Max Kowalski Didn't Mean It

by Susie Day

  They were running out of houses.

  ‘Maaaax,’ moaned Ripley.

  He picked her up, feeling the pull of his backpack on his shoulders, the drag of the pink suitcase.

  Soon, soon, be soon …

  ‘Did you say it was for sale?’ asked Thelma, pointing.

  There was a sign outside the last cottage in the line. A FOR SALE board, on a wooden pole.

  ‘Tŷ Gwyn,’ said Louise, reading a roughly painted sign at a rusted wrought-iron gate. ‘Is that right?’

  Max felt his heart soar.

  It had been white once, perhaps, a long time ago. Now it was dingy grey, with brown-green dribbles of mossy damp below one long low window. There was a hedge, overgrown, hiding it almost entirely from the road. Cracked paving slabs marked the way to the front door unevenly.

  It did not look lived-in.

  It did not look loved.

  It was the perfect place to hide: from Nice Jackie, from the social workers who would come calling, from the police.

  Tŷ Gwyn, their new home. Max allowed himself to feel proud and excited and a tiny bit clever.

  ‘Quick, go on, quick,’ he said in an urgent whisper. ‘You lot hide behind the hedge while I get the door open. We’re not meant to be here, remember?’

  ‘Hurry up then,’ muttered Thelma. ‘Even my flamingos are freezing.’

  The front door was of heavy dark wood, cobwebbed about the hinges. Max lifted the biggest key and fumbled it into the lock.

  It didn’t fit.

  ‘Give it here,’ said Thelma crossly, bumping Max out of the way and shining the light from her phone on to the front door.

  The key still didn’t fit. It wouldn’t even go in the lock.

  ‘Let me try,’ whispered Louise.

  They scuffled over the keys, Thelma huffing.

  ‘This key won’t fit that lock,’ said Louise.

  ‘Duh,’ said Thelma.

  Louise shook her head and disappeared along the cracked path and into the murk at the side of the house.

  A minute later there was a scrape, and a groan, and the old wooden front door swung open in front of them.

  ‘Hello!’ said Louise proudly. ‘I was right. The little key opens the door at the back. Come in. I can’t find the lights …’

  Max checked over his shoulder that they were unwatched. Then he followed the others inside.

  It smelled. It smelled very badly: of something very old, and possibly dead. As if the cottage had been forgotten entirely.

  There were lights, but they didn’t work; he could hear Louise flipping switches on and off.

  Thelma made sick noises as she thumped from room to room in the dark.

  ‘Is there a dead rat in here?’

  ‘Nooo!’ wailed Ripley.

  ‘Of course there isn’t,’ said Louise.

  ‘Probably a dead mouse instead,’ said Thelma. ‘A family of dead mice. Who were eaten by the rats. If I was a rat, this is totally the sort of house I’d live in.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Louise, ‘rats tend to go where there are people, so there’s a ready supply of food and water. And I don’t think there can have been people here for quite a long time.’

  Max sniffed, and regretted it. ‘Um, Elis said he used to come visit every holidays. But now his nain’s gone, no one comes here now.’

  So no one would come looking for them. No one would bother them. They’d be safe.

  A sudden loud trilling sound split the silence.

  It was a phone. A phone, ringing, waiting for an answer, in a house which was meant to be empty.

  12

  ‘What is it?’ yelled Thelma.

  ‘It’s just a phone,’ hissed Max, following the sound.

  Not Louise’s mobile, but an ancient-looking phone with a dial, hanging on the wall in the room by the back door.

  Max eyed it warily.

  They were hiding. They weren’t meant to be here. But he could lie, and the ringing was so loud he was worried it would draw more attention to the dark old cottage to ignore it than to answer.

  He picked it up gingerly.

  ‘Max! Is that you? Max? It’s Elis.’

  Max swallowed. ‘Uh … yeah.’

  ‘Right. So. You took the keys, Max.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I took the keys.’

  ‘Found it all right, then?’

  ‘Yeah. In the end. There’s a FOR SALE sign; that helped.’

  Another, longer, pause.

  ‘My mum’ll be really quite angry if she finds out, Max.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He swallowed again. ‘You going to tell her?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think so. I try to avoid her getting angry.’

  ‘OK, then.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It won’t be for long, Elis. Just till my dad comes back.’

  ‘Yes. I see.’

  ‘Could be tomorrow, even.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Sorry, Elis,’ said Max, meaning it.

  ‘Yes. Bye then.’

  The line went dead.

  Max hung the phone back on its hook.

  ‘Max,’ whispered Louise.

  She was standing in the hallway holding a torch, looking at him like a teacher who was about to say how very, very disappointed she was.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ said Max firmly.

  Course it would. Elis Evans was his mate. It would be fine.

  The others had followed Louise, huddling round the only light.

  ‘I don’t like it, Max,’ mumbled Ripley, clinging to his damp leg.

  ‘None of us like it, Rips,’ said Thelma. ‘It’s disgusting. Max has brought us to a horrible terrible nightmare house, because he’s stupid.’

  ‘Shush!’ said Louise hotly. ‘It’s an adventure. We’re pretending. It’s all make-believe, like a fairy tale, and we’ve run away to live in the witch’s cottage, and –’

  The grip on Max’s leg grew even tighter.

  ‘Oh! Um … not a witch. A … a wise old woman,’ Louise corrected. ‘Who has magical powers of enchantment and has turned the empress’s palace into a dingy mouldy old cottage. But it’s a palace underneath.’

  ‘In your stupid books maybe,’ Thelma snapped. ‘This is the real world, Lou-la. It’s just a house. And it smells. Of rats.’

  She folded her arms and sat on the floor, a tight ball of grump.

  ‘Why don’t we find the bedrooms, hmm?’ said Louise, taking Ripley’s hand. ‘And you can choose the nicest one. And Thelma can have a horrible one, because she’s mean.’

  They went hunting with the torch, leaving Max and Thelma alone in the darkness.

  ‘I want to go home, Max,’ said Thelma.

  Max wanted to kick something. He’d done this amazing thing, run them away to a whole new safe place like a pretty incredible superhero – and she didn’t even like it.

  But Thelma didn’t sound angry, like she had with Louise, or shouty, like she usually was with him. She sounded small, and very afraid.

  ‘We will,’ said Max, squashing down his anger, and fumbling Dad’s mobile from his pocket.

  The dim bluish light from the screen lit up Thelma’s face, pale and pinched.

  ‘Look. We’ll go home. Just – not yet. OK? Not till Dad’s back, and it’s all sorted. You don’t want us to get split up, do you, stuck in some care home?’

  ‘Sounds great,’ muttered Thelma, ‘if it means I don’t have to live with you.’

  ‘You want the police to take me away? You want me to disappear too?’

  Thelma stared up at him mutely, her eyes wide.

  Max swallowed. It did sound bad, now he’d said it out loud.

  ‘It won’t happen. So long as we lie low, right? Till Dad’s back, we have to hide. It’ll be fun, right? Like Louise said. Like a big game of hide and seek.’

  Thelma blinked up at him. ‘I’m not Ripley,’ she said crossly. ‘I don’t like games.’

  She buried her head in her ar
ms.

  That was girls for you. Ten feelings a minute, and nine of them were different kinds of annoyed.

  Max left her to it and went exploring.

  He’d expected Tŷ Gwyn to be something like Elis Evans’s house: soft deep carpets, big squashy sofas and everything matching.

  It was not that.

  The kitchen had a rusted cooker, and a toaster plugged into a socket that hung from the wall at an alarming angle.

  The lights still wouldn’t turn on.

  When Ripley flushed the toilet, the result was an odd clanking sound inside the walls, but no flush. When she turned on the tap to wash her hands, all that came out was the same awful clanking, followed by a sudden splosh of cold brown water.

  The living room was stiff and strange under the blue light of the phone: a hard upright sofa and chairs, with neatly folded woollen blankets tucked on the armrests.

  Max felt like an intruder. As if there was a ghostlike family from long ago who lived here and had popped out for a hundred years or so.

  As if they might sense Max was here, and come back.

  ‘Let’s go out,’ said Max, suddenly gripped by the fear of it.

  No one wanted to.

  ‘I’m tiiiired,’ moaned Ripley.

  ‘It’s horrible in here,’ said Thelma. ‘But it’s more horrible outside.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Louise. ‘Can we get pizza?’

  They couldn’t. There weren’t any takeaway menus.

  No power. No water. And when Max looked properly at the mobile to check it still had a charge, no signal.

  No way for Dad to call them and find out where they’d gone.

  It was still a great plan. It was still definitely, absolutely, the best plan that Max had made. It just didn’t look like it yet.

  ‘We’ll go to a shop, get some food in,’ he said confidently. ‘And candles. Like Louise said. It’s an adventure, innit.’

  There hadn’t been a shop back the other way, so there had to be one if they kept going along the road. There were always shops in places. And people came on holiday here, right? Not in December maybe. But they did sometimes. And where there were people, there’d be shops.

  Outside, the rain had eased. The wind had not. It blew through Max’s wet jumper like icy hands. They passed the time imagining what they’d have for tea when the magical shop appeared. Chips and gravy. Candyfloss. Apple pie and custard, and cheese and onion crisps.

  A bright light appeared up ahead.

  The light moved, grew brighter, split into two car headlamps and swept past them at a terrifying speed, spraying them all with road water.

  ‘I think we should go back,’ whispered Thelma, sniffing as it began to rain again.

  ‘I think we should’ve looked at a map,’ said Louise in a small voice.

  She shone the torch at a sign by the road up ahead.

  Llanberis, six miles.

  The nearest town. The nearest shop.

  There was no way they could walk six more miles; not in the dark and the rain, not with no pavement, and cars flying at them out of nowhere.

  It was no good. They’d have to go back. They’d have to go back, and be hungry, and Max would have to admit it.

  This wasn’t a brilliant plan.

  This was a mistake.

  Max Kowalski, the earthworm. Half full of hope, half rotten and ruinous, doing what he did best: messing up.

  The walk back was worse, now there was no prospect of a warm meal at the end of it.

  I didn’t want to run away to Wales, he should’ve said to Elis Evans. It’s wet and cold and they don’t know about shops. I want to go to Torremolinos, where there’s sun and beaches. Amber went last summer. Can I nick the keys to there?

  Every step was pure misery.

  At last they began to draw near enough to Nant Glyder to see the square lit windows and twinkling trees.

  There were lights on in a low cottage just up ahead, glowing from behind an overgrown hedge.

  Max stopped dead, so suddenly that Thelma walked into him.

  ‘Oi!’ she said. Then she gasped.

  ‘Max,’ whispered Louise.

  There was the wrought-iron gate. There was the FOR SALE sign. It was their cottage.

  Tŷ Gwyn.

  And inside, every single light was on.

  13

  ‘Who is it, Max? Who’s in our house?’

  Ripley wrapped herself round Max’s leg again.

  Max didn’t know.

  It was the same cottage, no mistake. But the iron gate now hung open, and inside there was warm light pouring from every window. There was even smoke coming from the chimney.

  And it wasn’t their house, was it?

  They weren’t meant to be there at all. Elis Evans’s nain could’ve decided to come home. Maybe the house had been sold already, and some new family were about to move in.

  ‘Stay here,’ Max said thickly – and pointlessly; there was no way his sisters were going to wait quietly to see what was going on.

  The back door opened smoothly, on to the sound of voices.

  ‘There now, check that tap. Should be running clear, if you leave it a minute.’

  That was a man: a light easy voice laced with a breathy Welsh accent.

  ‘Yeah, all right, I got it.’

  A boy, that was.

  ‘Let me do the talking,’ Max murmured, feeling a welcome flood of warmth. He set his shoulders back, and squelched past the coats and boots.

  There in the old kitchen they stood, quite unsurprised.

  ‘Hello there,’ said the man, ducking his head out of one of the kitchen cupboards. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t have it all ready for you. Didn’t know you were coming, see! She usually calls. Forgetful now, though. You’ll know.’

  He was older than Dad; short, slim, a bald head with small but jutting ears that made him look faintly elfin. He dusted off his mucky hands, and offered one for Max to shake. ‘Bill Bevan. I’m the man who does for Gwyneth.’

  Max didn’t know what that meant. But he pulled up his sopping wet sleeve, now so soaked it had drooped down to his knees, wiped it on his wet jeans and shook the hand.

  ‘Oh dear, you’ve had a night of it I see,’ said Bill, his face falling.

  There was a snort from by the sink.

  There was a boy standing there, Max’s age but a little taller, running one finger under the now-clear running water from the tap. He had chestnut hair hanging in two wings either side of a narrow face, a high forehead slanting down to a long nose, and heavy glasses in thick dark frames. He was dressed like an Oxfam shop, Max thought: a bobbled purple fleece and strange voluminous trousers of orange-and-green patchwork, with tiny round mirrors sewn into them.

  ‘That’s our boy, Tal,’ said Bill, giving him a stare.

  Tal smiled politely under his gaze, then waited till Bill had turned his back, and pulled a face.

  Max pulled one back. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be friends anyway.

  ‘So … you’re family, then?’ said Bill, prompting. ‘Elis’s cousins, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Max, going along with it, as the twins and Ripley emerged from behind him, peering warily round the kitchen doorframe. ‘I’m Max – and Thelma, Louise … Ripley,’ he added, as she grew brave enough to tuck her head under his arm and look out.

  ‘You don’t look like Elis,’ said Tal, slouching by the sink.

  ‘You know Elis?’

  Of course he would. Elis Evans came here every summer. He’d never mentioned being friends with this boy, though.

  ‘You don’t sound like him either,’ said Tal.

  ‘We’re the English cousins,’ said Louise nervously.

  ‘Well now, that’s not your fault, is it?’ said Bill kindly.

  ‘We go to a posh school where the school holidays start earlier,’ said Thelma, with confidence.

  Tal’s mouth twitched.

  ‘We’re not by ourselves,’ said Louise brightly. ‘Our d
ad’s just in the …’

  Her voice fell away. He was not in the shop, because there wasn’t one. She looked imploringly at Max.

  ‘Our dad – he’s not very well at the moment. He’s sick in bed.’

  Max hoped fervently that Bill hadn’t already gone to see to the bedrooms: the empty beds; the pink suitcase slid underneath one for safekeeping. But he needn’t have worried. Bill smiled with the warmest understanding.

  ‘There’s a shame now. You give him our best. And you let me know if you need anything; call to the doctor, anything like that, yes?’

  Max nodded.

  ‘You staying for Christmas?’

  ‘No way,’ said Thelma grimly.

  Bill smiled.

  ‘OK, then. You know there’s weather coming? The Big Snow. This week, next week, who knows. You keep an eye on the forecast; the road blocks up sometimes. Oh, where’s my manners? You won’t want to cook tonight, will you? You must come round for dinner. Your dad too, if he’s up to it. We’re only over the road a way. You’ll see it on the map. Coeden Afal. Tonight, yes? Seven o’clock?’

  Tal looked sour. But dinner meant food, and there was no way Max could say no.

  ‘All right, you, let’s leave these poor people to their holiday.’ Bill gave Tal a nod, turning off the tap. ‘Like I said, I’m sorry it wasn’t all ready for you. I’d have aired it out, if I’d known you were coming. But the heating’ll warm through in a little while, and you’ve the electric on, and the water. Wood burner’s lit, and I’ve left wood for you. Supplies on the table there will keep you going a day or two.’

  The Bevans made their way to the front door, with promises to be around if they were needed, and to leave them be if not.

  Ripley detached herself at the last minute, suddenly confident, and marched up to Tal.

  ‘Why’ve your trousers got mirrors on?’

  ‘All the better to see you with,’ said Tal, giving her a wolfish smile: all teeth.

  He pulled the back door shut behind him with a click.

  Ripley’s eyes went wide.

  ‘Supplies,’ said Thelma breathlessly, hurrying back to the kitchen.

  The cardboard box on the table was laden not with candyfloss or apple pie, but with treats just as welcome. A loaf of unsliced bread, wrapped in paper. Bread rolls. Butter, and cheese. Apples, biscuits, crisps. Peanut butter. Jam. Tea. Milk and orange juice. And some sugared rounds in a Tupperware, with ‘Welsh cakes’ written on a label in biro.