Solace of the Road

by Siobhan Dowd

  ‘Is it money enough for Ireland, Mam? Is it?’

  ‘It is, Holl. More than enough. Enough for a diamond jewel. Enough for a brand-new bed. Whatever. We’re rich.’

  ‘But will we go to Ireland, now, Mam? Will we?’

  ‘Yes, course we will, Holl.’

  And I’m imagining running in the green fields through the silky rain, breathing in pints of soft fresh air and throwing the sticks in the black river. We’re off to Ireland, we are.

  ‘Will that man ever come home, so we can see the colour of our money?’ Mam croons, and pours another. The sky-house lifts are whirring, coming up towards us. ‘Is that him now?’ Mam says. ‘Is it?’

  Holl. Quick.

  Above me, a board creaked. I jolted awake. The sounds of the sky house vanished and I was back on those strange stairs in the small hours. I was curled higgledy-piggledy, my cheek pressed to the wig. A thin light was creeping in from the front door. I heard a footstep above me, then another.

  Holl. Quick. Get. Out of here.

  A door opened. There was a grunt, whether a man or a woman I wasn’t sure, but in a second they’d turn the light on and I’d be caught.

  I grabbed my things and scrambled down the stairs. I banged my knee against the table at the bottom.

  ‘Hey! You!’

  A man’s voice, not Tony’s, someone older.

  I was at the front door, fumbling at knobs and handles, getting nowhere. The lights came on.

  ‘I’ll call the police!’

  I got the door open and scrambled out, groaning with the bad knee.

  ‘Stop! You!’

  He was coming down after me. I forgot the knee and ran out blindly, down the path, down the street and out onto a main road, and the knee-bang didn’t hurt I ran so hard. I ran until I was out of breath and then some more, and then I switched to the pavement and walked again and the knee-hurt came back.

  When I looked over my shoulder, nobody was following. I got my breath back. It was quiet, half dark, half light. I was by a bus shelter, so I sat down.

  Everything was grey. No birds. No cars.

  There were grass patches on the sides of the roads. The houses were big and more spread out. The trees didn’t move. Cold air played around my nose.

  I thought of the house and the smell and Tony’s roving hands and the stairs and the man who’d shouted at me and how it was my birthday and nobody knew, and I cried. I cried like I’d been caught, even though I hadn’t.

  Somewhere in my head, Mammy was crying right alongside me. Travel the world and the seven seas, she sang over her empty glass. Everybody’s looking for something.

  But Denny didn’t come that day. I remembered now. No champagne, no party, no tickets to Ireland. All I could see through that cracked old movie lens was Mam’s empty glass tipped over by her side and the left-over ice in it melting, and me, putting my own self to bed, crawling under the duvet with Rosabel up by my face, humming ‘Sweet Dreams’ over and over. And no sign of Denny-boy anywhere.

  Twenty-two

  A Walk Through the Dawn

  Was I a mess.

  A bird started up in a bush behind me. He was chirping away for all England. I wiped my face on my sleeve.

  You can’t go to Ireland in this state, I told myself.

  I brushed out the wig and put it on. Then I got my doll-pink lipstick out, and my little mirror. I saw hair jumbled, my own baby-fine brown showing under the blonde, and my eyes red and small nose shining. I straightened out the wig and brushed it down again. I dusted down the dress. I did the lips and dabbed the face.

  Then I remembered the iPod in my bag. I put the earphones in to end the silence.

  I sat there nodding to my favourite tracks. I thought of Ryan with his rolling-pin grin, then Tony with his beer-breath. I tried to put him in the trash part of my brain where you recycle things, but he kept popping back with his raunchy face and bleary one eye. And then his face was like the mask face in the museum, and then like Denny-boy’s. So I turned the music up louder, but no matter how loud I played it, there he was, eye-patch and all.

  Was I glad he hadn’t got my dress off.

  There’s only one person who I’d let near me in that way and he was nowhere close. And I’m not going to talk about him.

  I got myself up and walked on down the road. My back was to the dawn, so I reckoned I was heading west and west was the right way for Ireland. I walked to the soft beat of Storm Alert. It was like everyone in the world was dead except for me.

  Then, over the music, I heard a slow car approaching from behind. I tensed up. Maybe the driver was checking me out. A kerb-crawler. The trouble with being an all-time slim-slam glamour girl is it gets you noticed. The car kept crawling and I walked faster. It reminded me of the night I got busted. It was after the bouncer at the club turned me away. Trim said, Let’s all go hooking. That way we’d raise money and go gambling and end up millionaires. Grace knew all about sex. She told me her stepdad was her first boyfriend and that’s what had landed her in care-babes-ville. So that night with Trim she picked up a cruiser in a shiny suit and red car straight off. She came out five minutes later with a tenner, only she wouldn’t give it to Trim and he went wild and made me go hooking next. I stood on a corner, hip jutting out, tossing my head like Grace had, and a car slowed. But instead of a sex-hungry man it was the police. They stopped and took me away. They asked who I was with, but I didn’t tell on Trim and Grace. I said I was working the street alone. And that’s how I got sent to the secure unit and it was one bad time.

  It was bad now. This car cruising alongside me wouldn’t shift. I didn’t look over. I started nodding my head to the music and punching the air like a mad person. Mad people and hooking don’t go together, I reckoned. I hopped and poked like crazy. And you know what? It worked. The car zoomed past and away and was I glad.

  So if you’re ever bothered by a crawler, you know what to do.

  Then I kept up a good pace even though my head was thumping it faster than the music. Houses. Grass. Trees. Pavement. Thud-thud. My head ached, my eyelids felt like sandpaper. I took the earphones out and kept going. Two cars raced past, like they were chasing. I got to an underpass. Up over a dingy bridge, traffic zoomed by in spurts. I saw a slip road leading up to it and I sat down on a grassy bank near there for a rest. It was damp with dew but I didn’t care.

  Grace came and sat next to me, her face and lashes long.

  Some bridge, Holly.

  Yeah.

  Some height.

  Yeah. So?

  You ask me what I’d do if I were you? I’d go up there and jump.

  That was Grace, always going on about topping herself. Sod off, Grace. Lemon-head.

  Her long lashes vanished.

  I was left on my own. I pictured going up the slip road and onto the bridge, saying goodbye to the world and leaping off. How would that feel, the dropping and the car tyres and the ground zooming up and hitting every bit of me?

  My French teacher at school told this story once about this mademoiselle who was heart-broke. She goes up the Arc de Triomphe in the middle of Paris to jump off and end it all. Only she comes down on a big white van and her legs go through and she breaks them both and gets done by the van insurance for the damage and is ruined and crippled for life and not one bit dead. I remember thinking that pills and booze is the way to go if you’ve half a brain. Grace has tried nail scissors and starvation and got nowhere. But she doesn’t even have a quarter-brain.

  I stroked my wig and it was like Solace took charge. You’re not leaping off that bridge, Holl, she said. The wig would come off, wouldn’t it? Then I’d be dead too. I had to smile. Just keep going up this road. Ireland will get closer every step.

  So I did. I just kept going and going into that quiet morning.

  Twenty-three

  The Phone Box

  The houses were more spaced out.

  The light was stronger.

  I put the phones back in. The birds were si
nging fit to burst my skull. Drew was pouring words into my ear. I suppose he’s the other guy, aside from the one I’d rather not mention, who I’d let near me, but he’s always on tour nowhere near so we haven’t had a chance to meet. One day Storm Alert will play where I am and I’ll have a ticket and I’ll go. And that will be the same day that terrorists burst into the stadium and keep us all hostage. Then, in the negotiations, they’ll let people free, a hundred at a time, until we’re down to the last ten. Drew and me’ll both still be there and he’ll get to know me and we’ll chat up a storm. And when one of the terrorists tries to shoot dead this little kid-boy, a bit like the Junior Einstein boy in the museum, I’ll jog the terrorist’s trigger-hand and the boy will be safe. Only, in revenge, the terrorist will knock me out with the handle of his gun. Then, when I wake up, Drew will be cradling my head in his hands and stroking my hair …

  I was so lost in my thoughts I nearly bumped into a phone box, the old-fashioned red kind with lots of little windows. I looked at it in a daze like I’d forgotten what it was.

  Next minute I was inside, thinking who to phone. Trouble was, the whole world was asleep. Grace, Trim, asleep. Miko, in north London somewhere, asleep, and I didn’t have his number. With Rachel, I’d only get her voice, recorded. I had to talk to somebody.

  Only not Fiona or Ray. No way.

  Then I remembered a phone number they posted by the phone in Templeton House. ChildLine. It’s some group with a special number for us care-babes. So I thought I’d try it. It was better than nothing and it was free. I remembered its digits climbing up even, like a ladder.

  But would anyone answer so early?

  Brrimm-brrimm, went the phone.

  I waited.

  Brrimm-brrimm-brrimm. Nothing.

  I nearly gave up. Then with a click a voice answered, a real voice, not recorded. Female. She came out with some patter about disclosure and confidence and I nearly hung up. A mogit, one hundred per cent.

  ‘Are you still there?’ she said. ‘I haven’t put you off with that official stuff?’

  ‘Dunno,’ I said.

  ‘Well there. Hello again.’

  ‘H’lo.’

  ‘Are you a young person?’

  ‘Yeah. Fourteen. No, fifteen.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me your name? You don’t have to if you don’t want.’

  ‘Sure. I’m Solace.’

  ‘Solace?’

  ‘ ’S right. I’m Solace. And I’m on the run.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I’m Gayle,’ said the voice. ‘Hello – Solace. I’m sorry you’re running away. D’you want to talk about it?’

  ‘Maybe. See. I was in this Home …’ I trailed off.

  ‘A Home?’

  ‘Yeah. Being looked after.’

  ‘Residential? Or fostering?’

  ‘Residential.’

  ‘Didn’t you like it there?’

  ‘ ’S all right. Only the other kids were very naughty.’ Grace and Trim were suddenly crammed up in the box with me, digging their elbows into my ribs, trying to stop up the laughter. ‘Very naughty indeed.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘And my key worker didn’t like me. He picked on me.’ Miko turned round, halfway over the river, his jacket over his shoulder. He raised a brow. Holly. He shook his head.

  ‘How did he do that?’

  ‘Dunno. Different stuff.’

  ‘And you didn’t like that?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘So you ran away?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Don’t you have a social worker, Solace? Someone who you can talk to?’

  ‘She never answers my calls. She’s too busy.’

  That’s what Grace says about hers. But it wasn’t true of Rachel.

  ‘So where are you running to?’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘Is there somewhere you’re trying to get to? Or are you just running?’

  I thought of Mam in the green fields and the soft rain. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’re just running?’

  ‘No. I’m running – somewhere.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me where?’

  I couldn’t stop myself. ‘My mam.’

  ‘Your mum?’

  ‘Yeah. My mam.’ I could hear my voice wobble. ‘I want to go live with her. I want to be back with her. I’m tired of living with strangers.’

  ‘Does she know, Solace? Does she know that’s what you want?’

  ‘No,’ I blurted. ‘She don’t know nothing. Not where I am. Nothing. They don’t tell her. She’s looking for me. I know. She’s out there, looking for me. But she can’t find me.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Solace?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Do you know why you’re in care?’

  I thought of the sky house and Mam and Denny. ‘Oh, yeah,’ I breezed. ‘Sure I know.’

  ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’

  ‘ ’S kinda complicated.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘See, Mam had this boyfriend. Denny-boy.’

  ‘Denny-boy?’

  ‘Yeah. He took all our money. And he did bad things. Wicked bad things. And Mam had to get back to Ireland fast so Denny wouldn’t find her or she’d be dead. And they found out.’

  ‘Who’s “they,” Solace?’

  ‘Social services, of course. They found out about Mam being gone because I didn’t go to school like I should have and they got onto us. Mam was going to send for me but when she did it was too late. They’d taken me away. Now she’s there and I’m here and it’s all my fault.’

  ‘Why do you say it’s your fault, Solace?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Well, how old were you then?’

  ‘Dunno. ’S a blur.’

  ‘So you were young. Very young. You weren’t responsible for whatever it was the adults did. Were you?’

  You know, people always said things like: It’s not your fault, Holly. You didn’t do anything wrong, Holly. But it was like I’d never really listened before, not even to Rachel and Miko. You weren’t responsible. Besides, they were always saying about how I should be more responsible, not less.

  But now it was weird. The way Gayle had said it, I could feel it.

  ‘Were you, Solace?’ Her voice was soft and calm, pleading almost, and she said my name sweet. I imagined her on the other end of the line. She had pale cheeks and soft fair curls, long, and she was pretty, in a dark blue jogger with stripes down the side, not a mogit at all.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. I cradled the phone in my hand. I squeezed my eyes tight and I could see this little girl with falling-down socks and a crooked fringe and she had lots of gold stars from school and it was me, and she got the lift to the odd floors when the even lift was busy and walked up the scary stairs the last bit because she was brave. ‘My money’s running out,’ I choked, forgetting how the call was free.

  ‘Solace – d’you want me to phone you back?’

  ‘No. ’S all right.’

  ‘I can, you know.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Solace. I have to say this. You should go back, you know.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Will you do that? Go back. Then we can talk again. Any time you like. It’s a promise. Will you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t like to think of you out on your own, this time of morning.’

  ‘I’m not on my own.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘My boyfriend’s with me.’

  ‘Right. Great. What’s his name?’

  ‘Drew,’ I said.

  ‘Is he nice?’

  ‘He’s great. He’s handsome. And he’s looking out for me.’

  ‘I hope so. But you must call the Home, Solace. Or I can for you, if you like. If you tell me its name.’

  ‘The phone’s counting down the seconds,’ I lied.

  One, two, three, Big Ben donged in my head.

  ‘Solace?�
�

  Four, five.

  ‘Please, Solace.’

  Six, seven, eight. The voice of the Gayle woman floated inside me, right into my brain and lungs. Part of me didn’t want her to go, the other part of me was frantic to hang up.

  ‘Templeton House,’ I squeaked.

  Nine, ten. I heard a ‘Thank—’

  I slammed the receiver down. The thoughts crashed round in my head. Jeez. What did I say that for? She’ll call Templeton House and they’ll realize who it was. They’ll trace the call and the police will be after me. Thickhead. I’d better get on. FAST. Hot-foot.

  I came out of the phone box and looked at the road ahead. The sun had risen and the city was behind me. I hitched the lizard up onto my shoulder and ran. All I could think of was little Holly in her falling-down socks, playing broken dolls with Colette on the dark, scary stairs, begging Denny to let her choose a horse and brushing, brushing Mammy’s hair for the love and the money. You were young, Holly, Gayle’s voice kept telling me. Very, very young.

  Twenty-four

  Emmy-Lou of Eynsham Lock

  You can’t run for ever and soon I slowed. The morning silence was thick like soup. The houses stopped, then the pavement. There was only a bumpy, grassy verge. My ankles got a dew shower every step. Instead of gardens and buildings there were fields and pylons and trees and more green than I’d ever seen. There were yellow and blue flowers. There were bird coos and rustles and the smell of leaves.