When we went back down to Mirrorland, numb and silent, our arms full, Mum was pulling apart the Shank, stacking the old boardwalk planks against the boundary wall. Our claw hammer was at her feet.
‘I need to cover up the door in the cupboard,’ she said. She frowned, looked at us both in turn. ‘No one can ever know you were here. Do you understand?’
We nodded, even though we didn’t. Even though we’d barely thought of anything that might happen beyond escaping through a hole in a wall, a door with no lock, and a front garden with no gate.
When Mum had dragged the last of the wood up into the pantry, she put her hands on her hips, nodded back towards the cupboard.
‘Close the door to Mirrorland.’ The look she gave both of us was fierce in her bruised and bloodied face. ‘And bolt it shut.’
We did. And then followed her back into the kitchen. She sat down at the table. There was a key in the centre of it. Grandpa’s key.
‘It’s for the front door. I want you to do what we planned. Go as quickly as you can.’
‘But now you can come too,’ El whispered.
‘I told you. I have to sort this out, that’s my job. It was always going to be my job.’
She sighed, stood up, took hold of the tea-towel sling that now hung only around her neck, and began scrubbing hard at the cuts on our faces and the blood under our nails with her usual brutal efficiency. We knew better than to complain, never mind cry, even though the pain soon swallowed up our fear. My head throbbed in the places where Grandpa had punched it or slammed it against the ground; it ached inside as if my brain had grown too big for my skull. El was struggling to swallow now; her eyes were full of tears. Both of us couldn’t stop staring at Grandpa’s body slumped next to the Kitchener; his blood running fast and dark across two tiles, pooling inside the grout between them.
‘El. There’s a tartan scarf on the coat stand. Wind it round your neck and don’t take it off. And there’s a powder compact in the drawer of the telephone table. Take that with you and cover the worst of each other’s bruises and cuts.’
We stood, stock still and silent, throbbing with pain, the remnants of horror, the beginnings of regret.
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Is Grandpa …’ I looked at his face, the dark red blood still coughing out of his ruined skull. ‘Is Grandpa our dad?’
Her lips thinned, eyes narrowed. ‘Only follow the route on the treasure map. Go nowhere else. Only the harbour, only the warehouse. There’s always someone there, so you’ll be all right.’
‘Mum,’ El whispered. ‘Was Grandpa—’
I winced when Mum grabbed for my right hand and El’s left.
‘You must always hold onto each other’s hand. Because?’
‘We will not leave each other,’ I said.
‘Never so long as we live,’ El whispered, pushing her cold hand into mine.
‘Rely on no one else. Trust no one else. All you will ever have is each other.’
We nodded, tried not to swallow, to blink, to cry.
‘Remember, you’re the eldest, Ellice, the poison taster. Be brave, be bold, look after your sister.’ Mum’s hands were trembling; the blood at her temple had begun to run freely again. ‘Remember, Catriona, don’t be like me. Be brave. Always see the good instead of only the bad.’
And I nodded, thought of the shrieking, squawking Kakadu Jungle, all the nights El and I had run through the darkness and the lightning, the roaring wind and towering water, the shadows crouching, bristling with rage and sharp teeth. This would be no different, I thought, even as I knew it would be.
Mum stayed on her knees, and though nothing about her softened, tears ran down her lopsided face, soaked into the bloodied collar of her blouse. ‘Never forget how special you are. How special you have been.’
And then she let go of our hands, closed her eyes. ‘Go now.’
When I opened my mouth to object, El squeezed my hand tighter.
‘Go.’
When we didn’t, Mum’s eyes snapped open black, her hands uncurled to show their nails, her mouth flattened into a thin, cruel line. ‘Run!’
It wasn’t how she’d wanted – planned – to do any of it, I suppose. No long goodbye, no I love you – nothing beyond the awful, practical now. She knew we would obey because, in many ways, we were more afraid of her than of anyone else. El and I had been numbed by a lifetime of her anger, her disapproval and disappointment, but perhaps she had been too. That was how she’d protected us, safeguarded us against even the smallest part of what she’d had a longer lifetime to suffer. Her love was cruel; she built us mercilessly piecemeal.
El and I only discovered a week later that she’d killed herself, in a news headline on the TV in the Rosemount’s common room. A murder–suicide, probable history of domestic violence, a screen-crawling helpline number. She’d swallowed all of Grandpa’s heart pills and then lain down right next to him on the kitchen floor.
The last picture I have in my head of Mum is her kneeling on those tiles, blocking our view of Grandpa’s body. The fierceness of her jaw, the raw pink nakedness of that fist-sized bald spot close to her crown. And the last thing I remember that she said – shouted in echoes that shook against the thick walls and high ceilings as we ran towards the blood-red entrance hall – was no less terrible or kind.
Don’t ever come back.
But we did. Both of us. Because we didn’t keep our promises. We relied on someone else. We trusted someone else. We left each other. We forgot.
I open my eyes. They sting, my head aches, my throat throbs. I run my fingers across the smooth wood of the door, and though they leave trails of Ross’s blood in
