Mark Haddon - The Red House

♦

Angela is standing in the kitchen. Moonblue dark. A shuddery jingle as the fridge motor cuts in. What woke her? Whose kitchen is this? The fear that has haunted her ever since her mother became ill, that she would go the same way. Names refusing to come. Lost objects. Keys, wallet. The mind’s ordinary stumbles magnified perhaps. But sometimes…this utter blankness. Terrified of the simplest questions. What year is this? What are your children’s names? She touches her own face but cannot remember what it looks like.

♦

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king .

He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God .

Louisa had woken just after two. Halfway along the landing a sliver of light vanished from between the floorboards. Or was it her imagination? She waited, listening. Nothing. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep if she didn’t check, and there was no way she was going to wake Richard, not now, so she made her way downstairs, the oak creaking under her feet. Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, more alive then he ever was during the day, black table, black sideboard, the glowing grey circles of the plates on the dresser, as if a whispered conversation had been interrupted. The cry of a bird outside. She stepped into the kitchen and saw a silhouetted figure in the shadows at the far end. Jesus H. Christ. She flipped the light to find Angela standing beside the fridge, eating a bowl of Frosties, an open bag of caster sugar on the chopping board.

I didn’t want to wake anyone .

Louisa could see now that the shabbiness was symptomatic of a bigger problem.

Comfort eating , said Angela.

You scared me rigid .

I was embarrassed . Angela put the bowl down delicately, as if she were stepping away from an angry dog. So I turned the light out .

Angela…? Was she sleepwalking?

I’ve been feeling a little unsettled . Something oddly formal about this. I had another child. Before Daisy. Her name was Karen. She was stillborn .

Louisa was sympathetic to friends who were depressed but this was something stranger and more worrying.

It’s her birthday on Thursday , said Angela. She’ll be eighteen. Would have been eighteen . She rolled and crimped the top of the sugar. I’m going back to bed now . She walked carefully round Louisa and out of the kitchen.

In other circumstances Louisa would have washed the abandoned bowl but she couldn’t dismiss the idea that it was charmed in some dark way. She waited for the muffled clunk of a door overhead then followed Angela back upstairs, turning the lights on as she went so that there was no darkness at her back.

♦

That’s wonderful . Richard had approached so quietly and Melissa had been so absorbed in her drawing that she didn’t hear him till he was standing behind her. I didn’t know you could draw so well .

I am a woman of many mysteries, Richard . She turned and saw that he’d just returned from a run. Are those new shoes?

♦

They meet you at the other end , said Alex, and drive you back to your car .

I’ll come , said Benjy. Canoeing is cool .

Which meant that Dominic had to come, too, for Health and Safety reasons.

Count me in , said Louisa, because last night’s anger had softened into a sense of superiority. Richard was normal, and she had been released from a childish respect she should never have felt in the first place.

Alex was running his hand slowly over the map, as if he could feel the texture of the land under his fingers. Contour, castle, cutting. We can stop for lunch at the Boat Inn, Whitney .

Angela?

You must be joking . She was ferrying a bouquet of dirty coffee mugs to the kitchen. Drop me in Hay. I’ll get some stuff for supper . She caught Louisa’s eye and looked away.

Louisa wondered if she should tell Dominic. Or Richard. Did Angela need help or was it a secret they should keep between themselves?

We’ll stay here , said Daisy.

You go and do boy things , said Melissa.

You two sound as if you have a secret plan , said Dominic.

That’s for us to know , said Melissa, and for you to find out .

♦

Richard swilled the pan, flipped the brush over and used the wedged rear to scrape the cooked egg off the pitted aluminium base. They were experiencing a minor difficulty and he was making a hash of it, that was all. He rinsed the little tattered rags of cooked egg into the sink where they collected in the poker wheel over the plughole. He lifted it free and banged it clean on the edge of the bin. He’d run several hundred metres up the road that morning then been forced to walk, having underestimated the incline and overestimated his fitness. Ashamed of returning to the house, he had walked up to Red Darren where he sat half appreciating the view and half pretending to appreciate it and being horribly aware of the stupidity of this combination. He squeezed a worm of lemon washing-up liquid onto the pan and waited for the water to run hot. He remembered the first time they had made love, the bulge of flesh above her waistband, plump and creaturely, the little fold where the curve of her bottom met the top of her thighs, the way she lay propped on her elbows afterwards like a teenager making a phone call. He moved the brush in swift circles and zigzags and figures of eight, each calligraphic figure swiftly overwritten by the next. Those images. Two days ago they’d been a treasury of golden coins through which he could run his fingers, but now? Of course I love you . At this precise moment he felt only a dirty panicked entanglement.

Dominic appeared in the doorway. Ready to rumble .

He dried his hands. Two minutes .

♦

The Mercedes pulls away and the sun is out. Angela climbs the steps to the ugly block that contains the tourist information office and the public toilets. A goth girl with Halloween hair and a pierced lip is pushing a young man in a wheelchair. Cerebral palsy, perhaps? I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet . One of her mother’s gems. But in what kind of bizarre accident did you lose your feet? She’d never thought about that. Theo with Down’s, the cheeriest kid in Year 8. So you couldn’t assume anything. Though God knows how he’d cope when the hormones and the tribal stuff kicked in. Some ghastly special school, no doubt. She was trying hard not to think about the encounter in the kitchen. Handing Louisa so much ammunition in one go. The crazy lady with the imaginary daughter. She is going to buy some books. The Yellow Sun thing still unread at the bottom of her case. Hasn’t read a book properly for months, come to think of it. She remembers being ten years old, jammed into that triangular recess behind the sofa with a tattered paperback. The Log of the Ark. My Name Is David. Stig of the Dump .

♦

You have to wear this by law, young man . Mike handed Benjy a lifejacket of tatty orange rubber. Wiry and suntanned, workboots, ponytail. And I strongly suggest that the rest of you wear these . He took four more from the back of the Land Rover. But as long as they’re in the boat when you drown I’m in the clear, legally . He put his hands on his hips. No swimming from the boat. No extra passengers. No alcohol. Give me a call half an hour before you need picking up. If I hear nothing by three I put out an APB . The mobile rang in his back pocket. God bless you and all who sail in you . He extracted the phone. Brian. What can I do you for?