Max Kowalski Didn't Mean It

by Susie Day

  Her pen was flying across the page now, several others already filled with her neat cursive. She stopped when she saw him looking, though, and pressed the notebook closely to her chest.

  ‘Private,’ she said sternly. ‘I’m an artist at work.’

  ‘Are you writing a sexy part?’ asked Ripley, drawing ashy smears on her chin thoughtfully.

  ‘No,’ said Louise, flushing.

  ‘That means yes,’ said Thelma.

  Louise made a huffy squeaking sound, and marched off to work in the kitchen, where her muses could be undisturbed, she said.

  Max did the washing-up. He made the beds. He ate some biscuits. He did cheese on toast for lunch, the bread carved with the worn curved kitchen knife. He watched the clock.

  At last, it was half past three. Max saw the van drive past, and was on the Bevans’ driveway before Tal had even undone his seatbelt.

  ‘Come on up,’ said Tal at once, reading the worry radiating off Max.

  ‘So,’ said Max, sitting on Tal’s bed. ‘Problem.’

  He pushed the book at Tal.

  ‘Oh. I’ve read this, I think.’ Tal turned it over in his hands, reading the back. ‘Yeah. It’s all right.’

  Max resisted the urge to shout at him, and tugged it from his hands. The book fell open at the right place, as if it knew.

  ‘Look.’

  Tal read slowly, his finger travelling along under the lines, his lips moving.

  Then he sat back, frowning behind his glasses.

  ‘She’s not really dead, you know,’ he said. ‘Kriss. She’s fine. I mean, this is the first of seven books; she’s probably not going to die on page ninety-six.’

  Max felt faintly stupid. But also like he still really, really wanted to shout at Tal.

  Tal seemed to pick up on it. He read the passage again.

  ‘Hmm. I see what you mean,’ he said eventually. ‘Problem.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It does seem a bit dangerous. If you don’t know it all turns out OK. And … well, she does have to go to a special hospital run by witches, and they cover her all over in some magical herbs to cure her wounds. Michael’s called out the air ambulance loads of times. But I don’t think we could do that.’

  ‘You think?’ said Max.

  They sat quietly.

  Max thought of Willow again. Warm breathing life, suddenly stilled.

  ‘I mean, I’m not scared,’ said Max.

  ‘No,’ agreed Tal.

  ‘But – I reckon we need a bit more of a plan. Cos if our dragon’s asleep, it’s all good. But if it wakes up, I don’t really fancy being ripped up with claws. Or burned.’

  ‘It is a dragon in a book,’ said Tal. ‘Not a real one.’

  ‘Yeah. But what are the real ones like?’

  Tal tucked his hair behind his ears.

  ‘It looked big,’ he said. ‘That’s all I remember. Big and … well … beautiful. But not in a nice way.’

  Nice was definitely not what Max was expecting.

  ‘My mum reads books,’ said Tal softly, his fingertips tracing the dragon’s embossed wing on the book cover. ‘Not like this, though. True stories. About murders and serial killers and stuff.’

  There was a crease in his forehead, his pale eyes intently seeing somewhere else.

  The words were a jolt. Not murders and killers; Max didn’t care about those. But he’d imagined Tal’s mum was gone, like his: gone forever. It had felt like an unspoken connection. Something they both shared, like the dragon, that Elis Evans did not.

  ‘Do you miss her?’ asked Max.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tal, without hesitation. ‘I love Bill and Michael. It’s not hard to love people. So I don’t know why she didn’t love me. They kept sending me back, when I was little. She had lots of chances to keep me. And she’s my mum, so she should’ve taken them, and I don’t understand. But I do miss her. Every day.’

  He stroked the dragon’s neck.

  It should have been uncomfortable, but, with Tal, it was not. He had a steady uncomplicatedness about him; a sense of himself that was not apologetic. As if he was fine as he was, and if you wanted to come along beside him then that was fine too.

  Max liked it. He couldn’t be it. But it was comforting to be near to; honest, and without expectations.

  Max wanted to ask more: about what it was like, being fostered; about care homes and social workers and how long it took. Just to know. Just in case. For Ripley, who did better if you could tell her what to expect. But it felt wrong to even think it. Dad would be back. He’d promised to be back, soon, in a few days, by Christmas, and a man doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.

  ‘Have you got any armour?’ he asked instead.

  Tal laughed.

  ‘No. But – hang on. Stay here.’

  He disappeared downstairs.

  Max could hear him opening drawers, crashing about.

  He reappeared clutching a red plastic package in his hands; not a Christmas present, but close enough.

  FIRE BLANKET, the package said.

  ‘Look,’ said Tal, smiling as he pulled the cover away, shaking out the blanket inside.

  It was heavy material, plasticky and something else, with two black tabs hanging from it. Tal looped it round Max’s shoulders like a cape, and tied the tabs so it hung loosely from his neck.

  Max raised one eyebrow. Dressing up wasn’t his thing.

  Tal laughed, pulling it back off Max’s shoulders. ‘OK, maybe we don’t need cloaks. But at least we’ll be fireproof, right?’

  Max went home happy in the cold and the dark.

  He had the fire blanket if he needed it, and a knife. He could take one of the copper cauldrons from the fireplace to carry the gold. He was almost ready.

  Back at the cottage, Louise and Ripley were sitting on the sofa, white-faced and tearful.

  Louise thrust a sheet of flamingo-patterned paper at Max.

  I’VE GONE AND I’M NOT COMING BACK was written in angry pencil across it.

  ‘Thelma,’ said Louise in a shaky voice. ‘She’s gone.’

  22

  Max read the angry note three times.

  ‘What does it mean, “gone”?’

  Louise glared. ‘“Gone”! Not here! Run away!’

  Ripley sniffled. ‘She got all grumpy and cross and there was a bit of a shouty thing.’

  Louise knotted her fingers into her ponytail, looking guilty.

  ‘All I said was, it’s hardly any time at all until Christmas, and I know we keep saying Dad will be back, but he isn’t, and I … I said we should buy Christmas presents. Just in case.’

  ‘Which I said was silly, because Santa knows where people are, even if they move house,’ said Ripley. ‘So Thelma threw a biscuit at me and went to be cross by herself in the bedroom, which nobody minded, because she was being annoying. Only, when I looked to see if she was any less cross, she wasn’t there.’

  ‘Just the note.’ Louise wiped away a tear.

  Max rolled his sore shoulders. ‘You’ve looked everywhere? She’s not, like, in the garden?’

  Thelma had run away before. She’d been found at the sweet shop on the plaza, sitting on the pavement eating a sherbet dip.

  But Louise shook her head, looking bleak.

  ‘She packed a bag, took some walking boots off the rack; all her flamingo things. She’s really gone, Max.’

  Max checked the house anyway, with the girls following him and telling him they’d already looked there, and there, and there. He checked her room for what was missing. He checked the kitchen, and there was food gone too: bread, and some cheese; crisps and biscuits. And there was money missing from the envelope in the drawer: ten pounds, and some coins.

  ‘She can’t get far on that,’ he said, trying to sound certain. ‘What time did she go?’

  Ripley shrugged. Louise looked guilty.

  ‘It might be … two hours?’ Then she looked defensive. ‘We thought she was just being cross!’

&nb
sp; ‘Sure you did,’ said Max sourly.

  He should make them feel better, should promise they didn’t have to worry – but he wanted them to feel guilty. Because this was bad: very bad. Dad going missing was one thing: Thelma was quite another. It was completely dark now; freezing cold too. She could be anywhere. Thumbing down a lift with a nice friendly stranger who turned out to be cruel and murderous. Wandering into a field, thinking it led to a path, and finding herself lost; with no way of finding the way back until light, which was morning – tomorrow, hours away.

  ‘I won’t be long, OK?’ he said, hastily throwing a few things in a backpack from the cupboard: a torch, a map, some water and chocolate. He pulled on warm gloves and a hat and scarf, as well as a coat; he might be out for a while.

  ‘Stay here,’ he said firmly. ‘If she comes back, you go to the Bevans’ and use their phone to call me, OK? I’ve got Dad’s mobile. There might be a signal, up the road. Leave a message if not. But I’ll find her. She’s too lazy to have walked far.’

  Louise nodded, calm now there was a plan in place.

  Ripley gave Max a snotty hug, her breath hot in his ear.

  ‘Don’t get lost,’ she whispered.

  It was bitterly cold already. A little before six, with just a few house lights to mark the way.

  Max hesitated at the road, wondering. Left towards the road sign that said six miles to Llanberis. Right towards the post office and the lonely bus stop.

  He chose right.

  No pavement, no street lights. Max put the torch on, wondering vaguely how long the batteries would last and wishing he’d packed spares. If a car approached, he switched it off, just for the time it took for the bright headlights to show the path then sweep past at speed.

  If she’d been trying to hitch a lift, it wouldn’t have worked: they wouldn’t have seen her.

  He tried to think of that as a good thing – even as the next car swept past so fast and steered so far into the turn of the road that it brushed his arm.

  ‘She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s not hurt, she’s fine,’ he whispered to himself.

  But his eyes kept seeing the dog, its fast-breathing body, its frightened eyes.

  Max let the cold wind freeze his face, and walked faster.

  He’d guessed well.

  At the bus stop up ahead, on the other side of the road, he could see a shape: a small human, hunched in an angry ball.

  It moved. It hunched even tighter.

  But she didn’t run. She didn’t move, even when he crossed the road carefully, and sat on the freezing ground beside her.

  ‘All right,’ said Max.

  ‘Not really,’ said Thelma, in a muffled voice. She sounded as if she’d been crying for a long time.

  Max wished Louise was there – or Dad, best of all. Dad knew how to make a crying person laugh in a heartbeat. He’d start talking, about any old thing, in a jokey way, laughing until they laughed too, because once you had laughed, the reason for crying grew smaller.

  But all Max could think of was questions.

  ‘Where you going, then?’

  ‘Home,’ snapped Thelma from inside her coat.

  ‘We are home,’ said Max. ‘For now, we are.’

  Forever maybe, he thought. Once I’ve got the gold.

  Thelma rounded on him, her glasses foggy with tears, her face in the pale light.

  ‘We’re not! Don’t say that!’ She punched him in the arm. ‘We’ve got a home, and we’re going back there for Christmas and Dad will be there and it’s all going to be … normal!’

  Max blinked. ‘I never knew you liked normal so much.’

  Thelma sniffed.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she said, wrapping her arms tightly round herself. ‘I miss it. I miss all my friends. I missed the school play. I missed Christmas jumper day. Now I’m missing the fun bit of the holidays when you just watch TV and eat loads of chocolate. I hate it here!’

  ‘You don’t,’ said Max.

  ‘I bloody do. You would too if you were stuck there all day with nothing to do. It’s all right for you. Not all of us have made little mountain friends who drive us off for treats.’

  Max opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. It was true. He hadn’t thought about what they were doing while he was gone; had just been glad to learn and be around Tal, and Michael and Bill. He’d been in training for the dragon.

  But Thelma didn’t know that.

  He could tell her.

  He could tell her, and then she’d understand why they had to stay.

  But he looked at her face, still streaky with tears, and knew that it wasn’t what she needed to hear.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ she said firmly. ‘You should be.’

  There was a pause, then she punched him on the arm again. But this time it was gentler, with no power behind it; like a peculiar form of hug.

  ‘What do you need?’ asked Max.

  ‘Mum.’

  Max shut his eyes, and felt the ache of it. Her voice, singing nursery rhymes to Ripley. Her hand round his, squeezing gently while he had his hair cut so he knew she was there, before they gave up on hairdressers and just buzzed his head all over at home. Her absence, in all the spaces where she was not.

  ‘It’ll all come out in the wash,’ he said.

  Thelma shot him a hard fierce look.

  ‘What? That was totally Mum!’

  It was what she said when you fell and grazed your knee, or thumped someone, or were just awfully sad for a reason that seemed very big at the time. It always helped.

  But it came with her arms around you, her warmth, her voice. Her.

  He knew it wasn’t the same.

  ‘Thelma,’ Max said softly.

  ‘Dad, then. I need Dad.’

  Max swallowed. He couldn’t bring him back either.

  ‘It’s not fair, Max,’ said Thelma in a low voice. ‘I mean, loads of people don’t have a mum and a dad. No one really minds having just one. But not having any. It’s just not fair.’

  ‘You’ve got me,’ said Max quietly.

  Thelma wrinkled up her face. ‘You’re my brother. It’s not the same.’

  It wasn’t. Any more than her being his sister was.

  He’d had one job to do: step up, look after the girls. And here they were, at a freezing bus stop in the dark.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  Max thought it might be. It usually was: always, at school; often at home. If he’d been better or quieter or nicer, then perhaps Mum would never have felt sad. Perhaps Dad wouldn’t have had to work on the doors at Voodoo nightclub. And there might never have been a Nice Jackie or any boxes of rabbits to run away from.

  ‘There aren’t any more buses today, by the way,’ Thelma said conversationally. ‘I found out when I got here. But I couldn’t just go back.’

  ‘No,’ said Max, understanding.

  ‘We could now, though.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. But … Max? It’s not OK, all this. Us hiding here. And Dad being – somewhere else.’

  Max nodded slowly. It wasn’t; even he knew that. It wasn’t OK.

  She stared into his face. Then she sighed. ‘Come on then.’

  They walked back slowly, in the dark, the traffic still speeding past alarmingly fast and close. Max kept the torch on, the whole way back.

  The cottage was a glowing light spot in the darkness, and Max felt bright relief in his bones as they walked into the warm.

  Thelma was wrapped up in two tight hugs that went on and on until she squeaked out a protest.

  ‘I should run away more often.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t,’ said Louise grimly, hanging on.

  They had hot chocolate to thaw out their cold hands, and Thelma claimed to have walked ten miles away and then changed her mind and been found walking back. Max didn’t disagree.

  ‘I wouldn’t really leave you all behind
, Rips.’

  ‘Course you wouldn’t,’ said Ripley, arms tight round her middle.

  ‘Max says we’re going to go home soon,’ said Thelma. ‘He’s going to call Dad. And we’re going to go home.’

  Thelma looked at Max. He said nothing, but he didn’t look away.

  They finished the hot chocolate and went to bed early, tired from all the drama.

  Max slept deeply and dreamed of dragons.

  In the early hours of morning, when he pulled back the curtain, the dim dark valley was silent and thickly draped in blue-white.

  It was snowing.

  23

  He got up silently, pulled on his borrowed boots and a fleece, and grabbed the torch before pulling open the back door.

  Snow fell into the hallway, from where it had banked up against the door in the night in a small drift. It was still falling steadily in the darkness: a constant skyful of soft fat flakes clumping together as they fell in the triangle of light cast from inside. The ground was covered in a deep layer, perhaps twenty centimetres.

  Max stepped out into the sharp cold, lighting his way.

  Snow up to his knees in the garden, deeper by the tree and the fence. He stepped awkwardly, torch beam on the snow, eyes on the phone he waved until he found it, those magic two bars of signal.

  He’d promised Thelma. It was the right thing to do. With shaky hands, he pressed the keys and called it: the secret number, the one Dad had begged him not to call.

  Straight to voicemail.

  ‘Please, Dad. You have to call me back. Because Thelma … and, all of us, we need you. It’s nearly Christmas, Dad. And I’m stepping up, but – Just call, will you? Um … this is Max.’

  Then he told him the address, without explanation, and pressed the red phone button to end the call.

  He stood still for a moment with his eyes closed. When he opened them he saw it fully. This was it then: the Big Snow. The beginning of it, at least, for if it kept snowing at this rate, it would double in a few hours. Max’s arms were already wearing a thick layer of it. The snow was falling faster than he knew it could, heavy and soundless. There were drifts banked up against the shed and the trees, caught against the wire of the fences in odd, holey patterns. The wooden posts of the fence by the field wore thick stacks of snow like pancakes.