Lori and Max

by Catherine O’Flynn

  Miss Casey’s calling out, ‘Two more minutes, class. You should all be finishing off now. Please make sure that you’ve put your names at the top of your worksheets.’

  Max’s sheet is still blank.

  ‘So, what were you expelled for?’ Josh says again.

  Max ignores him but finally picks up the pencil and starts doing some work.

  ‘Oi, scarecrow!’ says Tariq. ‘Don’t ignore Josh. Don’t you know that’s rude?’

  Suddenly Miss Casey is at the table. ‘Well, with all this chit-chat, I assume everyone here has finished their work and is ready to hand it in.’

  Miss Casey always says ‘chit-chat’. It’s like nobody’s told her that you don’t need the ‘chit’ bit. Is chit even the same as chat? Nobody explains these things, least of all Miss Casey.

  We slide our worksheets across the desk to her. All except one.

  ‘And Maxine? How did you get on with the task?’

  ‘One minute,’ says Max, holding up her finger like she’s the teacher. Miss Casey stands and waits, looking a bit awkward until Max finally puts her pencil down and pushes the piece of paper across the table. She looks directly at Josh and Tariq for the first time:

  ‘You want to know what I was expelled for?’

  Suddenly Miss Casey gasps. ‘What on earth is this?’ She slams Max’s worksheet back on the table. There, covering the entire piece of paper is an amazing picture of Josh and Tariq: one of the best drawings I’ve ever seen. Their eyes, noses and mouths are perfect, but their bodies aren’t like their bodies at all. Their bodies are something else entirely: something grey and furry, with dirty-looking claws.

  Max, still ignoring Miss Casey, gives Tariq and Josh a big grin and says, ‘If you really want to know, I got expelled from my last school and the one before that because I’ve got this bad habit of turning silly boys who bother me into rats.’

  Chapter Four

  Max lies on her bed looking at the Wildlife Atlas of the World. Between its hard covers Max can travel to the Appalachian mountains of North America, or the Great Lakes of East Africa, or the frozen waters of Antarctica. Books are the kinds of things that get left behind when her family has to move, but not this one. She makes sure this one always comes with her. She reads it every day and never gets bored. Even her mum has noticed.

  ‘What you want to read about them wolves all the time for? Nasty things,’ she says.

  ‘It’s not just wolves, Mum,’ says Max. ‘It’s every type of animal in the entire world. And anyway wolves aren’t nasty. They only take what they need to survive.’

  ‘You never met a wolf,’ her mum says. As if she has. Max is fairly sure that the wildest animal her mum has ever seen is a cow. And even that made her scream.

  Max would be completely happy to lie on her bed all day long and lose herself in her book but the problem is that it’s hard to concentrate, hard to travel through time and space and race through a meadow with a snowshoe hare, when the smell of fried food is driving her completely mad.

  Max lives above a fried-chicken takeaway called Rooster Party. The name really bothers her. It’s obviously not a party for the roosters. The thought of a big queue of happy chickens thinking they’re going off to a party when in fact they’re headed for a deep-fat fryer makes Max really sad. It also makes her feel bad that she likes eating chicken so much. When she comes home from school, she always stops and stares at the photos in the window of Rooster Party. There are chicken wings, chicken breasts, chicken nuggets, chicken kebabs, chicken that’s been pulled and something called chicken popcorn. Max has no idea what that is. Popcorn for chickens? Popcorn made out of chickens? Whatever the type of chicken, it’s always photographed in a box with chips and a can of Coke on the side. Max thinks this must be because Rez, who owns Rooster Party, has to spend so long coming up with crazy things to do with chickens that he’s got no imagination left for anything else. The chicken looks very orange in all the photos and the chips looks pale and sweaty. But, even though the photos give her a headache, the name makes her sad and the smell isn’t great, the constant waft from Rooster Party makes Max hungry all the time.

  She heads out of her bedroom and across to the kitchen to scout around for food. All she manages to find are some teabags and the last handful of slightly stale Rice Pops. Her mum is asleep on the sofa. Max gently shakes her shoulder.

  ‘Oh!’ Her mum smiles. She always smiles when she wakes up, surprised and a little embarrassed that she has fallen asleep again. ‘Did I nod off?’

  ‘Mum, I’m hungry.’

  ‘Did you want me to make you something?’

  ‘There’s nothing to make. We need to go shopping.’

  ‘Well, where’s your dad? He said he was going to the shop this morning.’

  This is how it always starts. Max says nothing.

  Her mum sits up. ‘Get my purse. You go, will you, baby? I’m tired. Get something nice for yourself. I’ll cook it for you when you come back.’

  Her mum calls to her as Max hunts for the handbag in the hall. ‘Should be a £20 note in there. I got it yesterday. Take it and buy whatever we need.’

  Max finds the bag, opens the purse.

  ‘You got it?’ Her mum calls.

  The purse is empty. He’s taken it. She can’t face telling her mum.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ she calls. ‘Be back in half an hour.’ She looks in at her mum before leaving. She’s settling back down to sleep. Max wonders if she’s eaten anything at all today. She grabs her jacket and feels for the snake charm in her pocket. Time to go hunting.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Got you a little present, sweetheart,’ says Nan after we’ve finished tea, holding up a Ritzy carrier bag. Ritzy is a shop on New Heath high street. It sells clothes, usually with lots of glitter or pictures of fluffy animals on them. I find everything in Ritzy either confusing or crazy, but Nan loves it.

  ‘You didn’t have to get me a present, Nan.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. It was only cheap. Come on, try it on.’

  That’s the other problem with Ritzy. It’s super-cheap. If there are two things in this world that my nan can’t resist, they are bargains and clothes that make you look slightly crazy. Nan herself is a big fan of hats. She has hundreds of them. Some of them are OK, and by OK I don’t mean something that I would ever wear, but OK meaning something an older lady might wear, on a very cold day when a hat is absolutely necessary. But most of them are not so OK (e.g. her ‘hot pink pom-pom number’) and she wears them whatever the weather.

  I should say that Nan is not mad; overall she’s an excellent nan. My mum and dad died when I was four months old and Nan came to live with me. She brought her clothes, her photos, her ceramic angels and her hats, but apart from that she left the house exactly as it was and I’m glad about that. I like knowing that this is where my parents lived and I love our house. It’s old but not creepy old. It’s almost always sunny and warm. The only thing is that sometimes it feels a bit like we’re living in a museum where none of the exhibits have labels. Everything in the house is a bit of a mystery to us: the books, the ornaments, even the strange kitchen utensils. We look at the pictures hanging on the walls and wonder what they are. So Nan and I come up with our own names for them: like the sad-looking man on the landing is called ‘Sourpuss’ and the painting of the woman with eyes in the wrong place is called ‘Wonky Chops’. Sometimes we come across one of the pictures somewhere else and find out its real name, or who painted it, or what it’s supposed to be. Back in Year 2 we studied an artist called Henri Matisse and that’s how I discovered that the massive picture in the living room that Nan and I both love was painted by him and is actually called ‘The Snail’. I like Matisse, but he was obviously rubbish at titles. It looks nothing like a snail, so we stick with ‘Woman with shopping bags’, which is what it looks like and is anyway just a better thing to paint a picture of. Nan and I see eye to eye on most things. Unfortunately clothing is not one of them.

 
Nan pulls a purple T-shirt out of the Ritzy bag. It has jewels, possibly not real ones, all around the neck and on the front is a big picture of a puppy wearing glasses with the words ‘Follow Your Dreams’ written underneath.

  ‘What do you think?’

  I stare at it for a while trying to work it out. Is the puppy telling me to follow my dreams? Or is the T-shirt telling the puppy to follow his dreams? Do puppies have dreams? I’m fairly sure they don’t wear glasses.

  ‘He’s cute, isn’t he?’ says Nan.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  Nan frowns and turns the T-shirt round to look at it. ‘Mean? I don’t know, love. I didn’t read it. Nobody reads the words on clothes. It’s fashion! You just go with it!’

  ‘Right, I see.’

  ‘You will wear it, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure I will.’

  Nan gives me the look she gives when she thinks I’m fibbing. An eyes-narrowed, interrogating-detective-sergeant kind of look. ‘Are you being polite?’

  ‘I’m always polite. It’s good to be polite.’

  ‘It’s not good to fib!’

  ‘I will wear it, honestly.’

  Nan shakes her head. ‘Oh, I know, underneath one of your hoodies where no one can see it. People will think it’s my doing. They’ll look at you and think, “Poor love – lives with her nan – no idea what young girls should wear.”’

  ‘No one notices what I wear, Nan.’

  ‘I don’t want you to look different from the other girls. They all have their mums buying them the latest fashions. I don’t want you looking the odd one out. The fuddy duddy.’

  ‘The whatty whatty?’

  ‘Fuddy duddy. You know – old fashioned, out of touch.’

  ‘Nan, I’m not sure anyone says that any more.’

  ‘Are you telling me that saying “fuddy duddy” is fuddy duddy?’

  This makes me smile. ‘Nan, the thing is, detectives don’t have time to follow fashion or spend valuable minutes working out what puppies are thinking. We have our minds on other things. Plus, I’m meant to be undercover! Sherlock Holmes didn’t have sequins on his deerstalker, did he?’

  ‘Oh, the detective thing again. Lovey, you’re ten years old. You’re a child!’

  This makes me actually splutter. ‘Nan, there have been literally loads of child detectives!’

  ‘Yes, love, in books. On telly. Not in real life.’

  ‘Well, grown-up detectives have to start somewhere. I’m learning the tricks of the trade. Anyway, I’m good at solving mysteries. You told me that.’

  ‘Well, you are smashing at finding my glasses, I have to say.’

  ‘There you go then.’

  I help Nan clear up and then head upstairs to do my homework. My bedroom has yellow walls covered with hand-painted rainbows, stars, clouds, unicorns and all kinds of fairytale things. My mum and dad did them all when Mum was pregnant with me. Nan said they only meant to do one rainbow but they got a bit carried away. I like my room, I really do, but sometimes I wish it was just a little bit more … professional looking, the kind of room a detective might have. One of my favourite things to do is to sit at my desk (also yellow with a large rainbow covering the top) and imagine my perfect room. I imagine a whole bank of filing cabinets for keeping all my important case files and also for slamming angrily and making a really good thunk sound when things get tough or I’ve only got 24 hours to complete an investigation. I also want a big, grown-up desk, for doing all my paperwork, ideally with one of those springy, bendy lights that you can move up and down. Behind the desk I’ll have an enormous whiteboard or high-tech pinboard of some sort, where I can stick pictures of suspects and victims and clues and draw lines and question marks between them. Maybe I’ll even get the internet up on it, just in case I need to Google something. Most important, though, will be the chair. I’ll have a big, leather, swivel chair, that not only goes round and round but also up and down when you pull a lever, and makes a nice hissing sound, like the ones in Paperclips Office Supplies.

  I open my yellow rainbow desk to check my case files. It doesn’t take long as I only have four of them.

  Case one: Disappearance/possible theft

  Client: Pam Southwell (aka Nan)

  Details: Missing pair of bifocal glasses reported by client on June 26th.

  Investigation: After questioning and close search of client’s sitting room, glasses found down side of the sofa.

  Result: Case closed

  Case two: Disappearance/possible theft

  Client: Pam Southwell (aka Nan)

  Details: Missing pair of bifocal glasses reported by client on June 30th.

  Investigation: After questioning and close search of client’s sitting room, glasses found down side of the sofa.

  Result: Case closed

  Case three: Disappearance/possible theft

  Client: Pam Southwell (aka Nan)

  Details: Missing pair of bifocal glasses reported by client on August 1st.

  Investigation: Advised client to check side of sofa. Glasses found. Further advised client to put glasses on chain to be worn around neck.

  Result: Case closed

  Case four: Missing person (cat)

  Client: Pam Southwell (aka Nan) on behalf of Mrs Cromarty (at no. 52)

  Details: Cat answering to name of Mr Socks (description: black with white paws, likes eating pork scratchings) last seen August 28th in front garden.

  Investigation: After questioning and close search of street/garden, no trace of Mr Socks.

  Current lines of enquiry:

  Mr Socks has been taken by catnappers

  Mr Socks has gone to live with someone else who can offer a healthier diet

  Mr Socks did not look when crossing the road

  Result: Unsolved

  And that’s it. I suppose I could have had more if I accepted other cases from Nan, but I’ve had to tell her that looking for glasses, purses, hats and slippers doesn’t really count as detective work. I mean, I’m happy to help her look for the countless things she mislays every single day, but I can’t be launching formal investigations every time, I’ve told her. ‘It’s a lot of paperwork, Nan. It’s not really necessary.’

  If only I’d solved the Mr Socks case. Unofficially, I have a pretty good idea what happened to him: I saw a squashed, black, furry shape at the edge of Nicholson Street a week after the disappearance. I couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure it was Mr Socks and I couldn’t face telling Mrs Cromarty anyway, so I kept the information to myself. But if I’d found Mr Socks alive and returned him home, word would have got around, maybe other neighbours might have come with their own mysteries to investigate. The cases would have started flooding in.

  You see, the hardest part of being a detective isn’t solving mysteries, it’s finding mysteries to solve.

  Chapter Six

  She knows the sound now. A kind of shuffling, swishing noise mixed in with some thuds and grunts and the occasional swear word. This is the sound of Max’s dad trying to move a large screen TV either up or down stairs. Max has heard it a lot. Up is generally good news, but down is always bad.

  He used to always have a big grin on his face as he wrestled a giant flat-screen through the door. ‘Look what I got you both! Come see, look! Sixty-five-inch screen, man!’ And then the three of them would sit in front of the screen, taking turns with the remote, pressing the buttons like he told them. Her dad would be so proud, like he’d made the TV himself.

  But it never lasted long. ‘I’m gonna get you a better one, I swear. Top of the range, babe,’ he’d lie to Max’s mum just a few weeks later as he tugged the cables out the back and took it away again to sell.

  Now he says nothing. TVs come and TVs go and nobody mentions it. Even Max’s dad gets sick of pretending sometimes. It’s the same with laptops, mobile phones, her mum’s jewellery. Sometimes they’re there; sometimes they’re not.

  Max gave up on the telly a long time ago. She’s hap
py enough with her book. Her mum likes looking at it, though, right up until he takes it away. On a good day, her head jerks and she frowns and says, ‘Hey! What you doing? I was watching that.’ On a bad day, she doesn’t really react. She just carries on staring at the place where the telly was. Like the blank wall is the next programme.

  The telly’s still there at the moment. So things aren’t at rock bottom. But Max’s dad hasn’t been home in four days and that can only mean one thing. He’s gambling again.

  Chapter Seven

  Miss Casey is late again for registration and most of the class are ‘horsing around’, though if I were a horse, I’d be quite cheesed off about that particular expression. I mean, horses don’t really ‘horse around’, they’re generally quite sensible and well-behaved – boring even. I have never, for example, seen a horse steal someone’s pencil case and start throwing it to his mates, as Josh Ryman has just done while Jessica Pemberton runs around frantically trying to get it back.

  On the rare occasions when Josh Ryman isn’t picking on someone, he’s going on about his new trainers, or his bike, or the latest X-box games he’s been bought. He tells everyone how much everything costs – he’s like a walking, talking Argos catalogue. He’s the first boy in the class to have a phone and, of course, it’s the latest iPhone and he thinks it’s totally unfair that he’s not allowed to bring it into school. He’s always been the biggest in the class – even back in Reception. In fact, apart from expanding, he hasn’t changed that much in either appearance or behaviour since he was four. He still has the same babyish face – slightly chubby, red cheeks and big blue eyes topped off with a floppy mop of blond, curly hair. Nan once said that he looked like an angel, which made me snort so much that some chocolate milkshake came out of my nose. I said: ‘Nan, appearances can be very deceptive.’