And so my feet go faster and slower and faster again for the rest of the walk, as my thoughts tumble inside. When I finally see the house in the distance, my feet stop completely. From Aiden’s file I know it used to be Lodore Falls Hotel; Waterfall House for Girls it is called now. The exterior covered in Lake District grey slate fits the foreground of lake and woods rising behind it, the snow-touched fells beyond. It is warm from this distance, like a soft-focus, dreamy castle, even though I know much of it was destroyed in the riots decades ago, then rebuilt with more concrete and less slate. I carry on. The closer I walk, the harsher it looks.
When I finally reach the house, I hesitate at the door. This is it. Will she know me? Will I know her? Eagerness and fear war inside of me, laced with caution. As Aiden’s notes pointed out, many girls live here. None of them can realise what we are to each other.
Do I knock? Go in?
As if to answer my question the door opens, and a girl steps out. She nods and keeps going. I walk in the door before it swings closed.
There are other girls in the entrance area. Two in chairs, chatting. A woman stands near a large desk. She is tall; long blond hair swept back, dark roots peeking through; thin, maybe forty years old. Neatly, very neatly dressed. Even her buttons shine. Is it her? Nothing about her is familiar. I walk up to the desk.
‘Yes?’ she says.
‘Uh, hi. I’m Riley Kain. I think I’m staying here.’
‘You’re late. I was about to send some of the girls out to look for you in case you got lost in the woods.’ Is it her, my mother? Her lips are pursed, words calm and clear, but her eyes sweep over me with both longing, and confusion. She expects me to be blond, to have green eyes. She doesn’t know about the IMET?
With my back to the other girls, I take my glasses off, as if to rub my eyes. Green eyes. Hers widen slightly. I put the glasses back on.
‘Your ID?’ she says, and I take it out. She scans it into a netbook, hand shaking slightly. ‘You are indeed staying with us, Riley. I’m Stella Connor. You can call me Stella.’
I stare back at her. Stella Connor: Lucy Connor’s mother. But nothing about her or the name is familiar, and bitter disappointment at the lack of memory gnaws inside.
‘You’ve missed lunch, I’m afraid. Tea is here in the conservatory at four, and dinner in the hall at seven. Here is your list of rules.’ She hands me a substantial number of sheets stapled together, touching my hand as she does so. ‘We’ll talk tonight,’ she adds, her words such a quiet whisper that I’m not sure I heard or imagined them.
‘Madison?’ she calls out, and one of the girls looks up. ‘Can you show Riley to her room, please. The tower.’
The girl bounces out of her chair: cute with dark curly hair, not much taller than me, a mischievous glint to her eyes. She walks over. ‘Sure thing, Mrs C.’
Stella’s eyes narrow. Not happy with the Mrs C thing.
‘This way!’ Madison says, with a dramatic flourish. I follow her through a door, down halls to stairs. She looks back. ‘Take her to the tower!’ she mimics, one finger pointing dramatically at the staircase, her voice so like Stella’s that I have to laugh.
At the top of the stairs Madison flings the door open. ‘I can’t believe she’s put you in the tower. It’s been empty for ages. She only let one person stay here a while last year, and that was just because a bunch of rooms were wrecked in floods and all the other rooms were full, and as soon as one was empty she shifted her out.’
‘How many stay here?’ I ask as I walk in, put my bag on the bed.
‘Not so many now. Including you, there are, I believe, seventeen of us. Everyone leaves Waterfall Weirdo if they can get a place anywhere else.’
‘Why Weirdo?’
‘You met the Queen of the Weird downstairs, didn’t you notice? Wait til you read the list of rules.’ She takes it from my hand and brandishes it before putting it on the desk by the bed. ‘Break any of the rules at your peril,’ she says in her Stella mimic voice, and I try not to smirk: that is my mother she is making fun of. ‘And then there is her family.’ She rolls her eyes.
Family? Do I have other family? ‘Why? Who are they?’ I ask, trying to not look too curious.
‘Her mother is the JCO for all of England. Not somebody you want to be in the same room with. Thankfully, she hardly ever visits.’
JCO? I stare at her in shock. I have a grandmother. And my grandmother is not only a Lorder, but a Juvenile Control Officer, and not only that, but for all of England? My mouth falls open.
Madison doesn’t seem to notice. ‘What are you doing in Keswick, anyhow?’
‘I’m here for the apprenticeship intake.’
‘CAS? That starts tomorrow, doesn’t it?’
I nod. There was an outline of the scheme in Aiden’s notes, and it was the reason for my hasty trip up here: to make it for the first day. ‘What do you do?’
‘I’m working at Cora’s Cafe. It’s my day off today. Can’t wait until I’m twenty-one next summer so I can get out of here. I’d just moved into this fab flat with three others when they brought in that latest stupid YP law two years ago, and we had to give it up.’
I look at her blankly.
‘Don’t you even know why you’re staying here? JCO Young Persons Law 29(b).’ She stands up bolt straight. ‘Thou shalt live either with family or in approved structured accommodation with supervision until the age of twenty-one,’ she intones in a nasal voice, then pretends to strangle herself. ‘What do they think we’ll get up to? It’s not like there is much of anything to do in Keswick, even if we weren’t stuck out here.’
Madison opens a door to show me my en suite. ‘You may be on your own in the tower, but at least you don’t have to share your bathroom. Don’t miss rule nine: no more than five minutes per shower. If you go over she turns the hot water off for the whole house for a day. Somehow, she always knows. She does randoms, too: walks the halls in the middle of the night at odd times, to make sure you don’t breach rules six or eleven.’
‘Thanks.’ I smile, look at her. Please leave. I need to be alone a while.
She must see it on my face. ‘You want me to go, right.’
‘Ah…’
‘No worries. See you at tea downstairs at four. Don’t be late: rule number two.’
Alone at last, I circle the room: a double bed, an empty wardrobe, a desk and a chair. More wardrobes across the room – locked. And a lot of empty space: it’s a big room. Did this use to be Lucy’s room – my room – is that why Stella keeps it empty? I shrug. No idea. Nothing in it feels familiar.
I pull the curtains open wide. There are windows all around: lake one side, woods the other. Gorgeous views, and I close my eyes, try to imagine this room and me in it, younger, looking out the window with my dad, but can’t.
There is an odd noise at the door: scratching? A grey paw reaches underneath. I open it.
A grey cat looks up at me, then pushes past through the open door. Takes a running leap at the bed and sits there daintily, washing one paw, her green eyes on me all the while.
Lucy’s grey kitten, her tenth birthday present – one of the very few memories I’ve had of being her since I was Slated. Is it…this cat?
I walk over to the bed, sit on the other end cross-legged. ‘Is it you?’ I whisper. She stalks across the bed, walks all around me in a circle as if checking me out thoroughly. I hold out one hand, and she rubs her chin against it. Soon I’ve coaxed her onto my lap; I stroke her and she curls up, purring.
The list of rules is next to me where Madison left it, and I pick it up, look at the first page. Rule one: Be nice to Pounce (the cat).
‘Pounce?’ I say, and she stirs, looks at me with slit-eyes, then pulls her paws tight around her head as if to say, be quiet: can’t you see I’m sleeping? Pounce sounds to me the sort of name a ten-year-old would give a kitten.
Well. Stella might be a little weird, but given what she puts as rule number one, maybe she and I will get along all right, after all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
* * *
I make it to tea at exactly one minute to four, stomach rumbling. Madison and the girl I saw her with earlier are there, and two others; there is no sign of Stella, and I’m told the others are at work in various places around Keswick. There is a teapot, and a plate of warm scones with jam we all swoop on with delight. They usually just get dry biscuits at tea, Madison tells me, and I wonder: is this a special treat for me?
After they give me a quick tour of the place. There is a TV room with sofas and fireplaces, a library, and a dining room with one long table already set for dinner.
I wander back to my room to unpack. When we assemble for dinner at seven, Madison pulls me into a seat next to hers. Soon all but two seats are taken. There is a sea of friendly, curious eyes, and names are called out, too many to remember at once. And it all seems…nice. Cosy. Not a place to try to get away from.
Stella walks in as a clock chimes seven, and chatter quiets down. She takes the empty chair at the end of the table. She looks at the other empty seat, and frowns. ‘Does anyone know where Ellie is?’ There is a murmur of no, shaken heads.
‘Maybe she’s not hungry. Maybe she’s not well. Maybe she found something better to do,’ Madison says, and the room falls silent.
Stella frowns. ‘Then she should have sent word. Could someone check her room, please?’
Another girl volunteers, and returns moments later. ‘She’s in her room. She fell asleep,’ she says, and I wonder: why doesn’t Ellie come along now?
The tension on Stella’s face relaxes, and gradually everyone else does also. Serving dishes are passed around. I’m relieved I’m too many seats away to have to try to chat with Stella in front of everyone, but now and then can’t stop my eyes glancing over, finding hers, then spinning away again. This is so surreal: in a room having dinner with my actual real mother for the first time in seven years, yet we sit apart, not speaking. There is a part of me that wants to jump up and say, enough already! And another part happy to keep up the appearance of strangers, to hang back, to observe.
When we’re done, everyone starts leaving except two on dish duty, stacking plates. The others are wandering out in twos and threes; some head to the TV room, some in other directions, and I stand, uncertain. Did Stella mean for us to talk now? But Madison links my arm in hers and draws me along with her; a few others follow, down a hall and up a few stairs to knock on a door. ‘Come in,’ a voice calls from inside.
‘Did you bring me anything?’ a girl asks, and is introduced as the sleepy Ellie. ‘I’m starving!’
Madison and the others produce rolls and other bits pilfered from dinner.
‘I don’t understand – why didn’t you just come and eat with the rest of us?’ I ask. ‘What was the point in sending someone to check on you, then leave you here?’
Madison rolls her eyes. ‘You can’t have dinner if you are late. Against Weirdo Rule number three.’
‘Don’t be so unkind. She’s all right,’ Ellie says, and I’m relieved to hear someone stick up for her. But it doesn’t seem to be the popular opinion.
‘It’s ridiculous making us account for every second of the day. We’re not babies,’ another girl says.
‘You know why, though,’ Ellie answers, and I get the sense that this is a conversation everyone has heard before.
Madison scowls. ‘Yeah, but how many years ago was that? Shouldn’t she be over it by now?’
‘Over what?’ I ask. An uncomfortable feeling says I already know, but I shouldn’t. Do I ask because it would be normal to ask, or do I need to hear it? Hear somebody else say things I know to be true, but can’t remember.
When I finally reach the house, I hesitate at the door. This is it. Will she know me? Will I know her? Eagerness and fear war inside of me, laced with caution. As Aiden’s notes pointed out, many girls live here. None of them can realise what we are to each other.
Do I knock? Go in?
As if to answer my question the door opens, and a girl steps out. She nods and keeps going. I walk in the door before it swings closed.
There are other girls in the entrance area. Two in chairs, chatting. A woman stands near a large desk. She is tall; long blond hair swept back, dark roots peeking through; thin, maybe forty years old. Neatly, very neatly dressed. Even her buttons shine. Is it her? Nothing about her is familiar. I walk up to the desk.
‘Yes?’ she says.
‘Uh, hi. I’m Riley Kain. I think I’m staying here.’
‘You’re late. I was about to send some of the girls out to look for you in case you got lost in the woods.’ Is it her, my mother? Her lips are pursed, words calm and clear, but her eyes sweep over me with both longing, and confusion. She expects me to be blond, to have green eyes. She doesn’t know about the IMET?
With my back to the other girls, I take my glasses off, as if to rub my eyes. Green eyes. Hers widen slightly. I put the glasses back on.
‘Your ID?’ she says, and I take it out. She scans it into a netbook, hand shaking slightly. ‘You are indeed staying with us, Riley. I’m Stella Connor. You can call me Stella.’
I stare back at her. Stella Connor: Lucy Connor’s mother. But nothing about her or the name is familiar, and bitter disappointment at the lack of memory gnaws inside.
‘You’ve missed lunch, I’m afraid. Tea is here in the conservatory at four, and dinner in the hall at seven. Here is your list of rules.’ She hands me a substantial number of sheets stapled together, touching my hand as she does so. ‘We’ll talk tonight,’ she adds, her words such a quiet whisper that I’m not sure I heard or imagined them.
‘Madison?’ she calls out, and one of the girls looks up. ‘Can you show Riley to her room, please. The tower.’
The girl bounces out of her chair: cute with dark curly hair, not much taller than me, a mischievous glint to her eyes. She walks over. ‘Sure thing, Mrs C.’
Stella’s eyes narrow. Not happy with the Mrs C thing.
‘This way!’ Madison says, with a dramatic flourish. I follow her through a door, down halls to stairs. She looks back. ‘Take her to the tower!’ she mimics, one finger pointing dramatically at the staircase, her voice so like Stella’s that I have to laugh.
At the top of the stairs Madison flings the door open. ‘I can’t believe she’s put you in the tower. It’s been empty for ages. She only let one person stay here a while last year, and that was just because a bunch of rooms were wrecked in floods and all the other rooms were full, and as soon as one was empty she shifted her out.’
‘How many stay here?’ I ask as I walk in, put my bag on the bed.
‘Not so many now. Including you, there are, I believe, seventeen of us. Everyone leaves Waterfall Weirdo if they can get a place anywhere else.’
‘Why Weirdo?’
‘You met the Queen of the Weird downstairs, didn’t you notice? Wait til you read the list of rules.’ She takes it from my hand and brandishes it before putting it on the desk by the bed. ‘Break any of the rules at your peril,’ she says in her Stella mimic voice, and I try not to smirk: that is my mother she is making fun of. ‘And then there is her family.’ She rolls her eyes.
Family? Do I have other family? ‘Why? Who are they?’ I ask, trying to not look too curious.
‘Her mother is the JCO for all of England. Not somebody you want to be in the same room with. Thankfully, she hardly ever visits.’
JCO? I stare at her in shock. I have a grandmother. And my grandmother is not only a Lorder, but a Juvenile Control Officer, and not only that, but for all of England? My mouth falls open.
Madison doesn’t seem to notice. ‘What are you doing in Keswick, anyhow?’
‘I’m here for the apprenticeship intake.’
‘CAS? That starts tomorrow, doesn’t it?’
I nod. There was an outline of the scheme in Aiden’s notes, and it was the reason for my hasty trip up here: to make it for the first day. ‘What do you do?’
‘I’m working at Cora’s Cafe. It’s my day off today. Can’t wait until I’m twenty-one next summer so I can get out of here. I’d just moved into this fab flat with three others when they brought in that latest stupid YP law two years ago, and we had to give it up.’
I look at her blankly.
‘Don’t you even know why you’re staying here? JCO Young Persons Law 29(b).’ She stands up bolt straight. ‘Thou shalt live either with family or in approved structured accommodation with supervision until the age of twenty-one,’ she intones in a nasal voice, then pretends to strangle herself. ‘What do they think we’ll get up to? It’s not like there is much of anything to do in Keswick, even if we weren’t stuck out here.’
Madison opens a door to show me my en suite. ‘You may be on your own in the tower, but at least you don’t have to share your bathroom. Don’t miss rule nine: no more than five minutes per shower. If you go over she turns the hot water off for the whole house for a day. Somehow, she always knows. She does randoms, too: walks the halls in the middle of the night at odd times, to make sure you don’t breach rules six or eleven.’
‘Thanks.’ I smile, look at her. Please leave. I need to be alone a while.
She must see it on my face. ‘You want me to go, right.’
‘Ah…’
‘No worries. See you at tea downstairs at four. Don’t be late: rule number two.’
Alone at last, I circle the room: a double bed, an empty wardrobe, a desk and a chair. More wardrobes across the room – locked. And a lot of empty space: it’s a big room. Did this use to be Lucy’s room – my room – is that why Stella keeps it empty? I shrug. No idea. Nothing in it feels familiar.
I pull the curtains open wide. There are windows all around: lake one side, woods the other. Gorgeous views, and I close my eyes, try to imagine this room and me in it, younger, looking out the window with my dad, but can’t.
There is an odd noise at the door: scratching? A grey paw reaches underneath. I open it.
A grey cat looks up at me, then pushes past through the open door. Takes a running leap at the bed and sits there daintily, washing one paw, her green eyes on me all the while.
Lucy’s grey kitten, her tenth birthday present – one of the very few memories I’ve had of being her since I was Slated. Is it…this cat?
I walk over to the bed, sit on the other end cross-legged. ‘Is it you?’ I whisper. She stalks across the bed, walks all around me in a circle as if checking me out thoroughly. I hold out one hand, and she rubs her chin against it. Soon I’ve coaxed her onto my lap; I stroke her and she curls up, purring.
The list of rules is next to me where Madison left it, and I pick it up, look at the first page. Rule one: Be nice to Pounce (the cat).
‘Pounce?’ I say, and she stirs, looks at me with slit-eyes, then pulls her paws tight around her head as if to say, be quiet: can’t you see I’m sleeping? Pounce sounds to me the sort of name a ten-year-old would give a kitten.
Well. Stella might be a little weird, but given what she puts as rule number one, maybe she and I will get along all right, after all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
* * *
I make it to tea at exactly one minute to four, stomach rumbling. Madison and the girl I saw her with earlier are there, and two others; there is no sign of Stella, and I’m told the others are at work in various places around Keswick. There is a teapot, and a plate of warm scones with jam we all swoop on with delight. They usually just get dry biscuits at tea, Madison tells me, and I wonder: is this a special treat for me?
After they give me a quick tour of the place. There is a TV room with sofas and fireplaces, a library, and a dining room with one long table already set for dinner.
I wander back to my room to unpack. When we assemble for dinner at seven, Madison pulls me into a seat next to hers. Soon all but two seats are taken. There is a sea of friendly, curious eyes, and names are called out, too many to remember at once. And it all seems…nice. Cosy. Not a place to try to get away from.
Stella walks in as a clock chimes seven, and chatter quiets down. She takes the empty chair at the end of the table. She looks at the other empty seat, and frowns. ‘Does anyone know where Ellie is?’ There is a murmur of no, shaken heads.
‘Maybe she’s not hungry. Maybe she’s not well. Maybe she found something better to do,’ Madison says, and the room falls silent.
Stella frowns. ‘Then she should have sent word. Could someone check her room, please?’
Another girl volunteers, and returns moments later. ‘She’s in her room. She fell asleep,’ she says, and I wonder: why doesn’t Ellie come along now?
The tension on Stella’s face relaxes, and gradually everyone else does also. Serving dishes are passed around. I’m relieved I’m too many seats away to have to try to chat with Stella in front of everyone, but now and then can’t stop my eyes glancing over, finding hers, then spinning away again. This is so surreal: in a room having dinner with my actual real mother for the first time in seven years, yet we sit apart, not speaking. There is a part of me that wants to jump up and say, enough already! And another part happy to keep up the appearance of strangers, to hang back, to observe.
When we’re done, everyone starts leaving except two on dish duty, stacking plates. The others are wandering out in twos and threes; some head to the TV room, some in other directions, and I stand, uncertain. Did Stella mean for us to talk now? But Madison links my arm in hers and draws me along with her; a few others follow, down a hall and up a few stairs to knock on a door. ‘Come in,’ a voice calls from inside.
‘Did you bring me anything?’ a girl asks, and is introduced as the sleepy Ellie. ‘I’m starving!’
Madison and the others produce rolls and other bits pilfered from dinner.
‘I don’t understand – why didn’t you just come and eat with the rest of us?’ I ask. ‘What was the point in sending someone to check on you, then leave you here?’
Madison rolls her eyes. ‘You can’t have dinner if you are late. Against Weirdo Rule number three.’
‘Don’t be so unkind. She’s all right,’ Ellie says, and I’m relieved to hear someone stick up for her. But it doesn’t seem to be the popular opinion.
‘It’s ridiculous making us account for every second of the day. We’re not babies,’ another girl says.
‘You know why, though,’ Ellie answers, and I get the sense that this is a conversation everyone has heard before.
Madison scowls. ‘Yeah, but how many years ago was that? Shouldn’t she be over it by now?’
‘Over what?’ I ask. An uncomfortable feeling says I already know, but I shouldn’t. Do I ask because it would be normal to ask, or do I need to hear it? Hear somebody else say things I know to be true, but can’t remember.
