The Girl in Between

by Sarah Carroll

  There was a girl called Claire and she liked the frog pond too. The teacher made us the Pond Monitors, which meant every day we had to stay back after school to check that no plastic had blown into it. We were the only ones allowed to sprinkle food for the fishes. They’d nibble the flakes and Claire would put her finger in the water, and the fishes thought her finger was food and nibbled it too. I did it as well but I couldn’t stay still cos it tickled and made me laugh, and all the fishes got scared and hid.

  Gran would meet me and Claire at the gates of the school and walk us home. If it was hot she’d buy ice cream. One for Claire too, even though she wasn’t her gran. If it was winter we’d all share a bag of chips or something.

  We passed Claire’s house first. Gran and her ma would always end up drinking tea and talking for ages, so we’d go play with her toys. Claire had a room all to herself with a box filled with dolls and she’d let me play with them. Except if they were her favourites. I wasn’t allowed to touch those.

  At Easter she got a mountain of chocolate eggs. She wouldn’t eat them, though. She just left them stacked there. She didn’t even open them.

  I got two. One from Gran and one from Ma. But they were really both from Gran cos I’d seen them in a bag under her bed when I went snooping in her room. I’d eaten them both by lunchtime on Easter Sunday but Claire still had all hers when school finished for summer.

  I don’t know if she ever ate them cos Ma and Gran had a massive fight after that and we left.

  It was just after the first night of the summer holidays. Me and Gran were sitting out on the porch with curlers in our hair, doing a jigsaw puzzle of the ocean.

  I was trying to finish a dolphin when Ma came out the front door with her bag and coat. She kissed my forehead.

  ‘Where are ye going, all dolled up?’ Gran said. It was weird cos I thought Ma looked great, but Gran said it like it was a bad thing.

  ‘Out,’ Ma said, and opened the little front gate that didn’t close properly.

  Gran said something about Ma winning a prize.

  I looked up then. ‘What did you win, Ma?’

  I’d won first prize for drawing in school. The teacher gave me a brand new paint set.

  But Ma said, ‘Me? Nothing. Gran’s winning the Best Mother prize these days, aren’t you, Gran?’

  Ma let go of the gate and came back. She found the next piece of the dolphin and put it in the right place. Then she said, ‘Funny, don’t remember doing a lot of jigsaws meself when I was a kid.’

  ‘Don’t start with that,’ Gran said.

  ‘Don’t remember doing a lot of anything,’ Ma said. ‘There’s some stuff I remember only too well, though.’

  I thought that maybe Ma was upset cos she didn’t have a jigsaw. ‘You can have this one, Ma. There are three pieces missing. But it still works.’

  Ma smiled then, and leaned down till her forehead was touching mine. ‘I’ll be back later, love,’ she whispered.

  Then she started walking away. But when she got to the path she shouted over her shoulder, ‘Have fun, girls. Remember, it’s never too late to make up for lost time. Ha, Gran?’ And she said Gran like it was a joke name or something. I looked at Gran to see if she was laughing. She wasn’t. She was watching Ma walk down the street.

  ‘We cooked yet?’ I said.

  Gran turned to me with a funny look. Her face could change real quick, just like Ma’s. Sometimes it was as sharp as a witch’s. It didn’t scare me, though.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.

  I pointed to the curlers in my hair.

  Gran laughed then and her face went all soft and wrinkly, like an old mushroom. ‘Nearly. Finish the jigsaw first.’

  That night when Gran put me to bed, Ma wasn’t home. But in the morning when I woke, she was already up and packing a bag.

  ‘Get up,’ Ma said. ‘We’re going on holidays.’

  ‘Ah, Ma,’ I said. I didn’t want to. I’d gone on holidays with Ma before. It usually meant staying in some poxy flat with one of her mates.

  But Ma had packed a rucksack and she was going. And once Ma’s going, no one can stop her. Not even Gran.

  She tried anyway, though. She stood in Ma’s way when she was dragging me out the door. But Ma just shoved her aside.

  Gran was shouting. She said, ‘For God’s sake, act like a mother!’

  But Ma already had me out the front door. ‘Coming from you of all people?’ she said. ‘That’s bleeding rich!’

  ‘Ah, Jaysus, how many times can I say sorry?’ Gran said.

  ‘Not enough,’ Ma said. ‘Not enough.’

  Ma tried to slam the gate shut but it wouldn’t close.

  ‘At least tell me where yis are going,’ Gran said.

  ‘To the beach!’ Ma said. She kicked the gate and started storming up the road.

  I kept looking back at Gran as Ma dragged me away. She was standing there in the doorway. I’d seen Ma and Gran fight before. But this was different. Cos Gran didn’t look witchy this time. She looked like she’d been walking all day and just realized she was back where she’d started.

  That’s when things started to go bad.

  CURRY CHIPS AND A BATTERED SAUSAGE

  It’s getting late and I still need Ma to go out so I can nick some coins and make sure there’s nothing scary lurking in the mill. I turn round and run across the roof and climb down the ladder and run across the sky-bridge and into the mill and down the stairs and through the kitchen.

  ‘Ma,’ I say when I get to the door. She’s still lying on the couch. ‘I’m hungry.’

  I startle a cat that’s been sniffing around. It leaps away and scurries up the bricks and crates. It looks dead scabby, half its fur missing. When it gets to the wall it sits there staring at me like it thinks I’m going to eat it or something. There are two more cats on the wall. Little ones. They stare at me too. Cats don’t like me. They don’t seem bothered by Ma, probably cos she always feeds them. But they run when I come out.

  ‘Ma,’ I say again when she doesn’t answer. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘Have some bread,’ Ma says, but with the towel on her face it sounds like ‘Hasobre’.

  ‘I don’t want bread,’ I say.

  The bakery next door uses one of the skips. They throw out enough food to feed half the city. The other one is used by everyone and you can find loads of deadly stuff in it, like books and rusted bikes and wooden chairs and old mattresses. Or couches.

  Every day we fish out sandwiches and scones from the bakery’s skip, and even fruit that has nothing wrong with it, except it’s gone a little black or has a dent in it or something.

  But I don’t want fruit.

  ‘I want chips,’ I say, cos that means Ma will have to go out.

  ‘Just let me relax for ten bleeding minutes, will ye?’ she says, which is stupid cos she’s been lying there for ages sunbathing. ‘You can’t be hungry again.’

  Some gulls screech and I look up and see them swooping down this way from the sky-bridge. The bakery probably just threw out some bread and they’ve seen it.

  ‘Fine, I’ll go get the chips,’ I say.

  ‘Dream on,’ she says. ‘You’ll stay here.’

  Of course I will. But I offered cos it always works.

  I can’t go outside. If I’m seen, it’s game over. Sitting on the top step by the front door or in Caretaker’s room or by our beach is as far as I can go. But that’s fine with me. I don’t want to go out there anyway.

  Ma sighs and gets up but then grabs the side of the couch and just hovers there.

  ‘Jaysus, lying down too long,’ she says. ‘Made me all dizzy.’

  She shakes the dizziness away and stands. She stares down at herself. I really wish she’d hurry up but she says, ‘Look at the state of me,’ and goes over to the tap by the wall and fills the bucket and dips a bar of soap into it and then scrubs her face and arms. She leans over, lifts the water up, and pours it over her head and yelps as it sploshes
all over.

  I try to stay still cos when I get impatient, like I am now, I always tap my foot or bite my nails and it’s a dead giveaway that I’m up to something Ma wouldn’t like.

  ‘Jaysus, that’s freezing,’ she says, like she says every time. Her hair’s dripping and hangs like slimy eels over her shoulders. It’s soaking her T-shirt but she doesn’t care. ‘So, what do ye want?’

  ‘Curry chips and a battered sausage,’ I say, like I always say. ‘And Coke.’

  ‘Is that all?’ she asks, real sarcastic.

  ‘And a surprise.’

  ‘A surprise, me granny,’ she says and she picks up the cup and I really, really hope she doesn’t take all the coins. But she tips the money into her hand, picks out the bigger ones and throws the copper coins back. I can relax now cos there are loads of coins left.

  ‘Don’t forget the batteries,’ I say.

  She nods. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Read,’ I lie, and she gives me a look.

  ‘Don’t even think of going anywhere, ye hear me? You go out there and I’ll lose ye and never be able to find ye,’ she says. ‘What’ll I do if I find out you’ve gone out there?’

  ‘You’ll knock me sideways,’ I say.

  ‘Bloody sure!’ she says.

  I don’t say anything to her as we pass through the empty basement cos I’m dying for her to leave now, but it’s pretty dark in here and Ma trips over my bike and she almost falls but stops herself just in time.

  ‘I told ye not to leave that thing lying around. I’ll break my bleeding neck one of these days!’

  ‘Sorry, Ma!’ I say and I pick it up and wheel it to a wall and follow her to the door.

  She’s still rubbing her shin. ‘Jaysus, that hurts,’ she says. She bends down and kisses me. ‘I’ll be back soon, promise. Don’t forget to lock this door,’ she says, like always.

  She goes out onto the street and I take the key off the hook by the door and lock it from the inside. Then I run through the basement to the side where Caretaker lives. I creep up to the window, climb up on the ledge and peek out. I can’t see Caretaker cos he’s hidden by a pile of blankets. But after a minute I see Ma’s feet arrive above him.

  ‘Heya,’ I hear Ma say to Caretaker.

  ‘Howaye,’ he says in a voice like a truck reversing over gravel.

  ‘I’m heading out. Need anything?’

  ‘Nope. Took a stroll around earlier, I did. All sorted. But thank you kindly,’ he says.

  Then the traffic picks up and I can’t hear what Ma says. I try to listen real hard, cos I want to know if they’re going to talk about the Authorities turning up outside the Castle. But the only thing I hear is Caretaker saying stuff like ‘planning permission’ and ‘Silicon Docks’ and ‘starting in January’, which is real boring and doesn’t have anything to do with me.

  I get up and run to the backyard. I have more important things to do than snoop on boring conversations.

  A TRAIL OF BREADCRUMBS

  I’m back in the basement but this time my pockets jingle with change. It’s damp in here and my arms go all goosebumpy. Even though it’s sunny outside, in the shade it’s cold. Tomorrow is October. In a few weeks it’ll be winter and this place will be like a fridge.

  There’s not a lot in here from the old days – just six arches that run across the room from one side to the other and loads of pipes on the ceiling.

  Most of my stuff is in the basement, like my bike and my rollerblades. I even made a basketball net by cutting a hole out of a bucket and tying it to the ceiling. This is the best room for practising basketball cos it has a concrete floor. But I don’t want to practise right now.

  I crouch behind the pillar of the middle arch and listen. Outside, the city is moving and growing, but in here there’s no sound. I watch the shafts of light in the air. The dust just hangs there not moving, not even a little bit.

  Ma says bottles and plastic bags and clothes and tree branches float down the canal cos they’re lighter than water, and I wonder if that means dust is the same weight as air if it floats in it, cos if it was lighter than air, it would float to the ceiling and if it was heavier, it would be on the floor. But then that doesn’t make sense cos there’s loads of dust on the floor too – I can see our footprints in it.

  But I remember why I’m here and I take a coin from my pocket and put it right in the middle of one of the fingers of light on the floor.

  Then I go to the next space between the arches and do the same. And the next. And then I run back towards the stairs and the kitchen, dropping coins between the last two arches till there are five coins on the ground in total.

  Now I need to do the same on the next floor, so I run up the stairs. I ignore our bedroom and go straight into the big room on the left.

  This floor is different. It has arches too, but the pillars aren’t so wide. And there’s old machines that are real rusted and lying on their sides like they’ve been stabbed and keeled over and died. There are loads of pipes up here as well. Much more than in the basement. They run higgledy-piggledy all over the ceiling and down the walls.

  I leg it around the room putting coins on top of the dead machinery. Five in total.

  Then it’s up to the next floor where the classroom is. But I don’t go into it. I just close the door and go back across the stairway into the big room on this floor.

  I like the third floor. There are weird-looking tubes in it. Some are fat and reach from the floor up to the ceiling. Others are like mouths with lids, and you can open them and stick your head in and make noises that flow down to the next floor and roll through it and climb the stairs and echo back through this room again.

  I put a coin on each lid and then run back to the stairs and up to the fourth floor, where the boards are all rotted and if you fall through, you’ll break your neck. But I know which boards creak and which ones are broken and which ones are strong.

  I stay close to the wall. In the middle of the room there’s a pipe sticking right up in the air, like the picture of a periscope on a submarine that I saw in a book. Hardly any of the windows are boarded up in here and there are a thousand little suns like spiders’ eyes reflecting off the pipes.

  I have to crawl across a pipe cos the ground beneath it is rotted. When I get to the periscope, I climb down and crouch on the floor. I put one ear to the open pipe and cover my other ear, and the world goes all fuzzy, like when I’m standing on the roof in the wind.

  I listen. After a while my neck starts to cramp cos I’m leaning over, and my legs start to hurt, but I don’t move an inch. I just squeeze my eyes closed and concentrate real hard. But after ages I still don’t hear anything.

  I open my eyes. I don’t move. The thousand suns are gone. I look outside. ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight,’ I whisper and it’s so still that I imagine the words are just drifting in the air with the dust.

  Then I hear the sound. It’s like when you’re turning a page but it’s stuck to the next one and you lick your fingers and rub the pages and eventually they come apart.

  I lift my head and stare at the mouth of the pipe. I hear it again, the weird shuffling sound, and I put my ear tight against the periscope and cover my other ear and listen real hard.

  Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.

  It’s coming from one of the floors below. It sounds like a dead person dragging its mangled body across the ground.

  Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.

  Then silence. There’s nothing. I sit up.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  That sound’s not coming from the pipe. It’s coming from the stairs. Something is climbing the stairs!

  Thump, thump, thump.

  It’s getting closer. I don’t know what to do. The door is ages away, I’ll never make it out of here in time.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  I can hear a jingling noise too. It must be the coins. I make a little scared sound, which is real stupid.

  It stops.
There’s no more thumping. I wait. I put my ear back to the pipe and I hear more shuffling. It’s on one of the other floors.

  Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.

  I want to run. I want to go up onto the roof. But I can’t. I have to stay and listen. Cos this is my home and I’m never leaving here. So I have to find out.

  It’s moving around. I hear it. Starting and stopping and starting again. A hundred times I think I’m going to run away but a hundred times I decide to stay and listen.

  Then it stops. I lift my head. Try to hear if the shuffle, shuffle, shuffle turns into thump, thump, thump. I hold my breath. Nothing happens.

  Ages and ages passes. Maybe it’s gone? I wait longer.

  The sky’s not orange any more and the room’s bluey-grey and the pipes melt into the ceiling. I still don’t hear anything. I think it’s gone.

  I crawl over the pipe and step onto the floor by the wall. I creep real slow over the boards, cos I can’t see which are broken now that it’s dark. I get to the door and look down the stairs and listen. Only the sounds of the city outside, clanking and humming and beeping.

  I go down. Step by step. Real soft. My heart’s going mental – thump, thump, thump – hammering in my ears. At the third floor, I crouch down and wait. But I don’t hear anything else.

  I take a massive breath and I run downstairs to our bedroom. I nearly trip on Ma’s clothes on the floor cos I can’t hardly see. I grab my torch. No batteries. I fling all Ma’s clothes off the bed till I find her torch by her pillow. I click it on and the beam blinds me. I hold the light against my stomach and run on my tippy-toes back up the stairs and onto the third floor.

  It’s quiet. I take a deep breath and I swing the torch around. I can see the lids of the tubes and the floorboards and a broken pipe. I shine it over the whole room. Stop on one of the lids.

  There’s no coin.

  My legs are shaky but I have to look. I force myself to walk through the room.

  It’s the same at every lid. No coin.

  I creep back down to the next floor. I go from fallen machine to fallen machine but no matter where I look, the coins are gone, gone, gone.