Ghosting Home (Strong Winds Trilogy)

by Julia Jones

  Gallister High School, May 2007

  The crazy little person was possibly a bit of a figment but he’d got some assertiveness about him. When Ms Spinks called Donny into her office, a couple of weeks later, to yell at him for his failure to attend Inspector Flint’s Bonding Initiative. Donny’s inner uncle sent him straight along to his tutor to complain.

  “I know I’m still on the SS list but I told my social worker that I didn’t need to go and she completely agreed with me. My mum’s come home from Holland now; I’m living in a house full of different-aged people. I’ve got friends AND, as soon as I’ve got my passport, I’m going to meet my uncle. That’ll be when my great-aunt’s ready to travel. Probably in about another month or six weeks.”

  All this was true and Sandra had been pleased for him.

  “By the way,” he’d dared to ask, “What happened to that other social worker? I can’t remember his name ... Clang or Wang or something? He hasn’t been round in ages.”

  “It wasn’t Clang, it was Zhang. He was from an agency. I think he’s gone off sick.”

  Donny tried to look sorry.

  “It’s okay,” said Sandra. “I know you don’t like us. You’re not the first. I sometimes think that one of our main uses is giving our clients something definite to be angry about. Instead of simply angry with Life.”

  That was a bit too deep for Donny. He could have tried it out on Mr McMullen but he needed to stick to the main point.

  “But Ms Stinks, sorry, sir, Ms Spinks, says I’m invalidating my Care Plan and there will be Consequences at the next meeting if I’ve failed to attend. I’m not going to the Boxing Club and that’s that. I’ve only come to ask you whether they’ve really got a meeting?”

  Care Review and Planning. C.R.A.P. Mr McMullen had to be invited to the SS meetings for as long as he was still Donny’s tutor. So he’d know if there was one coming up and what was the worst they could do if Donny refused to play punch-bags with Flint. If they tried to take him away from Skye and send him to some hideous home, he had an uncle who’d stick up for him. A glorious vision of being plucked away by helicopter made him think it might almost be worth it.

  “Hmmm,” said Mr McMullen. “You may perhaps have overlooked the economic aspects. Helicopter rescue doesn’t come cheap, you know. It’s possible that the Dutch navy or hydrographic office or whoever pays your uncle’s fuel bill may not see springing a disgruntled fourteen-year-old from English SS accommodation as one of their prime objectives. They’d also have to consider the little matter of invading another nation’s air space ... even within the European Union.”

  “Oh,” said Donny. He hadn’t intended his tutor to take him quite that seriously.

  “On the other hand there’s also an economic aspect to taking young people into residential care. Accountability. Expenditure of public money. Difficult to justify in this case I’d have thought. Especially now that your relatives can mount a legal challenge. That’ll push the costs up and even Ms Tune has a budget to observe.”

  “O-kay?”

  “The authorities think you should join something, something that brings you into contact with a new group of people, something, slightly ... macho? What if we were to find you some regular commitment on Monday evenings? Something that, unavoidably, happens at very much the same time as Inspector Flint’s initiative but which doesn’t involve any demand on the public purse. No travel costs to Ipswich, for instance.”

  Donny said nothing. It felt safest.

  “As it happens,” continued Mr McMullen, “I have a longstanding involvement with the local sub-aqua society on a Monday evening. In fact I’m their principal instructor. It’s one of the hobbies I’m planning to extend in my retirement. If you decide to join the society I feel quite certain that our regular meetings will prevent you from travelling into Ipswich on the same evening. Not when you have homework to fit in as well. As your tutor it will be my duty to advise you against over-filling your extra-curricular time in this pre-exam period.”

  Of course Donny should have said thank you. Instead he stood up and backed towards the door of the DT office.

  “So it is true ...what Toxic said. You are planning to leave! Thanks for mentioning it. Not. You’d have been the only person who I like who was still here next term. Once my best friends have all gone. Or didn’t you think it mattered to anyone except yourself?”

  Mr McMullen took a moment to catch on.

  “Surely everyone knows that I reach retirement in July? When my new group was assigned to me in year Seven I told them, and their parents, that I’d only be seeing them through Key Stage Three. I reminded them again at last summer’s prize-giving and again by letter at the start of this academic year. There’s nothing sudden about my departure. I’ve known when I was going to be sixty-five for, well, the best part of sixty-five years.”

  “But ...”

  “But you weren’t here in year Seven and you weren’t here last summer and you weren’t here for the first week of this year either. So you didn’t know. I’m sorry. I suppose I feel that my expiry date is so obviously stamped all over me that there’s been no further need to mention it.”

  “But ...”

  “But someone told you of Denise Tune’s pathetic little plot to force me to leave early? If I thought you took any notice of her I’d begin to suspect you’d been drinking seawater, not just living on it. Even basic snorkelling can be useful if you need to check your boat’s hull or remove a rope from round her prop. Or so my daughter tells me. It’s entirely your decision.”

  “ ...I mean, yes! Of course I’d like to do sub-aqua. Is there, um, an economic aspect?”

  “None whatsoever. I’ll see you next Monday. School pool, seven o’clock. We’ll leave Ms Spinks to convey your regrets to Inspector Flint, shall we?”

  Donny thanked his inner uncle from the bottom of his heart.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Buddha Jumps Over the Wall

  Off Xiamen, May 2007

  The moon was full and low. The sea glittered silver and the shape of every passing sampan stood out black and clear.

  “You couldn’t have chosen a worse night, one-leg,” grumbled the shrivelled fisherman who had ferried them discreetly away from the floodlights of the port and the illuminated city buildings out into the wider waters of the Taiwan Strait.

  “Tiger Zhang picked the night, not me.”

  “Zhang,” the old man spat. “I remember when he was smuggling ladies’ underwear. Makes his money out of people now, does he? I wouldn’t have thought he had the brains.”

  “He’s hooked himself onto some powerful ghosts.”

  “And you’ve cut across them once too often. Why did you do it? I’d heard you were nicely set up in some cushy restaurant with a flock of pretty waitresses to protect.”

  “Cage-birds flying free, most of them. Yes, it was a good setup but I’d always planned to come home in the end. Then Jin Lóng arrived.”

  “Jin Lóng! I thought she was dead way back.”

  “So did we all but she turned up in that junk of hers, cool as you like, with a crew of children and some long-lost niece.”

  “That should put a mouse-dropping in Zhang’s porridge.”

  “Dollops of dragon’s dung, I hope. So, when she asked me to do a job for her, I was honoured to oblige.”

  “He who sets out to poke a hornet’s nest must carry a long stick.”

  “I’ve no regrets.”

  The two men fell silent then. Min had been watching a long black patch that he thought might be an island, perhaps with street lamps. Except that it was moving steadily towards them, blocking out the shimmering waves and the bobbing lights of smaller boats.

  “Transport’s on its way. We’ll put you on the tug first, youngster, then you’ll be up and into that tanker and non-stop for Rotterdam. Yu Wan, the cook, is a friend of mine so make yourself useful. Be sure to give him this.” he pulled a folded paper from inside his shirt. “He’s been after it for yea
rs.”

  “What’s that?” asked the fisherman.

  “My special recipe for fo tiao qiang. It’s payment for the lad’s final hop.”

  The old man burst out laughing, a wheezy cackle that was soon drowned by the engine of the approaching tug.

  “Why’s that funny?” Min needed to know. The swelling on Hoi Fung’s face made smiling even harder than speech but he did his best.

  “It’s a local speciality soup. They call it ‘Buddha jumps over the wall’. Yu Wan’ll tell you the story on board. Now remember young one, lock up your tongue when you can’t speak truthfully and seek the protection of Jin Lóng as soon as you arrive in Suffolk.”

  Suffolk, May 2007

  Donny spent more time with the younger boys at Erewhon Parva than he did with Anna. She was obsessed with revision for her scholarship exams and then, once they were finished, she usually chose to shut herself away with her mother in the evenings.

  There was a new TV in the sitting room – much approved by Liam who could now record the late-night football matches and watch them when he came home from school – but Lottie preferred Rev. Wendy’s study where she’d installed a state of the art keyboard, headphones and recording equipment. Donny didn’t really know what she did during the day. Made plans for the family move to Bawdsey Manor, he assumed. She was always charming and efficient and affectionate but it seemed as if her heart was somewhere else.

  The two mothers got on remarkably well. Once Vicky had been put to bed Skye often sat beside the cot holding one of Vicky’s feet as the child fell peacefully asleep. Lottie stayed downstairs into the early hours practising complicated small patterns on her guitar or working out song ideas at the keyboard. Skye hung dream-catchers over Vicky’s door and window and drew picture-stories which she stuck around the bedroom walls. Lottie had begun learning sign language so that she and Skye could talk and sometimes, when she was playing her guitar, she asked Skye to sit beside her and put her fingers on the resonating wood as if she understood about hearing by touch.

  Anna took up coffee-drinking. Once she’d finished her revision she followed her mother every evening into what she now styled Rev. Wendy’s sanctum. When Donny accused her of becoming a poser as well as a swot she shrugged irritatingly.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. I expect you’ll get the point one day.”

  Because Anna had once been on the other side – the child side – she knew how much private adult conversation you could hear from the dark landing above the hall. The study door was solid wood. It fitted snugly into its heavy frame. With Anna on the inside, nothing leaked out.

  Which was why Donny was as shocked as Luke and Liam when he dropped into the boys’ bedroom to say good night one evening and discovered what these conversations had been about.

  “It’s our Dad,” Luke said. “He’s due to be released early. Anna’s lawyer’s been making a fuss.”

  “Wow!” said Donny. “That’s ... really great!”

  But why did Luke sound as if somebody’d punched him and how come Liam was right down his bed with his face to the wall and his Man U duvet pulled right up so only the top of his head and one ear of his Flopsy Babbitt was visible?

  “Um, when’s it going to be? Will you all be going up to, like, collect him? Bring him back here?”

  Now Luke collapsed, his face buried in his pillow, his skinny body heaving with the sobs that he was fighting to contain. The sound of his crying got Liam out of bed. Blubbered and crumpled, he sort of dived across like a half-blind torpedo. The brothers were hugging each other, desperate in their need for comfort.

  Were they frightened of their father? He remembered Anna saying that Bill had got drunk. There’d been rows. Maybe violence.

  “Hey, you two, this isn’t good at all. Hang on a minute and I’ll fetch Lottie. Sounds like you need to talk to her.”

  The boys shook their heads and sobbed harder.

  So Donny sat there and sort of patted them and comforted and said there-there, don’t worry, it’ll be okay, honestly it will. Come on Lukey, come on Li, cheer up, we’ll sort it out. Whatever it is.

  Until finally they were so exhausted they began to make some sense.

  Their dad was coming out of prison but he wasn’t coming home. Not here to the vicarage and not to Bawdsey Manor either. Lottie had told them the news when she’d tucked them into bed and they’d nodded without comment and asked for a story as usual.

  Between her going downstairs and Donny coming up they’d understood what this meant – which was more than she or anyone else had done.

  From the moment Bill Whiting had been arrested, a few months before Vicky was born, through his time on remand and his time on trial, through the black day of his conviction and the first year of his sentence, Luke and Liam had been surviving on hope. It was much more than hope: it was an expectation. Something someone had said had given them the idea that when all this was over, when their Dad had served his time (they were both too young to be sure how long this might take) then they’d be together again as a family.

  This expectation had kept them going through their stepmother’s absence, their life in care and the miserable monthly journeys with Gerald or Wendy to the prison visits centre. It had helped them in past the sniffer dogs and their handlers, through the body searches and the suspicious stares, and then it had helped them out again. They’d mostly managed to say goodbye to their dad without tears and had allowed themselves to be driven away without looking back or even saying much until it was time for the next month’s visit. At school they’d told lies without feeling guilty and they’d got really, really good at looking blank and focussing on something else when it was father’s Day or ‘All About Me’ class projects.

  They’d been hanging on to the idea that when people were sent to prison they did their punishment and after that it was a Fresh Start.

  “You know, Donny, all of us living together. Us an’ Dad an’ Lottie an’ Anna and Vicky. Like we did before in Low’stoft.”

  “We didn’t care if it were only a caravan and there was all them rows.”

  “We know our Mum’s never coming back because she’s dead.”

  “But we thought it would be different with our Dad.”

  Donny got Skye to come and sit with the boys when he reckoned they were calm enough. Then he went storming down to the study to ask what the hell had been going on.

  They were all waiting – Lottie and Anna, Gerald and Wendy – sitting in silence with the study door open, as if they’d been listening upwards.

  Lottie stood up as soon as he came in. “Thank you, Donny,” she said, “Thank you so, so, much.”

  She looked exactly like Anna. Anna at her sweetest and most manipulative when she knew she was in a totally tight spot.

  “For doing your dirty work? For picking up the pieces after you told the kids that you’re dumping their dad? Didn’t get given much choice, did I?”

  All the questions he’d planned to ask and the hard things he was going to say suddenly got jumbled up and stuck like logs in a dam, somewhere between his mind and his mouth. He looked at them all, looking at him: worried, concerned, affectionate, ready to explain. Ready to help him understand and forgive. He turned round and went out, slamming the door behind him.

  He’d get right out of this house. To the river? No. To the camper van. Yes. He could lock it from the inside. He wished he could drive.

  It wasn’t until he’d pulled the metal door shut that he realised how stupid he was. This wasn’t about him. It was about Luke and Liam and he hadn’t picked them up a single bit of explanation. He’d have to go back to the study and ask.

  “So do you want to understand what’s going on or don’t you?” came Anna’s voice from outside. “Because I’m not going to hang around if you don’t. You’re just proving my theory that male emotions ... suck!”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  He opened the door with a furious heave, hoping that she’d topple in and look sill
y. Instead she was standing there with a bit of a smirk on her face.

  “I thought that might get to you,” she said, pushing past and closing the door with exaggerated care before settling herself on one of the benches. “In my experience blokes are so useless at expressing themselves that, once they’ve past the crying stage, their only resource is to slam out of the room or thump someone. Obviously I’m hoping that your testosterone hasn’t reached that level yet.”

  Her smirk stretched into a grin. He almost smiled back. She was his best friend, he remembered.

  “Get on and explain then. It had better be good. I’ve never seen Luke and Liam so upset. It was horrible.”

  “It is horrible. Bill’s being let out because our lawyers have proved that his sentence was too long. They haven’t managed to get him declared innocent.”

  “Is he innocent? I don’t even know what he did.”

  “Mum thinks he is. She thinks he’s innocent and scared. More scared about being released than staying in. It’s him who doesn’t want to come home as well as us who don’t want to have him. He thinks he’s a danger to us: we think he’s right.”

  “Because whoever put him inside is still around and could be waiting for him. Has Lottie told Bill that Gold Dragon got rid of the Tiger? The Tiger’s called Zhang by the way. He’s gone off sick.”

  “Mum’s stopped visiting. They faked a row last time. Now she can only send messages through Wendy. She’s not going to let the children go in again either.”

  “That’s so cruel. He’s their dad. They, like, love him.”

  “I think,” said Anna, “that you must have forgotten how truly frightening these people are. With your sub-aqua sessions and your Dutch uncle and your jolly jaunts up and down the river. They’ll think Bill’s been let out because he’s grassed – which, unfortunately, he hasn’t. I wish he would. Until then he needs to disappear.”