Free In Her Shadow by Louise Douglas Page A

sides of the bed, with Dad in between us, his gnarled hands resting on either side of the mountain beneath the bedclothes that was his stomach, to the soundtrack of Mum snoring gently on the chair. It was the first time we had all been together in the same place as a family since I was eighteen and Jago twenty, and yet we had nothing to say to one another, Jago and I; nothing at all.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    IT WAS DIFFERENT when we were young. There was a time, a brief time, when nothing was wrong in our world and we were happy. Jago was living with us, Caleb Cardell was gone, I was losing my puppy fat and my teeth were straight, Ellen’s father was still charming and funny and her mother, although poorly, was managing her condition.
    Every morning, during that time, I woke up feeling happy and excited because Jago brought an energy into our lives that hadn’t been there before. Dad threw himself into being a father to his new son. He encouraged Jago to join the cricket team he coached, he took him fishing and he ‘rescued’ the rusty old shell of a Ford Escort from a corner of the Williamses’ cow barn, brought it home on a borrowed trailer and set it on bricks in the front garden of our house so he and Jago could restore it together. When it was fixed, it would be Jago’s car and because he had rebuilt it from scratch, Dad said, he would always know what to do if something went wrong. Restoring the car was a project that lasted years.
    Mum cooked Jago a hot meal every night, did his laundry, and he showed his affection for her by moderating his language and doing little jobs, unasked. He fetched in thecoal, moved leaves from the gutter, unblocked the drains, cleaned up after Trixie.
    It was less straightforward for me to change the foundation of my relationship with Jago from friend to almost-sister. I was fascinated by Jago, but my feelings for him were confused and contradictory. I loved him, but I didn’t know why, or how. Even today I’m not sure if I saw him as a brother, a friend, or as a potential lover. It was probably a combination of the three, exacerbated by the hormones of adolescence and combined with a genuine affection for the boy who had always been part of my life and who had suffered so much in the house adjoining ours.
    I can’t say how he felt about me. How would I know? We weren’t the sort of family to talk about feelings.
    Not long after he came to live with us, Jago turned sixteen. Dad said it might be a good idea if he left school and did something useful that he enjoyed rather than being stuck in a classroom wasting the teachers’ time and his own. Jago had a natural aptitude for mechanics, and was accepted on an apprenticeship in marine engineering. He went to college two days a week; the other days he worked with Bill Haworth, a friend of Dad’s who owned a boat, the Eliza Jane , which fished out of Polrack. Jago enjoyed the work and Bill said he was good at it.
    When he received his first pay packet, Jago bought gifts: a box of After Eights for Mum, a fishing fly for Dad and a necklace made of tiny seashells threaded on a string for me.
    After that, he didn’t buy presents, but he gave most of his wages to Mum.
    Jago didn’t mind the weather. He liked the rain as much as he liked the sun. Mum and I sat on the harbour wall to watch the Eliza Jane come in and we squealed when we saw Jago standing on the deck, looking like a man, holding the rope between his hands, followed by a cloud of screamingseabirds. He raised his hand to salute us, and I was thrilled to the core. I played out a little fantasy in my head that I was his sweetheart and he was coming home to me. I was always imagining scenarios like that. I don’t think I really meant anything by it.
    Each morning, when Jago went to work, I knelt on my bed and pulled aside the curtains to watch him leave the house. He perched his mug of tea on the lid of the water butt while he laced his boots. Steam rose in a thin curl from the surface