One Moment

by Linda Green

  ‘Morning, sweetheart,’ says Mum. She is awake and sitting up in her sleeping bag next to me.

  ‘What time is it?’ I ask.

  ‘Just gone seven,’ she replies.

  I nod. There is still time to go home. We could pack up and leave now and if we got a taxi we could get to school on time. Maybe everything would be OK if we did that. Maybe it would not be as bad as I think.

  ‘Hey, come here,’ says Mum as I start to cry. I let her put her arms round me and rock me to and fro, like she used to do when I was little.

  ‘I’m going to get into really big trouble, aren’t I?’ I say, my voice cracking.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ she replies. ‘If anyone’s going to be in trouble, it will be me. But remember that all we’re doing is taking four days’ holiday in term time. Olivia Worthington did that when she went to the Maldives, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, but she asked them first and it wasn’t in SATs week. And she brought Mrs Ratcliffe a very expensive present back.’

  ‘Well, you could always take her a tent peg.’ Mum is smiling. She is trying to be funny, I know that. It’s just that I don’t feel like laughing.

  ‘Listen,’ continues Mum. ‘I’m not going to let you get in trouble for this, OK? I will accept full responsibility. But if you want to go to school today, I’ll take you now, there’s still time. I don’t want you to do anything you’re not happy with.’

  I hesitate before replying. There’s now a tug-of-war going on inside me, instead of in the playground.

  ‘I don’t want to go to school but I feel really bad about not being there when I should be and I can’t stop thinking about how cross Dad and Mrs Ratcliffe will be.’

  ‘OK,’ says Mum, pulling me in closer to her. ‘It’s nice that you care about other people’s feelings, but this is about you and doing what’s right for you, not what everyone else wants you to do.’

  I nod and wipe my nose on my sleeping bag.

  ‘Let’s try to take our minds off it and go for a lovely walk this morning and how about we get you an ice-cream this afternoon?’

  I look up at her. I only usually have ice-creams when I am on holiday, but I suppose I am on holiday now, in a funny kind of way.

  ‘Where will we get it from?’ I ask.

  ‘There’s a shop in the village. We need to get some more food too, we’re running low already.’

  ‘Won’t they know I’m supposed to be at school?’

  ‘We’ll go around three thirty. No one will notice you.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, managing a little smile.

  *

  My tummy ache has gone by the time we walk into the village later, which is a bit of luck as I don’t think Mum would let me have an ice-cream if I still had one. I had too much ice-cream at a party in Pizza Hut once and I was sick in the car park outside and Mum said my tummy wasn’t used to rich food like that.

  I am still trying to work out which ice-cream to go for. I have had Magnums before, and I like the white ones best, but Soleros are nice too and I like cones with scoops of ice-cream, but I think you only get them at the seaside and I can never decide what flavour to have anyway.

  It’s definitely hot enough for an ice-cream. Mum asked me to put my legionnaire’s hat on and she’s got her sun hat and shades on and it really does look and feel like the summer holidays. Which is good, because it helps to take my mind off the fact that it isn’t, and I should be in school.

  When we get to the shop, I look straight away to see what sort of ice-creams they have. It is quite a small freezer, but they have Magnums and Soleros, so Mum leaves me to decide while she gets a basket and goes and gets the shopping we need. The song about the dark days that the floaty lady with long red hair sings is playing on the radio and I look up and see Mum dancing a little bit in the tins aisle and it makes me smile, which is a good thing. When the floaty lady finishes the jingle for BBC Radio Leeds comes on. Dad listens to that station sometimes in the car, which is why I know it, but Mum doesn’t usually have it on at home because she says 6 Music is better.

  A man on the radio says it is four o’clock and starts reading the news and my hands start to feel a bit sweaty because I know school has finished and I should have been there, so I put my palms on the top of the ice-cream freezer to cool them down. And the next thing I know the man on the radio is saying my name and that police are concerned for my welfare because I was taken from my home by my mother two days ago and I didn’t turn up at school today and at first I think I must have just imagined that inside my head but then Mum comes up to me and her eyes are wild and scared and she grabs hold of my arm.

  ‘Finn, we have to go,’ she says.

  ‘Did they just say my name on the radio?’

  ‘Ssshhh,’ she says, putting her finger to her lips.

  ‘Why are the police concerned about me? How do they even know about me not going to school?’

  ‘Not now, Finn,’ Mum whispers. ‘We have to go.’

  I look down and see that she has put the tins back and is carrying an empty basket.

  ‘But what about my ice-cream?’

  ‘We haven’t got time for that.’

  ‘You promised,’ I say. My voice comes out all high. I am trying hard not to cry.

  She bites her lip. ‘Well, just grab one,’ she says, putting down the basket.

  I slide open the freezer door. I hadn’t even decided what I was going to choose. My hand hovers between the Magnums and the Soleros.

  ‘Quickly,’ hisses Mum. ‘And wait here while I pay for it.’

  I pick up a white Magnum and hand it to her. I stand there and watch as she takes it up to the till. There is no one in front of her, so the lady serves her straight away. Her hands are shaking as she hands over the money. As soon as she has the change, she heads for the door, glancing round to beckon me to follow her.

  ‘Why—’

  ‘Ssshhh,’ says Mum again. ‘Not until we’re out of sight. And keep your voice down.’

  Her eyes are still crazy, and I don’t like the way she is talking to me. I follow her round the corner and down the lane to a quiet spot where no one is about.

  ‘Why were they talking about me on the news?’ I ask, my voice more like a squeak.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Mum, crouching down and holding my shoulders. ‘All I can think is that your father must have gone to the police.’

  ‘But you left the note saying we were going camping. Why would he tell the police?’

  ‘I don’t know. I need to phone him,’ she says. ‘I need to get this whole thing to stop.’

  ‘But you haven’t got your mobile,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll use a phone box. I’ll call him at work now. I’ll get it sorted, Finn. Don’t worry.’

  I don’t know why she is saying that. The man on the news just said the police are concerned about me and she is still shaking, so it seems fair enough that I should be worried about me, too.

  Mum takes my hand and heads back in the direction of the main street.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  ‘To find a phone box. I’m pretty sure there’s one in the main road, on the next corner.’

  She is right. There is. I have never been in a phone box before and I want to know how it works. And if it’s like a Tardis and much bigger inside than it looks.

  ‘You wait outside, Finn. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘But what if the police come looking for me?’

  Mum sighs and shuts her eyes for a second, then seems to decide that the police might come looking for me because she holds the door open and I go inside. It is not like a Tardis at all and is actually even smaller inside than it looks from the outside and it has a funny smell, a bit like the smell on the stairs of car parks.

  Mum hands the Magnum to me, takes her purse out and rummages
around for some coins. She picks up the phone, pushes some numbers and, when someone answers, asks to speak to Martin Carter, then says ‘Hannah’.

  I tug her sleeve. ‘Can I talk to—’

  ‘Ssshhh,’ she says.

  I hear Dad’s voice next. It is loud and angry even though he is at work and I am listening to him on a phone that is pressed to Mum’s ear.

  ‘He’s fine,’ says Mum, when there is a pause at the other end. ‘He’s here with me.’

  Dad says something on the other end.

  ‘It doesn’t matter where we are,’ Mum replies. ‘I want to know why you’ve got the police looking for us. We’ve just heard it on the news on the radio. You knew I was taking him camping, I told you that.’

  I can’t hear what Dad says, I have to try to work it out by the length of the pauses, the looks on Mum’s face and what she says in reply.

  ‘In the note,’ she says with a frown.

  Mum sighs and rolls her eyes as Dad speaks. ‘The one on the windowsill by the door with your name on it.’

  A pause.

  ‘Well, it was there. I wouldn’t just take him without telling you. What sort of person do you think I am?’

  There is a very long pause after that while Dad says a lot of words. Mum is crying now.

  ‘You still had no right to go to the police. This is nothing to do with them. You need to tell them it was a misunderstanding. That he’s safe and well.’

  Dad shouts the next bit and I can hear every word.

  ‘I’ll call the police when you fucking bring him home,’ is what he shouts. I start crying too.

  ‘It was making him ill, Martin,’ says Mum. ‘He was sick the night before we left, do you even know that? I needed to get him out of that situation for his own good. I gave him the choice to come home last night and go to school, but he didn’t want to. We need to listen to him, Martin, and you’d stopped listening. There was no other way.’

  There is another pause. Dad is talking more quietly this time.

  ‘And do you think telling the police is going to help him at school?’ Mum asks. ‘Having his name on the news and kids and parents thinking I’ve run off with him without telling you. Do you think that’s going to make things better for him when he goes back?’

  Mum seems to be trying to do all her crying in the bits when Dad speaks, so that she can talk when it’s her turn.

  ‘I’m not the one who stopped talking, Martin. You’re the one who refused to carry on with mediation and started communicating by solicitor’s letters, threatening to take him away from me.’

  I think that must have been a good thing to say because there is a silence on the other end of the phone and then Dad’s voice seems to go quieter.

  ‘Well, you need to promise me that you’ll be reasonable when we come home, too,’ she says. ‘And the first thing you can do is to go to the police and tell them it was all a misunderstanding. When you’ve done that and I know I can bring him home without them being involved, I will. But you have to get them to call off the search for him first.’

  She puts the phone down and hugs me tightly, sobbing into my hair.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Finn. I’m so sorry for all of this.’

  I let her hold me while I do my own crying. It sounds like we are crying the same song. My music teacher would say we do very good crying harmonies.

  ‘Why did he call the police?’ I ask.

  ‘He says he didn’t see my note. He thought I’d run away with you. That we weren’t coming back.’

  I stare at her, imagining how scared Dad must have been.

  ‘It could have blown down when you shut the door,’ I say. ‘Your shopping list did that once. It fell behind the shoe rack.’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘Yes, I found it when I was looking for my trainers and put it back on the windowsill.’

  Mum screws her eyes up tight. ‘Oh God. How could I have been so stupid?’ she says.

  ‘Call him back and tell him,’ I say.

  ‘Not now. Hopefully he’s calling the police.’

  ‘Later then.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘He’ll look for it when he goes home, won’t he? And he’ll find it and read it and know you weren’t lying, and everything will be OK, and I won’t be in trouble with the police.’

  Mum starts crying again. I suddenly remember the Magnum still in my hand.

  ‘Are you allowed to eat ice-creams in telephone boxes?’ I ask.

  Mum does a sort of half-cry, half-laugh and brushes the tears from her cheeks.

  ‘Yes, but we’ll go outside, back round the corner to that quiet spot.’

  I try to open the phone box door, but it is very heavy. Mum squeezes past me and pushes it open with her bum. I follow her back to where we were before and peer into the bushes across the road to see if there are any policemen waiting for us.

  I unwrap the Magnum. It is a bit melty but if I eat it quickly, I think it will be OK. It doesn’t taste as nice as I remember, though. It doesn’t taste of being on holiday. It tastes of tears and shouting and feeling bad inside. I look around for a bin but there isn’t one, so I put the stick in my trouser pocket.

  ‘Are we going home now then?’ I ask Mum.

  She shakes her head and does the biting-her-lip thing again.

  ‘I don’t know, Finn,’ she says, sitting down on the little wall at the side of the road and putting he head in her hands. ‘I’ve made such a mess of this and I don’t know what to do any more.’

  ‘I don’t want the police to find us,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to be arrested.’

  ‘You won’t be arrested,’ she says. ‘They just want to know that you’re safe.’

  ‘So why don’t we go to a police station and show them I am?’

  Mum sighs and takes hold of my hand. ‘Because right now, they think I took you without telling Dad. They think we’ve run off for good. And that means I could get in big trouble if I just show up.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go to prison,’ I say, looking down at my feet.

  ‘I won’t,’ says Mum, giving me another hug. ‘But that’s why we need to wait for Dad to tell the police that it’s all been a big misunderstanding.’

  ‘So, are we still going to camp out tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But we can’t stay where we are. The warden or someone who has seen us might have heard it on the news. We need to go somewhere there are no people around until we know it’s all been sorted out and it’s safe to go home.’

  ‘Like a proper hideout?’

  ‘Something like that. Let’s go back to the campsite. We’ll pack all our things away super-quick and try to find somewhere.’

  I nod, feeling the full tummy ache again now. I hope if we are caught that I am not sick in the police car because Mum might never let me have an ice-cream again.

  BEFORE 14

  14

  Kaz

  Monday morning arrives and I realise bloody Theresa May was right about one thing – there is no magic money tree. Not outside our front door, at any rate.

  I have two crackers for breakfast but by midday my stomach is rumbling so much that I’m worried Terry will notice when I go and see him later. And I don’t want him worrying about me on top of everything else. Besides, if the only thing between me and a square meal is swallowing my pride, it’s got to be done. It’s not like I’m the first to go. Everyone knows someone who’s been these days. Kerry in the flat next door goes every week. I saw her coming home with a Marks and Spencer carrier bag full of food and asked how the hell she could afford to shop there. That’s when she told me: it was the carrier bag she’d been given at the food bank.

  When I arrive at the old community centre where they run it, there’s a small queue outside. Like it’s the hottest ticket in town. In a few years
’ time there’ll be three of them in every town and kids won’t be able to remember what it was like before we had food banks. Food banks and vape shops.

  It’s only when I get towards the front of the queue that I wonder if I should have brought any proof of identity. Something to show I am in genuine need – apart from my rumbling tummy that is.

  I edge inside the front door into the hall. I came here once for someone’s wedding reception when I was in my early twenties, can’t remember whose now. One of the girls from my class who got married, like pretty much all of them did apart from me. Terry didn’t like it though; it was too noisy for him, so we left after half an hour. There were quite a few dos like that. Gave up bothering in the end. And people gave up asking me.

  ‘Hello, pet, have you been before?’ an elderly woman asks me.

  ‘No, love. Do you need any ID or owt?’

  ‘Just your name and address on here,’ she says, holding out a clipboard. ‘It’s so we can keep track of who’s been.’

  I nod and write my details on the piece of paper, all the time hearing Terry saying not to give them our address because they’d pass it on to MI5.

  ‘Right, if you go over there and see Shirley in blue slacks, she’ll sort you out.’

  I do as I’m told. I suspect Shirley is a churchgoer; she has that air of organisation and an obvious desire to help, coupled with a faint smell of old hymn books.

  ‘Hello, there, what can we get you today?’ she says, like I’ve arrived at the pick and mix section in Woolies.

  ‘Um, just basics, please. I’ve not been before, so I don’t know what you’ve got.’

  ‘Let’s start with breakfast things, then,’ she says, picking up a Waitrose carrier bag from a box. ‘We’ve got some cornflakes, Weetabix or porridge.’

  The Weetabix she points to includes a pack that is organic; as if the people who donated it thought we’d not eat anything less. I’d eat bloody dog food if you put it in front of me right now.

  ‘Cornflakes would be great, thanks,’ I say, knowing that will taste best with cold milk and I need to have the hob on as little as possible. Shirley adds some long-life milk and a box of teabags. I tell her I don’t need coffee and follow her to the next shelves, where there are lots of different packets, pots and tins. I ask for beans, soup and noodles; all things that can be cooked without the need to put the oven on. I spot a packet of Waitrose organic wholewheat lasagne sheets. Presumably donated by the organic Weetabix person, who may well have brought them in the Waitrose carrier bag I am holding. I know they meant well, and beggars can’t be choosers and all that, but they really haven’t got a fucking clue.