The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight Read online

  “What?”

  The pancake in my mouth had turned to cold sponge, wet and heavy.

  “Mum?” Edie said. “Get a grip, would you?”

  “I lost my boy,” she said, “and this… this man came back.”

  “He’s still your son,” Edie said. “He’s still Cassiel, aren’t you.”

  I swallowed my food. I looked at my plate. I breathed.

  No I’m not. I’m nothing to do with her and she knows it.

  “Look at the size of his hands,” Helen said. “The space you take up in the room.”

  I felt huge and lumbering and unwelcome.

  “How did you get that big?” she said. “Without me looking after you?”

  “I looked after myself,” I said.

  “Erm, no offence,” Edie turned the pancakes over, tucked a long ribbon of hair behind her ear. “But you look like crap.”

  “Thanks,” I said. She winked at me.

  She said, “You’ll get used to him, Mum.”

  “I don’t want to get used to him,” Helen said, “I want to be amazed and grateful every minute that he came back.” She smiled at me, stubbed her cigarette out on the others. “If I get used to you again, somebody slap me.”

  I looked at the remains of my breakfast. Please get used to me. Please all of you get used to me and the real Cassiel never come home and just let me be here. Just let me have this.

  Edie sat down and smiled at me and made a little tower of pancakes on her plate, smothered in syrup. She speared them with her fork, looked out of the window, the grey and green of the garden reflected in the blue and black and white of her eyes.

  Helen said she was going upstairs to make up Frank’s bed.

  “When’s he coming?” I said.

  “Soon,” she said, drifting to the edge of the room, moving through the door and into the hallway and out of sight. “Later.”

  I looked at Edie. “She’s all over the place,” I said.

  “She always has been.”

  “Really?”

  “You’ve just forgotten. She’s been worse.”

  “Was it me? Did I make her worse?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. She was as bad when you were here as when you weren’t.”

  “Can’t we help her?”

  “I have been trying,” she said, frowning at me. “It’s just been me.”

  “What about Frank?”

  “He throws money at the problem. Mum doesn’t need money.”

  “What does she need?”

  “If I knew that,” Edie said.

  “I’ll help,” I said.

  “Why do I believe you?” she said. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “I mean it,” I said. “That’s why.”

  Edie smiled at me. “Would you take it the wrong way if I said you should go away more often?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Because you’re so much nicer now.”

  I tried to keep the smile off my face. I blushed, for God’s sake. I felt it happen. That was a compliment. That was a compliment meant for me. Edie thought I was nicer than Cassiel. Edie liked me. I allowed myself to start hoping I was safe here. I started thinking it was all going to be fine.

  My smile broke open. I couldn’t stop it. “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’re welcome, freak.”

  Some people have no idea how lucky they are. That’s what I thought when I looked at Edie. Cassiel Roadnight didn’t know. He should never have left home, the ungrateful idiot.

  She finished her breakfast, picked the plate up and licked it clean.

  “Don’t tell,” she said.

  “I won’t if you don’t.”

  “Deal. Let’s go and find you some clothes.”

  ELEVEN

  Frank’s room was small and gloomy and cluttered. Helen had made the bed, the sheets pulled taut and smooth, the pillows plumped and pinched and standing to attention. There were three screen prints on the wall of a woman’s face.

  “Do you like them?” Edie said.

  They were simple, the face made in six or seven clean and definite lines. Each print was the same, the same sad and far away expression. Only the colours were different. They were beautiful.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  “I did them,” Edie said, turning her back on them, walking away.

  “God,” I said, looking at them again, getting drawn in. “You’re good.”

  “What do you need?” Edie said, changing the subject, opening a chest of drawers.

  “Everything. I’ve got a sweatshirt I think. My jeans aren’t worth wearing.”

  “You’re going to have to dress up as Frank,” she said. “It’s not going to be pretty.”

  “I don’t care what I look like,” I said.

  “Well, that’s another change for the better.” She handed me a pile of clothes.

  “Can I have a shower?” I said.

  “What are you asking me for?” she said. “This is your house. You can do what you like.”

  No it isn’t. No I can’t.

  It brought me back to myself, her saying that. This wasn’t my house. This wasn’t my family. I knew I mustn’t relax or get too comfortable or allow myself to enjoy it. Not yet. As soon as I did that, I’d say something wrong and blow the whole thing wide open. I should do my best to remember that.

  “Do you want to go for a walk after?” I said, putting my face to the high little window. I wanted the open space and the cutting wind. I wanted to wear myself out with walking, to slow down my thoughts. I wanted to be with Edie. I wanted to be with my sister.

  It surprised me, how much I liked her. I looked at her across the room. It was the best thing, being her brother. It made pretending to be him the worst.

  “OK,” she said, smiling at me. “Yeah. I’ll find you a coat and stuff.”

  I locked the bathroom door. I hung a towel over the mirror. I didn’t want to look at myself any more. I didn’t want to be reminded that I was me and not him. If only I could take a pill and forget. How perfect that would be. If ever there was a life that needed forgetting, it was mine.

  I wished I could wipe it clean, like steam off a mirror, like chalk from a board, like me from the face of the earth.

  I wanted so badly to forget.

  I had to wear Frank’s coat as well, and his boots, and his hat. Edie laughed so hard. She bent over double and the little coat-room rang with the sound of her.

  “I love it,” she said. “You look like a middle-aged banker.”

  “I think it suits me,” I said, turning up my collar, trying to look conceited and distinguished. It made her double over again. She had to wipe the tears from her eyes.

  The wind threw itself at the house when we opened the door.

  “Where shall we go?” I said. “Which way?”

  Edie pointed, her chin tucked into her scarf, her hat pulled down. Only her eyes were visible, screwed up against the air. “That way,” she said. “Let’s go and look at the river.”

  We started walking. The beat of our footsteps, the circle of my own breathing loud in my ears, made it easy to keep going, made it impossible to stop. The stone-still mountains away to our left were watchful, on guard, reassuringly permanent. Sheep exchanged anxious glances and scattered from our path. A buzzard circled in the air above, carried by the wind, gliding on it. I’d never been in such a free and open place, me, trapped in someone else’s body, me, imprisoned by my own lie. I’d never felt freer.

  I turned and walked backwards to see the wide slope of fields behind us, the house hidden now over the brow of the hill. The trees around it stooped and nodded, watching us go.

  If I could just forget it wasn’t true, this would feel right and natural, walking here with her. But I kept remembering, and all the joy it brought me fell through the floor, tried to turn everything I looked at dark and lifeless and grey. Except for her.

  Edie’s coat was a cornflower blue. Her eyes watered in the cold wind, her cheeks we
re flushed pink.

  “Will you stay?” she said.

  “What?”

  “When everything gets back to normal, will you stay? Have you come back for good?”

  “I want to. I think so.”

  “What about when you and Mum start arguing again, when you and Frank get started?”

  “Get started at what?”

  “Oh, you know.” She frowned at the view. “The usual.”

  I didn’t know. I was thinking, What about when the real Cassiel shows up?

  “Do you think I’m going to run away again?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “No. I don’t know what you’re going to do. You kind of brought that on yourself.”

  She had no idea what I’d brought. I wish I hadn’t brought any of it. But I couldn’t wish I hadn’t come.

  “What happened to your phone?” she said. “Did you throw it away or sell it or something?”

  “Something,” I said.

  “You’re going to need one,” she said. “And some clothes.” She laughed. “You can’t go around dressed as Frank for much longer.”

  “I haven’t got any money,” I said. “I haven’t got a thing.”

  “I’ll ask Frank for some,” she said.

  “OK.”

  “I’ll ask him for some pocket money,” she said, her smile tight-lipped, her eyes like stone.

  We walked together without talking. I felt this urge to confess. I wanted to tell her the truth. I pictured myself doing it, down on my knees. I pictured her loathing and pain.

  Lying to Edie would be so much easier if I didn’t like her so much.

  “Are you ready for all the attention?” she said.

  “What attention?” I said.

  “Nobody else knows you’re back yet,” she said. “But once they do.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You know what it’s like around here,” she said. “Somebody cuts their hair and it’s a source of fascination and debate.”

  I laughed.

  “You’re going to tear things up,” she said. “I think you might cause a couple of people to actually explode.”

  “What shall we do?” I said. “Should we make an announcement in the paper?” I was joking.

  “We could,” she said. “Or we could put you in a cage with a sheet on top and wheel you into the butter market.”

  “Like a freak show,” I said. “Lobster Baby and the Bearded Woman and the Upside-Down Man and the Long-Lost Cassiel Roadnight.”

  She grinned. “We could charge.”

  “Yes!” I said. “Sell tickets! Then I could afford my own clothes.”

  “That’s what it will be like though,” she said. “You’re going to get gawped at. You’re going to get poked and prodded and questioned. It’s going to be a nightmare.”

  It was too much to ask, to slip quietly and unnoticed into his shoes. It was what I wanted, and I wanted far too much.

  “Will you be OK?” Edie said. “Do you think you will?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know till it happens,” I said.

  We were quiet for a minute.

  “What happened to you?” she said. “Are you ever going to tell us?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Not yet.”

  “One day,” Edie said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Never.

  We were over the hill, looking down on to the river. I hadn’t seen it before. I didn’t know it was there. From up high like that you could trace its winding path through the valley. It shone flat like silver, like it was solid and still, not moving, not alive with flow and eddy and fish-leap, not black and churning beneath the bodies of swans.

  “Wow,” I said, because I couldn’t stop myself, because it took my breath away.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I kept my eyes on the mirrored water. I thought fast. “I’d forgotten how good it looks, that’s all. It’s just good to be home.”

  “Frank wanted us to move away altogether, you know,” Edie was saying, loud against the wind.

  “Why would he want that?”

  “He almost persuaded Mum to do it.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. He had this idea we should come and live with him in London.”

  She looked at me for a reaction. I let her talk.

  “He could persuade Mum to do anything,” she said. “Sometimes I think that if he told her to jump under a train, she would.”

  “Why?”

  “Why d’you think? She doesn’t like the way he is when she says ‘no’.”

  “Why didn’t you move then?” I asked her.

  “Because of you, stupid,” she said, banging into me. “We stayed because of you.”

  I thought about what Cassiel would say to that.

  “Not in the same house though.”

  She looked up at me. “You mind that, don’t you.”

  I shrugged.

  “I would,” she said.

  What should I say to that?

  “I just wish you hadn’t got rid of all my stuff.”

  “When we started going through your room,” she said, “I kept thinking you were going to come through the door and have a go at us. Even though I knew you weren’t there, I kept hearing you in the hall. I kept hearing you come up the stairs.”

  “Find anything interesting?”

  She looked so sad, smiling at me. She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it,” she said. “It was like admitting you were dead. I left it to Mum and Frank.”

  “What did they do with it all?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They should have packed it and brought it with them,” I said. “It was my junk to throw out, not theirs.”

  I listened to the outrage in my voice. I hated myself, I really did.

  “We’d already been through it once,” she said. “When we were looking for you, we had to go through your stuff to try to find out why you disappeared.”

  I wondered if she was about to tell me, if I was about to learn something.

  “And did you find it?” I said.

  “No.”

  We looked at each other.

  “Are you going to tell me?” she said, and then she answered for me. “No.”

  “Sorry, Edie,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” she said, and then, “No you’re not.”

  We turned back when the wind got so cold Edie couldn’t feel her hands any more, even through gloves. The house was quiet. Helen had gone back to bed.

  “Cigarettes and sleeping pills for breakfast,” Edie said. “Home sweet home.”

  “I wish she’d stop now,” I said.

  “Are you kidding? You think your coming back’s going to change the habit of a lifetime? I thought you were joking yesterday,” she said. “Have you really forgotten?”

  I listened to the warming hum of the range, the creak of Sergeant’s basket as he circled to change position, too old to have come on a walk with us, too old and tired.

  Neither of us knew what to do next.

  “Let’s get in the car,” Edie said. “Let’s go into town right now, get it over with.”

  “The freak show?” I said.

  “Let’s do it.”

  I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to be seen and prodded and questioned. There were so many reasons to say no.

  I tried to. I said we should leave it for a while, I said, “Maybe Helen wants to come with us.” I said, “Do you think we should wait for Frank?”

  “Why does everything have to be decided by him?” Edie said, suddenly. “Can we move without Frank’s permission? Can we breathe?”

  “Easy,” I said, “calm down.”

  “What?” she said. “Ever since you left it’s like he’s become the Master of the Universe or something, and we little women just don’t know how to cope.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

  “Talking about Frank always hits the
nerve,” she said. “You know what he’s like.”

  I said, “I guess so,” because I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Let’s just go,” Edie said. “Let’s decide to do something without anyone else giving us the benefit of their opinion.”

  What choice did I have? I couldn’t say no.

  “Let’s go into town and scare people,” she said.

  “What with?”

  “With you,” she said, getting into the car, smiling at me before shutting her door. “You’re the walking dead.”

  So we did. Against my better judgement, against all the warning noise in my head, we got into the car and Edie drove the ten minutes into town. We parked in the market square. It was almost deserted. There were two old women talking on the corner, a dog wandering around, somebody at the cash point.

  I was relieved, but I pretended not to be. “Not much of an audience,” I said.

  It didn’t take long. The lady in the newsagent called me Frank, and Edie said, “It’s not Frank. He’s dressed as Frank, but he isn’t him.”

  The lady looked again. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “Cassiel Roadnight. Is that you?”

  Edie took my hand and pulled me towards the door. “He’s back,” she said, “and you are the first to know.”

  “How are you?” the lady said.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said, halfway out already.

  “That should do it,” Edie said. “Everybody goes in there. Where else? Want a coffee?”

  I shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Well, it’s not about the coffee,” she said, leading the way. “It’s about sitting in the window and getting seen. Let’s count the double-takes on people’s faces.”

  We did. There were thirty-seven. Some of them came in and spoke straight to me, the bell on the door announcing their arrival, heralding their decision to come in. I had to smile and pretend I knew who they were without actually using their names.

  “It’s you,” they said, and, “You’re back,” and I said, “Hello,” and, “Yes.”

  Everything else, all the questions they wanted to ask, all the information they craved, went on behind their eyes. I watched it. And I didn’t have to join in.

  Nobody was scared. Nobody exploded. Maybe they wanted to. It must have been something, seeing a boy they probably thought was dead, sitting with his sister drinking coffee, like nothing had happened.