Brian puts the cat down on the kitchen table, beside the sugar bowl. Mam picks it up, plonks it on the floor and wipes down the place it sat with antiseptic spray. She has pure I wish you had told me about this, love face. Oh, Brian. I pour myself a mug of tea. I kind of want to cuddle the kitten, but I’m worried that will look like I was in on the plan to put a fluffy bandage on a Lon-shaped wound.
‘I hate cats. Which is a fact a parent would know.’ Catlin has chosen to spend more time with us this week, so we can ‘actively feel the fire’ of her hatred. She glares at Brian who, I notice, has combed his hair in a slightly different way. He must have taken what she said to heart.
‘I think he’s cute,’ I say. I touch the kitten’s ear. He flinches and lets out a mewp of surprise.
‘Maybe that’s because you’re going to be a cat lady who dies alone in an apartment that smells of cats, surrounded by cats who are secretly delighted because they always wanted to eat you all along for being awful.’
‘Catlin!’ Mam exclaims.
‘You know I’m right, Mam. Who’d fall in love with her? She betrays people because she’s jealous that they’re soulmates.’ There is a pause, and Catlin moves her gaze across the room. ‘I’m talking about me and Lon.’
‘We know,’ Brian says. ‘You talk of little else. And I am tired of it. I think I’ll call her Bridget.’
‘No,’ I say, taking the little creature from Brian and plonking him on my lap. ‘Look at his tiny kitten junk. His name is clearly Button, because he’s tortoiseshell and shiny.’
Brian smiles at me. Puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Button,’ he says. ‘I like that, Maddy.’
Mam smiles too. ‘It suits him.’
I feel a warm wetness bloom onto my leg. It takes a beat to work out what it is.
Catlin laughs her head off. ‘Serves you right. You don’t support true love, then you get pissed on. I wish I had my phone. Lon would love this.’
‘Shut up,’ I tell her, putting Button on the floor. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’
I peel the tights off, lash them in the sink. I don’t want urine in my laundry basket. I crank the shower up, and step inside. It’s steamy-warm, running down my back. I wash my heavy hair. I scrub my face. I squeeze a quarter-bottle of shower gel on my poor disgusting leg. Button is cute, I think. He won’t fix anything. But maybe he’ll give Mam a thing to do. Train him, feed him, mind him. He’s small and weak. He’s such a little thing. All bones and fur, there’s hardly any flesh. Just little scraps. A warm slice of ham all stuck together, purring. And maybe Catlin will like him in the end.
I already do. I mean, obviously it’ll be a while before he gets lap access again. A girl’s got to have a code. But Mam and Brian didn’t want to see my reaction to the kitten at all. They were all focused on Catlin and her drama. I get that Lon is the worst and also dangerous. But I was being groomed by an actual witch for a bit and no one even noticed. I literally got in her van. OK, it was a car, but even so.
Everyone’s concerned with Catlin’s secrets. Ignoring mine. I think of the dead girls on the mountain. Their bright bones in the soft grass in the night. The parts of fox that gave beneath my feet. Catlin felt it too, the sense of dread there. Her useless prayers upon the bloody earth.
I look outside my window, at the trees. A lush, soft shape. An owl. A barn owl. I wrap the towel around me. It swishes past. I read somewhere that owls have special claws. When they grasp at you, they feel your heartbeat pulsing through them. They won’t let go until they sense the stop.
There’s something in the garden. I feel it wrong a while before I see it. Something’s moving slowly through the shrubs. Not trying to hide. It’s something tall and thin. A shadow-man. The twinkle of a phone screen. I hear a buzz begin in Catlin’s room. I open the adjoining door. She’s at the window, staring out and smiling. Her hand is busy, working at the latch. It doesn’t budge.
‘Fuck off, Madeline,’ she snaps.
No chance of that.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘The window’s broken,’ she sighs. I see her skin whiten and the bones push at the flesh from how hard she’s working to open it.
‘Let me help,’ I say.
‘You’ve done enough,’ she growls, but moves aside.
My hands press at the frame. And I see Lon’s form below, his head tilted up towards the window, staring. I startle, still my hands.
‘Madeline, I’m all the way up here. What do you think he’ll do? Stab me with a really, really, really long knife?’
The window’s jammed, even with my help.
‘I can’t,’ she mouths. ‘I love you.’
He raises his hand aloft, drifts back into the dark. We watch until the forest swallows him up.
‘Did Mam give you your phone back?’ I ask.
‘None of your business.’ She pauses, and her face turns wild and bright. ‘He loves me, Mad. He told me so at lunchtime. Finally. I just wanted to put it into words. To tell somebody.’
So happy now, remembering. It must have been when she went for a smoke or to the bathroom. How did I miss it? We were at school together all day long. My brain is twisting, trying to work it out. Lon worming his way into her life. Burrowing, like a parasite through flesh. How could we see him so clearly underneath the window, in the dark? He’d have to be much taller than he is for that to work. I mean, that’s science.
‘Catlin?’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you still mad at me?’ My voice comes out so vulnerable. I hate it. I hate how much I need us to be friends.
‘Of course I am. You’re kind of dead to me,’ she says.
I try not to react. It’s what she wants right now, not what she needs. I look at her and think, I’m here for you, my twin, I’m here. I’m here.
‘It was a horrible thing you did, betraying us like that. You tried to break our hearts. But it made us stronger. Did you see him looking up like that? I mean, it’s like he knew what I was saying, like he heard me. Even though he couldn’t. That’s how in tune we are.’
Barn owls rely on noises made by prey. They search until they locate them. Soft and white and smaller than you’d think. But they will find you, razor claws and all. Pluck you up to carry, kill and eat. Catlin’s brushing her hair; it ripples down her back. It’s grown since we moved here. Things have happened and they’ve changed us both.
‘Do you not worry though, Catlin?’ I ask. ‘That if he hurt a girl, he could hurt you? And with the Helen thing. I mean, can you see where I am coming from, at least a little?’
‘With another boy, I maybe would. But, Madeline, it’s Lon.’ She says his name as though it settled everything. ‘I wish that you would just let me be happy.’
‘But people said –’
‘What people?’ Her voice is scornful. ‘Was it Charley? Oona?’
‘A few people,’ I say. I sit on the edge of her bed. She’s at her altar, rearranging candles, little Marys. There are over twenty of them now. She’s obviously been raiding the castle. She holds one in her hand and strokes its hair.
‘Charley hates Laurent,’ Catlin tells me, ‘because he turned her down and she hooks up with everyone. She begged him once when she was really drunk and he said no because he didn’t fancy her and also it felt wrong. And then she started this rumour about him and Helen. Taking the worst thing that ever happened to him and turning it into a weapon to use against him. Lon is one of the good ones, Mad.’