The Girl in the Red Coat (3 page)

When I wake up in the morning everything’s wonderful. For a moment I can’t understand why. Then I remember: Mum’s said if the weather’s good we can go to the storytelling festival and that’s today.

My bed’s under the window. I look through the glass, in the shape of diamonds, at the sky.

It’s blue, blue, blue.

I lie here, warm under my quilt. I can hear Mum downstairs – the big old kettle clanks getting put on the stove and then
pop
when the gas is lit. When Dad was still at home I could hear his voice rumbling the floorboards. Or sometimes I could hear him arguing with Mum and they sounded like two bears snarling. When I went downstairs they’d stop and smile at me but they were making their faces smile, I could tell. People think when you’re a child that you’re just a mouse on the floor with a tiny brain.

My headmaster thinks that – that you won’t understand things. On parents’ day Mum was a bit late. My teacher – Mrs Buckfast – told me I could wait outside the classroom until Mum got there. While I was waiting in the corridor I heard Mr Fellows the headmaster inside the classroom say to Mrs Buckfast that
my
mum was ‘yet another single mum’. This made my face go a bit red with crossness because I didn’t think it was his business to say things like that. When Mum got there she was out of breath and saying, ‘Sorry,
sorry, sorry. I couldn’t get away from work.’ But I didn’t mind, I knew she was only late because she had to walk when everyone else had cars. So I held her hand and said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s only ten minutes.’ When in fact it was more like fifteen.

When we went in together Mrs Buckfast said I was ‘highly intelligent but sometimes on another planet’.

Mr Fellows kept looking at my mum and I knew why – because she’s much prettier than the other mums. She’s got thick brown hair and blue eyes and a nose that goes a little bit up and very pretty big lips that look nice when she puts some lipstick on them.

The headmaster started talking. ‘Carmel’s vocabulary is extremely advanced. Her imagination is amazing, I don’t think she quite sees the world like the rest of us.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘But you’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on.’ Which I thought was rude. Especially with what I’d heard him say about my mum. When I didn’t answer he said, ‘Like last week on the school trip when we couldn’t find you and when we did, you were sitting on a bench on your own looking like you were a million miles away. We were very worried, Carmel.’ And Mum said, ‘What’s this?’ I sighed then and stopped liking them talking about me. I started feeling upset and I was really glad when Mrs Buckfast smiled and said I’d grow out of it she was sure, so it didn’t matter too much. And Mum told me not to worry too and afterwards she took me for a pizza in town – not planned or anything – and we had a lovely time. She told me knock-knock jokes until I was laughing so much some Coke came down my nose.

These days I don’t miss Dad’s shouting but I do miss his
rumbling voice. But Mum says it’s just the two of us so we can do anything we want. She says, ‘We can be two nutters together.’ Sometimes we dance in the kitchen round the old wooden table. We turn the radio right up and use big spoons for microphones.

Right now, I don’t try and stop listening, like I did when Mum and Dad were arguing. It’s like I’m all ears and they stretch towards any tiny sound. I think of Mum right under my bed in the kitchen, sitting down and drinking her morning cuppa. It makes me laugh – that I’m seeing exactly what she’s doing in my mind and I’m lying right over her and she doesn’t even know. Then I hear a noise like someone’s humming in my room.

I look up and that’s when I see a bee at the top of my window. It’s buzzing more than humming now and I kneel up. It’s the biggest bee I’ve ever seen in my life and it’s got white bits on its fur like it’s an old man – or, as Mum would say, ‘in the winter of its life’. Every time it bounces against the window it makes an extra loud buzz like it’s getting angry. It doesn’t know about the glass in its way – it can’t understand why it can’t just fly out free into the garden. So, very carefully, because I know bees have a sting like a poison dart, I open up the window. It bumps against the glass once more and then flies out. At first I think it’s going to fall and crash onto the ground but it soars up into the air and away into the garden over the top of the apple tree.

I get dressed in my leggings and my favourite purple-and-red stripy T-shirt that feels so soft and lovely against my skin and it’s got long arms and I can feel the day in front of me. Before I go downstairs I decide to draw a picture of the storytelling festival. I find a piece of paper and draw with a
thick pencil a man sitting down. He’s wearing glasses and I imagine the story he’s telling so I put scribbly words coming out of his mouth. Then I do a rabbit at his feet with its mouth open because it’s listening so hard.

Downstairs there’s a toast smell in the kitchen and Mum’s wearing jeans and a flowery top – she told me flowery tops are her ‘haute couture’ and I got her to write those words down because I want to put them in my word collection – and I ask, ‘Are we still going?’ Because you never can be sure.

She turns round and smiles at me. ‘Yes, Carmel, yes.’

DAY 1

 We took the train that day. I wanted it to be special for Carmel and taking a train rather than the usual bus was a treat.

She had crazes for things then, like any kid. Passions that flared up and then fizzled and died as quickly as they came but her love for the colour red seemed to be enduring. I’d bought her a red duffel coat and that’s what she was wearing. She’d asked if she could have red shoes the next time she needed shoes and we’d seen a pair in the window of Clarks. We looked at them every time we went into town to check they were still there. My wages didn’t go far, but I figured I might be able to buy them before she returned to school after Easter and prayed they wouldn’t be sold before then. So far, miraculously, every time we went into town there they were – on a little green felt-covered stand, like two big fat ladybirds waiting on the grass – even though the rest of the stock changed around them. As she put on her coat that morning I made a decision.

‘Tomorrow, we’ll go into town and if those shoes are still there, we’ll buy them.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Really.’

To hell with everything, I’d put them on my credit card
and worry about it later. That morning with the spring wind blowing through the back door anything seemed possible. Perhaps I could even ask Paul to pay for them, now he’d made a reappearance. I’d felt he wanted the connection back with his daughter, even if he didn’t want anything to do with me. Perhaps it was time to accept the contribution he’d offered that I’d recklessly turned down, insisting that we’d manage without him.

That day on the train, for a while at least, the past got swept away by the spring, the sucking hot air from the trains as they speeded through the station and the excitement of a day out, just the two of us. I thought: I’ve been in such a state, such a terrible stupid anxious state this past year since Paul left. It’s time to stop it now. Time to start afresh.

Carmel sat opposite me bundled up in her duffel coat. The train was crowded. A tall young man with a dirty denim jacket and the tattoo of a spider’s web creeping up his neck from his open shirt got on and took the seat next to Carmel. He fiddled with his mobile phone for a while and then the guard looked at our tickets. I could see from the start the man in the denim jacket was desperate to begin a conversation. Words began to form in his mouth that he kept swallowing at the last minute, but after the ticket collecting he couldn’t hold back.

‘Good little girl you have.’ He was speaking to me.

‘Yes. Thank you.’ I smiled at him. It was peaceful and comfortable on the rocking train with Carmel right opposite me.

‘Day out, just the two of you?’

I nodded, then was it my imagination or did his sharp darting eyes glance at my ring finger? Though ridiculous
that anyone should note such things these days – especially at his age.

‘Left the old fella at home?’

‘That’s right.’

Maybe it was just me conscious of my finger, as naked as a root, where less than a year ago a thick gold ring with a circle of silver flowers had gleamed. Either way I was relieved when he got off.

‘I’m glad he’s gone,’ I said.

‘Who?’ asked Carmel, her mind clearly on other things.

‘Mr Spiderman, of course.’

She didn’t laugh at my silly name-calling, just patted my hand – once, lightly.

‘You nutter,’ she smiled, dreamily.

Then it was just the two of us again, sitting opposite each other. The train went through an avenue of trees. Carmel’s hair splayed out with static across the nylon headrest of the seat as she looked out of the window. As we passed through the trees they made a pattern so her face was one moment in bright sunlight and the next in darkness. This is the image I remember most from the day. Carmel’s face being stripped with light and dark, flickering on and off, like at the end of a spool of film when it’s about to run out.

Great flapping lines of flags are blowing upwards at the festival to the blue sky. While we’re queuing a woman dressed as a dragon walks up and down on stilts.

‘How do they walk?’ I ask my mum. ‘Can I have some stilts?’

I can imagine myself walking round the garden in them and being able to see right over the wall. Though I don’t tell Mum that bit.

‘They strap their legs up and have to practise a lot,’ Mum says.

The dragon goes past again, she looks down at me, and against the sun her golden face turns dark. She drapes her frilly dragon wings over me and I tip my head back so they can fall over my face and everything goes green and gold, then black. She walks on and I can see her bottom moving under her shiny tight green leggings. When a man dressed as a fly comes near I swap sides with Mum, in case he does the same, because I don’t really like the fly.

When we pay and get through Mum leans over me. ‘What d’you think?’

And I’m just nodding and nodding because I can’t say what I think except I love it. I love how everything seems weird, or too tall or upside down. That there’s people with sequins on their eyelids or dressed as bears and a giant book open on a page with the corner curling up – though when
I touch it with my finger, it’s not paper but hard plastic. It’s like the place in
Alice
on the other side of the mirror, a place where I might be able to grow as high as one of the tents or talk to a cat. Mum’s explaining how in each tent there’s stories being told and when she says that I can feel words come shooting out of the tent doors and I just want to stand there at the openings and let them fizz on my brain.

Mum’s reading the book now that tells you everything that’s going to be happening. The programme she says it is, though I thought that was something on the telly.

‘What kind of story would you like to hear?’

I say fairies because I can’t put into proper words the things in my head: swords glinting in the dark; pirates with hard yellow eyes; things that happen under the sea; creatures with furry mouths that whisper secrets.

We find a tent called ‘Once Upon a Time’. Inside, there’s a pretty woman with silver glitter on her face and little pink wings drooping down her sides. The tent’s lit up with coloured lights that twinkle on and off. When everyone’s sitting cross-legged on the mat on the ground she reads this story about a fairy that has to earn her wings by doing good deeds. But all the time she’s reading out loud it’s like she’s trying too hard and it’s making her worry. Her forehead keeps crinkling up and when she puts on the voice of the fairy it’s high and squeaky and her wings start looking sadder and sadder. And as well the fairy’s just too good to be true, especially when she swears never to let a bad thought cross her mind ever again. Bad thoughts happen in everyone’s mind – I know I’ve got them. So when the story finishes I start pulling on the sleeve of Mum’s green jacket.

‘Did you like that?’ she asks.

‘Yes, it was lovely.’ I don’t want to say about the sad wings or the too-good-to-be-true fairy. ‘Can we go somewhere else now?’

We find another tent where a story’s going to start in half an hour.

‘Let’s bag a place,’ says Mum and because hardly anyone’s there yet we can be right at the front. I sit on the floor mat under the wooden stage and the empty chair that’s ready for the storyteller.

Mum’s looking at the programme again. ‘You’ll like this one, Carmel. It’s a real writer and she’s going to be reading a story she wrote herself.’

The tent’s soon full to bursting, even people standing at the back.

I look over my shoulder and it’s then I see the man.

He’s standing against the wall – if you can call it a wall as we’re in a tent – he’s got white hair and glasses and he looks
just like
my storyteller in the drawing. And I smile at him because he looks like that and he smiles back. He’s staring right at me.

The writer comes in from a gap in the tent behind the stage. She’s old with short spiky grey hair and she’s got on this long glittery pink skirt with little blue boots poking out from underneath and her dangly earrings are the shape of question marks. She’s got a basket too. It’s a long time before she settles in the chair. She takes a big blob of pink bubblegum right out of her mouth and glues it onto a piece of paper in her basket. In the basket there’s books and her knitting showing out of the top with the needles stuck into a ball of red wool. I’m getting the feeling she’s been knitting right up until it was time to start the story
and then afterwards she’ll go straight back to it.

The first words of the story are: ‘The day her dad left Cassandra was so upset she went out into the garden and buried her favourite doll …’

I listen and listen because it seems to me that the girl in the story is just like me. I can feel Mum looking at me sometimes but I don’t let that take my listening away. The story finishes and the writer looks right over her red glasses and says, ‘Would you like to ask me any questions?’

There’s quiet for a bit then a woman at the back puts her hand up and asks, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ Though I can tell she only asks this because the quiet is embarrassing and she’s filling it up so it won’t be so bad for the writer. But the writer answers anyway. Her ideas, she says, come drifting towards her, and she’s got no way of knowing where they came from. They just come floating right towards her like out of a fog. It’s not much of an explanation but I can tell she’s telling the truth as best she can.

Other children start asking questions. ‘Why did you call the girl Cassandra?’ and ‘What happened to the dog that was in the beginning of the story and not the end?’ This question makes the writer smile and she says the dog was there through the whole story but she’s only written about him at the start and maybe that was a mistake. That’s very interesting to me, because I never thought you could make mistakes in stories. She starts saying things about who you can talk to if you are upset like Cassandra – teachers, friends and of course there’s always your nan and grandad.

That’s when I put my hand up.

She points to me straight away – like I knew she was going to, because all the way through I can tell she’s been
interested in me. She kept looking over at me when she was reading and finally I think I have something quite interesting and unusual to tell her.

‘I don’t know any of my grandparents at all.’

She’s smiling and leaning forward, she
is
interested.

‘Why, dear?’

‘Because my dad’s parents are dead and my mum hasn’t spoken to hers since I was a baby.’

Mum pulls her arms in the green jacket round and hugs her knees.

But the writer understands, she leans forward even more and says, ‘How fascinating! I just knew you’d have something out of the ordinary to tell me.’

My question seems to finish everything and people start leaving.

‘Did you like that?’ Mum asks. But I just nod; I can’t really say anything after speaking like that in front of everyone.

‘Let’s go and have a bite to eat then, Carmel. You must be getting hungry. I know I am.’

And I’m grateful to her because I know she probably wants to ask if I felt like the girl in the story when Dad left, and I did, but I don’t feel like talking about it.

We buy hot dogs and eat them sitting on the grass on top of a little hill so we can see everything below: the tents; the big book; the crowds with the people on stilts standing up taller than anyone else. We chew for a bit then I look down again.

‘What’s that?’ I ask. There’s smoke on the ground and the people are sticking up out of it with their legs invisible.

‘Seems like there’s a sea mist coming.’

‘Oh, I thought there was a fire.’

‘No, just a bit of old fog and look, it hasn’t reached us here.’ She laughs and her blue eyes light up all bright.

I put the last bit of hot dog in my mouth and squish it with my teeth. I decide I like the mist. It makes everything seem even stranger than before and I like that.

‘I love it here,’ I say, because I do and the feeling of it has suddenly rushed through my body.

‘Do you, honey?’ Mum’s finished her hot dog and she’s sitting with her face turned up to the sun. ‘I do too.’ And she looks happier and prettier than I’ve seen her for ages.

But then she turns into a spy again.