The Girl in the Red Coat (21 page)

Winter. We shiver under our crochet blankets and storms bash the side of the truck. Dorothy says our money’s nearly gone. That it hasn’t worked out like Gramps said it would. We haven’t done any more healings in churches. Bill has got ill and Dorothy says Gramps couldn’t organise a dead body at a wake. A hole comes in the roof out of nowhere and rain leaks over Dorothy’s pots and pans and makes them rusty. She throws them out of the back door in a temper. She yells, ‘Cheap trash,’ and, ‘When will I have a good set? A set made of stainless steel?’ My grandfather doesn’t answer her. He sits on the bed in a great big mood. The mood is so strong it comes out of him to about halfway down the truck and you think you’re going to bang into it. The rain falls straight down in a sheet outside the open back doors. ‘You and your notions,’ Dorothy yells at him but it doesn’t make him do anything except his head goes lower and he doesn’t even look up out of the corner of his eyes.

The pans stay outside all night and in the morning they’re full of rainwater and creatures, thin like the lines in my writing books at school, are using them as swimming pools.

Us three girls, we’ve grown. Our dresses are too short and the waists are squeezing our middles. Our tights, too, but they go downwards. The elastic cuts into our bottoms and makes us look funny, like a balloon man’s been making shapes with us. The other side of winter I’ll be nine, though, and nine is
when you’re a Big Girl. So it makes sense I’m busting out of my clothes.

‘The cold here is terrible,’ moans Dorothy. She’s sitting on their bed and she’s wrapped herself up in blankets. ‘There’s no cold like this at home.’

When it stops raining for a minute, Gramps climbs onto the roof to find the leak, and mends it with squares of black stuff. We can hear him, moving round there like a bear. ‘He’s going to crash right through,’ says Silver. But he doesn’t, he gets down before that happens and the rain stops coming in.

Me and the twins shiver in our dresses and rain macs. Mine’s an old blue anorak of Silver’s with a zip.

‘You’ll have to get them new coats,’ says Gramps.

Dorothy gives a shriek. ‘Coats with what? Coats don’t grow up from the ground.’

Gramps pulls a Bible down from his shelf and for a moment I think he’s going to read from it – something about how coats actually do grow up from the ground and we should let God take care of it. If he does that, I think, Dorothy will hit him with one of her rusty pans. But when he opens it, it’s scooped out on the inside like a melon, and there’s paper money inside. I understand what Dorothy meant about stealing from the Bible now.

‘Here, take this. Get them what they need. I can’t have people seeing I don’t take care of them.’

The town we go to is small, hardly one street of shops. But it’s lovely to be here. People walk along with their bags of shopping, and smile. Dorothy doesn’t like it though. One of the shopkeepers, he watches us through his grocery shop window as we walk by his store.

‘They think we’re itinerants,’ says Dorothy and none of us know what she means but the way she says it doesn’t make it sound like a good thing to be.

In the clothes shop I see straight away which coat I want. It’s red, red, red. Even though I’m only looking at it hanging on the rail I can see it’s warm and soft. I go up to it while Dorothy and the twins are looking on the other side of the shop. It’s not exactly like my last one that got thrown away. This one is even better, it’s got cushiony yellow lining.

I put it on and say, ‘This one.’ I’m doing the toggles up quickly I want it so much.

Dorothy’s pushing Silver’s arms into a purple puffa coat. She whips round real quick when I say that. When she looks at me her eyes go so dark and glisteny I think they’re going to start dripping down her face.

‘Oh no. No, not that one.’

‘Why not?’ I’m aching for it so much I’m talking back and I know Dorothy won’t like it. But I remember how she’s my enemy now so I don’t care. I fold my arms tight and hug it.

‘Oh no. No. No. It won’t do at all.’ She comes over and pulls the price tag from behind the back of my neck.

‘There, it’s too pricey.’

The lady behind the counter is listening to us now. She puts on her glasses that are on a gold chain around her neck and comes and looks at the ticket too.

‘Now, let’s see. It’s been here rather a long time, that model. I don’t know why because it really is a lovely coat. But there’s no accounting for taste I guess and I’m prepared to make a substantial discount. I’ll do it for the same price as those ones there.’ She points to the twins standing in their puffa coats.

I smile at her, and she smiles back. She’s old, with bright pink lipstick and lots of soft moles on her skin. Her hair is dyed a lovely gold that shines in the light coming through the window.

‘Thank you,’ I say. We like each other, I can tell.

But Dorothy’s not pleased with me saying thank you, like it’s really going to happen. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know …’ she says to herself. There’s even a bit of red coming through her brown skin and I’ve never seen that before.

‘Now then, I’m not meaning to be rude but can you tell me your objection? It’s a real bargain,’ says the lady, ‘and will last much longer than those two. And I have to know,’ she turns round to me, ‘where’s your lovely accent from, honey?’

‘We’ll take it,’ Dorothy says all of a sudden and I feel amazed.

She starts hurrying then and counts out notes even before the lady’s got back behind the counter. She’s not slow and watching like she usually is with money. I wish I don’t have to leave the shop ever. I could help the old lady tidy the pants that are in the trays underneath the glass counter. Or we could dress the children with the hard painted faces in the window and move their arms and legs about.

The shop lady follows us to the door. She stands there when we’re outside on the street. ‘Are you alright, dear?’ She’s looking at me.

Dorothy puts her arm round me. ‘She’s fine. She’s our foster child is all. We’ve taken her in …’ She starts pushing us down the street. ‘Thank you for the coats. They’ll be real warm and cosy now.’

When we’re further down I look back at the shop lady. She gives her gold head a shake and for some reason I think I see her shaking me right out of her head and me slipping out – away, down onto the ground. She bangs the door shut and the bell sound seems far away now.

Melody says, ‘I’m hungry.’

Dorothy stops on the street. ‘Oh, what the heck …’ she says and we go into a place with yellow and blue plastic tables and she orders burgers and milkshakes.

‘You better make the most of this,’ she says to me. But I don’t answer. I’m getting used to her being sometimes nice, sometimes nasty. Mostly nasty. I stare at her, not saying anything, chewing on my burger with my new coat buttons all done up to my chin. I don’t want to take it off ever.

When we’ve finished Silver starts crying and saying she never gets new stuff. It’s because she’s seen things in shop windows here. Dorothy would like to smack her, I can see, but she can’t because there’s people around. She hisses, ‘This is the very last of it,’ and gives us all some coins to spend. We go to a store that sells everything and spend ages choosing – Silver turning the carousels of toys around for hours. I start thinking Dorothy is going to smack her even if it is right in front of people. Silver ends up choosing a plastic pack of doll’s things – bottles and paper nappies and a tiny potty – and Melody copies her. I choose some cards. When we’re out of the shop I tuck them in my new coat pocket.

Dorothy asks, ‘What are those for?’

‘For sending to Dad and Sara,’ I tell her.

Gramps comes from round the front of the truck where he’s been fixing the engine. He’s got oil on his hands and
he’s wiping a spanner with a cloth.

‘Dorothy says you wish to send some greetings home, dear?’

Dorothy’s told. I wish she hadn’t because Gramps doesn’t like it when I talk about home. He says things like, ‘This is what we have to think about now, Carmel. Our new life.’

Instead he says, ‘That’s a great idea, Carmel. Need some help with that?’ I nod slowly.

‘Tell you what, you write what you like in your cards and I’ll make sure they get posted.’

I spread the cards over the bed. The pictures aren’t that good – squirrels and cats with hats on. The colour isn’t always in the lines but they’ll have to do. I write them nice and neat and in the one for Dad and Lucy I write – ‘please come and get me if you can’. I seal it up because I don’t want Dorothy and Gramps to see. I give them both to Gramps and think of something. ‘How will they know where I am? I don’t know the address here.’

‘That’s OK, dear. I’ll write it real nice and clear on the back.’

Even with our new coats we can’t keep warm enough. Gramps buys a stove you fill with petrol and heats the inside of the truck with it for an hour every night. Dorothy says he’s going to kill us, but he says, ‘What else d’you want me to do?’ And the twins creep closer to it and say, ‘Don’t be taking this away, Pa.’ They hold their fingers all nipped by the cold over it and make their eyes pleading and sad. Dorothy looks like she’s given up. She starts doing her cooking on the stove.

South, we’ll go south, Gramps says one day. He’s been
looking out at the rain all morning. Dorothy hugs him and starts looking better straight away.

‘Yes, south.’ She’s nearly crying. ‘I’ve heard there’s true brethren there, righteous believers.’

‘What about my letters?’ I ask. ‘They won’t know where the new place is.’

‘That’s alright.’ She starts laughing a bit through her crying like this is the last thing she needs to have to think about. ‘I’ll tell the lady at the post office here to send them on.’

I tell Gramps to do it too later because I don’t think she’ll bother.

One good thing – having my new red coat makes me feel like Carmel again. I wear it right up until bedtime. Dorothy says, ‘Don’t you want to take that off to eat dinner?’ I shake my head. I want to be wrapped in red forever – it’s the colour of Carmel. It doesn’t look like the sort of colour Mercy would ever wear.

Though sometimes I do get mixed up with Carmel and Mercy, so I decide to steal Mercy’s book because it’s the one thing in the box of secrets I haven’t opened yet. I don’t even bother to play Detective Wakeford this time or wait until they’re gone. They’re only just outside when I kneel on the bed and poke my fingers in between the books and this time I find it easily. There’s prickles going all over my head while I sneak off as far as I can to have a look at it on my own. I crouch behind a rock and look at her picture and touch her little face and the gold writing. Then I take the piece of newspaper and unfold it and I do a big gasp because there’s a picture of her there, sitting down.

Behind her is Gramps. He’s got his hand on the back of her chair.

It says: ‘
Church of the Truth Girl in Healing Ministry’.

Mercy looks blurry and white in the picture. Gramps doesn’t, he looks strong and clear. I read the words:

I lie awake all night with the book in my hand and my heart booming in case they notice it’s gone before I have a chance to put it back.

DAY 306

The one thing that once I would have said could never happen – happened. Me, Paul, Lucy became friends. More than that, we became close. Paul’s presence as a sexual being disappeared for me completely – the gap as vacant as the one left by Carmel.

‘You look thin,’ Lucy said one night at the weekly meals that had become our habit. The pink petal of her face floated in the steam rising from her bowl of risotto.

‘I’m alright.’

She stood and walked around the table and pushed the spoon into the closed tunnel of my fist and patted my shoulder.

‘There, eat,’ she said. I did – for her. Each week was a blessed touch of civilisation, she did everything properly: home cooking, silver cutlery, napkins.

‘Lovely food.’ Paul smiled across the table at her.

She’d become a mother to us both. I wondered sometimes how she could stand it, whether she’d stick around. I hated thinking of the nights I’d spent eviscerating her around the kitchen table with my friends, my mouth stitching bitter shapes as I talked. The wall-to-wall cream carpets, I’d cackled. The sporty little car. The hair straightened every morning, how mediocre. I’d cracked her open
and spilled her over the table, dabbling my fingers in the mess. I bet she’ll have cosmetic surgery. I bet she wears those pads between periods that protect you from your own underwear. I bet she gets her home ideas from celebrity magazines. How would my Paul ever be satisfied with that – my volatile, romantic, outdoors-loving Paul? It wouldn’t last.

Now, my fervent hope was that it would. Lucy was helping to save me, helping me to survive, and the generosity of her actions humbled me weekly.

The same time the following week my appetite was still dormant. Paul was late tonight and I was hoping he wouldn’t bring anyone back with him like he’d done a few times before. I wanted Lucy and Paul to myself, my mummy and brother bear.

‘Where’s Paul?’ I grumbled, cutting up asparagus into tiny slivers in the hope that would ease the transit to my stomach.

‘He’s started properly back at kayaking club – he must have stayed on for a drink. He’ll be here soon. His food will keep.’

‘Kayaking club? Oh no, that means he’ll be bringing people back with him again. I hate it when he does that.’

The sound of Lucy’s spoon rattling down on her plate startled me and I jumped. ‘For God’s sake, Beth. Honestly, you two may as well still be married.’

Her eyes were bright, sparky. I sensed mettle in her I hadn’t seen before and how Paul would be attracted to it. I bowed my head. ‘I’ve taken your generosity too far,’ I said. ‘I should stop coming here like this.’

‘Stop it. No, of course not. It’s not that. We want you here, but living with this is … he has to do things with his
life. I know it sounds harsh ––’ She was swiping tears away with her napkin now.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Every day just seems like an act of survival and in the morning I have to get up and start all over again. It’s made me selfish, hasn’t it?’

She sighed. ‘I wanted children, you know.’

I was sitting bolt upright now. ‘You shouldn’t let this stop you.’

‘How can I? It would be like I was trying to replace her.’

There were raucous voices in the hall and I stood and started piling plates up. I went round the table and took her plate, repeating in an urgent whisper, before the others burst in, ‘You mustn’t let it stop you.’

Then there were three of them with Paul standing in their socks in the immaculate room, eyes slightly shiny from drink, and their antennae sensing atmosphere.

As I slipped away into the garden I heard, ‘We’re imposing, we won’t stay. You’re in the middle of dinner.’ Then Paul’s protests and them relenting, ‘Go on, just a small one.’

Outside, I was licking the gummy flap down on my cigarette when I heard movement behind me. Childishly, I wanted to kick the leg of the bench I was sitting on. If it couldn’t be just Paul and Lucy I wanted to be alone.

A tall figure came into view. I could see from the orange town lights it was Graham; I’d met him here before.

‘Can I join you?’ There weren’t many who sought out my company these days but still I wished he’d go away.

‘I guess.’

‘I’m after one of your cigarettes actually.’ He folded himself next to me. His beard jutting in profile resembled a carving in the half light.

‘A sneaky smoker?’ I handed him the tobacco.

‘I’m afraid so.’

He began rolling so inexpertly I removed the makings of the ciggie from his hands and rolled him one myself. When it was lit we both sat smoking. I remembered the first time I’d met him he’d chatted to me, told me that he worked as an engineering lecturer in the local tech college, that he’d never married but had a daughter that he saw every other weekend. I didn’t tell him anything about myself, even that I was Paul’s ex-wife. How could I find the words for it all? But the next time we’d met he’d made me laugh and I’d become suddenly offhand. I didn’t want men to make me laugh. I’d excused myself early, afterwards realising there had been something in the humanity of his brown eyes that had overwhelmed me. I couldn’t see them properly tonight in the weak orange light.

‘I’m the mother of the missing girl,’ I blurted out. That’ll see him off, I thought.

‘I know.’

When he turned up at my house two days later, I offered him tobacco again.

‘I hate smoking actually; I haven’t done it for twenty years. I wanted an excuse to talk to you. I was nearly sick afterwards.’

He had a tall man’s stoop even when sitting down. His beard, seen in proper light, was dark gold. I went to make tea and stood by the side window, looking out onto the gate, and I felt his presence behind me. The tremor that went through me was sudden, almost painful. I turned and started unbuttoning his shirt, quickly, before I had a chance
to change my mind and the feeling that went through me was a warmth so intense I could almost feel the pain in my frozen bones as it splintered them.

Afterwards, I wondered if I’d been trying to save my own skin again – if this was just another way of losing myself. Already my mind was reeling ahead, how I’d have to meet his family eventually, his daughter. The next thing would be eating at each other’s homes, trips out. How one day he might talk about moving in and all the spaces that once held Carmel would get filled up.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, sitting up, ‘I think perhaps this can happen only once.’

‘It’s fine,’ he told me. ‘Don’t explain.’ And, relieved, I lay back down in the crook of his arm, smelling his skin, until we both slept a wonderful deep sleep.