by Judi Curtin
Again, I didn’t know what to say. This was my friend’s house I was talking about. How could I explain that the thought of going there on my own was creepy and scary in ways I couldn’t begin to understand?
‘Just come with me. Please,’ I said.
Joey grinned at me. ‘OK,’ he said.
I felt like hugging him, but knew he wouldn’t be impressed, so I just smiled back at him.
And then, feeling slightly braver with Joey by my side, I set off once more for Kate’s house.
Joey whistled while we walked – and even though his whistling was hopelessly out of tune, it distracted me and made me feel a small bit better.
I had the weird feeling that the brambles had grown longer overnight – almost like they were planning to wrap themselves around the house and hide it away forever.
As we stepped up to the front door, I had the horrible sensation that something – or someone – was watching us. Joey was still whistling, but I noticed that his whistles were now quieter and less confident than before.
I knocked loudly, and wasn’t surprised when no one answered.
‘You know Kate’s not there, so why are you knocking?’ asked Joey.
I didn’t really know the answer to that myself.
‘Just checking,’ I said vaguely.
‘Let me try checking too,’ said Joey, knocking even louder than I had.
Still though, once the echo of his knock had died away, the only sound was the rustling of leaves, and the distant moo of a single cow.
‘No one’s home,’ said Joey. ‘What a surprise! Can I go play with my friends now?’
I took a step backwards, and then gasped.
‘That’s it!’ I said.
‘What?’ asked Joey.
‘The thing that didn’t make sense.’
‘You’re not making sense, Eva,’ he said. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The washing line,’ I said, pointing towards the side of the house.
He turned to look where I was pointing.
‘What about it? It looks like an ordinary washing line to me.’
‘It is an ordinary washing line, but yesterday there was a tracksuit hanging there, and that didn’t make any sense, if no one was home.’
‘But it’s not there now,’ said Joey.
‘Exactly. A tracksuit being there was weird in the first place, but now the fact that it’s gone is even weirder.’
‘The mystery of the vanishing tracksuit,’ said Joey. ‘Someone should write a book about that. I’d love to read that.’
‘Really?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It would be totally boring, just like hanging round this stupid garden.’
‘But I don’t understand what’s going on,’ I said.
Joey sighed, and spoke in a patient voice, like he was older and wiser than me. ‘It’s very simple, Eva. When Kate went away she left her tracksuit on the line by mistake, and it was windy last night so it probably blew away. I bet if you look in the field over there, you’ll find it tangled up in some bushes. Mystery solved. Now I’m off. Are you coming?’
As he started to walk away, a sudden gust of wind blew a branch against a window, making a harsh squeaky sound, like fingernails on a blackboard. Even though it was a lovely sunny morning, I shivered.
Joey was already at the entrance to the lane, and I was very tempted to follow him. I took one step in his direction but then resisted.
I was being stupid. This was just Kate’s house and there was nothing to be afraid of.
Or was there?
After a few minutes the sound of Joey’s whistling faded away and I managed to work up the courage to walk around to the back of the house.
Dry twigs cracked under my feet, and brambles snagged on my clothes.
I felt sure that someone was following me, but when I turned around, all I could see were shadows and waving grass.
It was like a weird, creepy game – except I didn’t know the rules, and I had no idea who else was playing.
The back of the house was much like the front – neglected, overgrown and empty. I forced a laugh to make myself feel better.
‘You’re being stupid, Eva,’ I whispered. ‘There’s no one here. Kate’s in Cork.’
I was talking to myself, which is totally weird, so I knew it was time to go.
I was just turning around to leave, when I thought I saw one of the downstairs curtains twitching … now I was really spooked ...
I was getting ready to run for my life when the back door creaked open, a hand shot out, grabbed me firmly and pulled me inside. Then the door slammed shut behind me.
‘Help,’ I croaked weakly, as I reached for my phone and struggled to get my bearings in the warm, dark room.
Then I heard a familiar voice.
‘Sorry, Eva, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s only me.’
‘Kate?’
‘Who else were you expecting? The Wizard of Oz?’
What kind of stupid game was she playing?
Suddenly I felt cross.
‘I’d say I’m glad to see you, except I can’t actually see you,’ I said sharply. ‘Why is it so dark in here?’
‘Sorry, is this better?’
I heard a click and a small light came on. It still wasn’t bright, but at least I could see Kate standing in the shadowy darkness in the corner of the room.
She hadn’t changed all that much, but she had a weird expression on her face – kind of scared and defiant at the same time.
I reached for the curtains, hoping to brighten the place and make things more normal, but in a few steps, Kate had crossed the room, and pulled my hand away.
‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘Never, ever do that.’
Suddenly it was as if we had slipped a whole year back in time. It was like we were at the beginning of last summer again, and Kate was once more the weird girl I needed to get away from.
I took a step towards the door, and was starting to mumble an excuse for leaving, but Kate followed me. She put her arms around me and hugged me like she never wanted to let go.
‘Thanks for coming, Eva,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’
Chapter Four
When Kate finally released me, I looked at her for a long time. I felt dizzy, as all kinds of emotions rattled around my brain. I was confused, half-scared and angry, but still, the longer I stared at Kate, the more I began to feel sorry for her. The defiant look had faded from her face and she just looked sad.
‘You’re supposed to be in Cork,’ I said in the end.
‘Well, clearly I’m not.’
‘So when did you come back?’
‘I didn’t come back.’
‘So am I looking at your ghost, or your evil twin?’
As I said the words, I began to wonder if this really was Kate’s evil twin. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see a single trace of the happy girl I’d known at the end of last summer.
She ignored my question.
‘I didn’t come back from Cork, because I never went there in the first place.’
‘But Lily said—’
‘I know what she said. But she was wrong.’
‘And Martha?’
‘Martha’s in hospital. She’s been there for two weeks now.’
I still didn’t get it. ‘If Martha’s in hospital and you never went to Cork, where exactly have you been for the past two weeks?’
‘Here.’
‘You’ve been living here for the past two weeks?’
She nodded.
‘All on your own?’
She nodded again. I knew she was telling the truth, even though this truth was almost impossible for me to understand. If my mum and dad are going to leave me on my own for more than twenty minutes, they first spend half an hour warning me of all the terrible things that could go wrong. Then, while they’re gone, they spend their time phoning and texting to see if I’m OK. The idea of spending two whole weeks by myse
lf was unimaginable.
‘You’re only thirteen,’ I said. ‘You’re too young to live on your own.’
Kate didn’t answer.
‘Isn’t there anyone who could take care of you?’ I asked.
Now she looked defiant again.
‘I don’t need taking care of,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’m not a baby. I can look after myself.’
‘I know you can,’ I said quickly. ‘But that’s not the way people in authority see it. They have all kinds of rules and regulations, and I can’t see them letting a thirteen-year-old girl take care of herself.’
‘That’s what Martha said too. But who could we ask to “take care” of me?’
Kate used her fingers to mime quotation marks around the words ‘take care.’
‘Your aunt in Cork?’ As I asked the question, something else occurred to me. ‘Do you really have an aunt in Cork?’
Now Kate looked so angry, I felt half-afraid.
‘Yes, I do have an aunt in Cork – her name is Isabel. We hadn’t heard from her for years and years, but Martha was so desperate, she wrote to her in the end, telling her about having to go to hospital, and about me having no one to live with …’
‘And?’
Kate almost spat out the words, ‘Isabel sent Martha a really soppy “Get Well Soon” card, and said there wasn’t anything she could do to help.’
‘What a selfish cow!’ I said, but Kate didn’t smile.
Then I thought of something else.
‘Couldn’t you have asked one of the neighbours if you could stay with them for a while? They were all really nice and helpful last year, when we had the campaign to save the tree.’
‘I wouldn’t have minded that, but Martha would never, ever ask one of the neighbours to help us out.’
‘Why?’
Kate sighed. ‘Martha thought that asking Isabel to help was OK, because she was family.’
‘Not very nice family,’ I said.
Kate made a face, ‘Totally, but anyway, in Martha’s eyes, asking family for help is very different to asking neighbours.’
‘I don’t really see the difference.’
‘It all goes back to when my dad went away. A few days after he left, the health board sent a social worker around to talk to Martha. Her name was Nicola – “Nosy Nicola”, Martha used to call her.’
I giggled. ‘Why?’
‘She said Nicola got paid to poke her nose into other peoples’ business.’
‘I’m sure she was just doing her job,’ I said.
‘That’s not the way Martha saw it. Nicola called nearly every day for weeks, and it used to drive Martha crazy. She pretended to be angry, but mostly I think she was just scared.’
‘Scared of what?’
‘Martha never would discuss it with me properly, but I know she was scared that Nicola would take me away from her.’
‘And send you where?’
‘I’m not really sure. Nicola sometimes mentioned sending me to live with a foster family, but it never happened.’
‘Why?’
For the first time, Kate smiled.
‘Every time Nicola called, Martha would have a huge plate of cakes ready, and she’d make Nicola eat loads of them. In the end I think that Nicola just stayed away so that she wouldn’t explode from eating too many of Martha’s cherry and coconut scones.’
We both laughed and for a second I could see a faint shadow of the girl I’d known the year before.
Then Kate looked serious again. ‘Anyway, ever since then, Martha’s been really careful not to do anything that might bring Nicola back into our lives. So that’s why she wouldn’t ask any of the neighbours to help. She said it was a family problem, and it was up to the family to solve it.’
A sudden thought came to me, and even though I was afraid, I knew I had to be brave and say it.
‘You could have asked your dad to help,’ I said as gently as possible.
‘No!’ the single word cut through the warm air.
‘But …’
‘Martha’s never forgiven him for leaving, and neither have I.’
‘Have you heard from him lately?’
Her face softened. ‘He’s written once or twice, and he even sent some money a few months ago. He never did that before.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
Her face took on the distant look again.
‘Too little, too late, is the way I see it. Dad probably just had a sudden pang of guilt. I know nothing has changed. I haven’t seen my dad for three years now. He didn’t want me when Martha was well, and he certainly won’t want me now that she’s sick. I might as well just forget all about him.’
This was turning into one of the hardest conversations of my life, but I knew that since I’d started, it was probably best to explore every possibility. It was like I’d started to peel an onion, and there was still one layer left. (And, like peeling an onion, I was fairly sure that this last layer was going to lead to tears.)
I took a deep breath. ‘What about your mum?’ I asked.
‘My mum is dead.’
‘But ……’
Now I was totally mixed up. When I first met Kate, she told me that her mum had gone away and that her dad had died. In the end, it turned out that her dad was alive and well and living in England. In the beginning I’d been really mad at her for lying to me. When we talked a bit more, though, I understood that Kate had been too embarrassed to admit that both her parents had abandoned her. It was stupid, but it was almost like she felt it was her fault.
‘I didn’t lie when I told you about my mum last year,’ said Kate while I was still trying to work things out. ‘I told you she went away when I was a baby, and that’s true. That’s all I knew, but ……’
There was a long silence, and I knew I had to say something.
‘So … what happened?’
‘My mum was very messed up. After she left here, she went to live in a homeless shelter. She gave the people there a false name, and told them that she didn’t have any family. And a few months after she left us, she died – and we never even knew. The people in the shelter didn’t know we existed, so they didn’t try to find us.’
‘And?’
‘Last winter, someone in an office somewhere joined up a few dots, and figured out who she was. They wrote to Martha and told her what had happened. They even sent us my mother’s last belongings.’
I wanted to know, but didn’t dare to ask. Then Kate told me anyway.
‘Apart from her clothes, all she owned was a purse with a few coins in it, and a faded old photograph of me as a baby.’
Even in the half-dark I could see Kate’s eyes glistening with the beginnings of tears.
I hugged her. ‘I am so, so sorry,’ I said.
‘Don’t be,’ she said, pulling away. ‘She was never a proper mum to me.’
And then, something else occurred to me.
‘All last winter, you e-mailed me every single week. How come you never mentioned this then?’
Kate put her head down.
‘I didn’t know how. I didn’t know if it was right to feel sad about someone I’d never really known properly.’
‘But she was your mum.’
Kate nodded. ‘And there was something else too. You see, I loved getting your e-mails. They were so funny, and you always had such fun stuff to say about things you did with Victoria and Ella and Ruby. It didn’t seem right to just blurt out, “that’s all really cool, and by the way, I’ve just found out that my mum died twelve years ago.”’
I knew how she felt, and yet I felt strangely guilty that she hadn’t confided in me.
‘I wish you’d told me,’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’
I still felt a bit hurt, but then Kate looked up at me and I saw that her eyes were full of tears.
She started to sob, and I hugged her again. This time she didn’t pull away.
Chapter Five
After ages and ages, Kate calmed down a bit and let me go. She wiped her eyes and I wiped my wet shoulder, and we went to sit down at the kitchen table.
‘Martha knows I’m living here on my own,’ said Kate. ‘She doesn’t mind. She knows I’m sensible and she knows I’m perfectly safe. As long as no one else finds out I’m here, everything will be fine. I just need to hold out until Martha comes home again, and then we can get on with the rest of our lives.’
‘But you can’t hide here on your own for weeks and weeks!’ I said.
Kate gave me a defiant look. ‘Why not? I’ve managed fine for the past two weeks.’
A sudden picture rushed into my head – a picture of Kate all alone in the darkened house for day after day. But that picture was far too upsetting to me, so I pushed it away, and tried to concentrate on practical stuff.
‘You’ll run out of food in the end,’ I said.
Kate waved towards the kitchen cupboards. ‘No, I won’t. I’ve got heaps of stuff. Martha and I stocked up before she went to hospital. Every time we went to the shop we bought a few extra things.’
I closed my eyes as I realised what different lives Kate and I were living. I tried to picture my mum, calmly coming back from the supermarket with a few extra cans of beans and packets of pasta. I tried to picture my dad, stuffing the fridge with cheese and yoghurt. I tried to hear them calmly saying to each other, ‘OK. The kitchen’s stocked. We can happily go off and leave our thirteen-year-old daughter on her own for a few weeks or months.’
But I couldn’t picture it properly, because I knew that it would never, ever happen.
‘Even so,’ I said. ‘You’ll run out of food eventually.’
‘That’s why I’m so glad you’re here. You can get more food for me if I need it. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?’
I ignored her question. Kate was my friend, and I’d do pretty much anything for her – but this was much too big and crazy for me. There were all kinds of issues that Kate didn’t seem to have considered. Was it right for me to help her do something that I suspected was very, very wrong?
‘What about when you have to go back to school?’ I asked. ‘Martha probably won’t be home then. Who’ll buy your school-books, and sign your homework diary? Who’ll go to parent-teacher meetings and write you notes if you’re sick? Who’ll mind you if you do get sick?’
