The Radleys (12 page)

“Carbohydrates,” says Wil , referring to the toast he’s eating. He makes no effort to close his mouth. “I tend to neglect them, as a food group.”

The awkwardness Rowan feels, sitting at the breakfast table with a wild-looking stranger who is also a blood relative, just about keeps a lid on the anger.

Wil swal ows, waves the slice of toast vaguely toward him. “You didn’t know about me, did you?

I could tel by your face when I walked in . . .”

“No.”

“Wel , don’t be too hard on your mum and dad. I don’t blame them, real y. There’s a lot of history there. A lot of bad blood. And a lot of good blood too. They didn’t always have principles, you see.”

“So you’re stil a—”

His uncle makes a show of being embarrassed. “
Vampire
? Such a provocative word, wrapped in too many clichés and girly novels. But, yes, afraid I am. A ful y functioning vampire.”

Rowan looks down at the crumbs and smal pieces of uneaten egg on his plate. Is it anger or fear pumping the blood so fast through him now? Somehow he manages to say what is in his head. “What about . . . like . . . moral values?”

His uncle sighs, as if disappointed. “Which ones to go for, that’s the trouble. It’s a crowded market out there, these days. Gives me a headache just thinking about it. I stick to blood. Blood is simpler. With blood, you know exactly where you are.”

“So, you just go around murdering people? That’s what you do?”

Wil says nothing, just looks bemused.

Rowan quivers, like the earth above a living corpse.

Peter enters the room, looking uncomfortable.
No
, thinks Rowan,
Will is definitely the older
brother
.

“Wil , could we talk?”

“Peter, we could.”

Rowan watches them leave the room. His rash is getting worse, and he gouges at his arm with hard, angry scratches. For the second time in less than twelve hours he wishes he were dead.

Wil eyes the tasteful, muted artwork on the hal way wal . A semiabstract watercolor of an apple tree, with a smal brown
H
in the bottom corner.

It is Wil whom Peter is looking at, though. He looks good, it has to be said. He has hardly changed at al and must be living the same life he always lived. His older brother, looking at least ten years younger than him, with that roguish glint in his eyes and that air of something—
freedom?

danger? life?
—Peter lost a long time ago.

“Look, Wil ,” he struggles to say, “I know you’ve made the effort to come here, and it’s real y, real y appreciated, but the thing is . . .”

Wil nods. “An apple tree. You can’t get enough apple trees.”

“What?”

“You know, it’s always the apples, isn’t it, that get al the glory?” says Wil , as if they are having the same conversation. “Always the fucking apples. But no, go for the whole tree. Go for good old father tree.”

Peter realizes what Wil is referring to. “Oh yes, it’s one of Helen’s.”

“But I must admit—
watercolor
? I used to like those oil paintings she did. The nudes. She real y used to get her teeth into them.”

“Look, the thing is . . . ,” says Peter, finding it hard to say what Helen wants him to say. His brother, whom he hasn’t seen for the best part of two decades, has been
invited
here. And uninviting vampires, let alone blood relatives, is never that easy.

“Petey, this is great, but can we do the whole catch-up later?”

“What?”

A theatrical yawn from Wil . “Hard day’s night,” he says. “And way past my bedtime. Don’t worry, though. Don’t get the airbed out. I can puncture those things in my sleep, you know, if I’m having the wrong sort of dream. Get a lot of those nowadays.” Wil puts his sunglasses on and kisses his brother again on the cheek. “I missed you, bro.”

He strides confidently out of the house.

“But—,” says Peter, knowing it is too late.

The door shuts.

Peter remembers how it used to be. His brother always was one step ahead. He stares at the green fuzzy cloud of leaves and the little red dots signifying apples.

“What did he say?” Helen’s voice punctures his thoughts. She sounds tense and expectant.

“He wasn’t listening. He just walked out.”

Helen seems upset at this information rather than cross. “Oh Peter, he’s got to go.”

He nods, wondering how that’s going to be achieved and why for Helen this seems to be the biggest problem they wil face this weekend. Bigger than a dead boy and gossiping vil agers and the police.

She’s there, no more than a meter away from him, yet she might as wel be a dot on the horizon.

He tries to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but before it can reach her she has turned back toward the kitchen to load the dishwasher.

A Tantric Diagram of a Right Foot

Next door to the Radleys, in 19 Orchard Lane, everything is quiet.

Lorna Felt is lying in bed next to her husband, slightly hungover but relaxed and thinking about Peter’s frightened face after she’d made her modest move under the table. She stares across the room to the picture on their wal . A tantric diagram of a right foot—a print of a classic eighteenth-century Hindu
yantra
mapping al the inner structure and energy points of the foot, which she had bought on eBay.

Mark hadn’t wanted it hanging on the wal , of course. Just as he didn’t want her clients taking off their socks in his living room.

Stil , she nestles into him now, as he rouses from his sleep.

“Good morning,” she whispers into his ear.

He barely grunts a response.

Undeterred, her hand slips inside his T-shirt and caresses his skin with a feather-light touch.

She slides her fingers lower, unbuttons his boxer shorts, and strokes his flaccid penis as tenderly as if it were a pet mouse. And this soft and careful stroking works, in that it arouses him and he kisses her and they head quickly toward sex. But this sex is as disappointing for Lorna as it so often is—a short, straightforward journey from A to B when she could real y do with running through a bit more of the alphabet.

For some reason, as Mark clenches his eyes and releases himself inside her, he has a vivid picture of his parents’ sofa. The one they’d gotten on an instal ment plan the day Charles and Diana got married, by way of celebration. He pictures it as it was for a whole year. With its polyethylene cover on, in case anyone decided to get too comfortable and dirty the thing. (“You’ve got to learn to
respect
things, Mark. Do you know how much this cost?”) They lay there absorbed in their own unconnected thoughts. Lorna notices she is feeling a bit dizzy again.

“I wish we could stay in bed al day,” Mark says, once he’s gotten his breath back, though he doesn’t real y mean it. He hasn’t had a lie-in since he was eighteen.

“Wel , we could have a
bit
of time together, couldn’t we?” Lorna says.

Mark sighs, then shakes his head. “I’ve got . . . stuff I have to . . . this bloody rent situation . . .”

He gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom. Her hand stays on his side of the mattress, feeling the pointless warmth left behind.

And as she listens to him pissing noisily into the toilet, she decides that she should phone the doctor’s and make an appointment with Peter (it
has
to be Peter). And she knows that today could wel be the day she has the courage to ask her neighbor what she has wanted to ask him ever since she felt his intense, thirsty eyes on her at their barbecue last year.

She picks up the bedroom phone from its cradle. Toby’s voice is on the line. She stays on and listens silently, something she has done before when scouting for evidence of her stepson’s hatred of her. Why has Mark never supported her on anything to do with Toby? Why can’t he see how much the boy despises her?

“Hi, is Stuart in, please, Mrs. Harper?” The voice is almost unrecognizably polite.

And then Mrs. Harper. “Stuart! Stuart!
Stuart?
” This last “Stuart” is so loud Lorna has to take the phone from her ear. “Stuart, get out of bed! Toby’s on the phone.”

But no sound from Stuart Harper is heard on the line.

New Clothes

Eve lies in bed in the baggy T-shirt she was wearing the night her mother went missing two years ago. She would have thrown it out if that hadn’t been the case, as it is faded and ful of holes around the neck from where she’d chewed it and because it promoted a band she was no longer interested in.

To trash the T-shirt would be to burn another bridge between the Time Before and the Time After, and there weren’t that many bridges left since they moved here.

Their old house in Sale had been so different from this place. It had been a
house
for a start, not an apartment designed for retirees. It had been a place with soul, and each corner of each room had contained memories of her mother, evidence of her. This place was pathetic and brought a colder type of sadness—a modern brick, nursing-home type of sadness.

Of course, she understood half the situation. She knew that fol owing her Dad’s redundancy, they had no way of continuing to pay the mortgage. But
still
. Why move to a different county? Why move to the other side of the Pennines, sixty-whatever-it-is miles from the kitchen where she and her mother used to dance to old songs on the radio.

Why abandon the old bed where Mum used to come and sit and talk about the poems and books she was studying for her degree? Or where she’d ask Eve about school and friends and boyfriends?

She closes her eyes and sees her now, in the gal ery of her mind, with her short hair and the kind smile Eve had always taken for granted. And then her father comes in and breaks the memory by tel ing her she is not al owed to leave the house al weekend.

“What?” she asks, her croak advertising the undeniable hangover she is suffering.

“I’m sorry, Eve. Just this weekend. You’re staying in.” He stil has his coat on from wherever he has been and his face is as open to compromise as a roadblock.

“Why?” That’s al she seems to ask nowadays, and always, like now, it goes without a satisfying answer.

“Eve, please, I’m tel ing you not to go out. I’m tel ing you because it’s important.”

And that’s it. That’s al she gets before he leaves the room.

A minute or so later her mobile vibrates on the side table. She sees “Clara” on the screen.

Before she answers, she gets out of bed to close the door, then switches her radio on, so her dad can’t hear her.

When she does final y answer, she is aware that her friend sounds different. Her usual default tone of meekness and self-deprecation is replaced by something cooler, more confident.

“So, señorita, we on for our girly shop day today?”

“I can’t,” Eve tel s her. “I’m grounded.”

“Grounded? You’re seventeen. He can’t do that. It’s il egal.”

“Wel , he has. He operates above the law. And anyway, I’m broke.”

“It’s okay. I’l pay for you.”

“I can’t. My dad. Seriously.”

“He doesn’t own you.”

The way Clara says this is so out of character Eve wonders for a moment if she is actual y speaking to her friend. “You sound different today.”

“
Yeah
,” says the cool voice in Eve’s ear. “I feel better. But I real y do need some new clothes.”

“What? So you’re not puking?”

“No, it’s gone. My dad says it was a virus. This airborne thing.”

“Someone’s at the front door,” Eve tel s her.

“I know. I heard it.”

“What? How? I only just heard it . . . Anyway, I’ve got to go. My dad’s not answering.”

“Okay,” says Clara. “I’l come round then.”

“No, I don’t think that’s a—”

Clara puts the phone down before she can finish.

Eve leaves her bedroom to answer the door. She pretends not to hear her dad whisper from the living room, “Eve, don’t answer it.”

She does so, and sees the landlord looking down at her with his plump, arrogant, businesslike face.

“Is your father in?”

“No, he’s out.”

“Out. How convenient. Wel , tel him I’m not very happy. I need the last two months’ rent by next week or you’l have to find somewhere else.”

“He’s got a job,” Eve tel s him. “He’l be able to pay now but it might just be a little longer. Did, erm, Toby not explain it to you?”

“Toby? No. Why would he?”

“He said he was going to.”

And Mr. Felt smiles at her, but not kindly. It’s a smile that makes her feel stupid, like she’s the punch line in a joke she can’t understand.

“Next week,” he says firmly, “seven hundred pounds.”

A Bit of a Panic Attack

Clara had smeled something during their journey into town. Some kind of rich, exotic odor she had never noticed before on the crowded number 6 bus. It had such a disorienting effect on her it was actual y a relief each time the doors opened and fresh air arrived to clear her senses.

But here it is again, overpowering her as she tries on clothes in the changing rooms in Topshop.

That strangely intoxicating smel , reminding her of the wild, violent ecstasy she felt last night.

And she sees herself. On top of Harper’s body, swooping her head down like a velociraptor toward his gurgling wounds, to suck more of his life away. She is shaking as she remembers, but she doesn’t know if she’s shaking from horror at what she did or from delirious delight at what she knows she could stil experience again.

The smel is blood, she realizes. The blood that’s inside al the bodies undressing in other cubicles. Girls she doesn’t know, along with the one she does—the one she cajoled into running out of her apartment and away from her father.

She steps out in her new clothes, entranced. She is being drawn by invisible forces toward the cubicle next to hers, preparing to pul back the curtains. But panic creeps over her skin like a cold shadow, just in time. Her heart pounds and every limb tingles with it.