The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside

by Jessica Ryn

  Uneasy chuckles fall across the room and everyone sits up straighter.

  ‘I may not be able to do much about my past. But I can shape my own future. And if getting up here to talk to you guys helps just one of you to think about reaching out before you do something damaging, or to change the way you might treat a homeless person, then the stuff I’ve been through will be worth it. Has anybody got any questions?’

  Hands shoot up around the hall and Grace watches with pride as Jack tackles their questions with humour and sensitivity. Mrs Jacobs and two other teachers have misty eyes and Grace begins making a mental note of other schools in the area. Resettling homeless people is vital work for St Jude’s, but helping to prevent homelessness in the first place could only be a positive thing. Perhaps once the others have heard about Jack’s success, some of the other residents might be happy to get involved.

  ‘You were amazing,’ she says to Jack on the way home in her car.

  ‘I thought I was going to blow it before you got up and clapped. The head teacher asked afterwards if I’d go in once a week and help with the football coaching. She said the kids seemed to like me and she remembered me mentioning all the five-a-side I did at Young Offenders.’

  Grace can’t stop the smile from stretching across her face. ‘What did you say to her?’

  ‘I said yes. Maybe my life’s shaping up to be less of a waste than I used to think it would be.’

  ‘Have you only just realised that?’

  Jack nods. ‘Before I started my course last week, my days were just filled up with trips to the job centre or playing backwards bingo in the residents’ lounge. Now I’m learning stuff all day and studying most evenings. Between the driving lessons and the football coaching, I might have to actually start using a diary.’

  ‘Hope there’s some room in it for me,’ Grace finds herself saying as she puts on the handbrake. She punches his shoulder and covers her words with a high-pitched laugh, turning her reddening face away from him before getting out of the car. She locks it and rushes up the hill, keeping two paces in front of Jack all the way to the top.

  Chapter 18

  Dawn

  CARA LOOKS AS IF she’s got seven different kinds of flu and is shivering so hard she’s making her bed shake. It’s been two days since the picnic and she’s told Dawn that it’s three days since she’s had any methadone.

  ‘Please help me, Dawnie,’ she says as she grips her stomach. ‘I’ve been waiting all night for someone to wake up and come and see me.’

  A sicky feeling settles in the place where Dawn’s chest joins her stomach. She knows the kind of help she means, and she’d guessed all along that Cara was going to ask. It’s what had kept her from coming into Cara’s room yesterday when those strangers were wandering around the hostel with Grace and Peter about half an hour before the fire alarm went off.

  Dawn looks around the bedsit and studies Cara’s belongings, partly to stall whilst she thinks of an answer and mostly to distract herself from the overwhelming stench of Cara’s furious stomach contents coming from the en suite bathroom.

  ‘You were right about the bars on your window. You don’t have any,’ Dawn says. ‘That means mine were put there for a reason.’

  ‘That’s very helpful, Dawnie. Can we please get back to my shitty situation now?’

  ‘Why do you keep calling me Dawnie? You never usually do. Is it because you want me to do something I’m not going to like?’

  ‘I can’t go out like this and I’m short by a stinkin’ fiver. Kong said he won’t let me have stuff on tic anymore after last time.’ Cara interrupts herself to heave into a dirty saucepan next to her purple flowery pillow. ‘But if you could lend me a few quid and go and meet him then I’ll be able to sort myself out. Start going back to group and stuff.’

  Dawn’s eyes land on a cuddly white unicorn at the foot of her duvet. The duvet cover is a faded lilac, ‘Bang on the Door’ one. Dawn remembers having the exact same set when she was nine. Her dad had bought it for her, right before he upped and left forever.

  Dawn lowers herself onto the bed beside Cara and holds the unicorn on her lap, as if clinging to it for solidarity.

  ‘Why don’t you just explain to the chemist that your meds were stolen and you need more? Wouldn’t that would be easier?’

  Cara gathers the corners of her cover inside her tightly wound fists and pulls it higher over her shoulders, despite the sweltering heat of the airless room. ‘They never believe that kind of shit,’ she mumbles into her pillow. ‘I’ve said that loads of times before when I’ve sold it or got through it too quick.’

  ‘And what about this time? Are you sure it was definitely stolen? You couldn’t have… misplaced it some other way?’ It feels strange saying ‘misplaced’ as if she’s lost a pen or the remote control.

  ‘I might have run out a bit quicker than I meant to,’ she mumbles into her fist. ‘And I have been buying other stuff. Teardrop was right about what happened with the bike.’

  Dawn gives her a nod. ‘Whose unicorn is this? Is it one of your boys’?’ She strokes it like a well-loved pet.

  ‘Yeah. Her name’s Rainbow-Sparkles. Curtis lent her to me to look after so I wouldn’t miss him so much. I pretended I’d forgot to take it back last time. Couldn’t bring myself to part with her. S’pose we can add that to the list of crappy mum-points I’m collecting.’

  ‘I’m sure they miss you very much too,’ Dawn whispers. ‘And of course, I’ll help you. I’m also going to find two extra special teddies for you to take to give to your boys to hold onto whenever they’re sad.’ She pulls Cara’s head onto her lap, takes out her hair bobble and gathers up her long dark tangles, fashioning them into a fresh ponytail and ignoring the faint whiff of vomit. How had she coped on the streets? She’s heard stories from the others about Cara from before she’d moved into St Jude’s – enough to know that Cara needs this place to stay open. That closure stuff is probably just a rumour anyway, and Dawn’s not one to listen to rumours.

  ‘Thank you,’ Cara murmurs as her eyes begin to close.

  Dawn strokes her forehead, green-tinged and covered in a film of sweat, and wills her to stay asleep for a while, so Dawn can think. The universe has clearly brought her to this very hostel to help Cara and the others. She has a duty of care. What would she do if Rosie asked her for help? She’d move heaven, earth and every other bloody planet, that’s what. If only she’d been given the chance. Dawn swallows hard and forces her mind back to Cara. She is going to help her, of course she is. But not the way Cara wants her to.

  Cara’s eyes flutter open for a moment at the faint knock on her door, but she closes them before the handle begins to move slowly downwards and the intruder creeps into the room.

  ‘Shaun!’ Dawn hisses. ‘You shouldn’t be sneaking around the hostel, you’re not signed in. We’ll both get kicked out if they see you.’

  ‘Sorry. I just wanted to check Cara was okay. And you’ve been gone ages.’

  ‘I didn’t realise how late it had got.’ The light outside Cara’s window has begun to dim; the sea has swapped its daytime blue for dusky-grey. Dawn gently guides her dear friend’s head back onto the pillow and pats the top of her duvet. ‘Could you stay with her please? I’ve somewhere I need to pop out to.’

  Dawn’s footsteps echo in the hallway and on the stairs to her room. It’s quieter than it usually is at half past nine on a Saturday night. Dawn hopes Terry will be easy to find; her mission will be a trickier one without his contacts and expertise but she has to get hold of some of that methadone. She’ll stop Cara from going down a darker path. She’ll be her rock – the one to lean on when she’s tempted to stray. She’ll help Cara to see the kind of mum she could be for her boys, and she will rise to the challenge. Then Curtis and Kyle will grow up strong and well adjusted and visit Dawn every weekend. They’ll probably call her ‘Auntie Dawn’.

  As soon as she enters her room to get her purse, something feels different. She can smell
something sweet and cloying and it’s not the same deodorant Shaun wears. She closes her eyes and sees the familiar flash of red hair that always accompanies the smell of patchouli and lavender.

  Tell anyone, and I will kill you.

  Dawn shakes the voice from her mind, closes the door behind her and slides the bolt across before tiptoeing to the bathroom to check no one is lurking behind the shower curtain. They’re not. Life is rarely like TV or books. It’s never the monsters hiding in dark corners that people need to worry about; it’s the ones that bash into them in the middle of the day with a phone call or a knock at the door.

  It’s then she notices the fire blanket has been ripped off the wall and draped over her bed as if it’s trying to suffocate whoever could be sleeping on it. It’s a sign. She knows it is. A packet of pasta gets knocked from the shelf, spreading its shells across the floor as Dawn grabs clumsily at her purse.

  She is rushing towards the office, but still has no idea what she’s intending to do once she gets there. What exactly can she say to them? ‘Someone’s put bars on the windows to show me I’m a prisoner? That they’ve put a fire blanket over my bed to make me think I’ll die if I stay?’ Even Dawn knows that doesn’t make any sense, and believe it or not, she’s struggled with things like that in the past.

  Low voices hum from the office hatch. Dawn flattens herself against the wall next to it, so she can hear who they belong to. One of them is Grace and the other one belongs to Paul from room one.

  ‘Dawn? Is that you?’ Grace’s voice squeezes through the hatch and Dawn realises she can probably see her on the camera.

  Dawn spins around on one foot and skips sideways so she’s face to face with Grace. She runs her finger up and down the side of the hatch as if checking for dust. Really, she’s looking for him. She needs to see if he has forced his way into the building and found her, like he promised he would.

  ‘You’ve been here for a couple of weeks now, and things seem to be going well,’ Grace says to Dawn. ‘I know you’ve had an initial licence agreement for your room, but that runs out soon and we’d like to offer you a short-term tenancy agreement? It won’t change very much about your stay here, but it does offer you more protection.’ Grace is waving A4 paperwork at Dawn and smiling as if she’d arrived at a surprise party Grace had thrown for her.

  ‘Thanks,’ Dawn mumbles. And she does mean it. More protection sounds good.

  ‘I’ll just get you a pen. Ugh, Peter must’ve moved them again,’ Grace says as she rummages around in the drawer.

  Paul has disappeared to his own room opposite the office.

  ‘I’d like to report a break and enter,’ Dawn says in a loud voice, fighting to keep the wobble out of it. ‘Someone has been going into my room when I’m not there and doing things to try to frighten me. It’s someone who managed to steal a key so it’s less of a break and more of just an enter, I suppose.’

  Dawn braces herself for the voice again, the one that threatens her whenever she sleeps in the same spot for too long. Usually she packs up and leaves as soon as she hears it.

  Should she be signing a form to say she wants to stay? What about all those others out there on the streets needing beds? And even if he hasn’t found her already, he might if she stays in one place. She must try to keep the gate to that part of her mind closed; she has important things to attend to. People who need her. But those pesky memories keep peeping through the bars.

  ‘What was all that about your room? I can check the CCTV if you’re worried about something?’ Grace looks up from her paperwork.

  Another thought crashes into Dawn’s mind and runs around with the rest of them. The CCTV will prove that someone’s been going into number six, but it will also show Shaun coming and going too. Allowing him to stay overnight and not having him signed into the building will mean Dawn has already violated the tenancy agreement she’s meant to be signing. The ugly nights on the cold, hard ground of the park and those other ones, a while back in Poundland’s doorway, fall around Dawn like a curtain, making her remember and stopping her from seeing anything else. She thinks about Cara, shaking on her bed downstairs with poor Shaun who needs a mother’s love like a duck needs water. Do ducks need water? Dawn expects they do. All living things do.

  ‘Just sign and date here, please.’ Grace is still smiling but she looks puzzled and as if she’s been holding that pen out towards Dawn for a while.

  Dawn takes it and stares at the page. She never signs anything without reading it thoroughly first and she needs time to weigh up her decision.

  What will he do to her if she stays?

  On the other hand, Dawn may be safer here with the others than out on her own.

  ‘Done,’ Dawn says when she’s finished the final flourish of her signature.

  Grace photocopies the papers and gives the originals back to Dawn, all held together with a bright pink paperclip. The embers of fear remain but Dawn smiles as she looks down at the contract. She may not be safe yet, but at least, for now, she has an address.

  Chapter 19

  Grace

  GRACE RUSHES HOME AFTER her shift, wishing she’d taken her car. She’s got lots to do at home this evening if she’s going to get the flat ready for her mum’s visit after the weekend, and she has to be back at work again for a sleep shift tonight. She’ll give the place a thorough clean, then drive up to Homebase to pick up an inflatable mattress and some nice new linen for her own bed. Her mum can have that of course; Grace will sleep on the airbed.

  ‘Ah, what beautiful bedding. Such exquisite taste you have, my darling,’ perhaps her mum might say. They’ve never really had a ‘fun visit’ before; the two of them have precisely zero in common. But perhaps this time will be different. The inspection is out of the way and Grace has taken two whole days off work to spend with her mum. Maybe her mum will make more of an effort now that Gran’s no longer around. She might even get a hug when she arrives. They’ll have a glass of prosecco together and her mum will tell her how much she’s missed her.

  A renewed sense of energy and purpose fills Grace as she jogs up the stairs of her building, which is surprising given she’s just had the shift from hell. Apparently one of the other residents had ‘helpfully’ sourced Cara some street methadone to ease her withdrawals in an effort to stop her from buying heroin. Which was all very well and good, except it was a dodgy batch and it had sent Cara completely loopy. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t happened on the day of her child protection meeting. Needless to say, she’d cocked it up on an epic scale and would not be allowed unsupervised access to her boys for a very long time. Then had come the hospital visit to get her checked over, and then she’d had to fill out an incident form after settling her back into her room at Jude’s for fluids and rest. At least Cara now has her chemist-sanctioned prescription sorted, although she’d had to commit to taking it at the pharmacy each day instead of being allowed a takeaway.

  Grace’s phone buzzes with a text alert. She walks through the door to her flat, gets out her phone and throws her bag on the armchair. The message is from her mum.

  Hello Grace, I’ve cancelled my leave. One of last year’s Big Brother contestants has had an emergency. She’s got a part in a film and she wants me to do her lips tomorrow. I did them last time, so it wouldn’t be fair to expect her to see someone else – continuity of care and all that. I’ll be in touch soon!

  Grace tries to swallow down the anger. It tastes nasty. She’d known, really. She shouldn’t be surprised. An emergency. It always is. This is good, she tells herself. It’s what she wanted. She’s been dreading having to see her anyway. Now she can concentrate on work. Perhaps she could start a Masters in housing management and do it from home, then when her mother finally decides to arrive she’ll be able to show her how well she’s doing.

  Grace stomps past the sofa and through the kitchen area before attempting to fling the window open. Only it’s locked, and she can’t make the key go in the right direction, so
she just keeps yanking it, harder and harder, ignoring the drips of water from her eyes as they drop onto the inside of her forearm.

  Why is she getting upset? It’s not like this is the first time this had happened. And she’s a grown-up now, not seven years old – it’s hardly the same as the time they had to cancel their Malta holiday, two days before they were due to go, because her parents had to perform emergency liposuction for an A-lister. She wasn’t supposed to cry then either. Lots of kids had never been on holiday. Most kids didn’t have half of the financial security she had. Selfish, Grace. You’re always so selfish. We have to think of our client portfolio. This is a valuable life lesson. Work comes first.

  Grace picks up her overnight bag and throws in her PJs and toothbrush before galloping down the stairs of her building and slamming the door behind her. She tries to push back against the overwhelming feeling of aloneness as she walks towards work for her sleep shift. Sometimes, she just wants someone to put their arms around her and tell her it’s all going to be okay. A face falls across her mind. One she wants to see and touch and be near to. And it sure as hell doesn’t belong to her mother.

  Covering her Winnie the Pooh PJs with her longest cardigan, Grace keeps her head held high and her gaze straight ahead on her way down from the staff flat, ignoring the wobble in her knees.

  She tiptoes towards the lounge, holding her breath when she hears the TV from the hallway. Her heart picks up pace and she stops moving so she can slow it back down. If he is in there, she wants to be cool and calm and casual. Can’t have him thinking she’s going in there on purpose to see him. She creeps further towards the door. She just wants to watch another film with him, that’s all. Have a chat, a giggle. Maybe snuggle under that Spiderman duvet and drink hot chocolate.

  The room is empty. Grace stands in the middle of it, staring at the mindless talk show that’s blaring from the screen as she swallows down her disappointment. She swipes the remote from the arm of the sofa and rams her thumb down on the off button before turning to leave.