‘Yes, thank you.’
‘We’ve missed you.’
‘Have you?’
‘Martin’ – she paused as Mrs Walsh walked past – ‘talks about you all the time.’
‘Does he?’ The idea sounded crazy.
Mrs Walsh coughed and her eyes met mine, so I sat up straight and said sorry with a smile. My body began to feel easy. Mrs Walsh’s room felt safe and calm. She paced up and down, winding her way between our desks and talking to us about the World War, and in her warm voice she asked all the children to imagine what it would be like living on rations and powdered egg for evermore. Everyone murmured in agreement, because everyone was bored. I’d forgotten about the special message she liked to give us, the way she touched us gently on our shoulders and told us to trust in Jesus.
When the bell went, chairs screeched, and the speed of it took my breath away. I held back and took my time. Martin walked close behind. He was close enough to touch me. I knew he was there; I could feel his breath against my neck. He was close enough to remind me of the secret I had told him, and only him. The thing about me that I’d never repeated. But he said nothing, and as we left our form room, I turned right and he turned the other way.
I didn’t go home at lunchtime – I couldn’t face seeing Dad. I sat in the main hall on the end of a long table, furthest from the teachers and away from where Martin and the boys sat. There was no sign of him though. I watched different-sized children giggling and laughing, eating burgers and chips. Some girls sat near me and asked how I was. They smiled, but they were nervous, as if I had a disease that was super contagious. Some looked over from the other side of the hall and pointed and waved. I wondered if everyone had been told, at assembly or in form class, that when Bernice Flynn came back to school, being nice to her was strictly compulsory.
A dinner lady stood over me. ‘A pigeon would eat more than that,’ she said.
‘I’m not very hungry.’ I put my knife and fork together and she didn’t approve but she squeezed my arm and she took my tray.
As I stood up, Kat sat down. The sudden sight of her took the wind from me. My legs almost gave way.
She muttered something. Then, when I couldn’t respond, she said, ‘Please don’t hit me, Birdy.’
‘Don’t hit you? Why would I do that?’
‘I went to get help,’ she said. ‘I ran as fast as I could.’ She spoke towards my belly button.
‘I’m not going to hit you.’
She looked up. She was whiter. Her hair was longer with one curled kink. She smiled. Without moving my head, I looked around to see if anyone was watching. To see if I was being wound up.
‘The police.’ She paused.
‘What you talking about?’ I wanted to ask her something nice. Something friendly.
She pushed her hair back from her eyes.
‘What about the police?’ I waited.
She said nothing.
I ran out of time. ‘Look, I have to go.’ I got my bag and walked as quickly as I could.
She came after me. It was like she was shadowing me. I glanced back and she looked in pain, so I stopped. ‘Are you OK?’
‘The police won’t leave us alone.’
‘Did you tell them it was Martin?’
‘Maybe you should.’
‘Me?’ I said. I was getting annoyed. ‘I can’t. You know I can’t.’
‘I can’t shop my own brother.’
‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ My words spilt out. I didn’t know what should happen next, except I knew that I had double English and if I was late Mr Harvey would kill me, even on my first day back, because he demanded punctuality. I didn’t want more trouble. So, even though I was desperate to start again with her, to thank her for her card, and chat and laugh like we were old friends, I wanted her to go. I wanted to pretend it had never happened and forget the bruises, because everyone was being kind and that was good enough for now.
‘I couldn’t, Birdy. I’m sorry,’ she said. I moved to go. ‘But I did run and get help.’ Her words were drowned out by the bell. ‘I got the ambulance.’ She tugged my arm. Her eyes were begging me for something.
‘OK.’
‘Maybe catch up later?’
‘Maybe, yes.’
‘Was your mum here earlier? Talking to Mrs Cope?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What about?’
‘Oh, nothing much. My mum hates her.’
‘Mine would as well,’ she said, and in an instant I remembered the conversation we were having in the cemetery that day, before Martin showed up, and the confused part of me that was in such a hurry began to melt.
‘Did you say that your mum was . . .?’ I couldn’t say the final word, but she knew what I meant.
‘Dead? Yes. Sort of.’
‘Oh God. Kat. I’m sorry. Oh my God. That’s terrible. Are you sure? Yes, sorry, no, of course you are.’ I kept spluttering out words. ‘What is sort of dead?’ I asked, and while she stood still I got more and more nervous.
‘Well, not actually dead.’
‘Oh.’
‘She ran away. So she’s like dead. Like she might as well be.’
‘Oh no.’ That sounded worse somehow.
‘I know.’ We walked together, out of the main hall. ‘Anyway, Martin was a dick and I think you should tell the police. I hate it when people get away with stuff like that.’
And before I could ask how she could call her brother that, I saw Mr Harvey was looking at me. He deliberately held open the door and tapped his watch.
‘Not all teachers are evil,’ Kat said, leaning into me, ‘thank God.’ She waved goodbye and I let her walk on.
My mind wouldn’t let Kat’s words go. My mum didn’t have a mum, but that was because she was old. All the times I’d wished Mum away, whispered under my breath for her to get lost, complained about her cooking, wished my whole family would live in another house – preferably another town or city . . . I thought that life would be easy with less people to let down. To explain things to. Things I didn’t understand myself. But not having a mum at all was something I’d never truly thought of. It couldn’t happen. Not in real life. How does a mum run off?
It rained heavily in a summer blast at 3:35, while I waited and hoped for Kat to walk past. Waves of high-pitched human noise drifted by, until the snakes of people got thinner, down to one or two daydreamers walking extra slowly. I gave it five more minutes. Two teachers got in their cars and drove out of the car park. I agreed with myself that ten minutes was the limit. She didn’t come. Mr Rice arrived with his huge bunch of keys and told me he had to lock the gate up.
I stepped out and the fat padlock clunked shut behind me. The rain got heavier, and my clothes lost their scratchy itch but weighed a ton and pulled me down.
‘See you tomorrow, pet,’ Mr Rice said.
I held my hand up to wave goodbye and, as I turned to go, there was Kat. She was leaning against the green metal box where all the electricity switches were kept.
‘I was waiting inside,’ I said.
‘Oh no. I was here,’ she said, like we were in a hilarious comedy sketch.
‘Is Martin about?’
‘No. No. I’m not talking to him,’ Kat said in a determined voice, and I saw that Kat was on my side. I saw it in Kat’s angry face and in her eyes. She hadn’t carried on as normal.
‘Oh right,’ I said, with a leap of hope inside my head. ‘You want to go to the shops?’
‘Town?’
‘No, just Nelson Drive.’
‘OK. If you do?’
‘OK,’ I said and I clutched my school bag to my chest.
I was so nervous all my words left me. Kat asked if we were walking the right way. I wasn’t sure. I just followed the road. I dug deep into anything in my head, to think of something to say. I thanked her for her card. I said it was my favourite type of dog. She smiled. I took a risk and told her about the brilliant books that I’d read in hospital. She knew them. She loved t
hem. I was amazed. We chatted about Pippi and Huckleberry and whether they would get on in real life, and we both agreed that in a made-up country, at a made-up time, they would get along great and would be great pals.
The rain refused to stop as we strolled and talked, and on and on we walked. We climbed the arch of the motorway bridge as if it was Mount Everest and sighed with dreamy relief when there, up ahead, was the small parade of shops.
The Missing Cat postcard was still on the Londis noticeboard. I didn’t want Kat to see it so I took us inside the shop, past the sign trying to keep children out, to the smell of damp feet and a small electric heater. I looked around and searched the shelves for something that Mum would not call a waste of money.
‘What you after?’ Kat said.
‘Something for my mum,’ I said and then felt bad and wondered should I say sorry, but Kat just nodded.
‘That’s nice,’ she said.
There was stationery and writing pads and envelopes that Mum would never use. The magazines all looked expensive and, apart from the comics and the Radio Times, I couldn’t tell one from the other.
‘You OK?’ someone asked and made me jump. ‘What you after, love?’
‘Something for my mum.’
‘Oh, you darling. Is she ill?’
‘No, she’s not ill.’
‘Oh, OK. Well, those up there are popular with mums.’ With her eyes she pointed to the chocolates on the top shelf.
I couldn’t see the tags, but I knew they were expensive. Buying a box of chocolates with my own money was something I’d always wanted to do. Some were huge, the size of our TV, with bows and fancy decorations. My neck hurt from straining to see the smaller ones and find the little stickers with the cost on. Mum always said, ‘If you have to ask the price, you should always think twice.’ So I moved to go.
‘Shall I lift one down?’ the shop lady said.
‘Yes.’ I paused. ‘OK, yes, please.’ I put my bag down and dug out the coins from my pocket. ‘I only have this.’
‘That’s plenty, love.’ She pulled over a little stepladder. ‘Dark or milk?’ she asked. Then she said, ‘Don’t worry.’ She climbed up, holding the bottom of her dress, her face turning red. After a stretch, she reached me down a purple box with Milk Tray written in flowery letters. ‘Go and pay at the front, darling,’ she said and pointed me in the right direction.
I found the till, where a lady was talking and serving a man in a flat cap and a tweedy jacket like Uncle Timmy’s. I waited as patient as I could.
‘What sort of a country is this?’ he said.
I thought of how Mum’s face would light up when I got the chocolates home.
‘Throw the lot of them in jail,’ the man said. ‘Round the drunkards up.’
‘Except Terry Wogan,’ she laughed.
‘He can stay but the rest can sod off,’ the old man said.
‘You OK there, sonny?’ She leant over the counter.
I passed the chocolates to her.
‘Let me just serve him.’ She nodded to the old man.
He nodded back.
She counted out the right money from the pile of coins I gave her while me and the old man watched her moving hands.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and the old man patted me on the head.
‘She thought you were a boy,’ Kat whispered to me as I put the change in my pocket.
‘I know.’
‘Why didn’t you tell her?’ she asked.
I shrugged. ‘I like it.’ I smiled.
When we turned to the door, there was Mrs Cope. She stood still, neither inside nor outside the shop. Her arm stretched up as if she was holding up the frame of the door. She looked at us. Her face looked annoyed.
The till went ping. The old man clipped my shoulder as he left, and Mrs Cope made a big deal of letting him pass, smiling and wishing him a lovely evening.
‘My favourite,’ she said, stepping towards me, pointing at the box in my hand.
I said nothing.
‘Somebody’s lucky,’ she went on. ‘A birthday or a new boyfriend? Very different. Chocolates for a boy.’
‘My mum,’ I said quickly to stop her speaking.
‘How sweet.’ She looked across to the shop lady, who was serving someone else. She walked around me. ‘Been a naughty girl, then?’ She tapped the box in my hand and raised her eyebrows.
‘No, miss.’
‘Did your mother find Mr Williams?’
Did she? I asked myself. I’d forgotten about the morning. I couldn’t answer yes or no, so I shrugged and moved to walk past her, towards the door. She tugged me back. She held me. My insides spun, but my outsides didn’t struggle.
‘Leave her,’ Kat said, and Mrs Cope flicked her head in shock. Her grip loosened and her shoulders dropped.
The till pinged again and Mrs Cope walked around us, into the shop. We watched her.
She stopped and turned and said, ‘See you girls tomorrow.’
As I moved away, my toe clipped something on the floor and I tripped and stumbled. Kat put her arm out but I whacked my shoulder against the wall. I didn’t fall. I steadied myself and checked the chocolates were not broken.
‘You’re brave,’ I said to Kat, who was speed-walking away.
I got up beside her and she was tutting and moaning and shaking her head. No full words came out, just jumbled grumblings.
‘Are you OK, Kat?’ I said.
‘You should stay away from her, Birdy,’ she said in the hardest voice I’d ever heard from her.
Her footsteps got faster. I struggled to keep up.
‘Why?’ I said when she stopped at the top of the motorway bridge.
She leant over the fence, staring at the speeding cars below, taking deep breaths. I thought she was going to jump off. I’d never seen her like that.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Kat?’
She didn’t look up. It was like she couldn’t. Her neck seemed stuck.
‘Just keep away from her,’ she said in the same voice Eileen used when she was cross with me. Her hands gripped the railing; her knuckles went white.
‘From Mrs Cope?’
‘Yes,’ Kat snapped back.
‘I try,’ I said quietly, worried that I’d say the wrong thing and Kat’s anger would get fiercer.
‘Pardon?’ Her head jerked in my direction.
‘I try.’
‘You try?’ In her eyes I saw a flicker. She stared at me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Can you come away from the barrier now?’
A glossy wet started to fill her eyes.
‘Kat, you’re frightening me.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, and one or two tears began to trickle. ‘Please no.’
‘No what?’ I said and I felt stupid, like the last person in the world to answer an easy question.
But then I got it. The answer. The last line of the riddle. The punchline to the horrible joke. It was there all along. Kat didn’t have to tell me that Mrs Cope did it to her as well. We didn’t need to speak. We couldn’t speak. I couldn’t find any words in my head that were right, and I supposed that Kat had that problem too. We stood on the top of the bridge and the afternoon turned to evening and our soaking clothes turned cold and commuters’ cars whizzed by under us, on their way home. She was crying and I was trying to slow down my mind. I was desperate to say something simple and kind. She leant in and rested her head on my shoulder and I slowly put my arms around her and she hugged me tighter than anyone ever has, except my mum. But it was like I was the grown-up and she was the little one.
Chapter 14
Then Kat said she had to go. She stepped away from me, kicked a Coke can, screamed at the cars and ran.
When I got home, Uncle Timmy and Aunty Peggy’s bikes were there, leaning against our wall. Eileen’s car was there as well, which wasn’t right for a Tuesday afternoon.
My wobbly slab was normal but the bushes in our front garden were not. They were shrivelled and spiky and browner than gr
een. The hanging ivy that draped over our fence had a crew cut. In the back garden, everything was shorter and stubbier and Mum’s roses were clipped back to the thorns. It looked like Dad had been at it all with his blowtorch.
White ant powder was scattered, like icing sugar, over the nooks in the concrete and along the bottom bricks of the house. The back doorstep had been washed; soapy water still sat on top.
A blast of fish and onions melted up my nose as I shoulder-barged through the back door. There was no radio sound. They were sat around the table like a video stuck on slow motion, sipping tea, flicking cigarettes. Mum stood at the cooker, spooning milk in a simmering pan.
‘Hello, little one,’ Aunty Peggy said.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Gone out,’ Mum said.
The air felt as nervous as a doctor’s waiting room. Eileen stared at me. I checked for her fury, but she smiled.
‘What’s up?’ I asked her as she stayed in a daze. ‘What?’ I said to her.
Her eyes didn’t move. She wasn’t angry. She looked tired.
‘Sit down for your tea,’ Mum said, so I took a seat and put the chocolates on the table.
‘How was school?’ Eileen asked.
‘Fine.’
‘And who would they be for?’ Aunty Peggy pointed at the chocolates and I wanted to take them back and bring them home a different time.
‘Mum.’
‘Ah, you’re an angel, so you are.’ Peggy squeezed one of my cheeks. ‘Martha, will you look who bought you chocolates now.’
‘Who has? Why ever?’ Mum stood behind me. ‘Is Liam not with you?’ She scooped smoky-smelling fish and potatoes soaked in buttery milk over my shoulders and on to my plate. ‘I thought he would be.’ She removed a plate so I was the only one eating. ‘Get them off the table now, will you,’ she said.
I looked at her, but there was no smile. No beam of excitement.
‘Get another chair,’ she said to Eileen.
‘Is no one hungry?’ I said.
‘Fine in what way?’ Eileen said to me.
Mum took the pan to the sink and I turned around with the chocolates in my hand, but she kept her back to me.
‘Birdy.’ Eileen tugged my arm. ‘How was school?’
Birdy Flynn Page 21
