Ma woke up properly then. She sat up and yelled, ‘Hold on a sec!’ Then she gave me her egg-sucking face and said, ‘It’s the coppers. Not a word out of you.’
She threw off her sleeping bag and crawled over to the zip and stuck her head out. ‘Morning,’ she said.
I could see two sets of legs outside. Both wearing navy trousers. One was crouching down and he was wearing a neon yellow jacket. He used a stick or something to hold back the zipper so he could see past Ma. He saw me, and he nodded and then he stood up.
Ma crawled out and she stood up too.
‘Bit of a party here last night?’ one of the coppers asked.
‘Was there?’ Ma said. ‘Oh yeah, think there were some lads messing around here last night. They’re gone now, though.’
‘Is that right?’ one of the coppers said. ‘Living here, are you?’
I saw Ma move from one leg to the other. ‘Ah no. Just camped here last night,’ which was a lie. We’d been there for weeks.
No one said anything for a while. I heard Ma sniffing and one of the policemen walking around, kicking cans. Finally the one beside Ma said, ‘How long have you been living here?’
‘We’re not living here. Just the one night, that’s all.’ Ma sniffed again and shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘Went for a swim and camped last night. She’s mad for the camping, so she is, and the weather was good so we stayed. Bit of an adventure, ye know?’
‘Right,’ he said but you could tell he didn’t believe her. ‘So where are you living, if it’s not here?’ I heard the other one kick a can again. And that’s when Ma gave them Gran’s address.
‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘Sure I’ll give you a lift back there, then.’
‘Ah, no need. We’ll walk,’ Ma said. ‘It’s a nice morning. Might take a swim first.’
The coppers were quiet for a while. I heard them shuffle around. Ma walked away from the tent too and they talked, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Then she was back and one of the coppers said, ‘Right. Well, I don’t want to see you back here tonight, all right?’
‘Yeah, ’course,’ Ma said.
When they were gone, Ma stuck her head back inside and said, ‘Time to go.’
We packed up her rucksack but we left the empty cans and water bottles and broken tent where they were and started walking back to the road.
I kept asking Ma if we really were going back to Gran’s. She wouldn’t answer. But then we got on a bus that crossed the whole city. I didn’t know where we were going. But I knew it was nowhere near Gran’s.
So I stopped asking.
PART TWO
THE DIRTY SPY
It’s been over three weeks since Ma started drinking again. We are running out of gas and it’s real expensive. But she’s spent everything. Right now I’m making tea with whatever is left in the gas bottle and trying not to bang the pots too much.
‘Jaysus, me head,’ Ma says and she pushes an ashtray that’s full of cigarette butts over to the other side of the table. She sits down and shoves her face into her hands.
I wait till the pot is spluttering, then I turn off the heat and put in three teabags and cover it with a lid that’s much too big. I put it on the table.
Ma only drinks tea that’s real black. She says it should be so strong that a spoon could stand up straight in it. But I tried that before and it doesn’t work. Even with a whole box of teabags in the pot. And then Ma went mad at me for wasting perfectly good tea.
I pick up a long red piece of material. I tore it off one of my old T-shirts. Ma went mad at me for wrecking a perfectly good T-shirt too, but it was dead old anyway. I wrap it around my head and tie it at the back, but I leave one part real long. Then I split my hair into three parts and plait the red material into my hair. The bottom of the plait doesn’t reach my waist like the schoolgirls’ hair did. I wouldn’t make a very good Rapunzel. But it goes halfway down my back, which is pretty good.
I look at Ma but she’s still got her head down. I don’t think the tea is black enough for her yet. There are empty cans of beer all over the kitchen. She must have been up all night.
I go around picking the cans up and putting them in a plastic bag. I see the begging cup that’s sitting in the corner on the ground and I look into it. It’s empty and I’m worried. I haven’t been able to get my hands on any coins for the last few weeks cos Ma keeps spending everything. Yesterday was the first time I managed to nick some without Ma noticing.
‘We need gas, Ma,’ I say.
She doesn’t answer.
‘And batteries for the torches and the lights.’
Still nothing.
‘Ma,’ I say.
‘I know, I heard ye.’
I open the door and chuck the bag of cans outside and close it quickly again cos it’s freezing out there, even though it’s only the end of October. I sit down at the table with Ma and pour the tea and add the last of the milk. I haven’t had hot food in ages but I don’t say it to Ma cos that’ll just give her an excuse to go out again, and she’ll forget to get me food anyway and she’ll spend the money on drink. I don’t need a battered sausage and chips that much.
‘I finished all those sums,’ I tell her.
She lifts her head and opens her eyes a tiny bit and from the way she’s squinting, you’d swear there were a hundred trucks blaring their horns in our kitchen. She lifts her cup but spills a bit cos her hands are shaking. She takes a sip. ‘Jaysus,’ she says. Then she says, ‘What?’
‘Maths,’ I say. ‘You left me homework yesterday.’
Actually it wasn’t yesterday, it was two days ago. She was drinking all day yesterday so I had to teach myself and I never choose maths if I don’t have to. Instead I chose art.
I’m drawing on the walls of the basement. The whole room. Pictures of trees with eyes that follow you, and mountains and a drawbridge and a moat. Everything you’d see out of the windows of a castle. I don’t have any colours, but I’ve loads and loads of black paint and old brushes that we found in the skip.
‘Will you go through them?’ I ask. She squints at me. She’s already forgotten what we’re talking about. ‘My homework, the sums – will you correct them today?’
Maybe she won’t drink today. Maybe she’ll come to the classroom and teach me.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘In a bit.’ She takes another sip of tea. Then she puts her head in her hands and groans again.
‘Hungover?’ I ask, real sarcastic.
‘A little. But it was only cans,’ she says, and what she means is that drinking cans is hardly drinking at all so I should stop nagging her. In a way, I know she’s right. I shouldn’t stress her out cos it could be worse. A lot worse.
But it could be better too.
There’s steam coming off my tea. I lift the cup to my mouth and I make a hole with my lips that’s the size of a pea and I suck tea in through it and it makes a slurping sound.
‘Don’t,’ Ma says.
I spit the tea back into the cup. I lick my teeth and remember that I forgot to brush them cos they feel all furry. Ma looks up at me like she’s surprised I’m still here. ‘Go on upstairs and read your history book,’ she says. ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’ She drops her head again.
I take another mouthful of tea and swirl it around. I look at the top of Ma’s head. Her hair’s greasy and her parting’s all wobbly. She needs a wash.
I spit the tea out again but Ma doesn’t say anything. ‘Coming up?’ I ask.
‘Yeah.’
‘Promise?’
She looks at me. ‘I said yeah. Now go on, move it!’
I leave my tea. I don’t want it anyway. I head upstairs. But even before I’ve gotten to the classroom, before I’ve even reached the first floor, I hear the k-tiss of a can being opened and I know Ma’s drinking again.
Ma comes into the classroom a while later. She stinks of beer and cigarettes. But when I turn to look at her, her eyes seem clear enough. For now.
‘What’s that?’ she asks, and nods her head at my copybook.
‘It’s a drawing of a praying mantis.’ I point at the picture of the insect in the book.
‘A what?’
‘A praying mantis. It’s an insect found in warm countries. He gets his name cos he has real long legs that he holds out in front of him and it looks like he’s praying, and he’s a carnivore, which means he eats other insects.’ I say all that without even looking at the book cos I just remember it all. Then I point to the pictures on the wall. There are loads of praying mantises stuck up there now. The holes in the plaster on the walls don’t look like chickenpox any more cos instead it looks like the praying mantises have been eating it.
Ma lifts the book and turns it so she can see the cover and then she says, ‘What else have you learned?’
I tell her that pandas mostly eat leaves, and that camels have long eyelashes cos of the sandstorms, and that there are no penguins in the North Pole, only the South Pole. When I’m finished, Ma’s rubbing her forehead between her finger and thumb but she’s smiling a little bit too.
‘You’re some woman for one woman, missus,’ she says, and she puts her hand on the back of my neck and it’s freezing but I don’t flinch or pull away. She rests her chin on my head and says nothing for a while. I tilt my head back and she leans forwards till our foreheads are touching, upside down. Then she stands straight and she claps her hands together and says, ‘Right, show us them sums.’
I lift up my book and bury my face in it, cos I don’t want her to see that I’m smiling.
Ma sits with me for three full hours before she goes out, and I make her promise she’ll be home early and that she’ll bring me a bag of chips and a battered sausage, and she says she will, that she’s only going out begging for money for gas.
The mill’s real quiet now. I stand up and leave my books on the table and go downstairs to the basement. In the corner beneath the stairs is a loose stone. I jerk it from side to side till it comes out and behind it is a cardboard coffee cup that’s torn around the edges. I put it in here yesterday when I finally managed to nick some coins from Ma. I slide it out and look inside. A few euro coins and some coppers. I leave the euros behind and just take the coppers, cos we need the money and if there is a ghost, I don’t think it cares what coins I use.
I put down coins on the first three floors, just like I did the other time. But I don’t go up to the periscope on the fourth floor to listen. This time I take a few deep breaths and I force myself to go back onto the second floor and I crouch behind the first of the dead machines, the one closest to the door.
I wait for ages and ages but nothing happens, I’m just getting cold. I stay where I am for ages more. Nothing moves. I don’t see anything and I don’t hear anything. All the coins are where I left them. All five of them. Maybe it only works when I’m not here. Or maybe it doesn’t work any more.
I can hear a crane clattering outside but nothing else. No ghost shuffling around or anything. ‘Of course there’s no bleeding ghost shuffling around,’ I say. ‘Cos there’s no bleeding ghost.’
I don’t know how I feel. I think I’m relieved. I need to pee but I don’t want to go downstairs. I stand up and look around. The dust moves a little in the breeze that’s coming in through the gaps but that’s all. I’m bored and stiff.
I go to the end of the room where there are plastic bowling pins all over the place. Ma got them from a charity shop too. I collect them up and stand them in a triangle and then I look for the foam ball, which I can’t find at first but eventually see all the way back by the door.
The trick is to roll the ball to the right a bit, cos there’s a slant in the floor, but I roll it too far to the right and I completely miss the pins. The next time is better – I hit three. But it’s not very good. One time I got five strikes in a row. Ma’s only ever gotten one.
I fix the three pins and turn to walk back.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.
It can’t be.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.
It’s here. It’s back again.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.
I don’t believe it. This can’t be happening.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.
Thump, thump, thump.
It’s climbing the stairs. It’s real.
Thump, thump, thump.
I should run. It’s going to grab me and kill me and there’s no one here to help. What am I doing in here?
Thump, thump, thump.
There’s nowhere to go. I’m trapped.
It’s finished climbing. It’s outside the bedroom. I see a shoe!
I turn. Sprint across the room. But there’s no time. I reach the fourth pillar, run behind it and dive to the ground. My face is in the dirt. I’m breathing it in. I’m going to cough. I put my hand over my mouth.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.
It’s coming for me! I can’t look.
There’s a tinkling sound and a jingling sound and then . . . Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
There’s a bang from the building site outside. Life’s still going on like normal out there, like there isn’t a ghost dragging its mangled body through the room.
I let out a tiny sound. It’s heard me now.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stop.
It’s in front of me. It’s at the machine, I know it is. I lift my arm a tiny bit. I open one eye. Through the dust I can see the machine. There’s something moving out from behind it. Moving towards me. It has massive black feet and feathers dragging off the ground and hair all over and it’s groaning a little and it’s going to grab me and eat me and—
‘Caretaker!’ I yell.
I can’t believe it! It’s Caretaker! Of course it is, he reeks – I can smell bin juice from here! I’m up on my feet and I try to run out from behind the pillar but my legs are too wobbly. I hug it instead.
Caretaker lifts the coin off the machine, holds it up to the light and turns it over a few times. Then he drops it in his pocket where it jingles. Finally he looks at me. It’s like this is the first time he’s noticed me. And he doesn’t care that I’m standing right here watching him nick my coins. He looks at me and then turns and he starts shuffling again!
I watch him move. His long coat is torn at the bottom and it’s dragging off the ground. It does look like feathers. It really does.
He gets to the last machine and he does the same thing. He picks up the coin and he looks at it and he puts it in his pocket.
Caretaker is the ghost and he’s nicking my coins! I burst out laughing. It explodes through the room. It bounces off the walls and soaks into the floors.
He turns round and shuffles towards me, then past me and right out of the room. I hear the thump, thump, thump as he climbs up to the next floor.
I wish Ma was here now so I could tell her that everything’s all right. There is no ghost. The Castle is safe!
Caretaker is shuffling through the room above me, I can hear him. I take a load of deep breaths and try to stop laughing. I walk out towards the stairs. Above me, Caretaker is doing the same – he’s walking towards the stairs. When I get to the hall and look up, though, I hear the thump, thump, thump of Caretaker climbing up, not down. The smell of him is still in the stairway.
What is he doing? He never comes in here, inside the mill! How did he even get in here? The door downstairs is locked, it’s always locked. And how did he know I’d put out the coins?
I wait and listen. I can’t believe Caretaker has been stealing my coins. Why didn’t he just ask me? I’d give him some. They’re only coppers anyway.
I hear him come back downstairs and I stand there as he passes me. He hardly even looks at me. He goes on down the stairs and I hear my coins jingling in his pockets, but then I see something else too. There’s a chain at his hip holding lots of keys. I run down the stairs behind him.
‘Caretaker!’
He doesn’t stop and he doesn
’t turn round, he just keeps walking through the basement.
‘Caretaker!’ I yell again, and then I run in front of him and I turn round and walk backwards so I’m facing him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Leaving,’ he says.
‘I know that. But, well, you took my coins!’
He nods and says, ‘Left them out for me.’
I’m about to say that I didn’t but then I stop. Does he really think I was leaving them out for him? ‘But how did you know? That they were there?’
‘Can see them,’ he says, and he nods towards the basement window.
I look at the window and picture Caretaker on his tippy-toes looking through the gap over the boards. The old spy! ‘But why didn’t you just ask me for them?’
But then he gives me this strange look. ‘She leaves them out for me.’
I feel a tingle run up my spine and I think of Ma saying, ‘Someone just walked over me grave’, and I think I know what she means. She means something weird is going on. ‘Who?’
Caretaker keeps walking towards me. ‘She does,’ he says, and he’s not talking about me.
Now I want to laugh again. I think he’s messing with me, cos he knew I thought there was a ghost. But I don’t laugh. Cos he’s serious. ‘Caretaker, there is no ghost. Why do you think there’s a ghost?’
But then I remember that I told him that the mill was haunted. ‘Oh no, Caretaker. There is no ghost. It was me. I left out the coins.’ I feel a bit bad cos it’s like I’ve tricked him. ‘I’m sorry, Caretaker.’
Caretaker smiles at me. He’s real close now so I stand to one side cos I’m not brave enough to stand in Caretaker’s way. When he gets to the door, he doesn’t look at me. He just says, ‘Long before your time, kiddo,’ and he chooses a key from the bunch at his hip and opens the door. The light blinds me. Caretaker shuffles down the steps and starts walking along the street.
‘Caretaker!’ I call, and I take a few steps but then the sunlight hits me. It’s so loud out here. There are people walking and cranes banging. The traffic is stuck cos of the lights at the end of the street. There’s a woman driving a car with a tiny kid in a chair in the back, and he looks at me.
The Girl in Between Page 7