Chapter Text
The neat progression of his life story cracks suddenly and unexpectedly when Harry is sixteen. There's no warning, no time to prepare; a knock on the door at six o'clock on a rainy Wednesday morning and Harry's entire world splinters and falls apart around him.
Months pass, and for nearly a year Harry's life is nothing more than the court case and the media frenzy and journalists ringing the door bell and photographers taking pictures of him walking to school. His mum and Gemma crying – Harry tries to be strong for them but it feels like it's not enough, he can't keep them safe and he can't change what's happened – and people he thought were friends turning their back on him, not because of anything he's done but simply because of who he is, what his dad's done.
Two weeks after the court case is finally done, his mum breaks the news that they have to move and that, at least, is something Harry is prepared for; he knows they don't have the money for anything these days, let alone paying the mortgage. The night before they leave Holmes Chapel he goes for a walk at midnight, saying a silent, almost reverential goodbye to the life he's not a part of any more, the novel he's been written out of. The streets are quiet and deserted and his breath frosts in the cold January air
They all get up early the next morning. They don't have to be out of the house until noon but at 9 o'clock Gemma says, "Shall we go?" and that's all it takes; none of them can face sitting around all morning. Harry and Gemma load the suitcases and boxes into the car and it hits Harry all over again just how little they have now: what's left in the house is boxed and stacked in the kitchen, waiting for Harry's uncle to come and pick it up later with a van.
Harry stands in the doorway of his bedroom and looks around for the last time. Now it's actually come to it, he doesn't feel any of the things he thought he'd feel. Without his bed and his desk and his music blaring out and his posters on the wall it's not his any more; it's just a blank canvas, waiting for the next owners to come along and make their own mark on it. He closes the door on it and goes downstairs, where Gemma and his mum are waiting for him.
No one comes out of their houses to say goodbye but Harry can feel the weight of their neighbours' stares all the same and he hates them all, suddenly; a wave of sudden, visceral hatred like nothing he's ever felt before for their smug, silent condemnation. He was at school with their kids, they've watched him grow up, they know him, they know Gemma, they know his mum ... and now they're standing by and watch them leave their lives without even an acknowledgement of their shared history and it hurts more than Harry cares to admit.
"Want me to drive?" he asks his mum as she locks the front door of their house for the last time.
She shakes her head. "It's all right."
"Are you sure?" The temperature is still below freezing; frost in the air and he knows she doesn't like driving in weather like this.
"I need to do this, Harry." She forces a smile, discreetly wiping away unshed tears. "Come on. Head held high, ok?"
"Ok," Harry lies.
He doesn't bother looking back as the car pulls away from everything he's ever known.
~*~
It starts to snow during the journey, as the M62 leads them east, rising into the Pennines. Gently at first, and then as they reach Saddleworth, the highest point, the flakes get bigger and start to settle. The traffic in front slows down and Harry wonders if they're going to get stuck up here on the bleak and desolate moor. His mum has gone pale – she doesn't like driving in snow anyway and the cars in the outside lane are going too fast, darting in and out of the middle lane in front of them as they jockey for position – and her hands grip the steering wheel tightly.
"This is fun," Gemma mutters.
"We'll be all right," his mum says, and it sounds like she's trying to convince herself more than them.
They're all on edge by the time the motorway starts to descend, even when the snow turns to rain somewhere near Bradford. The sky ahead of them is so dark it feels like the day is over already and it's not even lunch time. Harry closes his eyes and dozes for a while, and when he opens them again they've arrived at their new house.
Harry hates it on sight. A squat, square pebble-dashed pre-war semi with a brown wooden door and cracked concrete drive, in a street of identically drab, run-down houses. The front garden is mostly weeds, interspersed with litter and what looks like part of a car engine. The junction box outside the house has been graffitied with the legend welcome to hell.
No one says anything for a moment and then his mum says:
"Let's get inside then, shall we?"
Harry nods and tries not to look as miserable as he feels as he unclips his seatbelt and opens his door. It's just starting to rain and the wetness feels like tears on his face.
The house doesn't look any better close to. It looks...tired. Tired and worn and shabby, as if no one ever cared enough about it to look after it, fix the cracks and paint over the wear and tear of the passing years. The door wobbles on its hinges when his mum unlocks it.
"That's good," Gemma says sarcastically.
"We can get that looked at," his mum says and Harry feels that strange lurching sensation in his stomach that has become a familiar friend over the last few months, every time his mum says things, simple things, that hark back to a life they no longer have. A life that means when something going wrong it can be easily fixed by getting someone in, when his mum's bankcard doesn't get rejected at the supermarket checkout, when Harry doesn't have to go to school in a coat that lets in the rain.
His mum warily pushes the door open and steps forward into a dark, narrow hallway. Gemma and Harry follow. The hallway smells musty and dry, like old books.
“Someone liked brown,” Gemma says, poking her foot into the threadbare carpet.
Another door directly in front of the front door opens into a gloomy, cold living room. It's like something out of a museum; the furniture looks like props from an old movie and the only sign of the 21st-century that Harry can see is the television in the corner. Gemma makes a sound that might be a laugh or a cry of horror.
"Great, back to the 40s."
"It's got atmosphere," his mum says cautiously, looking around. "We'll get used to it. We were lucky the house came furnished."
Harry looks down at the mustard-coloured carpet, which matches the mustard tiles around the ancient-looking gas fire. "Yeah, lucky." He tries not to, but he can't help thinking about their old house, how airy it was, how warm and welcoming. This house is about as welcoming as a tomb.
Another door takes them through into the kitchen. It's a long, narrow room that runs the length of the house, with a single window that looks over the front garden at one end and the back door at the other. The walls are panelled in a dark wood that make the room even gloomier but the gloom doesn't quite disguise the livid orange units or the green carpet.
The three of them stand in horrified silence for a moment and then Gemma says, "Well, at least they updated in here."
"To the 70s." His mum pokes one of the orange units with a finger, as if she can't quite believe what she's seeing. "Oh, these are awful."
"We could paint them," Harry says, and for some reason they all start laughing at that even though it's not funny; silly, hysterical laughter that probably borders on hysteria.
Upstairs isn't much better, as Harry discovers when they start unpacking the car. The stairs themselves are positively lethal; steep and narrow and perilously slippery right at the point where they turn. There are two reasonably-sized bedrooms and one tiny box room. Harry takes one look at the flowery horror of one bedroom and the 70s ochre of the other and announces that he will take the box room, overruling his mum's protests. It's not like he needs the space, anyway.
The box room has a single bed, a battered desk that looks to be the same vintage as the furniture downstairs, and a built-in wardrobe, and the single window looks out over the front garden. Harry thinks it's probably the nicest room in the entire house.
"My curtains are orange," Gemma complains as she and Harry carry her suitcases upstairs. "I didn't even know you could buy curtains like that."
"You probably can't, these days," Harry says. "At least you haven't got the flowers."
"Did you see it? Someone's actually wallpapered the ceiling in that room."
"Maybe they really liked flowers." Harry looks out of her window at the back garden below. Most of what he can see is heavily overgrown but it looks like there's a greenhouse in there somewhere.
"Maybe they were just deranged." Gemma makes a show of checking their mum isn't within earshot. "Whoever had this house before was probably a serial killer. Bodies in the cellar."
"There isn't a cellar," Harry points out.
"In the shed, then. There'll be bodies somewhere."
Harry leaves her to her unpacking and goes to finish his. The room feels a little bit more like his when he's done, though he's not sure he's going to sleep well on the thin mattress. There isn't even a duvet, just sheets and blankets, and he thinks they must be old too, and full of dust, because he gets so out of breath he has to sit down for a few minutes before he can shove his suitcase under the bed.
Dinner is spaghetti hoops on toast, eaten in near-silence, as if none of them quite dare to start to speak in case they can't stop. Tomorrow they'll talk; tomorrow they'll start to make the best of it: today is too overwhelming and shattering for words. Harry isn't entirely sorry to go to bed early but it takes him a long time to fall asleep in a bed that is new and unfamiliar and with the moonlight streaming in through the thin curtains, and when he finally does fall asleep he dreams of roaring flames and tears in his eyes and acrid, stinging smoke in his lungs.