stupid.”
We drove past a pub called The Homecoming. It looked warm inside, and noisy. I thought myself out of the car and into the pub, taking people’s drinks when their backs were turned. I saw myself through the windows.
“I wonder if Mum and Frank have got my messages,” she said. “I couldn’t get hold of them.”
I didn’t know who these people were. I didn’t have the slightest idea of what to say.
“They might not know yet,” she said. “How weird is that?”
I could see her searching my eyes for something that wasn’t there. I blinked and so did she.
“God, Cassiel,’ she said. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
I knew exactly what she meant, even if she didn’t.
Think of the perfect cottage, right at the end of a lane that lifts and drops through woodland, and runs high along the ridges of fields. A white picket fence, a covered porch grown thick with quince and scented roses, a garden alive with birdsong and the quiet constant thrum of a stream.
I am not making this up. I didn’t dream it or read about it. This place exists. It’s where Edie took me.
Home.
I pretended to fall asleep in the seat next to her, so I wouldn’t have to worry about what to say. I let my eyes give in and close and I stayed at the small centre of myself, listening. I listened to the engine and the tick of the indicator and to Edie breathing. I listened to the air outside the windows and the rush-rush of other cars and the music she put on and turned down low so it wouldn’t wake me.
I listened when she answered her phone. It rang once.
A woman’s voice, high and thin and tinny, said, “Is it him?”
“It’s him,” Edie said, and I knew she was looking at me while she said it. “It’s Cass.”
“Oh my God,” said the woman. “I don’t believe it.”
“He’s right next to me.”
“How is he? What’s he like? Is he OK?”
“Asleep,” Edie said. “Perfect. Tall.”
“Shall I talk to him?”
Edie nudged me. I shifted in my seat and stretched. She nudged me again, harder. I opened my eyes and looked at the moving sweep of buildings and lamp posts and trees. None of them knew the terrible lie I’d started, none of them cared.
Edie held out the phone to me like a question. I shrank from it. I shook my head. She held it out again, harder. She put it in my hand.
“It’s Mum.”
“Hello?” I said.
Breathing rattled out of Edie’s phone, shallow and ragged. It made me think of a long-distance runner, of a sick dog.
She didn’t say anything.
“Hello?”
“Who’s that?” she said. “Is it you?”
She heard the lie in my voice. A mother would. She would know straight away. I spoke away from the mouthpiece so I’d be harder to hear. “Yes, it’s me.”
Then the weeping, just like with Edie. The strange small noise and the empty feeling of listening to it. I looked at Edie. I gave her back the phone.
“Mum,” she said. “It’s over. He’s coming home.”
Nothing. More sobbing. I thought I heard her say, “Are you sure?”
“Got to go. We’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
Edie let the phone drop into her lap. “You OK?” she said.
I tried to keep my eyes on the running grey of the road ahead. I liked the way I had to keep them moving just to stay looking at the same place.
“I’m fine,” I said.
I wanted to find out where we were going. I wanted to ask how long it would take, but I couldn’t. I was supposed to know.
“What are you thinking about?” she said.
I hate that question. If you’re thinking about it, it’s private. If you wanted someone else to know, you’d speak.
“Home,” I said.
She straightened in her seat, looped a strand of hair behind her ear. “I have to tell you something,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“OK.”
She looked over at me. She spoke too fast. “Please don’t be cross. Please don’t mind. Frank bought us a house. We moved.”
It took me a minute to work a few things out.
I didn’t mind. For me this was good news. For me it was a gift.
Edie was holding herself away from me, waiting for a reaction. I couldn’t tell if it was me that made her nervous, or her brother; the person she didn’t know or the one she did.
Cassiel was missing. Weren’t his family supposed to wait for him? Weren’t his loved ones supposed to be right there when he made it home? I pictured him making the journey, knocking on the door to a houseful of strangers, doubly abandoned. Cassiel would mind.
“That’s harsh,” I said. I shook my head.
“It wasn’t up to me,” she said, not looking at me, keeping her eyes on her mirrors, keeping her face towards the road.
“Whose idea was it?”
I listened to myself sounding bothered. I marvelled at my own hypocrisy.
Edie spoke too fast. “Frank found it,” she said. “He thought it was the best thing for Mum, you know. Give her something else to think about.”
“Right.”
“It was her dream house. Remember the one we always used to walk past on our way up to the common? It was up for sale and Frank’s been doing really well and…”
“That was nice of him,” I said.
Who the hell was Frank? A rich uncle? Their dad? Their mum’s boyfriend?
“Yes,” Edie said, smiling. “It was.”
She put her hand on mine and
