Authors: Kate Thompson
‘Where are you?’ said Mom.
‘We’re at the station . . .’ I began. Then everything went haywire. The tannoy began to hiss and crackle, and I saw our benevolent guard weaseling through the crowds with surprising speed in the direction of our platform. I froze. Mom’s voice said, ‘What station, Christie?’ but I didn’t get as far as an answer. The guard had passed me and was vanishing down the stairs which led to our platform. There was no time to think. I couldn’t let them go without me. I snatched the card from the slot, dropped the hand-set against the wall and ran out after the guard.
‘Sorry, ’scuse me, sorry,’ I said, barrelling through the crush and wriggling down the stairs towards the Glasgow platform. The train was already pulling in, and I would never have found the others if it hadn’t been for Darling, who was hovering above their heads like a dark beacon. I held my breath and dropped my head and somehow tunnelled my way through the irate mob to where our guard, like a blue angel, was creating a one-man cordon around our little group.
They were just getting on the train. If it hadn’t happened like that I might have tried to stop them; I might have talked to Danny and dissuaded him from going any further. But it was join them or lose them, and I wasn’t about to get left behind on my own. I ducked under the guard’s arm and he shoved me aboard. Above my head, Darling dived in with a whirring of wings, hovered frantically for an instant, then vanished ahead of us into the jam-packed carriage.
I didn’t have time to worry about her. I was crammed against the toilet door and I could hardly breathe. Beside my knee I could feel Oggy squirming as he tried to avoid being trampled underfoot. A little further in, Danny was gaping like a squashed fish and Tina was valiantly trying to create some space around him.
There was a final, bone-crushing heave of flesh from behind, and the door closed. I looked back, hoping to see the guard and thank him, but all I could see was the nickel buttons on my neighbour’s denim jacket. There were shouts and roars from the ones left behind but finally, unbelievably, the train began to move.
As I stood there, crammed against the door, I wondered why anyone had gone to the trouble of buying tickets. There was no way in the world that anyone was going to be moving along this train to check them.
3
AS THE TRAIN
picked up speed, the people in the interior of the carriage relaxed their resistance and the pressure eased up. Someone fought their way through to the toilet and I was jostled away from the door. We manoeuvred our way across to the opposite side of the corridor and settled Danny down on a pile of luggage. As soon as he was happy again, playing spiders on the walls with his fingers, I went in search of Darling. To my relief, she was quite safe; sitting on a suitcase in the dark space between two seat-backs. She was probably better off there than she would have been in my pocket, so I left her where she was.
It was a nightmare journey. At every stop the angry scrummage was repeated, and if I was kicked and elbowed and trodden on once, I was kicked and elbowed and trodden on a hundred times. Tina got quite savage about it after a while, and took to making faces at people and calling them names. It didn’t create any more room for us, and it meant that we got excluded from the occasional air of camaraderie that wafted around the train, but there was no
talking
to Tina when she was in that kind of mood.
I turned away, as though I didn’t know her. Danny’s hands were still galloping around the walls and the stacked luggage. At least he was happy. But I wasn’t. I was tired, and the homesickness came back. For a while it overwhelmed me, and then I somehow passed through it, to where the bigger questions were lying in wait.
How had Maggie taught those animals to speak? What had she done to Danny, and what was she still doing that could give Maurice reason to report her? And who were these other characters that Darling had talked about? Father, and Sprog?
None of the questions had answers, not even in my imagination. It was easier in the end to turn them off and listen to the wheels clunking across the rail joints. Somewhere along the way the water ran out and the toilets began to emit a sickening stink. After that, I was so busy shutting things out of my awareness that I went off to sleep, upright and all as I was.
4
IT WAS HALF-PAST
four in the morning before the train finally reached Glasgow. The doors opened with a hydraulic sigh and an impossibly large amount of people spilt out on to the platform.
Darling was the last of us to emerge, and we regrouped on a bench, cold and befuddled.
‘No more trains,’ said Danny, and stood up, ready to move on.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I want to stop and think for a minute. Have a discussion.’
‘Ooh,’ said Tina, sarcastically. ‘A discussion, eh?’
I ignored her and blundered on. ‘I just think maybe we’ve gone far enough.’
‘Far enough for what?’ said Tina.
‘Just far enough. I want to go home.’
‘Aah,’ said Tina, with mock sympathy. ‘Poor little poppet. Wants to go home.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ I hissed. ‘You’re homeless anyway. I mean, if you’re homeless you might as well be homeless here as there. It doesn’t make any difference to you.’ A soggy wave of self-pity rose into my nose and eyes. ‘I have a home,’ I said. ‘I want to be in it.’
There was a pause, and then Tina said, ‘All
right
. Now we’ve had our discussion. Let’s have a vote. Who’s for going home?’
I already knew I was outvoted, but I put up my hand anyway.
‘And who’s for going to Scotland?’
Tina put hers up. Danny pointed at the sky and whooped. Oggy howled like a Banshee, and Darling flew rings around and between us like a gigantic bluebottle.
My heart sank. As I trudged behind the others, out of the station and in to the dark city streets, I knew I was faced with two choices. One was to go along, whether I wanted to or not. The other was almost unthinkable. If I wanted to go home, to have my way, I would have to betray the others.
5
OUTSIDE THE SHELTER
of the station the wind was bitter. We pulled our coats around us and Tina released Oggy from the ignominy of Mitch’s belt. He shook himself so hard his teeth rattled, then he romped like a puppy until Tina told him to act his age.
‘Just warming up,’ he said, sulkily.
With Darling navigating sleepily from my pocket, we set out across the city.
The power was down, and the streets were black with blacker shadows. Oggy tuned in to my anxiety.
‘I’ll protect you, Christie,’ he said. ‘No one tangles with Oggy.’
A man with a pale, slack face leant out precariously from a shop doorway.
‘Did that dog just talk to you?’ he asked. His voice was mumbly and I could smell the drink from three metres.
‘You’d want to stay off that stuff,’ said Tina.
By the time the sun began to lighten the sky we were passing through suburbs where dogs barked from behind closed doors and cats scowled at Oggy from high garden walls. And
soon
afterwards we found a little café, where we ate till we were full to the gills, and furtively slipped a few extra rounds of toast into our bags. When we headed out on to the road again, Danny seemed to be walking a bit faster and more smoothly than before. The rest of us still had to adjust our speed to his, but not as much. I found myself wondering why Maurice had always kept him so cooped up. Was it really for Danny’s sake, or was it for some other reason? Because Maurice was ashamed of him, perhaps? It seemed to me as though this adventure was exactly the cure that Danny had been waiting for.
We were walking through an area of richer houses. Beyond them, a range of low hills rolled away into the distance. Oggy bounded ahead of us, exploring every garden and field and hedgerow along the way. The chill wind had dropped and the sun was making the hills glow with green promise. Darling ignored us all for a while, then took it upon herself to perform for us. She sat on a telegraph post and came out with the most amazing set of impersonations. She did a chicken first, then an alarm clock, then a curlew and a jackdaw and a sheep. And once she had our full attention, she got us all in stitches by mimicking All Saints, Marge Simpson, and Oggy begging for Buddy. For the moment, at least, I forgot that I didn’t want to be there, and we covered the next few miles in companionable silence.
There was very little traffic on the road, but there was some. Whenever a car passed, Tina thumbed it with frenzied enthusiasm, but I was sure that she only made us look even weirder than we were, and she didn’t have any success. We walked on and put slow miles behind us, and at around midday we stopped for a break and a bite to eat. We felt that we had gone for miles, and we were all in great spirits until Tina got out the map. Then we deflated. All those hours of walking did not even add up to one inch of progress. We were barely clear of Glasgow.
It put the journey ahead into cruel perspective. We had grown up, all of us, in a world where walking was a leisure activity and not a means of travel. A hundred miles to me meant boredom in the back of a car. But now that I had just barely covered six in an entire morning, the concept of distance changed in my mind, quite dramatically.
When we felt rested enough we set off again. As the afternoon wore on, the sky clouded over and mist engulfed the higher points of the hills. Darling floated above us like a guiding star, and the way ahead was constantly marked by the waving white flag of Oggy’s tail. I remember a moment of perfect peace, when I felt as though I could have gone on for ever like that, strolling with my friends towards Inverness.
But afterwards I came to see that glowing moment as the calm which comes before the storm. Because it was very soon afterwards that everything started to go wrong.
Another car came flying along the road and, as Tina stuck out her thumb I could see that she was sharing my mood. Her hitching performance, normally urgent and weird, was suddenly quite relaxed and charming. I had always thought of Tina as awkward looking; too thin and gawky to be pretty. But when she was happy and not hunched up over herself, she looked quite different; almost beautiful. There was a man in the car and as he approached us I could see his expression change as his attention shifted from the road and on to Tina. He slowed, and peered closely at her as he passed, then seemed to drift hesitantly for a hundred yards or so. Finally, to our amazement, he stopped.
Tina and I sprinted over the distance and Danny hobbled after us, not that far behind, with Oggy. The man got out of the car and waited for us on the passenger side. When we caught up to him he looked Tina up and down, then smiled at me.
‘Going far?’ he asked.
‘Inverness,’ I said.
‘You’re a long way from Inverness,’ he said. Then his eye fell on Oggy.
‘That your dog?’
I nodded.
‘I’m not having a dog in my car,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to leave him.’
I stepped away from him, and maybe some instinct was at work deep within me, because I remember feeling vaguely relieved.
‘We can’t leave him,’ Tina was saying. She
was
laying on the charm again and it made me uneasy. ‘He’s very quiet, honest. You won’t even know he’s there.’
Danny had caught up at last and was already climbing into the back of the car. The man didn’t pay him any attention at all.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘If the dog goes in the boot I’ll take you as far as I’m going. That’s my final offer.’ He opened the passenger door and Tina dropped her bag on the floor and got in. Then he came round and opened the boot.
There was plenty of room for a dog in there, but Oggy was behaving very strangely. He couldn’t say what was on his mind, but he expressed himself pretty well all the same. He whined and put his tail between his legs and refused to come over when I called him. I thought he was just being sniffy about having to travel in the caboose, but the truth was that his instincts were far more highly attuned than ours were.
‘Do you want us to go without you?’ I said.
He whined and cringed and wagged his tail, but he wouldn’t come. I was so sorry afterwards for what I did next, but at the time it seemed like the only thing to do. I threw my bags into the back of the car, grabbed Oggy by the scruff of the neck, and lifted him bodily into the boot.
The man slammed the lid and went round to the driver’s side. As soon as his back was turned, Darling drifted down on silent wings and I picked her out of the air and slipped her into my pocket. I got into the back with Danny and,
before
long, we were a snoring jumble of heavy limbs.
I woke with a start.
‘Out, lads,’ the man was saying. ‘Quick, now.’
I stared out with bleary eyes. It was pitch dark and the headlights were illuminating a junction where two roads met. The road we were on was steep at that point, and the man was holding the car on the clutch. Tina had her head down, getting her bag, I supposed.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m turning right here and you need to go left. Out you get.’
Danny already had his door open and I fumbled at mine and spilt out, dragging my plastic bags behind me. I was already on the road when I heard Tina shout.
‘Let go of me!’
She had opened her door and by the inside light I could see that the man had a tight grip on her arm and was preventing her from getting out. I dropped my bags and grabbed Tina’s door, but the swine was already letting off the clutch and the car was pulling forward.
We were lucky that Darling had her wits about her. With the courage of a lion she flew at the man’s face and went for his eyes with her beak and claws. I don’t suppose he had any idea what was happening. He let out a yell and threw up his hands to protect himself, letting go of Tina in the process. I pulled her out and, luckily enough, her foot caught in the shoulder-strap of her bag and it got dragged out behind her,
spilling
its contents on to the road. Behind Tina, Darling left off the attack and swept out of the car just as it roared like a jet plane and careered away.