by Nette Hilton
Picking on Max meant that Aunt Belle got involved and then there’d be trouble.
Missie kept her mouth shut.
‘Go to your room, Missie, and get yourself tidied up.’ Buster was plonked onto his spot on the pillow. ‘Now. Off you go.’
It was best to go slow because Max might dob if she didn’t hang about. She dragged one foot after the other and had just reached the outside of the door when she heard him speak.
‘Is it true that you get hung if you kill someone?’
She didn’t hear the answer. Best to be as far away from that as possible. There was every chance her mother would want to know who said what.
But it hung around her. Like a sneaky fart inside a woollen skirt. That question. Is it true...
4
SATURDAY EVENING – LATER
MISSIE’S ROOM
There were such things as ghosts. Of this Missie Missinger was certain. Hadn’t she seen books about them in the library and hadn’t she heard Enid Battersly telling her mother that the ghost of her dead husband had stood at the end of the bed? Missie thought she’d die right off if a dead husband stood anywhere near her but Enid said it was a great comfort. Her mother said it was a lot of rot and ghosts don’t exist.
But she knew about them, didn’t she?
And now Judith Mae was dead she’d be a ghost too.
It was easier to think about ghosts and Judith when the house was full of people and her mother’s sobbing and Kitty Hancock coming in from the laundry with buckets full of hot water. But it had quietened and the night-time shadows were deepening and reaching long fingers across corners and behind doors.
Around her the house settled into its foundations ready for the colder nights now that autumn was well under way. The trees along the riverbank at the front had already turned yellow and dropped their leaves in deep, rustling piles.
And sitting alone upstairs was suddenly very scary.
It didn’t make any difference that her feet were tucked up under her, and the light was on and the door was shut. Judith Mae could go right through doors now. And she could float about outside, peering in, waiting for the time when it’d be best to come back. Her neck’d be all bent too. Her head’d be bleeding and she’d be howling. Ghosts always howled. It was something that you knew about ghosts.
Her newest library book, another Famous Five, was open on her lap. It should have been a good one, if the cover was anything to go by. But her eyes kept wandering along to the door. And then the window. There were hours to go yet before it was truly night. Really truly night when it was so dark your eyes would ache trying to see through it.
She’d been sent to her bedroom early. Her mother had appeared, red-eyed and full of sniffling, and lit the bath heater and put her in the tub when they’d usually still be sitting downstairs. She’d said that a policeman would be coming to talk to her and she’d bring her dinner up on a tray and she was to wait in her room until he arrived. And so, even though it wasn’t late, here she was ready for bed, in a nightie and dressing-gown and slippers in the very room where Judith Mae’s painting book still waited, open, on the table.
A fairy on a toadstool grinned up at her, when there was absolutely, positively nothing at all to be laughing about right now.
The book should be closed and put away in a place where she’d never, ever have to see it again.
All it needed was one sudden movement. One grab and she could shove the book under the bed. No, not under the bed. She’d never be able to sleep knowing it waited beneath her for Judith to come back and claim it.
Her feet were already under her. She wriggled forward a bit, taking care not to make too much movement. She didn’t want any ghosts to see what she was planning. Her feet slapped the floor and her ankles felt like they might be broken. Her leg hit the side of the table but the book was already in her hands and snapped shut. She rammed it under the desk. Right at the back.
It wouldn’t go.
It wouldn’t budge and a rush of terror lifted the hairs on her head as she thought of the ghosts who were already reaching out their long, dead arms to pull her down to them.
She had to lean down to see what was stopping the book from slipping into place.
It was ... and now her breath stopped altogether and pinwheels of terror danced before her eyes. Oh godohgodohgod it was Judith Mae’s yellow cardie.
Her face pinged with horror and she wished she had some spit to wet the inside of her mouth but it all seemed to have disappeared.
There was a cardigan under her desk and she was certain the last place it had been was around Judith’s middle. Judith’s mother had made it herself and sewed the little rosebuds on it. Judith Mae had rosebuds on everything.
And now it was here, in a place it had no right to be.
The thought of it danced around Missie’s head making her skin pimple into gooseflesh. Her head was nearly shaking off her shoulders she was shivering so hard. And then, ohgod, Judith’s ghost drifted about. Her cold breath was right there whispering on her neck where her hair parted. She would’ve straightened it and made it sit flat and warm but her arms had rusted into place and were not feeling like they would ever move again.
It was no good running. She couldn’t have made her feet work that fast anyway. A hidey-hole was needed and the bed would be safest. She eased herself up as best she could with legs and arms and neck that were as stiff as boards, and pulled the cover all the way up. When every hair was safely hidden beneath the blanket and there was only a peephole left for her eyes, she rolled onto her side and looked down at the cardigan.
The colouring book hung off to the side as floppy as a dog’s tongue on a hot day.
A pencil tin still held it in place.
Her bones ached with fright. Her breath was hot in her throat and everything else felt cold and sweaty all at once.
That cardigan shouldn’t be there. It shouldn’t.
And it couldn’t stay. How could she ever sleep in this room knowing that it was close? And if she called her mother she’d have to explain. Her mother would guess right off that Judith Mae had been left alone. It was her job to play with Judith, and hadn’t her mother made it as plain as the nose on her face that there were going to be no more warnings? It was time, her mother had said, to grow up and accept some responsibility.
Not too many people wanted to give a house and job to a mother and her little girl just like that.
Especially a mother who didn’t have a husband. For the life of her, Missie didn’t have a clue what difference that should make. She must have had one in the war anyway.
She had left Judith Mae alone. It had been up to her to watch out for her. And she had let everyone down.
It would be her fault if her mother had to leave and find somewhere else for them to go.
They’d have no money and no home.
It wasn’t going to help anyone if she called them all upstairs. There’d be lots of questions and people crying all over again, and her not being able to tell them anything except that Judith’s cardie was here under her desk when it shouldn’t have been.
It’d be so much easier if it turned up somewhere else.
Right then she knew what she was going to do. She was going to move it. Shoot out into the hall. Hide it down in the sitting room. Shove it anywhere...
...anywhere that wasn’t inside this room.
Above her bed was the Kewpie doll that they’d bought at the Lansdale show. She didn’t have any knickers on, which was a pity really, especially as her dress was so pretty and tended to flick up every now and then. It’d be prickly, having all that itchy skirt against your bare bum. But it was the curved top on the stick that she was attached to that could solve the problem.
Like a pinkie emerging from a hole in a pocket, one arm was eased out from the bed hidey-hole. The cane fell easily.
In one quick stab the stick was plunged beneath her desk. The cardigan was hooked. It stayed hooked on the end of its pole with the Kewpie
doll’s tulle dress sticking out underneath. As long as she lived that doll was never, ever going to be sat up there above the bed again. Ever.
She was going to hurl the cardie as far into the hallway as possible and was on her way to do just that.
And stopped.
Max was standing there, watching her. He was hanging forward slightly, neither in nor out, suspended in the door frame. He looked a bit like washing on the line with the breeze blowing on it.
Now he moved forward slowly.
‘Missie?’ He reached out and touched the fluffy cardie. She was surrounded by him.
‘Missie?’ For a moment she thought she might cry. His voice sounded so tender and caring. ‘What happened?’
She’d seen a fox once. One night when her mother had walked her further than they’d planned and the sun went in and night filled the marshes around them. ‘Be still,’ her mother had hissed. And Missie remembered freezing. Remembered the gooseflesh swell on her arms and the hairs on her neck ache against her scalp.
‘There,’ her mother said. ‘Look there.’
The fox was watching them. As frozen in time as they were. One foot raised. Head turned back. Russet muscle ready to flee. He didn’t look away though. His snout didn’t move as he scented them, nor his gaze shift.
He read them in his darkest knowing stare and then, when he was sure, he turned slowly and soundlessly ducked beneath the swampy overhang of grasses.
She hadn’t turned away. She’d seen his eyes in the nighttime light and had known, in that split second, when his gaze had changed from fear and became smug as if he knew he was on safe ground.
Right now, with Max around her and his eyes on hers, she didn’t know why she remembered the fox.
A sob started under her shoulders and tried to shake itself loose. Her throat hurt and her lips were doing that quivery thing that was so hard to stop. It always happened just before her nose filled up and went all red and swollen.
‘Don’t cry.’ Max’s eyes found hers.
There was no way she wanted to cry but nothing she was doing was helping it to stop.
‘Stop crying. Tell me what you did.’
‘I don’t have to. Anyway ... I didn’t do anything.’
‘You do have to.’
‘How come?’ It was clutching at straws. She just wanted him to go away.
‘Because you’re nine and I’m ten. Because your mother works here and my mother owns this house. And that means my mum’s the boss. And that makes me the boss of you. So, tell me what you did...’
It was like she was hypnotised. Her head was the only bit that turned when she tried to look away. ‘I was just painting...’
Max moved past her while she stood there with the cardie on the stick like she was leading a parade.
He stooped and collected the book. He laid it on the table. ‘That’s her book, isn’t it? Who said you could use her book?’
‘I only did one page.’
She opened the book to show him. It wasn’t hard to find. It was crumpled and the pages had rippled a bit from too much water but there it was. A smug-looking elf on a toadstool with a jacket exactly the same colour as the apple in the tree behind it.
‘What else did you do?’ Max was looking at the cardie. ‘And don’t cry.’
She didn’t want to. It was babyish and if you did it in front of other kids they’d call you ‘crybaby’ and tell you to cut it out or they’d bop you. Kids who got bopped usually deserved it.
But, in spite of her efforts, her nose was snotting up and she’d soon be blowing bubbles if she wasn’t careful.
‘Wipe your nose.’ Max leaned back to let her by. He stayed close though, close at her heels as she fished around in her undies drawer looking for a hanky. ‘What did you do, Missie?’
‘Nothing. I didn’t do anything.’
‘You don’t look like you didn’t do anything.’
He was standing his ground. This usually meant he wouldn’t be happy until she’d admitted to something that she hadn’t done. ‘That’s hers too, isn’t it?’
The dear little woollen cardigan hung between them. Still and silent. But it seemed to be saying heaps.
‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘That’s what you always say.’
‘No, I don’t.’
Below them she could hear voices filtering up the stairs.
‘It’s what you said when we got home late because you lost your sandals in the river.’
‘It was your fault for making me go.’ At least she wasn’t crying now and her voice was starting to sound a bit stronger. But she knew she was losing ground.
‘You didn’t have to come.’
Yes I did, she wanted to say. It was the way it was because his mother owned the house they lived in. And her mother was the one who did the work while his mother had card games and race days and ladies’ gatherings. And she’d been reminded often enough to mind her step where Max was involved. Echoes of that stirred the ghost of Judith Mae.
‘I don’t know what happened to Judith Mae and I didn’t do anything.’ For a lot of reasons it was true, but in another place, down underneath all the things she knew to be true, lurked the nasty feeling that she had done something that helped it to happen. She hadn’t tried hard enough to make Judith come to her room to play.
She’d prodded her though. Bossed her. Or tried to. It didn’t pay to boss Judith Mae too hard and everyone knew it. She held her breath. She’d gulp it in and hold it until her mouth went blue and her eyes rolled back and she fell down like she was ... like she was dead. That word fell into place like a stone into the bottom of a deep, cold well.
She hadn’t watched her closely enough but she’d leaned over and called her fatty boomsticks and told her she’d get a jolly good whacking if she didn’t get herself out of Max’s room and do as she was told and come and paint in the stupid old bloody book. She hadn’t yelled it out loud. She’d cop it if they’d heard her downstairs. She’d cop it if Max had heard it, too. But Max was busy with his trains in one direction and trying to shut the door on them in the other.
So she’d hissed it but Judith Mae wouldn’t budge.
And they all knew what happened when Judith Mae wasn’t going to do as she was told. She held her breath and, if you weren’t quick, she’d do it until she fell down.
Somehow, somewhere there in the layers that were too scary to start lifting apart, it was her fault. But it wasn’t going to help if Max thought so too.
He was watching her. Reading every thought. ‘You did do something you weren’t supposed to do.’
Paint in her book?
Make her fall onto the floor?
Max wouldn’t care about that. It’d have to be something that he wouldn’t like that was to do with him.
Gave her Buster to play with ... that was it. He’d found out.
‘She was holding her breath,’ she said and knew she’d got it right. ‘I only gave him to her for a minute.’
Max’s fingers drifted between the tracks made by the patterns on the chenille spread.
‘It?’
‘Buster.’
‘You gave her my Buster?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You did.’ He wouldn’t turn to look at her.
‘You know I did.’
‘I did not. I was in my mother’s room.’
He’d stormed past them. Shoving them aside when Judith Mae had slipped her toe neatly under the train track so that the carriages of the freight train fell over.
‘I heard her go up the hall to show you.’
He looked at her as if she had just uttered something so stupid that it was beyond even thinking about. Gently he put his arm around her and steered her back to her little desk.
‘Don’t worry, Missie. I won’t tell anyone.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ She folded her arms. It was supposed to make her look strong and tall and straight. But it felt a bit more like she was holding herself up. Or toget
her. As if bits of her were going to start to fall away. ‘I didn’t do anything! I didn’t. I was in here all the time!’
‘All the time? Where’d you get that water then?’
There was no point going on about it.
‘She never showed me,’ Max said and slowly rolled himself along the edge of the mattress so, at last, he was facing her. ‘She must have decided to run back and put him on the bed because that’s where he is now. She knows nobody’s allowed to touch Buster.’
‘No, she didn’t.’
Max straightened up. He smiled a lovely Max smile and looked up at her from under his eyebrows. His fringe drifted down across his forehead, curling in white-gold waves making his eyes even darker and more piercing and his teeth seem smaller and white and perfect.
‘You know nobody ever touches Buster. Maybe you got scared and tried to take him off her and pushed her and down she went.’ He looked at the cardie. ‘Maybe that’s how you got stuck with this. Maybe it came off when you grabbed at her.’
Missie struck him, punched him with a fist that she didn’t even realise she’d closed so tight and ready. She pummelled him so he was flung back onto the bed.
He pushed her back and held both her hands tightly.
‘It’s your fault anyway,’ he said. His voice was blustery and puffed and he held her more tightly while she lunged again. ‘You gave her Buster. Even if you didn’t push her she wouldn’t have had to go back along the hall to return him. It’s your fault, Missie.’
He gave her a good hard push so he could get to the door without her tackling him again. ‘It’s your fault! You shouldn’t have given her Buster.’
‘I didn’t mean to.’ Anger snapped up her spine, making her head ring. ‘She’s your cousin. All she wanted was to play with you and you wouldn’t. You shouldn’t have left her.’ But he had stormed off and she’d been alone with Judith ... And now Judith Mae was dead. ‘She was holding her breath,’ she said. ‘So I gave her Buster. Just for minute.’
Voices drifted up from downstairs. A man’s voice and her mother saying that she’d only allow it if she stayed in the room with her. Whatever that meant.
