The Girl in the Red Coat (12 page)

‘There, there.’ A sudden whoosh into the light and I’m lifted up into Dorothy’s arms – my head rolling backwards and my feet bumping up and down as she carries me.

‘There, there, child. Oh, what good can come of this? Really, really. Fool,’ Dorothy mutters as she heaves me up higher and struggles to balance herself on her two thin legs.

I get wrapped in a blanket that night, and put to bed. In a camp bed this time, at the bottom of theirs. So they can keep a watch on me.

Then I’m on their bed, wrapped in a sheet this time. It’s morning. Bright daylight comes through the window falling on suitcases with coloured tickets tied to the handles. I move my head and it hurts. I blink and it hurts. I pinch my lips together and
they
hurt.

I don’t hear them come in.

Grandad smiles down at me. ‘How are we feeling? Are we feeling better?’

I shake my head. ‘Dad,’ I mumble.

He sits on the bed beside me. His face is very sorry and concerned.

‘We’ve been in contact with your father. He’s cast down to the depths about what’s happened, Carmel. But you know, you know you told us he lives with another lady now, a lady that’s not your mum? You know you told us you don’t see him a whole lot …’

Clothes, floating out of the window, with no body to them and coming to rest on the ground, where I can’t see.
Dad’s sneery voice, out of sight: ‘You think you’re so middle class, but now you can shove it up your arse. Stone me, that sort of rhymes.’ Then his laugh. Not like his, but someone I don’t know – a demon.

‘Well, he thinks it best … he thinks we should, I’m sorry …’ But I know already. Getting excited about Dad going to the hospital was babyish – silly and horrible because he still loves Lucy. Mum tried to make me feel better when we didn’t see him for weeks and weeks on end but all the time I knew, I knew what was happening. Clothes don’t fall out of windows for nothing.

Dorothy is wearing the yellow blouse with pink roses, scared thoughts beating behind her eyes –
what will come of this?
Grandad doesn’t know about these thoughts she has.

‘Dorothy?’ I ask. ‘Dorothy, can I come and live with you?’

There’s a hiss of escaping air, the sound of joy? From Dorothy? No, it’s Grandad.

‘Why yes, dear, yes … Oh, gladly, gladly …’ From him.

But it’s to Dorothy I turn. She leans over me and catches me in a hug against her bony chest. I hold onto her, tight, and get covered by bright pink roses.

Then later, in the kitchen. I’m dressed and Dorothy’s trying to get me to eat something. I turn my head away from the egg – ‘sunny side up’ – feeling sick to my stomach. She shrugs and leaves me to it. I want her not to turn away and to cuddle me again but she’s busy, scooping things out of cupboards and throwing them in a black plastic bin bag. ‘The trash can’, she calls it.

This is before the tablets. Before: ‘This’ll help you to relax, Carmel. Just swallow them down, honey. Take them
with a little water …’ Before all that … the heavy drop down into the land of dreams. To the bottom of the sea where hardly a thing moves.

She’s gone off somewhere and I’m left sitting at the kitchen table, the plate of egg sticky and gross in front of me, getting cold. I notice a bright spot on the grey tiles on the floor. A purple stripe against a red one. I get up to look. Closer, I see it’s my T-shirt. It’s been wet and now it’s dried into a hard dirty ball. Dorothy’s been cleaning the floor with it. It’s like a thing from ages ago. Something you see in a museum in a case with a label up against the glass – ‘Carmel used to wear this.’

Once, near a place called Stonehenge, we went for a walk. There was a hill Mum called a ‘burial mound’. At the bottom of the hill was a tree, and the tree had tied to its branches a hundred waving scraps of cloth and ribbons and bits of paper with writing on, some in plastic things to keep them safe from the rain. I tried to read some but the rain had got in anyway and made the ink dribble down the page. ‘Wishes,’ my mum said, ‘that people have left here, even the ones that are a scrap of ribbon. It represents a wish.’

I get some scissors from the drawer and snip, snip I have a piece of purple-and-red stripes.

I hurry, before anyone can stop me, to the wall tree and climb right in among the branches and tie the strip up high, wrapping it round twice, three times with a double knot for safety. And I make my wish, even though I know it’s impossible – impossible for this not to have happened and for Mum to be alive again. I make it anyway because not even Grandad can stop you wishing. It hangs down limp for a moment then a little breeze makes it stand out sideways
like a dirty flag.

I climb down from the tree. By the door there’s a spade stuck into the ground. Grandad’s black coat is hanging on it. I can tell from the heaviness there’s something in the pocket. And I know it’s untrustworthy, but I reach my hand in and it’s a phone. Dad, I think. Maybe he’s changed his mind. Maybe if I speak to him he’ll come and get me in his red car. I pick up the phone and stare at the numbers. Someone seems to have taken out my brain and put something else there, slow and stupid. I stare at the phone and try to concentrate. I knew the number before, ages ago. I did. I did. Remember, I tell myself, remember. Then – 0 7 8 1. I frown – what comes after 1? It’s curled up – 6.

I look up. Grandad’s standing at the door and he’s got his arms folded and I get shivers all over because I know I’m doing something I shouldn’t. My hand goes tight on the phone and I press the buttons without meaning to so lots of little beeps come out.

He doesn’t get cross like I’m expecting. He goes down on the ground, bending so he’s on one knee and that hurts him.

‘Carmel. Honey, child. What are you doing?’ His voice is soft and kind.

I hold tight onto the phone.

‘Carmel?’

‘Dad …’ It’s a squeak that’s come out.

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about your dad, honey. Maybe he’ll reconsider one day but he says – and I know how hard this is – he says he must start a new life now. As must we.’

Then he takes my hand and curls my fingers back and takes the phone away.

DAY 51

Some days were worse than others. Day 51 I hadn’t managed to get dressed so when Alice came she found me still in my dressing gown.

‘Beth, I’ve been meaning and meaning to come.’

She stood on the doorstep, hesitating, gifts in her arms – home-made blackcurrant jam and a bunch of sweet-smelling hyacinths, the purple petals stiff and bristling like a hairbrush. The daylight seemed to shift behind her and the breeze lifted her fine reddish-brown hair as if an invisible child was hovering above and tugging. The braided bracelets she always wore peeked from under the cuffs of her pink jacket as she handed over her gifts.

‘How kind, how kind,’ I said, juggling with flowers and jam, and asked her in and offered tea even though I felt in such a way that day that it was almost beyond endurance.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been before,’ she said.

I peered at her. What was she doing here? Alice had been more or less tangential to my life, not even really one of my friends. I’d felt sorry for her, I suppose, for her terrible life – put that down as the reason why she came across as a bit of an oddball and tried to include her when I could. Even if she did seem to fancy Paul a bit, I didn’t take it seriously, and after all, he was attractive – lots of women fancied him;
I found
that
out to my cost. I suppose I’d had the thought I should talk her round to doing something about the sporadic domestic violence. Though all she’d ever do was give a smile that slipped around like a fish in water, change the subject or insist she was alright.

But it’s kindness, I chided myself. It’s kindness that she’s here today, and that made me exert myself.

She looked around the kitchen, clean and passable enough except for the empty shell of the egg on the kitchen drainer. ‘I’m glad to see you’re looking after yourself,’ she said, and I didn’t tell her that was from yesterday morning and I hadn’t eaten anything since.

‘Sorry to burst in on you,’ she said as she sat at the kitchen table. She seemed highly anxious, though it didn’t really register. Or if it did I blamed it on the stress of seeing someone whose daughter had vanished.

‘No, that’s OK, it’s fine, please don’t worry.’ The teapot breathed fragrant steam as I lifted the lid and stirred. ‘And I know it’s difficult for people. They don’t always know what to say.’ But it was me having to force myself to speak this time.

She drank in little bobbing sips.

Then out of nowhere – ‘Beth, I’ve been plucking up courage for ages to tell you this. I had to speak with you. I need to tell you something.’

‘About Carmel?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is it? What is it?’ I clutched at the neck of my dressing gown, suddenly excited and alert, imagining how this could be a clue to the puzzle – the one I’d been waiting for, the one I’d missed.

‘Your girl … Carmel.’ She stumbled and started again. ‘Well, I was battered, you know, covered with marks. He’d gone mad two nights before, you know, like he got.’

‘Yes, yes, I remember.’

‘And the night we were here she saw me. Everyone else was talking too much to take any notice but she put her hand on me, and the next day – honestly, Beth, I’m not making this up – the next day they were gone. Not a single mark and the day before I’d been black and blue. You remember, you must remember. Please, don’t be angry, but I think she had a channel with God.’

She stopped with a gasp.

‘A channel with God?’ She didn’t hear it, the sharp disappointment in my voice, burning in my mouth.

‘Yes, it happens, you know, when children are close to Him that way. And I wanted to say … to reassure you that she would be with Him now, I mean …’

‘What?’

‘An angel, one of the angels, Beth.’ Tears were shining in her eyes. ‘Can’t you see it? I think …’

My fury was a white heat building behind my eyes. ‘Are you telling me my daughter is dead?’ A horrible thought occurred to me: that I wanted to hit her too.

‘Please don’t be like this. It’s just … if she is, then … I thought it would give you comfort, to know this …’

‘Stop it.’ I stood and put my hands over my ears. What I’d thought was to be a vital clue was turning into the outpourings of a crazy acquaintance. ‘Please, stop it.’

‘You’ve got to believe it, Beth. You have to.’ As she spoke her wrists in those bracelets turned in front of her and hate rose up in me, thick in my throat.

‘No. Get out of here. I thought you had something real to tell me. Get out of this house and leave me alone, you stupid cow. You crazy stupid cow. Take your God with you and don’t ever come back.’

So, those leads, luminous and silver. How was I to know that Alice – of all people – held one in her hands, shining and spilling through her fingertips. And that even as we spoke, it was getting thinner, runnier – its silver lustre falling away into darkness.

When I wake up I think I must have died again – my eyes glued tight and my mouth stuck together. I’m lying down, but moving too – forward, the same way my head’s pointing. Inside my body, there’s a great big stone pinning me down.

I think I must be in that tunnel on my way to the pearly gates – I’ve heard people talking about what it’s like to die. It’s a long black tunnel then you see a bright light at the end and there are all your friends and family waiting for you who have died before and pearly gates come into it somewhere but I’m not sure how.

I really see some gates right in front of my face but they’re not made of pearl. They’re grey metal with cold coming off them. I’ve seen them somewhere before. Then they go away and red flowers start opening out on black behind my eyes instead. I go back down into a sleep that’s like falling into a pile of pillows.

When I wake up I remember my name is Carmel.

I’m being rattled around now. I’m in a sort of factory maybe, rolling forward like an engine or a chocolate to the place where metal arms will pack me up into a box. Once I think I’m going to fall off the moving belt but I don’t know what onto – I feel like I’ll carry on falling. Further and further and forever.

Then another long sleep then awake again.

I try to make sense of what I see. After a long while I decide it’s a ceiling, but with light and shadows rushing over it. I rest my eyes then – I’m tired to my bones – but I don’t want to fall asleep again so I roll around till I’m on my side.

There’s shadows and I start seeing four eyes in them, amber colour, looking at me sideways. Not one next to the other, like they should be in a head, but one on top of the other. I don’t even know if I’m scared. I watch the four eyes lined up in a row. They watch me back, blinking sometimes.

Then a voice: ‘We’ve been waiting for you to wake up, like – for ages.’

One of the pairs of eyes moves upwards and round and then they’re next to each other – like they should be – but floating in the air. The other pair down below stays the same, blinking and watching.

‘I didn’t know anyone could sleep like that. It’s like you’ve been dead or something.’ It’s a television voice: a squeaky American cartoon.

I mumble something. Not real words, just a silly croak and there’s the noise of both pairs of eyes laughing.

‘You sound so funny.’ The top pair of eyes seems to be doing all the talking. The ones down below just watch.

I properly pop back into myself for the first time. Lying on bunk beds there’s two girls looking exactly the same. They could be two of the exact same person. The one below’s got her head on a pillow but the one above is sitting up and leaning down to look. She swings her feet over and dangles them over the edge. She’s wearing black patent shoes and a flouncy dress with lace that puffs up around her like she’s landed there in a parachute.

The one down below speaks for the first time.

‘Silver – you shouldn’t have your shoes on when you’re in bed. You’ll get into trouble again.’

‘Oh, who cares about that? She won’t know anyhow.’

Top-bunk girl stands up. She has to crouch so she doesn’t bang into the ceiling and she looks like she’ll fall over we’re jolting about so much now.

‘I don’t care. I’ll dance on the bed, I’ll do the moonwalk.’ And she starts to lift her knees up and down, pounding her feet into the bright cover. It doesn’t look anything like the moonwalk to me.

‘Hey you, you girl – watch me dance in my shoes, watch me.’ She carries on dancing so I’m afraid she might shoot off the bed and land right on top of me.

The one below starts laughing and smacking her hand on the bedpost in time.

‘Dance, Silver, dance. Kick your legs right up so you show your panties.’

The dancing girl brings her knees up higher and higher. Her lacy dress bounces and her long black hair flicks up and down. She stops all of a sudden and flops down on the bed.

I want to talk to them but my words don’t seem to make sense.

‘What’s that?’ says top-bunk girl. ‘What does she say?’

I look around me. My bed’s on one side with the bunk beds against the other wall. Behind us there’s a curtain hanging up. It’s got red, pink and green in the pattern and the word ‘paisley’ comes into my head from out of nowhere. There’s a window, very high up. That’s where the light’s coming from, streaming over the ceiling.

‘I’m Carmel,’ I manage to say. But I’m not really telling
them – I’m reminding myself of something I nearly forgot.

Bottom-bunk girl says, ‘I’m Melody,’ but the top-bunk one says, ‘We know that, of course. Carmel – it’s kind of funny.’

I want to say – not as funny as you, with your horse names and your squeaky voices. But the box we’re in jolts hard, enough to nearly tip the three of us off our beds. It comes to a slow grinding stop.