Running on the Cracks

by Julia Donaldson

  CPN? DLA? Accompanied and Unaccompanied? What is this world I’ve stumbled into?

  Mary shakes her head and turns to little Ronnie, who is still shuffling from foot to foot. ‘How’s the pool going, pal? Still beating the Godfather?’

  Ronnie nods and smiles his glazed smile.

  ‘You’re giving him too much of they pills, Jim,’ says Mary, and suddenly I get the picture. Ronnie is a patient – a mental patient probably; so presumably is the man she calls the Godfather. The hospital must be very near here, and Jim must be one of the nurses, taking Ronnie for his daily accompanied stroll. Where does Mary fit in? Has she been in hospital too? Is that how she knows them all?

  ‘Come on, then, Ronnie,’ says Jim. ‘Say goodbye to Mary.’ It is as if he’s talking to a child. Ronnie waves to Mary, Jim takes his arm and the pair of them carry on along the path.

  I feel sorry for Mary. She’d been looking forward so much to seeing Ronnie, but their meeting has only lasted for a few minutes and he didn’t say anything. What will she do now?

  And what will I do? Say goodbye too, and go in search of a more peaceful bench to sleep on?

  ‘Will you take a wee cup of tea, hen?’ asks Mary.

  To my surprise I find myself accepting. I thrust the sketchbook back into the hold-all, which I’m so sick of lugging round everywhere. ‘Let me carry some of your bags,’ I say, and take a couple with my free hand. They’re much heavier than I expected.

  Mary laughs.

  ‘Cat food!’ she says.

  Finlay – Missing People

  ‘Hello, you’re through to Missing People.’

  ‘Oh, hi … er, I’ve seen the girl that’s gone missing.’

  ‘Can you give us the name of the missing person, please?’

  ‘That one in the paper.’

  ‘We do have several thousand missing people in our files. We need to work from a name.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t remember. It wasn’t my paper, see. I just deliver them. But it was yesterday she was in it. She’s kind of Chinesy-looking.’

  ‘Do you mean Leonora Watts-Chan?’

  ‘Aye, that was it. I’m sure it was her. She nicked a bag of doughnuts from my van. Well, it’s not my van, really, it’s—’

  ‘Can I just take down a few details first, please. What’s your name?’

  ‘Finlay Grant.’

  ‘And your address?’

  ‘Fifty-eight Tiverton Road.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘It’s in Glasgow … But you won’t write to me, will you? I don’t want you to write. My parents don’t know about this, see. I broke some stuff when I was chasing after the girl, and I don’t want them to find out. Is there a reward, by the way? I don’t mind you writing to me if there’s a reward.’

  ‘FINLAY!’

  ‘Oh no, that’s my dad. I’ll have to be quick.’

  ‘Can you tell me when and where you think you saw the girl?’

  ‘Yes, it was at the Barras this morning.’

  ‘The barrows, did you say?’

  ‘No, the Barras. It’s a market. She nicked a bag of doughnuts and ran off. I nearly lost my job because of her.’

  ‘Can you remember what she was wearing?’

  ‘It was some kind of anorak. Light-coloured. I think it had a hood. She had a great big bag, too.’

  ‘Was it a school bag?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘FINLAY! STOP HOGGING THAT PHONE!’

  ‘Can you describe it? Hello? Hello? …’

  ‘You know Mum’s expecting a call.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  ‘Who were you calling, anyway?’

  ‘Ross. It was about the physics homework.’

  Leo – Flat 2/1

  The tabby cat is sitting on my lap, purring like a road drill.

  ‘Midget likes you,’ says Mary.

  ‘Midget? But she’s enormous.’

  ‘Aye, but she was a wee toty thing when I found her. She was in the back court, sniffing around by the bins. All skin and bones, she was – a wee toty thing.’

  I have the feeling that Mary collects waifs and strays, ‘wee toty things’, and that I’m the latest one.

  ‘My cousins used to call me Midget,’ I tell her.

  ‘That’s no very nice.’

  ‘They called me a lot worse things than that.’ I stroke the cat rhythmically, and it seems to have an effect not just on her purr (which gets even louder) but on my own voice. I find myself telling Mary all about Flo and Caitlin and how they were always taunting me – ‘just joking’ as they called it – about my clothes and my height and my eyes and my skin. ‘We never really got on, even before I went to live there. Maybe it all started with our mums: they were sisters, but not at all alike. Aunt Sarah was a beautician and she was always immaculate-looking, with manicured fingernails and high-heeled shoes, and Mum was … well, a bit unconventional.’

  ‘A bit of a tearaway, was she?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. I think maybe Aunt Sarah disapproved of her and Dad not being married. Not as much as Dad’s parents did, though. They cut him off when he moved in with Mum.’

  ‘That’s harsh, that is.’

  ‘I know. I don’t think Dad ever forgave them, although he did try to explain it to me: he said that in the Chinese community anything like that was completely taboo. You didn’t even go out with someone unless you were definitely going to get married.’

  ‘Could they no get married just to please his ma and da?’

  ‘That’s what I sometimes think. But my dad could be quite stubborn too. Anyway, they didn’t – they moved to London to join orchestras. And then they had me. Mum called me Leonora after a Beethoven overture – that was so typical of her. Apparently my first bed was a spare cello case.’

  ‘She played the cello then, aye?’

  ‘Yes, but in a different orchestra from Dad. They never went on tour at the same time, so that there would always be one of them around to look after me. But then, just three months ago, Dad’s orchestra was invited to Spain and they needed some extra cellos for a particular piece. It was one of Mum’s favourite pieces – by some Spanish composer, for a singer and twelve cellos. I said she should go: I could stay with Aunt Sarah and Uncle John. I even pretended I felt OK about Flo and Caitlin. So Mum said, “Just this once.”’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I pause a second and watch my hand stroking the cat. It’s hard to go on, even though I want to. My voice falters as I say the words: ‘Yes, it was, because the plane crashed and everyone was killed.’

  I hate telling people that. It’s always such a shock to them and I find myself trying to comfort them when it should really be the other way round.

  But Mary takes grief in her stride. Her eyes soften and she pats my arm with a bony hand. ‘So you’re the wee orchestra orphan? I read about you when it happened. Poor wean.’ She passes me the Chocolate HobNobs.

  ‘What about your uncle?’ she asks. ‘Was he as bad as the others?’

  ‘I used to like him when I was little. I thought I did, anyway. Maybe it was his birds I liked really. He keeps all these birds – about twenty of them.’

  ‘Pigeons, are they? Wee puddie-doos?’

  ‘No, budgies and canaries mostly. And some cockatiels too. I’ve got some pictures of them here.’

  I reach down for my bag. Midget jumps off my lap and then straight back again once the sketchbook is open on the table.

  ‘They’re good, they are,’ says Mary. ‘You’re a good artist. You’re Leo da Vinci, you are!’

  I don’t flick back to the pictures of Mum and Dad. I don’t think I could bear to look at those just now. I stick to the bird ones.

  ‘These were my two favourites,’ I say, turning the page to the picture of the two lemon-yellow cockatiels with the bright orange spots on their cheeks. ‘They were called Clemmy and Lemmy.’

  She chuckles. ‘The wee rascals. Did they talk, aye?’

&nbs
p; ‘Not that I ever heard, but Uncle John talked to them all the time. He kept them in the spare room. Their cages took up nearly half the room – he’d built all these shelves for them. That was the room I slept in when I went to live there.’

  ‘Did the birds no keep you awake?’

  ‘No, because he’d rigged up a curtain across the cages to stop the light getting through. I liked sharing with the birds – at first, anyway. I liked sketching them. The social worker wasn’t happy, though.’

  ‘Are they ever? Don’t get me started about social workers,’ says Mary.

  I don’t give her the chance – I’m quite keen to keep going myself. It’s such a relief to be able to share all this with someone at last. ‘She said it was against the law and I could get some disease off the birds – but I was just glad not to be sharing with Flo and Caitlin.’

  ‘Aye, the wee witches.’

  ‘Not so wee – Flo’s fifteen like me and Caitlin’s thirteen. Actually, Flo could be all right when she was on her own. Caitlin was the worst. She even pretended she had to make a list of all the words meaning yellow for her English holiday homework – she kept going round the house saying, “I know – jaundiced!” and “I’ve got another one – sulphur!” Aunt Sarah actually believed her and signed the list on the last day of the holidays.’

  ‘I’d have slapped her round the face if she was my wean,’ says Mary. I feel a bit shocked – I can’t imagine friendly generous Mary being violent even to her worst enemy.

  ‘That was last Monday,’ I continue. ‘I was supposed to be starting at their school the next day, but I ran away instead.’

  ‘Did they have a gang then, aye? Were they going to bully you?’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t them I was running away from – not really. It was Uncle John.’

  ‘The bird man?’

  ‘Yes.’ The next bit is going to be harder to tell. I pause and stop stroking Midget. She lifts her head and opens her eyes reproachfully, till I carry on with the stroking and the story.

  ‘Uncle John used to bring me in a cup of tea in the mornings, and then he’d draw the curtain across the cages to wake up the birds. This would be quite early – about seven o’clock, even earlier sometimes, but I didn’t mind that. I quite liked drinking my tea in bed and watching the birds. Sometimes the tea would be a bit cold, but I just thought he’d been pottering about and had forgotten to bring it in to me – he was a bit absent-minded like that. But one morning I woke up and … he was kneeling on the floor by my bed. He was just kneeling there, leaning over me and staring at me. Usually he wears glasses, those magnifying kind, but he hadn’t got them on, and his brown eyes were just inches away from my face. They looked smaller without the glasses, and all watery. It was so creepy. Of course then he started rummaging around under the bed, pretending he’d lost a packet of birdseed or something, but I knew he hadn’t.’

  ‘Did you tell your auntie?’

  ‘No. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think she’d believe me anyway. And then I started wondering if it had really happened – until it happened again a few days later.’

  ‘Tried to mess about with you, did he?’

  ‘No – no, he didn’t actually touch me or anything. Just knelt there, staring with his little watery eyes. The second time he didn’t do the “Whoops, I’ve lost the birdseed” routine though. He just gave me this sort of soppy smile for a few seconds and then went and fetched my tea – he’d put it down on the table by the cages and it was getting cold. He’d probably been staring at me for ages. Maybe he’d been doing it every morning. It was such a horrible thought.’

  ‘What did you do – throw the tea in his face?’

  ‘No. It was stupid, really – I just whispered “thanks” like I usually did. And after that, when it kept happening, it felt too late to say anything. I suppose I should have told him to get out or something, but … well, it was his house and his room and his birds, and … it’s not as if he’d actually done anything. Looking’s not a crime – or is it? Anyway, he did get out without me telling him to, but he still had that stupid soft kind of smile on his face. It was as if he was sharing a secret with me.’

  ‘I’ll wipe that smile off his face if I ever see him,’ says Mary. ‘I’ll get the Godfather to wipe it off, so I will. The dirty old man.’

  ‘I hope you never do see him. He thinks I’m in London. But the thing is, I still didn’t know if he was a dirty old man. It felt like it was me that had the dirty mind, being so horrible and suspicious. Maybe Uncle John just felt sorry for me, you know, being an orphan – maybe he felt fatherly or something. I was so confused. It’s not like I had any friends in Bristol that I could talk to. I did used to phone Bridget sometimes – she’s my best friend in London – but she was on holiday when it started happening. Anyway, it wasn’t the sort of thing you chat about on the phone somehow. I suppose I should have told the social worker.’ (Mary snorts – she definitely doesn’t think much of social workers.) ‘But instead I came here. I thought it would be easy to track down my grandparents, only it’s not.’

  I tell her about the twenty-two Chans in the phone book and how hopeless it has been trying to phone them. ‘I didn’t pack my mobile because I thought people might somehow trace me that way. So I have to use phone boxes, but I keep running out of change. And then everyone sounds so suspicious! Half of them put the phone down before I’ve got going, and some of them never pick it up in the first place.’

  ‘You’d be better going to their houses,’ says Mary.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I decided. I copied all the addresses out of the phone book and I bought an A-Z of Glasgow. But now I feel too scared.’

  ‘Why? They willnae bite your head off.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s because my picture was in yesterday’s Sun.’

  Mary gasps, suitably impressed. ‘You’ll want to lie low for a wee while then,’ she says.

  ‘But where? I can’t afford to go to that café any more. My money’s run out. I’m so tired, and I feel so dirty!’ The tears that wouldn’t come when I was telling Mary about Mum and Dad come now, and I can’t stop them.

  ‘I just want a bath!’ I cry. And suddenly I can see our bathroom back home – a tiny room made even tinier by Mum’s enormous cheese plant. Dad and I used to call it the Beanstalk. I want desperately to be in that bathroom. I want to be squeezing a spot in the mirror and for Mum to come in and tell me that I’ll only make it worse.

  My jerky sobs cause Midget to turn her head in concern.

  ‘You can have a bath, hen,’ says Mary. ‘And you can have a bed too.’

  Talking to the Birds 1

  Here you are, nice clean water. That’s what you like, isn’t it? Oh look, nasty husks – let’s take them away. Nice new seeds. Yes, you like the stripy ones, don’t you, Clemmy? Let Lemmy have some too. Who’s a pretty girl, then? You are! Don’t you want to play with your bell? Are you missing our little friend? Daddy’s missing her too. On you hop. That’s right. Don’t be shy. Don’t be sad. She’ll be back. Daddy’s going to find her.

  Finlay – Canal

  ‘Is that the new school crest then?’ asked Rab, pointing at Finlay’s back. Finlay was wearing the Breakneck hoody he’d been given for his thirteenth birthday. ‘Very good – Breakneck! I suppose that’s what the staff do to the kids – or is it the other way round?’

  Finlay was deciding whether it would be more dignified to ignore this wit or to enlighten Rab on the subject of his favourite band when the phone in the depot rang.

  Rab’s mirth vanished.

  ‘What? Not again!’ he said. The force with which he slammed the receiver down jolted the cigarette in his other hand and sprinkled ash all over the phone.

  ‘Bloody hell! That wee wimp Ross McGovern gets more colds than I get hot dinners. Who’s going to do Glennie Avenue?’

  The few remaining paper boys headed for the door hastily, but Finlay wasn’t quick enough. Rab clamped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not so fast, pal!
I’ve got a present for you.’ He thrust a bundle of extra papers into Finlay’s bag.

  ‘I can’t! It’s not fair! I’ll be late for school,’ complained Finlay.

  ‘I’ll break their necks if they break yours,’ Rab offered, and then, more helpfully, ‘and I’ll run you to Glennie Avenue.’

  In fact, Glennie Avenue was surprisingly quick to do. As Finlay took a short cut back along the canal to his regular route he calculated how much he would earn if he did an extra paper run every morning. It would help to make up for the two weeks’ wages he’d lost at the Barras.

  Finlay still seethed when he thought about the doughnut thief. It wouldn’t be so bad if the Missing People phoneline had taken him seriously but it seemed they hadn’t. The day after he made the call Finlay had read in the Sun that there had been ‘dozens of alleged sightings of Leonora Watts-Chan’ and that police were following several leads in the London area and another in Bournemouth – no mention of Glasgow.

  That was last week. Since then another body had been found in a bin and the orchestra orphan story seemed to have fizzled out.

  Finlay kicked an Irn Bru can along the canal towpath and then stamped on it. Startled, a brown bird with a red beak swam out from the bank, rippling the glinting water of the canal. Finlay stopped and watched the wobbly reflections of some tall nettles and a tree with orange berries. It was peaceful here, and the late September sunshine was surprisingly warm for the time of day. Typical, thought Finlay. It rains all holidays and then once school starts it’s sunny for weeks on end.

  Thinking of school he set off again, but then stopped. Ahead of him across the canal was a narrow swing bridge, and on it sat a girl in a white T-shirt. She had her back to him and she was looking down, into the water. Then Finlay saw that she had a pad of paper on her lap and was sketching. The girl’s hair was short, dark and glossy, just like the doughnut girl’s hair. It couldn’t actually be her, could it? No, he had her on his mind, that was all. But then he noticed that she was sitting on a beige anorak. That didn’t prove anything either, yet Finlay felt his heart beat faster.