The Roman and the Runaway

  "Sure!" Shelley felt on more familiar ground with this request.

  "And there's something else," Pagan's voice dropped. "I think the police will ask you questions about me. I don't want you to lie to them but I don't want you to tell them I've changed my hair. If they ask you why I've run away, then you need to tell them it's because of Brian. I don't think it's going to be possible to get through to Mum any other way."

  "God, you're really serious about this, aren't you?" said Shelley.

  "Yes, I am. If he comes up behind me and puts his hands on my hips like that one more time I'm going to scream. Or stab him with the bread knife."

  "Probably best to use the carving knife," advised Shelley, "it'd do more damage."

  *

  Pagan blamed herself for what she thought of as The Brian Situation. She'd been the first one to make friends with him, after all. He worked in the hardware shop down the road from where Pagan and her mother lived. It was an old-fashioned kind of DIY shop; not one of the national chains of big warehouse-style shops on out-of-town trading estates but a small, family-owned affair. It was on the corner of two busy roads in the centre of the Cheshire town where they lived (a town which had long since become one of the suburbs of the city of Manchester). There were brooms, wheelbarrows and rolls of chicken wire on display outside the shop and large, plate-glass windows with golden lettering promising "Keys Cut While 'U' Wait".

  Pagan's mum was a firm believer in supporting small local businesses rather than big, impersonal stores and she would often ask Pagan to pick up items from the shop on her way home from school. Pagan got to know the regular staff and would joke around with them as she made her purchases. Brian had always been friendlier than most of the other people there and, in retrospect, Pagan thought she had probably been too ready to talk about herself and her mother when she chatted with him. But she'd only been twelve years old when she'd first met him and to her he had just seemed like a kind, attentive, middle-aged man.

  There weren't many men in Pagan's life at that time: her dad had died when she was eight and she and her mum lived alone together in a road full of identical square, three-bedroomed semi-detached houses with large gardens. The house was around seventy years old and always seemed to be in need of some sort of work.

  One day, both Pagan and her mum had visited the DIY shop. Pagan had been chatting to Brian, as usual, when her mum asked him whether he could recommend a local builder to help her put up a new handrail on the staircase. Brian had promptly volunteered to do the job himself and his relationship with Julia Randall had all stemmed from that. He had moved in with them in September and Pagan felt as though her life had been unravelling ever since. Had Brian Colson been more interested in her than in her mother all along?

  *

  Later, when Pagan got home, she found her mother and Brian in the kitchen, eating their evening meal.

  "Yours is on the side," her mother said.

  Brian patted the bench next to him. "Come and sit down, girlie," he said.

  Pagan picked up her plate of macaroni cheese and pointedly sat down on the opposite bench, next to her mother.

  "We've got some good news for you, sweetheart," said Pagan's mother. "Brian's boss is looking for a part-time worker on a Saturday. If you want to, you could work with Brian at the hardware store for a few hours for some extra cash."

  There was a self-satisfied smile on Brian's face. Pagan tried not to imagine how horrible it would be to be sandwiched in amongst the narrow aisles of the hardware store with Brian ‘accidentally' brushing past her. The macaroni she was eating had suddenly lost its flavour, making her feel as though she were eating a mouthful of maggots. With difficulty, she swallowed the food down.

  "Oh, right," she said. Then, not wishing to sound too ungrateful, she added, "Thanks."

  Pagan forced herself to eat the rest of the meal, realising this was the crisis point she had been expecting. She would not be able to refuse this offer of work without a good reason and the idea of being forced to spend several hours every Saturday in Brian's unwelcome touchy-feely company was unbearable.

  "We thought we'd go to the cinema tonight, Pagan," said Brian. "D'you want to come?"

  "Erm, I've got a load of homework to do," Pagan replied. This was true, although Pagan had no intention of actually doing any of it. She was relieved she would have the house to herself. Finishing her meal, she got up and loaded her dirty plate and cutlery into the dishwasher. "Have fun, you guys," she said.

  When Pagan heard the car pulling out of the drive she went to her mother's bedroom. In the back of the wardrobe was a small cash box which was where her mother kept an emergency supply of banknotes. It was well hidden under a heap of sweaters and Pagan was fairly sure Brian did not know about it. She took it out and counted the notes inside it. There were several hundred pounds. Pagan took about half of the money and carefully replaced the box under its protective camouflage.

  Reckoning she had about two hours before the adults returned, Pagan went back to her own bedroom and methodically started laying out the things she thought she would need for her period of exile. Then she found her largest rucksack and began to pack everything inside it. There was some space left in it but she was planning to buy some camping equipment which would fill that.

  She dialled Shelley's number on her mobile phone. "Shell, it's going to happen tomorrow."

  "What is? WHAT? You're kidding? You're really going to go through with it?"

  "Yes, I've got to. I'll explain tomorrow. Can we do the hair thing without your Mum seeing me?"

  "She's going to be at Gran's tomorrow afternoon."

  "Great. I need to go and get some stuff in the morning. I'll come over after lunch, about one?"

  "Okay, see you then. I can't believe you're going to do this Pagan."

  "See you tomorrow. Bye."

  Pagan rang off, hid her backpack in her wardrobe and went to bed, her mind busy with plans for the following day.

  *

  She stayed in bed until after nine the next day so that Brian would have left for work before she got up. Pagan showered and dressed and then went downstairs to let her mother know she was planning to hit the shops with Shelley. This raised no suspicions, as Pagan and Shelley made fairly regular trips on the bus to the large indoor shopping centre that was situated a few miles from their home.

  Pagan caught the bus, very aware of the bundle of stolen notes in her pocket. At the shopping centre she ignored the boutiques and accessories shops that she and Shelley usually hung out in and went straight to the camping and outdoor store instead. Here, she bought a camping stove set which came with two small pans; a tent designed for two people (the smallest one she could see); a bedding roll; a vacuum flask; a can opener and a plastic plate, bowl, mug and folding cutlery set. Everything fitted into the small rucksack apart from the tent. Her next stop was the pharmacy, where she dithered for a while, overwhelmed by the range of different hair dyes and colours that were on offer. Eventually she settled on a boring-looking semi-permanent brown, on the basis that it would make her look less noticeable than any of the other colours.

  By now it was lunchtime. Pagan got on the bus and went straight to Shelley's house. Shelley's mum had already gone and Shelley answered the door.

  "Shell, I need to leave this stuff here. I'm going to go home and get my other bag. See you in a bit." Pagan left without another word and went back to her own house.

  Her mother was tending to her vegetable patch in the back garden and did not notice Pagan coming back. Pagan swiftly retrieved her rucksack from her bedroom, gave her cat an affectionate goodbye hug and then returned to Shelley's house, feeling excited but also already sorry for the worry she knew her mother would experience when she did not return that evening.

  Pagan's hair was pale blonde and hung down her back in a straight sheet.

  "Are you sure about this?" Shelley asked, as she stood over Pagan with her mother's hairdressing scissors in her hand. Shelley's own hair
was wiry, red and unmanageable and she had always been deeply envious of Pagan's. She found it hard to believe Pagan could want to disguise it.

  "Get on with it," snapped Pagan, who was beginning to have serious second thoughts about her whole plan but didn't want to admit them to Shelley.

  Shelley bit her lower lip and started to cut Pagan's hair so that it came to just above her shoulders. When she had finished they both stared in awe at the pile of yellow hair on the floor. Pagan carefully picked it all up and stuffed it into a pocket of her rucksack.

  "What are you going to do with that?" asked Shelley, bemused.

  "I don't want the police finding it," replied Pagan. "I'll bury it once I find a campsite."

  The hair-dyeing took longer than the hair-cutting, as the dye had to be left on Pagan's hair for twenty minutes. When it was done, the colour was not quite as dark as Pagan had hoped but the girl staring back at her from the bathroom mirror looked very different from the one who had arrived at the house earlier.

  "Well I wouldn't recognise you," decided Shelley.

  Pagan packed the hair dye box and her morning purchases into the large rucksack and strapped the tent on to the top. Struggling a little, she managed to hoist them both on to her back, then she pulled a baseball cap onto her newly-brown hair.

  "Thanks, Shelley," she said. "I won't be calling you and my phone is going to be off, because I don't want them to trace me through it. But I will have it with me in case of emergencies." She hugged her friend and left before Shelley could try to change her mind.

  At the railway station Pagan bought a return ticket to London. She was planning to get off the train before it got that far but thought that buying a return to the capital would attract less attention than buying a ticket to anywhere else. The ticket put another big hole in her funds. There was a small food store in the station forecourt where Pagan purchased some basic supplies: enough food and water to sustain her for the next day.

  The journey south seemed to go very quickly. Pagan had been planning this trip for some time and knew roughly where she was going to be pitching her tent. She got off the train at its last stop before London and then caught a smaller, local train. It, too, was going to London but she got off it long before it had left the countryside, at the small station she had identified from her forward planning on the Internet.

  Pagan climbed the steps from the platform and crossed a small footbridge to the road above. There was no pavement and she had to walk along the edge of the narrow road. A few cars drove past her as fellow passengers left the station and drove home. She felt suddenly jealous of them and a sharp twinge of homesickness stabbed her as she thought of her mother and of the bed Pagan would not be sleeping in that night. A few tears of self-pity fell down her face before she pulled herself together and started looking out for footpath signs. A bridle path opened off the road on the left; Pagan followed that, relieved to get away from the traffic. After a few more minutes the path split, with a narrower footpath branching off to the left. It seemed to be heading towards a wooded slope in the distance. Pagan had decided that camping out in the woods would be a good idea, so she headed off in that direction.

  It was now the early evening and Pagan was beginning to get very tired with the weight of the rucksack and tent on her back. The path was heading north and skirting the western edge of a large golf course, where Pagan could see a number of people pulling golf bags along behind them. Every few hundred metres there were large signs declaring that the golf course was the property of ‘Pritchards Country Club: Member's Only'. Pagan began to get irritated by the signs, which she felt were spoiling the scenery. She was also fairly sure that whoever had written them had failed to understand the correct use of the apostrophe. Her mother was always complaining about missing or unnecessary apostrophes and this thought renewed her feelings of homesickness and guilt.

  The footpath curved round to head east and on the left the land became more densely wooded. The southern boundary continued to be defined by the golf course and its irritating signs. There appeared to be woodland on both sides of the path further on, where the golf course stopped. It occurred to Pagan that if the woods on the right-hand side of the path belonged to the Country Club, then they might be more private than those on the left, given the club's attitude towards trespassers. As she approached the woods beyond the golf course, she could see they were protected by a fairly tall dry-stone wall. The inevitable ‘member's only' signs were posted along the wall at regular intervals. There was no-one to be seen along the path; Pagan scrambled up the wall and carefully climbed over the top of it. There were stones on their edges at the top, which made it awkward and uncomfortable but soon she was on the other side.

  Here, it seemed quieter than on the footpath. The trees were densely packed, with thick undergrowth beneath them and there was no sign of a pathway. The area looked as if no-one had visited it for years. Perfect, thought Pagan.

  She struggled through the undergrowth to find a place to pitch her tent. She did not want to be too close to the wall, in case someone should look over it and see her campsite. After scrambling through brambles and bushes for about fifty metres she glanced back and was satisfied that she was no longer visible from the wall. Clearing a space for the tent was difficult, as the undergrowth had many brambles in it and Pagan's hands were soon scratched and sore.

  The tent was easy to put up, although the soil was shallow and full of lumps of chalk, making it difficult to anchor the tent pegs securely. By the time it was up and her bed made, it was beginning to get dark and Pagan was exhausted, hungry and thirsty. She drank the last of the water she had bought at the station and gobbled down a sandwich and a sausage roll, before climbing into her sleeping bag and falling instantly asleep.

  Chapter Nine

  Pagan's mother was having the worst evening of her life. By eight o'clock, when Pagan still had not returned, she was beginning to get concerned. She rang Pagan's mobile phone, which switched straight to the answer machine. She left a message there and then telephoned Shelley's home. Shelley's mother answered the call.

  "Hello Naomi. Is Pagan there?"

  "No, Julia, she isn't. I haven't seen her today."

  "Didn't she go shopping with Shelley?"

  "I don't think so. Hold on, I'll check with her." She held the telephone away from her ear, covering it with her hand and called her daughter. Shelley appeared from the living room reluctantly, as she suspected this was the phone call she had been dreading ever since she had said goodbye to Pagan.

  "Darling, have you seen Pagan today?"

  Shelley nodded. "When did she leave?"

  "About 2.30," Shelley replied, honestly.

  Naomi relayed this information to Julia and Shelley could hear Julia's shout of "WHAT?" from where she was standing.

  "Put Shelley on the phone," Julia told Naomi, who passed the receiver over to her daughter, looking worried.

  "Shelley, do you know where Pagan was going when she left you?" asked Julia.

  "Mrs Randall, I think she was running away," Shelley said, her voice shaky. Her mother was looking at her with a look of absolute horror on her face.

  Julia took a deep breath and tried to keep her own voice level. "Do you know where she was going?"

  "No, she wouldn't tell me. She's got a tent and is planning to camp out for a couple of weeks."

  Julia suppressed all of the words she would have liked to have directed at Shelley and asked to speak to Naomi again. Shelley passed the telephone back to her mother.

  "Julia, if there's anything I can do to help…" Naomi began.

  "Yes, there is. Make sure Shelley stays in the house. I think the police are going to want to talk to her."

  Naomi stared grimly at her daughter. "She's not going to be going anywhere in a hurry, I assure you."

  "Good, I need to call the police now, Naomi. Speak to you soon." And Julia rang off.

  The expression on her mother's face told Shelley that her plans for a peaceful
evening in front of the television were going to be the first casualty of the storm that was being unleashed by Pagan's disappearance.

  Julia's next call was to the local police, who were supportive and professional, promising to send an officer over within the hour. Once this call was made, Julia collapsed into a chair, trying to understand what had happened.

  Brian came home and found Julia staring at the television. Which was not switched on.

  "What's the matter?" he asked, sitting down beside her.

  "Pagan's run away from home. The police are on their way," Julia told him. "Why, Brian? Why would she do something like this? I don't understand."

  Brian hugged her but did not reply.

  The doorbell rang and Julia answered it to two police officers.

  They sat down with her and Brian in the living room and went through a long series of questions about Pagan, covering her appearance, her friends, her family, her last known location and any reasons for her disappearance. Julia gave them Pagan's most recent school photograph.

  "Does your daughter have access to a bank account or any cash?" the woman police officer asked Julia.

  "She does have a savings account. Oh," she said, as a thought occurred to her, "hold on."

  Julia went upstairs and came down a few minutes later.

  "She's taken some cash with her. About £300."

  "What?" Brian asked. "What cash?"

  "Just an emergency fund I have," Julia replied. "She clearly thought this was an emergency, for some reason."

  Brian subsided into silence. The male police officer said "We need to talk to this friend of your daughter's, Shelley. Can you give us her address, please, Mrs Randall?"

  Julia told them Shelley's address and the officers left, assuring her they would be in touch if there was any news about Pagan.

  Shelley's mother had had much to say about Shelley's involvement in Pagan's disappearance and Shelley had spent most of the evening in tears. When the telephone rang again, Naomi rushed to pick it up.

  "The police are heading over to you," Julia told her, before Naomi could even ask whether there was any news about Pagan. "Please tell Shelley to tell them everything she can."