3 Emerging from the dark
The naked mole rat spends its entire life underground, living in a colony, tunneling through the earth in search of nutritious roots and other titbits. Forever in darkness, the mole rat’s world consists only of soil and roots, of other mole rats and worms and other underground creatures. It is entirely unaware of the outside world.
There is a completely different world beyond the darkness.
~
Night time, and still no word. Liam lay curled awkwardly on a sofa that was too short for him to stretch out, in a borrowed sleeping bag that smelt of dusty cupboards. He had been woken by drunken shouting coming from the flat downstairs. All was quiet now, but he was stiff and sore from lying uncomfortably. A streetlight burned amber through a thin curtain, casting the room in the kind of half-light that both obscured the details and yet lit up enough to hint at all those things you couldn’t quite see. Somewhere, a baby cried.
He and Kath had spent a desultory evening, two people who realised that they didn’t know each other anywhere near as well as they should. One of the few things they had in common was that Kath, too, had been to NATS. But even there they differed. Kath had only lasted a term or two before returning to a State school in Norwich, while Liam, now, was being fast-tracked. Even the Grunts had to make the grade.
They hadn’t talked about NATS that evening. They hadn’t talked about anything that mattered. Kath had forced lightness into everything she said, calling him “littl’un” and laughing nervously at the least opportunity.
“They’ve probably just forgotten you were coming,” she had told him more than once, even though they both knew that didn’t explain the state of the house. “They’re probably off clubbing.” They had eaten noodles from the Cantonese Kitchen, even though Kath couldn’t really afford it, as she had made sure to tell him. She fried some onions and mushrooms to go with it. Liam had felt much better after the food, his headache receding, a calmness reasserting itself. Before ... it had been as if there was a jabber of voices in his head, closing in on him, and he had been intensely aware of the city of human souls all around him.
They had waited by the telephones: Kath’s hanging from the living room wall, Liam’s mobile open and ready on a coffee table.
There had been no calls, no knocks on the door from the police. No nothing.
~
He must have dozed again, because he woke to a terrified scream bursting out of the flat’s one bedroom.
Kath!
He sat upright, feeling suddenly helpless, his arms trapped in the sleeping bag, its hood pulled tight around his face by the drawstring. For a moment, he felt as if he was being smothered, then he forced himself to get a grip. He took a steadying breath, and worked a hand up to loosen the hood, then found the zip.
The bedroom door banged open and Kath staggered out, pale slug-like thighs lit yellow by the streetlamp, a tee-shirt swinging around her middle as she moved. Her eyes caught Liam’s, and the whites burned gold in the room’s eerie light.
She jerked away, flapped at the kitchen door, fumbled for a light.
He half-expected someone – or something – to follow her from her room: whatever it was that had woken her screaming and given her those terrified animal eyes.
No. She must have been dreaming. Nightmares.
He heard running water, a cupboard banging, a rattle, a clatter of glass or china. Then he heard the feet of a stool being dragged across the lino.
He extracted himself from the sleeping bag and stood. Straightening his tee-shirt and boxer shorts self-consciously, he paused to pull on a pair of jeans from his bag, then went through.
“What’s up?”
She jerked and looked round. She mustn’t have heard him come in. She was sitting on a tall wooden stool, elbows on the draining board by the sink. She let her head settle back into her hands. A mug sat on the ridged metal surface before her, and a white plastic pill bottle with the lid by its side. She tugged the hem of her tee-shirt down over a bloated thigh.
Liam approached her cautiously, and stood leaning against the fridge. Tear tracks highlighted his sister’s face.
“What’s up?” he said again.
“I...” Her voice was a mere croak. She smacked the palm of one hand against the side of her head and slumped. “It’s hard to take,” she said weakly.
Was this guilt? Guilt that she had rebelled at school and then turned her venom on their parents before finally leaving to live on her own and ignoring them altogether? And now their parents had vanished... Liam had expected that she wouldn’t care, but now he thought she must care a great deal indeed.
“They’ll turn up,” he told her now. Somehow this didn’t seem right. He didn’t feel that he should have to be the one offering comfort and advice. “They’ll turn up, and when they do you can talk to them.” He almost added that it was never too late, but thought better of it. “It’ll be okay,” he finished lamely.
She was staring at him. Those same scared eyes.
He saw that she had barely calmed down at all.
“No,” she said. “It’s not them. It’s this.” Her eyes flicked around the room, as if showing him what it was she couldn’t take. “It’s you, littl’un.”
He stared at her, feeling as if the ground had been pulled from under his feet.
“It’s you that I can’t cope with...”
~
“All the rest...” She waved a hand dismissively. “But you ... here ... It’s too much.” She smacked the side of her head again. “Too much.”
She reached for the bottle, hesitated and then tipped another pill out. She washed it down with a gulp of water from her mug.
Liam stared at her. The mug had a picture of a smiling cow on it, with big pink udders and friendly eyes. She put the mug down and now he stared at it. Something normal. Something sane.
He didn’t know what to say, what to think.
She was looking at him, sideways on. More tears were flowing down the crease between nose and cheek. “I shouldn’t feel ... this,” she said. “I should be able to cope. You’re ... my brother.” She jerked her head away, and leaned low over the sink so that Liam thought she was about to throw up. Instead, she took a series of deep breaths.
She rubbed at her nose with the heel of her hand. Then she tipped her head back so that her face was lit by the yellow light coming in from the living room, the streetlamp.
She looked at him, suddenly calm. Liam suspected that the pills must have started to work, whatever they were.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice lazy, distant. “It’s not you. It’s me. I ... have problems. It’s just me. Go back to bed. Back to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
She drifted across the room then. As she passed him in the doorway, she reached up and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand, the first time they had touched that Liam could remember.
When she had gone, he switched off the light and went back to his borrowed, musty sleeping bag. He leaned back, his knees in the air and his feet on the arm of the sofa. He had always thought she had left home because she had rowed with their parents, but tonight changed all that. She had said it. She had said that she couldn’t cope with him being there. She couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take him.
His sister hated him and yet right now she was all he had in the world.
~
The living room window faced east and the morning sun woke him early. He reached out for his phone and checked it, but there were no messages. He lay back, holding the phone to his chest.
He looked around the room, realising for perhaps the first time quite what a shabby existence his sister lived. An old TV, a tiny stereo. A vase of artificial flowers by the window. Up on the mantelpiece over the electric fire, he saw a couple of postcards. Southwold and La Rochelle. Liam had sent them to her last year, one a day trip and the other a holiday with Mum and Dad. She couldn’t bear to have him here, yet she kept his postcards...
He glanced at her bedroom door, firmly closed, a barrier.
He wondered just when it was that the two of them had gone wrong, when they had become people who could no longer live in the same house.
He remembered the rows between his parents and Kath. Or rather, he remembered the aftermath, the angry silences, the sense that there were things left unsaid. He had been away a lot of the time, at NATS, and before that at a prep school in Cambridgeshire.
Earlier memories. Playing with Kath on a wide, sandy beach, somewhere in Norfolk. Blue skies and sandcastles, and later, a picnic on a tartan travel rug spread across the crisp white sand. Christmases and birthdays stuck in his mind, happy family occasions with cakes and candles and presents to unwrap. All these memories seemed to run together in Liam’s mind, much of the detail lost. It was like an album of family photos: they could have been anybody’s, but they were his, his childhood, his family, his sister.
He didn’t know when things could have started to break down.
He lay there quietly, trying to close down all the random noise in his head. It was often like this, back in Norwich. He pictured it as the city trying to burst in. All those voices, all those people crammed into the streets around him, a constant background jabber. His head was starting to pound again.
Much later, he heard sounds from the bedroom and then the door opened. Kath came out in black jeans and a crimson sweater, with a jolly smile on her face. He wondered how long she had been trying to force that expression into place. She hated him, he remembered.
She didn’t say anything. She must have sensed his mood.
She went through to the kitchen and started to bang cupboards and crockery.
Liam dragged himself out of the sleeping bag, leaving it in a screwed up heap on the floor. In the bathroom, he peered at himself in the mirror. Heavy black shadows were slung below his eyes, and his skin was pale, greasy. He decided it wasn’t yet time for his fortnightly shave. He splashed cold water over his face, running wet hands through his hair to smooth it down and refresh his scalp.
There was a plate on the coffee table, mounded high with scrambled eggs, tomatoes from a tin, sausages. Kath stood behind the sofa, that forced smile on her face again. “Eat up,” she said, waving a hand at the food.
“I...” Liam put a hand to his throbbing head. She was making an effort this morning, but he just didn’t think he could eat.
“Go on,” she insisted. “It’ll do you good. It’ll get you off to a good start. Sit down. Eat up.”
There was a tense edge to her voice. She seemed to be saying that if she could make the effort then the least he could do was go along with it.
He sat on the edge of the sofa and stared at the plate. Kath handed him a knife and fork, and stood just to one side, waiting for him to start.
He prodded at the egg, took a little on the fork and raised it to his mouth.
She was right. It smelled good, tasted good. It was just like the refectory food at NATS. He took another forkful, and another.
Soon the plate was clear. He sat back. “Thanks,” he said. “Aren’t you...?”
She shook her head. “I had toast,” she said.
His head was clear again, he realised. The food had made a big difference.
“So,” he said, as Kath came to sit on a bean bag against the wall, “what do we do?”
Kath shrugged. “We sit back,” she said. “All we can do is wait. Keep our heads down and wait.”
She was probably right, but it made Liam feel so helpless! He felt that he should be out there, doing something. But what could he do? What did they know?
“You can stay here,” said Kath softly. “As long as you need to.”
He looked at her, remembering last night. He couldn’t work her out. He looked away again, and tried to think what to do next.
~
The city seemed different today. It was nothing obvious. He stood on the narrow foot bridge over Grapes Hill and looked down at the solid Saturday morning traffic. All these people in their cars, carrying on as normal. But Liam had emerged in a different and frightening world where all the rules seemed to have changed: his parents had vanished, their house had been ransacked, his sister couldn’t bear to be with him. Yet for all these people in their cars and their ordinary lives it was all the same as ever. They didn’t realise just how close they were to having their worlds turned upside down. Everyone was living on the knife-edge, but they just couldn’t see it.
He hadn’t known where he was heading, when he went down the stairs from Kath’s flat.
She stood at the top, telling him not to go. “What if they ... or someone ... phones?” she said.
He had taken his mobile from his pocket and waved it at her. “If anyone calls me I’ll let you know. And if anyone calls here you can call me.”
Kath seemed resigned to just sitting by the telephone and waiting to see what happened. Their parents would call them, or someone would make contact, or the police would discover something. Liam couldn’t do that, though. He couldn’t just sit and wait.
Stepping outside had been like a great weight lifting, a blanket being pulled back from his eyes. He was able to breathe again. He hadn’t realised quite how tense the atmosphere had still been between his sister and him, until he stepped out into the morning air.
Now, he stood and watched the traffic crawling past beneath him.
He turned away from the peeling green rails and went down the bridge to Upper St Giles Street, heading for the city centre.
A few minutes later he stood before the public entrance to the police station. It led into a gloomy waiting area with a high ceiling and posters on the walls. Liam approached the enquiries desk and an officer turned to look at him. He was a bulky man, with short ginger hair and a slight squint. “Yes? What can I do for you?”
Liam hesitated. “It... It’s about an incident. Yesterday. My parents disappeared and the house was turned upside down. I stayed with my sister last night. There was a policeman – two. One in uniform and another in a suit. They took me to my sister’s. They said they’d call but we haven’t heard anything. I thought someone here might...”
He ground to a halt, realising that he hadn’t made much sense.
“Hold on a minute,” said the policeman. “What’s your name? Where do you live? Just give me some details and I’ll find someone who can talk to you, okay?” He had a friendly manner, but Liam sensed that he probably thought he was mad.
“Connor. I’m Liam Connor. I live with my parents at 23 New Chapel Road, up near Mousehold Heath.”
The man scribbled this down on a memo pad, then picked up a telephone. “Okay,” he said to Liam, as he punched a number. “Give us a minute and someone’ll be through.”
Liam sat. He had a terrible feeling that it had been a mistake to come here. He felt guilty, accused.
A short time later, a tall, dark-haired man with a neat little moustache and a blue suit came out to the waiting area. “Liam Connor? Come on through. I’m Detective Constable Parker.”
Liam followed him into an interview room and they sat across a table from each other.
“So tell me, Liam,” said DC Parker, “what, exactly, happened yesterday?”
“I came home from school for the weekend,” Liam said. “But when I got home, the place had been wrecked and my parents were missing. The police came, and took me to my sister’s. They said they’d find out what happened and let us know. We haven’t heard anything, so I came here.”
“How old are you, Liam?”
“Fifteen.”
“Okay, Liam. Can you tell me who this policeman was? You told Bob on the desk that there was one in uniform and one in plain clothes. What were their names?”
“They never said.”
“What kind of car did they drive? Was it a marked police car?”
Liam shook his head. “No, it was just a silver car, unmarked. A Ford Focus, I think.”
“What’s your sister’s name? Does she have a telephone?”
“Kath,” said Liam. He took out his phone to check her number, then turned it to show DC Parker.
“Okay, Liam. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be back. Okay?”
Liam sat alone in the interview room.
Eventually, Parker returned. He didn’t sit this time. Instead, he stood, leaning forward on the back of the chair opposite Liam. “Okay, Liam. I want you to be straight with me this time. Is that okay?”
Liam nodded, uncertainly, eyes fixed on the policeman’s face.
“Is this some kind of a game, or are you telling the truth?”
Liam still stared. After a few seconds of silence, he said, “What do you mean, ‘a game’?”
The policeman let the silence return for a few seconds more before he replied. “I’ve just checked the system and spoken to some of my colleagues, and I’m puzzled.”
He was shaking his head slowly as he spoke. “You see, Liam, there was no report of an incident at New Chapel Road yesterday. No missing persons report. No report about a house being vandalised. Nothing. We have no record of the police having attended the incident you describe.”
Liam realised he had been holding his breath. He let it go, breathed in again. What was this man telling him?
“As far as we’re concerned, Liam, this incident never happened.”