Ghost Girl (18 page)

She hesitated. If she gave Michael the key he might lock her out or lose it and then she would be in trouble. It was better that he wait on the front step for her.

She hauled him to his feet by his good arm and squeezing his hand led him out of the gate nearest to the Sunken Garden. This exit was by the sweet shop.

Mary spent the last of the change from last week’s lunch money on a half-pound bag of Fruit Salad chews. This was more chews then either of them had ever seen. She resisted taking some for herself. Miss Crane did not eat sweets. Michael was not grateful and, irritated, Mary summarily stuffed the bag into his satchel.

By Ravenscourt Park station, Michael slowed to watch a newspaper vendor fix the latest headlines into a display case. The man smacked smooth the paper and snapped it behind the grille.

Moors Murderers Get Life.

Michael was behind with his reading as well as his writing, but he did recognize the ‘M’s in the headline as being from his and Mary’s names. About to point this out, he was engulfed by a wave of nausea when his arm swung out. He concentrated on not being sick and stumbled along beside Mary.

Mary stopped by the park and bashed at her brother’s blazer, brushing it down. ‘When you get to the house, sit outside and have some sweets. Not too many, save your appetite. I won’t be long,’ she added more kindly and, sorting his collar, combed back his hair with her fingers.

She hurried into the park. On the other side of the viaduct tiny patches of sunlight penetrating the foliage looked like gold leaves scattered on the path. From the tennis courts came the pock-pock of rackets hitting balls; from somewhere else came girls’ laughter. Mary saw no one but knew they were laughing at her.

At a break in the bushes she glimpsed the sandpit and paddling pool and faltered. She should have made Michael play there. She continued, reassuring herself that she would not get into trouble with her parents, for she had the perfect plan. Nothing could go wrong.

The arch with the slide was dark and silent: no children. The slide gleamed, tempting her inside, but she did not give in.

Under the next arch was the roundabout where she had seen Clifford Hunt smoking. A little girl was perched on it, going slowly round and round. Mary thought she was alone but then saw a lady, who kept still until the girl got near when she gave the roundabout a push. The girl saw Mary and twisted to keep looking at her until she was facing the other way. Before the lady saw her, Mary hurried on.

She hesitated by the next arch in case Douglas had got her instructions wrong and was here. Metal railings stood in front of the opening through which she counted lawn mowers, trimmers, rollers and tins of white paint, which she guessed was for the lines on the tennis court and football pitch. There were ladders at the back and a barrow for collecting leaves. Douglas was not there. The last arch was screened with sheets of corrugated iron but, as she expected, the door was open a tiny bit and she crept inside.

The walls were streaked with bird slime and snakes of moss where rainwater had got in. At Mary’s feet lay fir cones and leaves. Sweet wrappers betrayed that other children came here. She smelled exhaust fumes and dog’s mess and wrinkled her nose. She was alone.

Douglas Ford had disobeyed her. She charged towards the door and collided with something warm. She heard a gasp and reeled back.

Douglas cowered by the opening, his bag across his shoulder. Goose pimples on his legs disgusted Mary. She tugged at the hem of her dress, trying to conceal her own fear. He had been hiding in the bushes to scare her. It had worked.

They were a stone’s throw from the playground and close to the high street, yet Mary Thornton had come to believe that they were far away from anyone. For a moment she understood she had set in train a misdemeanour more serious than running away. If she shouted, no one would hear.

‘I don’t have other swaps, only the Holly. I told you.’ Douglas took out his album of cards and held it against his chest like a shield. Mary knew he wanted to make her jealous so she would give in.

‘You can see under my dress.’ She was businesslike.

Douglas blinked.

‘Did we wash our ears this morning, Douglas Ford?’ A pitch-perfect Miss Crane.

‘See what?’ Fixed on Trees of Britain, Douglas Ford was slow to comprehend.

‘My knickers.’

‘Oh.’ He clicked the heels of his brown lace-up shoes together as if brought to attention.

An animal or a bird scrabbled in the foliage outside the arch.

‘I’ve seen girl’s knickers before.’ Douglas was equivocal.

‘Not all of it, you haven’t.’

Douglas gripped the booklet and backed into the corrugated iron with a clang. Both children froze at the noise.

‘And touch? With fingers?’ He pursed his lips as if the words had escaped unbidden.

‘No.’

Neither child moved.

‘All right, but be quick.’ Mary was her mother allowing ten more minutes before bedtime.

Douglas hesitated.

‘Give me the cards first, stupid.’

‘I don’t have any to swap. Only the Holly,’ he whispered. He was translucent pale in the dim light.

‘You have the Common Lime with leaf and seeds, the Rowan, the Crab Apple, the London Plane, the Hawthorn without leaf and seeds, the—’

‘They’re stuck in. There’s only my Holly for your Yew.’ Teetering on the verge of the unknown, the boy stuck to the facts of life with which he was at home.

‘Then you shan’t see a thing.’ Mary folded her arms. ‘This is very disappointing, Douglas Ford, but I will draw a line under the incident.’

A twig snapped.

‘How many?’ Douglas spoke thickly, sensing a possible compromise.

‘You give me all the cards I haven’t got, that’s fourteen including the Holly (leaf and berries).’ Mary knew her collection off by heart.

Overhead a helicopter clattered. The ground trembled; the sound beat around the brick after the machine had passed overhead.

‘All right,’ Douglas breathed into the quiet.

Mary was a forbidding supervisor, while one by one Douglas tore each card from the page. Page after page. He made a hole in the paper when he ripped out the Hawthorn, and he stopped and looked pleadingly at Mary. She was steadfast. On he went with the painstaking task. On the back of each card, framed in blue, was the number in the series with a paragraph about the tree. Mary was saddened to see words blotted where Douglas had spotted glue; she preferred her cards to be clean.

It was the happiest feeling in the world when she lifted a new card out from among dry tea leaves in the packet and saw she did not already possess it. Recently she had not had this feeling. She had it now.

A rapid sum told Mary Thornton that she would have forty-nine cards and that even with her Yew and Sycamore, Douglas Ford would be nowhere near. It never occurred to Mary to take possession of the boy’s book intact and swap it for her own. Perhaps that would have exposed the stark reality of her arrangement.

She retrieved her swaps from her dress pocket and slipping off the elastic band, slotted the new cards into the pile in number order. She stowed the fat bundle in her satchel. The entire procedure had taken no time at all so she would be home before her mum and dad. It had worked in two ways: she had not had to look after Michael and she had got more cards without needing a packet of tea and or having to find swaps.

It did not occur to Mary that Douglas Ford would not start a fight or tell anyone if she did not keep her part of their bargain. She had got what she had come for and could go. Perhaps her pragmatism did include a personal code of right and wrong.

She moved into the shadows of the far wall and whipped up her dress. Dull light illuminated her sturdy body and showed off her bright white knickers dotted with minute pink roses. Douglas gaped. With one hand, Mary caught at the elastic in her knickers and tugged them downwards. She shimmied them to her knees.

The gate in the barrier creaked and a face appeared. Mary yanked up her knickers. In one movement, she dragged her brother inside and backed him up against the wall. Michael’s scream was shrill, cutting the air. She clamped her hand over his mouth.

Douglas crammed his depleted album, the denuded pages ripped and flimsy, into his bag. ‘That wasn’t enough time… could I have some cards back?’ He was tremulous.

The ground vibrated with a rumble that grew louder and louder.

‘You were spying!’ Mary shook Michael. He was sheet-white, his arm limp, his body flopping with each jolt like a doll.

Michael’s teeth chattered. ‘It hu-uh-urts.’

‘His arm looks funny.’ Douglas took a tentative step forward. ‘Actually, it might be broken,’ he ventured. ‘I broke my arm last year, a greenstick fracture.’

Neither sibling appeared to hear. The vibration made the corrugated iron hum.

Michael broke free of his sister and lurched towards the gate. He stopped and abruptly threw up; a torrent of multicoloured gloop smattered his sandals and spattered over the dusty ground.

Mary stared at half a pound of hastily eaten Fruit Salad chews.

The rattling bounced off the bricks like machine-gun fire. A Piccadilly line train hurtled over the tracks above the children. The noise was tremendous; it was not scheduled to stop at Ravenscourt Park station.

Michael had gone.

He would tell. Her mum would take his side. Mary snatched up her satchel and gave chase. Although her brother had a head start, she had longer legs and had not just been sick or hurt her arm. She knew which way he would go and that he would not have the gumption to hide. His red jumper gave him away. She slowed to a trot. She would catch him because he was running in that funny way of his that made it look as if he had a limp. He scampered across the ‘Do Not Walk on the Grass’ area and out of the tall gates on to King Street.

There was no need for Mary Thornton to chase Michael; he was going to the house. But she was livid that he had not done as she had told him and could not let him get away with it. He was running faster than she expected. She caught at his pullover and the seam ripped. She let go.

Michael gained the kerb and swerved out of her reach. He did not stop to look right, left and then right again but plunged out on to the road. A car was going too fast to stop.

It was Mary’s lasting impression of her young brother that, when he flew up into the air like an angel, he looked at her with his bright blue eyes just as he did when he was waiting for her to decide what game they would play. Then his body thumped on to the bonnet and rolled beneath big black wheels.

Mary carried on down the street and into British Grove. She let herself into the house, scooped up the post from the hall mat and laid it on the table. This was Michael’s job. She smoothed the shock of green hair on her troll key ring and dropped the key safely back in her satchel.

Alone in the house, the competent ten-year-old filled the kettle and set it on the stove. She lit the gas ring with the lighter which, as in the old house, was kept by the tea and coffee. She checked the tea caddy. Her mum would have to buy some more tea.

She lifted down Michael’s plastic Mickey Mouse plate and a grown-up china one from the cupboard for herself. She laid his baby knife and fork each side of his plate, and proper cutlery for herself. She opened a tin of baked beans and spooned them into a pan, which she set on the hob on a high flame.

Mary Thornton was counting out slices of Mother’s Pride bread – ‘two for Michael, two for me’ – when her mother opened the front door. She came into the kitchen and dropped her string shopping bag on the table.

‘Look at you, doing the tea! Since you’ve been such a good girl, see what surprise is in there.’ She handed her daughter an unopened packet of Brooke Bond Tea.

Mary gave the beans a quick stir and then pulled up the flaps on the box. She used her fork and fished among the leaves until she caught a glimpse of white and blue. With nimble fingers she lifted the card out and held it up.

Holm or Evergreen Oak (Number 43).

She had the full set.

Mrs Thornton had been home five and a half minutes when, for the second day since they had moved in, PC Terry Darnell knocked on the front door.

22

Wednesday, 25 April 2012

The stench of stale tobacco smoke was mitigated by a wafting of lavender and a hint of bleach. When she entered her mother’s hallway that evening Stella was dazzled by light. A high-wattage bulb shone on to the newspaper towers. She moved crabwise past them and outside the lounge heard a low rumbling tone and then a raucous laugh. She could not think when Suzie had last laughed. Slowly she opened the door.

Jack sat cross-legged on the mat, like a small boy engrossed in a game. The ‘game’ involved raking through the rubbish. Suzanne Darnell was leaning over the arm of her chair, chattering happily to him; neither was aware of Stella.

‘…he would have got away with it if it hadn’t been for me because no one had spotted the anomaly. Their filing system was a mountain of Xerox boxes stored in the basement. Call yourself a detective, I told him.’

‘Sometimes it takes another eye.’ Jack stirred a lump of soggy tea bags about with a forefinger. He delicately parted them, then pushed them to the far reaches of the newspaper.

‘Another eye? Terry never paid attention in the first place, he was always somewhere else,’ Suzie Darnell retorted. ‘Terry used to say my legs could win Miss World,’ she said apropos of nothing.

‘Ah ha!’ Jack exclaimed.

Stella, still by the door, watched with distaste as he sweep aside the cellophane from a pork pie and the packaging of a ready meal of liver and onions.

‘Is this it?’ He balanced on his haunches, steadying himself on the armchair.

Suzie made a darting motion like a bird; their heads came together like conspirators.

‘Yes!’ She clapped her hands and looking up saw Stella. ‘He’s found my ring! Your clever Jack has found my ring.’

‘Your engagement ring? The one you lost in 1980?’ Stella was disbelieving.

‘What? I didn’t get engaged. My view was if you’re going to do it then just do it. No, my eternity ring, I lost it… oh – when did I lose it?’ She appealed to Jack, her hands fluttering over the cushion on her lap, fingers tapping away.