The Ant Colony

by Jenny Valentine

  There was someone sitting on top of the paper stand and I didn’t notice them until it was too late cos I was looking at the headline. Sam told me that in the countryside those things were always really silly, like SWIMMING POOL PLAN HOLDS WATER and ANGER OVER GYPSY DROPPINGS. But this one was talking about someone being stabbed on their birthday, and then the person I hadn’t noticed hopped down behind me quite close and started walking.

  I felt a bit sick. I went very hot and very cold inside my coat. I didn’t want any trouble cos I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I’m only ten, for God’s sake.

  The footsteps asked me for a cigarette and I didn’t look round, I just shook my head. Then he asked me for a pound for bus fare so I felt around in my pocket and offered him a Mars bar.

  “What’s that?”

  I kept my face buried and tried to sound old and gruff. “It’s a Mars bar,” I said.

  I looked up quickly while he was taking it. He wasn’t very old. He had really bad skin and holes in his trainers. I hoped he wasn’t anything to be afraid of. I didn’t know if I should carry on trying to be an old lady or just show him my face. I didn’t know which one of me he’d want to hurt less.

  “Can I go now?” I said, trying to speed up a bit and not trip on the coat.

  “Haven’t you got any money?”

  I could feel it in my sock, creasing against my leg with every step. “Nope. Sorry. I just gave you my breakfast.”

  He slowed down and I knew then that he wasn’t going to do anything. And of course I was glad. How could I show them at Georgiana Street what I could do all by myself if I got kidnapped outside Topshop?

  I ran into a side street ahead of him and hid in a doorway until he’d gone past, just in case. He threw the wrapper on to the pavement.

  It was getting lighter when I got to St James’s Park. It was empty apart from the pigeons who dived in and landed at my feet if I as much as rustled my crisp packet. I scattered the crumbs when the bag was empty and they fought over them with their fish eyes still looking at me, and their stabbing little heads.

  It was just after six o’clock when I got to the coach station. I know cos there’s an enormous clock there – you can’t miss it. I undid my coat and wrapped it into a sort of a parcel cos I wasn’t allowed to look like a crazy old lady in here, no way. I had to look like a little girl who’d just been sent on an errand by her mum, which was going to be easy when the station was full of other kids doing the same thing, but right now was hard cos there were twelve men and four old ladies in it. I sat on a chair, on my coat, and I waited. I think I slept, but not for long.

  When it was more crowded and safe to move about, I looked at a map. And when I’d worked out where to go, I bought a ticket and I said thank you to Sam in my head.

  I found a family that was going where I was going and sort of attached myself to them, not enough for them to notice, but enough for the ticket lady to think we were together. Every time I tried to smile at the littlest kid and look like I belonged, she stuck her tongue out and grabbed hold of her mum’s arm.

  “It’s all right,” I wanted to say. “I’m not staying. I’m on an important misson.”

  On the coach I sat down on my coat again, next to an old man who thought my mum was behind me. He was fast asleep after about eight minutes anyway. It smelled of bleach in there, and the dust heating up on the backs of the seats, and someone’s sausage sandwich. I wished I’d bought a bottle of water in the station cos I was dying of thirst.

  The lady at the front pointed out the toilet we could all smell and wished us a pleasant journey. She looked like she’d rather be at home in bed. She had the microphone right up against her lips so all the words she said were like little bomb blasts. I covered my ears with my hands and she glared at me, so I pretended to be asleep for the first bit of the journey so she wouldn’t notice me. I closed my eyes and I thought about everyone.

  I thought about my dad, whoever he might be, and what things we were both good at, thanks to him.

  I thought about my mum and how I hoped she was home when I got back and how I hoped she was different.

  I thought about Isabel, who actually was the nosiest and the kindest and the wrinkliest person I knew, apart from Steve who was maybe wrinklier. And I thought about Steve too and how nice he was to me always.

  And last I thought about Sam and how lovely he was, and how sad, and how I was doing this just to show him.

  It’s quite stressful being on an adventure. You make it so far and then you realise you really can’t mess it up cos everything’s depending on it.

  Sixteen (Sam)

  How do you know when a kid who spends most of her time out and about on her own is really missing? When do you tell someone about it? Isabel said we had to wait. She said we couldn’t call the police straightaway because Bohemia hadn’t been gone long enough. She said they’d ask all kinds of awkward questions. She said we’d have to get Cherry in a cold shower and tell her what to say or things would get worse for Bohemia and it would be our fault.

  “Worse than what?” I said.

  Isabel told me not to panic. She said, “I bet you she’ll be back now, any minute, with something unsuitable for breakfast. She’ll get an earful from me when she is.” She blew on her coffee, the skin around her mouth corrugated like the paper cake cases on the kitchen table.

  But Isabel was wrong for once, the one time I wanted her to be right. Bohemia didn’t come back, with her gravestone smile and her instant affection and her wittering on.

  “I’ll go and look in a few places,” I said.

  “Good idea,” Isabel said, frowning at her hands. “Keep yourself busy.”

  I walked where we walked with Doormat. I went to the park and into the woods where we’d seen the ants, all gone now, and into the playground where I know she’d have gone if she’d had anyone her age to play with. I checked the tubes in the climbing frame train. I could picture her there as I walked towards them. I could see her, fast asleep, wrapped up in a coat. I wanted to picture her coming back from the station like she’d told me, with no money, except this time everybody had noticed.

  I went to the shop, just in case she was there, and I walked up and down the High Street, round the back, over and over, hoping for a sight of her. I went past the place I first saw her when she was nobody to me, when she was a good picture in a dark doorway. I stood there looking at the black space she’d filled. I missed her.

  I only went back home because I imagined her sitting on Isabel’s sofa, with Doormat on her lap, wondering what all the fuss was about.

  She’d be pleased we were worrying about her. She’d say, “See? You didn’t want me to go away at all, did you, Sam.”

  I wished so hard I hadn’t said those things.

  Isabel was angry with me at first when I told her. She said, “What did you say that to her for? Why are you taking your life out on a little girl?”

  She said my trouble was I thought that people caring about me was a burden instead of a gift. “You want to be left alone,” she said, “and Bo wants a mother like Doris Day. We can’t always get what we want.”

  I stared at her table until my eyes blurred and I couldn’t see it any more.

  I never killed time like we did waiting for Bohemia to come home. You had to find fourteen thoughts just to fill one second, and one second lasted all day. Steve said it was just like flying, boredom and fear of the worst, combined.

  Cherry came down and there was this stony silence when she walked in the room, from all of us. “I know, I know,” she said. “You hate me. I get it.”

  She was shaking and she smoked cigarette after cigarette while we waited. The room filled with the low, thick fug of it. Without her make-up on you could see Bohemia in her face, in the flat of her cheekbones, in the delicate up-turn of her nose.

  She looked at the clock a lot, at how little it had moved, and she rubbed at her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “Anyone got a drink?” she said.


  Isabel stood up and put the kettle on. “You can have tea like the rest of us. Be sober for when she gets back.”

  Mick came in as well. He stood behind Cherry’s chair and he put his hands on her shoulders.

  Cherry didn’t want to call the police either. That’s maybe the one thing she and Isabel were ever going to agree on. She said, “I might never be ready to call those bastards.”

  “Those bastards might be the only hope you have of finding your daughter,” Steve said.

  “Look,” Cherry said, “you hate me. Fair enough. I’m a crap mother.”

  “Yep,” said Isabel.

  “I’m a drunk and I like to party and I sleep around.”

  “You said it,” Isabel folded her arms, ready for battle.

  “She knows I love her,” Cherry said frowning, picking at her nail varnish, pulling it off in pink flakes and scattering it on the table.

  “No, she doesn’t,” I said. “She just knows she loves you.”

  I didn’t mean to make Cherry cry. I was just saying what I thought. She put her head on the table and her hair spread out over the skin of her arms and she didn’t make a scene or anything, her breath just kept catching and it made her nose run.

  Nobody said anything. Isabel made her a cup of tea. Steve looked embarrassed, or slightly in pain or something. Mick stroked Cherry’s hair. I put my arms on the table in front of her. I put my head down too.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Cherry looked over at me, her cheek resting on her arm. “Not as sorry as I am.”

  At some point in that first day I went to my room and found that Max’s ant book with my money in it was gone. I searched around for it until I was sure it wasn’t there.

  I pictured Bohemia, swearing at me and hugging herself, hugging my book under her jumper. I was angry with her for maybe ten seconds. I stood by my bed and I balled up my fists and I roared, until Isabel banged on her ceiling and told me to give it a rest.

  It was more than two hundred quid.

  It scared me. It meant she wasn’t coming back from the station this time. Not if she didn’t want to. I went downstairs to tell the others.

  “That’s my girl,” Cherry said, biting her fingernails.

  “Bloody hell!” Isabel said.

  What would you do with that much money if you were ten and nobody was there to tell you? Live on sweets? Buy yourself a puppy? Give it to the nearest busker? I had this image of Bohemia stuffing my savings into the donations box at the National Gallery, walking away with a big Patron of the Arts smile on her face.

  “She could be anywhere,” I said.

  Seventeen (Bohemia)

  When I got off the coach at the right place, the ticket lady was watching me. I could feel her watching. I saw her head move when I moved, out of the corner of my eye. I held on to my coat really tight so none of the food fell out and I scratched my leg quickly to be sure of the money. In the car park I headed straight for the loo. I looked over my shoulder and said to my pretend family, “I need a wee.” Them looking at me strangely was fine because it meant the lady on the coach stopped watching.

  I stayed in the loo for a long time. There wasn’t a lot to do in there and I had to take tiny breaths cos the dirty pine smell was quite overpowering. I washed my hands and face, but I couldn’t see in the mirror cos it was too high so I just had to hope I looked tidy. The towel was on a roll and there wasn’t one speck of it that hadn’t been used at least forty times by someone else. I sorted out my pockets, food in one, Sam’s book in the other, and I put all the crumbs and wrappers in the bin. The third time I peeked out into the grey and shiny metal of the car park, the coach had gone.

  I was still quite a long way from where I needed to be.

  There was a café on the corner and the smell of bacon was like this solid thing you could almost eat straight out of the air. Actually I had an egg because of the trying to be a vegetarian thing. I had a fried egg roll with ketchup and a glass of milk and a chocolate chip cookie as big as my face. Eggs are quite strange. I find them easier to eat if I don’t look at them.

  It took me forever to work out which bus I needed to get and what time it was coming and everything. I worked out that there was one bus in the morning and one in the afternoon, and I’d missed them.

  That was it. One bus in the morning and one in the afternoon. Unbelievable.

  I was standing there trying to think of what to do when a man got out of his car and asked me if I was OK. Everything he was wearing was the colour of a mushroom, even his shoes and bag and moustache.

  I said, “I’m fine thanks,” and I moved a little bit away from him sideways, not so he’d notice, not to be rude or anything, just to feel better.

  “Are you lost?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Where’s your mum?”

  What was I supposed to say to that? In bed with Mick. Passed out in the bathroom. Drunk in a corner.

  I said, “She’s gone to get some change for the meter.”

  He clucked his teeth and I looked at my shoes and I was starting to wonder if somebody who dresses like a mushroom could be described as dangerous. I was picturing myself running when a lady came out of the loo. I could tell straightaway she was his wife cos she looked like a mushroom too. Maybe that happens to you when you get old. You wake up and suddenly pale brown is your favourite colour.

  I felt better that she was there. But then I remembered seeing this thing on TV once about a girl being followed by a big man. She got on a bus to get away from him and this nice old lady took pity on her and dried her tears and promised to take her home. Except the nice old lady was actually the big man’s mum and she took the girl straight to him. I didn’t sleep for days. It shows you can’t be too careful.

  “Her mum’s gone for change,” the man said to his wife.

  “And left you here?” she said. “All by yourself?”

  The whole of her throat, from her chin down to the top button of her shirt, swung and wobbled when she talked.

  “I don’t mind,” I said, and I thought about how much her neck would wobble if she knew the half of it.

  In the end I got a taxi. I felt bad about it being Sam’s money, but I wasn’t going to spend a whole night in the car park. It was cold for a start and it was probably going to rain, and I didn’t want to sit and watch everything get empty and dark all by myself in a place I’d never been before. That’s when it would’ve been handy to have Doormat, just for somebody to cuddle up to.

  The people at the taxi place didn’t believe me. I had to lie and lie to get them to take me.

  I said my mum was a doctor and she was supposed to collect me from school, but she was stuck in the hospital.

  I said my dad was away on business.

  I said they couldn’t speak to my mum cos she was busy in an emergency and that’s why she couldn’t take me herself.

  They wanted to make sure I had the money. I felt a bit silly getting it out of my sock. It was crumpled and sweaty, but it changed their minds.

  Forty quid it cost me. It was worth every penny.

  Me and the driver didn’t talk to each other. I put my face against the window and I just stared and stared. Everything was so green. Everywhere was trees and fields, and the floor was all hills and slopes, not flat at all. And in the background, sort of brooding over all the green, was the purple and grey and brown and blue of the mountains. If it hadn’t all been moving past at me at however many miles an hour, I’d have thought somebody drew a picture and stuck it to the window just to trick me.

  We got stuck behind a tractor the size of a dinosaur, with red clods of mud dropping off its teeth, leaving red trails on the road behind it. The driver didn’t like it. He kept trying to overtake, but the road was all windy and small and I didn’t mind cos it gave me more time to look at things.

  We got stuck in some sheep too, a whole load of them right there in the road. The farmer was waving his hands about, trying to get them to cross. It made a t
raffic jam. The sheep moved around the cars, both sides, behind and in front, and it was like we were in a boat and the bobbing sheep’s backs were the foamy ripples of the sea.

  We turned off the road and on to a track that was full of holes and ditches and puddles. It crunched under the tyres and the hedges either side of the car were too high to see over. The track was going up and up and up, and then suddenly the hedges disappeared and everything opened up and we were right at the bottom of the mountain, like a giant breathing down on us, standing really still. The track was just a tiny straight line in the middle of this wild place, thick with plants and dotted with sheep. They looked at the car and I looked back at them, and I remember thinking how lucky they were to live right there, and how I’d never in my whole life seen anything like it before.

  After a bit the track bent round, and on the bend there was a house that looked like two houses stuck together. There were two dogs and three geese and a muddy car in the front. The taxi driver stopped and looked at me and said, “Home.”

  I paid him the money and I got my coat out of the back and I shut the door. Then I just stood there while he drove away cos I was suddenly feeling a bit nervous, like, what if no one was in or I had the wrong house or something?

  I got Sam’s book out of my pocket and I took small steps to the door. The dogs and the geese came to see me and smell my hands. The dogs wagged their tails and the geese shook their heads and feathers. I’d never been that close to a goose before. They’re pretty big.

  The front door was big too, and wooden and old. My hand hardly made any noise against it so I had to use the knocker, which was black and metal and loud.

  A boy opened the door. He was tall like Sam, but much thinner and his hair stuck out from his head in strange directions, like a paintbrush you forgot to wash. He had one blue sock on and one orange, and no shoes. He had a thing with his eyes, so that one was looking at me and one was looking at something behind me, just above my head. He had two thin, jagged scars, one above his right eye that disappeared into his hair, and one under his lip, all across his chin. He had some teeth missing too, gaps like mine except he was way too old for that.