Mr Lion looked at the photo again. ‘They said she had postnatal depression.’
Nobody ever speaks about my mother in this house. Dad didn’t tell me anything else, just that she’d been ill, and to remember that she loved me.
I remembered it, but I didn’t feel it. I looked for it in her face, gazing into her eyes for some sort of recognition, something she had to give me. The curl of her hair or the curve of her nose or the whorls of her left ear, side on to the camera. All I could see was that she loved my Dad who took the picture, and I wondered how she could have left him after she’d smiled at him in that way. When she left the only thing that had changed was me. I was there. A three-month-old baby and she just packed her bags and left.
Mr Lion looked at me. ‘She carried you about in a sling and wouldn’t let you go. Even your dad had a hard time prising you off her.’
I pressed against Peter and he tightened his arm around me. I tried to say something, but no sound came out.
Peter said ‘What happened?’
Mr Lion shrugged. ‘She started crying a lot. She said she wanted you to sleep in a different room, and she stopped feeding you, so you had to have a bottle. They didn’t live with me then, so I only saw her sometimes, but she would look at you and Andy as though her heart was breaking. Then she was gone. Andy moved in here with me because he couldn’t bear to be in the house without her.’
The back door opened and someone turned on the kitchen light, sending a flood of yellow through the open doorway. There was laughter and the clink of bottles. A draught of cold air made the flames dance wildly.
I looked at Peter.
‘We better go and get some clothes on.’
Wrapped in blankets we shuffled across the room. We couldn’t move our legs high enough to climb the stairs so we had to lift our skirts and we started giggling.
We were halfway up the stairs when Mr Lion spoke to us again. The people in the kitchen were getting louder so I only just caught it.
He said, ‘I saw her today. She’s back in the old house.’
Then someone switched the light on and the shadows vanished. We dashed upstairs before anyone saw us.
Peter didn’t want to come back down again. He was knackered and the spliff had finished him off. I don’t think he’d heard what Mr Lion said. He wanted me to curl up with him in bed, but my mind was buzzing and I knew I would lie there with questions flying round my head. So I pulled on my jeans and a jumper and went back downstairs.
They were all in the living room. Mr Lion was still in his chair gazing into the fire and didn’t look as though he’d moved. Nobody was talking. Jimmy and Suky were on the sofa and Dad was in his chair looking at his hands.
Richard was sitting on the floor, and so were the couple from the party. They sat close together, watching everyone. He had short brown hair and two nose rings. She had bleached dreads tied back with a scarf, thick black make up and a piercing between her nose and the left corner of her mouth. She was really beautiful.
The other person there was Steph who works in the post office. She’s seven years older than me and she used to babysit for me sometimes when I was a kid. She’s really nice, but she’s quiet and not much of a party-girl so I was surprised to see her.
Still nobody spoke. I looked at Mr Lion and he raised his eyebrows.
The girl on the floor said, ‘Anyone want some MD?’
Dad stood up. ‘I’m going to bed,’ he said.
Jimmy looked round the room and caught my eye. ‘We could go to ours,’ he said, ‘so we don’t keep you awake, Andy.’
Dad shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
‘I’ll get my coat,’ I said.
‘Are you going?’
‘Yeah, I think I will.’
‘Well, be careful,’ he said. He looked at the three sitting on the floor. He obviously didn’t like the look of them.
‘Ok, Dad.’
Peter was fast asleep under my duvet, his lashes soft on his cheeks. I leaned over to kiss him and noticed a couple of beads of fresh blood at the base of one of his horns. I flicked my tongue and licked them off. I kissed first one closed eye and then the other. Peter murmured in his sleep but didn’t move.
Downstairs the others were waiting for me. Steph said she thought she’d better go home, though she lingered a bit as though she wanted to us to persuade her otherwise. When we reached the end of our street she went on her way looking a bit forlorn.
Jimmy was walking ahead with Suky, and the couple, who were called Smith and Jeannie, had their arms around each other, so when Richard offered me his arm I said, ‘Why, thank you kind sir,’ and we walked through the night quiet streets like a Victorian gallant and his lady.
I remember a woman once came to the door asking for my dad, who wasn’t in. Mr Lion told her to come another time, but she was really persistent and kept asking questions and I could hear Mr Lion getting more and more annoyed.
She said something which sounded like ‘Are you sure she’s still alive?’
I came into the hallway and peeped round the door and she spotted me.
‘Is that her daughter?’ she said, and Mr Lion roared. His mouth opened and his teeth were huge, his tongue was bright red and his lips were black. His claws extended and the woman on the doorstep stepped back very quickly.
‘Are you the only one here with that little girl?’ she said.
Mr Lion took a step forward and roared again. The noise made my hair prick against my head and I felt alive and excited. The woman walked quickly away down the path, turning at the road to look back. I’d gone up to the doorway and was holding on to Mr Lion’s leg and I could see his claws were still out, although they were gradually retracting.
The woman fumbled in her bag and pulled out a camera and Mr Lion growled again. Not loud, but loud enough for her to hear and she leapt into her car and drove away.
I said, ‘I didn’t know you could do that Mr Lion. Will you do it again?’
But he wouldn’t. We went back into the house and he put Ray Gant’s Don’t You Leave Me Baby on the record player, and we pretended to sing along and laughed and laughed.
12. Ali
When Smith jumped out of the window the police came out of the house like greyhounds from a cage. But the rabbit was faster and had a good start and he knew the twists and turns and back alleys better than them. The officers who had stayed behind to separate me and Jeannie took her down to the police cars. She was kicking and fighting and it took both of them to hold her. I was alone in the garden, Gran’s ring still clutched in my hand.
I could feel my heart beating.
I saw Smith’s trainers in the grass where Jeannie had dropped them.
Smith wears thick soles – ridiculously thick, as though he had some sort of height complex and wanted to make himself taller. Or it could have been a fashion thing. But it didn’t quite go with the rest of what he wore – skinny jeans and jumpers with holes, leather jacket. These shiny black trainers with their orange flashes and soles like bicycle tyres didn’t seem like him.
I knew why. I’d seen him once, when he thought I was asleep, taking out the inner soles to uncover the compartment below. The place where he hid his stash, his money, his knife. Whatever.
They were two feet away from me.
I looked towards the street. I could hear Jeannie shouting and the two police officers talking to her. The others were all off chasing the rabbit.
I grabbed the shoes. The left innersole was stuck tight, so I tried the right and it came away easily in my hand. Underneath, fitted neatly between the ridges of the shoe, were two items: a plastic bag of pills and a fat roll of twenty pound notes. I thought for a second, then I took the notes and stuffed them in my pocket, fitted the insole quickly back into the shoe.
I threw them into the bushes, turned around and there was one of the policemen st
anding inside the garden looking at me.
He said ‘We’re going back to the station now. I think you’d better come with us.’ He didn’t look unfriendly, though, and he didn’t even look to where I’d thrown the shoes.
At the police station they asked me some more questions and I told them that Jeannie had taken my Gran’s ring and I showed it to them, still clasped in my hand. They asked me about the squat and stuff that Smith gets up to and what acquaintances he might have. But I didn’t tell them anything, because that had nothing to do with Gran’s ring and I wasn’t going to tell them things they didn’t need to know.
Then they let me go. I was surprised. I thought they’d search me and find the money or even take Gran’s ring away again. But they said thank you for your cooperation, and let me go just like that.
When I was walking down the steps someone called my name. I turned around and it was the same policeman who’d appeared in the garden when I’d just taken the money out of Smith’s shoe. He was quite young, and if he hadn’t been stuffed into that uniform he might have been fit. I waited and he caught up with me.
He said ‘We’re not going to be able to hold her, you know.’
I looked at him. ‘Jeannie?’
‘We’ve got nothing on her. Only her boyfriend, and he got away.’
‘So you’re letting her go?’
‘We’ll have to. We can only hold her for a few hours. Then she’ll be out.’
‘Ok.’
‘Leeds isn’t that big a place really, when someone is looking for you.’
‘No.’ He had really nice eyes, brown and deep, and I almost wished he was my type. ‘Thanks for telling me,’ I said. ‘Bye.’
I walked off, leaving him on the steps looking after me.
In the train station I locked myself in the bogs so I could count the money. There were ninety-seven crisp new twenties. One thousand, nine hundred and forty pounds. I’d never seen that much money, let alone held it in my hand. I peeled off five of them and put them in my jeans, then stuffed the rest right down at the bottom of my rucksack underneath my copy of Nicholas Nickleby that I was half way through reading.
I caught a train to Wakefield, then Huddersfield, then Manchester, then Skipton and so on, circling around, moving about, trying my best not to leave a trail. Until eventually I ended up in Hawden, the town my Gran came from. Well, almost. She lived in the village up the hill, Hawtenstall, over the ridge from Old Barn where I was now living with Sally.
The morning after the party I came downstairs and Sally was at the kitchen table slapping a piece of dough about in some flour. She was thumping and whacking it like she was really pissed off.
I noticed my book was on the table, just out of the circle of flour, but I didn’t think I’d left it there. I might have left it on the end of the sofa in the living room. Was she angry because I’d left my stuff lying about?
‘Good morning,’ I said.
She spun round. Her hair was down, and its kinks and curls stood out at all angles from her head. She had streaks of flour in her hair and on her face. Her eyes were shining and wild. It was pretty early when I got back from the party. I tiptoed in and didn’t disturb her. I didn’t bring anyone back. I hadn’t done anything to annoy her.
‘Ali.’ It came out like a hiss.
‘Hi Sally, are you making bread?’
She looked at her flour covered hands for a moment, but didn’t answer my question. She stared hard at my face.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘Who am I?’ Maybe she really was mad. ‘I’m Ali. You know, I was helping you with the garden yesterday. You said I could stay…’
‘She sent you didn’t she.’ Her voice was harsh and loud.
‘Er… She? Who do you mean? No one sent me.’
‘She!’ Sally snatched my book off the table and brandished it at me. ‘She sent you!’
It was a tatty old black classic I’d picked up in a charity shop. Paid for actually. I hadn’t read that much – only about seventy pages – but there was nothing in it so far that could explain this kind of outburst. I shrugged and shook my head.
‘Sally, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
She opened the book and thrust it at me. On the flyleaf I had written my name – Ali Greenwood. Officially I have my dad’s name, which is Parker, but I quite often use mum’s because I like it better.
‘I’ve been nursing a viper in my bosom,’ Sally said.
I took the book out of her hand, stepped round her and walked across the room. I sat down at the other side of the table. She followed me with her eyes. She was shining, almost vibrating, sparks coming off her.
‘Ali Greenwood – that’s me. I was hiding and you let me stay here. That’s all.’
Her mouth was twitching and for a moment I thought she was going to laugh.
‘Frances,’ she spat out. ‘Frances Greenwood sent you.’
‘Frances Greenwood?’
‘What does she want?’
‘Frances Greenwood was my Gran.’
‘I knew it!’ She slapped her right thigh with her floury hands leaving streaks on her jeans. ‘A viper! Born of a viper’s blood. Where is she? Has she come back?’
I’d kind of hoped that while I was here I might meet some people who’d known my gran, who could talk to me about her, tell me stuff about her and her past. This wasn’t really what I’d expected.
‘Gran is dead,’ I said, and I was annoyed to feel tears welling up in my eyes. ‘She’s been dead for six years. This is her ring.’
I pulled the string on my neck and held it out. Sally looked at it warily, as though it might leap out and bite her. She didn’t take her eyes off it when she spoke.
‘You are her successor. You’ve come back to carry on her work.’
‘No!’ I jumped on to my feet and shouted. ‘She didn’t have any work. She was a lovely old lady and I miss her. Shut up, shut up!’
I ran out of the room and up the stairs and threw myself on the bed. I found myself crying in a way I never had when Gran died. My whole body bent in two and hoarse sobs hurt my throat. A detached part of myself watched with horror. I told myself, pull yourself together girl, don’t let her see she’s got to you, and after a while I quietened down. I lay still on the bed, my face pressed against the wet pillow.
When I walked back into the kitchen with my bag there was a man sitting at the table eating a plate of bacon and eggs. There was no sign of the dough or the flour, only a warm yeasty smell underneath the sharp tang of bacon.
‘Morning,’ he said to me, and shoved a forkful of food into his mouth.
Sally walked through the back door and as she walked past the man squeezed her bum. She grinned and I could see that she was still shining, though the anger had gone. She smiled at me and I wondered if I’d imagined the whole conversation.
‘Ali, would you like some coffee?’
I shook my head and turned to leave.
‘Sit down girl and have some breakfast.’
It was the man who spoke. He was a fat man with a bald head and the features of his face all seemed too big: fleshy lips, a wide thick nose and big eyes that were green, fringed and beautiful like a girl’s. He should have been repulsive, but his good humour brought everything together as part of a really pleasant whole. It was impossible to resist him.
‘Sally has got some toast on, haven’t you love?’ He smiled at her and she squirmed like a cat. ‘Get some food inside you and everything will feel better.’
Sally poured coffee into a mug and handed it to me.
She said ‘Sorry Ali, I was a bit out of order.’
I didn’t really have a choice. I took the coffee from her, slid my bag off my shoulder and sat on a chair. I was curious too. I wanted to know who this bloke was and what he was doing here.
He shovelled the rest of his eggs and bacon into his mouth. It smelled good. Sally put a rack of toast between us and butter and marmalade, then she gave us both a plate and a knife and sat down opposite the man. She gazed at him. Her eyes had gone soft and violet coloured. I guessed I’d missed the main course.
I spread a piece of toast with butter.
‘I should introduce you.’ Sally was talking to me but she couldn’t take her eyes off the man. ‘This is Terry, my husband.’
They were focused totally on each other. She had her chin resting in her cupped hands, and he was managing to get the last of the bacon and eggs into his mouth whilst looking only at her.
‘But I thought you said…’
‘That he’d left me. He did. He left me seventeen years ago.’
‘Seventeen years, eight months and fourteen days,’ he said. ‘But now I’m back.’
‘I’ve missed you every day.’
His plate was empty. He put down the knife and fork and pushed it away from him. With his other hand he took a piece of toast. He did all of this without taking his gaze away from Sally. She refilled his coffee mug and passed it to him. He trapped her hand in his.
‘He came back last night,’ Sally said. ‘I’d been waiting for him all these years.’
She turned and looked at me.
‘I thought it was because of you. You turning up, and then Terry. It’s too much of a coincidence. You being her granddaughter. I was scared I was going to lose him again.’
I didn’t say anything. I wanted to know what Sally knew about Gran, why she hated her so much, but I didn’t want to start crying again.
Sally was looking at her husband, who was eating marmalade and toast.
He said ‘I’m back to stay, Sally. You’ve got me for good now.’
‘Unless anyone sends you away again.’
He munched his toast.
I thought about what it would be like now he was here, the two of them. And I wondered if Sally would go off on one about my gran again.
‘I’m just going to take my bag upstairs,’ I said. They didn’t turn as I left the room.
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