See If I Care (3 page)

Helen was missing.

The first Luke knew that something was wrong was on his way downstairs for breakfast. His mother was on the phone in the hall, her free hand pulling at her hair, and this is what Luke heard as he came down the stairs:

‘Look, she’s bloody sixteen years old, that’s a child in my … well, you
should
be. Look, for God’s sake, she’s been out all … I
know
, you already
told
me that, but there’s got to be
something
… well that’s just
not
good enough–’

She looked at Luke as he walked past her, but kept on talking angrily into the phone.

His grandmother and Anne were sitting at the
kitchen table. Granny turned quickly as the door opened, then sagged a bit as Luke walked in.

He closed the door behind him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Helen never came home last night.’ Her face was twisted with worry. ‘She wasn’t home when I was going to bed, but I thought she’d be in any minute … and your mother just assumed she was there when
she
got in …’

There was a piece of unbuttered toast on her plate. It looked as if it had been there for a while.

‘Her bed hasn’t been slept in,’ Anne told Luke, and then ate a spoonful of Weetabix.

‘Wow.’ Luke thought of his sister, out all night in the dark. He tried to think of something to say that might take the lines out of his grandmother’s forehead. ‘Maybe she went to a friend’s house, and just forgot to say.’

‘Maybe.’ His grandmother nodded slowly, still frowning. ‘She might have done that, I suppose.’

‘Who’s Mum on the phone to?’

Before his grandmother had a chance to answer, Luke’s mother burst into the kitchen and crossed quickly to the worktop by the sink and leant up against it, folding her arms. ‘They’re useless, bloody useless.’ Her shoulders were hunched.

‘What did they say?’ Luke’s grandmother started to
stand up, and then changed her mind and sat down again.

‘They can’t do anything until she’s been missing for twenty-four hours, can you believe it?’ His mum unfolded her arms and began to pace quickly around the kitchen, biting at one of her nails.

Then she stopped suddenly and glared at Luke’s granny. ‘Why did you let her go out? She’s barely sixteen, Mam – what were you thinking of?’

Granny bit her lip, shaking her head. ‘I’m sorry, Breda, I–’

But Luke’s mother wasn’t listening. She turned to Luke. ‘Do
you
know any of her friends?’

He shook his head. Helen had been a mystery to him for a long time now. Since their father had come home from hospital, Luke had felt Helen pulling herself away from the family, little by little. Coming home later from school, disappearing after tea on the nights Mam worked late, and at the weekends. Spending the rest of the time in her room.

Luke had no idea what kind of life his older sister was leading. She barely spoke to him, to any of them. ‘She’s probably in a friend’s house,’ he said to his mother, but she wasn’t listening to him any more either. Her head was bent over the phone book.

Luke wondered if he and Anne would have to go to
school, with his sister missing. But when Mr Farrell’s car horn sounded outside, a few minutes later, nobody said, ‘Of course you can’t possibly go to school today’, so he took the two lunchboxes from the fridge and picked up his bag and walked out into the hall with Anne. He wished he’d had something for breakfast – now he’d have to wait till half twelve to eat the tomato sandwich that was always gone soggy by lunchtime.

The curtains were still pulled in their father’s downstairs bedroom. Their father had taken sleeping tablets every night since the accident, and he never got up now till around noon. On bad days he was still in bed when the children got home from school.

‘Don’t tell about Helen,’ Luke said to Anne as they walked towards Mr Farrell’s car.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s none of their business.’ No need to give anyone another reason to talk about the poor Mitchells. ‘She’ll be back soon anyway.’

Every so often during the day, Luke remembered that Helen was missing. He wondered what the others in his class would say if he told them. Would it get into the newspapers? Would Helen’s photo be on ‘Crimecall’?

What if she was dead? He couldn’t eat his lunch,
thinking about that. He watched a few of his friends playing soccer in a corner of the yard. He hoped Helen would be found quickly, if she was dead. He didn’t like to think of her lying in a field somewhere, with rain falling on her.

In the afternoon, Mrs Hutchinson asked them how they were getting on with their penfriends. A few girls said ‘brilliant’, and Luke guessed that they were writing to boys. None of the boys in the class said brilliant.

‘Well, they’re delighted with you, according to their teacher,’ Mrs Hutchinson told them. ‘Keep up the good work.’

Helen came home that evening. She walked into the kitchen as her mother was giving a description of her to a policewoman.

From the sitting room, Luke cocked his head and listened to the shouting. As soon as he made out Helen’s voice, he turned up the volume on the TV. His father, sitting in another armchair, kept his eyes on the screen, but began rocking uneasily as soon as the shouting began.

‘Helen came home,’ Luke told him. His father darted a look at him, and then stared back at the screen, still rocking.

‘It’s OK,’ Luke said. ‘She’s home now. Everything’s
OK.’ When ‘The Simpsons’ was over, he watched the credits as they rolled up the screen. ‘Will I switch to the News?’

‘Yeah, the News,’ said his father, brightening up. ‘Yeah, the News.’

In the hall, Luke stood listening for a minute. There was no shouting coming from the kitchen. The police car was gone from the driveway. He could smell the sausages they always had on Wednesdays, and his mouth watered. He remembered he’d had nothing to eat all day.

Helen didn’t come down for tea. Luke’s grandmother put sausages and pudding and grilled tomato on a plate and brought it upstairs. His mother looked as if she’d been crying.

Afterwards, Luke helped with the dishes while his mother put his father to bed.

‘Where was Helen?’ he asked his grandmother, but she just shook her head.

‘She won’t say. She wouldn’t even tell the guard.’ She finished scrubbing the frying pan and put it on the draining board.

In his room later, Luke reread his penfriend’s last letter. She still sounded so dumb. ‘I think I’ll be a pop star’ indeed. As if you could just decide to be something like a pop star, and that would be it. As if
a pop star was better than a brain surgeon. Not that Luke had any notion of being a brain surgeon, of course.

And how on earth was he going to get out of the whole horse business? Why hadn’t he thought more about what stories to make up? His penfriend was being so persistent – it was obvious she didn’t believe he had any horses. Well, no way was he going to admit that. He’d just have to think of something.

And what the heck was all that about her mother being a famous chef? How could anyone be famous for making gravy? Wasn’t that just powder mixed with hot water? What a load of rubbish – famous for making gravy. At least his horse story sounded like it might be true.

He addressed the envelope and stuck the stamp on while he was thinking about what to write. The picture on the stamp was some kind of modern art painting that looked exactly the same upside down.

He lay on his bed and thought for a while. Then he sat up, pulled the notebook onto his lap and began.

Elma smiled to herself as Mrs Lawrence handed her the letter. Once again the stamp was upside down, though it was a modern art stamp and she had to look carefully to be sure. This upside-down thing couldn’t be an accident, could it? Surely no one could be that stupid? Maybe Luke Mitchell was trying to send her a secret message.

Of course Tara got yet another beautiful envelope – this time it was all covered in mauve and blue stars. Still, Elma thought to herself, Tara’s penfriend sounded really boring, always going on about schoolwork and history projects and stuff, and at least that couldn’t be said about Luke Mitchell. She could think of lots of bad things to say about him –
he was vain and boastful and a big fat liar, but at least he wasn’t boring.

She wondered if there was any truth in the story about Rocket. She knew he’d never won at Leopardstown, but maybe he had existed. Maybe he really had died, and maybe Luke was really sad. If Snowball was a cat instead of a monster-dog, Elma would miss him if he died. Maybe it was time to stop going on about Rocket, just in case.

And maybe it was time to stop arguing about Jessica’s hair, too. Since Jessica didn’t actually exist, maybe it was best not to spend too long arguing about how long her hair was?

When Elma got home, she quickly forgot about Luke Mitchell and his strange letters with the upside-down stamp. The kitchen was filthy, just like she had left it in the rush for school that morning. Clearly, Dad had once again spent the whole day in bed, watching television.

Elma was really cross as she tried to tidy up. So cross that she kept banging doors and slamming things into cupboards. So cross that Dylan and Zac didn’t argue once. So cross that they even tried to help her without being asked. Dylan vacuumed the living room, while Elma and Zac washed the breakfast stuff. It was really hard because all the
food was dried up and stuck on to the dishes.

Zac chatted away about his teacher as he dried the glasses. Then he struggled to reach the cupboard to put them away. Elma wiped her hands.

‘Wait a sec,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you.’

Zac grinned at her. ‘’s OK, Elma. I’m big. I can do it.’

He scrambled on to the kitchen counter. Elma laughed as he did a little wriggle of victory. But then, as he reached for the first glass, disaster struck. He lost his balance and tumbled towards the floor.

Elma watched as if it were happening in slow motion. Zac’s small, grubby hand grabbed for the counter, but missed, and knocked the glass to the floor, where it smashed into tiny pieces. A second later Zac fell on top of it with a dull thud. There was a moment’s silence before the screaming started. Elma hauled Zac to his feet, and felt a sudden cold chill when she saw that there was a deep cut on his cheek. She grabbed the damp and rather smelly tea towel and held it to his face. Dylan came in to see what the screaming was about.

‘Quick,’ Elma said. ‘Run up and wake Daddy, and tell him Zac has hurt his face.’

Seconds later Dylan was back. ‘Daddy said to put a plaster on it, and to make him stop crying because Daddy has a sore head and needs his sleep.’

By now the bleeding had almost stopped, and Zac’s crying had turned to small, quiet sobs. Elma felt like crying now.

How could her dad be so mean?

Didn’t he even care that Zac was hurt? Didn’t he care enough to drag himself out of bed to see how bad the cut was? Didn’t he care about anything or anyone beside himself?

Elma sat Zac on the couch and dialled her mother’s mobile. She’d been warned to do that only in an emergency, and surely this was an emergency?

A few hours later, Zac was home from hospital, with three painful-looking stitches in his cheek and a huge lollipop in his mouth. Elma’s mother went upstairs, and minutes later the shouting started.

Elma could only hear bits of it, all in her mother’s voice.

‘… the poor child could have been scarred for life …’

‘… threatening us with social services …’

‘… he kept saying his big sister was minding him …’

‘… she’s only eleven …’

‘… stupid layabout father …’

‘… no good to any of us …’

Zac and Dylan were huddled on the couch, looking frightened. Elma closed the door and turned the television up loud. Poor Zac and Dylan couldn’t
really remember the time before the accident, when they were a normal happy family. Sometimes Elma had to struggle to remember it herself.

Back in those happy times, Dad went out to work as a plumber every day and Mum stayed home and minded the children. They were like a happy-ever-after family in a storybook. And then one day the happy-ever-after came to a sudden end.

A lorry arrived on the building site where her dad was working, and the back of the lorry opened unexpectedly, and three toilets fell out. Two of the toilets smashed to pieces on a patch of dried concrete. The third toilet knocked Dad to the ground, injuring his back. He spent three weeks in hospital, and hadn’t been able to work ever since.

So, as well as having a sick dad, Elma also had to put up with the teasing at school. Why couldn’t Dad have had a less embarrassing accident? She was now the girl whose dad couldn’t work because a toilet fell on him. Harry’s dad lost a leg in Iraq, and he was treated like a hero, and all Elma got was mockery. It just wasn’t fair.

Dad’s back got a bit better after a while, but it was like something had switched off in him. The doctor had told him his days as a plumber were over. He would never again be able to do a job that involved
bending down to get at awkward pipes. But he could still work – if he wanted to. There were still lots of jobs he
could
do.

A man from the job centre dropped in a huge bundle of leaflets about retraining courses. They were still in a corner of the living room – unopened. (Sometimes Dylan And Zac used them for making paper planes.)

And now Dad didn’t want to do anything except lie around in bed, or on the couch, watching TV. So that’s what he did. All day. Every day. The National Geographic Channel had become the centre of his universe.

Life had been pretty bad ever since the accident. Elma didn’t like school much, but it was better than being home with Dad. Mid-term had been awful. Really, really awful. Mum didn’t have to do school dinners, but she did extra hours at her cleaning jobs. So Elma just hung around the house with the boys, and brought stuff upstairs, or into the living room for her dad, and counted the days to when she could go back to school and some kind of normality.

Both boys were asleep by the time Elma got around to writing her letter. Zac was snoring, and she could see a big bruise forming on his forehead. She’d have liked to tell Luke about what happened,
but how could she? As far as Luke was concerned, Zac didn’t even exist, so how could he have fallen down and cut himself badly? She wished she hadn’t lied, but it was too late now.

She addressed her envelope first – the boring bit – best to get it over with. She wrote ‘Luke’ and then on a sudden whim, finished the ‘e’ with a curly line. It was meant to look kind of cool, but ended up looking a bit like a pig’s tail. She hoped he wouldn’t mind. When she’d finished writing the address, she grinned to herself as she peeled her stamp from its backing paper, and placed it firmly upside down on the envelope. She hoped the Queen wouldn’t mind standing on her head. And she really, really hoped there wasn’t a law against that kind of thing. Still, too late now, Mrs Lawrence had given her only one stamp, so it would have to do.

Would Luke notice?

If so, what would he think?

And why did she care what stupid liar Luke thought anyway?