The Girl in Between

by Sarah Carroll

  ‘Ma!’ I scream and I don’t care if I fall through the floorboards and break my neck. I run straight across the room, but I step on a rotted part and it breaks and my foot catches and I fall forwards. ‘Ma!’ I scream. I smack my elbows on the floor and my foot twists, but I’ve stopped falling and the board holds. I lift my foot out of the hole real careful and crawl across the dodgy boards to the wall. Then I stop and breathe real heavy. All I want to do is cry.

  My foot hurts so I have to limp to the door and when I get there, I hold the railing as I go downstairs.

  ‘Ma!’ I’m screaming but I can’t find her. She’s not in the bedroom and when I go into the kitchen, she’s not there neither. I open the back door but she is not in the backyard.

  I run into the basement even though my foot stings like mad. And that’s where I see her. She’s standing in the open doorway.

  ‘Ma! What did they want?’

  She stops and turns but I can’t really see her face. Her hands are shaking and traffic whizzes past behind her.

  ‘Ma,’ I say again. ‘What did they want?’

  She drops her head and starts biting the skin around her nails.

  I think about all the things they said. They said lots of things. But not about me. They talked about the Castle. Words like ‘development’ and ‘after Christmas’. And they were wearing plastic hats like the people on the building site across the road. ‘What were they doing?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘You said “they know”. Upstairs. That’s what you said. You said “they know”. What do they know, Ma?’

  ‘They know there is someone living here,’ she says through closed teeth.

  ‘You’re the one that brought them here!’ I say. ‘This was ours! It was safe. You promised, Ma! You promised you’d never bring them in here and you promised I’d never have to go back out there and you promised I wouldn’t be scared ever again!’

  Her head snaps up. ‘Stop it!’

  ‘This is all your fault!’ I say.

  She takes a few steps towards me and she clenches her fists. ‘Enough! There’s never an end to it, is there? You’ll never leave me be!’ she says.

  ‘I hate you!’

  The words spill out before I can stop them. And then I see it. The stress that’s been growing with every can she opened in the last few weeks.

  It’s like the octopus tentacles smothering the church. Pulling her down. She’s drowning.

  She breathes real deep like she’s trying to make herself calm and I know she’s counting to ten in her head. But even with her hands clenched they are still shaking like mad.

  Then she stumbles like she’s drunk. But I know she’s not drunk right now. She puts a hand out and she leans against the wall. She mumbles. Her shoulders are shaking now too. Her whole body.

  ‘Ma?’

  She stands straight and shoves her thumbs into her eyes like she’s trying to squeeze them dry. Then she wipes her face and leaves her hands there. ‘What am I going to do?’ she says from behind her hands but it’s real hard to understand her. ‘I can’t keep doing this. We’re out of time.’

  I don’t know what to say now. I hate her. But I don’t. And I don’t know how to stop this from happening. Any of it.

  Then Ma does something weird. She puts her face right up against the stone. It’s like she’s whispering to the building. ‘Enough! Time to move on,’ she says. She slaps the wall with an open hand. Then she turns and flops back against it. She looks at me. And there’s no anger left in her eyes. They’re empty.

  ‘I can’t. It’s too hard,’ she says.

  She’s crying. Ma’s crying. And she doesn’t even brush the tears away.

  ‘It’s all right, Ma,’ I say.

  ‘No. It’s not,’ she says. ‘Cos no matter what I do, I can’t stop it from happening.’

  I think she means that she can’t stop the Authorities from coming. But maybe she means she can’t stop herself from drowning.

  A tear drips off her chin and splashes on the floor. She reaches out her hand to me but then she stops, like she changed her mind.

  She’s drowning and I can’t save her.

  She turns her head and looks out at the traffic and the people. But I know what she’s really looking for. The same thing she always looks for when her eyes go that deep.

  ‘Please, Ma, don’t do it,’ I say.

  Ma takes a deep breath. She looks straight at me. Tries to smile. But she can’t. A tear rolls down her face and drains away her smile like a sandcastle washed away by waves.

  She sighs. She turns. She walks right out the door. And I’m standing and staring and my heart is tearing. ‘Ma!’

  But Ma doesn’t hear me any more. She doesn’t care.

  I know where she’s going. To knock on the black rusted gate with the evil smiley face.

  And I can’t stop her.

  A CARDBOARD CASTLE

  The morning after we left Monkey Man’s house and slept by the river, we started walking again. I kept asking Ma where we were going and if we were going to find a castle. She said castles weren’t easy to find and that it might take a few days.

  Ma’s hands were shaking but her eyes were as clear as the air that morning, so I wasn’t worried.

  We walked for hours and hours searching for a castle. We must have looked weird, with Ma carrying her rucksack and me still in my pyjama bottoms, cos that was the first time I noticed the way some people can look everywhere except at you.

  Like this one woman walking with her kid. I saw her notice us from down the street, cos she grabbed her kid’s hand and dragged him to the other side of the path. When they got close, the kid stared at me. But the ma looked straight ahead. Then the kid said, ‘Mummy, why is that girl wearing pyjamas?’ But the ma didn’t answer. Instead she walked faster till they were past us. And the whole time her eyes looked straight ahead.

  That’s the thing. People can see you coming from a mile off. You’re only invisible up close.

  We got to this crossroads that had a sign for the zoo on one side and the train station on the other and loads of traffic zooming past. Ma turned towards the train station.

  At the entrance to the station there was a coffee shop, and Ma went straight up to the counter and took a load of napkins and turned and walked out. Then we went into the ladies’ jacks. There were people queueing but Ma went straight to the sinks and filled one with water. She took off her T-shirt and started washing everywhere, even under her arms.

  ‘Ma,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s staring.’

  There was this woman that was wearing a posh black-and-white skirt and matching jacket. She was watching Ma with this look on her face like she’d just drunk sour milk.

  ‘What are ye gawping at?’ Ma said and the woman looked away.

  Ma dried herself with the napkins and chucked them in the bin. Then she took out her hairbrush and brushed her hair. Then it was my turn.

  I changed into real clothes. Then Ma wet a napkin and rubbed my face so hard it hurt. ‘Ow, Ma!’

  ‘Don’t be such a whinge,’ she said, but she was laughing.

  This other woman came in to the jacks and when she saw me, she shook her head. ‘What are you looking at?’ I said, and the woman tutted. Ma winked at me.

  I brushed my teeth and then Ma said, ‘Do you need to use the jacks?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right,’ Ma said, and when the toilet door opened, she shoved me in front of the tutting woman. ‘Sorry,’ Ma said. ‘We were here first.’

  When I got out, the woman was gone. But then a minute later the security guard came in. ‘Sorry, yis can’t be in here,’ he said.

  ‘Neither can you, it’s the ladies’ jacks,’ Ma said. ‘We’re leaving anyway.’

  When we left the train station we went back to the signposts. Behind us was a pub and across the road was the archway that you go under to get into the park, the big one that has the fields and the trees in it. The zoo is just up the road.


  ‘Wait here,’ Ma said and she went in under the archway. When she came back a while later, she didn’t have the rucksack. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Where’s the rucksack?’ I said.

  ‘I stashed it. Come on.’

  She grabbed my hand and we went into the pub. We sat down at a table that was right beside the door. When the woman came over, Ma said, ‘Give us a menu.’ But a second later, she said, ‘Please.’

  We ordered the best food ever. Loads of egg mayo and ham sandwiches, and soup and Coke. For dessert I had a massive slice of chocolate cake with the icing all melted and gooey. Ma ordered the same but she only ate the soup. She had a few pints as well, though.

  When we finished, Ma said, ‘Go across the road, under the archway and to the left. Wait for me there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  I did. I waited ages. So long that I was about to go back for Ma when she came flying around the archway. ‘Come on,’ she said and she grabbed my hand and started legging it towards the trees.

  ‘Ma, stop, I’m too full of food!’

  ‘Run!’ she said, so I legged it, even though the chocolate cake was stuck in my throat.

  When we got into the trees we ran along a trail. It was all overgrown and bursting with green. There was loads of cardboard everywhere cos loads of people had slept there. After a while, we slowed down.

  ‘You didn’t pay, Ma, did you? For the food?’

  ‘I did!’ she said in this voice like she was real offended. ‘I just didn’t leave a tip.’

  ‘You’re such a liar,’ I said. Ma didn’t reply to that.

  We came up to this one guy who was just standing there, staring at nothing. Ma’s rucksack was beside him.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said when she picked it up and she handed him the bread rolls that had been in the basket when the woman brought us our soup. He took them but he didn’t say anything.

  He had tied a piece of plastic into the branches above him to keep the rain off, and below were a few sleeping bags. He must’ve been living there for a while.

  ‘Coppers been around at all?’ Ma asked, and he shook his head real slow.

  We went on through the trees, and I was thinking of the forest with the eyes that followed the princess, when we came up to this big old shed. It was tall and wide, but it didn’t even have a proper roof on it any more. Just wooden beams and pieces of slates, but there were loads of holes in it. I stared at Ma.

  ‘We’re just resting here, love. Let me sit down for a minute, will ye?’ she said and she went inside.

  ‘Ah, Ma, it’s a shed!’ I said, cos I knew that meant we were going to sleep in there.

  ‘More like a barn,’ Ma called out. I followed her inside and watched her. She went to say something but then she stopped, like she changed her mind, and instead she said, ‘One night, I swear on me own grave, just for tonight. The weather is grand, we’ll sleep here and find a place tomorrow. Deal?’

  I looked around at the ring of black stones where someone had lit a fire before, and then up at the holes in the roof.

  ‘Just for tonight,’ she said again.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But you have to help me make it better.’

  Ma looked at me and shoved her hands in her pockets, but her eyes were smiling. So I ran out into the trees and grabbed a load of cardboard boxes and brought them back and threw them into the middle of the shed.

  ‘Come on!’ I said.

  Ma laughed and shook her head but she came with me and together we brought back loads of cardboard boxes and piled them as high as our heads.

  ‘Now what?’ she asked.

  ‘Now we build a castle,’ I said.

  I took down the first box and I opened it out and then started folding it up into a tube shape. Ma watched me do it a few times and then she said, ‘Wait here, I’ll be back.’

  And she ran off before I could say anything, so I just kept opening out the cardboard boxes and folding them into tube shapes, and hoping she’d come back. She was gone ages. But then she did come back. With a six-pack and two rolls of tape and a packet of cigarettes.

  I started taping the boxes so they’d keep their tube shape, and then we put one tube beside another and taped them together so we had a long tube.

  We built loads of tubes and stuck them together, and we made corners as well, so in the end we had this deadly maze with corridors and corners and side rooms, and you could crawl through it and get lost in it for days.

  Then we made towers and we put them on top of the maze. With the last of the cardboard, I built a wall around the whole thing.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Ma asked.

  ‘That’s to keep the intruders out. We don’t have a moat but the wall’s real high so they can’t climb over it,’ I said.

  And Ma sat down and laughed as she drank her last can. And when I was finished building the wall, I sat down beside her and ate the left-over sandwiches that Ma had taken from the pub. There was cake too and it was real good, even though the icing was gloopy instead of melty.

  ‘We’ll find our own castle, though, won’t we, Ma?’

  ‘We will,’ she said.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah, love. Tomorrow.’

  Ma crushed her last can and threw it away. Then she crawled into the middle of the maze with me and told me a story about a princess stuck in a castle who couldn’t leave till a prince came and rescued her. But I said it was stupid to wait for a prince to come rescue you when you could just find the secret way out, cos there’s always a secret way out from a castle.

  And when I fell asleep, I knew Ma would be right there beside me and that we’d be safe in our castle.

  THE STARS GO OUT

  I’m lying in bed in our room. I brought the duvet and the lights back in from my brick castle. Ma’s not home yet. I wish she’d come back.

  It’s real quiet. The office workers are all gone home and the cars have left the city and the seagulls are gone to sleep. There’s a scratching sound coming from the stairway but it’s just a rat. Sometimes in the morning you find them dead in a corner somewhere, with their guts all hanging out. That’s the cats. You don’t hear the cats, though, cos they’re too smart.

  The rats eat the food from the skip and the cats eat the rats. Nothing eats the cats, though. They’re king of the Castle. They just come and go, over the walls and through the gaps. No one even cares what they do. No one is looking for them.

  The fairy lights above my bed twinkle. I’m telling myself a story about a princess that gets kidnapped and then escapes. Right now, she’s fighting her way through an enchanted forest but there are evil men chasing her. I wonder, are enchanted forests like castles, do they have a secret escape route?

  Three loud knocks fold the silence in half. I jump up. Yellow Jackets again? But they said, ‘Boards are going up after Christmas.’ And it’s not Christmas yet.

  I hear them again. Two knocks, then a pause, then a third. It’s okay. That’s Ma’s knock. She’s back.

  I run downstairs.

  At the door I run my hand up the side till I find the key that’s on the hook. When I open the door Ma’s standing there, crouched over.

  Her hands aren’t shaking any more.

  ‘Heya, love,’ she says. But she says it like she’s underwater and the words are real heavy and they’re pulling her down.

  ‘Ma?’

  ‘You’re here,’ she says, and smiles as if she thought I’d be gone or something. ‘Came back, didn’t I? Me and you against the world, eh?’ she says.

  Then she starts fumbling around in her pocket like she’s making sure whatever’s in there is still safe. There’s a little bulge in her jeans and I know what that means. She steps inside and wobbles off towards the kitchen.

  I don’t follow her. I just lock the door and go back up the stairs to bed. I turn off the stars and stare at the darkness. I pull the duvet tight around me. I lift it over my head.

>   She promised she’d never go back there. But she broke her promise.

  PART THREE

  MAKE-BELIEVE

  I’m drawing on the walls of the second floor. Outside, the cranes have munched away a whole office block like it was never even there. I bet there were people inside and they didn’t get out in time and the cranes munched them up too.

  There are more cranes these days. I can see thirteen just from this window. They’re all creeping closer, as if there’s a building that’s bleeding and they can smell it and they are coming to devour it.

  I’ve painted thirteen praying mantises on the wall, just like outside. Except in my drawing, people aren’t sitting around drinking coffee. They are all running away screaming, cos the mantises are tearing apart the buildings and are coming for them too.

  I hear something.

  I turn and look at the dead machines. There’s nothing there.

  I’ve painted loads of destroyed buildings and now I’m going to add some trees growing out of the rubble. Then I’ll paint new buildings, but there’ll be ivy crawling up the outside walls, smothering them.

  There it is again. The sound. Like someone moving real quiet through the room. I turn again but I can’t see anything. Just the machines and lots of dust drifting. Even as I’m looking, though, I hear it again.

  I stand dead still. It’s probably just wind or something. I turn back to the wall, but as I do I spot something.

  I turn my head from one side to the other and now I see it. It’s the air. The dust in the air. It’s moving.

  I don’t know how to explain it. The dust isn’t drifting around like it usually does. It looks like it’s flowing through the room. I pretend to start painting again but really I’m watching from the corner of my eye. And I can see it’s not flowing everywhere. In some areas it’s not moving at all.

  I whip my head round but now I can’t see it any more. I move up to the closest machine, real careful, and walk all around it.