Poppy Day (26 page)

It was a cold night in the desert. Poppy was initially thankful for the respite from the heat, but quickly became
uncomfortable
. She closed her eyes and envisaged their big, fat duvet on the bed at home. She wanted an extra blanket or thicker pyjamas, or ideally, her husband to snuggle up to. She hated being cold, it reminded her of her childhood.

Poppy never had a coat. When she’d asked for one, the response from Wally dozing in the chair of power had been, ‘Stop moaning, you’re waterproof. If you get wet, you’ll dry off soon enough.’ You know what? He was right! Clever old Wally, the sleeping, moaning dickhead.

What he didn’t understand was what it felt like for a little girl to get so wet on the way to school that she remained so for most of the day, shivering as her hair dripped onto her artwork, turning every poster paint creation into a smudged rainbow river. At the exact moment her wool and polyester jersey
finished
steaming, it would be time to go outside for break, where she would get wet again, remaining so until just before lunch when she would get rained on all over again.

Poppy spent hours shaking so hard that she couldn’t
concentrate
on what the teacher was saying. She could only hear the word ‘C… c… c… cold’ repeated over and over in her head, chattering through clenched teeth. In her mind, there were whole days, if not weeks, when she was permanently soggy. A small puddle would form under and around her chair. Her socks remained moist and her toes pruney-skinned inside them until she could get home and put the damp grey strips on the heater. This would fill her grotty bedroom with a damp,
cheese-like
smell. Her wet hair clung in thin, brown stripes across her pale face, which, for Poppy, seemed like prison bars. She felt isolated, trapped and bloody uncomfortable.

Poppy decided that when she had a little girl she’d buy her a big furry winter coat with a hood, a set of matching hat, scarf and gloves and a little cagoule folded up into a bag that she could carry around her waist for ‘just in case’.

It was the early hours of the morning in her desert home when she stopped shivering. It was maybe four or five a.m., someone was standing by her cot. Poppy gasped and jumped up, still inside the sleeping bag. She stood like a large green, padded slug, unable to run or move; a stationary target, trying to focus on the shadowy figure that loomed ahead of her.

‘It’s all right, Poppy; it’s me, its Miles.’ He put his hand on her shoulder. He was holding a piece of dark cloth.

She flinched. ‘Blimey, you scared me!’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to call out and risk waking anyone else. Get dressed, Poppy, and put this headscarf on. We’re off.’

‘What do you mean? Off where? When?’

‘Now! We are off now. I’ve just had word from my contact and it’s on, but we have to go right now, to meet our lift. This isn’t unusual, Poppy; they often do it this way, not giving anyone a chance to plan, tell anyone or predict the outcome. Listen to me, and listen carefully: you are Nina Folkstok, don’t forget. Do not speak, Poppy, I am telling you this because it is really important that you understand. Don’t speak until I tell you that you can and let me handle everything. Do you understand?’

Poppy nodded, not trusting herself to speak anyway. This was it; she was being taken to the people that had her husband. She was going to get Martin. It was unbelievable, exciting and scary all at the same time. She didn’t know why she was scared, didn’t know why she should be scared. She would find out soon enough.

She had only once before felt this level of anticipation and that had been a long time ago for a very different trip; she prayed that the outcome of this adventure would be better. Poppy was six when she went on a school outing to London Zoo. Boy, was she excited, the anticipation was almost unbearable! The night before she couldn’t sleep and spent the hours jumping around the bed, her head full of all the possibilities of what the day might bring. It was to be an epic adventure; Poppy never went
anywhere
or did anything. She desperately wanted to study a sea horse, having only recently learnt they were not mythical
creatures
as she had believed. She pondered this fact every night leading up to the big day, promising herself to similarly
investigate
mermaids. She glued the typed out, photocopied note about it on the wall above her bed, reading it over and over:

Poppy could still recall it word for word. When the day of the big trip dawned, Poppy got up early to make her packed lunch. The distraction and excitement meant she didn’t notice the freezing air inside her bedroom, or the cold plastic of the bath against her skin, which, despite the warm water, did nothing to relieve her chills. In the tiny kitchen, she clambered onto the Formica work surface, rooting around in the
cupboard
to find something to take. The contents of that packed lunch would stay with her forever. Jam sandwiches – the
standard
two slices buttered, strawberry jam smeared then stuck together – were cut in half. The butter, too hard to spread, pulled the soft white dough into large holes, but she didn’t mind. There was a piece of cheese wrapped in foil and three cubes of uncooked jelly, lime flavoured.

Poppy put the whole lot inside an empty bread bag and set off. She was happy to be going to the zoo and just as excited to be in possession of a packed lunch. There were kids in school who enjoyed a packed lunch daily, but she couldn’t possibly have prepared food every morning as well as get her uniform ready and Dorothea up and into the bathroom. Besides, she was entitled to free school meals; buying supplies for a packed lunch every day would have been out of the question for her.

Poppy skipped, bread bag in hand, along the pavement, circumnavigating the dog poo and hopping over the cracks. Jenna was already sitting halfway up the coach with her brother. Poppy didn’t mind a bit, she was, at that tender age, already assured of her place in Jenna’s affections. Poppy placed the plastic bag on her lap. She ran her fingertips over the shiny seat next to her, feeling the smoothed surface where a million excited bottoms had wiggled away the nap of the once plush fabric. Harriet sidled into the space and sat next to her. The catchment area of Poppy’s school included the council estates and flats where she grew up, but also the big houses near the tube where the money brokers and city traders raised their families in seven-bedroomed Edwardian splendour. The children from this side of the street would leave the school at eight and dance off to fancy prep schools. This left holes in the violin teachers’ schedule and meant that the Harvest Festival offerings from the upper years was always pitiful. They were two completely
different
worlds, each equally fascinating to the other.

‘Good morning, Poppy.’ The way she spoke made Poppy feel ordinary. Harriet was the sort of girl that always had
Tipp-Ex
, a spare pen and a sharpener in her pencil case, while Poppy and her mates scrabbled around in the disused ice-cream cartons to find something to write with. No matter what topic was being discussed, from Victorian railways to the Egyptians, Harriet always had a relevant book, relic or objet d’art to bring from home. In later years, Poppy wondered if she had an ‘in’ at the British Museum.

Harriet was very clean and very pretty, but the most amazing thing about her on that particular day was her lunch box. It was a pink plastic suitcase, the perfect size for sandwiches and a couple of treats. Poppy was desperate to look inside. Ten minutes into the journey she was rewarded when Harriet
casually
flipped the lid to reveal the most wonderful sight. Tiny brown bread triangles, the crusts missing, were filled with ham. It made Poppy think of her nan, who would have said, ‘No crusts? She’ll never ’ave curly hair!’ This was one of her many sayings, turned into belief based on nothing more than
repetition
. The sandwiches were on one side, making space for a carton of orange juice with its own little plastic straw. An
individual
pot of yoghurt with a teaspoon sat neatly in one corner and there were not one but two chocolate biscuits. Most intriguing of all was the plastic twist of cling film with four washed, sugared strawberries in it. It was a glimpse into another world, a fantastic sugary, crusts-deliberately-missing-on-
your-sandwiches
, world.

Poppy was transfixed.

Harriet saw her staring. Lifting the box, she held it towards Poppy’s face. ‘Would you like something, Poppy?’

Again, with that way of speaking that made Poppy think she should definitely do Harriet’s bidding, whatever it might be. Poppy wanted all of it, but how could she say that? Instead, she shook her head, too shy to be honest, trying to ignore the rumble in her tummy. Poppy dug deep, plucked up the courage and found her voice, ‘I like your lunch in its little box, Harriet.’

‘Thank you, Poppy.’

‘Did you make it yourself?’

‘Did
I
make it?’ Harriet’s eyes widened, her eyebrows shot upwards towards her blond fringe. It was as if she had heard something outrageous, unfathomable. She laughed, revealing flossed and polished teeth. ‘Of course not, silly! Mummy made it for me, but I chose what I wanted from the fridge and she said I could have treats even though it isn’t Thursday, which is sweetie day in our house!’

Poppy was enthralled. There were two things about Harriet’s fabulous insight that gripped her completely. Firstly, she couldn’t imagine living in a house where these sorts of goodies were hanging around in a fridge waiting to be picked. Secondly, in Harriet’s house they had a sweetie day, which Poppy now knew was Thursday. This information left her with a large void in the base of her stomach, an acute ache that she carried with her until she fell properly in love with Martin Cricket some years later. These facts filled her throat with the bitterest of bile, making her feel utterly hopeless.

Cheryl would not know
if
her daughter had eaten much less
what
she had eaten. If Poppy didn’t get supper for her and Dorothea they would both go to bed without food. Cheryl would be too busy putting on her face or watching something on the telly. Harriet’s mum not only had a fridge bursting with treats, but crucially cared enough about Harriet’s health, teeth and well-being to only allow her sweets once a week! Poppy felt bloody sick and bloody jealous. She realised at that precise moment, looking at her squashed jelly cubes and the jam
sandwiches
with big holes in them that had gone hot on her lap, that her mum was really quite crap.

She scrunched up the bread bag with its sordid contents and pushed it down the side of the coach seat. It was a crappy packed lunch that reminded her of her crappy life. She wasn’t sure if the empty aching feeling in her tummy was hunger or something else entirely. Sadly, this was Poppy’s overriding memory of that day. She couldn’t remember if she got to study a sea horse and didn’t recall the elephant that sprayed its trunk on cue. Instead, her strongest recollection was of her packed lunch and the fact that she grew up a bit more; lost even more of the magic…

Back in the real world, Poppy tried not to think about the man with the gun in the front seat. It wasn’t a little pistol that she might have been able to ignore, but was one of those great big machine guns, the ones you see in films, where the owner also has a large row of bullets over his shoulder accompanied by a big droopy Mexican moustache and a fat cigar clamped between his teeth. Miles and Poppy sat in the back seat; they’d handed over their bags and their pockets had been emptied. They looked out of the windows, purposely not looking at each other. Poppy felt sick. She had always had a tendency to feel sick in a car, but this was different. There was an element of her ailment, but she was also frightened sick, it was horrible.

She looked at the empty dusty roads as they bumped along; wondering if this was where he had been captured. The image of Martin on his knees, winded, with his head covered, came into focus again. It was still relatively dark outside; the car headlights threw two beams out to light the way ahead. The landscape was that of her vision, it could have occurred
anywhere
; the image of him on his knees was, in fact, everywhere she looked.

The driver had his face wrapped in a scarf and was wearing sunglasses. He reminded Poppy of
The Invisible Man;
she
considered
the possibility of unwrapping the man’s headgear and finding nothing.

As the journey continued, the day cast its light over the sand until it was bright. The creamy terrain caught the early sunlight, giving the whole landscape a pink hue. As the morning
progressed
and the light changed, the dunes went from yellow to gold until the large red sun shone high in the sky and the earth positively glowed the colour of burnt cinnamon. It was beautiful. The spectacular scenery, however, did little to relieve her anxiety. Supposing Martin wasn’t there? Supposing he was hurt or worse? She had wanted this for a long time; it had been her dream since the day that he’d been taken, to get him back and to make a difference. Yet now she was getting close to achieving some or all of that, she felt nothing but fear. She whispered under her breath, ‘I am coming, baby. You hang in there, I am coming.’

After some hours she spied a small settlement ahead of them; a selection of houses, a larger building and what looked like a derelict mosque. It had to be where they were heading. Poppy’s heart rate increased and she was sweating. Miles turned towards her and placed his finger on his closed mouth,
reminding
her that she was Nina Folkstok and that she mustn’t speak, as if she could have forgotten. She smiled at him with her mouth, but her eyes were frozen with an expression of trepidation.

The car began to slow and then stopped. The man with the gun opened the back door; apparently they were going to walk the rest of the way. She wasn’t prepared for what happened next. He went to Miles and placed a black scarf over his eyes and tied it tight. Miles spoke loudly, ‘That’s right, we are now blindfolded and will be until we are inside, all quite normal and it won’t be for long.’