“Beans on toast. Do you eat beans?”
Will sniffed it. It smelled all right—wonderful, in fact, sweet and salty at the same time—but she hesitated. She wished it were an apple, or plain bread. This would be difficult to eat neatly. It was important, she felt, that she eat the Leewood way, because it was important—quiveringly important—that Daniel like her. She wished she’d brought some paper napkins.
She groped round in the dark. “What are you doing? What is it?” said Daniel.
“I was just looking—they must be here—for the knife and fork.”
“I didn’t bring any.” He sounded angry. “I couldn’t take them without someone noticing, could I? It’s not like we’ve got mountains of silver, you know.”
“Oh!” She’d said the wrong thing. “No, ja. Just. Ja. I don’t want to make a mess.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you were one of those girls. Lizzie’s like that; she always wants to be the perfect one.”
“No!” Will put her plate down with a thump. If he was Simon, she would’ve had him by the hair by now. “They said. At the school, ja. ‘Manners are a form of thanks.’ ”
“Are you being funny? That’s just for adults. I don’t care if you get sauce all over your face. You can get it in your ears if you want to.”
“Oh. Nobody said that, ja. Nobody told me.”
“Well, now I’ve told you.” She could hear him smiling in the dark. She felt herself strengthened by it. “Eat,” he said.
The beans were too hot, but Will was painfully hungry. She could feel the skin on the roof of her mouth burning off in little shreds, but they were so filling, and so sweet and deliciously solid. . . . She looked up at Daniel laughing.
“What?”
“You’ve got sauce on your eyebrows.”
Will threw a bean at him. Even in the dim light she was accurate; she’d been deadly with an air rifle back home. “And now so do you,” she said.
WILL DID NOT HEAR THE car that drew up just before midnight.
Daniel did. He couldn’t sleep, or think about anything except the filthy girl alone in the garage. He should have given her his duvet, he thought. Or his curtains, to use as a tent; he could have unhooked them easily. The wind was battering at the house, and she might die of cold. He was just swinging himself out of bed when the noise of the bell cut through the house, and he reached the landing in time to see his grandmother at the spy hole.
“Daniel! Daniel, get your young self down here!”
He joined her at the spy hole. Two policemen’s helmets hovered at eye level.
His heart dropped to the floor. His knees followed it. “Daniel!” His grandmother hauled him up again. “This is not the time to be sitting down for a tea break.” His grandmother whispered, harsh with fear, “What’ve you done? If you’ve been out with those hoodlums again, I warn you, lad—I’ll stop your pocket money until you’re old enough to draw a pension.”
“I’ve not! Not for months, gran. I told you I hadn’t.”
“If you have, lad . . .” She glared at him as she tugged at the door.
But it wasn’t that at all. The stockier of the two men held out a blurred photograph. “We have been notified, madam, that the missing schoolgirl—you will’ve read about it—may be concealed in your garage.”
“What?” said Daniel’s grandmother.
“The missing schoolgirl—Wilhelmina Silver.”
“And you are saying what?” Mrs. James was fierce to make up for the fright. She moved to shield Daniel from them. “Are you calling me a kidnapper?”
“No, madam. But a man and a woman saw a person partially answering her description outside your house earlier this evening. It seems they debated for some time about calling us.”
“And why would that be?”
The policemen looked uncomfortable. “It seems the girl had become bald since running away.” The old woman snorted. The stocky man continued, “Nonetheless, they’re sure it was her face. They say the eyes were unmistakable.”
“There is no runaway schoolgirl in this house, officer—be she bald, bearded, or mustached.”
“Ah, yes, but her school says the girl is like a wild animal. She might easily have broken in through a window.”
“And be living in the garage? And eating what, tell me? The pliers? Or the Christmas decorations?”
“Please keep your temper, madam. If you could just give us the key.”
“I’m giving you nothing.”
The policemen exchanged looks. “Right. Then if you could come and unlock it for us, madam?”
“We do have a search warrant.” That was the wiry, aggressive one.
Mrs. James transferred her glare to the second policeman.
“I suppose I could do that, yes. Stay here, Daniel.”
“What? No! I’m coming with you.”
“Daniel! Stay here, I said.” But she didn’t sound too furious. Daniel thought he could risk it, and followed three steps behind into the night.
His grandmother flung the hanging garage door wide open. The policemen pushed forward, grunting. And Daniel braced himself to run.
“There, you see. Nobody there.”
Daniel opened his eyes. It was true. And there was nowhere she could be hiding; no matter how small, an African runaway will not fit into a biscuit tin already full of screwdrivers. The men waved their flashlights around in a resentful sort of way.
“Look under the car,” said the sharp-faced one, though they could all see there was nothing except an oil leak. Daniel felt his courage rise. He was on the point of delighted laughter when the wiry officer said, “And if you could unlock the car trunk, please, madam?”
The old woman looked scathingly at them. “No, I could not. The catch is broken. It needs a kick.” And as one of the policemen stepped forward, she said, “No, thank you. Daniel’ll do it.”
Daniel whispered, “Oh, no. No, no,” because he knew with sudden certainty where Will must be. His mouth tasted of vomit. He tapped at the bumper with his toe. “I can’t. It’s stuck.”
“Oh, come on, kid. Give it a bit of muscle.”
He thumped, hard, at the wrong part of the trunk. “It’s broken. See? How could Will have gotten in if it’s glued shut?”
“Will? Who’s Will?”
The wiry policeman swung his flashlight into Daniel’s face. “What did you just say?”
Daniel’s face stretched with horror. “I—” His grandmother’s left eye gave him a warning look. “I thought—You said— Isn’t that what you said the girl’s name was?” he said.
“I see.”
“Right.”
“Step aside, please.” They advanced.
“Move aside, kid. We’re going to need to take a look in that trunk.”
Daniel saw he had no choice. He clenched his eyes shut and gave the bumper a proper thump. With a shriek of rust, the trunk opened.
“Oh,” said the first policeman. And the second policeman added, “Ah.” They looked down at two plastic bags and a patch of spilled soap powder.
“Quite.” His grandmother snorted. “Will that be all, gentlemen? Or do you not think you’ve disturbed us enough for one night? Would you like us to pry open the gutters? Dig up the floor? Sing the national anthem?” His grandmother had a kind of ferocious beauty, despite being less than five foot, and as she herded them out before her, he heard her saying, “And you, lad—your boots need polishing. What, will you tell me, do we pay taxes for?”
Daniel followed them out of the garage and slammed the door shut behind him. He waited; there were the sounds of increasingly panicked apology, the low rumble of his grandmother’s fiercest voice, and the front door slamming. A car started. Dan reopened the garage door and peered into the darkness. Without the policemen’s flashlights the garage was black and icy.
“Will?” He didn’t dare shout. He hissed, “Will? Are you here?”
“Daniel? Daniel?” Her voice sounded less musical than before, he thought
—flat and shaken. “I’m caught.”
The voice came from outside the open window. There was a scrabbling, like birds on a roof, and Will’s face appeared, upside down and pale in the moonlight. “Daniel! Oh, thank goodness. I think I’m on a sort of gutter. Help, please! It keeps creaking; I’m too heavy.”
“What were you doing, Will?”
“I tried to get right up onto the roof, but my bootlace got caught. I don’t know what to do.” Will’s soft eyes looked desperately into Dan’s face. “Can you cut it?”
He stood on a chair and looked out the window. She was lying along the gutter, covered in leaf mold and surrounded by roosting pigeons. (He stared. Why hadn’t they flown off? Or made frightened pigeon noises and warned the police?) It was a long drop to the concrete below. “Hold on,” he said, “I’ll get the kitchen scissors. Hold on, okay?”
“I can’t. No! Don’t go. There’s a pocketknife in my pocket,” said Will. “Hold my shoulders—ja—I can reach it.” She had to shift her weight to get at her pocket, and the gutter shuddered and groaned. The pigeons stared reproachfully.
Will held her breath. “I—wait—penga . . .” The gutter settled, but a few inches lower than before. Two puffs of relief misted the night air. Will gripped the knife in her teeth and spoke round it. “Can you reach round and cut me free?”
It took five endless minutes of cutting and waiting and listening before Will was disentangled. She still clung to the roof. “Wait! I’m at a funny angle.” Her voice was tight and breathless. “I don’t know if I can slide back in.” Her voice sounded as though she was fighting tears. “I think something snapped in my ankle. Not a bone—”
“A ligament, maybe?”
Will glared. “Help, please, ja? I don’t need a science lesson.”
“No need to get angry. You’re safe now. Hold on. You okay? I’ll hold on to your wrist.” Daniel reached farther out. “Give me your wrist. Yeah. Good. Slowly. Now your elbow.” He tugged at her sleeves, and Will slid toward the casement. She kicked at the gutter with one foot. He caught her by the back of her coat and lowered her the rest of the way.
So Daniel was like she was, Will thought: stronger than he looked.
They sat together on the concrete floor.
“What time is it now?”
Will peered at the sky. “After midnight. Before two.”
“I should go to bed, or Gran’ll notice. Are you warm enough?”
“Ja, thanks.” Will looked at him in the pitch black. She said, “Thank you, hey.” The second thank you, he thought, meant something else.
“No problem. You should go to sleep. I’ll try to bring you tea and something to eat in the morning. I sing in a choir, but I should be able to get out of it.” He turned back at the door. “You do drink tea, yeah?” The girl seemed more like a cat than a person. She was like a whisper, or a starjump. “Would you rather have milk? I could find a saucer. Or do you know about mugs?”
“Ja! Of course. Tea is good. At home we had redbush tea; rooibos, you know?” He didn’t but said he’d look in the kitchen cupboards. He added, “Sleep well. Don’t run off in the night, yeah? You will still be here?”
“What? Of course! Don’t let the mosquitoes bite. Sleep tight, hey.”
But Will had lied. She was getting good at it. She and Simon had never lied, at home. They’d despised Peter, who lied about pointless things, and was bad at it. But it seemed it was only easy to be honest when you were happy.
She hauled herself to her feet—foot, in fact, and even the uninjured one felt rough and raw, as though she’d walked through the padding and into the bone—and hopped to the window. The windowsill was rough unpainted wood, and she bit her tongue not to wince at the splinters. She pulled herself halfway up, but her arms gave way and she dropped down again. She tried again. Failed again. She couldn’t do it; without the mad-adrenaline rush of panic, she was stuck here.
She sank down in a corner and gripped her stubbled hair, and forced her thoughts to steady themselves into columns. She needed real, solid plans. No more cartwheeling round London. This wasn’t a game. Think, Will, she told herself, and then, when she could only shiver, Courage, chook. In the Bad column: the police were clever. They would come back. She was sure. This wasn’t a book; they didn’t just give up and go home. And she was just a child, and alone. In the Good column: Dan was funny and kind, and obviously not stupid. But—Bad: he was unlikely to be able to provide things like airplanes. And he looked the sort of boy who got flustered in a fight. And—Bad: it would now be impossible, she saw, to get on an airplane home even when she did have the money; they did checks at airports, and—Bad column—they’d be on the lookout. Unless—her face brightened and shone in the blackness—she could get a fake passport. But where did a bald schoolgirl go to commit fraud? It was impossible. The world was bad.
What else was there? With a swollen ankle, and a septic hand, and the beginnings of a black eye, and bald patches, she didn’t think she’d make a prime candidate for adoption. What else? She wrestled with the thought until she could barely breathe. Will fell asleep, in the end, backed into a concrete corner, with the wind crashing against the window, and her last waking thought was of her own room back home, and the dance of the dust, and the window without glass. She would not have been surprised if her head had swollen with longing and burst in her sleep.
WILL OPENED HER EYES TO find the world was still dark, and her heart was still intact. But no night was this black. She closed her eyes again, and opened them again to nothingness, and breathed in a mouthful of something heavy and gagging. She thrashed, and spat. There was a clunk, and a crack of breaking china, and quiet laughter. Panicking, Will tore her head free from the coat and saw that she was lying in bright morning light. There was a broken mug at her side and a plate of toast with something brown spread thickly on it. But Will saw neither of these, because sitting in a pool of spilled tea, there was a woman. She was wrinkled all over, hands and face and clothes—just like a slept-in bed, Will thought. She was smiling.
The woman said, “Hello, Will.”
Will leaped to her feet. The coat tangled round her legs, and she stumbled over her own knees, choking. “Ah, sha!” And thudded down onto the concrete floor.
The woman hadn’t moved. “That sounded painful, Will.”
“No! My name’s not Will,” Will gasped from the floor. “I’m a friend of Daniel’s. My name’s . . .” What was a boy’s name? She could think of none. “Wilbur.” Wilbur?
“No, it’s not, my dear. Your name is Wilhelmina Silver.” For so minuscule an old woman, her voice was firm. It was a voice to stake a life on, rough and lilting and deep. Will didn’t know what you called a voice like that; the old woman would have said it was Irish, with a shadow of South London, and a chunk of Scots.
“Please.” There was no air in Will’s lungs. She whispered, “Are you going to call the police? Please don’t call them, ja?” She swatted at the tears that had appeared on her face. “Please.”
“Come on, dear one. Sit up now and calm down. Eat your toast. Wrap yourself in this.”
Will stared out from underneath the coat. The woman’s hair was thin and wispy, and she was almost bald in places, but her eyelashes were thicker than Simon’s, and the eyes were the green of gin bottles and banana leaves. She could see why Daniel—as sharp-faced and tall as he was—was so in awe of this woman.
“Eat, Will. Food makes the world look brighter. You must be hungry.”
Now that she thought about it, Will realized how hungry she had been—for weeks, a dozen different kinds of hungry. She ate the toast in three bites, without chewing. The woman smiled steadily.
“What’s this one?” Will waved a second piece. “On here?”
“Hazelnut spread.”
It tasted hopeful—thick, nutty hope.
“Do you want another?”
“Ja! Yes. Yes, please.”
“We’ll go in in a second. Finish up that last piece. No hurry, tho
ugh.”
Will thought the woman’s voice sounded like the opposite of hurry. It was thick and soft, like the hazelnut spread.
“I’m sure you can manage some jam, too, and there’s a boiled egg in the kitchen, my love, with your name on it.”
“Thank you,” Will said. “It was a long walk.” Her bones felt hollow.
“Yes! And how did you know the way?”
“It was easy. I bought an Ayterzed.”
“Ah, child! At your age I couldn’t have found my own front door with a compass.” Will grinned into her chin. She tried not to look smug.
The woman said, “Come on, then. Start at the beginning. I want to hear your story. A story’s a good return for a breakfast.”
That seemed fair. Will wrapped her arms round her chest and felt the warm skin of her own spine, and told the woman everything, slowly at first, and then with her words bumping into each other in her hurry—about Cynthia Vincy (who was to blame for her father’s death) and the school (where girls sat two by two in rows of spite, and where everything was rigid and flimsy, “Both, ja, at once, like cardboard dolls”) and to here, now, in the refuge of the garage.
“And now, ja, I’m caught,” Will said, and she could not stop her chest from shaking a little. “I can’t get home, because I haven’t got money, so I can’t bribe people for a new passport. And I don’t know . . . I don’t know how it works. Airplanes, and money, and everything.” She scowled at the floor to thwart possible tears. “And I won’t go back to school.”
The woman stood up. It took some time, but Will didn’t want to offer to help. It would have been presumptuous, maybe.
“Come into the house, dear heart, and we’ll get you a new mug of tea. No, leave the pieces. Daniel will see to them when he comes home.”
“Daniel!” She’d forgotten. “Where is Daniel?”
“He sings in the church choir. There’s a wedding, and I said he was to let you sleep. I promised he’d see you soon. He fought like a wildcat, but I told him I would look after you.”
“Did he tell you I was here?” Will was suddenly angry. “He swore not to.”
Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms Page 14