Sal

by Mick Kitson

  We had no meat or fish that night and we ate cherry cake and walnuts and raisins.

  The wind changed, the northerly dropped and it came from the west and it was warmer, and as we lay in the bender looking at the fire we heard hisses and splashes and trickles of rain coming down hard. It was melting the snow and wet blobs of it were dropping off the tree branches, and after an hour or so the fire was almost out and soaked and we could hear the burn rushing and churning with all the new water. I had stacked some wood in the bender to dry and I was glad. The bender didn’t let any rain in and we fell asleep listening to it drumming down on us.

  Next morning I got a little fire going right in the entrance of the bender and boiled the kettle and while I was waiting for it to get light I started worrying about the food. I still found it hard to work out how many days we’d been here or what day of the week it was. I thought if it was a Wednesday when we ran, that would make it a Sunday when we saw the helicopter if that was five days after we ran, but I couldn’t remember what we’d done every day or how many nights I’d fallen asleep telling Peppa stuff. We’d had two rabbits because we had two skins and we’d had fish on two days and a Grouse on one day. If I thought hard and counted I worked out it could be a Wednesday or a Thursday today.

  We were short of food, and if we didn’t snare a rabbit or get fish again we’d have to eat the last raisins and the brioches and then we’d go hungry. I could go hungry but Peppa couldn’t, and I wouldn’t let her and I was trying to work out how much food we brought to see us through to when we could hunt and snare everything. And I didn’t want to, but I was thinking we maybe couldn’t just eat what we caught or snared or dug up and that we needed more food.

  It would take me a whole day to get into the town and get food for another week and I’d have to leave Peppa here because they were looking for two of us and by now they had descriptions and maybe even CCTV from the train station and they maybe even knew we used disguises. I had a hundred and five pounds in the rucksack left from the money we brought. The thought of leaving Peppa made me start to feel a panic.

  Peppa called out from the bed ‘Any tea Sal?’

  And I said aye, and made her some with a teabag and UHT and sugar. I gave her three of the brioches for her breakfast and she ate them in the bed as the sun was starting to come up. The rain was easing off but the wind was still blowing in from the west and it was warm and damp.

  She said ‘Snow’s gone Sal. All the washing’s wet.’

  It was, still on the line I made and all dripping.

  I said ‘I think I’m going to have to go and get more food Peppa. And you can’t come or we’ll get caught. It’ll take me all day and you have to stay here and stay in the bender.’

  She thought for a bit then said ‘Will you get me a book?’

  I said aye, and she said ‘Can I have the knife and the gun?’

  I said aye, I’d pump the gun and put a pellet in it but she wasn’t to shoot it unless it was an emergency and someone was attacking her. She said ‘I’ll be scared Sal.’ And I said I know and I went over and hugged her and whispered ‘You stay in the bender and don’t go out. You’ll be alright and I’ll be back before it’s dark.’

  She said ‘What if I need a wee?’

  ‘Aye, well, you can go to the latrine but then come straight back in here and get in the bed and stay warm and wait for me.’

  She said ‘Can I cut up the rabbit skins and make a hat? I can sew it.’

  So I said aye, even though I thought she’d make a mess of it. And I told her to be careful with the knife and always cut away from her and do it on a stone in the bender. I got her the sewing kit with extra strong thread in it and I threaded her a big needle. I got the rabbit skins off the frames and brushed all the ash and wee and oakleaf off them and scrunched them up and rubbed them to try to get them soft. I gave her the knife and told her to keep it in the sheath when she wasn’t cutting with it because the sheath had a sharpener on the inside.

  I left her the brioches and boiled water in the kettle and made her put on her purple jumper and her fleece. She’d been on her own in the flat before, when I was out getting things and Maw and Robert were in the pub or out in town, but she always had the telly then.

  I took the backpack and the map and compass and the money. I left her in the bender cutting at the rabbit skins. I didn’t say goodbye or make a big thing of going, I just turned and went. For the first mile through the forest I breathed steady and looked straight ahead and listened to my feet stamping on the leaves and twigs and brown larch needles.

  I was wearing my fleece and had the backpack and a hat with my hair up in it and I thought I’d look like a lad out hiking because I had walking trainers and waterproof over-trousers on too. If someone saw me they’d think I was just a lad or a scout out in the forest.

  I went along through the forest and then crossed onto a moor bit with heather and went along the edge of a plantation until it came out at the bottom of a hill, and over the hill was the next valley and then along the top of that was a slope going down to a forestry track that went along through more plantation spruce.

  So I didn’t panic about Peppa, I thought about Ian Leckie. He was Mhari’s papa and he looked after us when we were wee and he loved me. He was the only person who didn’t think I was weird and didn’t say ‘What ye starin’ at?’ He was old and they lived by the shore in a proper house with a garden and a shed. Even after I stopped going about with Mhari I used to go there and see him and he called me Bonny Sal. Ian Leckie taught me about fishing and tying knots and he took me and Mhari to the wall and we caught a Cod and a Saithe on Mackerel strip. He showed me how to gut Mackerel and he thought it was funny I liked doing it and said ‘There’s no many lassies’ll do that Sal.’

  In his shed he had tools and paint cans and varnish and he made a hutch for Mhari’s rabbit. He told me about plywood and how it is so strong because they glue crossing grains in thin sheets and compress them. He taught me how to saw a bit of wood and keep your elbow in so you don’t go off the line you are cutting and he told me about how they use copper strips to stop barnacles and weeds growing on the bottom of fishing boats because they create an electrical current that stops them growing.

  When I was sad about Maw or scared about Robert or going to panic I thought about Ian Leckie, and it made me feel calm and warm and I think I might have loved him like he was my papa. Ian Leckie didn’t drink and he said he’d been sober twenty-two years but before that he was on the drink all day and night and he got arrested for fighting. He used to go to meetings to stay sober and not drink with other people who didn’t drink at the Fishermen’s Hall.

  Once he met me and Maw and Peppa walking up from the precinct and Peppa was in a buggy and Maw had three bottles of cider in a carrier. He said ‘Hello Claire, how you doing luv?’ and Maw said alright and she seemed like she wanted to keep going but Ian Leckie put his hand on her shoulder and said ‘Are you doing alright ma luv?’ and Maw said aye and she was just wanting to get home and get the tea.

  Ian Leckie rubbed my head and said ‘How’s ma Bonny Sal?’ and then he squatted down and put his hand on Peppa’s cheek and said ‘Look at wee Peppa, what a bonny lassie.’ And she smiled at him and she had no front teeth and he clapped his hands and made his cheeks go all blown up at her and she giggled.

  Maw said ‘See you Ian, come on Sal.’

  And Ian Leckie said ‘Ah’m going up the wall on Saturday for Cod if Sal wants to come. She’s a good gutter.’

  Maw said ‘Oh Ian we’re out Saturday, awa’ to Glasgow to see ma friend Jo. Come on Sal . . .’ And she started back off up towards the flats. I knew we weren’t out Saturday and I knew she didn’t have a friend called Jo in Glasgow. My maw was a good liar. We got home and she started on the cider and me and Peppa watched telly.

  After that when I saw Ian Leckie or I went down to his house to go in his shed he said ‘How’s yer maw?’ and I’d say alright. And then he’d say ‘Is she still on t
he drink?’ and I’d say aye. And he’d say ‘Tell her to come and see me if she needs a hand.’

  But I didn’t. She only really got angry and screaming if she had no drink or if I hid it and she found it or if I said to her not to drink it. She was alright when she got drunk and then for a while she was soppy and wanted to cuddle us. And then sometimes she’d cry and start phoning people on her phone and I’d get Peppa’s tea and put her to bed. If I went back through she was normally asleep and you couldn’t wake her, so I’d make sure her fag was out and cover her in a sleeping bag and go to bed or go online and read.

  Maw used to take us thieving drink with Peppa in a buggy. She could only get wine or cans like cider and extra strong lager because vodka and whisky have got tags on them and they set off the alarm when you go out of ASDA. Maw used to make me watch along the aisle and spot the CCTV and then she put the cans in under Peppa or in the wee tray under the buggy and piled coats on them. She used to bring extra ones for that. Once she zipped two bottles of wine into my coat and I had to hold my hand up on my chest when we went through the checkout. She said to be quiet and not to cry and to stand close to her when we went through.

  I asked her if me and Peppa would get arrested too, if she got arrested, and she said ‘No. But they’ll take youse off me.’

  I got to the end of the forestry road and then came out in the car park near where we buried our mobiles on the way here, then followed the path along onto the road and up to the main road and the layby where the bus stopped. I think I had done it in under two hours and I knew there was a bus every hour.

  There was a woman waiting in the layby with a wee dog on a lead. I walked up and stood at the other end and looked back up towards the way the bus came so she didn’t look at my face for too long. I could feel her staring at me and then I heard her shout ‘Be about ten minutes son.’ And I held up my hand to say thanks and carried on looking up the road.

  I could hear her talking to the dog. It was a wee white terrier and she was going ‘Loo-Loo, Loo-Loo, bus is coming Loo-Loo’ to it in a high baby voice. I looked and the dog was wagging its tail and looking up at her and sort of dancing about all excited. The woman was old with short grey hair and big glasses. She grinned at me when I looked and said ‘She loves the bus!’ I went aye and nodded.

  ‘Been hiking up the glen son?’ she said coming a bit nearer me. And I said aye and tried to look down.

  ‘Are ye a scout?’

  I said aye and I thought ‘Brilliant!’

  Then we heard the bus coming and she said ‘Oh here we go . . .’

  I got a £4.80 return and found a seat on my own upstairs. It was nine miles into town and the road followed the river all the way down the valley.

  The town was wee with one main street and lots of wee shops. It was busy, with loads of people and a farmers’ market with stalls in the street selling cheese and candles and a Buffalo Burger van. I got off the bus and walked up and down the street looking at all the places I needed to get stuff and there was a Co-op and a wee bookshop that sold cards and pictures.

  Nobody even looked at me. I bought belVitas, two loafs of bread, four tins of corned beef and four tins of beans, another Dundee cake and another cherry cake and a box of teabags and a bag of sugar. It weighed like hell in the backpack and I knew I’d never be able to get enough food for us for weeks and weeks or months. Maybe I’d have to keep coming back here once a week. I bought a big steak and ketchup for Peppa for a treat when I got back and in the health food shop I got more nuts and dried apricots. I also got a big bag of Bombay Mix for Peppa because she loves it. In a chemist I got soap and shampoo and plasters for the first aid kit.

  In the bookshop there was a young woman with blond hair and an English accent and she saw me looking and said ‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’ and I said I wanted a book for my wee sister who was ten. She said ‘Is she a good reader?’ and I said aye.

  And then she said ‘What sort of thing does she like?’ and I said she liked stories about Indians and people in wars and people going on adventures. I didn’t look at her when I was speaking I just kept staring at the bookshelves. It smelled nice in there, like vanilla and sugar.

  The woman said ‘What about this?’ and she showed me a book called Treasure Island that had pirates and a treasure chest and a sandy beach on the front. The woman said ‘The language might be a bit strange for her at first but if she’s a good reader she might like it. It’s a classic.’

  I said ‘She’s clever. She likes words.’ I didn’t say what kind of words.

  The woman held up another book called Kidnapped with an old boat on the front and two men holding swords and wearing eighteenth-century clothes. ‘This is by the same author and it’s a fantastic adventure story.’

  I got them both and they were £9.98 and I put them in the backpack. Now it was really heavy on my back and I had five miles to do when I got back to the forest, but I didn’t think about it and did what it says in the SAS Survival Handbook about setting and achieving small goals minute by minute and not projecting as a way of keeping up morale in stressful survival situations.

  So I went to the library and paid £4 for an hour’s internet access on a PC.

  I knew I was going to do this all the time and I knew deep in my mind that it was why I had really come to the town.To find out what had happened after we ran and where Maw was and where the polis and the social were looking for us.

  There were loads of stories about us. I searched Google News and put in our names – Salmarina and Paula Brown.

  The latest headlines were all SEARCH WIDENS FOR MISSING SCHOOLGIRLS and MISSING GIRLS – POLICE EXTEND SEARCH AREA.

  I went back a week. I found SISTERS MISSING AFTER STEPDAD KILLING and DESPERATE MUM PLEADS FOR MISSING SISTERS TO COME BACK. There were pictures of Maw at a press conference crying and a full face photo of Robert. Further down there were pictures of me when I was ten in a red school sweatshirt and a picture of Peppa when she was eight. There was a picture from one of Maw’s phones of me and Peppa staring, and Peppa was wearing her black fleece and I had a white T-shirt on and my hair was shorter.

  I read the story about the press conference and it said Maw was pleading with us to come back and we were not in trouble and she just wanted to know we were safe. And the policeman said he believed we were in the area where we lived and may be being held or hidden by someone and that ‘we are increasingly concerned about the safety of Salmarina and Paula’.

  Then I found an STV video of people searching round our flats and along the wall and up to the lighthouse and by the shore. There were crowds all wearing hi-viz jackets and I saw Ian Leckie and Mhari and people who lived in our flats like Big Chris and Mrs Duggan with her dog on a lead. The voice said ‘Concerned neighbours and friends took part in a search for the missing girls who vanished from the flat in Linlithgow Court on Wednesday morning. The body of their mother’s partner Robert McColm was found in the flat after police were called by a neighbour. Police say he died from stab wounds.The girls’ mother Claire Brown, 29, was in the flat at the time of the girls’ disappearance and it is still unclear how the sisters Salmarina, 13, and Paula, 10, left the flat. Police say they were last known to be in the flat on Tuesday night. Local volunteers scoured waste ground, parks and areas of the shore . . .’

  I skipped down and found CCTV LEAD IN SEARCH FOR MISSING SISTERS and SCHOOL UNIFORM RIDDLE OF MISSING GIRLS from four days ago. There was footage of us at the train station in Glasgow, me with the big rucksack and Peppa with her backpack walking across by the shops in the school uniforms.

  Then I started to feel a panic coming and my heart starting banging very fast and I felt like someone was squeezing my chest. I was just staring at the screen and the shot of us went all blurry. I wanted to breathe but I couldn’t and I started to try to stand up and I staggered back into the chair and it went over with a big crash.

  My eye was looking along the grey carpet down between metal shelves of books
and black leather shoes were running towards me and a man was saying ‘Alright, it’s okay, it’s okay.’

  He was old and wearing a blue shirt and a tie and he crouched down beside me and I started panicking again. I hadn’t minimised the screen so he’d see what I was looking at. But he was sitting me up and saying ‘You feeling faint?’ and I said aye. Then I said, ‘I’m okay. I just tripped.’

  I was trying to see round him to see if the CCTV of us was still on the screen. He made me sit with my head between my knees and he rubbed my back and went ‘Just breathe . . . you’re alright.’

  I didn’t want him to rub me and I wriggled out from his hand and got up still trying to see the screen and was going ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I need to go outside.’

  He was looking right at me and smiling. His face was big and he had a grey beard and little round glasses. He said ‘Aye it is warm in here, go out and have a breath of air.’

  He turned and then he looked straight at the page I had up with the CCTV footage of us.There was the blurry grey of me and Peppa and a time and date line and the headline underneath. He stood still for a minute and then he walked away smiling.

  I stepped over to the PC and quit the page and deleted my search history then got the backpack and swung it onto my shoulder and the tins in it clanked and I walked straight out.

  I walked up the street breathing deep and I felt really hungry and I wondered if that was why I fell and started blacking out. My head was racing with all the stuff on the internet about us and the guy seeing the page. If they searched and looked at what I was looking at they might guess who I was and I still didn’t know what had happened to Maw. And I was worried about getting back for Peppa.