The Girl in the Red Coat (2 page)

I ran down hallways of yew. Each one looked the same and at the end, every time, I turned a corner to see another endless green corridor in front of me. As I ran I shouted, ‘Carmel, Carmel – where are you?’

Eventually, when there was only enough light to just about see I stumbled on the entrance. I could see the big grey house through the gap and the front door looked like a mouth that was laughing at me.

Across the field was the man who had taken our money, leaving. He was walking towards the brow of the hill and already a long way from the house.

‘Please, come back.’ My ragged shout didn’t feel like it had come from me.

He hadn’t heard. The sound was swept up by the wind and carried away in the other direction. Only crows answered me with their caws.

I began running towards him, shouting. He seemed to be walking very fast and his figure was disappearing into the last of the light.

Finally he must have caught my cries and I saw him stop and turn his head. I waved my arms about and even from such a distance I could see his body stiffen, sensing danger. I must have looked crazy, though I didn’t think about that then. When I caught up with him he waited for me to get my breath back as I rested my hands on my knees. His face
under his old-fashioned cloth cap was watchful.

‘My little girl. I can’t find her,’ I managed to say after a minute.

He took his cap off and smoothed his hair. ‘The one with red legs?’

‘Yes, yes – the little girl with red tights.’

We set off towards the maze. He switched on his torch to show the way.

‘People don’t just go into mazes and never come out,’ he said reasonably.

‘Has anyone else been here today?’ I asked. My throat closed up waiting for his answer.

‘No. At least, there was a couple here this morning. But they’d gone by the time you arrived.’

‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’

He stopped and turned. ‘I’m sure. Don’t worry, we’ll find her. I know this maze like the back of my hand.’ I felt so grateful then to be with this man who had the plan of the puzzle imprinted on him.

As we approached the maze he switched his torch off. We didn’t need it any more. A big moon had risen and lit up the place like a floodlight at a football match. We went in through the arched entrance cut into the woven trees. In the moonlight the foliage and the red berries had turned to black.

‘What’s the little girl’s name again? Karen?’

‘No, no. Carmel.’

‘Carmel.’ His voice boomed out.

We walked fast, shouting all the way. He turned the torch back on and pointed it under the hedges. There were rustlings around us and once he pointed the light straight into
the eyes of a rabbit that froze for a moment before bolting across our path. I could tell he was working through the maze methodically from the plan.

‘I think we should call the police,’ I said, after about twenty minutes. I was becoming frantic again.

‘Maybe. We’re nearly at the centre now though.’

We turned another corner and there she was, in the crook of the hedge. The torchlight flashed over her red legs poking out from underneath the black wall. I put both hands into the gap and dragged her out. Her body felt pliant and warm and I could tell at once she was asleep. I lifted her into my lap and rocked her back and forth and kept saying to the man smiling down at us, ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’ I smiled back at him and held her lovely solid warmth.

How many times I was back in that place that night. Even after we were home and safely tucked into bed, I kept dreaming I was there again. Walking round and round in circles and looking. Sometimes the rabbit bolted away – but sometimes it stopped right in the middle of the path and stared at me, its nose twitching.

I like playing in the garden on my own, making dinners. There’s a tree at the bottom with twigs that if you skin off the bark looks just like chicken, white and flaky. So with twig knives and forks I can put out dinner. There’s old leaves though – black and slimy left over from ages ago – so I kick them away to make a gap on the grass.

I’m super safe here. Around the garden there’s a stone wall and I can only just about see over the top. Over the wall there’s fields and hardly any houses. But I can see smoke from chimneys puffing far away. There’s a long way I can see as Mum says Norfolk is flat like a pancake.

As I’m playing I see two big white birds flying side by side. One’s a bit in front of the other like he’s the leader. Their necks are stuck right out and they’re flying low down, wings flapping away like it’s hard for them to stay up. I climb onto the bottom of the wall to see better and, guess what? They fly right over my head and I have to laugh at their big tummies wobbling in the air and their orange legs dangling down flappy and useless.

But that’s when I turn round and see Mum’s face at the window. Oh, she tries to go back but it’s too late. I’ve caught her checking I’m still there, like she does since the maze. Then she comes out of the back door with her coat on like it’s nothing at all and I never caught her. She smiles the sort of smile people do when they want you to stop being grumpy.

‘What was funny, Carmel?’

‘What was funny, what was funny, Carmel?’ I mutter under my breath but so she can’t hear. But I feel bad because her smile looks a bit broken. Anyway I want to tell her about the birds.

‘Geese,’ she says.

‘Like snow geese or like goose that Alison had for Christmas dinner?’

‘Yes, both. They mate for life. That would be a male and a female you saw.’

I have to ask as I’m not sure. ‘Mate for life …?’

‘Yes, they stay together forever like they’re married.’

So not like you and Dad then. I don’t say that
of course
, even though she’s annoying me again, crouching down and pretending to play with my leaf plates because she doesn’t want to go back inside and leave me alone. She fiddles around with the twigs I’ve put down for knives and forks, making them all untidy. One of her brown boots stands on a plate and crushes it though she probably can’t realise and thinks it’s just a leaf.

I sigh and kneel down and straighten it up again as best I can. But
now
she says, ‘Carmel, you’re getting your trousers wet.’ And she starts stroking my hair and her hand feels very heavy on my head and I’m wishing she’d stop though I don’t say. I just carry on putting bits of chicken back onto plates and waiting for her to go away.

She goes in the end but now I feel mean because perhaps she just thought she was being nice playing with me. Being mean goes right into my stomach, sick and uncomfortable, like I’ve swallowed a stone. After the maze I’ve been feeling mean a lot. Last week we went to McDonald’s. I was
so excited because we were taking Sara. Sara’s mum smells nice and so does their house and her mum wears the most gorgeous shoes with gold bits on them. We were in McDonald’s and me and Sara were laughing together about a silly secret but Mum’s there watching and listening. Oh, she was pretending not to but she kept looking at me without turning her head, just out the corner of her eyes like a spy. And then I had such a mean thought it made the McFlurry I’d just had go all hard in my stomach. It was – I wish Sara’s mum was my mum and I was Sara’s sister and we could all live together in their little warm house in town and maybe I could have some peace.

After we’d taken Sara home and we were on the way back on the bus to our house I was still feeling horrible. I was thinking maybe she wasn’t spying like I thought at all, maybe I’d just wanted it to be me on my own with Sara – more grown-up like, so I said, ‘I wish I could buy you some gold shoes.’

Mum turned and smiled a lovely smile.

‘What a nice thought, Carmel, but where would I wear them? To Tesco’s?’ And she laughed. ‘Tell you what, we could both have gold shoes and we could just wear them for shopping.’

I started laughing too at the thought of us trying to walk round Tesco’s in high-heeled gold shoes, tottering behind the trolley. Then I looked down at her feet on the bus floor. She was wearing her big brown boots she’s worn for so long there’s toe shapes in the leather. I remembered she has quite big feet with lumpy toes and I imagined seeing her there on the bus with her feet squeezed into tiny gold shoes like Sara’s mum wears and it made me feel a bit sad. So I looked out of the window so she couldn’t see my face.

The maze was fading to a distant memory.

It was Saturday and we’d been shopping. We were walking down the lane with our Tesco bags when we saw Paul’s red Peugeot parked outside the gate. He got out of the car when he saw us and stood with his arms folded, smiling at Carmel. Then he opened his arms up wide as she raced forwards and flung herself at him.

‘Daddy,’ she screamed.

‘My girl,’ he almost shouted. ‘My lovely girl.’

He never looked at me once the whole time, but maybe, after all, I was relieved. I’d tried to keep myself together in the time since he’d left, for my own sake and Carmel’s – flowers on my blouses, deep berry colours, or summery yellows. A dash of lipstick, cheap and cheerful. The same with the house – I’d put bright orange curtains at the windows and hung little mottoes up on the walls, to try and fill the gap he’d left. But typically Paul had caught me on the one day we’d rushed out to catch the bus, me still looping my hair into a haphazard ponytail. And Carmel was ecstatic to see him and I didn’t want to spoil that so I unlocked the front door to let us in and waited till she went to hang her coat up.

‘What’s going on?’

He sat at the kitchen table looking bigger than I remembered. Tall and handsome with his legs lolling about like our
little kitchen chairs were from a schoolroom. He smelled strange though, the chemical scent of fabric conditioner hung about him.

‘I’ve come to see our daughter, that’s OK, isn’t it?’

Then I heard her coming down the hall so I didn’t mention access agreements or how he was supposed to see her every weekend and hadn’t been near us for nearly five months. I was just glad for her that he was there. Carmel was bringing armfuls of things to show him – a cushion she’d made at school with her name painted on it; her last report; her new umbrella which had ears sticking up in little flaps when you opened it.

‘Never mind all that.’ Paul stood up and he looked so strong and handsome that I had to harden my heart. ‘Let’s you and me go and watch a film in town and you can choose a place to eat afterwards.’

He leaned down and unpeeled a strand of hair stuck to her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. Such a tender gesture. I wondered how he could have beared to stay away for so long. Then, like he’d been reading my mind: ‘I’ve been wanting to see you so much, Carmel. I’ve just been waiting till everything was settled …’ I realised he meant till
I
was settled. ‘We’ll have a lovely evening now. We’ll stuff our faces with popcorn.’

‘And Mum?’ Carmel was looking over at me. God, how alike they looked: clear hazel eyes; curly hair; strong bones.

‘No, let’s leave Mum in peace for once. Just you and me.’

I chimed in with a smile as bright as a piece of tin, ‘Yes, you two go. Enjoy yourselves. I’ve things to do.’

Carmel looked suspiciously at my tin smile so I softened my face and said, ‘I’ve got lots to do here, Carmel. I’ll be
able to read in front of the fire without the television on.’ So she slowly put her things down and went to get her coat.

‘You could come, but probably for the best, eh? It would only spoil it for her, wouldn’t it? I mean, if us two fall out again.’

I said, ‘Yes, Paul,’ and turned away, conscious that my hair was in a scruffy ponytail with scrappy bits falling around my face and hating myself for caring. ‘You go,’ I said and willed myself not to ask about Lucy, and whether they still lived together, but I didn’t need to ask really. It wasn’t just the smell of fabric conditioner that was new, anyone could see he’d been dressed by a woman. Pink-and-green polo shirt, sweetie colours. A chunky Patek Philippe watch gleaming on his wrist.

‘I needed to talk to you anyway, Paul.’

‘OK.’ He braced himself.

‘About Carmel.’

‘Oh, yes.’ He relaxed.

‘We’ve had a parent–teacher meeting. They think, well, they think she’s quite special.’

His face dropped and he frowned, then looked round at the space where she’d just been. ‘What, like special needs?’

I let my breath out in a slow one, two, three.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, the opposite. Clever, you know. Very bright … but …’

‘What?’

‘Dreamy. Too dreamy sometimes. Have you not noticed?’

Was it just me who saw those absences? When she stood rooted to the spot and her eyes became strange and stony – then as soon as they came, they went. Fugues, I began to
name them. I wanted to talk to someone about it. Perhaps Paul was closer than he realised in his meaning of ‘special’. But after all, I couldn’t be sure – how can you tell when you only have one child, when there’s nothing to measure these things against?

Paul didn’t want to talk about this, I could see. I remembered how he used to be on accepting people as they are. ‘Maybe. But …’

‘What?’

‘I’ve always thought it was more like she has an old soul. The Chinese say that, don’t they, or the Hindus?’

‘Oh, Paul. She’s so pleased to see you,’ I burst out.

He looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry I felt I had to wait until, you know.’

I did. Divorce is never pretty. Ours wasn’t.

‘But now. Now it’s all settled.’ For him I suppose it was. ‘Now things have settled we can do this more often, all the time.’

‘Look, Paul. I need to go over it with you, the meeting, there’s more.’

That’s when we heard Carmel coming down the stairs, so the conversation ended.

‘C’mon, curly mop,’ he said. ‘You and me hit the road.’

I watched their tail lights disappearing down the twilight road. Then once the last blink of red had gone I went and fished out some tobacco from the dresser drawer. The tobacco was old and had hardened inside the plastic pouch so it looked like chocolate-flavoured sugar strands. When I rolled the cigarette I had to twist both ends so the tobacco didn’t spill. I lit it and sat next to the window, smoking and looking out.

It wasn’t just a marriage with Paul – we’d run a business together buying and selling ginseng and specialist teas. When he’d left I’d been proud and angry and told him I’d rely on the reception job I’d found – not quite full time. We agreed that he would have the business and I would have the house. He had no need of a house now he was moving in with Lucy and it was better for Carmel to stay in the same place. Lucy had a small newbuild on the outskirts of town. I knew, because I found it one night, mad with jealousy. To her credit, she asked me in. So much younger than me; I burned at the cliché. As I was following her I looked at her behind, tiny in tight-fitting white jeans. My eyes followed the contours of her backside down to between her thighs and I thought, ‘Paul has put his cock inside there.’ And the thought made me feel sweaty and ugly.

Her feet were bare, with tiny pink painted shells of toenails, and I realised – remembering the shoe rack by the front door – that this was the sort of house where you’d take your shoes off in normal circumstances. Would Paul really do that? I looked down at my feet and wondered if after I’d gone, she’d be there with dustpan and brush and squirty carpet cleaner, rubbing at the cream carpet where my boots had been.

She told me they were in love and she was sorry. She seemed nice enough – I’d wanted her to be heartless and hard-faced and she wasn’t either of those things. But as I left I couldn’t help saying spitefully to her, ‘He’s unreliable and untrustworthy. He’ll do the same to you.’

She tried to still her face but I saw the movement flick deep behind her eyes, knowing what I’d said was possibly true. And I relished that flicker – took it home with me and
turned it over later, Gollum-like, as though it was something to be treasured. It shames me now, to say that.

After Paul had gone the house slowly emptied of his presence. Every time the door opened the wind blew in and took with it a bit more of him. The smell of tea faded. We’d kept the dresser full of stock and it exuded smoky smells of Lapsang and deep stately tannin with a flowery trill of jasmine riding its wake. The smell of tea still makes me think of Paul. Even passing the tea section in the supermarket or taking the lid off the pot in a cafe to check the contents brings back our time together and the feel of him. After the dresser was emptied these tea smells faded away until it was strangely only the thin scent of jasmine that remained. I’d catch its sharp delicate breath in odd parts of the kitchen. Occasionally I’d find a piece of ginseng in a kitchen drawer, the rude rooty stub a reminder of something base and earthy. Once I came across a knotted ball of Japanese tea that had rolled behind the log basket. The dense packed ball looked like a form of root too but would reveal itself when boiling water was poured, growing in the cup into the form of a chrysanthemum.

The house became very quiet. The noise I made as I blew out smoke was a rushing wind in my ears. Sometimes the floorboards would creak upstairs or the old heating would clink rapidly for a few seconds. I stayed there until I saw the headlights of Paul’s car returning. I must take her out more, I thought.