Mrs Mace and the child are sobbing so we shove them into my room. As we hear the front door open, Kit and I creep back across the landing to the top of the stairs and sit behind the laundry basket so we can see what happens.
‘Come home, Sharon. I said I’m sorry.’ The man’s voice is whiny, like a dog begging for food. I can’t see him very well because Mum has only opened the door a little bit, and she has put her foot behind it.
‘Sorry, but you’ve got the wrong house. There’s no Sharon here.’ Mum starts to shut the door, but it’s pushed back hard. She nearly loses her balance and has to put a hand on the meter cupboard to steady herself.
‘How dare you!’ she says.
The door is open a little wider, and the man now has one foot inside the house. He’s leaning through the gap looking around, and he is really shouting. I look back to my room and see Mrs Mace standing in front of the bed, the child held tightly to her chest. One of them is shaking because the tips of her hair are jerking around. I grab hold of Kit’s hand. Kit’s eyes are fixed on the man downstairs whose face is red and bulgy above his white T-shirt.
‘Sharon, get fucking down here.’ His voice changes pitch. ‘I’m not going ’til you do —’
We don’t hear what he says because Mum rights herself and shouts out the door. ‘Morning, Emily. Is Derek around?’ I can’t see Mrs Cadogan, but she must have heard the shouting. Derek Cadogan’s a Sergeant at the local police station, but Mum says it’s Mrs Cadogan who likes to do all the detecting.
‘For shitting fuck’s sake!’ The man gives one last push. Then he’s inside and coming head first down the hall. Kit stands up at the top of the stairs, and I stand beside him. Mum looks angry now, but she leaves the door wide open so that anybody outside can see in.
‘Out the way, bitch! This is none of your business.’
‘You can’t bully me,’ says Mum quietly, and then, more loudly, ‘Stop! Ow, you’re hurting me!’ Kit starts to move down the stairs, but I hold on to him.
‘He’s not touching her,’ I whisper. The man looks up and sees us both, my hand in Kit’s.
‘Best get out my way, kids!’ Then he’s at the bottom of the stairs and yelling. ‘Sharon, get down here!’ He yells it over and over, and Kit is shouting back now in that high low voice he has when he gets angry. Then Sergeant C’s right behind the man, and he puts a hand on his shoulder. Sergeant C is still doing up his tunic with the other hand.
‘Alright, mate, out you come. Are you okay, Jemima?’ He waits for Mum to nod. ‘I’ll just have a chat with Mr Mace here, and then I’ll pop back in.’
He puts an arm around the man’s shoulders and steers him out.
‘She won’t me let me talk to my wife, Derek. I know she’s bloody well in there.’
‘I should sober up first, Bill,’ I hear as the front door closes.
Behind me, there is a thud as Mrs Mace collapses on to her knees and starts to cry out in loud, rasping breaths. Kit and I fly down the stairs to Mum. She hugs us and tells us it’s all fine, but her body is taut through the layers of her loose top and the beads of her long necklace hurt my cheek as she holds us tight. Then she sits down on the bottom stair with us for a moment.
‘Why was he shouting at you?’ I ask when she lets us go.
‘He just lost his temper.’ Mum takes a deep breath. ‘That’s all.’
‘What’s it got to do with us anyway?’ I say. ‘Why can’t they go somewhere else?’ Kit glances to the top of the stairs.
‘Because, little ones, sometimes people don’t have anywhere else to go, do they?’ She looks at Kit for the longest time as if she is waiting for an answer. Then she gives us both a quick kiss on the top of our heads.
‘One for you and one for you,’ she says.
I am sitting under the kitchen table with the little boy, who says his name is Danny. He has one arm wrapped around the pink teddy that I gave him to stop his tears and the other is around his mother’s leg. The underside of the table is rough, and my hair keeps snagging on it, so I am bent over my knees as far as I can go. Danny is watching me with wide eyes. His tears have dried crusty on his cheeks, and I think that must be the salt you can taste when you cry. I reach out to touch it, but he cringes away from me, and I stop.
Mum must think I went upstairs with Kit because she is using a lot of words I normally have to pretend I don’t know. I can hear her jewellery and see her feet slapping on the lino as she walks around the room, but Sergeant C’s shiny black boots are quite still.
‘But why didn’t you arrest him? For God’s sake, Derek, you would have if he’d done this to someone else. Look at her bruises!’ Mrs Mace’s leg twitches, and I can hear her sobs bubbling up again. I try and think of her face, but, with all that hair hanging over it, I can’t get a clear picture of it at all. I have a bruise on my right knee though from tripping over the front door step. It doesn’t hurt very much. I poke it, and it’s a bit sore, but not as bad as picking a scab that isn’t ready to come off yet.
‘Oh, come on, Jemima, it’s just a domestic. It’s none of our business.’ He pauses, and, in my mind’s eye, I can see him take a swig of the tea Mum made. ‘She’ll end up going home sooner or later, they always do. Kicking up a fuss’ll only make things worse for her.’
‘And what if he attacks the boy?’ Mum is using her Don’t pick a fight with me, Sonny Jim voice.
I look at Danny, who is beginning to cry again, and I take the wooden babies out of the pocket of my shorts to show him. I wobble them from side to side and make them walk up his legs to see if he will smile, like some little kids do when you step up their arms with your fingers.
‘Oh, come on! With the factory closing, everyone’s on edge, you know that.’ His voice is angry, and I wonder if he’s talking about Matthew’s factory. Matthew’s father built it. When Matthew’s being especially grumpy in the mornings, Mum says we should be kind because he really wanted to do other things with his life, but his dad told him he had to stay because the people who work there depend on him.
I wonder what my real dad’s doing now.
‘At least your dad wants to see you,’ I whisper to Danny who isn’t smiling as I make the babies jump and fly. Sometimes, when I ask about my real dad, Mum says he’s an important spy in Russia and can’t ever see us in case his cover is blown. Or that he is a great explorer who went into the darkest, most dangerous part of the jungle before I was born and never came out. But mostly, she just says he was a man who took a wrong turn and can never find his way back and she looks kind of sad about that. When I ask what his name is, she might say ‘Rudolf or Roberto or Rick’ and I might say ‘or Ralph or Raoul or Roger’. Kit never joins in, and, when I tell him that I’m hoping one day our dad is going to take a right turn and come back to us, he just glowers at me and walks away.
Sergeant C is shouting to make himself heard over Mum now.
‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’m not arresting him and that’s that.’ Mum stops talking and in the sudden quiet the wooden babies clatter to the floor. I just manage to grab them before Mum’s head appears between the chair legs.
‘What are you doing under there? Out!’ Her face is as red as it ever gets at the hottest part of the day. The skin on my legs pulls a little as I get off the lino and crawl out. Mum takes the mug from Sergeant C’s hands even though I can tell he hasn’t finished it.
‘If you’re not going to help, you might as well go.’ Her foot is tapping.
‘What if I’m not here next time?’ Sergeant C blows his breath out in a rush. ‘Stop toying with these women’s lives.’ He nods at me as he walks out.
‘He’s right, I should go home,’ says Mrs Mace when the front door has closed. ‘It’s my fault for using some of his pay-off.’
Mum snorts and puts her hands on her hips. ‘It’s still not right, Sharon, is it?’
Danny climbs up on to his mother’s lap, the pink teddy still tucked under his arm, and I don’t think I’ll ask for it back.
‘We need to find you somewhere else to stay. What about your mum?’
‘How can I? I walked out with nothing, and if he catches me going back …’
Mum picks up her purse and pulls out a couple of notes and then she takes down the old shortbread tin from the cupboard and pulls some more cash out of it. I walk over so I can see exactly what she’s doing with it.
She puts the money down on the table and says, ‘Take these, use my phone to call her and then I’ll drive you down to the station.’
‘You can’t take that,’ I say, ‘that’s for my riding lessons. Mum!’
‘Don’t be so dramatic, Robyn, no one needs riding lessons.’
‘Mum!’
‘Christopher,’ Mum calls, ‘come and get your sister and you can head off.’
‘She can’t take my money!’ I start to cry. ‘It’s not fair, I saved up for that.’
Mrs Mace pushes it towards me, but Mum picks it up and puts it back into her hand.
‘I think you should probably stay away from The Coppice today,’ she says to Kit. ‘Now, get going before I change my mind.’ Mum is trying to smile at me, but I don’t smile back because she’s just ruined my chances of going riding, and now I’m not allowed to go to The Coppice, which is where Debbie lives. Neil appears at the door behind Kit. He must have been waiting for his dad to leave. Neil is Kit’s best friend, and Sergeant C is his dad. They both look at Mum and then at me.
‘You better not be a pain if you’re coming with us,’ warns Kit. Neil is not quite as tall as Kit, and always in trouble, but at least he doesn’t keep trying to get Kit to ditch me like their other friends from the senior school. When we get outside, I punch Neil in the stomach as hard as I can.
‘What was that for?’ he cries, pretending I didn’t hurt him.
‘Your dad was mean to my Mum,’ I say and march on ahead, shoving my hands into my pockets. My fingers close around the wooden babies and I wish they could magic me some riding lessons. I wonder how my horse riding money will stop Danny’s dad being so cross.
Danny was curled up back on his mum’s lap when we left, and I wish that I’d said goodbye to him. Or got a flannel to wipe the tears off his cheeks. For a moment, I can see his little face leaning on Mrs Mace’s leg as it starts to shake, and I feel a bit sad about everything. I stop and think about going back to say that he can keep the teddy and they can have my money after all, that it’s okay with me, but Kit shouts at me to hurry up and stop daydreaming.
I take the wooden babies out of the pocket of my shorts before pulling them on and going downstairs for breakfast. When I walk into the kitchen there is a sharp smell, and I find Mum cleaning; that serious, under-the-furniture sort of cleaning that isn’t normal in our house. I’m about to show her the babies when I see the emptied cupboards and start to feel a little uneasy. Mum has her back to me as she stands on the draining board wiping the windows, and I can see the little circles she has made on the glass.
I put the babies back in my pocket and say, ‘What’s for breakfast?’ Mum gets down and gives me a packet of crisps and some sausage rolls straight out of the fridge and shoos me into the garden. Kit is there already, and he rolls his eyes a little when he sees me. I join him and eat leaning against the shed because the grass is covered with a Gotham City of chairs, rolled up mats, bin bags, and all sorts of things from the front hall. The washing line is stiff with the linen from the spare room that Mrs Mace and Danny used, and I watch as a ladybird flies into the corner of a sheet and then drops to the grass in front of me. Its black legs waggle in the air until it opens its hard shell to flick itself over and takes off again.
While we sit there, Mum comes in and out either carrying more things or just to stand and scowl at everything, hands on hips. She has pulled her hair up tight on top of her head and pinned the ends down so that it doesn’t bounce around, but the hoops in her ears shoot out ‘Kappow!’ flashes of light in the sun anyway. Her movements are almost entirely silent without her usual beads and bangles, like some kind of Stealth Mum, apart from the odd words that punch out loud as if she has no control over them.
‘Idiot’ we hear as she hangs out another load of washing, and ‘Bastard’ as she empties the ashtrays into the bin bags. It’s ‘I told him!’ as she beats the mats against the fence so that clouds of dust envelop her.
‘What happened?’ I ask Kit when I’ve finished the sausage rolls.
‘Dunno, something bad,’ he says, ‘but she’s not making sense.’
‘I hope she doesn’t start on the oven,’ I say, and then I wish I hadn’t thought of it because it makes me lose my appetite even though the crisps are smoky bacon flavour which is my absolute favourite. I rescue our bags from the pile and put the rolled up crisp packet into mine. Maybe we can go out before it’s too late.
When Mum starts really cleaning, we always pay attention. Scrubbing the oven is usually the last thing she does before sliding our suitcases down the stairs and bumping them out of the front door. Then she piles them on to Kit’s old go-cart, and we have to hold tight on to the back of it to stop it snaking into the road as she pulls it all the way to the station.
So far, Matthew has always managed to turn up before the train does. We don’t know how he does it, but this town is not good at keeping secrets. At least, that’s what Debbie’s Mum says. When he arrives, he will follow her up and down the platform for a bit while Mum shouts about the town not being safe and that we can’t stay. Matthew gets gradually nearer and nearer to her until finally he has an arm around her waist, and she leans her head on his shoulder and their voices are too low to hear. Then Matthew will put the cases and Mum in the car and give Kit and I some coins to spend at the newsagent before we walk back, taking it in turns to sit in the go-cart.
In the morning, we will go down and there will be the remains of take-away curry in the bin and the sickly smell of empty wine glasses by the sink. Mum will be humming and dancing around a bit, and, even better, she’ll have made us pancakes or boiled eggs and soldiers for breakfast. And then we know it’s all okay for now, and this isn’t going to be the day we have to leave.
After an age, Mum starts taking everything back inside, so we jump up and grab a few things to help because this means that she’s finished downstairs.
‘Should we ring Matthew?’ I ask Kit as she heads up the stairs. He walks into the kitchen, and I follow. The oven door is firmly closed, but the bucket of cleaning stuff is sitting in front of it. Kit grins at me and pulls out the oven cleaner.
‘This should slow her down,’ he says. ‘Come on!’
We put on our shoes and grab some snacks and our bags really quietly. Kit picks up the spray can and hides it in his bag so that Mum can’t use it, and I shove the wooden babies further into my pocket so they won’t work their way out. Then, as we open the front door, we shout up to her, ‘We’re going to the park!’ as if everything is normal and, before she can answer, we swing the door shut hard and run.
‘Park!’ shouts Kit at Neil as we pass him sitting on his own front doorstep, and then we are racing down the road, the tarmac not yet sticky even though the sun is already so bright that I have to squint. Kit starts to laugh, and I would too if I had any breath left from trying to keep up. He sees me struggle and grabs my hand and pulls me along so that I have super powers and can almost fly. Neil is shouting at us to wait for him, but we can’t because we are unstoppable and glorious and made of wind.
Chapter Two
1988
We step out from the ticket hall into the dark evening, summer behind us. The journey has been a long one, a lesson in patience that neither of us need. Kit’s doubts have been on our heels at every step, his objections hanging around us like storm clouds. Only finding that girl stopped us carrying on the argument that had been crackling all the way along the tracks with us.
‘Why don’t you see if she needs rescuing?’ I nodded towards the girl as she entered our carriage, hoping he’d take the bait and leave me in peace. S
he had an air of contained fury that I recognised and knew would be irresistible to my brother. It fizzed in the angry curls of her untidy hair and the way she’d thrown herself back against the carriage window with her feet up.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Robyn.’ Kit threw me a look of irritation. He turned his back and pulled out a book, flicking through the pages so fast I knew he wasn’t reading.
I jammed the window in the door right down again setting the pages of Kit’s book flapping in the warm draft. He closed the book and sat back against the seat, his face pinched and pale like the girl’s.
‘Ticket inspector’s coming.’ I elbowed Kit who had taken possession of our tickets in a display of control I chose not to argue with.
The girl opened her eyes and swung her feet on to the floor. As the inspector worked his way along the carriage, she searched through her pockets with increasing panic, her movements setting her messy curls jumping.
‘See? She does need help,’ I smirked at Kit.
Kit handed over our tickets and pointed to the girl. ‘And one for her, please, she got on at the last stop.’ The ticket inspector raised his eyebrows but just asked for her age and where she was heading.
The little stranger looked like she might argue but then changed her mind as Kit handed over the money. We remained silent as the inspector printed out the ticket and then waved it between Kit and the girl, unsure who it should go to.
Kit reached for it and passed it to the girl.
‘Thanks. My mum’ll pay you back.’
Kit smiled. ‘Aren’t you a bit young to be on your own this late?’
Really, Kit, what harm could an eleven-year-old come to enclosed in a train? I moved the waistband of my trousers away from my stomach to squeeze some cream on to my scar. The itching and pain may not be real anymore, but the puckered skin felt hot and angry under my fingers.
I leant back, easing the stiffness out of my back, and watched them through my lashes. She’s about the same age as Kit when we left but just a whisper of flesh where he was ruddy and solid from the hot months of playing outside. Kit coaxed more answers from her, assessing them with interest. The girl’s face came to life in the warmth of his attention, like layers of oil being added to a painting, and I saw myself in her response.
A Little Bird Told Me Page 2