The night unravels like a spool of dark thread. Elly gives in to her fatigue, sinking heavily into the cushions of the sofa. She lets Margot slip a plump segment of tangerine between her lips. She listens to the tinkling of piano keys, the icy voices of the red sisters as they sing an old Gaelic song. Then, sometime after midnight, Elly becomes aware of a new quiet. Everyone is looking at Haina, who has climbed up onto the coffee table in the middle of the parlour. As the guests notice her, one by one, they fall silent. Haina presses one hand to her chest, smiling benevolently. Her voice is calm as the sea on a windless night.
“My angels. I have a very important and exciting announcement to make.” Her voice has no problem fillingevery inch of the room. Elly pictures it seeping into the weave of the upholstery, forcing its way into shadowy corners. Beside her, Margot is tapping her palms against the outside of her thighs, like she can’t stay still, like there are insects crawling beneath her clothes. “Many of you will know how fiercely I guard our privacy here. How important it is that we’re protected from everything going on…out there.” Those two words seem to hurt her tongue. “It’s only by untethering ourselves completely that we can really begin to heal.”
On the night she arrived, one of the first things Haina asked Elly was whether she had a mobile phone. Elly had left hers back on the bed in the cottage; hadn’t even thought to take it with her in the molten second she’d decided to run. She’s heard from some of the other guests that Haina took their phones and stamped on them with the heel of her boot until they were mangled. It’s one of the things that gives Hex House its intense immediacy, she realises now. No one’s attention is divided. There’s nothing else to do or think about other than what’s in front of you. There’s no intangible world to escape into. There is no other place. Only here, only now.
“That being said,” Haina continues, “those of you who’ve been here a while will notice that we’ve had fewer arrivals recently. Our newest guest aside.” Heads swivel to seek out Elly, and she finds herself pierced by many eyes. She keeps her eyes trained ahead, on Haina. “Despite the best efforts of the flock, most of the people who need us aren’t finding us, and I’ve been thinking hard about why that might be. And I think one of the reasons, perhaps the biggest reason, is that peopleout theredon’t understandwhat Hex House is, or what it can offer. Some of you have told me about the rumours. They won’t believe in it. And those that do, don’t think that this is a safe place. They don’t know how much it can help them. And what good is this sanctuary if the people who need us misunderstand who we are?” She pauses, her hand still braced on her chest. Her eyes are large and watery, and Elly wonders how long Haina’s been here, for her to care this much. “So,” she says, brightening a little, “I’ve made the decision to invite two outsiders into our midst.Filmmakers.” She says the word as though it’s an exotic fruit. “Over the next few months, they’ll be staying with us and making a documentary about the important work we do here. Eventually, they’ll broadcast our mission to those who might benefit from it.”
The room starts to simmer with uncertainty, maybe a little panic, hushed whispers passing back and forth. Beside Elly, Margot’s leg taps have become slaps. Elly reaches out a hand to calm her and finds her skin clammy, cool to the touch. The idea of filmmakers,here, their cameras and microphones amongst all the candles and roses, is surreal. Elly remembers how her hands had looked today and bites down on her tongue, hard. There’s a shape to this place that Elly doesn’t understand yet. How much can Haina really mean to show the rest of the world?
Haina raises a hand, and the room falls silent again. Elly tastes saltiness in her mouth and realises she’s bitten her tongue hard enough to bleed. “I understand that it’ll take some getting used to,” Haina says, more gently now. “I realise that it might even feel frightening at first, to open up the walls of this sanctuary, just a little. Pleaseknow – anyone who doesn’t wish to be on camera can ask for their identity to be hidden. I have selected these filmmakers especially for their affinity with the house, their sympathy to our ethos and what we do here.”
Near the back of the room, Grace has raised her hand. Her thin lips are set into a hard line.
“Yes, my angel?”
“When will they get here?” Grace’s voice is different here than in the kitchen, where she sounds authoritative and sure. Now, it is small, contained.
Haina beams, teeth gleaming. “That’s the best part of all. Our new friends will be here with us within the week.”
NOW
Siobhan walks quickly down Leith Walk towards her mum’s flat. There’s something prickly about Leith that Siobhan has always loved: the sweaty pubs with the same hollow-faced men staring out of the windows day after day, the graffiti on the sides of the yoga studios. A march out of town and towards the shore, Leith feels like a different world to Old Town Edinburgh, a surly cousin lurking on the outside of a party, smoking.
The air has a bite and it’s drizzling, a thin static of rain dampening her face. The other people on the pavement seem lethargic and oblivious today and Siobhan has to elbow her way past them, growing more fractious the further down the street she gets. She’s wearing a battered navy rain jacket of Theo’s, one he grew out of as a teenager and let her have. The zip is broken and there’s a hole in the left pocket. She wears it every time it rains.
Every few minutes, her thoughts return to Zara’s email, lurking in her trash folder. Four years ago, she’d decidedthat the only way to survive was to convince herself that Hex House had never happened. But Haina is dead – Haina, whose striking face often returns to her unbidden, sending her teetering off-balance for days after – and that changes everything. She can feel the claws that have been buried deep in her skin for so long start to come loose. She could rid herself of it, unburden herself of every awful detail. There are so many consequences to telling her story that feel like routes down a foggy road – she can’t see where they might go, or what she might be freeing by putting what she knows out into the world. She follows her thoughts around in circles, trying to pin them down, all the way down Leith Walk.
Her mum Nora has lived in the same poky flat above a drycleaners since they left the shelter. Theo will already be inside now, almost certainly unaware she’s coming, and Siobhan pauses at the main door to collect herself. She chews on a hangnail, ripping off a little too much skin. It stings. She’s starting to feel clammy under her clothes, thinking about the last time she saw Theo. Running. The woods. Hex House getting smaller and smaller until it was nothing, nothing at all. Theo screaming at her, each word pointed and hurled to hurt.
Fine, have it your way. But I’ll never speak to you again. That’s the deal.
He had stalked away from her, the woods consuming him with no effort at all, and Siobhan had stood still and alone for a very long time. Eventually, she’d retraced her steps back to the house and found only trees, endless trees. They felt so insistent and absolute that she’d looked down at herself and expected to see not her body but a gnarledtrunk, for the woods to have claimed her as punishment. She looked for hours. She never found her way back to Hex House.
Siobhan had tried to go and see Theo in Glasgow about a year later. She’d turned up drunk outside his flat, jabbed repeatedly at the buzzer, slurred her name into the intercom box like an apology. He sent his flatmate Joe down with a ten-pound note and a folded piece of paper she was too drunk to read. Joe drove her to Queen Street Station where she fell asleep on the platform and got nudged awake by a cleaner in the early hours of the morning. Before boarding the train, she remem bered the paper in her pocket and took it out. Theo’s handwriting – the careful capitals, the looping ‘s’s – made her stomach feel warm, but the words cut at her insides.
Just leave me alone Shiv. Remember the deal.
She hasn’t tried to contact him since. Sometimes she dreams about him, but he’s always screaming at her. He’s always leaving.
Siobhan lets herself into the main stairwell and makes her way up to the second floor. Stepping inside her mum’s flat is always like going back in time: the twinkling sound of the bead curtain as it parts, the way the light falls across the hallway in the afternoon. She knows that in the bedroom down the hall, the one she shared with Theo, the faded Green Day and Sum 41 posters will still be Blu-Tacked to the walls, that inside the kitchen cupboards will be the same Nutella jars repurposed as water glasses, and that on the lounge bookcase there will be no books but rows and rows ofDallasVHS tapes, proudly displayed. Siobhan slips out of her trainers. She can hear Norahumming in the kitchen as something spits and crackles in a frying pan. She makes her way instead to the living room, where she’s almost surprised to find Theo, surprised to find that he is, in fact, real, that he didn’t disappear for good that day in the woods. He’s curled up on the sofa watching an old episode ofThe OC, wearing a grey sweatshirt and black jeans. He’s turned towards the TV and doesn’t see her straight away, so she has a moment to observe him uninterrupted, to indulge in the details that have been forbidden to her for so long. At first glance, even though it’s been four years, he looks no different: dark hair curly and unkempt, tortoiseshell glasses framing melancholy eyes, a long, slightly crooked nose she could draw in her sleep. His lean body is folded in half as he concentrates on the TV, back rounded and one arm looped around his knees. But the more she looks, the more she can see the subtle changes: the way he’s filled out slightly around the shoulders, the silver watch around his wrist she never would have thought he’d like. He’s twenty-seven now, she realises. He’s gotten older. Maybe he’s a different person entirely. He’s acquired four years of memories and tiny bursts of happiness and aching lonely moments that she has no idea about, and maybe never will. Her throat feels tight and a small sound escapes her, making Theo turn towards the doorway. When he sees her, he straightens, eyes widening like she’s a burglar. His feet swing from the sofa and onto the floor, as if he’s considering making a run for it.
“Theo,” Siobhan starts, but he’s no longer looking at her.
“For fuck’s sake, Mum,” he shouts as he gets to his feet. “You promised you wouldn’t do this.”
“Just five minutes, Theo. Please.” Siobhan hates how her voice sounds – there’s a needling quality to it, the shrillness of desperation.
Theo pushes past her as though she isn’t even there, out into the hallway. Siobhan watches him reach the kitchen in three strides. She hasn’t seen him in this flat for so long and had forgotten how much space his tall body inhabits. The idea that the three of them lived here once, spending every day together, feels almost magical now. It feels like a fairytale childhood she’s dreamed up.
She follows him silently into the kitchen. Nora stands at the stove, tending to sausages. When she sees Theo’s expression, the way his face has drained of colour, she sighs and turns off the gas. Her dark hair is twisted into a bun on top of her head, thick kohl around her eyes. Siobhan has only seen her mum without make-up a handful of times and always hated how fragile it made her look, with her small eyes and pale lips. She much prefers her like this, brownish-red liner framing her cupid’s bow, almost cartoonish. Brash, bold. She’s wearing the apron Siobhan and Theo had bought her one Christmas, the characters fromDallasprinted on the front.
“Hi, Shivvy,” Nora says, ignoring Theo and giving Siobhan a light squeeze on the arm. Siobhan catches a whiff of her perfume – sweet vanilla, soft jasmine. “Thanks for coming.”
“Mum,” Theo hisses, incredulous, one hand raking through his hair. “Are you serious? I’ve told you a thousand times. I do not want to speak to Siobhan.”
“What about what I want?” Nora says. Her voice is level, calm. She has obviously prepared herself for theonset of this particular storm. “I want my two children to speak to each other. It’s been long enough.”
Theo splutters something incomprehensible and then seems to think better of even trying. He still won’t look at Siobhan. “Whatever. I’ll just go.”
