Thirty
The News on the Radio
… which is what passed over us, tearing the sky apart.
I woke with a jerk and yelped.
‘Just a jet,’ Phil said. ‘Relax.’
‘Bloody hell. Sounded like the end of the world.’
‘It’s the boys, back from Iraq.’
‘Why do they have to fly so low?’
‘Just their idea of fun, I suppose. Had a sleep?’
I stretched. ‘Nah. Just daydreaming. About that friend I told you about. Miko.’
‘The social worker?’
‘Yeah, him.’
‘Sounds like you still hold a torch for him.’
‘Hey?’
‘Wasn’t he an old boyfriend?’
‘Yeah. But he had to move away with his job. We petered out.’
Phil sighed. ‘Same old story.’
‘Too right. D’you have a girlfriend, Phil?’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah. You.’
‘Not in ages. It’s this job. You’re never in one place long enough.’ His hands rose off the steering wheel and fell back down. ‘Maybe I’m better off single.’
‘Know the feeling.’ We passed these hedges that somebody’d shaved into giant hedgehogs, then a pond of lilies ringed by the kind of trees that hang down into the water.
‘See them trees?’ I said to Phil.
‘The willows?’
‘Yeah. Just thought up a joke.’
Phil grinned. ‘Try me, birthday girl.’
‘Why do willows weep?’
He sucked in his cheeks, then blew out. ‘Dunno. Why?’
‘They can’t stand the sight of their own reflection. That’s why.’
Phil hooted. ‘Sounds like me the morning after the night before,’ he said. ‘Hey, look at that sign.’
I stared, but the letters didn’t add up:
SIR FYNWY
‘Who’s Sir Funny?’ I went.
Phil chortled. ‘It’s Welsh, for Monmouthshire. We’re in Wales.’
Wales. You won’t believe it but it was different, right away. We were running down a road with a brown mountain ahead. There were black and white cows in the field, all bunched up in one corner, sitting down. Then we passed a big tumble-down castle with a tower that wasn’t ruined yet. In my head I put a woman on top, like Mam maybe, in a long dress with floating sleeves and a cone on her head. Maybe she was waiting for Mr Right to rescue her or maybe she was waiting for me to come up the mountain road. Then a whole string of mountains loomed up. The radio made beeping noises and Phil turned up the volume.
‘It’s the news,’ he said.
I didn’t listen, but rooted in the lizard for my baby-doll lipstick. I needed touching up. The posh mogit voice droned in and out of my thoughts as I dabbed. ‘Detectives are investigating the death of a baby in a fire in Leeds … The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a statement expressing grave concern … In Pakistan, a bomb has exploded in the capital, killing fourteen …’ We went into a tunnel, with silver lights on one side and gold on the other. The radio crackled and I had to pause with the lipstick because I couldn’t see in the wing mirror. We shot out of the tunnel. ‘… The Prime Minister has denied all knowledge of the memorandum … Police are searching for a fifteen-year-old girl who went missing from her south London home yesterday …’
My heart forgot how to beat.
‘… She was last heard of in the Oxford area …’
Thickhead, I thought. The call to the Gayle woman. They must have traced it.
‘… and do not suspect foul play but they are urging the girl to get in touch with her foster parents …’
The road pounded on and I stared at the lipstick but didn’t see it and I felt heat creeping up my cheeks.
Phil said nothing. I squinted over. His hands were on the wheel, same as ever, his eyes looking ahead.
Real slow, I moved the lipstick back up to my lips. I dabbed it on and dusted down the fringe.
‘Pretty country,’ I drawled over the mogit voice. ‘Castles ’n’ all.’
‘What?’
‘Wales. ’S pretty.’
‘Sorry. I was miles off. That’s the trouble with driving long distance. You get these times when you don’t know where the last hour went.’
‘Know the feeling. Like school.’ Then I remembered I was Solace, all done with school. ‘Mean, how school was,’ I burbled. ‘Used to blank out in science and technology. Only got two GCSEs.’
‘I only got one.’ Phil whistled out a long breath. ‘And that was RE. Maybe I’ll retake them one day.’
I looked at my bitten fingernails. ‘So, Phil,’ I said. ‘When you drift off on the road, how come you don’t crash?’ The radio voice was on to the weather now, saying something about thunder and showers.
‘Don’t speak too soon.’
‘Yeah. But how come?’ I had to keep his mind off the news story somehow.
‘Guess I go on automatic.’ He glanced over. ‘Do you drive?’
‘Nah. Only people up a wall.’
Phil chuckled. ‘D’you want to learn?’
‘Yeah. I’ve got my provisional.’
‘That so?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I love driving,’ Phil said. He changed gear and sped up. ‘Only sometimes after hours of it the white lines hypnotize you. Then I put the radio on to keep my mind on the job.’ He took his hands off the wheel for a split second. ‘You hear all kinds of strange stories on that radio.’
Did he suspect me or not?
We crawled through a town called Abergavenny, stuck behind a pick-up truck. I stared at a takeaway place called Balti Bliss and at shops with odd things like washing machines, buckets and leather chairs spilling onto the street. I wondered if I should just hop out at the lights and run. But the chance to jump went when we got out of the town.
If he believed that girl in the report was me, I thought, he’d have driven straight up to the police station.
But even so, Phil kept glancing over at me like he was wondering something. Every time he did, that hot prickling crawled up my cheeks.
Houses clung to the slopes. I saw a big dead furry thing on the road with long hair, real thin, and flattened.
‘Ugh!’
‘That was a mink,’ Phil said.
‘A mink? As in mink coat?’
‘Yeah. They’re getting more common, apparently.’
What’m I going to do?
‘The fur trade must be laughing,’ Phil said.
The air got hot and sticky.
We went through another place, small and full of itself. It had rows of houses with flowerboxes on the sills, all pinks and mauves. I pictured old-people fingers sifting through them. Flowerboxes give me the mogit miseries. My stomach was churning.
The sky went dirty brown. The mountains got dark and close.
‘Solace,’ Phil said.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m going to stop at the next petrol station, if that’s OK.’
He’s going to stop and ring the fuzz and turn me over. ‘Sure thing.’
He pulled in a moment later and got down from the cab to fill up the tank. I sat there with my thoughts raging and my head thumping. I saw him get out his mobile phone.
Great. He’ll look at the last call and figure it was a made-up number.
I opened the passenger door. ‘Just off to the ladies,’ I breezed. ‘Won’t be a sec.’
‘I’ll wait,’ he said. ‘Take care getting down.’
‘Will do.’ I made sure I had the lizard and climbed out.
‘Solace?’ Phil said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Are you in some kind of …?’ He frowned like he’d forgotten what he meant to say. ‘Never mind. Nothing.’
I went in the toilet block and poured water over my face. There was no mirror.
Then I peeked through the crack in the door and guess what I saw. Phil on the mobile.
He’s phoning th
e police. Gotta get out of here.
I froze. I could hear gravel crunching. Was he after me?
No, he was only going next door, to the gents.
Quick as lightning, I changed from the high heels back into my trainers.
I heard a toilet flush next door.
NOW, I thought. RUN.
I sped quiet as a kitten round the back of the toilets and along the road. I climbed over a gate and into a field and behind a bush. I could still see the petrol station and the truck, maybe fifty metres off.
Phil came out of the toilet building, hands in his pockets, looking around.
The world forgot how to spin.
He was waiting, leaned up against the wheel.
Maybe he was calling my name.
He walked round the toilets, knocked on the ladies’ door.
Then he went into the shop.
Then he came out and waited some more.
He walked back to the truck.
He got his mobile out, looked at it and then looked up. For a moment it seemed like he was staring right at me, but then his gaze shifted and his shoulders slumped.
He got in the truck. But the engine didn’t start.
Minutes passed. From far away came a distant rumble. Thunder.
Then the engine did start. The lorry pulled away. And Phil with it.
The world started moving again.
I sat down in the green field. Me and Solace and the lizard-skin bag.
The lizard flopped over like it was beat.
The girl inside me called Solace breathed out over the dandelions. Close shave, she whispered. She opened her palm and there were a couple of coins, stolen from Phil’s stash. She couldn’t help herself. She was a bad girl, that Solace.
But the real me didn’t move. The Holly part was crushed, flat as the mink.
Thunder rumbled again.
Miko and Phil, same difference. Going, going, gone, story of my life.
Fishguard might as well be China.
I was in the middle of a field in Wales with a storm growling in the sky and the cops after me. And all I had to help was a thieving glamour girl who only existed inside my own cracked head.
Thirty-one
In the Black Mountains
Miko used to say you can meet God on the road. Maybe he was right. I thought of Phil with his turned-down lips and suffering eyes and sad music and him buying me sausages when he was a vegan, not to mention the birthday cake. And I thought of him being sorry for my beaten-up mam in Wales and lending me his phone. I’d never really gone in for God stuff. Souls floating up to heaven. People walking out of tombs when they’re supposed to be dead. Mam was brought up Catholic on account of being Irish, but she said churches were a waste of space and the sooner they were all made into nice roomy flats the better. But on that day of my fifteenth birthday, 11 June, I sat in that green field and thought maybe God does exist a tiny bit. Maybe he kind of sits inside people, looking out through their eyes. Maybe God gets inside you and makes you do good things and you don’t even know he’s there. He’d probably never come near my sort. But people like Phil, with his scenic routes and vegan dreams, he loves.
I looked at the money Solace had stolen from him and I felt like throwing it away. Then I thought I’d hang onto it and give it to the first homeless person I saw. Or put it in a church collection box. For now, I put it away in the lizard, in the secret pocket where Mam’s amber ring and my SIM card were stashed.
There was only one chink of blue left in the sky and that was shrinking. I got up and went back to the petrol station. I went straight to the toilets and brushed my real hair. I put the wig back on and brushed that too. Then I went out and looked up at the ugly dirty cloud hunched up over the dark mountains. The air pressed up hard and yellow.
… They are urging the girl to get in touch with her foster parents … Fiona and Ray. I’d tucked them away into the back of my head, but now they were back times two. I could see Fiona looking at me that first time in my bedroom in Templeton House like I was the last whale, and Ray looking up at me from the garden below, smiling. Clip-clop went the shears, and the cloud-letters of my name floated across the sky.
They hadn’t believed the story about me going off to Tenerife. Come to think of it, I didn’t even have a passport.
One call, I thought, and it’s over. They’ll know I’m alive so they’re off the hook, but they’ll never want me back. Who could blame them? If I were Fiona and Ray, I wouldn’t want me back either.
I got the mobile and SIM card out of the lizard and put them back together to see if they’d left me any more messages. But when I tried to turn it on, it died. There was no charge left. But why would there have been any more messages anyway? They’d probably washed their hands of me.
The mountains darkened and there was nobody in sight. I popped into the petrol station, and with my own last bit of change I bought a Red Bull from the mogit woman behind the counter. Trim used to drink three Red Bulls straight off and then no one could stop him – not Miko, not anybody – he’d just roar and flare up and it was like you had to call in the vet to tranquillize him with a stun gun. I needed some of that, fast.
I sat on a wall and guzzled the drink. Shake a leg, I told myself. Get back on the road before Phil phones the police and they hunt you down here like a fox.
Then flickering started in the sky. I tramped down the road, thumbing as I went, but nothing much went by and nobody stopped.
The rain started. I turned off a side road, thinking the police were less likely to find me there, and sheltered under a big tree. I took off the wig and folded it safe away at the bottom of the lizard to keep it dry. There was a flash, then, a few seconds later, a thunderclap. I remembered the tree in Jane Eyre. Lightning splits it in two and Mrs Atkins says it’s because Mr Rochester proposed to her under it when he shouldn’t have, so Fate is angry because he has the wife in the attic. I reckoned Fate was angry with me too, for stealing the money off Phil. I moved down the road, looking for better shelter.
A pigeon flapped out of a hedge, scared crazy, nearly stopping my heart. Then a loud clap exploded just across the next field. My insides and outsides swapped places. My life was one long list of wickedness. God had probably decided to murder me with a thunderbolt. I’d end up jellified in my shoes, a smoking mound of ashes. And it would serve me right.
I ran on down the narrow lane. Rain fell in heavy blotches, then started pelting so it hurt my skin.
I got to a strange bridge, made of stone with turreted walls, and under it a small river chasing.
I saw a flash and right after that a clap tore up the sky worse than that army jet. I screamed and cowered against the bridge wall.
‘Spare me, Jesus,’ I cried.
The lizard was sodden and soon everything in it would be drenched, including the wig.
I climbed over the wall and down the bank and got down under the bridge. The water was coming up around my trainers, but I didn’t care.
Then I remembered. Mam. She’d been frightened of storms too. She’d drape blankets over mirrors to keep the lightning reflection from killing you. She’d draw the curtains. She’d take the phone off the hook. She’d pull all the plugs from the sockets. Then she’d lie on the tiger-skin sofa, moaning, ‘Why do we have to live at the top of this bloody tower block, Holl? Why?’
The water was white and swirling. I huddled hard against the stone of the bridge. The storm rumbled and crashed, sometimes near, sometimes far. I got out the amber ring of Mammy’s from the secret zip pocket in the lizard. There were no robbers anywhere to chop off my finger so it was OK to put it on. It’ll keep me safe. It will. I put it on my middle finger and closed my eyes.
You could still see the lightning flash, even behind your eyelids, so I opened them again and stared at the tiny insect stuck in the middle of the amber. It had been trapped there for hundreds of thousands of years, Miko told me, the time I’d showed it to him. He’d said how amber was made from the goo of pine
trees, only it was called resin and it had set hard long ago, before there were people even. The dark speck might be an ancient mosquito, Miko said. Or a fly.
I stared at it. Caught. For ever.
Mammy. Where are you?
Between the next crash and the next strike my mind went white and clear and still.
And in the silence, she came to me.
‘Holl.’ Mam’s voice calling, high and strong.
It’s the sky house again with the glass, the balcony, the light. I’m walking down the hall and there she is, in the kitchen, fixing tea. Her face is covered over with a see-through scarf. Like an eastern bride, her eyes glitter through the material. Is she smiling? I can’t see. No, she’s cross. She slams the knife drawer, opens a can of baked beans. ‘Go down to the corner shop, Holl. Get the bloody fish fingers. I can’t go. Not looking like this.’
The picture’s burned out of my brain by another lightning fork. Mammy’s vanished. Instead there’s a knocking on the door and whoever it is won’t go away. So I open it and a woman from the Council’s at the door with a briefcase and she’s smiling, looking down at me. I stare at the bracelet she has on, coloured discs, clacking against each other.
‘Holly. Is your mother in?’
‘No, miss.’
‘Is her boyfriend there?’
‘No, miss.’
‘You’re on your own?’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Is your mum just down at the shop?’
‘See that on your arm, miss?’ I reach out and touch the bracelet.
‘Do you like it, Holly?’
‘Yes. ’S pretty.’
She takes it off and hands it to me. I make it click-clack and smile at the colours. ‘Reminds me,’ I say.
‘What of, Holly?’