by Julia Jones
“What’s strange?”
But it had gone. “Oh, I dunno. Thought I might have heard of her?”
“Unlikely. And can you please stop saying ‘oh’. It’s totally getting on my nerves and we’re not even half way home.”
“Oh ... KAY!” said Donny, dodging as she swung her schoolbag at him.
CHAPTER TEN
Inappropriate Behaviour
Thursday 5 October
‘What’s the good of thinking about them?’ said Dorothea. ‘They might as well be in some different world.’
Dick started so sharply that he almost dropped his telescope.
‘Why not? Why not?’ he said. ‘All the better. Just wait until dark and we can try signalling to Mars.’
‘To Mars?’ said Dorothea.
‘Why not?’ said Dick. ‘Of course they may not see it. And even if they do see it they may not understand. A different world. That makes it all the more like signalling to Mars.’
(from Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome)
Anna’s old computer had gone from Mr McMullen’s cupboard. Mr McMullen was gone too. A succession of cover teachers took Donny’s class for registration and supervised their DT lessons. There was a rumour that someone from Education Welfare had made a complaint against Mr Mac for exceeding safety numbers on his open department evenings. Another rumour said he’d been sacked for inappropriate behaviour with one of his students.
“Education Welfare? That’s Toxic. This’ll be her revenge attack for him sticking up for you at that meeting last week,” said Anna to Donny as they grabbed a table for four in the main dining-hall. “The inappropriate bit could mean me because he helped me build my computer and I’m a girl.”
“But even Rev. Wendy couldn’t see anything wrong in that: she mainly got in a strop because you were using it in the vicarage and you hadn’t asked. Don’t you remember her coming in and saying ‘There has been Deceit in this House!’?”
He thought she’d laugh but she didn’t. “I should have known they wouldn’t have forgotten about it. Before you and your great-aunt arrived Wendy used to ring up Toxic almost every day to check that it was okay to allow us to breathe. You know, there might have been some new research which advised selective stifling.” She sounded bitter. “Of course she’d have told her about my computer. And how Mr Mac had helped me with it. A ready-made excuse for a Toxic Special smear campaign. As if anyone would be interested in sex when they could be doing electronics. That woman is so evil ... Poor Mr Mac.”
Anna sat down. She didn’t eat anything. Donny began noticing that some of the other students were nudging each other and looking as they walked past. He wondered whether he should stand up and have a go at them.
“Hey, do you reckon she’ll try making trouble for our parents too?” asked Xanthe, clattering her tray onto the table top. “Our mum gave her mega-grief about putting the wrong addresses on those letters.”
“Yeah – and they put in that complaint against Flint for breaking speed limits on the river.”
The sisters were laden with veggie pasta, garlic bread, side salads and orange juice. Maggi’s arm was in a sling because she’d broken her collarbone. She’d been sitting out in her Laser dinghy and had been thrown violently across in a squall. She said it had really hurt at the time but it was okay now. She waved at a couple of the girls who were staring at Anna. They hesitated a moment then one of them waved back and they turned away. Seen off by Maggi’s smile.
It was great to be eating with his Allies again. Great Aunt Ellen had used her good hand to sign the forms for Donny’s replacement meal card and had given him some money to put on it. He couldn’t see it was going to last long and he hadn’t liked to ask her about school shoes as well. He’d watched her face sort of stiffen when she’d found out how much his school bus pass was going to cost.
There’d used to be help in the system for him and Skye – free school meals, for instance – but that had somehow vanished. An admin problem, Sandra thought, but she didn’t seem to know when it would be fixed. She also wasn’t able to say when she would be calling on them again. Her work was being re-structured.
Gold Dragon had scowled and said they didn’t want handouts. It had, however, been a big relief when Rev. Wendy had remembered that she’d noticed a boy’s bike advertised in the village shop. Just £30 – the price of two taxi journeys!
Wendy had bought him the bike and she’d also paid back the Flower Fund out of her own money. She said they’d still some care allowance left from when Donny had been looked after at the vicarage. He wasn’t entirely sure this was true. You’d have thought that vicars didn’t do lies but he’d once seen Wendy do a really big one. He considered it her Finest Hour.
Then she and Gerald had reverted to type and made an unbelievable fuss about rechargeable front and rear lights, a safety helmet and fluorescent strips. They even produced clips, which he was supposed to put round his trouser legs. Donny’s school trousers were now so short that they hardly reached the tops of his socks when he was cycling. Still, he took the clips and thanked them and stuck the strips on his jacket and rucksack and did remember to wear the helmet. In general Wendy and Gerald were so decent nowadays that Donny had almost forgiven their treacherous past.
Anna evidently hadn’t. Her face looked hard as she re-lived that day they’d taken her computer.
Maggi and Xanthe were reminiscing much more happily. “It was fun painting Jaws on his bling boat!”
“And hearing Mum bawl him out in the club!”
“It’s not that hilarious,” Anna snapped. “Your parents won’t get done in by the SS: they’ve got status – and each other. But I’d like to point out life’s not such a breeze for us plebs. Never mind that Mr Mac’s done utterly nothing wrong: I bet they’re giving him a hard time proving it. And humiliating him in front of the other teachers. Meanwhile Toxic’s got my computer. You don’t know how bad that is. She’s such a witch! She’ll get Flint to get some police specialist working on it. They’ll find everywhere I’ve been.”
The sisters sobered up.
“Okay,” said Xanthe. “Message received. Hilarity put on hold. So tell us. Where did you go?”
Anna put her fork down and pushed her plate away completely. Donny tried not to stare at it.
“Nowhere that I had to pay – and that’s most of the proper investigation sites, the ones that say they can access police records and stuff. Obviously I kept checking the National Missing Persons site but I didn’t expect to get lucky there. Didn’t expect much anywhere. Mum’s so not a techie and if she’s trying to hide, there must be a reason. I mainly need to know that she isn’t dead.” Anna’s voice sounded bleak. “I’ve never said that I was me. I’ve kept trying to find if anyone’s seen or heard her over this last year. I’ve spent a lot of time on music sites – posing as a fan. And on friendship sites, pretending I’d been at school with her, posting lists of her favourite songs ...”
“Was that how you met Oboe?” asked Donny.
“I was following a string and it sort of led me there,” said Anna. “It was one of those ‘eager to meet you’ sites.”
“Maybe this Oboe set you up,” said Xanthe. “Like he was grooming you.”
“Sounds well creepy to me,” agreed Maggi.
“Maybe,” said Anna. “I was mainly hoping that he’s another searcher: someone who’s getting sort of desperate. Like I am.”
Her last three words sounded small and exhausted.
I do know something, thought Donny. There’s something here I’ve read or I’ve dreamed. Something from another life.
Maggi gulped and reached across the table and put her hand on Anna’s arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I completely hadn’t got it.”
Xanthe, however, steamed straight in. “Okay Anna. It’s well past time you levelled with us. Why are you all being looked after by W
endy and Gerald? Why did your mother leave? Someone told me that the other kids’ father’s in jail. What did he do? And where’s your dad?”
“My dad’s dead. And so’s Luke and Liam’s mum. My dad was a structural engineer and he was killed in an accident over the North Sea. I’m not sure about their mum. I think she had cancer or something.” She moved her arm away from Maggi, folded her hands on her lap and carried on talking, not looking at any of them. “I was almost seven so I remember quite well the night my father died. We had a small house, a mile or two outside Immingham. It was really comfortable, only me and them. The stairs were the best bit. There were thirteen, you see, the number of chromatic notes in an octave so Mum had painted them black and white, like on a keyboard. You could do a different tune every time you went up or down. And she kept adding colours because she hoped that I would learn to hear in colour like she does. She never quite realised that those stairs were more like number patterns than sounds to me. I think Dad understood. Anyway ... there was always music in our house but that night the music wasn’t right. I’d gone to bed and I could hear Mum trying to work out some phrase. Over and over again. I couldn’t sleep because I was waiting for the moment when she’d get it. But she never did. Instead there was a knock on the door and two policemen came and someone from Dad’s company.”
Anna went a bit quiet then. None of the Allies wanted to speak.
Then she carried on. “Mum went a bit crazy after that. She fell out with her record company and her agent. Just did pubs and clubs and street corners, practically. That’s how she met Luke and Liam’s dad. He sings shanties. He’s not exactly educated. He’d been a trawlerman and the company he worked for had gone bust. He was going to work on the rigs but she persuaded him not to. She thought she could support everyone with her music. I thought she was wrong. We were all living in this dump and Bill, that’s their dad, used to drink too much. Sometimes he’d go off to sea and then he’d come back and they’d have a row. But they always made it up again. Once us kids had been sent to bed.”
The suppressed hate in her voice would have burned through steel. “Then she was pregnant with Vicky and she couldn’t go on giving concerts. So he went to work in Felixstowe docks and got in trouble with the police. And that’s when I first met Flint and Toxic. Happy days. Not.”
“Didn’t you say anything to your mum? You know, about how Flint bullied you and Toxic watched when you were being sick?”
“She had enough to worry about. Bill was in prison ages before he got convicted. That was when Vicky got born. I think they were trying to pressure Mum to dob him in. It would be their standard tactic. Unless they were just bullying for pleasure.”
“What had Bill done?” Xanthe was leaning forward, staring at Anna. Her normally loud voice had gone quiet.
“Something at work. Mum kept insisting he’d been set up. She would have known not to bring me into it. I never pretended that I liked him.”
Then her cool brain clicked back in gear. “That was my big mistake. I’ve thought about it since. She liked him so I should have kept my feelings out of it. Then maybe she would have trusted me. We could have set up a communication system.”
“But ...” Donny was sort of trying to say that Anna had only been about eleven, or maybe ten and why should she have had to pretend to her own mother about not liking this drunken stepfather? And he still didn’t think her mum should have left.
The first bell had gone: the dining-hall was starting to empty. Xanthe stood up and began stacking their plates. “You’re gonna have to accept this one thing, Anna. Nobody, absolutely nobody, – let alone your mother – could know you for more than five minutes and not trust you.” Donny and Maggi nodded as hard as they could: Xanthe carried on. “I swear that it was because she like totally trusted you that she knew it was okay for her to leave. She knew that you’d be looking out for the others. She knew you wouldn’t let her down. And you haven’t.”
Anna pushed her chair back. She hadn’t eaten any of her lunch. She knocked her water glass onto the floor and didn’t stop to pick it up.
It was the end of that same day and Donny was hurrying after her as she headed for the bus. “Can’t you just hang on, Anna? My feet hurt.”
She hitched her bag higher and walked faster.
“Please, Anna, I know I’m thick but why are you so uptight about your old computer?” He was sort of hobble-running. “You didn’t use your real name when you were on it. You didn’t find anything about your mother and you’ve got Oboe on the new one. How’s having your old searches going to help Flint and Toxic? I need you to explain.”
She answered in her voice that was like spitting. “Because, if you remember, Wendy and Gerald didn’t know that I’d been on the Internet. They thought it was a homework project. That witch’ll have my screen names now. All the places that I went and the updates that I posted will give her detail about my mum that she probably didn’t have before. Nice for anyone who can visit the paying sites and look at records that I couldn’t get. It also proves that I’ve never believed that she’d abandoned us. I’m sure she’s on a mission. And now they’ll be closer to finding her. All because I couldn’t bear not knowing if she was okay.”
She did stop then. She twisted round so fast that he nearly cannoned into her. “Oh and for their cherry on top they’ll be able to use all the dodgy sites I visited as extra smears on Mr Mac. Got it now, have you?”
“But ... you didn’t even go on that computer at school.”
“Try telling them.” She was stamping furiously away again. “I’ve been in with Ms Spinks all afternoon – she’s one of the deputy heads. Hag! She gave me official notification of the SS complaint and told me they’re bringing Wendy and Gerald in tomorrow. She was trying to persuade me to say that I looked on Mr Mac as a sort of father figure in what she called ‘my difficult circumstances’.”
He could see one of those red danger spots burning in her pale cheek. Didn’t dare interrupt.
“I’m surprised she didn’t start pulling out male dollies and asking me to name the sex parts. She kept promising me it was safe to confide in her. Liar! As if I don’t know the regulations. No-one’s allowed to keep your secrets if you’re an At Risk child.”
They were at the buses now.
“I told her that ‘father figures’ represented a patriarchal view of society that should have been scuttled with the Ark. I said Mr McMullen was useful because he knew more than I did about electronics and that was that. So then she turned snotty and said that there’s some sort of computer expert coming in this evening to check all the machines in the DT department for evidence of improper use.”
“They won’t find any.”
“That’s because there isn’t any. Unless they fake it ... They could do that if they’ve got someone with half a brain cell. Depends how seriously they’re trying to fit him up. They can’t simply copy all my searches across to the DT machines because the school screening system will stop them. That’s why I hooked it up to the phone line at the vicarage.”
“Gerald and Wendy aren’t going to like that.”
“No, they’re not.” Anna climbed onto the bus and pushed her way through to an inaccessible seat.
Before Donny had met Anna he’d have thought that people who were really logical wouldn’t get so upset about things. He wished he was getting on the bus with her, even if she was heading into a vicarage mega-row. It seemed as if there was nothing useful he could do – except cycle in and out of school and hand his homework in on time.
He needed to take action.
There was the regular afternoon queue of buses and cars in the turning circle: people walking, texting, mucking about, shouting to one another. A few teachers stood around making sure everyone got off the site safely. Donny spotted Ms Spinks over by the admin entrance leaning towards another woman who, he was pretty sure, was Anna’s form tutor. They went insi
de together. He considered running after them, grabbing their arms, shouting, forcing them to understand.
He knew he’d only mess up.
Xanthe was in orchestra and Maggi’d got a hospital appointment. There were notices all over school to say DT open nights were cancelled. Plenty of people were going to be annoyed about that. He hoped they wouldn’t blame Anna but he guessed that most of them would.
Donny started walking towards the technology block. Must stop thinking about his blisters. The cycle racks were that way. He could at least take a look round Mr Mac’s room before he set off home. It would be so good if there’d been a mistake. Anna’s computer might have been moved in some tidy-up. He could find it for her. Take it back to Strong Winds. Keep it safe as she’d always hoped he would.
There was no-one there except the cover teacher. “They’ve told me to wait,” she complained. “Apparently there’s been some problem with the network and someone’s coming to take a look. They don’t want this room left unattended. But I’ve got my own children at home. It’s not my job.”
“I’m waiting for my mum.” Donny could lie like a pro now. “She didn’t know that the after school session had been cancelled. She won’t get here for ages. I’ve only got homework and reading. I could sit in here if it would help? It is my form room.”
The teacher obviously knew that she shouldn’t say yes but she did anyway.
As soon as she’d gone, Donny took his shoes off, dumped them on a bench near the door and began to search.
Anna’s computer had been inside one of the big walk-in cupboards where all the DT projects were stored. There were clocks and CD racks, self-propelling karts and carousels. Each school year group had a different section in the cupboard and Mr McMullen had labelled every student’s shelf-space. That way no-one had any excuse to touch anyone else’s work.
There was no computer in the Anna Livesey space. Just a grubby music folder that Donny recognised as being the type issued to all Year Eight students. He was surprised that it was such a mess. She must have dropped it somewhere in the department and someone must have handed it in. He’d tell her, if he remembered. It didn’t seem to matter much. She was Year Nine now.