Max Kowalski Didn't Mean It

by Susie Day

  She smiled, and pushed an ironed striped T-shirt and a knitted jumper covered in squirrels into his shivering arms.

  ‘Go on. They’ll be a bit big on you, but they’ll do.’

  They smelled of clean; of home and care and time and love. They smelled like his old life. He pulled them both over his head, squirming at the feel of the tags scratching at his shoulders.

  His mum always cut them out, whenever Max got new clothes. And she must have told Elis Evans’s mum one time, because she reached behind him with a pair of scissors and snipped those labels out, at once, without a word.

  Max felt a big wall of something stopping up his throat.

  Elis Evans’s mum looked at him and tilted her head, and he ran away upstairs before the hug could begin.

  Elis Evans was sitting on the long table in his bedroom, surrounded by tiny clay birds and pots of paint. There were swans and swifts, robins and kingfishers, and a few that had, perhaps, not turned out quite as birdlike as intended. Elis Evans was painting them with a tiny thin brush.

  Max climbed on to the table too.

  ‘Nice jumper,’ said Elis Evans, barely looking up.

  ‘Borrowed it off some nerdy kid,’ said Max.

  ‘You should keep it. He’s probably a bit over squirrels.’

  There was a tiny china dragon on the table too, curled up and sleeping. It had two keys hanging off it on a thin silver chain.

  ‘That’s the keys to my nain’s house, in Wales,’ said Elis Evans, when Max picked them up. ‘I was going to paint the dragon too. It’s meant to be gold, though, and I haven’t got gold.’

  The dragon was cool in Max’s hand. It was mostly white, but you could see in places where the gold paint was not quite worn away. It had a chip in its long narrow head where a porcelain ear had broken off, and the missing part was rough against his thumb. The words Tŷ Gwyn were etched into the base, in a childish hand. But the rest was smooth and solid, with nubbly bumps along the spine and the tail. He held it, feeling it grow warm in his palm.

  ‘You can help, if you like. I’m trying to build a menagerie of a hundred. Then I’m going to hang them on our Christmas tree. We’re getting a Nordmann fir this afternoon. The one at my dad’s house has been up for two weeks already, but Mum says that’s because he’s uncivilized.’

  Elis Evans passed him a tiny paintbrush. Max picked up a robin, its breast already painted red, and blobbed a bit of brown across its back. But the paint came off on his fingers where he held it, and smudged the red.

  He tried again with another one, but the paint was too wet, and dribbled.

  ‘Try the swan,’ said Elis Evans, pushing one towards Max. ‘It’s only the beak, really.’

  Max stared at it. He didn’t want to paint a swan because he was too useless to do a robin.

  He didn’t want to do any of it.

  He tried really hard and it didn’t matter; it never seemed to matter.

  The wall of something was back in his throat. Only this time it wouldn’t go away. This time it rose up and choked him and lit a fire in his nose and suddenly he was crying.

  He could feel Elis Evans watching him and he dragged his squirrel-jumper sleeve across his face, trying to scrape off all the feelings as well as the snot. He hadn’t come here for this. He’d had a plan of what to say, and how to say it. But the feeling wouldn’t stop. It was as if now it had stepped out of him, it was too large to go back in.

  Elis Evans very quietly got up and closed the door. He placed a box of tissues on the desk, quite casually, as if they might be needed one of these days. Then he climbed back on to the table and went on painting.

  ‘My dad didn’t come home this week,’ Max said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Elis Evans, dipping his brush into the black paint.

  ‘I bought new trainers and I took the girls out and we ran out of money and now –’

  Now Max was scared, really scared: for Dad, for all of them.

  ‘I don’t think … I don’t think I can fix it.’

  Elis Evans painted quietly for a while.

  ‘Do you want me to tell my mum?’ he said eventually, putting down his brush.

  Max felt shame wash over him the instant the words were spoken.

  It was so kind, and so what he had hoped for. A small film had been playing in the back of his skull: living here, with the big fridge and someone else to get the knots out of Ripley’s hair. Sharing Elis Evans’s big bedroom. Having someone else in charge.

  We need help, Max said in the film in his head.

  I can see that, said Mrs Evans, and you should all live with me for just a little while, and here’s a biscuit.

  But Kowalskis didn’t ask for help.

  Besides, Mrs Evans liked Max. She wouldn’t like him if he brought the pink suitcase into her house.

  And she’d never liked Dad. If she knew he’d disappeared, just left them to cope alone – he couldn’t let that happen.

  Max sniffed, and shook his head. ‘Nah. It’s a secret. And – and I’ve got a plan, actually,’ he added, suddenly, before he could stop himself. ‘I’ve got a really good plan. Forget I said anything.’

  When Max left to go home, he was still wearing the squirrel jumper.

  Mrs Evans pressed a tin of cake into his hands.

  And in Max’s pocket slept a small curled dragon, and a stolen pair of keys to a house in Wales.

  10

  ‘Wales? Why would we go to Wales?’ asked Thelma, crunching up her face.

  Because if they stayed social services would come, Max thought.

  Because there was a suitcase of money in their flat, and police looking for it – and if they found it, Dad would be in even more trouble. Max too.

  ‘Because that’s where the house is,’ he said instead.

  Elis Evans’s nain’s cottage in Wales, that she was selling because she lived in a home now. Elis Evans’s nain’s cottage, that was empty, and waiting for them.

  Elis Evans wouldn’t mind that Max had stolen the keys; not really. It wouldn’t even be for long. Just till Dad came back.

  ‘How will Dad know where we’ve gone?’ asked Ripley.

  Thelma sniffed. ‘He should’ve thought of that. Serve him right if he comes back and worries cos he doesn’t know where we are.’

  Ripley’s eyes went wide.

  ‘She doesn’t mean it, Rips,’ said Max firmly. ‘We’ve got Louise’s phone, haven’t we? So we’ll take it with us. And when he’s back, he can phone it and we’ll tell him.’

  ‘What about Christmas?’

  ‘He’ll be back by then,’ Max said confidently.

  Of course he would. He wouldn’t leave them over Christmas. It was the sixteenth of December: loads of time.

  ‘What about school?’ asked Louise.

  ‘There’s only one week left till the holidays. No one’ll mind.’

  He waited for Louise to complain that she couldn’t possibly lie to a teacher. But her eyes were sparkling.

  ‘We can each pack our own bags,’ she said. ‘I’ll sort out food, and bathroom things. Ripley, you should pack some toys and books. Max – you can work out how we get there.’ She beamed. ‘It’s like an adventure, a proper adventure.’

  It wasn’t, really. Max reckoned a proper adventure would have a magic teleporter, or a free limousine on the doorstep to drive them. Trains to Wales, it turned out, weren’t cheap.

  ‘That’s stealing,’ said Ripley, when Max clicked open the case and took out a few bundles.

  ‘Nah,’ said Max, trying to sound confident while feeling anything but. ‘She was going to pay me anyway, right?’

  He guiltily clicked the case shut, and added it to the pile of bags by the front.

  She’d asked them to look after it. So that’s what he would do – in Wales. And when she found a way to bring Dad home, she could have it back.

  They left in the dark, and early. Four children with backpacks and a bright pink suitcase, on a Monday morning in the middle of December,
with no adult in sight: that was going to raise eyebrows.

  Max had made them rehearse it all the way to the station.

  ‘Our dad’s just in the shop, getting a paper.’

  ‘We go to a posh school where the holidays start early.’

  ‘We’re going to visit our granny in North Wales.’

  And in case of total emergency: ‘I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.’

  He need not have worried. The woman at the ticket desk took so long to understand Max’s attempts to stand on tiptoe and shout ‘Four singles to Betws-y-Coed,’ into her microphone that she didn’t seem fussed about him sliding a fat stack of cash over the counter. And on the train into London, and on the Tube, no one looked at anyone else. It was as if they were all running away too.

  At Euston, they climbed on to a long train, and claimed a table – four seats together – and glared at anyone who looked at them twice.

  ‘Need a hand with that?’ asked a tall man in glasses, eyeing the pink suitcase. ‘There are overhead racks for luggage.’

  Max had the case balanced awkwardly on his lap, wedged up against the table, with one arm wrapped round it.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Max, gripping it firmly.

  ‘We go to a posh school,’ said Louise hopefully.

  The man blinked. Then he smiled politely, and settled into his seat.

  ‘Are we nearly there?’ asked Ripley, after the train had been moving for three minutes.

  Max groaned. It would take seven hours, they’d said, when he phoned. A train, a Tube, a train, a train, a bus. Seven hours at least of Are we nearly there yet?

  ‘We’re not even in the right country yet, Rips,’ said Louise. ‘Why don’t you get out some colouring or something? It’s going to be ages.’

  But it turned out Ripley’s tightly hugged backpack contained Potato the stuffed rabbit, and nothing else.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Thelma, clutching her flamingo pencil case and scooping her flamingo notebook off the table. ‘These aren’t for sharing.’

  Louise pretended to be too busy reading her book to have noticed.

  So they played I-Spy, which with Ripley was always a challenge (‘I didn’t say I can see a crocodile right now, but I definitely saw one once’). They counted sheep out of the windows. They took the pink suitcase for a walk along the train.

  ‘What a nice big brother you have, dear,’ said a creaky-voiced old woman, giving Ripley a smile as they queued for the toilet. ‘Where’s your mummy?’

  ‘They burned her and put her in a pot,’ announced Ripley.

  The woman decided she didn’t need to go to the toilet after all.

  For the last hour, Louise let Ripley and Potato share her seat, and read to them from her book in a soft bedtimey voice.

  It reminded Max of story time at school. When his mum was pregnant with Ripley she would come in and volunteer with his class, back when Mrs Chauhan was his teacher. She read them that Narnia book, with the witch and the lion and the Turkish Delight. She did all the voices. Mr Tumnus’s house got smashed, and no one believed Lucy, and they tied the lion to a stone table; and every time she stopped reading, Max needed – needed – to know what happened next. But she always smiled, and made him wait till next time. ‘He loves story time, Mrs Kowalski,’ Mrs Chauhan would tell her. ‘It’s the only time of day I’ve ever seen him sit still.’

  Max rested his head against the suitcase and watched as the scenery outside switched from towns and fields to hills and lakes, to green and purple mountains. He stared out, letting it blur; letting his eyes fall closed as Louise’s voice mingled with the steady hum of the train, one hand in his pocket wrapped round the furled wings of the porcelain dragon.

  Kriss had been raised as a Dragonslayer all her life. Not one day had gone by since she was four years old without a lesson: in weaponry, in cunning, in the history of the beast.

  But this was to be the first time she saw one for herself.

  The elderly keeper led her down the crypt’s winding stone staircase. Their way through the dark was lit by torchlight. The tunnel smelled of dust and decay: a forgotten place, rarely visited.

  ‘You go alone from here,’ said the keeper, handing the torch to Kriss.

  She unlocked the iron gate, which groaned with age. Once Kriss was inside, she locked it again.

  ‘One hour,’ the keeper promised. ‘I’ll come back.’

  Her slow footfalls on the winding stair died away.

  Behind her, Kriss heard a low rumble.

  She spun, her gasp loud in the echoey chamber. It was a huge space, she realized now. A cavern underground, carved into the rock of the mountain.

  The rumble was coming from before her: a constant rhythmic sound, deep and crackling.

  It was breathing, she realized. The dragon was breathing.

  She stepped towards the sound, her heart adding its own quicker thudding beat. Holding the torch ahead of her, she searched the sunless dark.

  The flickering flame caught something shining in the distance, reflecting the light back. It glowed, then the reflection vanished for a moment into blackness, before returning. She stared at it, trying to fathom what she was seeing: something curved and glistening, a huge golden goblet or a crystalline window, almost as tall as she was.

  She edged nearer, reaching her hand out to touch it as the reflection vanished once again, then reappeared.

  An eye.

  It was an eye, a blinking eye, vast and glistening and suddenly swivelling her way.

  The rumbling breath stopped, to be replaced by a terrifying roar as the dragon’s impossibly gigantic head lifted off the ground beneath her feet and swung towards her.

  Kriss dropped the torch and ran, desperately ran as fast as she could as she felt hot flames of breath roaring at her back …

  ‘Llandudno Junction is your next station stop, where this train terminates. Change here for services for Snowdonia, Anglesey, Bangor and Pwllheli. Llandudno Junction, all change please.’

  Louise closed the book with a sigh.

  There was another sigh, from a seat across the carriage; the tall man who had offered to help, who had clearly been listening, and wanted too to know what happened next. He flashed Max a shy smile, as they hurried to gather their bags.

  The train slowed, then stopped.

  ‘Llandudno Junction, all change.’

  Wales.

  They had made it.

  11

  ‘We’re here!’ squealed Ripley, the moment her feet hit the platform.

  ‘Nearly,’ said Max, explaining, to universal dismay, that there was another train to somewhere else – and then a bus for an hour.

  The problem with Wales, he thought, was that it was too far away.

  But that was the point. To leave Southend behind. To go so far that no one would think to look for them there.

  ‘Potato!’ yelped Ripley, suddenly stopping dead on the stairs as they changed platforms.

  She ran back, wailing, knocking irritated passengers aside with the swinging of her empty backpack – but it was too late. The train was slowly moving off, the doors firmly locked. Potato was lost.

  The next train journey was nightmarishly slow, and accompanied by sobbing.

  The bus was worse.

  It took an hour, winding up and down tiny roads, gloomy with the fading of the afternoon light. Heavy-set clouds loomed above the distant line of mountains. As they grew closer, the roads seemed to sink beneath the weight of the sky, dipping into endless valleys. No one else got on the bus with them. No one else got on along the way, as if no one else could possibly want to go where they were going. Thelma spent the whole journey with her hand clamped over her mouth and her eyes shut, groaning at every bend. Ripley pressed her nose against the window and kept sighing, ‘Potato would’ve liked that mountain,’ at intervals.

  Max didn’t care. He felt a thrill running through him with every passing minute. He’d done it, really done it.

  The loom
ing sky was already growing dark when they stepped off the bus at a stop beside the road, in, as far as Max could tell, the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Good luck,’ said the driver, sounding as if they might need it.

  The bus whirred away, leaving silence.

  It was savagely cold, with a light rain falling, it seemed, directly into their faces. A wet road stretched before them in either direction, pavement-less. There was nothing to see beyond the circle of light cast by the one street lamp over the bus stop: no people, no houses. Only the mountains: on one side, a sheer clifflike overhang of rock; on the other, a shallower rise of grey-green grass and purple mosses which continued up into the blackening clouds.

  ‘Where’s our house, Max?’ asked Louise, sounding nervous.

  ‘This way,’ said Max optimistically, striding ahead in the direction the bus had brought them and bumping the suitcase behind him.

  He held the keys in his other hand, holding tightly to the sleeping dragon to keep himself strong.

  After five minutes of walking through the rain along the road, they found a sign:

  You are now entering Nant Glyder

  Please drive carefully

  As far as Max could see, it was the same empty road as before – but it was proof. He was where he was meant to be.

  ‘There we go,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Won’t be far now, will it?’

  Sure enough, the next bend in the road revealed houses. Not a village exactly. Not shops, not bustle. But shapes in the darkness strung out along the roadside. Telltale squares of orange light cast from windows; parked cars; and bare-branched trees wound about with Christmas lights.

  Tŷ Gwyn: the white house. That was what they were looking for. The sort of house Elis Evans’s granny would live in –

  Every single house was painted white.

  And none of them had numbers.

  Max swallowed hard. He hadn’t planned this bit. He thought he’d just get there, and be able to tell.

  It was late afternoon and already fully dark. The rain was steady now, heavier and still blowing at them, through clothes, into bones. Max’s trainers were soaked through and no longer purest white.