The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside

by Jessica Ryn

  ‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ Grace says. ‘How long ago did he pass?’

  Dawn gets up out of her seat and walks towards the glass, staring down the driveway as if she’s expecting someone to arrive.

  ‘He was murdered,’ she announces. ‘And the police have no suspects.’

  Grace can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t sound wildly inadequate and Peter is busy cleaning his scratched-to-bits glasses. They’ve been like that for months but he won’t go to the opticians. Peter doesn’t ‘do’ appointments as they tend to include two of his pet hates: small talk and waiting.

  Grace leaves a respectful gap of silence, looking at Peter every now and again for clues about when it’s the right time to go back to the questions.

  Dawn tells them she’s slept in the park, the seafront and a few bus shelters since her landlord chucked her out. Apparently, he’d been dealing drugs from the address and wanted rid of Dawn because she knew too much. She’d lived in Dover for almost a year, and lots of different towns before that. ‘I like to travel,’ she says. ‘Travel is good for the soul. Staying in one place can be… dangerous.’ Dawn shudders. ‘So, I’ve slept in lots of places of varying qualities. Quite a few shop doorways too, but we can’t have everything.’

  Dawn’s score creeps up as she lets them know what medication she’s prescribed and that it’s been a while since she’s seen the nice people from the mental health team; she expects they’ve been very busy.

  Dawn gives them both unexpected hugs before she leaves, and Grace suppresses a smile at Peter’s pale face. Peter’s not fond of physical contact, too many germs. She often wonders how he’d coped when he’d been a surgical doctor, working in humanitarian aid mission fields in less-than-sanitary environments.

  The afternoon of interviews passes by, churning with stories and answers to questions they hadn’t asked. There’s half an hour to go until they hand the shift over to the evening staff. Thirty minutes to decide whose life they can pluck from the streets and patch up with paperwork, a tiny room and an Argos duvet cover.

  They add up the scores from a pile of papers. Grace had already worked out the answer.

  Chapter 4

  Dawn

  THE EVENING IS BEGINNING to cool even though it’s July and only one minute to five. The park is holding all the evening sunshine in its top corner where the swings are, leaving none for its other inhabitants. People enter through one end and leave through the other, scurrying home from work to watch Neighbours and order a Domino’s.

  Dawn slips her phone out of her jeans pocket (Topshop, £25.99, and getting a bit baggy). She makes sure she has signal and that it’s not on silent. Not that she’s expecting St Jude’s to call; there’s plenty of people needing that room, probably more than she does, which is why she hadn’t contacted them before now. It’s just if they don’t call, she’ll need to pick a corner of the park to set up home in for the night. Which is fine; she has her sleeping bag and she’s managed perfectly for the past month. She’s tried lots of different parts of the park and it’s tricky to decide which is best, under the trees where the bins are or behind the toilet block.

  She leans back on the park bench, pushing her aching back muscles into the cool slats, and glances towards the skate ramp. Shaun’s still there, fiddling with the wheels on his board, no dinner to get home for. Perhaps there will be two beds available at St Jude’s soon.

  ‘All right?’ she asks him, realising she’s got back up, crossed the large stretch of browned lawn between them and now he’s right in front of her.

  ‘How did your interview go at St Jude’s?’ she asks him.

  ‘Not sure. The woman said she’d let me know this evening.’

  Dawn nods and notices the large sports bag bulging at his feet. ‘You not staying at your mate’s again tonight?’

  ‘Nah, he’s got people coming over.’

  She watches him as he meticulously constructs his roll up, only for it to leap out of his hands when the phone rings. Neither of them moves, they just look at each other’s frozen faces. It’s Dawn’s; she can feel the vibration against the top of her thigh.

  She whirls around and walks along the path a bit further. It takes her a while to turn back again once she’s put her phone away, and he’s not on the ramp anymore. She can just make out the back of his head, disappearing into the lane that leads out of the park.

  ‘Take care of yourself, Shaun,’ she whispers under her breath.

  Dawn’s room at St Jude’s is number six and at the back of the building on the second floor. It looks right across the sea and she can see the ferry leaving the docks, heading for Calais. Although the room is tiny, it’s bursting with sunlight and has an en suite, a fridge, microwave, a dented chest of drawers and a small single bed. On the bed sits a new duvet cover and pillowcase set, still in its wrapper, £14.99 from Argos (20 per cent off). Dawn has moved into countless rooms over the past twenty years. Bedsits. Squats. Flats. So many towns, so many different places she could never call home. She came close a couple of times… but then she’d catch sight of a particular shade of red hair and have to move on. The cold hard ground of parks or shop doorways had become regular pit stops between addresses. As time crawled on, these pit stops became longer than the brief stays between them. Anything not to be trapped. Being hemmed in must never be an option.

  Never again.

  Dawn looks around the room and prays that this time it will be different, that this time she will stay. She could even get herself a job nearby. She’d almost left Dover when Reg’s Reptiles had let her go, but something about the town kept her from leaving. She’s had loads of experience – a ton of different jobs. It would just be tricky tracking down references. That’s the problem with changing your life and starting again so many hundreds of times. Still, a change is as good as a rest, they say, and maybe this could be the life she’s been heading towards all these years.

  There’s a sound outside the door, and Grace is standing behind it holding groceries and wearing a big smile.

  ‘We always provide a welcome pack for new residents,’ she says, balancing carrier bags on her wrists as she struggles through the door. She blows the wisps of blonde hair away that have fallen across her face. ‘Just basics. Toiletries, bread, milk and pasta type stuff.’ She starts unloading her cargo onto the top of the fridge. ‘Oh, and tea and coffee, obviously.’

  Dawn swallows the ball in her windpipe and tries to suck the tears back into their sockets. She’s not sure where they came from, but she doesn’t have time for all that nonsense. She has unpacking to do.

  ‘Welcome to St Jude’s,’ Grace says, and she brushes Dawn’s shoulder with her fingers. It’s the briefest of touches but it’s enough to reverse all her hard work.

  ‘Hey,’ Grace whispers as Dawn sinks to the bed, water freely flowing everywhere from her cheeks, staining her top with mascara-ridden teardrops.

  ‘I don’t deserve it,’ Dawn blurts out just as Grace is leaving. ‘So many people out there need this more than me – I shouldn’t have gone to the council, shouldn’t have come here. I put off trying for ages because of that. A few more months on the streets wouldn’t have made much difference. I should have stayed away – who was next on your list?’

  Grace turns back from the door and hands Dawn a booklet of house rules from her carrier bag. She doesn’t answer the question but gives Dawn’s shoulder another quick squeeze before she leaves. Shaun’s face swims into Dawn’s mind and a plan begins to form alongside it as she looks at the booklet. Rule number three pulls her eyes towards it. No Overnight Guests.

  Dawn pulls the clothes from her holdall and places them in the drawers before popping the toothpaste and shower gel onto the tiny shelf above the sink. She leaves the food bits where they are; she can’t remember the last time she ate. She doesn’t really get hungry anymore.

  She puts off going to bed for as long as she can, but quickly runs out of things to distract herself with. She switches off t
he light and guilt hits as soon as she’s under the duvet. The darkness squeezes tight around her, keeping the sleep away and forcing out those age-old pictures that can be drowned out by daylight but never the night. Tonight, it’s not just Rosie’s face Dawn sees. She blinks again and again but she can still see Shaun Michaels between her eyelids. Tomorrow, she promises herself. Tomorrow she’ll save him.

  But you couldn’t save me, she hears, right before sleep catches her.

  Dawn’s room is already drenched in light when she wakes up, just before six. Her bed is directly underneath the window, so she lies for a while, watching the seagulls soar in the air above the sea. Local people always moan about the racket they make but she likes it. It reminds her she’s there now. Near the sea and away from the city. Not many seagulls in Manchester. They call out, letting each other know which roads have rubbish collections this morning and which houses never do their bin bags up properly.

  After enduring a lukewarm shower (a notice on the wall tells her that temperatures are capped for health and safety reasons), she pulls on a pair of light leggings and a long floaty top from New Look, £19.99, buy-one-get-one-free. She picks up her key and clicks the door shut behind her.

  The staff flat is across the corridor. According to the information booklet, the night staff take it in turns to sleep in it in case there are ‘incidents’. Dawn can’t decide if she’s comforted by this or not. The office shutters are still down, so it must be too early for a natter. She decides to take herself on a little tour and pads about in her pumps as quietly as she can. The top two floors appear identical and the ground floor is mostly just the office and the foyer. The basement is home to the resident’s lounge and the laundry room; only to be used before 8 p.m.

  The lounge is empty of people but the TV is still on low and Lorraine Kelly is smiling down from the wall. Maybe it’s screwed on in case anyone nicks it. Two worn sofas frame the room and there’s a patio door that leads into a small, walled garden that’s littered with fag butts and dandelions. The coffee table in the middle of the room is covered with torn boxes of board games that look like they’ve been there since the eighties. At least they’re trying. Dawn was always quite good at playing Frustration; she likes the satisfying clunk of the push-ey down bit in the middle.

  Lorraine’s gone from the telly and now there’s a local news bulletin. Someone’s been found dead, probable overdose. Dawn swipes the remote from the arm of the sofa and switches it off. No point wasting electricity.

  The muffled roaring sound of the shutter from upstairs makes her jump, and she runs upstairs to see the office is now open. She’s looking forward to having someone to chat to – she’ll go and make a cuppa for the staff to say thank you for letting her stay. As Dawn strolls towards the office, she wonders if Grace is working today. She stops when she reaches the hatch.

  Grace is hunched over a newspaper on her desk, tears falling down her cheeks. Peter’s arm is placed awkwardly across her.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ Grace says.

  Dawn will leave quietly. She won’t intrude; Grace probably isn’t allowed to cry in front of the residents.

  She can just about see the headline in front of Grace. It has the word ‘overdose’ in it. Underneath is a photo of a toilet block in a Dover park. Dawn stares at the paper and back at Grace’s heaving shoulders.

  And then she runs.

  Chapter 5

  Grace

  GRACE’S TEARS HAVE MIXED with the ink on the page and she dabs at the newspaper with the sleeve of her cardigan, smudging the article and making it worse. Not that it could get any worse, each word is drilling a hole straight into her heart and she has to look away from the featured photograph as it smiles back at her. It must’ve been taken some years ago before life had come along and stolen all the sparkle.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ says Peter as he hugs her shoulders, reading over the top of her head. ‘We can’t save them all.’

  ‘But he was on our waiting list.’ She swipes a man-size tissue from Peter’s freckly hand and blows hard into it.

  ‘You couldn’t have known,’ he says, pulling a chair towards her and sitting down. ‘We interviewed seven people yesterday for one room. This could have happened to any one of them. And they’re not saying it was definitely deliberate. People accidently overdose all the time. Even if he was living here, it still could have happened.’

  ‘Yes, but at least it wouldn’t have happened on the floor of a grotty public toilet in the park.’ She thumps the desk in front of her and realises that she’s shouting. She tries to still her thoughts and then closes the paper. She shouldn’t take it out on Peter, it’s not his fault and his night shift finished half an hour ago.

  ‘Lorna should be here any minute, it’s her day to run the activities. I’ll wait until she gets here,’ he says when she tells him to go. ‘I can’t leave you on your own like this. You’d be better taking the day off, you’ve had a big shock. Why don’t you take yourself off home?’

  Home sounds appealing. She could have a big wardrobe clear-out. She’ll do some yoga – that one on YouTube led by the woman with the weirdly long toes. Exercise always calms her. Yoga, running, stretching. Just keep yourself moving, her mum would tell her. When life goes to shit, it doesn’t mean you have to.

  ‘I can’t, the police are coming up soon to take statements. We might have been the last people to speak to him as he phoned the office yesterday to check on his application.’ Her voice wobbles again. ‘And you’ve been here all night already.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he assures. ‘It was a quiet night. I slept. No incidents.’

  Peter is still in the office even after Lorna has turned up, twenty minutes late as usual. Beads of sweat cling to her grey spiky hair and she peels off a layer of her signature high-spec sports gear before disappearing downstairs with Peter to put on an activity for the residents so Grace can speak to the police in private.

  ‘A large amount of heroin was found in his system,’ they tell her once she’s written her statement. ‘Probably too much to be considered recreational, unless he’d been a regular user for a considerable amount of time.’

  ‘It wasn’t on his referral form that he had a drug issue.’ Grace shakes her head. ‘We always ask and let them know they can be open with us; that it wouldn’t stop them from getting a place here. We only ask so we know how to support them best when they move in.’

  ‘People aren’t always honest, Grace,’ Detective Jeffries says, glancing at her statement. ‘Sometimes people just get trapped inside the lies they tell themselves, and the truth can’t squeeze back in.’

  Grace opens the shutter after he’s gone, and pokes her head through the gap, listening to the silence of the foyer. Everyone must still be downstairs playing ‘backwards-bingo’, a favourite group activity whenever Lorna’s working.

  ‘Have you been crying, Miss?’ Jack from number four appears in front of the hatch, making Grace jump. He always calls her Miss, even though he’s two years older than her twenty-five. She keeps telling him she’s not a primary school teacher. Peter says it’s because he spent his youth in detention centres and has never got out of the habit.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she smiles. ‘Just a touch of hay fever. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I can’t face spending another day of my life playing backwards-bingo.’

  Grace laughs at his scrunched-up face. ‘Can’t say I blame you.’ The sunshine hits her shoulder blade from the office window, reminding her of the sunny morning and the cloudless sky outside. ‘How about a walk along the cliffs when Lorna comes back up?’

  Jack grins and his bright eyes twinkle. Before Jack moved in, Grace had always thought of dark eyes as being the most soulful. But his light green ones always look like they have stories in them that will make her laugh.

  ‘I’ll go and get my trainers,’ he says, flashing a cheeky dimple.

  Grace begins to feel lighter as she whips her scarf on and clips her pedometer into place
around her wrist. Daily steps are daily steps after all, and every one of them deserves to be counted. She says goodbye to Lorna, assuring her that her phone will be on if she needs anything. She blinks away the image of the park toilets and steers her mind towards the people she can help. Jack has been with them for a few months now and not once has he had a letter or a phone call from anyone who wasn’t the TV licensing people.

  ‘How are things going?’ Grace says to Jack as they wander down the footpath. She keeps glancing back at St Jude’s and wondering how the outside would look to the inspectors. The building had once been a fisherman’s cottage and it’s been stretched and strained, built upon and extended to accommodate the ever-growing waiting list of Dover’s needy and without. It proudly sprawls across the very top of the cliff, surrounded by a low pebbledashed wall that could do with a bit of TLC.

  ‘All good, ta. Best I’ve been in a long while. Peter reckons I’ll be ready to start viewing flats and moving on soon.’ He stops walking and there’s a note of panic in his voice. ‘I know there’s loads of people waiting to move in.’

  ‘We don’t want you to feel rushed,’ Grace says, briefly touching his forearm in reassurance, before retracting her hand. They’re supposed to be careful with showing physical affection, but she forgets sometimes. ‘We usually suggest anywhere up to a six-month stay before resettlement into more permanent accommodation – and even then, we wouldn’t kick you out until we’d helped you find somewhere to live. I just wanted to check you were doing okay?’

  ‘Mostly,’ he says after walking in silence for a few moments. ‘Peter’s been a great keyworker. I’m starting that course tomorrow – the one he helped get me signed up for. When I’ve finished that I should be able to get some building work. Put these muscles to good use.’ He grins as he flexes his arms as well as the dimple in his left cheek.

  ‘That’s great.’