open door. Edie took her eyes off me for a moment to look at her.

“You are so tall,” Helen said.

“Am I?”

“I forgot you’d be two years older.” She leaned on the doorframe. She crossed her arms around herself and she watched me.

“I said the same thing,” Edie said. “It’s like you grew in five minutes.”

Helen nodded. “It’s a lot to take in.”

When she blinked, she blinked slowly, like her eyes would have been happy staying closed.

“Where have you been, Cassiel?”

“What happened? Tell us what happened.”

They spoke at the same time, almost. They were nothing but questions. I couldn’t answer them. My disguise was paper-thin. I didn’t know who Cassiel Roadnight was or what he’d say. If I spoke I’d eat away at it, I’d just show myself lurking underneath, the rotten core.

“Not now,” I said.

“When?” Edie said.

“Leave it, love,” said Helen.

It was quiet, tense, like a stand-off. I could hear us all breathing. I thought about how big Cassiel’s breaths were, how many times a minute his heart beat.

“Are you hungry?” Helen said.

I should be. I don’t think I’d eaten since Edie called. But I wasn’t. My stomach was like a closed fist. There was too much to think about. Too much could go wrong.

Cassiel would be. He would be relaxed and hungry and tired. Cassiel was home.

“I think so,” I said.

“Good. Let’s eat.”

They left the room ahead of me and I listened to them go along the landing and down the stairs. I stopped in the doorway and looked back into his room. The dust was still frenzied in the light from the bulb. I switched it off.

It disappeared, just like that.

I never ate meat in my life before I was Cassiel Roadnight. Not once.

According to Grandad, being a vegetarian wasn’t just about health or cruelty or money or flavour, it was also about manners. He said that stealing milk and eggs and honey was enough of a liberty without hacking off someone’s leg and then drowning it in gravy. He had a point.

He taught me how to cook. He trusted me with all the sharp knives and all the boiling water I could get my hands on. We ate rice and beans and vegetables. We ate a lot of curry. We ate like kings.

That’s what Grandad used to say.

After the accident, when I wasn’t allowed to see Grandad any more, they tried to make me eat meat. They put withered, puckered, stinking things on my plate and told me if I didn’t eat them there’d be trouble. They said they were good for me.

They didn’t know the first thing about what was good for me.

I told them that. I screamed it in their faces. I said I didn’t eat meat. I said I wanted my Grandad. I threw the food at them. I threw it at the walls and the windows and their faces. I threw it anywhere it wanted to land. I didn’t eat their meat. I didn’t do it.

I’d rather have starved.

Cassiel’s favourite food was meatballs. Helen put a plateful down in front of me and it was clear from the look on her face that meatballs were something I was supposed to get all excited and nostalgic about.

“Meatballs,” I said. “Thanks.”

Edie said, “How many times have we talked about this, Mum? Cass sitting here having supper, just like this.”

Helen shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Hundreds.”

I cut a piece off a meatball, dripping in sauce. I tried to make my face right. I tried to smile and not grimace, tried to close my eyes in delight not panic, tried to swallow not gag. They watched me like hawks.

“Delicious,” I said, still chewing. They tasted like salt and shit and gristle.

“As good as you remember?”

“Better.”

I got through two. I drank a lot of water. I broke them down into fractions of themselves, sixteen more to go, fourteen more, eight, one. In my head I said sorry to Grandad, and to the lamb or the pig or the mixture of creatures I was eating. I put my knife and fork together with four of them still swimming on my plate.

“What’s wrong?” said Helen.

“That’s not like you,” said Edie.

I said, “I haven’t eaten like this in a while. My stomach isn’t quite up to it.”

I allowed Cassiel, wherever he was, to chalk up a point against me. I told myself it didn’t matter. I reminded myself I didn’t have a choice.

So I wasn’t a vegetarian any more. I wasn’t me any more either.

When you’re running, when you’re moving from place to place, day after day, it’s hard to watch yourself eat. You steal. You pick through the bins and try not to realise it’s you. You try not to think about what you’re doing. You learn where the shops dump their rubbish, what night’s the best night. You rely on what other people waste.

Finish your food? No, don’t, because somebody watching from outside might want it.

After meatballs there was ice cream. I let it melt in my mouth and it slipped, rich and over-sweet, down my throat. I did it without thinking.

“Why d’you always eat it like that?” Edie said. “It’s gross.”

Funny to have such a thing in common with Cassiel – the way we ate ice cream.

“Have you been in London? Or Bristol? Or Manchester? Or where?” Edie said.

“He’s tired,” Helen said, putting her cool hand on my forehead.

“Have you been living rough?” Edie said. “On the streets?”

What would the answer to that be? It was pretty likely. If you run away from home when you’re fourteen, you don’t usually end up in the penthouse suite.

“Now and then,” I said.

Helen shook her head. “And being on the streets was better than being here?” She looked at Edie and then at me. “I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I,” Edie said, “When you put it like that.”

My stomach was giddy with rich and strange food. I listened to their spoon scrapes, their soft slurps and swallows.

“Why did you go off?” Edie said.

I looked at her food, only at her food. I said, “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I don’t believe you,” Edie said.

I kept my voice soft. I kept it level. “You don’t have to.”

“What was so awful?” Helen said. “What was so bad that you had to go?”

I didn’t say anything.

Edie said, “You shouldn’t have punished us all like that.”

“Frank said you were in trouble,” Helen said. “He was worried about you.”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t call,” Edie said. “I’ll never understand why you let us all think you were dead.”

Was it OK to say sorry? Would Cassiel say sorry for that? I wanted to say it.

Edie couldn’t stop. “You didn’t think about what it would do to us,” she said. “It didn’t cross your mind.”