Aunty Julia was my dad’s sister, the closest relative I had outside Elden. Since I was a little girl, when Dad and I had visited regularly to fish in the lake, I’d thought of the little whitewashed cottage and my aunty’s smiling presence as things that meant safety. It had always felt more like home than the stark, minimalist innards of my mum’s house.
I still made the trip up whenever I could and Aunty Julia, who had no kids of her own, always welcomed me with child-like excitement. Whether she’d do the same today, I wasn’t sure.
As I knocked at the door, a vivid picture of little me wading in the shallows of Wastwater with my jeans rolled to the knee, clutching a jam jar full of minnows while Dad did the grown-up fishing and Aunty Julia laid out a picnic on the bank, popped up in my mind. It made me smile in spite of everything. The fishing trips were my happiest memories, although since losing Dad they often came with a tear served on the side.
I waited impatiently for Aunty Julia to let me in. Even though I was a good hundred miles from Butterfield Farm where, if I was lucky, my family and friends were still enjoying a wedding reception they hadn’t noticed was now Kittyless, I felt paranoid being out in the open air, ultra-conspicuous in my daft bloody ballgown.
‘Hello, can I – oh my goodness!’ Aunty Julia said when she answered my knock, her eyes widening. ‘Kitty, look at you! What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Hiya.’ I bent over her wheelchair to give her a kiss.
‘Is Ethan with you? I don’t understand, Kitty. Why aren’t you at the reception?’
‘Can I come in before we get into all that?’
‘Yes,’ she said, blinking. ‘Yes, of course, my love. Come through to the front room.’
I followed her in and took a seat on the sofa.
‘How did you get here, dear? Where’s Ethan? How will you get back?’ She didn’t seem to know which question to fire at me first.
‘Ethan’s at the reception. I got here in an orange campervan with an Irish children’s author and his pregnant karaoke-singing dog. And I’m not going back.’
‘What do you mean, you’re not going back?’
My stomach gave a growl, its way of reminding me that even fugitives needed to eat. I hadn’t had a bite since pre-wedding nerves had kicked in to hurl yesterday’s lunch down the loo the evening before. I’d been feeling pretty sick all day, first with nerves and then the shock I’d got at the reception, and my energy levels were drained.
‘Have you got any biscuits, Aunty J? Or a ham sandwich or something? I’m starved.’
‘Yes.’ She recovered herself slightly. ‘Yes, yes, of course. I’ll make us some tea and see what I have in.’
She wheeled herself to the specially adapted open-plan kitchen, coming back ten minutes later with a plate of chocolate digestives, some finger sandwiches and a steaming mug of tea each. I tucked in ravenously.
‘Don’t wolf it down like that, Kitty. You’ll make yourself sick.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, gulping down a sandwich. ‘Not eaten for twenty-four hours.’
She scanned my crumpled clothes and tangled hair with concern. ‘No offence, dear, but you look like you’ve fallen out of a bird’s nest. What on earth have you been doing with yourself?’
I felt a wave of nausea as I gagged on the last bite of sandwich, but I forced it down.
‘I’ve been hitch-hiking,’ I said. ‘Bit of an experience. Still, one thing I can cross off my bucket list, eh?’
‘Don’t joke, Kitty. This is serious.’
‘You’ve got no idea,’ I said through a mouthful of digestive.
‘What did you mean when you said you weren’t going home?’
‘What I said. I can’t go back, Aunty.’ The mental picture of what I’d seen at the reception rose up in my mind, and I choked on a sob. ‘I’m never going back.’
‘But why?’
‘Something happened. At the wedding reception. Something… something really bad.’
‘With Ethan?’ Her eyes were round. ‘Did he hurt you, Kitty? He didn’t, did he? Surely not.’
In her free time, Aunty Julia volunteered at a women’s refuge, and she had her own bit of history in that department too – dear departed Uncle Ken, widely known among the family as ‘that bastard’. So it was no great surprise that violence was her first thought.
‘Nothing like that.’ I tried to push back my tears, but they wouldn’t stop coming.
‘Then what? Was there – you didn’t find him with someone else?’
I turned my face away to gaze out of the window. ‘I’d really rather not talk about it just yet. It’s… kind of raw.’
She stared at me for a moment, mouth open, as if she was struggling to take it all in.
‘But you can’t just run away,’ she said at last. ‘What about your mother? She’ll be worried sick.’
‘She’ll cope,’ I muttered.
‘Let me call her, dear. She can take you home, and if Ethan’s done something—’ Her brow lowered. ‘Well, never you mind about that. He won’t be able to hurt you, we’ll see to it.’
‘No,’ I said sharply. ‘No. I don’t want you to call her. Please.’
‘But she’ll be so anxious when she finds you’re gone. At least let me tell her you’re safe. Then you can stay here for a few days until you’re calmer and we can work out what to do when you get home.’
‘I told you, I’m not going home.’
‘Then where will you go?’
I flushed. ‘Well, I was hoping I could stay here. Just for a little while, until I can make a new start somewhere.’
She shook her head, bewildered. ‘A new start! Don’t you think that’s a little extreme? I mean, your job. Your friends, your family, your house…’
‘It’s Ethan’s house. And there’s nothing in that life I want to go back for now.’
‘You can’t let him chase you away, Kitty. Elden’s your home.’
‘Not any more.’ I finally surrendered and let the tears flow. ‘I can give up or I can start again, Aunty J. And really, I just want to give up. But something won’t let me.’
‘Oh, Kitty…’
She wheeled herself closer and put her arm around me. She had that comforting smell she always had, a combination of some floral perfume and the spicy aniseed tang of the cream she used for muscle pain.
‘Now, don’t you worry about a thing,’ she said gently. ‘What can I do for you, my love? Tell me what you need from me.’
‘Can I stay? Just for a bit.’
‘Of course you can, for as long as you want to. But I wish you’d let me call your mother. You need to be with your family.’
‘You’re my family.’
She smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose I am. Well, dear, how about you go upstairs and run yourself a bubble bath? Get out of that silly dress and into a nice fluffy bathrobe while I make us something yummy for tea? You need something a bit more substantial than ham sandwiches, I think. You’re looking very peaky.’
I sniffed, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘That sounds nice.’ I pecked her cheek. ‘Thanks, Aunty, I knew I could count on you. Love you.’
Upstairs in the bathroom, a huge corner bath gaped welcomingly. I turned on the hot tap, and watched as the steaming jet started to fill the tub. There was some lavender-fragranced bubble bath next to the tap, so I threw a bit in.
God, it was nice to feel safe again. Grounded.
I pulled off my wellies, then glanced down at my dress, which was a bit worse for wear by now.
I remembered the day I’d got it; how excited I’d been at the colour, the cut, the fit. Nan had been with me. I could picture her zipping me into it and the quaint little blessing she’d muttered in the accent that even after fifty years in Yorkshire, still had a trace of County Kerry about it – ‘health to wear it, strength to tear it, money to buy another’. Then she’d kissed me, told me I was beautiful. Told me how proud my dad would’ve been if he’d been around to see me.
I wished I could call her, just to hear her voice for five minutes.
I hunted around the bathroom for a towel, but there didn’t seem to be any. Opening the door, I went to ask Aunty Julia where she kept them these days.
At the top of the stairs, I stopped. I could hear muttered speech. Who was she talking to? Glancing down, I saw her on the phone in the hallway.
‘Yes, she’s here, safe and sound,’ she was saying in a low voice. ‘No, she won’t tell me. Ethan must really have done something terrible to get her into that state. Complete breakdown, it looks like.’
She paused while the person on the other end of the line said something.
‘No, you never trusted him, did you? I should’ve listened. But Kitty was so besotted with him, and he seemed such a nice boy, I did think… ah well. I suppose my record’s against me.’ She sighed. ‘Poor little girl. What can we do for her now?’
Another pause, then:
‘Are you sure? She seems quite adamant she doesn’t want to go home. Of course, she’ll calm down after a few days, but maybe she’s better off here until then?’
She paused again. ‘Okay, if you’re positive it’s for the best, you’d better come and fetch her. I’ll look after her till you get here. Bye, Petra.’
I stiffened, then dashed back into the bathroom to yank my wellies back on.
My stomach lurched painfully, and I threw myself over the toilet bowl as the sandwiches I’d just eaten came back up. When I’d retched out the entire contents of my gut, I flushed the loo and rinsed my mouth out over the sink, staring at the pale alien looking back at me from the mirror.
I couldn’t believe it! She’d only gone and called Mum, after I’d specifically asked her not to! Aunty Julia, the one person I’d really believed would be on my side; the person I loved and trusted most out of everyone.
But there was no time to reflect on my second sickening betrayal of the day. From the sounds of it, my mum was already heading this way to take me home.
I had to get out.
Quietly I turned the bathroom lock to shut myself in. Then I opened the window and looked down.
Yep. It was happening. I was going to do something I’d only ever seen in films, something that twenty-four hours ago I could never have imagined myself doing.
I was going to shin down a drainpipe. In my wedding dress and wellies, like some low-budget Yorkshire remake of Kill Bill.
I eyed the iron drainpipe with trepidation. I didn’t have much time: if Mum set off right away she could be here in two hours, and I wanted to be as far away as possible by then. But I’d never climbed down a drainpipe before, and although I asked myself how hard it could really be, the ground seemed a long way off.
‘Kitty! Do you need a towel?’ Aunty Julia’s voice sailed up.
‘Er, no,’ I called back. ‘Managed to find one, thanks.’
Okay, that settled it. I needed to get out, before she cottoned on that something was up.
I turned off the taps. It might take Aunty Julia a while to work out I was gone, and I didn’t want to end up flooding her house.
Clambering up onto the sink as quietly as possible, I leaned out of the window to grab the drainpipe with both hands, my enormous flared skirt billowing over the porcelain. With a huge effort and a barely suppressed squeal, I managed to manoeuvre myself out, supporting my weight as best I could.
Still, as I scrambled down the pipe, trying not to look at the ground, it was really less of a climb than a slide. When I got to the bottom, the skin of both hands was friction-burnt and painful, little pieces of black paint dotting the palms where they’d embedded themselves in my flesh. I’d managed to tear my dress too, but that was the least of my worries.
Health to wear it, strength to tear it, money to buy another…
Money. I patted my bosom, where the £50 Jack had lent me was stashed in my bra. Thank God I hadn’t talked him into taking it back. It was all that was standing between me and complete destitution right now.
I started walking towards the road. Once I was out of sight of the house, I broke into a sprint. My plan was to get as far away as possible on foot, out of sight of Aunty Julia and any of her neighbours and friends who might recognise me, before I tried hitching another lift. Christ only knew where I’d end up spending the night. Hopefully there’d be a youth hostel or something that wouldn’t dent my £50 too much. As for what would happen to me after that, I had no idea. All I knew was, I’d rather sleep rough than go back to the place that used to be my home.