So motorists are like liars and estate agents. They don’t have a patron saint. When Dorothy picked up our money and drove away, no one was looking after her. And that was the thing which kept happening with the money. People helped themselves and then no one could help them.
I was still behind the curtain when Dad came down. I was staring at the road, in case she did come back. I heard him panicking with Anthony.
‘The money’s gone. And she was here and now she’s gone too. Her car’s not there.’
‘And neither is our Damian,’ said Anthony.
‘No,’ I shouted. ‘I’m here. I’m behind the curtain.’
Dad pulled the curtain back. He said, ‘Where’s Dorothy?’
‘I don’t know. She came in, took the money and went. I don’t even know how she got in.’
‘She took the money? All of it?’
Anthony shrugged. ‘I did say. I did warn you.’
‘Just be quiet. Damian, come on, think. What did she say?’
‘She said, “Shush.”’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I shushed.’
Dad groaned and threw himself into the big chair. Then he sat up straight, remembering something. He rooted down the back of the chair and came out with the fistful of twenties he’d hidden last night. He was surprised and disappointed to discover that there wasn’t that much. ‘A hundred and twenty. A hundred and twenty quid out of . . . how much?’
Anthony said, ‘Two hundred and twenty-nine thousand, three—’
‘OK, thank you, Anthony. Thank you and be quiet.’
‘I did say.’
‘Not only did you say, you also said that you said and now you’re saying that you said that you said, so that’s enough saying, all right?’ Dad lowered his voice and started talking to himself instead of us. ‘Think what to do,’ he said ‘Think what to do.’ Suddenly he ran off upstairs and came down with his mobile. He found her number in incoming calls, gave a happy yelp and dialled it.
Anthony put on a robot voice and droned, ‘The vodaphone you are calling is switched off . . .’
It was as well.
Dad glared at him. ‘The charity. The charity she was working for. What was it called?’
‘Water Aid.’
He got their number from Directory Enquiries. ‘You two wait in there,’ he said, pointing to the living room. He carried on talking to the phone. ‘Oh. I see. The collections are done by a franchise.’ Water Aid didn’t know anything about Dorothy. ‘What’s the name of the franchise? Thank you.’
He dialled another number and looked up at us. ‘Nearly there,’ he said. ‘I’m in a queue.’ He sat on the bottom of the stairs. We could just about hear a tinny orchestra playing down the line. He sat there, saying nothing, listening to the music. He kept the mobile clamped to his ear and tried Dorothy again on the landline.
‘She knows it’s you,’ said Anthony. ‘She won’t answer if she knows it’s you. If you press 141 before you dial her number, it withholds your number so she won’t know it’s you.’
‘How do you know that? Why would you need to know that?’
‘Just try it and see. If she doesn’t know it’s you . . .’
‘I thought I told you to be quiet. Get the fairy lights picked up and put them back in the box.’
‘Are we not putting the tree back up again?’
‘No, we’re not. Go on. Get cracking.’
Anthony started to untangle the fairy lights from the wreck of the tree. Dad put down his mobile and said, ‘What was that number again?’
‘141.’
He dialled. Then he redialled. Redialled again. Thirteen redials. Then he sat down on the big chair, checking behind the cushion one more time just in case. Nothing. We all sat and listened to the clock nibbling away at the last few hours of sterling.
I persuaded Anthony to have a game of Top Trumps. We didn’t dare go upstairs for his ‘Predators’ set, so we tried playing with my saint cards. On the ‘Predators’ set you score points for ferocity and weight of the predators. We used saints’ dates and feast days instead. It was rubbish. I won in about thirty seconds because I knew them all. Anthony doesn’t even know his own saint’s day.
I looked at the telly, even though it wasn’t switched on. I could see the Digibox and the wires leading out to the aerial up on the roof, where signals bombarded it from the masts and transmitters on their lonely hilltops being blasted with other signals from satellites which were drifting around in space catching the signals from earth and bouncing them back down again – television signals and phone signals, and signals for ships and cars – so that the whole air was like a cat’s cradle of beams and waves and rays and messages.
I was holding my St Clare card at the time and I thought about how she used to send a vision of herself through the air when she was in her hermitage. There were no phones or tellies then, so the air was completely empty apart from birds and this vision of St Clare. I wondered if it could still be done.
I could see my face reflected on the dead screen of the telly. I tried to imagine it being sucked back into the cable, up through the wire and spat out of the aerial. I could see it shooting through the air, past the tangles of phone chat and radio stations, floating off into space. I tried to see the flocks of wandering satellites up there and St Clare shepherding them around in her capacity as patron saint of broadcast media. The satellites looked a bit like floating monstrances. I imagined banging into one and then bouncing back towards earth, picking up speed, blazing like a comet through re-entry, whistling through the jet stream, punching through the cloud cover, until there underneath me was a mess of wires and circuits with something shining in the middle. The wires and circuits were a town and the shining thing was the glass roof of its station. I passed through the roof like a beam of light and stood on the platform while people rushed by me to get on the train. People were kissing each other goodbye. People were checking their watches. People were carefully carrying paper cups of coffee.
Dorothy walked past me and into the carriage.
I saw her through the window, chatting to a lady at her table and settling down. I stepped back. For some reason I was scared that she might see me. She picked up a big bag and tried to swing it on to the luggage rack. It was heavy – probably full of money. She must have missed, because the bag came down again and thudded on to the table. She smiled a sorry at the lady and looked out of the window. She saw me. There was no doubt about it. It was like being punched. I thought I was invisible. In fact I thought I was dreaming. But she could see me. Even though I was still at home. I was sending her a vision of me.
Suddenly I could see Dad again and Anthony and the living room. They were in between me and her, like when you look out of a window in the dark and you can see what’s in front of you through the glass and what’s behind you on the glass. Dad and Anthony and me were on the glass. Through the glass was the train and Dorothy looking at me. I heard a whistle blow. There was a bit of fuss. I saw her wrinkle her eyebrows as if she was trying to figure out what I was doing there. I heard the engines fire up. I stepped back and I was still in the living room, where no one was talking.
Dad looked over at me, as though he’d heard me come into the room, even though I’d never left it. He still didn’t say anything. He looked over at the window. Then he frowned. Then he leaned forward and frowned some more. Then he stood up. I looked where he was looking. Dorothy was striding up towards the front door, waving through the window. Dad pulled the front door open like it was a Christmas cracker. There was a huge red people carrier – a Toyota Previa – outside.
‘Did you think I’d run off and left you?’
‘No,’ said Dad.
‘Yes,’ said Anthony.
‘Anthony did,’ said Dad.
‘I was just a bit eager. And thorough, you know.’
‘Eager and thorough, just what I said,’ said Dad. He was bouncing up and down on the soles of his feet.
‘I
went into work. I bought the car for cash. It seemed like a good way of getting rid of a stack. Buy it now in sterling. Sell it next week in euros. We’ll lose a bit but not much. They hold their value, these. Oh, and I changed 2,000, in the bank. We’ve still got a 150,000 and one afternoon to change it all. Can we change it?’
Dad yelled, ‘Yes, we can!’
Ten minutes later we were in the back of the Previa driving towards Manchester, because they’ve got more banks there. The word ‘Previa’, by the way, doesn’t mean anything at all. When they discovered that you couldn’t sell a car called ‘Nova’ in Spain, they started hiring people to think up names for cars that would be completely meaningless in every country on earth. That way they would know that the car’s name didn’t mean ‘Uncomfortable’ in Serbian or ‘Dangerous’ in Welsh. So there are these people who sit around trying to think up words that mean nothing at all. Imagine that. Previa is one of those words, and so is Megane and so is . . . Well, there’s loads of them. If you just think of all the people on motorways driving round with no patron saint and words that don’t mean anything written all over their cars, lexically speaking, it’s a worry.
Anthony said, ‘If the banks are busy, we could try the bureau de change. We don’t have to change the money into euros, we could change it into dollars. In fact, we might be better off. There’ll be a rush on the euro this week because of us joining, so its value will go right up. If we go for dollars and wait for the situation to calm down, we’ll probably come out ahead. What d’you think?’
Dad said, ‘I think I brought the wrong child home from the hospital. Where did I get you, Anthony?’
When we got to Manchester, Dorothy suggested that we split up. She’d take me to all the banks on the north side of Deansgate and Dad would take Anthony to all the ones on the south, ‘Just in case we have to queue.’
Deansgate was quiet as we hurried past the giant Christmas tree. It was quiet because everyone was already in the bank. Opening the door was like accidentally joining an attempt to break the world record for fitting as many people as possible in one place. From somewhere very far away, we could hear a robot voice saying, ‘Window is free. Please go to Window 3.’ Sometimes it would say, ‘To change smaller amounts, please use the machine on the left of the hall,’ but nobody ever did.
Dorothy got twitchy. She tried to push me into the next queue in case it went faster, but when I ducked under the rope, a man in a duffel coat pushed me back.
Dorothy fiddled with her bag. I kept a lookout while she slid a few more thousand out of the bag and into her pocket. When I glanced down to see if she’d finished, I saw her train ticket in the open bag. She turned round to smile at me but I turned away just in time.
We finally got to the till. The face of the woman behind the glass was red and sweaty, as though it was a summer’s day. She kept talking to the man at the next window. We couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the glass. Dorothy slid her wads of notes under the window. The woman picked them up and tidied them. She said, ‘How much is here, please?’
‘Five thousand.’
‘It’s a bit much. Are you an account holder?’
‘No. I was going to buy a car today but it’s not ready. I’ve been saving for three months to buy it and now it’s not ready, so I’ve got to change this . . .’
‘It’s an unusually large amount.’
‘Well, that’s why I don’t want to lose it, love.’
The woman was looking around. She was going to call a supervisor.
‘It’s not an unusually large amount to spend on a car, I can tell you.’
The supervisor was busy. The red-faced woman went a shade redder. I started to bounce up and down on my heels. I tugged at Dorothy’s sleeve. She snapped at me, ‘What? What do you want?’
‘I need a wee.’
‘Oh, brilliant. We queue for half an hour, finally get to the window and now you need a wee.’
‘I can’t help it.’
The red-faced woman had her back to us now, waving at her supervisor. Dorothy knocked on the glass and pointed to me. I was up and down like a yo-yo now. ‘Have you got a toilet? A customer toilet?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Well, you must have something. Where do you go?’
‘I go on this side. It’s secure, this side. You can’t come through without clearance. There’s toilets in Marks & Spencer’s, just up the road.’
‘So am I supposed to go to Marks & Spencer’s, come back and go to the back of the queue with my hard-earned savings and just hope that I get to the front of the queue before you close? I need this car for work. If I don’t change this money I’ve had it. I can’t . . .’
‘All right. All right.’ She stacked the money in a counting machine and gave Dorothy 7,042 euros in a long brown envelope.
Dorothy was flustered and edgy. She almost dragged me along the street. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘M & S, where’s M & S?’
I said, ‘I don’t really need a wee.’ It took her a minute to understand. ‘I just thought it would put a bit of pressure on her, you know.’
‘Well, you little belter,’ she whooped. I took that as a compliment. ‘You 100 per cent blinder.’ I took that as a compliment too. ‘You cunning little crook.’ I wasn’t so happy with that.
We ran to Barclays. It worked there as well. And in the Halifax, HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland and in Lloyds. The only place it didn’t work was the Co-op, because they had a customer toilet. By four o’clock we’d changed 62,000 pounds. The banks were starting to close.
‘There’s got to be somewhere else.’
‘There’s a bank inside Kendal’s.’ As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. She took hold of my hand and nearly dragged me back up Deansgate and in through the main door. The main door leads in to the make-up department, where Mum used to work.
The last time I came here . . . Well, it doesn’t matter. She worked on the Clinique counter, that’s all you need to know. It’s over by the lifts.
I used to like it that when we came to collect her, we could see her before she saw us. You could watch her chatting to a customer, or to the other woman on the counter, or tidying up, and she wouldn’t know you were looking at her. She wore a white overall with a black name badge on it. All the women who worked there had skin like hers – skin that was shinier and smoother than everyone else’s. And they were all so clean, immaculate really. There was always beautiful music playing. There was now. And all the immaculate women were still here. Except for her.
One of the immaculate women – the one from the Chanel counter – stared at me, as if she was going to say something. Which was bad. Then she looked as though she couldn’t think what to say. Which was worse.
I decided to get out quickly. I said, ‘The bank’s upstairs,’ but when I turned round, I saw my own reflection in a big mirror. No sign of Dorothy. I looked around and saw the Chanel woman looking at me again. Only now I could see that her skin wasn’t smooth. It had some kind of paste over it to make it look smooth. She’d missed a bit round her ear. It looked silly. I wondered if Mum had ever done that. I looked behind me. No Dorothy. Just a big cutout of a thin brown sweaty woman in a bikini. To be medical about it, my breathing was irregular.
Someone touched me on the shoulder and I swung around. Dorothy. I had to swallow to stop myself crying.
She looked around, then looked at me. ‘How do you know about the bank?’
I still couldn’t catch my breath.
‘Is this is where your mum used to work?’
She didn’t wait for me to answer. She just said, ‘I’ve had enough of queuing up now, let’s go and have a bit of a spree.’
I didn’t actually want any worldly goods, but I thought it might be rude to say so. I followed her up the escalator. She was rooting in her bag. At the top she took something out and dropped it in the bin. I saw that it was the train ticket.
Dorothy didn’t take me to the toy department or the electrical g
oods. She took me to boyswear, picked out a bright-red duffel coat and held it up against me. It had a hood that pulled right up over your head so it looked like a Franciscan habit. She said, ‘Paddington Bear!’ which was another way of putting it. As far as worldly goods go, it was the best I’ve seen in ages.
It was probably the only thing in the shop that I really liked. She bought it for me. ‘I bet he hasn’t bought you a coat in ages. Coats and cutlery, they’re the things that dads never buy.’
She bought herself a bag.
On the way back up King Street we saw an amusement arcade that had a sign up saying ‘Still Accepting Sterling Silver’. It was fantastic! I’ve never been in one before. There’s a thing where you drop coins on to a kind of tray that goes backwards and forwards and the idea is to get your coin to tip all the others off. I won twice!
‘Just what we needed,’ said Dorothy, ‘another bag of old money.’
You could spend it in there. We bought a fantastic Egyptian vase and some candyfloss, the kind that comes in a bag.
We met Dad and Anthony back at the car. Dad said, ‘Did you change it all?’
‘We lost interest, didn’t we, Damian? Want some candyfloss?’ Dad tugged a big wad out of the bag. ‘How much did you get?’
‘Well,’ said Dad, ‘we had this brilliant idea that we’d take the money to the building society and pay off the house.’
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