The Girl in the Red Coat (7 page)

DAY 2

I fell asleep for about an hour, sitting on the sofa with my head tilted sideways on a cushion. God knows how I managed it, but then it wasn’t really like sleep. Sleeping should be forgetting and I didn’t forget at all. Not when I was asleep or when I woke up. I felt gratitude I’d been spared at least the terrible painful jolt of remembering.

When I opened my eyes the police liaison officer – Sophie – was sitting in exactly the same place, on an opposite chair, reading texts on her phone. She looked neat and tidy despite being up through the night; her blond bun hadn’t come loose, even a little bit.

‘Hello,’ she said.

I threw off the blanket and swung my feet to the floor. ‘Any … any news?’ I asked, my breath coming quick and fast.

‘Not yet.’ She leaned over and briefly touched my arm and went to fill the kettle.

Then I was suffused with a kind of pain I’d never experienced before. It ran through me, as if I was made of fibre-optic wires, flowing into my hands, my throat, everywhere. I sat for a few moments, wondering how it was possible to function with such pain and dread.

Stand up, I told myself and amazingly my body obeyed.

Behind me I could hear Sophie filling the kettle, pouring milk. I went to the back door to breathe in some fresh air. The fog from yesterday had lifted completely. It was early, but already it was the most glorious sunlit morning. The tree shone with drops of dew and a scented steam rose from the grass as the sun dried it out. It seemed incredible to me that the world had turned once again on its axis and carried on
as if not one thing had happened
: the sun had risen and the birds were singing and bees and insects were busy buzzing away in the trees and grass.

On the washing line were the clothes I’d hung out the morning before, just before we’d left to catch the train. Carmel’s striped pyjamas, her T-shirts and a row of her knickers – candy pink, white and yellow – danced about in the breeze. My head hurt, the sunlight sliced bright curved beams into my eyes and the clothes seemed to perform a jig in the wind –
where’s Carmel?
they mocked.
Have you lost her? Is she gone? Have you lost her? Wha-hee.

A wave of nausea engulfed me and I doubled over, there by the back door. There was a startled shout and the sound of the kettle banging down and Sophie was beside me and one arm was going round my back and the other one cradled my head and she gently, gently helped me to stand up again.

She looked out into the garden. ‘Shall I get those things in?’ she asked.

I nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I’ll help you.’

When I wake up for the second time it’s properly light but I’ve got trouble remembering where I am. I blink a lot on purpose which is the trick I do when I want to wake myself up properly.

The room is huge with a high ceiling and bare floorboards, like I’m ill and in an old-fashioned hospital except my bed’s the only one in here. There’s no curtains and the sun shines right onto me and feels warm on my face. On the windowsill there’s a lot of dust and black bits mixed in with chunks from the ceiling fallen onto it.

Bits of yesterday start to come back to me in flashes. But they’re jumbled up: the black-and-green shiny face looking down at me; the man with owl eyes jumping up out of nowhere; the long dark time in the car; the giant book; Mum on the train saying ‘nearly there, nearly there’; biting into a hot dog and snapping off the head of a long red worm of ketchup.

Mum’s brown boots sticking out from under a truck.

I don’t need to blink any more when I remember that. I sit up straight and a scream comes out of me I didn’t even try to make. It jumps out of me like a sneeze does.

The scream goes, ‘Oh no, no.’ And the sound flies up into the air and bounces around the ceiling. My legs kick up and down and the horrible thick blankets fall onto the floor in a lump and I jump right out of bed in one go. Footsteps come
running down the corridor and Dorothy rushes in. She looks even darker in the daylight, like an Indian and with the same dusty black skirt as yesterday that comes down nearly to her ankles. Today, there’s a blue blouse tucked into it and a wide leather belt round her waist. Her hair is in a straight ponytail that goes right down her back and she reminds me of a woman in a cowboy film I once saw.

‘Now, now. There’s no need for that noise,’ she says. Though really I stopped screaming when she came in, I’m so glad to see her.

She starts picking up the blankets off the floor and folding them tidily. She’s very quick and neat doing this. Then I hear more footsteps and they don’t sound quite right. They go clump, clump and on the second clump there’s a dragging sound.

‘Thank the Lord, there’s Dennis,’ Dorothy says and my grandad appears in the doorway. His sleeves are rolled up and he’s sweating on his face like he’s been working in the garden or something.

‘I want to talk to my mummy,’ I say. I’m clenching my fists without even meaning to.

Grandad walks towards me and I see now what’s been making the dragging noise. There’s something wrong with one of his legs and he has trouble lifting it properly off the ground, so it scrapes across the wooden floor when he walks. He wasn’t doing that yesterday, not when we were running to the car or when he was unlocking the gates. And I know it was that sparkly energy that had somehow stopped him limping for a while. I don’t know how I know, but I just do.

His big pale eyes are on me and I feel hot and strange standing there in Dorothy’s see-through petticoat.

‘I want to talk to Mum,’ I say in a quieter voice, which feels fluttery like there’s butterflies in my mouth.

He scrunches down on the floor in front of me which I can see is hard for him because his leg hurts. Then his face is right in front of mine.

‘Of course you do, Carmel, but you must remember it’s important to stay as calm as we can. We need to be very grown up and calm for your mummy.’

I think about this for a minute and see it’s true, and I feel a tiny bit better.

‘You get dressed, and I’ll go and phone the hospital to find out the news,’ he says. He gets up and I can see it hurts again.

Him and Dorothy are standing round me, like I’m going to run off any minute, looking at me to see what I’ll say.

‘Alright,’ I say.

I stand by my clothes on the chair and wait for them to go so I can get dressed. I’m looking out of the window at trees when I hear the door close behind me.

I can see now that the black bits on the windowsill are the crispy bodies of dead wasps. They’re dried up and their thin spidery legs are bunched and pointing up to the ceiling. When they were alive they must have been more heavy: like the bee who escaped from my window and dipped down so low when he was flying out I thought he was going to crash. Now these wasps are dead all the heaviness has gone out of them and I think – how strange that being alive seems to make you heavy.

My clothes from the day before feel thick and dirty in my hands. But I put them on anyway, even my knickers. Even though my mum says, ‘Always start the day with clean knickers.’ I realise I don’t even have a toothbrush to brush
my teeth with and decide to ask Dorothy if she has a spare one and hope she won’t suggest using one of theirs because using other people’s toothbrushes is gross.

Outside my room there’s the long corridor that’s painted green to halfway up the wall and then dirty white above. I follow the way I’ve heard their voices go till I’m at the top of the wooden stairs again. Down below the front door is wide open and outside there’s a stripe of blue sky above the metal gates. The sky looks the same as it always does – like it’s another normal day – and that’s a relief.

Grandad and Dorothy’s voices are coming from their apartment downstairs and they sound like insects chatting away – up and down, up and down. Dorothy’s a little grasshopper – rrrupp, rrrupp, rrrupp. Grandad’s bigger and deeper. I think ‘cockroach’ at first but that doesn’t seem a very nice insect to be. So I change that to one of those big black beetles with pincers. I listen again to check if I’ve got it right: beeep, beeep, beeep. I hear one of them moving towards the door and I don’t want them to find me listening so I start to come down the stairs. Then my grandad is standing at the bottom.

‘Ah, there she is – little Carmel. I’ve spoken to the hospital. Come down and have some breakfast and be welcomed properly to our humble abode.’ Humble rhymes with bumble and I think it means small but I can’t see what’s small about living here.

I rush the rest of the way downstairs then because I want to find out about Mum. Dorothy’s at the cooker.

‘Come, sit down.’ Grandpa walks over to the table with his funny limp and Dorothy puts a pancake in front of me and sprinkles some sugar on it.

‘Blueberry,’ she says and winks and for some reason the way her eyelid rolls ever so slowly over her eyeball reminds me of an animal. She sits next to me and folds her hands in the lap of her black skirt.

The blueberries pop as I chew but it starts making me feel sick that I’m gobbling lovely pancakes when Mum’s in hospital, so I put my spoon down. Grandad sits at the top of the table.

‘Carmel, there’s good news and bad I’m afraid. Which would you like first, dear?’

They’ve both gone quite still and they’re looking at me carefully.

‘Bad. No, good.’ I hang onto the sides of my chair so hard it hurts my hands.

‘Well, your mother had a very long operation. It went right through the night because she was so terribly injured. Oh dear, my poor daughter.’

He gets a white hanky out of his pocket and wipes his face with it and I have the funny feeling he’s trying to hide his eyes and I wonder if he’s starting to cry behind the hanky. I know I am, I can feel my eyes filling up again even though I cried so much yesterday I didn’t think there’d be any water left in my head.

After a while he puts his hanky back in his pocket.

‘What about the good news?’ I ask. My voice comes out tiny. I’m an insect too now – but a quiet little baby one that’s crept under my plate to hide.

‘The good news is that she’s finally out. The wonderful skills of the surgeons have put her back together as best they can.’

Put her back together as best they can.
I don’t like the
sound of that. It makes me think of a doll or a puppet that’s been taken to pieces and put back all wrong so they’ve got legs coming out of their head and an eye looking out of their bottom. But I tell myself that’s silly and that’s not what he means. I tell myself I need to pull myself together.

‘When can I see her?’ I say, still in the baby insect’s voice. ‘Can we go now?’

Grandad looks worried and lifts up his hands from the table and holds them in the air in front of him so I can see their insides.

‘Oh no, no, Carmel. She’s very sick, she’s …’

‘I won’t bother her. I’ll let her sleep …’ I’m sounding more like myself now, more like Carmel.

‘No, no. That’s just not possible, not possible at all.’ I can see he’s getting upset and fidgety now.

But so am I. ‘Why? Why isn’t it possible?’ I stand up with my fists squeezed like I’m going to hit something.

‘Well, you see, she’s in a place called intensive care. It’s a very quiet place for people who are really sick. And it needs to be quiet so the people can get better.’

‘But I won’t be noisy. I won’t, I won’t.’

‘Maybe not, Carmel. But you see the doctors say there are no visitors allowed, especially not children.’

‘So I’ll creep up and peep round the door.’ I’m shouting at him. ‘Or if there’s a window in the door I’ll only peep through that. And if it’s too high you could hold me up to look …’

‘
No,
Carmel.’ The shout from him is so big and frightening the tears that have stayed in my eyes come popping out and I put my hands up to my face. I fall back to sitting on the chair and Dorothy reaches out her arms and pulls
me towards her. She smells of pancakes and her clothes feel very soft as if they’ve been washed a lot and I push my face into her and sob.

Her voice goes sharp. ‘Now, Dennis, that’s enough. Leave us alone and the child will be fine.’

After a while I hear my grandfather leave the room and the door shut behind him. I don’t want to move from Dorothy’s lap so I put my arms around her and cling on like a monkey. She starts stroking my hair.

‘There, there, Carmel. Everything will be A-OK. It’s all A-OK. We’re here to look after you, that’s all. As soon as your mommy starts to get a little bit well again you can see her.’

It seems much more normal and makes more sense when Dorothy explains. I start to feel better and even take my arms from round her so I can blow my nose on the pink tissues she’s given me out of her skirt pocket.

She smiles at me. When I see her eyes the word ‘amber’ comes into my head. The colour of them makes me think of a necklace Mum’s got with big yellow-brown stones and when I was little I used to like to put one big bead in my mouth when no one was looking because they looked like sweets. No sweet taste ever came off it, but I liked the feel of it in my mouth and Dorothy’s eyes look exactly the same as those beads – even the little brown bits in them.

She makes me another pancake. Then she tells me to go outside and get some fresh air while she does the dishes, and she gives me my coat which she hung up with theirs last night.

I stand at the top of the big stone steps for a moment and sniff at the air like a fox. I want to see where we are but the gates are still chained with a shiny padlock. I look through
the gap and my face goes cold from the metal and all I can see is blurry green. Around the house in a circle is a high wall made of stones bigger than my head and in one place there’s a tree growing straight out of it, its roots clawing into the stones. I sit underneath the tree and the shadows make nodding shapes on my coat.

I start feeling like I’m a picture or in a film, flat and made of the same stuff as the people on TV. My hands start feeling sticky and I open them up and look at them. Dirt’s got into the cracks and I sniff my palms. They smell salty-sweet like peanut clusters only there’s just dirt and sweat.

I walk some more. I don’t think anyone’s lived here for a long time before Dorothy and Grandad. There’s broken tiles and stuff at the back that crunch under my feet. There’s even some rusted farm machines.

I stop feeling real again. There’s nothing I know here except the clothes I’m standing up in. This time, I feel like I’m about to be switched off – like I really am on the TV. I sway from the feeling and I almost go back inside to try and make it stop.

After a while I decide the best thing to do is to put my brain to work to try and get to know Grandad and Dorothy better before I see them again, so they’ll be more familiar. Grandad’s energy was still around the gates when I went past. It was hanging about there like the fog from last night. Dorothy’s different. Hers is folded up tight and neat inside of her. I think about Grandad’s limp and how it was gone and now back again. That makes my leg hurt and I nearly fall over. So I stop thinking about it. I don’t think about Mum in hospital either. I’m keeping it in a snow globe.

I sleep in the same bed for another night. I really want to go home now. I say that and they say, ‘Not quite yet.’

I don’t like the nights but in the day the house feels better. Dorothy and Grandad’s apartment is nice and new and they sleep upstairs in it, where I went to the toilet the first night. Their sitting room next to the kitchen has got a big leather sofa and it smells of new carpet and has a huge window that looks out of the front of the house. It’s so big I can sit in the window and I do. But where I sleep is not done because people Grandad calls developers ran out of money. The good thing about it is they got their apartment cheaper – Dorothy’s told me that twice. This morning I heard them talk about what it would be like if they owned the whole building, not only renting their bit of it. How they’d turn it into lots and lots of apartments and make piles of money out of it. They’d be like the developers. But the way they talked about it you can tell they’re dreaming about the idea, it’s not real.

There’s no television anywhere. I ask Dorothy about it but she just laughs and says her family didn’t have a TV when she was little and when they got one the people moving about inside of it frightened her and that reminds me of the feeling I had before.

I ask about Mum again. They say I can see her soon. I say I want to speak to Dad, and they say they’ve tried his phone but it was switched off because he’s inside the hospital. They’ve left a message and he’ll call back when he can, they’re sure. But in a funny way I’m excited about him being there because it means he cares about what happens to Mum. If he’s with her maybe, you never know, it’ll make them be together again. I don’t know what will happen to Lucy if they do. I can’t worry about that.