Louder Than Words Read online

  ‘I’m going out next week.’

  She waited for the rest, but he didn’t add anything.

  ‘Yeah, Dad, come on – that’s not it.’

  He sighed more heavily and stirred still harder. ‘To the cinema.’

  ‘Great. And I need to know this because?’

  It was ridiculous how nervous he looked as he met her eyes. ‘On a date.’

  ‘Oh!’

  She was falling, that’s how it felt. That plunging feeling, that lurch in the stomach that you get when a lift drops away too quickly and you wonder for a second if the pulley cord has broken.

  Her father had a date.

  Her father.

  He watched her worriedly, waiting for her to respond.

  But what could she say?

  He hadn’t been on a date since . . . well, since forever because Josie hadn’t been around the last time for that had been with her mother. He’d never shown any interest in a woman since she died. He still had a photo of his wife by his bed and another on the wall of his study.

  How could he be dating?

  She opened her mouth to say something stupid about betraying her mother’s memory, and didn’t she mean anything to him, had he stopped loving her, and why, why, WHY?

  But she stopped.

  Two things stopped her. One was a Pinterest quote she’d snagged two days earlier that said: ‘A part of those we love remains inside us, so be careful who you love because they will change you forever.’ She’d pinned that as a warning, but it had occurred to her afterwards that it meant she carried a part of her mother inside her for always. And if that was true, then so did her dad.

  The other was a memory. She was about ten and they were at the beach, in Devon she thought. She was playing on the sand and building a sandcastle with a moat around it while her father watched her. ‘Do you need help?’ he asked as she struggled over the sharp shale part of the beach in her bare feet with another bucket of water.

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘No, I want to do it so then I’ll have made it all by myself.’

  To her shock his eyes had filled with tears. She’d never seen her father cry, not that she could remember.

  ‘Daddy?’

  He dashed his hand over his face quickly. ‘Sorry,’ he said thickly, ‘it’s just that sometimes you remind me so much of your mum.’

  And she remembered how proud she felt when he said that, but it was only now she realised how much love and loss there was in those words. So Josie didn’t shout or rage at him about the date. She bit her lip and drew in a long breath, and then she sat on the kitchen stool and said, ‘So tell me about it.’

  CHAPTER 26

  Hi again, Dad.

  So I guess you want to know what happened after that. The next part was good. You’ll want to hear this.

  Lara took it all in – the scene by both gates, the placards saying ‘Save the Symonds’ and ‘Where’s your heart, Loxton?’, the farmers and country people making a human barricade across the tracks in and out of the crumbling farmhouse. And the woman in the doorway of the farmhouse, her face lined with wrinkles from a life of hard work outdoors, now brushing away tears from her eyes as a man stood next to her and rubbed her arm before he went off to join the protesters at the front gate. As he reached them a cheer went up.

  Lara looked so alive it was like a fire was burning inside her as she picked up one of the placards and held it high. ‘Who are the Symonds?’ she asked me.

  ‘The farmers who live here. They rent the farm off the Loxton estate. Have done all their lives. Now Lord Loxton and his estate manager want to turn them out because they fell behind a couple of months with their rent while Mr Symonds was ill with pneumonia and couldn’t work. Basically they want them out so they can bring in some rich people who have horses and will pay a higher rent for the grazing than the Symonds can afford with their dairy cattle. So a lifetime’s loyalty to the estate and they’re out on their ears.’

  ‘Scum,’ Lara snapped. ‘So how did you find out about this?’

  ‘I did a bit of digging around for somewhere to take you and found an online protest against Loxton. Thought it was right up your street.’ I could feel myself colouring up a bit and hoped she wouldn’t notice, would think it was the wind or something. ‘OK, it’s not a conventional date, but I thought it might appeal to you more . . .’

  For the first time I saw what her face looked like when a genuine, wholehearted smile warmed it. ‘It’s a perfect date. You were so right.’

  Inside me, all kinds of mushy stuff happened. You know, birds burst into song, orchestras played triumphant marches and the sun burned the clouds away to shine in a clear blue sky. Lara had smiled. She really smiled. I had made her happy.

  I never knew my happiness could depend so much on someone else’s.

  I picked up a placard too and took my place by her shoulder, and it felt like the only place in the entire universe that I wanted to be now.

  Have you ever felt like that?

  There’s more, but I have to stop for a while. I’ve got work that has to be in tomorrow so I’ll finish the rest another day.

  Silas

  CHAPTER 27

  The cake was in the oven, filling the kitchen with the delicious smell of baking and chocolate, and Josie’s dad poured them some freshly made coffee.

  ‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘Your mother would tell me it’s been long since time. She’d have no patience with me spending my life alone because I’d rather live with the memory of her than another woman.’

  ‘Really?’ It was so difficult to remember enough of her mother to know her. It was so long ago and Josie had been so little. She ate up others’ memories of her as if she was starving, which she guessed she was really.

  He nodded. ‘She told me something just before she died. When she knew she was going and there was no fighting any longer. And that was right before the end, Josie, because she battled so hard to stay alive, as if she could scare the cancer away by how strong the fight in her was.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  He swallowed. The words were not easy to get out. ‘When I said I’d love her forever, as much after death as in life, she told me I should find someone else to be with. I was angry with her. Didn’t she understand? I couldn’t love another woman like her. There is no other woman like her.’

  ‘So what did she say when you told her that?’

  He laughed, one of those small, broken laughs people give when they remember something beautiful that’s left them. ‘She said don’t be a damn fool. A ghost can’t give you a hug after a bad day, and everyone needs a hug after a bad day.’

  Josie felt the lump form in her throat instantly. ‘You managed a long time on ghost hugs,’ she said.

  ‘I had you.’ He reached over and hugged her. ‘Ghost hugs and baby daughter hugs.’

  ‘So why now?’ she said when he let her go.

  He kept hold of her hand. ‘You’ll be gone before I know it, sweetheart. To university and then on to your own life. And that’s how it should be. How your mother and I wanted it to be for you. We wanted so much for you, you know. Wanted you to have every good thing we could think of. That was what upset her most at the end, that she’d not get to see you grow up.’ He closed his eyes as if holding the memory tight to him.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘A colleague. She’s new. Came up from the Met a couple of months ago.’ He gave Josie a wry smile. ‘She asked me out. A movie and a meal, she said. I got on with her fine, but I hadn’t thought of her in that way. Then I thought about it, and you know I reckoned maybe I should. Just to see if it was possible to be with someone who isn’t your mother.’

  Josie felt as if she grew up in the moment between his words and her answer. ‘Yeah, Dad, perhaps you should give it a go. Try it. You might have a good time.’ She made a smile appear, even though she had to force it, because she had a feeling her mother would have told her to damn well do it.

  She found me r
oots of relish sweet,

  And honey wild, and manna-dew,

  And sure in language strange she said –

  ‘I love thee true.’

  (John Keats – ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’)

  CHAPTER 28

  Dear Dad,

  OK, this is the rest of it. And I swear to you, nothing happened that night, nothing!

  The last train home was cancelled. I swore as I read the message on the screen at the deserted platform. There wasn’t another going through until morning.

  Lara’s eyes were still shining from the battle. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  ‘No, it does. I can’t believe I didn’t get us back on time for the 6.30, and then the 8.30 is cancelled!’

  She shook her head. ‘What we were doing was important. Much more important than making a train.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  For one beautiful, perfect moment, she leaned her head against my shoulder. ‘Yes. I felt like I made a difference today. You know, we were there for those people and having their community come out for them like that, and having people travel miles to join in, that really meant something to them. And when the TV cameras turned up that was fantastic.’

  ‘And what about the result?’

  She tilted her head to look up. ‘That was just the best thing. When that agent from the Loxton estate turned up and said to the cameras it had all been a misunderstanding and they weren’t going to be thrown out after all, and you could see it written all over his face that he was lying about the misunderstanding and had had to back down because of the bad press.’

  ‘Yeah, that was pretty phenomenal. I get what you mean about this stuff now. I felt kind of high at that moment.’

  ‘Me too.’

  We stood in silence for a moment on the empty platform.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ I asked, and then wished I hadn’t because I should be the one who had a solution.

  ‘There’s a shelter.’ She pointed at the perspex tunnel further down the platform. ‘There’s a train at 7 a.m. It’s a warm night. We’ll sleep here.’

  Every square millimetre of my skin began to tingle at the thought of sleeping beside her.

  ‘There was a pub half a mile back down the lane,’ I said. ‘We could go and get some food first.’

  She nodded. ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  We left the station and walked back the way we’d come. There was still plenty of light in the summer evening and the breeze blowing across our faces was warm. I sent a brief text to Mum as we walked, which she probably wouldn’t even see until morning as half the time she never knows where her phone is or if it’s charged. And I sent another to Rafi, who would be worried if I didn’t show up.

  When we got to the pub, lots of the other protesters were there and waved us over to sit with them. I watched Lara’s face as she laughed with the wife of one of the local farmers – something about the pathetic statement given by Loxton. This was the real Lara. The stiff, defensive front she showed sometimes was totally dropped.

  ‘So why did you come?’ the woman asked her.

  Lara grinned. ‘I didn’t know I was until today, but Silas knew I’d want to get involved.’ She shrugged and gave a wry smile. ‘I guess I’m just a scrapper, you know. I believe in people’s rights and I believe we should fight for them when those rights are abused. But, you know, I just can’t not fight. There’s something inside me that has to.’

  The woman laughed and Lara turned back to me.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ she said, flushing as I couldn’t help laughing at her.

  ‘Yeah, I know it is.’

  She eyed me. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. That stunt you pulled with your sister’s friend’s guy – why did you do it?’

  ‘Because he was a shit to her and he deserved taking down. Because I knew how to do it. Because nobody else was looking out for her. Because I thought, and I still think, it was the right thing to do. Because sometimes you have to stand up for people when they can’t fight back.’

  She leaned over and kissed me softly on the cheek. ‘Yeah, you do.’

  And after that I was flying, Dad. Totally flying. No drug could take you where I was.

  As we were leaving after we’d eaten, the woman Lara had been talking to asked, ‘How are you getting home?’

  ‘I called my dad for a lift,’ Lara said without a blink. ‘He’s picking us up by the station.’

  ‘Why did you say that?’ I asked her when we got outside.

  ‘Because she’d have felt obliged to offer us a bed or find someone with a spare room otherwise.’

  ‘Oh.’

  So why hadn’t she wanted that? Because we might have been put in the same room, or because she didn’t want to feel obliged to them? Or did she really prefer to spend the night on a hard, cold train platform?

  ‘How do you know that? It would never have occurred to me.’

  ‘I grew up in a place a lot like this. That’s how the people are.’

  Now I didn’t expect that, Dad. Not at all. My picture of her childhood is in some cool urban environment. It’s impossible to tell where she’s from by the way she speaks, but I’d never imagined it was some isolated rural spot.

  We walked back to the station in silence. It was fully dark but Lara seemed comfortable to pick her way back down the lane by moonlight alone. The station was in darkness too, but the day’s heat still lingered in the air and so I had some hope we wouldn’t be miserably cold overnight.

  Lara sat down under the shelter, leaning her back against the perspex wall and wriggling around, trying it out for comfort. ‘No,’ she said finally, ‘I think sleeping on the ground will be more comfortable.’ She scooted down and curled up on the tarmac floor with her head resting in the crook of her arm.

  I didn’t know where to position myself. Eventually I leaned back against the shelter. As she’d said, it wasn’t comfortable, but it was much safer for the moment until I worked out exactly how to act around her right now.

  My heart beat with a racing rhythm that said sleep was a long, long way away.

  ‘So, Demo Virgin, what did you think of today?’ said Lara through the darkness.

  I rehearsed lots of explanations in my head before I realised that ultimately it was very simple.

  ‘I get it,’ I said. ‘I get why you do it.’

  There was a long, achingly long pause. And then, ‘Why did you have to be the way you are?’ She said it in the smallest voice I’ve ever heard her use, and there was something so sad in her tone. I didn’t understand it.

  ‘You don’t like the way I am?’ So hard to get those words out because I was so afraid of the answer.

  She sighed heavily. ‘I like the way you are. You shouldn’t change.’ And she turned over so she had her back to me and curled into a tighter ball. She didn’t say goodnight, but I’d been dismissed from the conversation.

  I crashed back down to earth with a bang.

  I wish you could tell me what you think of it all. I really wish that badly. Never mind, it helps just to tell you.

  Love, Silas

  CHAPTER 29

  I’d thought that I was feeling calmer about the whole speech therapist thing – until I was actually in the waiting room for my second appointment. She had given me a false sense of confidence last time for a little while, but of course I was still myself and the feeling of choking that I was so used to began to grow again in my throat as I waited. What if she tried to get me to speak today?

  Silas was staring blankly at the wall in front, his phone in his hand. Obviously waiting for a message of some sort. He carried on staring at the wall and trying to pretend he wasn’t checking his phone messages every few minutes until we were called through by Andrea.

  ‘So how has it been since last time? Any thoughts you want to share?’ She had the paper and pen at the ready for me this time.

  I shook my head immediately, a reflex action. The relative easiness of our
last session had disappeared and we were back to square one, except this time for some reason I felt even less like sharing. I shut down, like a hedgehog curling into a protective ball.

  Nothing.

  I had nothing to give.

  ‘Did you manage to come up with more positive ideas about what you can do once you start to talk again?’

  There was no ‘if’ with Andrea. Last time I’d liked that. Today it felt like immeasurable pressure.

  Still, I had to give her a crumb.

  ‘Baby steps,’ Silas urged, seeing my face.

  Will be able to get a job, I wrote.

  ‘Do you know what job you’d like to do when you’re older?’ Andrea asked.

  Shake of the head. Not ready to share that. She might ask to see something I’d written and there was no way I could show her. Probably not ever.

  I saw Silas cast me a sidelong glance, but he stayed silent. He knew about my writing, but as I wouldn’t even show him he’d know I couldn’t share it with Andrea.

  ‘Thinking about some possibilities might be a good way forward then,’ Andrea said.

  I shook my head again.

  She paused and examined my face, trying to read something there.

  ‘OK, let’s go back to the beginning and look at how this started for you again,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’d like you to tell me if there were times after you stopped talking when you wanted to try to speak and you couldn’t.’

  Nod.

  ‘How exactly did that feel?’

  I thought about it. Could I answer this? My pulse went up a bit, but nothing too bad. No, I didn’t feel threatened by this question. She probably knew how it felt if she’d been mute too.

  I wrote: Tight in my throat and sick in my tummy.

  ‘And did you ever get pains in your tummy when you thought you might have to speak?’

  Nod. Used to.

  ‘But not now? What does it feel like now if you want to try to speak?’