Mark Haddon - The Red House

Daisy sits rigid. For two, three, seconds everything is very clear and quiet, as if she has dropped a china plate on a tiled floor. If she stands very still and concentrates hard she will be able to find the matching fragments and put them all together again. She got carried away. For the briefest moment she lost any sense of where she stopped and Melissa began. When Melissa has calmed down she will be able to explain everything.

Then she realises that Melissa will tell Louisa and Richard, Louisa and Richard will tell Mum and Dad, Alex will find out, everyone at school will find out and they won’t understand that it was a mistake. Because it isn’t a china plate, it’s her life and there are too many fragments and they’re too tiny and they don’t match. A woman is standing in front of her wearing a blue cagoule. Are you all right? Daisy stands and turns and runs, further up the ridge, away from the woman, away from Melissa, away from the car park, away from the house, hoping that if she runs far and fast enough she will find the edge of the world and the beginning of some other place where no one knows her and she can start all over again.

♦

Economics, History and Business Studies , says Alex.

Why History? asks Richard.

Because I like it , said Alex. And because I’m good at it .

Richard finds it reassuring, the swagger. It makes Alex seem like a boy again. Of course he’s flirting with Louisa. It’s only natural. Richard feels jealous, almost. Because he never had it, did he, the swagger. That sudden spurt of growth just after he arrived at university. Rugby, judo, 400 metres. Turning suddenly into a person that was never quite him, waking in the night sometimes, convinced that he was trapped in someone else’s life, heart pounding and throat tight till he turned on the lights and found the family photographs he kept in the back of the wardrobe like passports, for the route out, the route back.

Dominic is sitting up front with Mike. So, what’s it like living out here? Because he is still enchanted by the idea of the cottage and the garden and the job in the bookshop. Mike bridles slightly at the metropolitan presumption of out here so Dominic tries to be more conciliatory and asks how easy it is to make a living. Mike sucks his teeth and says he does a bit of tree surgery in the winter, and some other stuff , in a tone which suggests that the other stuff might not be legal.

So do you live up in them thar hills?

And freeze my bollocks off? They go over a bump and the trailer clanks and shakes. Got a flat in Abergavenny .

Dominic realises that he has misread the ponytail and the workboots. He isn’t Davy Crockett after all, just a chancer who props up a saloon bar and sells pills to bored kids on a Friday night.

Louisa is sitting next to Benjy. Did you enjoy that?

Enjoy what?

Did you enjoy the canoeing?

Yeh .

What did enjoy about it?

Just, you know… He shrugged. Being in a canoe .

You’re not very chatty today, are you?

No, not very .

Sorry, that was a mean thing to say .

It’s all right .

How hard it was to talk to children. They made no effort to ease your discomfort. But it was hard to talk to Melissa sometimes and at least Benjy wasn’t going to swear at her. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Don’t know .

Boys always wanted to be train drivers when I was little . What did girls always want? She can’t remember now. Married to one of the Bay City Rollers, possibly.

Some boys in my class want to be footballers, but I’m not very good at football .

What are you good at?

He shrugs. Perhaps he wants to be left alone. It’s because I don’t know you very well .

What is?

Not being chatty. Even though I know you’re meant to be my aunt .

The word moves her in a way that catches her by surprise.

Is it OK to be quiet?

Yes , she says, it’s OK to be quiet .

♦

Melissa wanted to walk back via the road but she had absolutely no idea where the road went so she had to retrace the path back through all the fucking mud. Christ. She wanted to ring someone at home. Tell them about Dyke Girl. Except they’d laugh, because if she told them about the kiss they’d be, like, How did you let it happen ? And if she didn’t tell them about the kiss, then what was she being so horrified about? Just some girl fancying her. Which sounded like showing off. Because the truth was that it wasn’t the kiss that made her angry, it was the way she’d reacted. She was cool with people being gay, even getting married and having kids, and she rather liked the idea of another girl fancying her as long as the girl wasn’t ugly. So she kept rerunning the moment in her head except this time she gently pushed Daisy away and said, Hey, slow down, I’m not into that kind of thing . But she’d said all that other stuff, and now they were going to have to spend the next three days in the same house. Jesus, this fucking mud.

♦

Daisy couldn’t run any further. She came to a halt and fell to her knees, lungs heaving. She had sinned. She had wanted everything Melissa had. Now she was being punished with exquisite accuracy, that envy pushed to its poisonous extremity. For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me . People would be disgusted. She would be mocked and reviled. She looked around. Bare and bleak, no fields visible now, just high empty moorland, the further hills black under the massive off-white sky. Where was her coat? You could imagine hell being like this. Not the fire, nor the press of devils, but a freezing unpeopled nowhere, the heart desperate for warmth and companionship, and the mind saying, Do not be fooled, this is not a place .

You’re weird and your clothes are shit . Melissa, of all people. So vain, so nasty. But the fault was hers alone, Melissa merely an instrument. She had never pretended to be anything but what she was. It was Daisy who had deceived herself.

The image of Melissa telling Alex. She rolled over onto the wet grass, curling up, as if she had been punched in the abdomen. Oh please, God, help me . She was crying now, but God wasn’t listening, He had never been listening, because He knew, didn’t He? It was why the Holy Spirit hadn’t come. He had peered into her soul from the very first and seen the pretence and the false humility.

She was lying in muddy water. Cursed is the ground . Thorns and thistles and coats of skins. She rocked back and forth. She imagined stepping off a tall building or standing in front of an oncoming train, head bowed, eyes closed, and it was the sweet pull of these images which revealed her cowardice. She had to remember. The hurt was her only way out of this place, the long walk through the flames.

The taste of Melissa’s mouth, the freckles. Diamonds and pearls. How cruel time was. The future turning into the past, the things you’ve done becoming your testimony for ever. I think being yourself is punishment enough . Where had she heard those words before?

♦

Angela carries the shopping into the kitchen and starts to put everything away, sausages, cheese straws, pears. The house is silent. Melissa and Daisy must be out somewhere. £26 for the taxi, tiny round man, Punjabi Sikh. She didn’t catch his name. Talked about his sister being married to a drug addict, how he and his brothers were forced to take him in hand . She didn’t press him for details. Plastic Taj Mahal swinging on the mirror, Bon Jovi on the radio. Half an hour later and the explorers return. Benjy runs for the living room, shouting, Can I watch a video? and vanishes before anyone can countermand him. So , says Angela, did you reach the source of the Nile? Richard laughs. Not at the speed we were going . The blare of the Robots theme tune. Benjy, can you shut that door, please? Alex picks up the paper. Audrey Williamson has died. Silver in the 200 yards at the London Olympics, 1948. Melissa sweeps into the room, cleansed and fragrant. Where’s Daisy? asks Dominic. Oh , says Melissa breezily. I think she went out for a walk .