He stalks back down the hallway, and Siobhan hears the front door open. She reaches it just in time to catch him at the top of the main stairs.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she tells him, breathless, lightheaded, desperate to delay him for even a couple of seconds. To keep looking at him just a little while longer. “I’m going to talk about it. All of it.”
Her words are enough to make him pause, one foot on the first stair. There’s a terseness to his face, which he turns sharply to one side, as if he’s trying as hard as he can to ignore her. “What?” he growls eventually, hands white-knuckled around the banister.
“Someone reached out, about a documentary,” Siobhan says. “I’m going to talk about Hex House.”
Theo stares at her now. Siobhan can’t quite meet his gaze – she didn’t even know his face could look that unkind. One of his sleeves is rolled up, and she can see the scar from where she’d dared him to hold a lighter to his skin when they were little. Neither of them had known it would burn. “Why?” he says quietly. “Why now?”
Siobhan bites at the inside of her lip. “Haina is dead.” She remembers Zara’s email, the pointed way it closed.I’ll share more when we meet. “Maybe you were right. When we left, we should have told someone. After Elly…”
“Stop it,” Theo snaps. There’s something simmering about him now, on the brink of tipping over.
“Theo, just listen to me…”
“Don’t you dare talk about Elly.”
“You didn’t own her,” Siobhan bites back. “She was my friend, too.”
A long, heavy moment of silence. Siobhan can hear Nora moving around the flat and wonders what she’s overheard. She’s never told her mum anything about Hex House, and to the best of her knowledge, neither has Theo. That was part of the deal.Mum can know nothing.
“Don’t pretend she was your friend,” Theo growls. “Don’t fucking do that.”
“Just come over to mine,” Siobhan says on an outbreath. She feels like all the energy has been squeezed out of her body; it’s an effort to stay upright. She sags against the doorway. “We can talk about all of it. It’s so stupid, not talking. I feel like you’vediedhalf the time.”
Theo scoffs and rubs a hand over the shadow of stubble around his chin. “I haven’t changed my mind,” he says, and takes a few steps down the stairs. “I want nothing to do with you. But by all means, go and talk to some stranger about all of it now that Haina’s dead and you’re finally brave enough. You’re only four years too late.”
He descends the stairs out of sight, and Siobhan watches the blank space where he’d been standing. She hears the main door slam. Her blood is sluggish in her veins. She closes the door to the flat and retreats inside, finding Nora still in the kitchen. The hob has been switched back on and the whole room smells like grease and meat.
“Went well, did it?” Nora asks drily, poking the sausages back and forth.
Siobhan slumps down at the kitchen table, running herhands over her face. She suddenly, fiercely, wants a drink. No, five. “I don’t know what you expected,” she grumbles. “He hates me. I tried to tell you.”
“He doesn’t hate you. You’re his sister.”
“I don’t think that matters.”
“I wish you’d just tell me what happened. I wish you’d help me understand. I feel like I’m breaking apart with the two of you not speaking.”
Me too, Siobhan almost says, but stops herself at the last minute. Outside, the drizzle has turned into a downpour, droplets pelting insistently against the sash window. It’s open a crack, and Siobhan gets up to close it.
“Leave it,” Nora says, quiet but firm. Siobhan had almost forgotten. Nora always likes more than one escape route: an unlocked door, an open window. There’s nothing to run from anymore, but of course, that makes no difference. Siobhan sits back down at the table. She watches the rain, thinking of Theo walking, head down, to the station, then boarding a train back to Glasgow. This very second, he’s getting further and further away from her. For him, it’s probably never far enough.
Nora puts a plated sausage sandwich in front of her. Siobhan’s stomach turns.
“Eat it,” Nora warns. “All of it. You look like a waif.”
Nora sits down and they eat in a comfortable silence. The sausages are hot and salty but they taste like dust in Siobhan’s mouth. In her head, she composes the text she’ll send to Owen when she leaves.
Let’s go for a drink.
You said I’m in control of this.
You can’t say no.
“How’s the cinema?” Nora asks.
Siobhan abandons her half-eaten sandwich. “Fine. The money’s okay.”
