‘Whoooooo . . .’ I say through the gap in the window and I make my voice all breezy so that I sound like a ghost. ‘I am the ghost of the mill. I bring you soap.’ I drop the bar of soap onto the outside window ledge and then whip my head back in and crouch beneath the boards.
After a while I lift myself up high enough to see. The soap is still there.
‘Whoooooo . . .’ I say. ‘You must waaaaaash.’
I duck down again and wait. But when I get up, the bar is still there. So this time I drop the slice of chocolate cake on the windowsill beside the bar of soap and I hide and wait a while and when I finally take a peek, the soap is still there but the cake is gone and there are crumbs all over the blankets.
I climb through the gap in the window and I take the blanket and the peg and the other slice of cake with me. I jump down and sit close to Caretaker, but not too close, and I pinch the peg on my nose and I say in my normal voice, ‘I brought you a blanket.’ Except that it’s not my normal voice, it sounds all funny cos of the peg. ‘Ma washed it,’ I say, and I say ‘washed’ slowly so he might get the point.
A hand appears from the blankets. The fingernails are almost as long as Ma’s but they’re all black with dirt. The hand pushes back the blankets and now I can see a bird’s nest. But I know it’s not, it just looks like the swallows’ nest that’s above the window on the sixth floor. It’s really Caretaker’s beard. He throws back a few more blankets and sits up.
Caretaker is wearing sunglasses with one lens, and he squints at me with his free eye. He’s only wearing one hat today. It’s brown and has a wide rim, like a jungle explorer’s hat. I wonder if it belonged to the same explorer who owned my new binoculars.
He takes the blanket I brought like it’s a handful of eggs and strokes the material and says, ‘Not a thing wrong with that. Not a thing.’ He puts it on top of a stack of blankets that’s so high it wobbles and nearly tips over.
‘I think Ma got it from a Do-gooder the other day,’ I say. ‘Or maybe from the skip.’
Feet pass by on the street above us. Caretaker’s books are all lined up on the pavement. People can buy books from him or swap their own with one of Caretaker’s for a few coins.
‘It’s my birthday,’ I say, to point out the fact that it’s him that should be bringing me presents, and not the other way round.
‘Is it now?’ he says.
‘Ma got me a present.’
He lifts an eyebrow and I hold up the binoculars, which are hanging around my neck.
He nods. ‘Good present. Practical.’
‘I agree,’ I say, though I don’t actually know what ‘practical’ means. Maybe it means you need to practise to be able to use it properly. Like a basketball.
A woman stops on the pavement and bends over and looks at the books.
‘When’s your birthday?’ I ask.
‘I dunno,’ he says.
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ I ask. ‘Everyone knows their own birthday, don’t they?’
‘I forgot mine,’ he says.
The woman on the street chooses a book, drops a coin into his cup, and moves on. Caretaker cranes his head up. I think he’s trying to see which book she took. ‘Business is booming,’ he says, like it’s a bad thing. ‘They only choose the rubbish, mind. Ulysses has been there for years.’ Then he leans back and pulls a blanket around him. He must be roasting under there.
He takes out a tin of sardines and pulls it open.
‘How could you forget your own birthday?’ I ask.
He scrunches up his nose like he can smell himself. ‘Cos it’s not important,’ he says, and he shoves some fish in his mouth and oil drips off his fingers onto the blankets.
‘Yes, it is!’
‘Why?’ he asks with his mouth full.
‘Cos . . . !’
I don’t know what else to say. It’s not something I ever thought needed explaining before. ‘It’s yours and no one else’s!’ I say in the end.
Caretaker just shakes his head and swallows. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he says. He wipes his lips with his sleeve and I stay quiet, cos Caretaker is weird and I don’t know how to explain to him that it does matter.
Then he says, ‘When’s your death day?’
And that doesn’t make any sense. ‘How can I know that?’ I ask and he shrugs.
Then he looks straight at me with his one eye. ‘But seems like a more important question, don’t you think? Birthday, bleugh!’ He flicks his greasy fingers at me. ‘But today and your death day and the time in between. Now –’ And he points a dirty finger at me – ‘that’s worth thinking about.’
He stares at me for ages, as if he wants me to agree. Sometimes I wonder if he’s away with the fairies.
He wipes his fingers on the blankets and reaches up and grabs a book and opens it. I look at my slice of cake but I don’t want it. I hand it to him and he takes it without looking at me and shoves it in his mouth. Sardines and cake. Gross.
The peg hurts my nose and I take it off. But then the smell hits me. It’s like the juice in the bottom of the bin when you take out a full bag and you realize that the bag has ripped and the bottom of the bin is full of liquid that’s leaked out.
‘Phew, you really smell!’ I say.
Caretaker ignores me.
‘Why don’t you wash?’ I ask.
‘Don’t like getting wet,’ he says.
‘But you smell like a bin,’ I say.
He looks down at himself and sniffs the air a few times. ‘I can’t smell anything,’ he says.
‘But I can!’
He lowers the book and looks at me. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that would seem to me to be distinctly your problem.’ And then he lifts the book again.
I’m about to say something about it being the world’s problem at this stage, but I stop. Instead I say, ‘Caretaker? You believe in ghosts?’
He looks at me and his face is flat. He says, ‘You believe in memories?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘of course. But that’s not the same thing.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No,’ I say, and I’m pretty sure I’m right so I go on. ‘It’s not the same. I’m talking about actual ghosts.’
‘Ghosts can’t exist without people. Without people and their pasts and their memories.’
But he’s just waffling now so I try to make my face go like Ma’s egg-sucking face to show him that I’m not impressed.
Caretaker sighs, like he’s tired of having to talk to idiots, and he says, ‘Seems there’s more ghosts than people in this city.’
I think that means he does believe in ghosts. ‘Are they good or bad?’
‘Are people good or bad?’ he asks.
I shrug. ‘Both.’
‘’Zactly,’ he says, and he starts reading again.
I’m playing with the peg and one side of it pops out of the metal spring. ‘I think the mill is haunted by a ghost that drags its mangled body around,’ I say. I’m trying to stretch the metal bits apart so I can slide the plastic arm of the peg back in. But it breaks and the metal spring flies away onto Caretaker’s blanket.
He’s staring at me with the weirdest look on his face.
‘What?’ I say. I think I just scared him. ‘I don’t mean it! I haven’t seen it. Anyway, Ma says I’m just making it up and she’s right, I probably am. She says I’ve got an overactive imagination.’
He keeps looking at me.
‘Don’t be scared, Caretaker,’ I say.
‘No. I’m not scared,’ he says.
That’s when I realize. His weird look. It’s not cos he’s scared.
He’s sad.
His eye has gone all big and deep. Like Ma’s.
‘Sorry,’ I say but that doesn’t help.
I still want to know if he knows anything about the coins, though, so I ask, ‘Have you ever seen anything weird going on here? Not ghosts but just, I dunno, weird stuff?’
He’s not saying anything. His mouth is ha
nging open. He stays quiet for real long. I stand up but he doesn’t notice.
‘Caretaker?’
He says nothing.
Great. I’ve made Caretaker sad. And I’ve stressed out Ma.
I think of her sitting on the couch looking like she’d been punched. And then I think of her lying in a doorway somewhere with dead eyes, and then I don’t want to think about it any more.
I want her to come home. I’m going to the roof to look for her.
STANDING GUARD
I’m passing the second floor, the one with the dead machines. There’s a noise. A scuffling sound. My eyes dart over the room. I see something. Beside one of the machines. On the floor. It’s white and grey. It’s moving.
I step forwards into the room. There’s another shuffling sound. I stop. It’s quiet. I take another step.
Something comes flying out at me, like the witch coming flying round the altar! I scream. It’s coming for my face!
Then it drops down. And shivers. And settles its feathers.
It’s just a pigeon.
‘You’d swear it was the first time I’ve seen a bleeding pigeon,’ I say.
It flies again and then lands fatly on a fallen machine. It looks at me with its dumb eyes.
‘What?’ I say, but it just sits there and coos.
Pigeons are real stupid. Seagulls are smarter. They know how to grab a piece of bread straight out of your hand and fly away before you can chuck a stone at them. But pigeons sit around asking to be kicked. I seen the boys in the wetsuits do it.
I walk up to the pigeon and he’s still cooing away, so I shoo him with my hand and he flies over to the empty window, the one that fell in during the storm last year. I get real close and start flapping my arms like mad and he still doesn’t move, so I run straight at him and finally he cops on and flies out.
‘Stupid pigeon.’
Maybe Ma was right. Maybe the sound was just a pigeon.
There are two girls walking over the bridge. They’re around my age. They’re in school uniforms with white shirts and grey skirts. Why do school uniforms always look so boring? Why can’t the skirts be pink or have stripes or dots or something?
Both of the girls have real long hair, like Rapunzel, and it looks like they’ve got ribbons in their plaits. One has a pink ribbon and one has a blue ribbon. The plaits hang almost all the way down to their waists.
The girls are walking towards a group of boys in wetsuits that are standing by the railing of the bridge. They must know them, cos one of the boys is shouting at them and the girls have stopped talking to each other and are looking at the boys. The boy who was shouting comes close. He’s real tall. He grabs the one with the pink plait and shoves her towards the railing and she’s screaming, I can hear her from here. I think he’s trying to throw her into the water.
The other girl is shouting at the boys but they’re all just laughing and Pink Plait is halfway over the railing now and she’s hitting the tall boy’s head, but I don’t think he cares cos he’s laughing like mad.
But now Blue Plait is holding something over the railings. I think it’s a bag. Maybe it belongs to the tall boy, cos he’s stopped laughing and he’s staring at Blue Plait and she’s staring back at him and shaking the bag over the water. After a minute he lets go of Pink Plait and she goes running back to her friend.
Now the girls are walking together straight through the group of boys. The boys are pretending to grab the girls, but Blue Plait is still holding the bag over the water so the boys don’t actually try to throw the girls into the canal again – they’re just messing. When they get past the boys, Blue Plait throws the bag back and then grabs the other girl’s hand and they run away.
But when they get to the other side of the bridge, they stop and they turn and they both give the finger to the group of boys, and now it’s the girls who are laughing and I laugh too.
I look down at my hair. It’s loose and messy. I can’t remember the last time I brushed it. I never plait it. And I don’t have any ribbons.
Ma still isn’t home.
I see Red Coat. With the binoculars, I can see her face much better. She’s real nice-looking. I nearly missed her cos she’s on her own. He’s not with her. She’s one of loads of people moving over the bridge. I follow her till I can’t see her any more. Then I keep on looking, till all the people are gone and the streets are quiet.
Ma still isn’t home.
On the canal there are lots of boats and people live on them. I think it’d be cool to live on a boat cos you’ve got water all around you, like a castle with a moat. The boats even have planks of wood that you have to walk over to get on and off, and they’re like drawbridges cos you can lift them up and float away and no one can get onto your boat. So you’d be safe.
There’s one boat that’s green with a red line painted around it. I can see through the windows with the binoculars. There’s a woman. She’s almost naked except she’s got trousers on and she’s holding a baby to her chest. I think she’s trying to feed it but the baby’s going mental crying. Its face is all red and scrunched up. I bet it’s roaring so loud that people walking along the bank can hear it.
Actually I think the woman is crying too. She keeps trying to feed the baby but it’s kicking its legs and shaking its head so I don’t think it’s hungry. Maybe it’s angry cos its ma’s tears are dripping on its head.
Some swans float past the boat. There’s a ma and dad swan, and three babies. There used to be five. But the seagulls swooped down and grabbed the other two when they were still real small. I seen them do it. The three babies that are left are bigger now, though, even bigger than the seagulls. So I don’t think the seagulls could take them.
It must be real hard for the ma and dad to watch their babies being taken and not be able to do anything to stop it. They must hate seagulls.
I point the binoculars above the boat, real high, right to the top of an apartment building, and I can see a woman and a man through a window that takes up the whole wall.
They’re in the kitchen, at least I think it’s the kitchen cos there are pots and pans hanging from a silver bar on the wall, but there’s no bucket for washing. They do have a tap, though. It’s inside, not outside on the wall.
The kitchen’s all white and gleaming and looks real nice. But she doesn’t look nice, she looks mean. She’s pretty – even prettier than Ma – and her clothes look dead posh, like it’s the first time they’ve ever been worn. But she’s real skinny. If I had money, there’s no way I’d be that skinny. I’d eat curry chips and a battered sausage for lunch and dinner every day.
Her face is as red as the baby on the boat. She looks like she’s shouting at the man. He’s standing on the other side of this table that’s real high, and the chairs around it are real high too, and I think it’s made of white stone, though I don’t know if stone can be white.
He has one hand on his hip and he’s stabbing the air with the other hand. And now she picks up a funny-shaped glass and throws it right at a clock and it smashes and red wine spreads down the wall like blood and he’s marching away out the front door and I imagine I can hear the door slam.
The skinny woman storms out of the room and into another. There’s a kid in there. She’s real young, around four or something. Her room is white. The wardrobe and the rugs and the bed are all pure white. But the kid’s got a red crayon and she’s drawing right in the middle of a big white wall. I don’t know what she’s drawing. Maybe it’s a bear or something. It’s not very good. But I agree with the kid, it’s better than white. I don’t think the ma agrees, though, cos she’s shouting and the kid drops the crayon and shoves its hand in its mouth. The ma grabs the crayon off the ground and throws it back into a box. Then she takes a remote off a white table and she clicks on this huge TV and picks up the kid and drops her down in front of it. She’s still shouting at her when she marches back out of the room.
I follow her through the sitting room into the kitchen. She gets to
this tall silver bin and dumps the box of crayons inside.
These binoculars are great.
I lower them and it takes me a second to recognize Ma. She’s coming over the bridge. I try to look at her face but she keeps bumping around. So instead I run over the roof and down the ladder and across the sky-bridge and through the mill. I hear her knock just as I get to the basement.
I unlock the door. ‘Hey Ma,’ I say.
She’s been leaning on the door and stumbles as I open it. She laughs. ‘Heya, love,’ she says, and bends down and kisses me. And that’s when it hits me. Her sour breath.
The bag of spiders in my stomach explodes. They crawl out, hundreds of them, and they swarm through my veins and up my neck and into my brain.
‘Ma?’ I step back.
She’s still bending over me, wobbling. ‘You didn’t go out, did ye?’
I shake my head.
‘And I came back, didn’t I?’ she says. ‘Just like I said I would.’ She stands up straight. ‘I’ll never leave you. Never, never, never,’ she says. But she’s not looking at me. She’s looking into the shadows.
‘Ma?’
I can’t believe she’s drunk. She promised.
‘I promised,’ she says like she can hear me thinking. But then she says, ‘Promised I’d come back.’
She pushes past me and I watch her go into the kitchen.
I thought Ma had changed. I thought she was better.
A FREE RIDE
The morning after Monkey Man broke our tent, the Authorities arrived. Back then I didn’t know about them. I knew about cops and stuff, I just didn’t know I was supposed to be scared of them.
At first, when I heard them outside the tent, I thought they were the men from the night before.
‘Hello? Anyone in there?’
I gave Ma a dig but she just groaned. Then the zip on the tent started opening so I kicked Ma. She said, ‘What?’ like she was real annoyed with me for waking her up.
But the Authorities had heard too and they said, ‘Come on out here.’
The Girl in Between Page 6