The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside

by Jessica Ryn

  Cara gives her a small nod before emptying the dustpan into the bin. Her sleeve rides up as it catches on the corner of the lid, and Dawn sees that her arm is marked with angry red holes across her veins, the same as the ones on her neck.

  ‘Curtis and Kyle,’ Cara says after putting the dustpan away. She pulls at her locket, twisting it between her fingers before popping it open to reveal a tiny photograph. ‘My boys.’

  ‘Beautiful names,’ Dawn smiles as she opens her eyes wider, so the tears stay in them rather than falling down her face. Must be the bastard onions.

  As the morning rushes past, Dawn is surprised by the number of people who come in for cups of tea and coffee and scones.

  ‘It’s cos we’re so close to the cliff and the cycle path – and we’re the only café around here that allows dogs,’ Cara tells her.

  Dawn follows Cara as she strides across the seating area, collecting empties and cleaning tables before rushing back to the kitchen to stack and to clean. ‘Does everyone work as hard as you in here?’ Dawn asks. ‘You keep it spotless, even when it’s busy.’

  Cara nods. ‘Have to. We get inspected every week. Grace does it. Which reminds me,’ she lowers her voice. ‘None of us are meant to know this yet, so keep your trap shut in front of Grace and the others, but Terry told me something earlier and it ain’t good.’

  Someone scrapes their chair across the café floor, making Dawn’s teeth rattle. Something in her gut flutters. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s them people who give hostels the money to stay open. They’re inspecting them all and closing loads of them down. Let’s hope we’re not next, eh?’

  The front door dings and Dawn turns away from it when she sees Paul from Room 1 with the red hair. She busies herself in the cleaning cupboard out of sight, hoping to find a paper bag to breathe into. Lots of people have red hair, she tells herself. It doesn’t mean it’s him.

  ‘Hi Paul,’ Cara says. ‘Didn’t see you at the session last night. You really should join in with stuff. Ain’t it boring stuck in your room all the time?’

  ‘I’m off out now as it happens. Run out of coffee at mine, so I’ll have one to go, please.’

  ‘Coming right up. Dawn?’ Cara bellows, obviously not noticing her backside hanging out the cupboard three feet away from her. ‘Perfect time to show you the coffee machine.’

  Dawn keeps still, willing Cara not to see her. She tells her heart to beat slower and quieter; it’s making quite a song and dance in there. It’s not him. His voice isn’t right, and she’s spent enough time replaying his words to know what he’ll sound like when he finds her.

  Cara clatters about making a racket with the coffee machine. The door dings again.

  Paul has gone.

  ‘How do you know? About the inspections?’ Dawn squeezes the Cif onto her cloth and attacks the counter with it. Surely St Jude’s couldn’t close – she’s only just got here. And where would they all go? She couldn’t let Shaun sleep out in the park again, she just couldn’t.

  ‘Teardrop heard them talking. Told me not to tell anyone cos people might panic, but he thought we could help out a bit without ‘em knowing. Tidy the place up and that. Shit, you look worried, sorry. It probably won’t even happen for ages.’

  Two St Jude’s residents arrive to take over from them in time for the lunchtime rush and Dawn has an idea as she grabs her handbag from under the counter.

  ‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ she whispers to Cara. She feels like Cara would understand about Shaun, and she doesn’t seem the type to grass.

  Cara agrees to come to Room 6 with her, and Dawn smuggles a chocolate brownie from the counter into the pocket of her hoody. It would be rude to invite her over and not give her anything to eat, and she might be hungry after all her hard work.

  ‘You have to promise you won’t tell anyone,’ Dawn says in a low voice as her key turns in the lock. ‘He’s just staying with me until he gets back on his feet—’ Dawn breaks off as soon as they are in the room.

  Shaun has gone.

  Dawn remembers what she’d told him to do and runs to the en suite, yanking the shower curtain across. The cubical is empty.

  ‘Hey, what’s up with you? Who’s gone?’ Cara dabs at Dawn’s cheek with her pinkie finger, making her realise she’s crying. Dawn is about to tell her all about him, and how he can’t leave because he needs her. But then she sees them.

  Three thick metal bars across her window. She clutches at her mouth with both hands and sinks down onto the bed. A hundred locked doors appear in her mind, one after the other. They belong to the flats she left behind. The squats she escaped from. Her room at the Barton Wing. The other door with the lock she couldn’t quite reach, the tiny toilet cubical and the smell of posh soap. Dawn gags into her fist and closes her eyes.

  ‘Someone’s after me,’ she says in a quiet voice close to Cara’s ear. ‘Someone I know from a long time ago. I think he might be dangerous.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know his name,’ she whispers. ‘He’s put bars across my window. He’s sending me a message. I’m trapped, and he won’t let me leave.’

  ‘Course you can bloody leave, it’s not a friggin’ prison. It’ll be some health and safety crap or something. They should’ve warned you before barging into your room, though. Stop shitting yourself,’ Cara adds when she looks back at Dawn’s face. ‘Do you want me to see if they’ve put them on mine too?’

  Dawn nods, grateful that she’s at least pretending to take her seriously.

  Cara glances at the blister pack of tablets on the top of the chest of drawers on her way out and Dawn wishes she’d thrown them away. Now she definitely won’t believe her. It’s not as if Dawn even takes them anymore, they were old ones that had fallen out of her make-up bag.

  Cara had only been gone a couple of minutes when she knocked at the door again, only opening it wide enough to stick her head through.

  ‘Can’t come in now, I’ve got keyworking with Grace, but the answer’s no. I don’t have any bars on my window.’

  Dawn lies face down on the bed and screams into the pillow, bunching the duvet cover tightly between her fists until her throat hurts and her knuckles have turned white.

  She needs to leave. It’s not safe here. Dawn flies from the room and down the corridor to the office. Grace and Cara look out at her from the other side of the hatch.

  ‘If I want to leave, I can, can’t I, no one can stop me?’ Dawn blurts towards Grace.

  Grace opens her mouth and closes it again. She disappears from the hatch and Dawn feels crushed until the office door falls open and Grace walks through it.

  ‘You are completely free. This is your home, not a prison. That being said, I really hope you choose to stay. Cara said you were a natural in the café today.’

  Dawn’s pulse rate begins to slow to normal. She nods at Grace and tries to walk as normal and casually as she can back to number six.

  She’s still trying to will herself to pack everything back into her holdall when there’s a knock at the door.

  ‘I’m busy at the moment, Cara. Come back later,’ Dawn croaks.

  The door opens slowly and Shaun slips through it, banging it behind him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Dawn hisses as she pulls him close, squeezing all the air from his lungs. ‘You weren’t supposed to come in or out unless you had to. What if someone had seen you?’

  ‘I had to get out, I’m sorry. This room’s so tiny, I was going off my head. I came up through the fire escape, like we said. No one saw me, stop worrying,’ he says, wriggling out of her tight grasp. ‘I’m friggin’ starving though. Got any food?’ The corners of his mouth turn upwards when Dawn presents a brownie to him from her pocket. ‘You are a legend,’ he says, spraying crumbs all over the duvet.

  Dawn is staying put. Whatever that man has in store for her, she’ll risk it. Shaun, Cara; they both need her, and she’s never going to let them down.

  Chapter
9

  Dawn

  DAWN WAKES UP THE next morning with Shaun’s foot in her face. Bright light filters through the curtains, and the clock on her wall tells her it’s still early.

  ‘Do you wake up thinking about them, Shaun?’

  ‘Eh?’ Shaun’s voice is thick with sleep as he turns over.

  ‘The people we left behind. The ones still outside.’

  Shaun stays quiet. Dawn wonders if he’s gone back to sleep.

  ‘I’ve had an idea,’ Dawn says. ‘I’m going to wake Cara up and get some supplies first. Meet me outside at the bottom of the hill in ten minutes.’

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’ Cara grumbles from the other side of her door. ‘It’s not my day to work. I was looking forward to a lie-in.’

  ‘Do you have the keys to the café?’

  ‘Yes. Why, what you planning?’ Cara’s eyes narrow into two suspicious hyphens.

  Twenty minutes later, Dawn is trundling down the hill towards the seafront with Shaun and Cara, armed with flasks of coffee and packets of biscuits.

  ‘I’m glad they didn’t catch us nicking the coffee.’ Cara sounds breathless.

  ‘I’ll talk to Grace later,’ Dawn promises. ‘The biscuits are from my room and we’ll put the flasks back later. She’ll understand when I tell her who it’s for.’ They decide to go along the sea shelters before they head to the park. When sleeping outside, the first minutes of waking are the worst. The aching joints and frozen limbs. The absolute alone-ness of waking to the sound of other people on their way to places where they’re needed. Thinking of those starting their days with morning coffees in sun-drenched kitchens.

  The sea is calm and blue with only the smallest of waves dancing against the shingle. Pigeons waddle across the promenade, beaks to the ground in search of breakfast, and seagulls call to each other in surround sound. Behind the seafront shelter and across the road is a row of hotels, B&Bs and tall houses bearing paintwork that’s been mercilessly eroded by salt air and neglect.

  Bill is in his usual spot under the middle sea shelter. Guilt snaps at Dawn when she counts how many days it’s been since she last saw him. She’d slept beside him many times before he moved from the park and she always checked on him each day afterwards. He is already awake and rolling up a stained, coverless duvet.

  ‘Dawn.’ Bill’s already crinkled face creases up into a smile when she enters the shelter.

  Dawn pulls him into a hug, feeling his bones through his beige anorak and his coarse grey beard against her face. She wishes she could take him back to St Jude’s. ‘How’ve you been? How’s the foot doing – you seen a doctor yet?’

  ‘You haven’t given up your ruddy fussing, then?’ Bill’s eyes are twinkling but his hands are shaking, and Dawn knows they will do so until he can get hold of something stronger than what’s in their flasks.

  ‘Sit for a minute and have a coffee with us before you go wandering,’ she says. ‘Then I’ll call the surgery for you. I can see with my own eyes you’re still not putting any weight on that left foot.’

  ‘Who’s this then?’ Bill nods towards Cara, ignoring her words but holding the cup she’d given him whilst Dawn pours the contents of her flask into it.

  ‘Cara and Shaun. They live with me at St Jude’s.’

  Cara and Shaun shake his hand and say ‘hi’ in choral unison.

  ‘So, that’s where you’ve been – St Jude’s. We wondered where you’d got to. Maisie reckoned you’d left town.’

  ‘Where is Maisie?’ Wherever Bill is, Maisie isn’t usually far away. She’s better at being homeless than anyone else Dawn has ever met, and most of the locals are frightened of her.

  ‘Woods behind the park. Got sick of my company, I reckon,’ he chuckles. ‘She managed to get a tent from somewhere. She’ll probably tell you to piss off.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  Footsteps pound the pavement behind Dawn, and she turns around to see Jack jogging towards them along the promenade.

  ‘What’s he doing up this early? Did you ask him to help?’ Cara says.

  Dawn shakes her head and watches Jack’s face break into a smile.

  ‘Bill!’ Jack slows his pace to a stop and hi-fives Bill.

  ‘Young Jack’s one of the gooduns.’ Bill slaps Jack’s back. ‘Brings me hot chocolate every night just before it gets dark. Same flasks as them, I reckon.’

  Jack coughs. ‘Umm… those from the café too?’

  Laughter bubbles inside Dawn. Jack must’ve had the same idea but had been carrying it out at the opposite end of the day.

  ‘The surgery can fit you in at ten past nine,’ Dawn says, putting the phone back in her pocket. ‘You really must make sure you go. You might need antibiotics.’

  ‘Aye. I’ll be there.’

  Dawn can tell by the light tone of his voice that he won’t.

  ‘I’ll go with him. We’ll go via the off licence,’ Jack adds when he sees Bill’s face fall. Bill wouldn’t even get through a doctor’s appointment without something to take away those shaky hands.

  ‘Come up to the café afterwards,’ says Dawn. ‘It’s writing group day. I’m sure Hazel wouldn’t mind a few extra. Might even be a scone in it for you.’

  Bill lets out a wheezy laugh. ‘Not my thing. Ta for the coffee and biscuits. You’re a good woman.’

  Dawn, Cara and Shaun make their way to the park and distribute their coffee amongst those waking up on benches or huddling against the large oak tree by the river. Dawn squeezes as much information from Cara as she can about the workings of the hostel. She dishes out phone numbers and drop-in days for St Jude’s along with the biscuits, hoping to get every homeless person in Dover on the waiting list. Buoyed up by the success of getting Bill packed off to the surgery, she finds herself dispensing copious amounts of medical advice too. Really, with her background and all this intuitive knowledge, she really should consider becoming a doctor. She could tend to the wounds of the sick and needy of Dover. She would heal them of all their afflictions and after she’s died, they might erect a marble statue of her in the middle of the park. In Memory of Dr Brightside, it would say. She Transformed Dover with the Healing Power of Hope. Or something like that.

  Heat rises from the tarmac as they climb the hill to the next park, the one with the woods behind it. The park at the top of the hill is awash with flowers and smells of honeysuckle rather than dog poo and stale pot.

  ‘What if she doesn’t even want to see us?’ grumbles Shaun. ‘Maisie can be pretty scary if you get too close to her sleeping bag.’

  ‘No one should have to go more than a day without anyone speaking to them,’ says Dawn. ‘If Maisie wants us to leave, we’ll leave. But she should have the choice.’

  The tent is easy to find. It’s small, torn and bright blue and sits in a small clearing between a cluster of trees. A sizzling sound is coming from behind it and a pleasant smell is wafting up Dawn’s nostrils.

  ‘What are you lot doing on my property?’ Maisie swings her head away from the frying pan she’s precariously holding over some eager flames. ‘I’m not putting my fire out. I’m sick of you lot telling me what I can and can’t do. Bloody health-and-safety this and environmental-that. You council people should go and get yourselves a real job.’ Maisie wobbles on the sideways cider barrel she’s somehow managing to perch on. Her waist-length dreadlocks are tied into a knot on the top of her head. They look too heavy to be able to hold up for too long at a time without needing a lie down.

  ‘We’re not from the council. It’s me – Dawn. I stayed in the sea shelter for a few nights with you and Bill.’

  ‘Ugh, that feckin’ man.’ Maisie shivers. ‘I came up here to get away from him. Snores like a bloody rhino. Need my beauty sleep, I do.’ She rubs at the skin under her right eye, smearing several inches of melted make-up onto her fingers. A lopsided heart drawn in lipstick, sits across her left cheekbone.

  ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ Dawn starts to unscrew the t
op of her flask.

  ‘Why would I want your coffee? Got a whole tub of Nescafé in my tent. It was in the bin behind Morrisons. Right next to these eggs.’ She points towards the sizzling pan. ‘Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll make you a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich. Might have to pick the mould off the crusts, I know how fussy people can be. Health-and-safety-this, environmental-that,’ she mutters as she pulls the pan away from the flames and sets it down on an upturned Quality Street tin.

  ‘Not for me, ta.’ Cara sits on the ground and starts pulling daisies from the ground.

  ‘Ah. My food not good enough for you? Well, in that case, why don’t you just f—’

  ‘Egg sandwiches and coffee would be lovely,’ Dawn smiles. ‘Wasn’t expecting a nice picnic in the sunshine now, were we?’

  Cara and Shaun mumble some words and Dawn bites into a sandwich, focussing on the gloriously runny egg yolk and ignoring the green speckles. The mould might even do her good. There’s so much waste in the world. Really, Dawn is probably helping her own health and helping the environment. That sicky feeling in her tummy is just psychological.

  ‘Mmm. Delicious. Thanks, Maisie.’

  ‘What are you really doing here?’ she suddenly snaps. ‘I’m not moving my tent. I’ve already told the council that. Did they send you instead? I’m staying put – if they don’t like it, they can stuff it up their arse.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ Dawn says. ‘Now if you aren’t too busy later, we have a writing group up at St Jude’s café. Free cakes and it starts at two o’ clock.’

  The skies have clouded over by the time the three of them are walking back down the hill towards the town.

  ‘There’s no way she’s walking all that way to a writing group,’ says Cara. ‘I don’t know why you even invited her. Can you imagine what a nightmare she’d be if she turned up?’

  ‘I thought she was funny,’ Shaun shrugs. ‘Bloody good egg sarnies too.’

  ‘You’ve invited how many people?’ Hazel says as she slides two of the café’s tables together. Hazel runs the writing group at St Jude’s and looks like one of those kind librarians you see in films. The ones that inspire troubled kids to read books that go on to change their lives. A mousy brown cloak of hair frames a lightly lined face and cheerful eyes. At least, when Dawn had first walked in, they’d looked cheerful. Now they look a little nervous and keep darting from chair to chair whilst she counts up numbers under her breath.