There’s a creaking noise above my head. What was that? My heart thumps hard. I roll away from the wall. Oh! Someone’s sitting on the bed cos I can see two legs dangling down and two feet on the floor and it’s the birdie feet. I shuffle closer to look. All the birdies are the same: blue and yellow and pretty. There must be a-hundred-a-thousand birds. I try counting them but they keep jumping about and not staying still so I point my finger at them and count, ‘One, two, three, four, five, seven,’ but then my finger points too far and pokes the sock and the foot jumps away from me and then the legs move and they are kneeling down. There’s nowhere to hide! Is it Jane or Duncan? They will be so cross I poked and so cross cos I bited Jane. A face appears sideways and upside down under the bed and it’s Duncan but he doesn’t look cross. He’s smiling and he says, ‘You missed out six.’
I don’t know what he means.
His face disappears and his hand is pointing to the birdies on his socks and he says, ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.’ His face appears again and he’s still smiling. Maybe he’s not cross.
He says, ‘Do you like birds?’
I nod and the carpet tickles my cheek.
Duncan says, ‘Liam likes birds too. He’s another boy that we look after. He knows all the names of the birds. Maybe he’ll tell you some of them when he gets home from school.’
I know bird names too. I know robin and blackbird but I don’t know what the ones on Duncan’s socks are called. Is Liam a little boy like me? Maybe his Mummy is poorly in hopsipal too.
Duncan says, ‘If you come out from under the bed and get dressed, I can show you the bird table. We always see lots of birds on there.’
I didn’t know birds had tables like people. I want to see that. But I’m still nudey apart from my pyjama top and I can’t get dressed til Duncan goes away.
I say, ‘No.’
Duncan says, ‘Hmm.’ Then he says, ‘How about this? I’ll go outside the bedroom and close my eyes and count and you see how fast you can put all your clothes on. I bet you can’t do it before I get to twenty!’
I say, ‘I can!’
Duncan smiles big and he says, ‘OK, then!’ and his face disappears and the birdie feet walk over to the door and I hear the door open and close and then I hear Duncan counting, ‘One, two, three …’
I wriggle out from under the bed and there’s a pile of my clothes on the floor.
Duncan says, ‘… six, seven …’ Quick! I pull on my pants and my trousers and my socks and Duncan says, ‘… ten, eleven, twelve …’ and I pull my pyjama top off and put on my T-shirt but I don’t put my zippy top on cos I’m too hot, and Duncan says, ‘… seventeen, eighteen …’ and I run to the bedroom door and pull it open and shout, ‘I did it!’ and I’m smiling and laughing cos Duncan looks so surprised.
I say, ‘Can I see the bird table now? Is it in one of these rooms?’
Duncan laughs and says, ‘No, we don’t keep the bird table indoors. That would be very messy!’ and he laughs again and he says, ‘Come on, this way,’ and he walks to the top of the stairs and then stops and waits for me and then he says, ‘Now, if you put one hand on the banister and give me your other hand,’ and he waits til I’m holding the banister and his hand and then he steps off the top step backwards and says, ‘And just take one step at a time, slowly, slowly, that’s it,’ and we walk down the stairs with Duncan stepping backwards afore me and watching my feet and going so slow and I think it’s cos maybe these stairs are slippy or dangerous and that’s why we have to be careful cos I don’t usually go down stairs like this, I just go down them by myself.
At the bottom is a big room with lots of doors. All the doors are brown and wooden cept for one that’s big and red and it’s got a window right above it that looks like the top of a shining sun. Duncan and Jane have a lot of doors! Even more than Paige! Or maybe these doors are other people’s houses like in my house … but I don’t think so cos they don’t have numbers on them like in my house, and there’s no thump-da-thump-da-thump music or shouting or banging or eggy-yucky smell.
I say, ‘Where’s Jane?’
Duncan points back up the stairs and says, ‘She’s working in the office.’
I say, ‘What’s the office?’
Duncan says, ‘It’s a room upstairs where we both do our work.’
Lorna goes to a different place to work and so did Mummy when we lived with Bab-bab.
I say, ‘Don’t you have to work in a different place?’
Duncan says, ‘Some people do. We’re lucky that we’ve found a job we can do at home so we can be here to look after the children who come and stay with us.’
He bends over and picks up a washing basket like the ones that Nandini has in her washing machine shop. Aren’t they apposed to stay at the washing machine shop so other people can use them? I don’t know why Duncan’s got one in his house, but it’s got lots of things in it and I can see the covers that were on my bed. Maybe he’s got the basket at his house so he can carry the bed covers to the shop. Maybe he doesn’t have a big washing bag like Mummy’s.
He says, ‘This way,’ and we walk down the side of the stairs past two of the brown wooden doors and then at the end of the room Duncan opens another brown wooden door and it smells just like the bread shop that we walk past to get to preschool. My belly growls loud like a bear and Duncan looks ahind to me and says, ‘Someone’s hungry!’ just like Mummy does and now the Big Hurty is squeezing and squashing again and I don’t feel hungry cos my belly hurts too much.
Duncan puts the basket down and walks back to me and crouches down and says, ‘This is all a bit strange for you, isn’t it?’
My eyes sting and I blink and blink.
Duncan says, ‘How about some breakfast? Some bread and jam? And then you can eat it while you watch for birds on the bird table. How about that?’
I love bread and jam. It’s yummy. Nandini gave me bread and jam at the washing machine shop. And I really do want to see the bird table. I nod and I blink and blink and wipe my sleeve over my eyes and I say, ‘Yes, please,’ but my voice doesn’t speak, it just whispers.
Duncan says, ‘Come on, then,’ and he holds my hand and we walk into the room and, oh! It’s a giantnormous kitchen and it’s shiny in black and red, even the floor and the walls and the cupboards, and there’s chairs with really long legs like giraffes. I let go of Duncan’s hand and walk right up to a red shiny cupboard that stretches far, far up above my head and I can see my face in the cupboard like a mirror cept this is a red mirror and all my face and my eyes and my mouth shine red and not my normal colours.
Duncan slides the washing basket along the floor with his foot and opens one of the red shiny cupboard doors and he picks up all the covers in the basket and pushes them inside the door. Why is he putting them there? Why isn’t he taking them to the washing machine shop? Then he stands up and I can see into the cupboard and it’s not a cupboard, it’s a black shiny washing machine! And when Duncan’s put in the washing powder and pressed the buttons the machine starts swooshing, and he pushes the cupboard door shut and the swooshing gets smaller. I go over and press my ear to the door and it swooshes louder and tickles my ear, like the tickly carpet at home. Maybe Mummy doesn’t know that you can have washing machines right inside your house. When she comes to get me, I’m going to tell her that we can get one, and maybe we can get one that’s green and we could get green shiny cupboards too so I can see what my face looks like all green.
WHIZWHIRRRR!
I jump back from the washing machine cupboard, eyes scary-wide.
WHIZWHIRRRR!
What is it?
The noise is where Duncan is. He’s moving something along on the worktop but I can’t see what it is.
WHIZWHIRRRR!
I go to look and Duncan turns round and sees me looking. He points to a red, shiny machine on the worktop and says, ‘It’s a bread slicer.’ And he shows me a round metal circle with jaggy spikes like shark’s teeth and he pres
ses a button and, WHIZWHIRRRR!, the round metal bit spins round fast and fast so I can’t see the jaggy shark’s teeth any more. He switches the noise off again and I can see the jaggy shark’s teeth again and he says, ‘It slices up the bread.’ And next to him there’s a board and there’s lots of slices of bread on it, all leaning over each other like they’re trying to push each other down. That’s strange that Duncan has to slice his bread up himself. Our bread is already cut up when Mummy buys it at the shop.
When Duncan’s finished spreading the butter and the jam, he puts the bread on a plate and he puts the spread and the jam back in the fridge but he doesn’t shut the fridge, he looks and looks inside and he says, ‘Now, what do four-year-olds drink?’
I say, ‘Milk at breakfast, juice at lunch and water at tea-time.’
Duncan looks at me like someone gave him a big surprise and he says, ‘OK, milk it is, then.’ He pours out the milk into a glass and I stand on the metal bit at the bottom of a giraffe chair and try to wriggle onto the seat. It’s tricky and it makes me huff and puff and I keep slipping back down and then, oh! I whizz up in the air and my feet bump onto the floor and it was Duncan lifting me right off and he says, ‘No, no, no, that’s a bit high for you, Jesika,’ and he picks up my milk and my bread and he says, ‘Better through here,’ and he walks over to some funny black curtains that have been cut in lots and lots of straight lines from the top to the bottom and I think he’s going to walk straight into them but he stops and puts the bread and the milk on a worktop near the curtains and then pulls on a long string and the curtains slide open and ahind them are two glass doors and through the glass doors is a glass room and it’s full of GREEN!
Duncan opens the doors and we walk through and I can’t stop looking at all the green. There’s green leaves and green chairs and a green sofa and a table made of sticks with a green cloth on top and even green outside in a park on the other side of the glass walls.
Duncan puts the tray on top of the green cloth and points to the green sofa and says, ‘How about you sit right here, and then you can watch for birds while you’re eating.’
I sit where Duncan says and he sits next to me and I can see right outside at the grass and the trees and the flowers in the park and there’s a teeny-tiny house that’s just a roof but no sides and it’s on a pole that stretches up, up, up and there’s a brown bird sitting under the roof peck, peck, pecking. Oh! He must be pecking at food! I know where the bird table is now. And it must be teeny-tiny cos the house is so so small.
There’s a far away bang and a thump-thump-thump-thump-thump and afore I can say, ‘What’s that?’ Duncan jumps up from the sofa and rushes into the kitchen and he’s saying, ‘Liam? Liam, is that you?’ and his voice goes small and small and then I can’t hear it and everything is so quiet.
I eat some more of my bread and jam and now there’s two blue and yellow birds in the bird house. They peck-peck-peck and then one flies away and then the other flies away and then one comes back, peck-peck-peck, and the other comes back, peck-peck-peck, and it’s like the song we do at preschool when we have to hide our hands ahind our backs, cept those birds were sitting on a wall and not a bird house stuck on a big pole.
I can hear voices again. Small and then more big and more big. I look ahind me at the glass-room door but there’s no one there. Is it Duncan? I stand up and walk to the door and look into the kitchen …
CRASH!
The kitchen door bounces against the wall and a big boy rushes through it and runs straight at me and I think he’s going to knock right into me and I can’t make my legs move out of the way but just afore he bangs into me he stops. His face is scary and his eyes are mean and he says, ‘Who are you?’
Duncan hurries into the kitchen ahind him and says, ‘Liam …’
The big boy says, ‘Move it.’
Duncan says, ‘Liam …’
But the big boy’s not listening and he pushes past me and he opens the glass door into the park and runs outside and a bird in the bird house flies off quick as quick. I look where the big boy’s gone but I can’t see. Duncan walks over to the glass door and pulls it shut and goes and sits down on the green sofa and he pats it to tell me to come and sit down too and I do and he says, ‘That was Liam. He just needs calming-down time, that’s all. Maybe by the time you’ve finished your bread and milk, he’ll be ready to meet you properly.’
I don’t want to meet him. He’s scary and mean.
There’s footsteps in the kitchen and I look round and Jane comes into the kitchen and she looks at me quick, not smiling, and looks at Duncan, still not smiling, and says, ‘They didn’t even know he’d left. Again. Is he …?’ She nods her head sideways at the glass door into the park. Duncan nods and Jane nods her head sideways the other way where me and Duncan are sitting and she says, ‘And what about …?’
Duncan nods again and says, ‘Fine, fine …’
Jane says, ‘Right. Good. I’ll talk to him when he comes back in.’ And she walks back out of the kitchen. I think she doesn’t want to talk to me cos she’s still cross about the biting.
Liam stays outside for a long-a-long time and I’m finished my bread and milk, and the extra bread and milk that Duncan gave me next, when Liam comes back in and falls lying down on the chair in the glass room.
Duncan says, ‘Ready to talk?’
Liam turns his face into the chair and says, ‘No.’
Duncan says, ‘How about a proper hello for Jesika?’
Liam turns his head and stares at me and says, ‘Hello,’ in a grumpy voice and then turns his head back into the chair. I don’t think Liam’s a nice boy.
Jane comes into the glass room and she bends down and says something in Duncan’s ear so quiet I can’t hear it and Duncan gets up and says, ‘Back in a minute.’ He touches Liam on the shoulder as he walks past him and he says, ‘Jesika likes birds too, Liam, but she doesn’t know all the names. You could help her.’ And he walks into the kitchen and I turn my head and I can see him and Jane standing close together and talking.
Liam rolls over on the chair and stares at me again and he says, ‘So what you doing here, Jesika? Is your Mum a big fat waste of space too?’
My heart thumps and thumps and the Big Hurty squeezes and squashes all my breathing. I don’t like Liam and I don’t want him talking about Mummy. I wish Mummy was here. I wish Toby was here too cos he’s more nice than Liam and he doesn’t not ever talk to me mean.
Duncan comes back into the glass room and sits down next to me and says, ‘Jane’s just spoken to Delphine. Do you remember her? She’s the lady who brought you here from the hospital.’
He looks at me but doesn’t say anything else. Mummy’s coming to get me? Mummy’s coming to get me! I smile and smile and say, ‘Mummy!’
But Duncan’s not smiling. He says, ‘Delphine says your Mummy and Toby are getting better but they have to stay in hospital a bit longer.’
My smile goes away. ‘Why do they have to stay?’
Duncan says, ‘They’ve got something called pneumonia and the doctors at the hospital have to give them some medicine to help them get better.’
I don’t know what new moania is but I know that getting medicine is quick cos Mummy just sucks it up into a plastic tube and squeezes it into my mouth and I swallow it and then it goes inside me and I feel better.
I say, ‘Will Mummy come and get me afore bedtime?’
Duncan shakes his head and says, ‘Your Mummy has to stay in hospital tonight, so you’ll sleep here and then Delphine will let us know tomorrow what’s happening.’
I don’t know why Mummy has to stay in hopsipal. I don’t want to sleep here tonight. I want to sleep in my own bed with Mummy and Toby aside us in his cot.
Duncan says, ‘Jesika, does that all make sense to you?’
My eyes sting and I blink and blink.
Duncan says, ‘Is there anything else you want to ask me?’
Liam makes a noise and I look at him and he makes a mean
face at me.
Duncan says, ‘Jesika?’
I want to see Mummy. I say, ‘Can I go and see Mummy?’
Duncan says, ‘Not today because your Mummy is sleeping a lot. Delphine will let us know when it’s OK to visit. OK?’
It’s not OK. I want to see Mummy now.
Duncan says, ‘Your Mummy and Toby are being well looked after. Try not to worry, OK?’
The Big Hurty squeezes and squashes.
Liam says, ‘Yeah, try not to worry, Jesika. Life’s a fucking fairytale.’
I don’t want Liam to talk to me.
Duncan leans forward and says, ‘Liam, if you can’t find something positive to say, just leave it, OK?’
My heart thumps and thumps.
Liam says, ‘Something positive? Let me have a think.’
Duncan says, ‘No. I think you should go to your room right now.’
Liam looks straight at me and his face is scary and he says, ‘Your Mum’s not coming back for you because—’
‘LIAM!’ Duncan jumps off the sofa.
Liam jumps up too and runs for the door into the park and he shouts, ‘… Mums are big, fat, pathetic liars!’
I’m not sitting on the sofa now. I’m running and running and I don’t know where, but when my legs stop I’m up at the top of the stairs and I’m looking at all the doors and I can’t remember where the yellow room is and I open a door and it’s the blue bathroom and I can hear someone coming quick up the stairs and I run fast to the next door and open it and it’s the yellow bedroom and I run so fast inside and slide under the bed and roll over to the wall and curl up tight against it and I can hear my breathing so loud in my ears and my whole body thumps and thumps and it hurts so much.
Mummy is coming back to get me.
She’s coming to get me when she’s not poorly. She won’t make me find a new Mummy cos I’ll be helpful and good and I’ll never shout at her ever, ever, ever again and I’ll always eat all my pasta even with no cheese. She’s coming to get me soon. She is.
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