‘Does your head hurt?’
‘What?’
‘I saw you walking with your arms up…’
‘Oh, right. No, it’s nothing.’
He nodded. ‘Are you in a hurry?’
I was – of course I was. I was always in a hurry. But to my surprise, I found myself saying, ‘No, not really…’
‘Can I show you something?’
‘OK.’
‘It’s by the riverbank,’ he said. The last of the sunlight reflected off his glasses and cast a glow over his face. I couldn’t read his expression.
‘Can I bring my dog?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
He waited as I unlocked the door. Milo pelted out of the house, overjoyed, but he didn’t jump on me as he usually did – he bundled himself straight into the lap of my new companion.
‘Woah, woah.’
‘Down, Milo, down. I’m so sorry. He’s the most badly behaved dachshund in the world!’
But the boy somehow managed to calm Milo without losing control of the chair. Within moments, he was patting my dog’s head and putting him back down on the ground. Milo ran circles around his new friend.
We made our way to the riverbank through the narrow gap between our house and the Lachmanns’. At first, the path was paved and even, so it was easy enough for the boy to wheel himself along, but then it turned to a muddy, stony track, and with every turn of the wheel, I thought he might slip and fall. My hands flew out several times, wanting to help, but he was always too quick for me and I noticed that there was something amazing about the way he held himself. His upper arms seemed incredibly strong, and with every judder over a stone or slippery patch, they brought him back into a steady forwards movement.
He stopped only when he was right at the edge of the water, and turned to grin again at me. Milo and I were a few metres behind, struggling to get through the mud. I hadn’t been here since the spring and I’d forgotten how wet and boggy it could get. Every step was an effort.
‘I’m Toby, by the way,’ he said. ‘I’ve moved into number thirty-two.’
‘I’m Izzy. You moved into the abandoned house?’
‘Yes, last week. It’s a total mess inside, you know. Most things need replacing. Mum is only able to rent it because it’s so cheap. I like it, though. I hope we can stay.’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’
‘We need to find out whether Mum can get a permanent position at her work. That’s why she hasn’t signed me up for school yet. She’s teaching me at home at the moment.’
‘Nobody’s lived there since old Mr Mason died…’ I said, and then clamped my lips shut. He didn’t need to know that. I knew I wouldn’t want to, if I lived there.
But Toby wasn’t listening. He was gazing at something in the middle of the river, his finger pressed against his lips.
‘Just there. Be very quiet. Look.’
He spread apart the dense grass and pointed ahead. At first, I couldn’t see what he wanted me to look at. My eyes scanned the murky water and the patches of bright green algae. A mist scurried across the river, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
‘Look closer. Just there.’
I peered at the other side of the bank. The water was moving fast, but the river itself wasn’t wide. In the last glimmers of afternoon sunshine, I could make out leaves and twigs sticking up from under the surface. And then I saw them. On a branch, jutting from beneath a mulberry bush, was a group of small, awkward-looking grey cygnets gathered around their mother, their feathers shuddering in the breeze. There was something so fragile about them that it made me hold my breath.
‘They’re already a couple of months old,’ Toby said. ‘You can tell by their size and their soft feathers. I’m not sure where their dad is – I haven’t seen him around. Look – there’s a tiny one who can’t quite keep up with the gang. You might not be able to see him because he’s usually hiding behind the others, but you can recognise him by a funny tuft on his head. I called him Spike because of it.’
We edged closer to the bush, Milo pulling on his lead, itching to get into the water. I motioned for him to stay still. The mother swan’s babies were all around her, swimming close together for warmth and safety. I counted four of them, alike in colour and size. Then I saw him – tucked between two branches that just skimmed the water, was Spike. His head was cocked comically to the side. He reminded me of an old man who’s told a joke and is waiting for his audience’s reaction. His brothers and sisters were ignoring him, busy trying to get their mother’s attention.
‘They’re beautiful.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s so delicate.’
‘I think they hatched late, for cygnets. Usually they arrive earlier in the summer. That means they’ll have more trouble finding food as it gets colder. And Spike’s going to need help. We have to make sure that the others don’t take it from him.’
I loved the way he said ‘we’. It was as if the two of us and Milo were already a team. I felt a bond with Spike straightaway. He looked so tiny as he sheltered from the wind, but there was something determined about him. Every time it seemed that he was going to be left behind, he swam a little faster.
‘Shall we come back tomorrow with some food for him?’ I asked. ‘We should probably get started with feeding him up as soon as possible.’
Toby shifted in his chair, the muscles of his shoulders tensing under his coat. Then he turned and looked at me, as if checking how serious I was about committing to Spike. I must have made a good impression, because he chose to reveal a secret.
‘For sure. They’ll be here for a while. And there’s an old van there. We can hide out in it if it rains. The back door’s missing, so I can wheel myself inside, if you give me a hand.’
He raised his eyebrow questioningly.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘On the other bank, behind the playground. Want to go over and see?’
It was getting dark. Tiny flickers from street lamps shone in the distance. I was just about to say that I had to head home, when my curiosity got the better of me. I tugged on Milo’s lead and we followed Toby across the rickety wooden bridge. We went beyond the swings I used to twist myself around in when I was younger, and the broken seesaw covered in graffiti, and then Toby pointed to a clump of bushes which separated the playground from some wasteland.
‘We need to get to the other side,’ he said. I scoured for a space where the branches were sparser so that Toby could wheel himself through.
He was right about the van. It stood on the edge of the field, as if it had always been there, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Even in the half-dark, I could see it was rusting. There were three words written on the side in bold, slanting letters. The first was obscured by a stuck-on piece of cardboard, but I was pretty sure that the other two read: Laundry Services.
The longer I stared at the rusty patches, the more they took on familiar shapes – a butterfly, a shoe, even a dog, just above where the back left wheel had been.
‘What’s inside?’ I asked Toby, peering in. Something scuttered across the back of the van. I shuddered.
‘It’s just beetles,’ Toby muttered. ‘There seem to be quite a few of them, but they’re harmless. Other than that, some tools and an old mattress.’
Milo was having a whale of a time kicking up leaves and sniffing the soil. When he noticed the van, he bounded straight in.
Despite the beetles and the old mattress, I was strangely taken with the van. It could easily be made homely with a blanket and some provisions, and I liked how it was tucked away, a true secret hideout. I wondered whether Toby had told anyone else about it.
Before I could ask, there was a sudden buzzing from his pocket. He fished out his phone.
‘It’s my mum. I have to head back. Are you coming?’ he asked me.
‘Yes.’
At the base of the riverbank, his wheelchair lodged itself in the mud, and I rushed to hel
p, but once again, he’d already extracted himself before I got there.
As we drew closer to home, I was mesmerised by the glistening spinning of Toby’s wheels and the squelching sound my shoes made as I trod on the patchwork of fallen leaves. Mud spattered my tights, my feet were soaked, and the tips of my big toes were numb from cold. Yet as we were walking, a warm sensation made me tingle – it was a feeling that I hadn’t had for weeks. And all my worries about Mum, about Lou, about the nightmare, about everything, faded for a couple of moments as Toby waved, before disappearing behind his front door.
Four
When we got indoors, the house was silent and empty, but I felt happy. Dad wasn’t home yet, so I decided to make a start on my algebra homework. That way, when he got back, we could have dinner together and I could tell him about Toby and the swans.
I went upstairs to change out of my uniform. My room badly needed a clean. I could see dust gathered in the corners of my desk, and when I switched on the light, I could make out a brown stain where I’d spilled a cup of tea. The one part of my room that remained perfect, no matter how messy everything else was, was the wall above my bed.
If I told anybody that I usually enjoyed staring at this wall, they could be forgiven for thinking that I’d gone raving mad, but it’s important to say that this isn’t just your average bedroom wall. It’s really the exact opposite – it’s filled with colours and shapes and textures, and it’s my story. It’s an unfinished story… and it means so much to me for a lot of different reasons.
I was four when Mum started painting the mural, and after that we’d always do it together. She would stand by the wall in her baggy jumper, odd socks and dungarees, holding an old kitchen plate on which she mixed her colours. ‘Let’s paint some more of your story, Izzy,’ she’d say, smiling, and she’d tie up her long hair, so that it didn’t get in the way of her work. I always thought she looked the most beautiful when she was standing there, with the brush in her hand.
And even though I had itchy feet and could hardly ever be still, I would sit for ages watching her paint. I handed her the right sizes of brush and the colours that she asked for – often I would guess them even before she said them aloud. ‘Colour me in!’ I’d demand, as soon as she’d finished sketching my outline. I couldn’t stand being kept grey and empty for longer than a few minutes. She’d laugh at me and get started immediately. Often she would colour in both versions of me – the picture on the wall, and the real me, sitting cross-legged and impatient on the bed. I would receive a sudden streak of blue across my nose when I least expected it, and it would make me chuckle.
Her painting grew and grew over the years. It was divided into squares, each one an important event in my life. My favourite was the square at the start – it showed Mum and Dad in hospital when I was born, Mum holding me on her lap, wrapped up cosy in a huge blanket, and Dad grinning. Apparently, I was the biggest baby on the ward, and the loudest.
That evening, as I collapsed on to the bed and looked up at it, I could tell immediately that something was very wrong. Yellow. I felt a spidery scuttling through my stomach as my eyes sought out the change. The yellow of my blanket had faded, as if all of the paint had drained from the plaster. The yellow had disappeared from the tulips in the hospital vase, and the small, dainty lampshade in the corner of the painted room… and that was just in the first square. I scanned the wall frantically. There was not a single place where yellow was still visible.
I turned up the light and checked it from all angles – it made no difference. A washed-out white had taken the place of the yellow, as if the entire image had been a stencil. I touched it, but there was nothing but smoothness beneath my fingertips. Could the paint have faded over the past few weeks and I just hadn’t noticed? It was possible, of course, but was it likely? I decided to ask Dad to come and have a look as soon as he was home. It was always good to have a plan.
With the plan firmly in my mind, I went back downstairs, poured out Milo’s food and settled myself at the big dining room table with my books. It’s strange how names stick to things. The last time the table had been used for dining would have been when there were still three of us eating at it. It would have been before the Blackest Day. Now, Dad and I ate at the table in the kitchen. I think we felt less lonely, in that cramped space. We could roll down the blinds and put something in the oven and the whole place enveloped us in a toasty glow.
I couldn’t motivate myself to get started and I wondered what Toby was doing. My eyes kept darting to the kitchen window, to get a glimpse into the life of my new, mysterious neighbour.
And that was when it happened – I noticed Dad’s shoes and the rucksack that he usually took to work.
I climbed the stairs slowly and knocked on his bedroom door.
‘Dad, are you there? Can I come in?’
There was no noise from inside. I held my breath, but only for a moment, and then I opened the door. The room was dark and stuffy, and I groped for the light switch.
Dad was lying, still in his work clothes, on top of the duvet. There was a stack of papers next to him, some on the pillow; others had slipped on to the floor. I sat on the edge of the bed and took hold of his shoulders.
‘Dad! Wake up! It’s me!’
His eyelids fluttered and he shook his head.
‘Dad?’ Finally, his eyes opened fully and focused on me.
‘Hi.’ He smiled. ‘You OK?’ He sat up and looked at the black patch of window, confused.
‘Yeah, I’ve just come back from school.’
‘Ah. I must have… I must have fallen asleep. I came home a bit earlier today from the hospital and I lay down for a moment just to rest my eyes. What an idiot, eh? What’s the time?’
I glanced at my watch.
‘Time to eat?’
There was relief in Dad’s eyes and shadows beneath them. He looked exhausted. I suddenly wanted to hug him, but he got there first, taking me into a bear-like embrace.
‘I’ll get dinner sorted,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to stay up for a bit and work on this campaign. I promised Simon.’
I liked Simon, Dad’s business partner. He was always cracking jokes. He and Dad had known each other since they went to school together, and decided to quit their jobs in big banks a year ago and start Project Elephant – an organisation which campaigns against animal poaching. When I first heard about Dad’s change of career, I only thought of poaching as a way of making eggs. Dad had explained that it meant the illegal hunting of animals, often those that were endangered.
Anyway, it was still just Simon and Dad on Project Elephant, and they’d been working horribly long hours at their office. It took Dad ages to travel each way, but since that day, he’d worked from home more and more.
I waited for him in the kitchen with a mug of tea and he came down a few minutes later, looking a bit more refreshed.
‘How was your day, Diz?’ he asked, ruffling my hair just a little too hard and beaming. He’d never stopped using the nickname that he’d given me when I was two, a whole decade ago. He called me that because I used to love to spin around in the garden until I was so dizzy that I collapsed on the ground and couldn’t get back up.
‘Dad, could you come and have a look…’ I began, but when I looked again at the shadows under his eyes, the words stuck in my throat.
‘Hmm?’
‘It was all right,’ I said instead.
For a moment, he sat there, nodding absent mindedly. Then his brow furrowed and he gave me a closer look.
‘I went to see Mum today too,’ I said. I felt as though I couldn’t hold the information in any longer without telling him.
‘How was it?’ he asked quietly. ‘Why did you go on your own?’
‘I wasn’t planning on going… it just sort of happened.’
‘And they let you in?’
‘Yes. I’m not sure the nurse knew that you weren’t there. Maybe I’d just missed you before you left. I stepped into the room this ti
me. I spoke to her.’
His eyes widened.
‘And?’
He sounded hopeful, as if I was about to say something miraculous.
‘And… nothing,’ I said helplessly, and the anger boiled in my stomach. What did he expect? Did he think that I would walk in there and suddenly Mum would be better?
He opened and closed his mouth, as if he was planning to say something else, but decided against it.
‘Let’s put on some dinner,’ he said. ‘We must have something good in here that we can rustle up.’
Nanna Tessa, Dad’s mum, had stayed with us in the weeks that followed the accident. She was an amazing cook and preparing food was what she loved. She made the most delicious dumplings from a recipe handed down from her own mum. Despite everything that had happened, she never failed to make a three-course dinner every single day she was with us. I could smell her delicious food from halfway down the road when I was walking home.
‘Good food helps the soul,’ she would tell us, serving up with a smile on her face. She liked to watch us eat what she’d made – all three of us: Milo, Dad and me. She said that was what made her most happy, but she was generally such a happy person.
It was only once that I saw Nanna’s mask slip. I was in the garden and she was in the kitchen, stirring mushrooms, and she didn’t know that anyone was watching her. I worried that something was wrong when I noticed her body shaking, and then I saw her wiping her eyes with her sleeve and I knew she was crying. I wanted to go in and hug her, but something stopped me. It was the same thing that had stopped me from going to hospital for a whole five weeks.
Before Nanna left to go back to Gramps, she’d frozen twelve portions of dumplings for us, which had lasted us all the way until last Tuesday. I opened the fridge, hopeful that we might have missed something else she’d left for us, but there were only eggs and a bag of old carrots that had started sprouting hairs.
‘These look like they’re ready to have babies,’ Dad said, picking one of them up with the tip of his thumb and forefinger. ‘Gross or what? I really have to do the shopping. I’ll go tomorrow.’
The Mystery of the Colour Thief Page 2