You wouldn't believe how ordinary a squad car is on the inside. The backseat had one of those stretchy covers with a fluffy brown surface on it that people put in their carsâI don't know why, it's pretty horrible. It also had one of those dangling Christmas-tree things that smell like the stuff people squirt in the toilet to make it smell like not-toilet.
Our guard sat in the driver's seat, and the bike guard, the one who'd been on the computer, got into the front passenger seat. Hal didn't like that, but he couldn't argue. It was their car.
“Will you put on the siren?” he asked, after we'd put on our seat belts.
Our guard laughed, but she was a good sport and she did it.
“Oh yes!” said Hal, and we sped off in the direction of the Market Square,
whee-hoo, whee-hoo, whee-hoo.
It was kind of cool, I have to admit.
“Good-bye, so,” said our guard, when we'd climbed out of the squad car. “And next time,” she added with a grin, “try to get the name of the person you are inquiring about, right. It is much less suspicious.”
“I don't think there'll be a next time,” I said.
I mean, let's face it. How often does someone you know get arrested at the hospital? Nearly arrested, even?
She shook both our hands through the window of the squad car and said, “My name is Sonya O'Rourke. If ye're ever in trouble again, just ask for me, OK?”
“Thanks, Sonya,” said Hal.
I gave him a dig in the ribs. “Thanks, Guard O'Rourke,” I said.
“Here,” she said, and she took out a notebook and wrote something down in it with her pencil. Then she tore out the page, folded it over twice, and shoved it out the car window at Hal.
“Um, thanks,” said Hal again, looking at the folded note.
We waved them good-bye, and she put on the siren again, just for the fun of it.
“Is that her phone number?” I asked Hal, nodding toward the piece of paper. “She must like you.”
Hal blushed. He scrunched up the piece of paper and stuck it in his pocket.
I really was not looking forward to facing my parents after being out practically all day without permission. They don't like that kind of thing in my family. They get very cranky about it, in fact.
L
arry phoned from Paris in the morning. After the murder and mayhem there'd been in our house the previous day when I'd got home, I'd nearly forgotten about my Romanesque brother.
“Hey, Larry!” I warbled. “How's it going? How's Paris? Is it fabulous? Do you get croissants for breakfast? Are you having a great time with the lads? I bet you're having wild parties in your hostel, are you? I wish I was in secondaryâ”
“Great, Liv, it's cool. Look, can I speak to Mum or Dad, please? Urgently?”
“They've gone to church,” I said. “It's Sunday here. I'm cooking their breakfast, as a peace offering.”
“It's Sunday here, too. We've been to Notre Dame,” he said. “Gothic,” he added, before I told him. “How come you're at home by yourself? Have they finally caved in to your demands to be recognized as a freethinker?”
Wow! My brother the comedian! It must've been the Parisian air. But of course I didn't give him the satisfaction of laughing at his little witticism.
“I'm not,” I said. “It's just that I'm grounded. Strict house arrest.”
“House arrest! That doesn't include ⦔
“I know, I know,” I sighed. “Let's not go there, Larry.”
My parents had been furious when I said that I couldn't go to church because that would break the terms of my house arrest, but they hadn't had time to have it out with me, so they'd gone off muttering, “You haven't heard the last of this, young lady.” “Young lady” is always a bad omen, I find.
“Why?” asked Larry. “Why are you under house arrest, as you call it?”
“Because of yesterday and getting Alecâyou know, Mr. Denham, Hal's sort-of-stepdadâwell, we almost got him arrested, me and Hal. And you.”
“Arrested! Olivia, what
happened
?”
“Oh, it's not so bad. We only
thought
he'd been arrested, but really ⦔
Larry interrupted. “Look, I've just realized, this phone call is costing a bomb. You can tell me all this when I get home. So just listen, will you? I've got myself into ⦠well, I wouldn't say trouble, exactly, but ⦔
Larry in trouble. That was a new concept. I was intrigued.
“Larry, what have you done?”
“Well, um, I'm what you might call up doo-doo creek, and there is a serious shortage of paddling equipment.”
Larry is a bit like my mother that way. Tries too hard to be funny and ends up sounding pompous and ridiculous.
“Larry,” I said in exasperation, “I thought you were in a hurry. Will you just say whatever it is and put me out of my misery?”
“My passport has been stolen.”
“Oh, Larry! You idiot.” I have to admit that I chortled. “You lost it, didn't you?”
“It doesn't matter. The thing is, it's gone. The teacher said to ring home. We reported it to the French police, but they weren't very interested.”
I shuddered slightly at the mention of the police. I was beginning to feel we were having far too much contact with the law in this family lately.
“So, what's going to happen? Are you going to be stuck over there? Poor you, forced to live on
petits pains au chocolat
!”
“I dunno,” said Larry. “Ask them to phone me when they get home, will you? It's a bit nerve-wracking. Someone told me it's a crime to go out in this country without your papers.”
“What papers?”
“ID,” said Larry. “Passport.”
“Oh, Larry! Are you going to have to stay stuck inside all the time? Under
hotel
arrest?”
“Well, no,” said Larry. “I'm going to risk it. Live dangerously, that's my motto.”
That is so not Larry's motto! Paris must've been going to his head.
When my parents came back, all set to pick up the row where we'd left off, I told them that Larry was living dangerously in Paris. They didn't see the funny side of it. They got worked up into a right schemozzle about it, and they started ringing around all sorts of people, but because it was Sunday, there wasn't very much they could do, except tell Larry to report it to the embassy in Paris first thing the next day.
Luckily, all the flap and hoo-ha about Larry and his missing passport took the heat off me. Of course, they did still make me go to church later in the morning. Parents always win, don't they? Not that I minded. We have a gospel choir. It's cool.
In the end, it turned out there was somebody in the embassy in Paris after all, even though it was Sundayâ“skeleton staff,” they called it, spooksville!âand they said not to worry at all, they would be able to do something about Larry's passport, and it turned out he got invited to
dinner
by the ambassador because he was a friend of someone who knew my dad. That is just so Larry. He gets into what should be serious trouble, and he ends up getting invited out to a swanky dinner. Things like that never happen to me. I get to drink Coke out of a teacup in a grimy Garda station. Hal too. Then I remembered suddenly all that stuff yesterday about Hal's dad dying and everything. It made drinking Coke out of a teacup seem not so bad really.
Now I come to think of it, it mightn't have been the
actual ambassador, but it was definitely one of the high-ups in the embassy
“Now, if you are offered a glass of wine with your dinner, Larry,” my mother said earnestly into the phone, “you may take a
small
one, and add a
lot
of water to it, but otherwise, no, OK?”
“How come Larry can drink all of a sudden?” I asked.
“He's in France. People have wine with their meals. That doesn't count as âdrinking.'”
“He was in France yesterday, too, and it was absolutely no way.”
“Then he was with a group of Irish schoolkids. Now he's going to dinner with the Third Secretary.” (How many secretaries do these ambassador people need? I wondered.) “It's different.”
“No, it's not,” I said. “He's still fifteen.”
I don't know, parents have the weirdest attitudes to their own rules. It's like house arrest not applying to going to church. When I grow up, I will be more consistent.
H
al turned up in the afternoon, with his kite under his arm. My father opened the door. I was watching from the top of the stairs. I could see he was not pleased just by the way he stood there.
“Hello, Mr. O'Donoghue,” said Hal. “Can Olivia come out?”
“No!” barked my dad, but he jerked his head to indicate that Hal could come in to see me. Even prisons allow visitors, don't they?
“What's going on?” Hal whispered as soon as we got into the dining room, which is the best place because the adults never go in there unless we have people around for dinner, which, of course, doesn't happen on Sunday afternoons.
“Larry's got to go to dinner in a Paris apartment with Irish embassy people,” I said, “and it's full of overstuffed cushions, gold silk”âactually, I just made that bit up, but I bet it's very luxuriousâ“and it has shutters, but they don't open them, so it's dark and mysterious and it smells of cat and potpourri. Doesn't that sound adventurous?”
I wished I could go to Paris. I imagined myself about
three years older, in very pointy high heels and a little black dress, in high rooms lined with bookshelves, talking about something serious, philosophy, maybe, or films. I don't know what, but serious stuff, anyway. And people listening to me. That'd be the best part, instead of everyone telling me to act my age one minute and to do as I'm told the next.
Hal shook his head.
“Well?” I asked. “What happened when you got home yesterday?”
“Er, well, we had our lunch,” said Hal. “Waffles and beans.”
“Sounds disgusting,” I said.
“Well, normally it's broccoli and rice cakes, the stuff women eat. And I put a border around the kite. Look, I made it out of wallpaper that I found in a skip on our road.”
“Very nice, Hal,” I said.
“I thought about what you said about a blue kite disappearing into the sky, and I thought a red border would make it more visible.”
“Well,” I said. “It's nice to know you listen to me some of the time. So, it's red like Wednesday then?”
“No!” he said. “Wednesday is a completely different shade of red!”
“Right,” I said. Weirdo, I thought.
He'd attached these two amazing tails to the kite as well. One was made out of an old Christmas decoration, all glittery streamers, and the other one had these paper bows
in different colorsâpurple and yellow and green and red and pink and turquoise and gold. It was gorgeous, and really long, and every bow was a little bit smaller than the one before it, so the whole tail kind of trailed away, right down to the tiniest little mauve bow, not much bigger than a shirt button. He's quite artistic, Hal, when he puts his mind to it.
“It's wicked, Hal,” I said, “but what
happened
?”
I was dying to know how Hal's folks had reacted to all that business with the hospital, and whether the row between his mother and Alec had continued after she got back from the golf tournament. It was an
interesting
situation.
“I told you.”
“I mean Alec, what did he
say
? Did he mention the hospital business?”
“To me?”
“Well, yes, to you, to your mother, whatever. Did it come up in conversation over the waffles?”
“He doesn't eat waffles. Heâ”
“Hal!”
“What?”
“Look, let's take this in easy stages. When you got home yesterday, who was there?”
“My mother was still out playing golf.”
“Right. And Alec?”
“He was having a beer in the back garden.”
So, he was home before Hal. He hadn't got locked into some sort of nightmare in the hospital, going around and around pathetically looking for Clem Clingham and a pot of paint. He must have known about the back gate all along. He'd got one over on us there, even though he probably didn't even know it.
“So, you stuck your head out the back door and said ⦠oh no, you don't talk to him, so maybe you waved to him or something?”
“Wave to Him? No. I just took my bike around the side of the house. I keep it in the back, and he was sitting there on a deck chair, still wearing his painting overalls.”
“And?”
“So I said, âWere you working this morning, then? Only, I thought you were going to the golf thing with my mum.'”
“Hal! You
spoke
to him!”
“Well, I thought, it's a bit funny to be wearing his overalls when he's not working, and if I don't mention it, it'll look as if I am avoiding it or something, and that might seem a bit suspicious.”
“Well, yes, but I thought you said you never spoke to him! Not since he moved in.”
“Well,” Hal said, “I never had anything to say to him before, not really. Nothing important. But it seemed important to say something yesterday, after ⦠everything. So I did.”
“OK, so
he
said?” It was hard work getting this story out of Hal.
“âRrrmph,' something like that.”
I wasn't getting very far with this line of interrogation.
“So, when did your mum get home?”
“She didn't.”
“How d'you mean, she didn't come home? She must have been home by bedtime.”
“No.”
“She stayed out all night?”
“Yeah, looks like it.”
“Hal!”
“It tastes sort of like curry paste,” Hal said, peering at the kite.
“What does? Your mother not being there?”
“No!” he said, as if I should know that a thing like that wouldn't have a taste. How would I know what tastes and what doesn't in Hal's weird world?
“The border around the kite,” he said. “That shade of red. Green curry paste. Funny, that, the way the reds and the greens get mixed up. Never thought of that before.”
The kite, the kite, the wretched kite! He couldn't seem to concentrate on anything else. That and his weird mixed-up senses of color and taste.
“Hal!” I said again, pretty thunderously, I have to admit.
Hal's shoulders seemed to collapse in toward his chest, and he had that caved-in look he gets when he's upset. His face was like a snowflake that gets stuck on the outside of the window and you're looking at it from the inside, and
you know it's going to slither down any minute and then disappear.
“Sorry,” I said, meaning about shouting at him, but he didn't seem to hear. “Er ⦠did she ring or anything?” I asked. “Was she staying with a friend?”
“No.”
“Well, did Alec explain where she was?”
“No.”
“Does
nobody
ever talk in your family?” I could hear myself getting all psychological, like my mum.
“He isn't in my family.”
“Oh, Hal!”
“Can we go to the strand and fly the kite?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I can't, I'm not allowed. I'm grounded.”
“Why?” It sounded like the wind, the way he said it, the wind trapped between tall buildings. He must've really needed to go kite flying.
“Because of yesterday,” I said, “being out all day. My parents are furious with me. You're luâ” I stopped myself just in time. This boy's mother had ⦠disappeared, it seemed. He was behaving oddly, but could you blame him? Poor Hal, I found myself thinking. Just like my mum is always saying.
Hal's face looked whiter than ever, if that's possible. He's in danger of turning into an angel, I thought, and flying away altogether.
“When are you ungrounded?” he asked.
“I'm afraid to ask,” I said.
We didn't say anything for a while. I admired the kite. Hal just sat there. It looked as if he were working on draining every last drop of blood out of his head and down into his feet. I suppose if you don't know where your mother's gone, it's probably normal to look like that, but I didn't like it. Hal didn't look himself at all.
“Olivia,” he said at last, in that tiny, insecty voice he had yesterday at the Garda station. “What if my mother doesn't come home?”
I had been thinking exactly that, but I didn't let on to Hal.
“Of course she'll come home, Hal,” I said. “Mothers don't just disappear. It's in their job description: they have to stick it out.”
“I shouldn't have done that thing with the mortuary, should I? It's all my fault. It was Him that was supposed to leave, not her. I wish ⦔
“Don't be daft, Hal,” I said. “There's no connection between you playing a silly trick on Alec and your mother not coming home last night. It's because of whatever is going on between them. Nothing to do with you, you'll see. It's just some silly row they're having.”
I don't know much about how grown-ups think, only what I can work out from
EastEnders.
(I am not supposed to watch
EastEnders,
but, hey, I have to live in the real world, whatever my parents think of it.) Still, I'd say that it'd take
more than someone not going to a golf tournament to make a couple split up, wouldn't it? And anyway, even if she wanted to leave old Alec, Hal's mum wasn't just going to abandon Hal, now, would she? No, there had to be another explanation.
“She was banging doors and screeching and everything yesterday morning before she left for the golf thing. She was
furious
with him. It woke me up, all the shouting.”
I have to say, that sounded a bit serious all right. People don't screech in my family, unless they get a fright in the dark or something, but I said, “Look, Hal, this is probably what happened. She probably had a few drinks after the golf tournament, maybe she won or something and she got carried away, and then she thought she'd better not drive till this morning because she'd be over the limit, wouldn't she? She's probably seen those ads on the telly where you only have to pick up a drink and the next thing, there's mangled bodies all over the road.”
Or maybe she had a few drinks all right, I thought, only she
didn't
decide to stay over but instead got into her car and drove it into a ditch. OhâmyâGod! She could be lying there with the crows picking out her eyes. But I didn't say that out loud.
“She probably stayed over at the golf club or with a friend or something,” I said. “She'll be home by teatime. You'll see.”
I kind of hoped that might be true.
“But why didn't she ring?”
“She probably did. I'm sure she would have phoned Alec.”
“He never said.”
“He just didn't mention it to you. Since you're not exactly on chatting terms. It's all very well you two not talking to each other,” I went on, “but how are you going to know what's going on if you don't
ask
?”
“Yeah,” said Hal. He definitely cheered up a bit at that thought. “You're right. She must've rung Him, mustn't she? He thought I knew, I suppose, so he didn't mention it. Yeah, that must be it. I
will
ask Him.”
“Good on you,” I said. “That's the spirit.”
“I'd better get on home, then,” he said, “and see what the story is.”
“OK,” I said.
“See you tomorrow, Olivia.”
“Yeah, tomorrow,” I said. “No, tomorrow's the bank holiday. See you on Tuesday, you mean. At school.”
“Yeah, well, Tuesday,” he said.
“Bye, Hal,” I called as I closed the front door behind him.
It would all have blown over by Tuesday, I thought comfortably. It was easier to think comfortable thoughts when Hal wasn't sitting there, slumped in a chair and looking lugubrious. His mother would ring by tomorrow for sure, or she'd come home with a long story about a tire puncture or a missed train or something. It'd be all right. Mothers don't just walk out on their kids. I never heard of such a thing.