How to Find Home

by Mahsuda Snaith

  ‘You can’t, Luca,’ I said.

  He looked up at me.

  ‘No, I can,’ he said. ‘I saw this guy do it once.’

  But that’s not what I meant.

  I could feel something bad inside me. The feeling comes every so often – not butterflies fluttering but snakes slithering around my gut. It makes me queasy, like I’m about to be sick, a sour taste spreading across the sides of my tongue.

  Luca stood up with a wire coat hanger in his hand. Jules stopped laughing.

  ‘My God,’ she said. ‘Posh Boy’s got balls.’

  She slapped him on the back and he looked all chuffed as though he’d been elected captain of the football team. I glanced up at the windows of the houses around us. One of them had curtains with a teddy bear print.

  ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ I said.

  Jules was nodding, bottom lip stuck out.

  ‘You’re right, Molls,’ she said. ‘The coat hanger only works with old bangers. This car’s too new. The alarm will sound as soon as you touch it.’

  Luca nodded at Jules as if she was his newly appointed crime adviser. They walked off, hunting for an old banger. Boy trailed behind, her little stump waggling in anticipation. It took a while for Luca to notice that I wasn’t following. When he did he gestured at me with his long, dangly arms. I squeezed my shoulders tight.

  ‘It’s not right,’ I whispered.

  Luca squinted, trying to decipher what I was saying. Jules heard just fine though, rolling her eyes and jutting her chin in the air.

  ‘Here we go!’ she cried.

  Boy barked. The sound echoed around the street.

  ‘Control your dog,’ Luca told Jules.

  ‘She ain’t my dog!’ Jules hissed.

  She picked Boy up and fed her some Quavers from her pocket. Luca scurried over to me.

  ‘It’s not fair to just take their things,’ I said. I made sure to keep my voice low so Jules wouldn’t hear.

  Luca shook his head as though I’d made a simple mistake.

  ‘The people on this street own two cars minimum. They won’t even notice it’s gone.’

  The rows of cars were all parked neatly beside the kerb. There were family cars, camper vans, two-seaters with soft tops, all shiny and buffed with little air fresheners shaped like fruit hanging from the mirrors. The snakes slithered.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I said. ‘They might be really struggling. They might be elderly. They might have a disabled child and need the car to get them to hospital.’

  I could hear Jules sighing. She wandered over to us, Boy still in her arms, but I didn’t look at her, I looked at Luca. I could see he was thinking about what I was saying.

  ‘Just because they live in a nice house doesn’t mean they don’t have problems,’ I said.

  Luca jerked back as though I’d slapped him. Jules didn’t notice, nudging him gently in the ribs.

  ‘She’s got moral on us recently has Molls. Seen God or summat.’

  I didn’t like the way she said this, all dismissive. I felt the heat prickle up my neck, my shoulders draw in even closer. I looked at the can in her hand. I wanted to snatch it and empty the contents down the drain. She’d be fuming if I did that.

  ‘I’m going back,’ I said.

  I turned around before Jules could see she’d got to me. If she saw that, she’d tell me I was too soft. Every time I disagree with her, she tells me I’m too soft. I don’t mind it most of the time, but this wasn’t about me; it was about the people who lived here.

  I kept my head low, not knowing where I was going or whether Jules and Luca would follow. I saw a rat scurrying along the side of the pavement, its long pink tail flicking out behind it. I slowed down, thinking about the rat eyes from the night before. How they wouldn’t stop staring, as if they were trying to tell me something. Then I remembered my dream.

  When I looked up, there was a police car at the bottom of the road. It was so bright and luminous with its reflective yellow-and-blue checks that I didn’t understand how I hadn’t seen it earlier. It must have just arrived. I scanned the houses and saw a man in uniform at the door of a cottage. I almost turned to run back up the road but the policeman had spotted me. The sour taste in my mouth turned rotten. He looked away and I began to whistle.

  Back when I was deep in the habit, me and Jules would go on the rob together. Rusby said no one ever suspected girls so it was best that way. Truth was he’d been caught so many times that he’d been banned from the city centre. In any case, me and Jules worked pretty well together. I’d be the lookout while Jules went and filled the pockets of her oversized camo jacket and cargo pants. When I saw a shop assistant looking suspicious or a security guard coming I’d do this whistle. It couldn’t be an obvious whistle or people would look at me and we’d both be in for it so I did a quick ‘Follow The Yellow Brick Road’ melody. Then I’d leave and meet Jules at our safe spot for that part of the city. The front of the Town Hall, for example, or next to the Brian Clough statue.

  We didn’t have a safe spot in Bingham, but I whistled my tune loud and quick as I passed the policeman, then carried on whistling so it didn’t sound suspicious. When I got to the square at the bottom of the street, I turned, hoping to see Jules and Luca behind, but they weren’t there. I thought of going back to Manor Cottage or to the station. Then I saw the Buttercross monument and decided I would sit underneath it, right in the middle, so that they wouldn’t be able to miss me.

  The slabs were cold and my hip was aching as I sat cross-legged. The seconds seemed to drag on for hours, and I thought about what Luca said about time being relative. The seconds plodded on. Tick. Tick.

  I looked at the houses at the end of the street. They were big buildings, painted white with panelled glass windows. We had a nice house once. When I was little. No mansion, mind, but a nice semi in the suburbs. Beautiful lawn, a shiny car in the driveway. From the outside, everyone must have thought we had a great life, that we were the perfect family. But no one knows the inside of something unless they live in it. I pulled at the rubber bands on my wrist. I didn’t want to be thinking about that but the policeman had brought it all back. I whistled again, hoping the sound would swallow the memories. But other memories took their place. The magistrates’ court by the canal in Nottingham. Feeling giddy as I looked up at the tall glass entrance. How I’d sat in a denim jacket, a maxi dress and sandals because I had no other clothes to wear. I couldn’t borrow anything because I was eight months pregnant and nothing fitted. I remember sitting in the reception, watching all the solicitors and barristers walk by in their pressed suits and shiny shoes. They glanced at me, but only for a second, as if I was something they’d seen out of the corner of their eye but realized was nothing important. I wanted to tell them that I had been going to be a solicitor myself. It’s what had been planned for me. But what did it matter? What was planned wasn’t what I was. And what was I? A homeless, pregnant thief sitting on a bench in a magistrates’ court with a boyfriend who had a season ticket for the place but was nowhere to be seen.

  I shivered. The memories were taking over. My parents. Rusby. Those dark, fragile days. I pulled a bunch of rubber bands from my wrist and began twisting and looping them together until I had legs and a body, two rubber-band plaits. I was so focused that I didn’t hear the barking. Then I saw Boy running towards me across the square. A fuzzy ball getting bigger and bigger. I tucked the half-formed body into my jacket pocket.

  ‘Good girl!’ I said as she jumped into my lap.

  I squeezed Boy tight, feeling her heart thudding in her tiny body like the beat in a stereo speaker. One by one the streetlamps switched off as the blue dawn turned to day. I saw the police car drive around the square before leaving. I couldn’t tell if there was anyone in the back. Boy licked my chin. She carried on until two figures came marching down the street. Then she jumped out of my lap and ran straight to Jules, who was trying to get Luca to turn back. But Luca’s expression was steel
. When he saw me, he headed to the Buttercross and stuck his hand out. I clasped his palm, feeling the firmness of his grip as he pulled me up.

  ‘We can still do it,’ Jules was saying. ‘He’s gone now, ain’t he?’

  Luca shook his head.

  ‘Not with what you just told me.’

  Jules flapped her arms down hard to her sides.

  ‘I already told you! He ain’t gonna recognize me!’ she said. ‘I’m not in his jurisdiction.’

  ‘She’s broken her probation,’ Luca said. ‘Wasn’t supposed to leave Nottingham. That’s why we just spent the last ten minutes hiding behind a bin. Thanks for the whistling thing. You saved our necks.’

  He was looking at me with that impressed look. I felt my cheeks tingle as I blushed.

  ‘Yeah, ta,’ Jules said, but in a begrudging way, as if she’d opened a birthday present to reveal something she didn’t want.

  She scrunched up her beer can and threw it on the ground. Then, seeing Boy for the first time, bent down and scooped her up.

  ‘End of adventure, then,’ she said.

  Luca pulled the straps tight on his rucksack.

  ‘No, not the end,’ he said, starting to walk away. ‘Just the start of Plan C.’

  Jules looked at me, confused, and then followed Luca.

  I picked up the can and threw it in the bin.

  The Magic Art of the Psychotic

  I saved a boy from drowning once.

  He’d been squatting on the bank of the lake at the local park – hand stretched out to a toy boat floating on the ripples, body straining forward as his fingers wiggled towards the sails – and lost his balance, falling head first into the water. There wasn’t a dramatic splash, just a dull plop, as though a heavy rock had been thrown in. No one seemed to notice he’d fallen, apart from me, or that he was flapping his arms and legs in a way that was moving him further and further from shore.

  I dived straight in. I was eleven at the time; I’d started my rookie life-saving course at school so it seemed logical that, if I could rescue bricks from the bottom of a pool in my pyjamas, I could save this boy.

  His hair was the colour of fire. I remember searching for it as I front-crawled through the murky water. The rotten stench of stagnating water was in my nose, the sludgy algae entering my mouth and making me gag, but I kept going, watching the fire of his hair get closer and closer until, finally, I grabbed him around the shoulders, flipped on to my back and began short firm kicks towards the shore. The boy clung tightly to my arm, his body relaxing into mine as he coughed and spluttered. This is it, I thought, I’m going to be a hero.

  That’s when I got stuck.

  Something, a reed or an old rope, was wrapped around my ankle. I tried to kick it off but the harder I kicked the more we were dragged under the water. Our heads plunged down, then back up as we gasped for air. I began choking, my mouth filling up with the stagnant taste of lake water and death. The boy began wailing.

  I don’t remember how we got out of the lake, but when we did the boy was still crying. Even when his parents came rushing to his side he kept his eyes closed, chest heaving in and out with each sob. I knew how he felt; my chest was stinging, the foul taste of death still swimming across my tongue. I wanted to sob too.

  The father ran over to me. He had the same fiery hair, freckles scattered across his pale face. I waited for him to hug me tight and thank me a thousand times over. Instead, he held me firm by the shoulders.

  ‘Next time, call for help,’ he said.

  When my mother came, her face was thunder. She ignored everyone telling her to wait for the paramedics and took me to the car park. She pushed me on to the back seat of the car and climbed into the front. I looked at the back of her head, her hair in a perfect French twist, highlights running in horizontal lines. She glanced at me in the rear-view mirror, dark eyes buried beneath furrowed brows.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone about this,’ she said. ‘Especially your father.’

  She switched on the ignition as I shivered. There was a blanket in the boot, but I didn’t ask for it. That’s the thing with my family: you never called for help, even if you were drowning.

  The sun was lily white as we followed Luca through Bingham. It shone through the gaps between the shops and on to the cobbled pavement. Jules was telling us again about the man who looked like Flash Gordon and how he’d held his head, weeping.

  ‘I mean, it’s like the man never had his head nutted before,’ she said. ‘Bloody knobhead.’

  She’d obviously forgotten the car debacle. As long as we were moving, she didn’t care too much what we were doing. Even when her phone kept ringing she didn’t slow down, just took it out of her pocket, glanced at the screen and declined the call.

  For a long time, we were walking in loops. Jules didn’t notice, she was too busy gabbing, but I recognized the same red telephone booths and veg stalls, the Chinese takeaway and dry cleaner’s that looked like a solicitor’s office. I didn’t ask Luca where we were going; he seemed to have a plan and I didn’t want to interfere.

  ‘You’ve got to let the wind guide you when you’re on the streets,’ Robin Hood had told me. ‘You’re not a caged bird any more; you’re wild.’

  It was past midday when we turned on to a new path with grass verges and arching trees. A heritage-green sign said ‘BYWAY’. Boy was following us, shoving her head in bushes and ditches. The sun was shimmering through the leaves, creating a dappled light across the path and on our faces. Robin Hood said they have a word for this in Japanese: komorebi. He had travelled a lot when he was a CEO. We used to have nice conversations about his travels and I kind of wished I could tell him about mine now. To be honest, I missed Robin Hood. And Big Tony and Yasmin from Glasgow. I even missed Private Pete and his skin infections.

  We walked straight up the byway, Jules telling us how – after nutting him – she’d kicked the Flash Gordon man in the balls so he’d know what real pain was like. As she demonstrated the kick, fist tight round her bevvy, leg snapping out, Luca stopped walking. His feet stayed stuck to the path, but his body wobbled forwards and backwards as though there was a big magnet beneath him. We stopped too, watching Luca staring down at his feet. Then he turned around and headed back the way we’d come. We both began to follow but he paused again. Jules was being quite patient, holding her bevvy lax in her hand, strands of her hair still at crazy angles from the night before. She was looking at Luca with curiosity, like he was a rare animal. It was only when Luca turned, set off again, hesitated, and spun round for the third time that her neck blotched poppy red.

  ‘What the FUcK, Posh Boy?’

  Luca scratched his chin like he was solving a mathematical problem, lips pulled to the side, eyes darting round like steel balls in a pinball machine. Eventually he sighed and shook his head.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ he said.

  ‘What can’t you do?’ Jules said. ‘Walk up a FucKinG PaTh?’

  A cloud covered the sun, and the komorebi vanished.

  ‘Shall we rest for a bit?’ I said.

  I tried to say it cheerily to break the tension, but the words only riled Jules further.

  ‘Rest from what exactly?’ she said. ‘We’ve only been WalKinG.’

  Luca didn’t seem to hear Jules at all. He looked at me, nodding as we made our way to the grass verge and took off our rucksacks. The grass was damp so we both sat on Luca’s trumpet case. I could feel the warmth of his body pressing into mine. Boy came and curled up in front of us as if we were a fire. I glanced up at Jules. The clouds were hovering like a dark canopy, heavy and foreboding.

  ‘Only for a bit, Jules,’ I said. ‘You can have a fag.’

  Her face was tight as she pulled out her rolling tobacco.

  ‘I can have a FaG walking and all,’ she muttered.

  She didn’t sit down with us but kept muttering to herself. Luca was clearly having another mathematical think because he was scratching his chin again. He pulled a bit of bread from
his pocket and broke it up for the birds as he had in the graveyard. It seemed like a ritual he had to do before a big decision. Maybe Einstein did a similar thing.

  Jules took a drag from her cigarette and then held it by her side. The darkness was hanging over us, birds gathering at our feet.

  ‘Does a lot of THinKinG, this one,’ she said, gesturing at Luca. ‘Like you in that way, ain’t he, MoLLs?’

  She took another drag, puffing out smoke in big curls. Dog-walkers passed by, spying from the corner of their eyes. I knew what this would lead to; if we lurked too long they’d call the police, reporting us for committing the grand crime of looking suspicious. That’s probably what happened this morning with the police car: You must come, Officer, there are unknown people walking our quiet market town streets.

  It began spitting with rain. Tiny little drops hit Jules’s face but she didn’t wipe them away. She pointed her finger at Luca. It looked aggressive the way she did it: long digit wobbling, fingernail bitten down into a jagged blade. But I could see by the way she was holding her shoulders that this was her version of being calm and reasonable.

  ‘I’ve told MoLLs and I’m telling you,’ she said to Luca, ‘ThINking never helped no one.’

  Luca’s mathematical frown dropped. He pushed each of his fingers down, counting off examples.

  ‘The theories of space and time; the invention of the steam engine, telephone and penicillin; the creation of art, literature and music …’

  Jules flapped her hand at him, shaking her head like she was teaching a toddler to stack cubes.

  ‘Naaaah!’ she said. ‘That’s not what I’m talking about. Thinking doesn’t help the likes of us.’

  Luca stopped counting and looked at Jules.

  ‘All it does is send you more mental than you already are,’ she said.

  It was a reflex comment, like the babble that comes after a big cry, no judgement or malice attached. Jules may think the world is full of psychotics but it’s not some godawful thing that she believes needs to be purged from the face of the earth. It’s not something that scares her like it might other people.