The Girl in the Red Coat (17 page)

Gramps raises both hands to quiet everyone. ‘Stop. Isn’t it enough to know that Mercy has come to us through fire, that she is part of us now and we have a new name to celebrate …?’

That’s enough. I jump up. ‘I’ve got a name already and it’s Carmel. You’re trying to make me forget it but I won’t.’ I don’t tell them how Mum was there in the river to remind me and losing my name would be like pretending she’d never been alive. They wouldn’t believe me.

‘Sssh, dear,’ says Gramps. ‘No need to be upsetting yourself. Come, come and eat some of these beans. It’ll do you good to eat something.’

‘I don’t want any beans,’ I shout. ‘I just want my mum. I want my mum. And you shouldn’t give beans to the twins either. It makes them fart all night.’

Melody puts her hands up to her mouth and laughs when I say that.

I’ll run away, I think. I’ll run off and hide and they’ll never find me. So I hug the blanket around me and take off towards the trees. I can feel the bottom of my socks turning soggy. There’s shouts behind me, but it’s too late. The
blanket falls off but I leave it on the ground.

Inside the woods I crouch down, panting, behind a lump of ferns. I can see, through the leaves, everyone standing in the twilight round the fire and pointing towards the trees. There’s Gramps – the size of a toy from where I am – going to fetch his donkey jacket from the truck.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to keep quiet and stick my fingers into the soft earth. Then there’s a tramp, tramp, tramp as Gramps gets closer. He makes the ferns brush against my face as he walks past them.

I can hear him for a long time walking round the woods. When he comes near to me he sounds like a wolf, hunting and sniffing. But, after a while, even the wolf gives up. It goes back to the fire and I can see him, looking into the flames. Sometimes Dorothy stands with her hands on her hips, looking into the trees too, her long skirt nearly touching the ground.

Then dark: I stand up, as quiet as I can, and turn to the woods. It’s black in there and noises come out of the darkness, animals moving round. What do I do now? Do I wander about the night woods until I get eaten by a real wolf? Or lost, and starve to death? And the woods are so scary in the dark. There’ll be ghosts in them, getting ready for fun and games – pulling my hair and pinching me with their skeleton fingers. I can almost hear them now, licking their bare teeth with invisible tongues.

I look back at the camp and the four people sitting round the fire lit up by the flames. I watch them for a long time as they talk and then boil a kettle and look at the trees again and stir the fire.

In the end I just go back out. I don’t know what else to do.

Dorothy makes me go to bed with nothing to eat and Gramps says I need to think about what sins I’ve committed by running away. But I don’t. In the night Melody climbs in my bed with me and we hug each other.

‘You’ll keep calling me Carmel, won’t you? You can do it in secret if you don’t want to get in trouble.’

‘Is it real important?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I will.’

‘Thank you for trying to rescue me,’ I say.

‘That’s OK,’ she whispers back.

DAY 150

I thought Paul might phone on day 150. Then I remembered how he wasn’t keeping track as I was – marking the red number in my diary every day. But I was vaguely relieved he hadn’t. I’d had Nessa’s leaflet updated with ‘Missing – One Hundred and Fifty Days’ across the top and I planned to leaflet Harwich ferry terminal – it was one theory that’s where she’d been taken. Paul might try and stop me. He didn’t think it was good for my health, this incessant looking. He was paying a private detective, who seemed well-meaning but lacked the urgency I felt coursing through my blood.

Day 150 I watched large stately ferries come and go; people in stretchy travelling clothes arrive with their kids and suitcases, bottles of drink in their hands and bum bags round their waists for their travel documents. I stood by a pillar and handed out my leaflets. Some stopped to talk to me.

‘Oh my God, love, I hadn’t heard about this,’ or, ‘I remember this, has she not been found yet? I’ll light a candle for you both. What’s the little one’s name? I’ll pray for her.’

Then walking away, looking at my leaflet and wheeling their cases, shaking their heads as they went. Holding their children’s hands a little more tightly.

But mostly I didn’t want to talk. Once I realised they
knew nothing I wanted them to move on and let me find someone who did.

After an hour I saw one of the staff, a uniformed woman with a jaunty necktie, talking to a security guard. They were both looking at me. Tears welled in my eyes. Was this what my looking had become? Something people were tired of, a public nuisance. But they came over and read my leaflets and wished they could help. The guard bought me a cup of coffee and let me stay at my post beside the pillar.

Then my phone rang. It was Paul. ‘Beth. Beth, where are you?

‘I’m at the ferry.’

‘What? Why? Never mind. Look, Ralph has found something.’ Ralph – the private detective.

‘Oh, oh, what?’ I crushed the empty coffee cup flat in my hand.

‘It’s from a holiday video that someone took. Where exactly are you? I’m coming to get you now.’

‘And so what happened?’ Craig asked.

‘Ralph had the footage sent over by courier. It had been taken by a couple on holiday on a campsite. They thought they saw Carmel in the background.’

‘When did you realise it wasn’t her?’

‘Oh, straight away. As soon as I saw it.’

‘That must have been terrible. Disappointing.’

I nodded. I’d been so wild with hope and excitement. There’d been a problem with the footage. It had been filmed on some ancient format and we’d had to travel to Ralph’s office in Ipswich to look at it. It made the excruciating tension worse – the trip in Ralph’s car. The smell of leather
seats catching at the back of my throat. The stop to get petrol that seemed to last an age.

‘It’s the red, see. They see a girl in red and everyone jumps at it, which is ridiculous. This couple had come back from holiday and seen one of Paul and Ralph’s adverts they’ve put in the press. They’d videoed their kids playing cricket on the grass and there was a little girl walking through the frame in the background. She was wearing red and we couldn’t see anyone with her. But it was a red anorak she was wearing anyway, not a duffel coat.’

‘You say you didn’t see her face?’

‘No. She had it turned away from the camera, looking the other way. But I didn’t need to. I know Carmel’s shape like the back of my hand, the way she walks. They’ve taken it to the police – people want to help so much they jump at anything – but I know. I’d know my daughter. Paul wanted to be convinced, I think.’

Another lead, snipped off at the root.

‘Beth, have you been thinking about what we’ve discussed several times before, your guilt at what’s happened?’

‘Yes.’ I felt exhausted with it all.

‘I think it might be useful to examine it.’

I looked through the French windows at the statue of Pan. The leaf behind him had grown since I was last there, so now it flopped over one of his eyes. His visible eye squinted at me.

‘I try to stop myself thinking about it but I can’t. Because – because I always felt I was going to lose her, maybe it made me overprotective.’

‘Most people feel protective about their children, it’s natural.’

‘Yes. But, oh I don’t know.’ Then I was suddenly heated, sitting bolt upright. ‘What if I influenced events? What if I did? I feel somehow I made this happen and I don’t quite know how but the feeling won’t go away. It’s me, nobody has said I have but …’ I trailed off and sat silent, thinking.

I remembered Carmel’s words from the dream:
perhaps we wanted to lose each other.
I did sound cross the day she vanished, no maybe. I could admit that to myself now –
no, Carmel, stay with me, hold my hand or we’ll go straight home, Carmel.
Cross and pissed off and harassed. With responsibility, with worry. No one tells you how it will be when you have a child. No one tells you it’s going to be worry, worry, worry, worry, worry. World without end. How they hold your fate, your survival in their hands, whereas before you were free, free and didn’t know it. How if anything happens to them you will also be destroyed and you carry that knowledge with you, constantly.

‘No one will say it,’ I repeated.

‘Well, I won’t either,’ said Craig. ‘We could sit here for a hundred years and I won’t say that. I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about it. But I’m not going to back the idea up.’

We sat in silence for a while. ‘Alright,’ I sighed, nearly sick of thinking about it. ‘Shall we go back to firsts?’

‘Do you think you’re ready?’

I nodded. We’d been talking about the idea of firsts. First day back at work. First solo shopping expedition.

‘That’s it – I’ll go into town on my own,’ I said. ‘Soon. Next week even.’ I squeezed the arms of the chair. ‘Or the week after.’

The morning after the baptising I don’t get out of bed.

I can still taste the river in my mouth. The bump on my head is bigger: it makes my eye half close up and I can’t stop longing for what I saw down there.

I don’t hear Melody tiptoeing up to the truck. The first thing that makes me know she’s there is her voice floating in.

‘Carmel, aren’t you going to get up today?’

I open my eyes. She’s standing outside, looking in and twisting her hands together. I can’t see the scrapes on her body now she’s dressed. There’s only one I can see that goes all the way from her hair to her chin. It looks like someone’s felt-penned her face.

‘Don’t you have to call me Mercy now unless it’s secret?’

‘No. Pa said we’ll keep it for special occasions. For the time being.’

I sit up in bed. ‘Oh.’

‘He’s scared you’ll run off again.’

I lie back on the pillows. It feels like I’ve been in a fight with Gramps and that I might have won, though it’s not certain.

She starts twisting her skirt around in her hands, holding onto the hem and sticking her fingers through the holes in the lace.

‘We were wondering about the school?’

‘Silver too?’

‘Yeah. Silver wants to do it. More than me even. She just won’t say, that’s all.’

My eyelids feel heavy, they’re going to drop down over my eyes any second now. I touch the bump on my head gently. There’s crusty stuff in the middle.

‘Maybe not today.’

‘Oh.’ She sounds disappointed. ‘What about tomorrow?’

‘Sure. Tomorrow …’

Then my eyelids clang down.

But it’s tomorrow and now Melody’s sick too but much, much worse than me. Gramps lays her on my bed.

‘It’s lockjaw,’ Dorothy wails. ‘It must have entered her body through the thorns. She needs a hospital, Dennis.’

He says, ‘No insurance.’ Then, ‘God will look over her. God will look after her. Don’t doubt it.’

Dorothy wails some more but he goes to the shore and reads his Bible. ‘If only I could drive this heap of junk,’ she mutters and wipes the sweat off Melody’s face. ‘I’d kill us if I tried.’ She looks with knives in her eyes towards Gramps’s big back, then flies out to him and their voices spill out over the water that’s flat today and smooth.

I wrap myself up in the crochet – pink, purple, blue squares – and kneel next to Melody in bed. When her eyelids flitter bright amber shows like two wet beads. Her jaw goes into a clamp, pushing out the scab lined down her face that’s ugly pink.

There’s a little wind blowing inside me. It goes into my mouth and blows around in there. My palms start to itch so I scratch them, trying to make it stop.

I lean over her and call Melody all the words my mum called me: ‘Sweetheart. Angel. Darling. Love. Pumpkin Pie.’ The wind in my mouth blows on her face and I add another one, ‘Nutter,’ because with us that was always a good word too.

‘I love you, Melody.’ I breathe it over her face.

Her hair is in black ribbons over the pillow and her face and arms are stiff like she’s trying to turn herself into a doll. I climb under the quilts with her, it’s fiery hot and I hold her in my arms and she feels like a doll too, until my eyelids clang shut.

Melody wakes me up sitting bolt upright. ‘School, Carmel. When are we doing school?’

‘Ugh.’ I’m half asleep.

Her face has stopped trying to turn into a doll’s. She’s pushing off the bedclothes and I try to sit up, but I’m so tired I have to do it with my elbows. It’s still the day outside.

Melody jumps over me and down the steps.

‘Child, child.’ Dorothy laughs and wipes her eyes and hugs Melody tight. ‘Look at you. Let me get you something to drink.’

‘You better, Melody?’ Silver smiles at her.

I notice Gramps is standing quiet and serious. ‘You know what this means, don’t you, Dorothy?’

‘What, Dennis?’

He looks to me and then to them. ‘Only two hours ago Melody was a very sick little girl. In fact she could not move from her sick bed …’

‘But kids get better all the time, Dennis.’

‘See, I knew you doubted the truth of it. I know, woman, your thoughts.’

Dorothy has a plastic cup and rests it against the side of her face and taps it with her nail. She’s thinking. Tap, tap, tap, tap. I wonder if Gramps knows
these
thoughts. They’re going in and out, in and out.

‘I believed you believed and that was good enough for me. You are the expert in these matters.’

‘Can you not see it now with your own two eyes? Melody was too sick to move and look at her now. Will you look at her?’

Tap, tap, tap, tap. She smiles like she’s just had something sweet and lovely to eat. ‘Yes, yes. It could be …’

He stays serious. ‘Carmel laid her hands on her and now she is well.’

Out of the corner of my eye I can see my hands pink and resting on the crochet cover, with the soft insides showing upwards. The fingers are shaking like there’s shocks going through them. Is it possible? Gramps thinks it is, he’s sunk onto his knees and started praying.

Dorothy cries out and her orange juice flies out of the cup in the shape of McDonald’s golden arches as she opens up her arms. ‘Oh, Dennis. True or no, I can see it now. How it can be – you clever, clever man – we’re going to make our
fortune
.’

But he doesn’t hear her. He’s too busy praying.

‘So who’s gonna be teacher then?’ Silver’s sitting on my bed.

‘What about taking turns? You can go first,’ I say.

‘Mmmm. I think it should be …’ She points right at my chest. ‘… you.’

‘Oh, OK.’ I frown. Now I’ll have to think of something to teach.

We’ve made the inside of the truck look as much like a classroom as we can. I had the idea of putting books around but the only books are Gramps’s Bibles and books with prayers. And we’re not allowed to touch those so that’s not going to work. Instead, we got out the drawing pad and sellotaped our drawings to the walls. It looks quite good. Dorothy’s gone to walk to the shop. She left without telling anyone but Gramps. He told us it’s five miles away and she’s crazy, he would’ve driven her, but that she’s used to tramping all over God’s earth. She likes to.

The twins are excited: like something’s really going to happen. I hope they won’t be disappointed. I think hard for something to teach them. I remember. Just before, before – Mrs Buckfast was teaching us about the Tudors.

‘OK. We’ll do a history lesson. It’s about the king.’ I look over to Gramps. He’s sitting miles away in one of the foldout chairs.

‘What’s his name?’ asks Silver.

‘Henry. Henry the Eighth.’

‘Was he a good king?’ Melody’s brushing her hands up and down the crochet bed cover, fast. The line down her face is pink biro now.

‘No. He was not. He was a very, very bad king.’

Both of them breathe out together, an ‘ooooh’.

‘He had a red beard. And he used to feast. He used to eat a lot and that made him very, very fat.’

‘Is that what made him bad?’ asks Silver.

‘No. Not that. It was because of his wives. He had six of them …’

‘That’s not possible,’ Silver cries out. ‘How can you have six wives?’

‘No, not all together.’

‘It’s still not possible.’

‘Look, what about your dad? I mean before Gramps.’

‘Yeah, but he’s gone. Not died. Just gone,’ says Silver.

‘See. So —’

‘Mom says he was a work-shy Mexican pig. He got drunk so hard we used to hear him smashing the bowls downstairs. So Mom ran us away in the night, she said she was going to get a divorce. She said America is the land of milk and honey and if you’re clever dollars will rain on you. Then she met Gramps.’

I black over the clothes flying through the air in my mind so I don’t have to think about them. ‘Yes, so you can get, um – a divorce. But Henry the Eighth didn’t always get a divorce.’

‘No?’ Melody’s hands are brushing up and down at super speed now.

‘No. Some of them – some of them he had killed.’

‘Are you making this all up?’ Silver says it like she’s hoping I’m not.

‘I’m not.’ I go quiet. Next term we were going on a school trip to one of King Henry’s palaces called Hampton Court. Me and Sara were really looking forward to it because there’s a maze and I told her what they’re like. They’ve probably been by now. For a moment it’s almost like I’m back home and I really did go to the maze with Sara and I’m remembering what it was like. Then I blink and it goes away and Melody and Silver are waiting, staring at me.

‘Anyway, Mrs Buckfast told it to us, so it must be true. One had her head chopped off with an axe. And one had her head chopped off with a sword.’

Dorothy pops her head round the door and makes us jump. She’s got an orange rucksack on her back.

‘What are you kids doing?’

‘We’re having school.’

‘Oh, well, anything that keeps you quiet, I guess.’

She goes over to Gramps and I hear her saying, ‘Eleven dollars and fifty-one cents for your information.’ Even though he hasn’t asked.

We ask Dorothy if we can have our lunches wrapped up, like you would at school, and she agrees. Going out always seems to make her in a better mood. We help her make ham sandwiches and put them in three paper bags with an apple each. We have to have our cups in our hands, though, there’s no mini cartons of apple juice with a straw you stick through like I used to have at school. So we decide to have our lunches there and then. Melody rings the bell round the neck of her teddy because I told them there was always a bell before lunch. After our lunch we get back to our lesson.

‘We’ll do art now, related to the topic.’ It’s something Mrs Buckfast used to say a lot but I can see they don’t understand, so I say, ‘We’ll draw a picture about what we’ve been learning.’

‘You’re a good teacher, Carmel.’ Melody smiles. ‘Are you gonna be a teacher when you grow up?’

‘I don’t know. I might be.’ I thought I might like to once. But Mrs Buckfast is very neat and organised, and I know how my thoughts fly away from me, so sometimes I hardly know where I am. And I don’t think that would make me a good teacher. It might happen when I’m teaching with everybody looking at me.

We get out the drawing pad and have a sheet each. I’m
drawing Henry, gobbling on a chicken leg. I put bits of food into his beard. When I look over at Melody’s drawing I see it’s the queen having her head chopped off with an axe. There’s blood everywhere.

We’re packing up this morning and leaving again so I’m looking out over the river and calling for Mum quietly, so no one can hear. It feels so sad leaving – like I’m leaving her here in this river. ‘Goodbye,’ I whisper ‘I love you.’

The twins are calling out from the back of the truck. ‘Hey Carmel, come and do school again.’

Inside, they’re ready and waiting. They love this school game.

‘Aren’t we leaving? Where’s Dorothy and Gramps?’

‘They’ve gone for a walk in the woods,’ says Silver.

‘To have an argument,’ adds Melody.

‘Oh. OK. Who wants to be teacher?’

‘Your turn again,’ says Silver. That doesn’t sound like a turn, but I don’t mind. Not really. What else is there to do?

‘Can we have the queens having their heads cut off again?’ Melody’s hands have started already, up and down over the cover.

‘Mmmm. We did that. Perhaps we should do writing today. Do you do joined-up?’

‘Not sure …’ says Silver.

We get the paper out and make the sheets into two halves so it’s smaller for writing. We have a pencil each and sharpen them so hard there’s a pointy tip.

‘Let’s each write our own story. We need a topic,’ I say. I guess it’s not quite fair – it’s what I want to do and I’m not sure teachers are supposed to do that – but the twins
don’t seem to mind. Their pencils are sticking up into the air, waiting.

‘How about “all about me”?’ I’m copying Mrs Buckfast again – that’s one she gave us. ‘You have to put your name at the top and your class number.’

‘What’s our class number?’ says Silver.

‘Um, it can be 5b.’

We settle down to writing. Sometimes I suck the top of my pencil to help me think. Soon, though, my hand’s flying across the page. ‘My name is Carmel. I’m eight years old. My favourite thing is reading. I’ve read “Alice in Wonderland” five times and I wish I could read it again. My favourite animal is Sara’s Collie dog called Sheila. I also like small animals like bats and foxes.’

When we’re done, I say, ‘Let’s look at them all and then read them out aloud.’

The twins lay down their papers next to mine on the floor and I can hardly believe it. I don’t know what to say. Their writing is terrible – it looks like four-year-olds have done it – but good teachers shouldn’t hurt feelings. Only horrible ones do that.

‘That’s very, very hard work you’ve done.’ I pick mine off the floor. I’m embarrassed to see my joined-up writing next to their baby words. I worry it’ll make them feel bad, or pick on me. I hold up Melody’s to look. She’s put her name at the top but after that it’s just some odd words that don’t really mean anything.
Cat. Dog. Mom. Truck
– except she’s spelt it
truk
.

‘Maybe we should do lots more writing lessons.’

Both girls are nodding, holding their pencils like they want to start already.

Then Silver says something.

‘You’re much nicer than the other Mercy, Carmel.’

I’m blowing the pencil dust off their sheets they’ve been pressing so hard.

‘What other Mercy?’

Silver goes to the end of the truck and looks out, checking we’re all alone. She puts her finger to her lips then climbs up on Gramps’s bed and gets something down from the shelf. It’s a tiny blue book with gold writing on the front.

‘This one.’

She opens up the book and there’s lots of typewriting in there and a tiny photo and some old bit of newspaper folded up inside. My hand flies up to my short curls.

‘She looks like me! Her hair does anyway … and her face a bit. A lot.’

‘She’s Mercy too,’ says Melody. ‘We didn’t like her, did we, Silver?’

Silver shakes her head.