The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside

by Jessica Ryn

  A door creaks open somewhere from the corridor. Grace’s shoulders sag when she hears Dawn calling goodnight to Cara. Cara’s door closes, and Grace lets out a breath as Dawn’s footsteps get gradually quieter as she pads back to her room.

  The silence feels thick and cold and the need to not be alone almost overwhelms her.

  Grace stands outside Jack’s door for several minutes. She zips up her cardigan. It’s one thing to sit in the lounge in her PJs but quite another to knock on someone’s door after midnight in them.

  Concentrating hard on the force with which she raps on number four, Grace checks behind her that no one is watching. If she’s too quiet, he won’t hear her, and she’ll lose her nerve. Too noisy and Cara might come out to see what’s happening.

  Grace is still trying to decide between knocking again and slinking away when the door opens.

  Jack’s eyes are pink from sleep and they flicker as they adjust to the light behind her. He takes a step backwards and flicks on the lamp.

  ‘Umm. You want to come in? Or did you need me for something – has something happened?’

  She steps into the room. She had planned to ask if he wanted to watch a film in the lounge, but the words sound like a lie, even in her own head. She ignores that inner whisper, the one accusing her of needing someone to want her.

  That sounds far too feeble.

  Jack takes a step towards her and stops, confusion written in his eyes.

  ‘I’ve just… just had a bad day and couldn’t sleep,’ Grace stammers. ‘I didn’t want to be on my own.’

  Jack fixes his gaze on her face, blush marks springing up on his cheeks. He doesn’t look tired anymore. ‘Erm – of course. You’re always welcome.’ He holds his arms out towards her, concern written in his eyes.

  She closes the door behind her and walks slowly towards him. He opens his mouth to speak again. Grace closes it with her index finger and presses her forehead against his.

  They stay like that for several seconds, their lips millimetres apart. Jack’s full lips look soft and plump and his breath sounds as shaky as hers. Grace moves her hands to his chest and inches her mouth closer to his.

  Jack covers her hands with his own, keeping them still and moves his face further from hers.

  ‘What’s brought this on?’ he asks in a low voice. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing I want to burden you with.’ Grace can hear the wobble in her own voice.

  ‘I just don’t think we should…’ Jack peels her hands from his chest and drops them before taking a step backwards. ‘You’re crying,’ he says, peering at her face.

  Grace wipes her wrist across her face. It comes away slick with tears and clumps of black mascara. Her face burns with humiliation. He obviously wants her to leave. She wants to run far away from his concerned face and his Spiderman cover, but her legs won’t move.

  She watches in silence as he opens his wardrobe and gets out a scratchy-looking blanket. He wraps it around her shoulders, guiding her onto the bed until she’s lying on top of the duvet and pulls the blanket tightly around her. Plumping up his pillow, he sits up next to Grace and scoops his arms around her, guiding her head to his shoulder. He smells faintly of sleep, toothpaste and Lynx Africa.

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed,’ she says with a hollow laugh. ‘It was unprofessional. I completely understand if you want to report me.’

  She doesn’t dare to look at his face as the seconds tick by, she’s afraid of what she might see written all over it. Disgust? Pity? She’s not sure which would be worse.

  She’s so preoccupied with waiting for his answer that his sudden laughter makes her jump.

  ‘Report you?’ he sounds as if he’s choking on his own chuckles. ‘Yes, officer, I’d like to report this really hot woman I know. We’ve been flirting for a while now, had a few cuddles, I very obviously fancy the socks off her and she has the cheek to knock on my door. Can I have a complaint form please?’

  ‘I still shouldn’t be doing this. Not in my position.’ Grace blushes and bats his shoulder with the back of her hand. ‘Why did you stop me, if that’s what you really think?’ She snuggles down further into his arms, immediately feeling her body sag and her eyes begin to droop.

  ‘Because I want something to happen with us, and I don’t want it to start with you crying or using it as a way to escape whatever other shit you’ve got going on today.’

  Bingo. He has her there, she supposes.

  Grace wakes to the delicious smell of coffee and Egg McMuffins. Jack is perched next to her on the bed, his dimple on proud display beside his smile.

  Grace sits up as she feels beside her for her phone. It’s not there, she’d left it in the staff flat. ‘What time is it?’ Panic sets in and her stomach drops.

  ‘Hey, don’t panic. It’s ten to ten.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll be fine. You said you weren’t working today?’

  ‘Well, no, I’m not, but I didn’t mean to fall asleep in here. Peter must’ve wondered where I was when he got to work. I was supposed to be in the staff flat. What if something bad happened last night in the hostel and no one could find me?’

  ‘Relax. Nothing happened. Besides, I hung around the hatch this morning and told Peter you’d only just left for a dentist appointment. He didn’t bat an eyelid. Then I went for a run and picked up our breakfast.’

  Grace’s stomach growls and she sniffs her hash brown, her face breaking into a smile despite her nerves. ‘Smells delicious.’

  It tastes just as good. Grace closes her eyes and savours every mouthful, feeling her shoulders relax with every bite.

  ‘Do you like escape rooms?’

  ‘Eh?’ Grace laughs. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever been in one.’

  ‘Neither have I.’ Jack wipes ketchup from the side of his mouth with his finger. ‘But they’ve just opened one up in town. They have loads of rooms to choose from – all different themes – they lock you in and you have to solve clues to get out in under an hour. It’s half price today, so I thought we could go. Have some fun away from this place.’

  Grace opens her mouth to say no, and then wonders why the hell not. She’s already sitting on a service user’s bed in her PJs on her day off. How could a fun day out be any worse?

  Jack goes to the office to keep Peter busy and Grace holds her cardigan tightly around her and runs on her tiptoes to the staff flat, praying that no one sees her, and that Peter isn’t watching the cameras.

  She pulls on her day clothes, puts her PJs in her bag and picks up her phone. Footsteps and voices move past the door and Grace stands still until she thinks they have gone. Then she inches the door open and creeps down the back stairs to the fire exit until she’s beside the bins at the back of the building. A quick survey of her surroundings confirms she’s alone, and she hops over the back fence, using the bin to step onto.

  ‘I can’t believe we just did that.’ Grace bursts out laughing as soon as Jack appears around the corner. ‘Now run before anyone sees us!’

  They are still laughing when they arrive at the escape rooms. Grace feels like a naughty schoolgirl and can’t remember the last time she’d felt so free.

  They are both hopeless in the escape room. The room is supposed to look like a witch’s cottage. They are supposed to find clues, but they keep getting distracted by their own conversations.

  They cover everything from music to celebrities and politics. Grace is just about to say how great it feels to be talking about things other than her problems, when Jack throws her a curveball.

  ‘So, what was the matter last night?’

  Grace sits down on the wall along the side of the room. She tells him the truth. She lets him know about the inspection being a disaster and that they are waiting for the verdict from head office. She even tells him about her mum cancelling.

  ‘She’s a pain in the arse. Not a nice person at all, if I’m being honest. But she’s my mum, and I wanted to see her. I want
ed her to see me and just for once, be proud.’

  Jack nods. He looks as if he’s going to say something when a man wearing a Dover Escape Rooms T-shirt rushes through the door.

  ‘Are you two all right in here?’ he says, breathlessly. ‘It’s just that your time is almost up and you’ve still got seven clues to find. We haven’t even sent Hansel and Gretel in yet.’

  Chapter 20

  Dawn

  TONIGHT’S EQUIP MEETING AT St Jude’s is supposed to be about CVs and interview skills. It appears to be very well attended, which is surprising to Dawn when she notices the lack of biscuits. Not a rich tea or a custard cream in sight.

  Every sofa seat and hard-backed chair is filled with the behinds of St Jude’s residents and most of the scratchy carpet is covered too.

  People are staring at the empty space on the coffee table where the biscuits usually sit. Not Dawn though, she can’t quite tear her eyes away from Peter and Grace’s faces and the looks that pass between the two of them every few minutes. Grace keeps opening her mouth and then closing it again, fiddling with the clip from the top of her board. Peter looks as if he wishes he could be anywhere but there and keeps staring around the room, looking for an exit or someone to save him.

  ‘Have we still got the bike? Only I wanted to borrow it next week for a job interview. It’s in Deal and I hate going on buses.’

  ‘Good thing I got it back again then,’ mumbles Cara.

  Dawn waits for Grace and Peter to congratulate Terry on his interview and begin discussions about progress and increased self-worth etcetera. But none of it comes, just another weird expression between them that seems to plead with each other to say something.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Cara pipes up. She looks a normal colour today and is managing to hold her head up higher on her shoulders. She even looks as if she’s washed her hair.

  ‘We’ve received an email,’ Grace says, glancing sideways at Peter. Peter just looks straight ahead, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. ‘It’s from Supporting Futures, the people who give us the majority of our funding.’

  The room is silent now, most people are sitting up just a little bit straighter.

  ‘They came to carry out an inspection, as many of you are aware. There were a few issues that were highlighted, which have dropped our rating, meaning that they are pulling a significant amount of our funding.’

  The silence deepens, rooting itself into the ground and thickening, filling up the room and taking all the air out of it.

  ‘Can’t head office do something?’ Jack asks.

  More furtive glances between the staff and Dawn’s stomach takes a downwards dive.

  ‘They’ve spent the past few days looking at the figures and trying to secure finance elsewhere. Unfortunately, there’s nothing more they can do.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Terry always has the biggest balls in the room, and almost every resident looks at him gratefully. No one wants to ask a question that no one wants to answer.

  ‘We’re now facing a shortfall of ten thousand pounds. It means we can only operate for a further four months.’

  The silence is punctured by sixteen separate gasps and almost as many different swear words.

  ‘During that time, Peter and I and the rest of the staff team will be working closely with each one of you to work towards relocating you to more permanent housing.’

  One by one, each face in the room drains of colour. Dawn’s must look the same. Four months is so soon. Even if they do all get relocated, what will Dawn do then? Who would be left for her to look after? It would be tricky to watch over them if they weren’t all in the same building. St Jude’s is so much more than just a roof over their heads.

  ‘No.’ The word falls out of Dawn’s mouth before she even knows it’s in there.

  Every face is pointing towards her as something stirs deep inside her belly.

  ‘We can’t give up on this place. I won’t. There’s sixteen of us who live here as well as staff. Am I right?’

  Grace gives Dawn a nod.

  ‘You read about it all the time, and there are definitely films about it… you know, where a group of people band together to raise money for some good cause? We could be those people!’

  A cluster of blank faces stare back at Dawn. They don’t get it, not yet, they’ve had too many years of ‘no’ and ‘can’t’ and ‘move the hell on, you’re not allowed to sleep here’.

  ‘We have four months,’ Dawn carries on. ‘At any given time, there are plenty of us in this building. If we do it in shifts, we could use all of that time to try and make money for St Jude’s. That’s a lot of man-hours.’

  ‘People-hours,’ corrects Grace, but she does look intrigued. ‘Say we could do this,’ she says, excitement poking out between syllables. ‘What would that look like? Has anyone here got any fundraising experience?’

  Silence is back again as people throw glances to and from each other around the room.

  ‘I do.’ Terry puts his hand halfway up for the briefest of seconds before using it to scratch his head, as if that’s what he’d meant to do in the first place.

  ‘What, legally?’ Cara screws up her face. ‘I’m not sure you’re talking about the same kind of fundraising.’

  ‘I used to work for the RSPCA. Door to door and down the high street, jiggling the boxes, giving out stickers. Not too different from sleeping on the street actually, people still speak to you like shit or pretend they haven’t seen you.’

  ‘That’s settled then. Terry, you are head fundraiser,’ beams Grace.

  ‘Cool,’ he nods.

  A warm feeling begins to spread inside Dawn’s stomach as people start to smile and shout ideas out to the front. This is the kind of thing she was made for. Inspiring people. Solving their problems. Being the wind beneath their wings. Years from now, some of these residents would be telling this story to their grandkids over a home-cooked spag bol. We almost lost our rooms. Our hostel. We were facing being back on the cold, hard streets. We were about to give up. Do you know why we didn’t? Because of Dawn. She’s why I’m still here to tell the tale. Good thing too, otherwise you wouldn’t have even been born…

  ‘We could have a charity run, like those Races for Lives?’

  ‘Cake sale?’

  ‘Sponsored walk? Scavenger hunt? We could get the mayor involved!’

  ‘We could do car washes, painting and decorating.’

  ‘Artwork! There’s some great stuff in the café, we could paint some more and have a gallery night; sell some of the work?’

  ‘You’re all amazing.’ A tear falls from Grace’s eye and the room waits in silence as it makes the journey down her cheek before pooling in the corner of her mouth. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Applause breaks out, mostly from Dawn as she stands in the middle of the room doing slow claps, but she can tell everyone else is sufficiently moved. Perhaps they are less used to public displays of emotion or they’ve just not seen as many films as she has.

  Everyone begins talking at once, sometimes addressing the room and other times just the people beside them. Grace disappears then reappears with an A5, leather-bound notebook, her personalised parker pen and a selection of highlighters. Dawn senses that things are about to get wild, and sneaks back to number six to get three multipacks of melted Wagon Wheels from underneath her bed. They all deserve a treat and they were three-for-the-price-of-two from Aldi. Plus, the security guard who works the morning shift is a little lacklustre during the lunchtime rush.

  By the time she’s arrived back in the residents’ lounge, the conversation has moved on to methods of collecting sponsors and the potential use of social media.

  ‘I’ve heard that Facebook is always the way forward for fundraising,’ Cara says, her face more animated than Dawn has ever seen it.

  ‘When exactly have you ever done any fundraising? Selling stuff that doesn’t belong to you to cover drug debts doesn’t count,’ chuckles Teardrop Terry with an edge of reveng
e.

  Dawn holds her breath and watches for another storm to brew, but Cara bats his knee with the back of her hand and chuckles. ‘Okay, maybe I’ve not done any actual fundraising, but I can hustle pretty good. Plus, I’m great with Facebook. We need to get local people to see the page. People outside the area won’t give a shit about helping some grubby hostel in Dover. Okay, I didn’t mean grubby,’ adds Cara hurriedly as she catches Grace’s eye. ‘I just mean that’s what people will think who don’t know who we are.’

  Grace is beaming by now, obviously relishing the task of handing out people’s individual tasks and responsibilities and making a corresponding, colour-coded pie chart in case of any confusion.

  ‘Oh, yes! Dawn and I will do that.’ Cara has her hand high in the air like a school child who knows the answer to a tricky question and thinks that nobody else does.

  ‘Making the Facebook page,’ she explains to Dawn. ‘Don’t look like that, it will be fun, and we make a good team.’

  The knots of muscle at the top of Dawn’s back bunch up together and her head starts to pulsate on one side. She’s always steered clear of the internet and the idea of things like Facebook. It’s easy to hide your face from the universe inside a grotty bedsit, a shop doorway or a stranger’s sofa. But the whole world is inside a computer screen. Watching. Waiting. Knowing where you are and waiting to pounce. She grits her teeth and shakes out her shoulders.

  ‘Fine,’ Dawn smiles. ‘You’ll have to show me though because I haven’t used a computer since Friends Reunited was first launched.’

  Everyone looks at Dawn blankly and she feels a surge of smugness about her knowledge of vintage technology.

  Maybe this will work. Maybe they won’t all be out on their arses in four months’ time. Maybe Dawn really is there for a reason. Maybe, maybe.

  Chapter 21

  Dawn

  ‘WHO DO YOU SPEAK to on this thing?’ Dawn asks as Cara proudly shows off her Facebook page. A photo of her with Curtis and Kyle shines out at Dawn from the screen. Underneath the picture are various ‘about me’ sections. Under ‘work’ Cara has put ‘full-time mummy’. Dawn swallows the pebble that’s formed in her throat.