K.A. Hayton - The Other Side of the Whale Road

Now that its over, the whole thing has the quality of a dream when you wake up in the morning, where the more you try to remember it, the more hopeless it gets, like trying to hold onto water in your cupped, leaking hands. And I mean all of it, not just the weird stuff. I mean Cressida and Tim, and their cold, dim house full of beautiful objects from all the interesting places theyd been to when they were younger; I mean Mr Richards, with his heather hair and his Welsh lilt. Those things are fading as fast and getting as misty as the rest of it. The weird stuff that cant possibly have happened really except it did, and Ive got the scars to prove it.

The village was called Hoxne. You say Hox-un if youre a local and in the know, which I definitely wasnt. And Sofia, driving me there in her buzzy little social workers car paid for by my taxes, Tracy said, with a sort of false, automatic bitterness, learnt from other people, which was a bit of a joke actually, because when had Tracy ever earned enough to pay even one penny in tax? Anyway, Sofia called it Hocks-nee too, because she was from Romania or Spain or somewhere, and was as much of an outsider as I was, when you came to think about it.

I was going there because Tracy burnt down our house. She really did burn it down. She fell asleep with a lighted cigarette in her hand after drinking about fifteen vodkas, and the cigarette set fire to the sofa. There were fire engines and gawping neighbours, and a five-minute piece on the local television news. It was the first time shed done anything as bad as that, but shed been on their radar anyway and it was the final straw. The final straw in the coffin, Sofia had said, displaying a grasp of English idiom that was not quite faultless. Shed given me a stupid cartoon leaflet explaining what it meant, being in care, and now we were zipping along the A140 towards a village neither of us knew how to pronounce, and further and further away from Ipswich and Tracy and the twins, who were staying in town and being fostered together in a big house by the park.

I think you will like Cressida and Tim, Joss, Sofia said.

I said nothing. Which I believe is often the best thing.

They are very musical Tim plays the piano. And Cressida gives violin lessons. And they keep chickens. I expect, Sofia added vaguely, that they grow organic vegetables.

The last of the light was draining out of the sky, and I no longer recognised any of the names of the villages on the road signs. On either side of the road, the trees and hedges were lumpy and black against the milky violet of the evening sky.

I felt a breathless kind of panic, as if someone was trying to stuff me into a sack.

My world was buses and shops, the solid reassurance of pavements under your feet, and the cold, clean light of kebab shops spilling out of plate glass in the middle of the night. The air I was used to smelled of petrol, and not like this air, of emptiness. I knew that Hoxne Hox-un was buried deep in the guts of the Suffolk countryside, and I was trying very hard not to let the thought of it frighten me, but it did. It scared me, the emptiness. Breathe. Breathe.

Be a good boy, Joss, Tracy had said. Her hands were shaking when she fished in her bag for a tissue. There was a deep groove between the long, vertical bones in her arm. Tracy never had the time to eat.

Ill see you once a week. At a family centre in Diss. And Sofias enrolled you in a new school. Itll be better than that dump youre in now.

A fierce, tearing not-quite-pity had shot right through me.

Oh, well, youre sixteen, Tracy had said.

She started to pick at the flaky skin around her nails.

When I was sixteen, I had you on the way. Its time you grew up a bit.

In the back of the paid-for-by-taxes car, I wondered out loud how much bloody further it could be.

Sofia flashed me a tense, false, teeth-gritted smile in the rear-view mirror.

Almost there, Joss.

The house was right on the edge of the village, up a tiny lane only just wide enough for one car, and it was bigger than any house Id seen before. Bigger than any house needed to be. Sofia pulled up outside the front door, and we got out; she opened the boot, and I took out both my bags, which suddenly looked small and familiar and shabby and sad. I blinked and looked away.

It was one of those drives that curves all the way around, one way in and another way out, made of shingle like on a beach. My shoes made a crunching sound whenever I took a step. And the house was even bigger, once you got up close. It was bigger than the whole block at Ipswich had been. The faded purple paint was flaking from the windows and doors; I could hear the soft bickering sound of the organic chickens, but I couldnt see them. They must have been round the back.

And here is Cressida.

She doesnt look real, I thought.

I didnt know why the words banged into my head, and then I realised: it was her clothes. They werent the usual sort people wore; they were long and sort of drapey. More like dust sheets covering a statue than clothes. And there was a big hole in the elbow of the jumper she was wearing. Her hair was strange too, pulled into a wispy grey tail over one shoulder.

She looked like someone in fancy dress.

Tims in the kitchen, Cressida said. She squeezed my arm, which normally I would hate, but for some reason it didnt bother me at all.

This way. Well have a cup of tea, and it wont seem so strange. Teas the same wherever you are.

Weve had a long talk, Joss and I, Sofia said, about acceptable behaviours .