Thirteen Chairs (9 page)

You can tell Callum thinks she looks scary, but he is trying not to let it show, but he does look scared of her and he can’t even think up anything to say.

‘Yeah, well, just …’ he says, and points at me. Only he doesn’t even properly point at me. He sticks out a finger but he just sort of waves it roughly in my direction, like he’s scared that if he actually, properly, aims it at me he’ll get in trouble with Red Duffel Coat Girl.

I think he’s probably right.

He mumbles something and flicks his eyes my way really really quickly one last time, but he’s already shuffling away. Then he runs off to tackle a football from Nadia’s little brother from Year One and nearly trips himself over, which makes me laugh even though he doesn’t actually fall over (which would be really funny), but I suppose I laugh a bit extra because I am relieved.

I turn round to thank the girl, but she is walking away, and seeing her head from behind I realize that as well as being the girl who was here early, she is also the girl who was outside the window at break time. I shout after her but she doesn’t look back. Then she
turns round a corner and I think about running after her but I don’t run after her because I’m still picking up my lunch.

I eat the tomatoey biscuit after all. It is a bit peculiar but it is OK.

In the afternoon we do science (which I like) and PE (which I don’t like unless it is running, and today it is not running, it is gym and that is quite bad).

At home time Auntie Anna picks me up from school and we walk home and it is not raining. Auntie Anna asks me how was school and I say it was good because of science and I don’t mention the strange girl or punching Callum and we stop at the supermarket for Auntie Anna to do a bit of shopping and she buys me a chocolate bar which I eat and it is nice.

At home I do my homework and I play a game on Dad’s computer. I play Boxworld, which is a puzzle game and doesn’t have shooting or zombies in it and I am good at it. I score 13,024 points, which is my second-best score ever (my best score was 16,712 points but that was when I played for a whole Saturday when the babysitter who we don’t have any more looked after me and didn’t stop me and my eyes and my head went a bit funny). Then Dad gets home from work and we have dinner which is sausages with onion gravy and mashed potato and peas, which is my third favourite dinner, and Auntie Anna stays and eats with us, then goes home.

While we are watching telly I draw in my special
notebook with my good felt tip pens that I got for my birthday. I draw a police lady (because there is a police lady in the programme), and I draw Dad and I draw a cat eating a fish (but I get the mouth a bit wrong). Then I turn the page and I draw the girl in the red duffel coat. I concentrate really hard. I remember the way her hair was and I try to get that right, and I do her uniform and her coat and it all comes out looking quite good. In fact, it’s probably one of my top ten best drawings that I’ve ever done and I am really pleased. I am just finishing colouring in her coat when the man who had done the bad thing at the start of the programme is caught by the police lady and the story finishes.

Dad says, ‘Right then, monster, you should really be in bed by now, you know.’

I say, ‘Can I just finish—’

And then I make a funny squeaky yelping noise because Dad has dropped his not quite finished mug of tea and it has spilt on the carpet, and even though the mug has not smashed into smithereens it is still a big surprise. And when I look up at Dad’s face, his eyes are all wide which I think is being frightened and that makes me a bit frightened. Then when he sees me being frightened, Dad pulls his face into a different shape, I think because he doesn’t want to worry me. He worries a lot about not wanting me to worry but really I don’t worry much anyway.

‘Oops-a-daisy!’ says Dad in his not-quite-right jolly
voice, and he smiles at me with his not-quite-right smile. ‘I’d better get a cloth.’ And he goes to the kitchen and gets a damp cloth and kneels on the floor mopping up the little bit of tea he spilled. I don’t say anything and I stay on the sofa, pretending to watch the adverts on the telly but glancing at Dad sometimes and at my drawing sometimes and thinking about what just happened. It is like a puzzle and I like puzzles mostly, except when I can’t work them out and they make my head feel funny, and I think this might be one of those ones.

‘There we go,’ says Dad, looking up from the wet patch on the carpet. ‘I think that’ll be OK once it dries.’ Then he looks at me, and I realize I’m looking at him with a very frowny face from thinking about the puzzle and it puts him off from acting like nothing has happened.

‘Sorry, darling,’ he says. ‘Your drawing reminded me of something. Something … not very nice. It just gave me a bit of a shock, that’s all. It’s a very good drawing, though. I like … I like her red coat.’ And he smiles at me again, but it’s still not a very good one.

‘Who does she remind you of, Daddy?’ I say. Normally I call Dad ‘Dad’, but when I want something I call him ‘Daddy’ because that works better. I look straight into his eyes with my eyes opened really wide and I keep my mouth tightly closed. Dad’s eyes are blinking and he looks in lots of different directions but not really at me.

‘A girl called Karen, darling. Karen Hockney. You remember I told you about Susan Hockney, Mummy’s friend? Well, Karen was her daughter.’

‘Oh. The lady and the girl who were in the car with Mummy?’

Daddy is still kneeling on the floor, but he’s shuffled over to me now and he’s put his arm around me. He thinks I might get upset talking about Mummy and the crash.

‘Yes, darling. Mummy was giving them a lift into town.’ His voice has gone all quiet and full of breath and his eyes aren’t blinking any more. He’s looking at me sort of sideways and his eyebrows have gone high up.

‘Oh …’ I say, and look down at the floor and I stay very still and quiet. Sometimes before when I’ve done this, he’s made me hot chocolate and given me biscuits. It works this time too. I even get marshmallow bits in the hot chocolate.

Mostly I don’t get upset about Mummy or the crash any more, not really. Sometimes one of the children at school will say something horrible that makes me feel a bit sad for a little while, but really I don’t remember Mummy properly (I was three and a half when the accident happened to her). There are photos of her in the house, though, so I remember what she looked like from them (even though some of them are from before I was born). But mostly the crash is A Thing That Happened and I don’t mind it. But I don’t talk about it
because it makes Dad’s eyes go wet.

I ask Daddy if I can play on the computer for ten more minutes before bed and he looks at me carefully and then says, ‘Well, oooookay then,’ (which I knew he would) and goes into the kitchen to do the washing up.

I go to the computer but I do not play Boxworld this time because I told Dad a fib and what I really do is go on the internet and try to find out about Karen Hockney. It is easy. I go on Google and do a search on ‘susan karen hockney crash’ and I find the story from the local newspaper from the day after the crash.

Mostly it tells me things Dad has already told me (only he had never told me that the accident was a
tragic
accident – I thought it was a
traffic
accident). Mummy and the man in the other car died instantly and they get her name wrong, and Susan and Karen Hockney went to hospital. Then next I find a story from the paper from a day later and Mummy is still dead but they get her name right this time, and now Susan Hockney has died in the hospital too and Karen has ‘serious injuries’ but is ‘stable’. And there are photographs of Mummy and the man from the other car and Susan Hockney and Karen Hockney, and the one of Karen Hockney does look a lot like the girl in the red duffel coat, only younger and with her hair different so you can see all of her face. I can see why my drawing would make Dad jump. He gets more upset about Mummy than I do. I suppose that is because he knew her
for longer.

In the morning Dad has toast and horrible coffee for breakfast and I have orange juice and Rice Krispies (because it is Thursday).

‘Do you know where she is now?’ I say.

Dad lowers his newspaper which he is reading the back page of with a screwed-up face. ‘Where who is?’ he says.

‘Karen Hockney,’ I say. I have been thinking about Karen Hockney from the moment I woke up.

Dad puts his newspaper down and stares at me for two seconds. Then he puts down his coffee mug (the ‘World’s Fourth Best Dad’ one that I got him for his birthday) and stares at me for three more seconds.

‘She died, love,’ he says, in his slow, quiet voice that he uses when he thinks he needs to be careful.

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I thought she was only seriously injured.’

Dad looks at me a bit funny, but doesn’t ask any awkward questions. ‘Yes, she survived the crash,’ he says. ‘But she died a few months later. She, um …’ I think he doesn’t know how much he should tell me because he is still wanting to be careful. I look at him with no blinks and guess at how much of a smile is the right amount to make him carry on. I must get it right.

‘Karen lost an eye, darling. She had broken bones and her face was very badly cut and one of her eyes … got very badly damaged. But she survived and the doctors did some operations on her and she was getting better.
But then after another operation …’ Dad is wriggling about in his chair now, like he needs to go for a wee or something, but I know he can’t need to go for a wee because he’s only just been (I heard the toilet flush while I was getting the milk out of the fridge). ‘There were complications. Infection. And Karen got very poorly … and she died.’ He stares at me very hard. His mouth has gone all small, and his forehead is wrinkly, but at least he’s not wriggling about any more. I give a little smile to make him see I’m all right.

‘How old was she when she died?’ I say.

‘Oh, er, let’s see … she was about a year older than you are now when … when the crash happened.’ Dad swallows really loudly, even though he hasn’t touched his toast or coffee in ages. ‘And … and she died about a year after that. Yes. So she would have been eleven, I think.’

‘What was she like?’ I say.

‘Oh,’ says Dad. ‘I don’t really know. I think maybe she was quite like her mummy. You remember I told you before how Mummy and Susan were best friends and always looked after each other? Well, I think probably Karen was like that: kind and generous and brave. Darling, why are—’

‘What’s in my sandwiches today?’ I say.

Dad’s mouth stops being tight and he smiles a bit, and his forehead goes flat, nearly.

‘Tuna and mayonnaise today, love. And an apple and a banana.’

I knew that already really (because it is Thursday).

‘Come on. It’s time we were off.’

When I get to school there’s Charley and Callum and Harry from Year Two in the playground. Charley is kicking a tennis ball against the wall and Callum is prodding Harry, but he stops prodding Harry when he sees me. He comes over to me, trying to stomp scarily, which he’s not very good at. But he does look very angry with me and that is a bit scary.

I want to say something to try to calm him down a bit but he puts his hand over my mouth. I don’t like that at all – I would bite his hand, but I don’t want to get ill. Callum is pushing me backwards with his hand on my mouth and with his other hand on my shoulder. I stumble backwards and fall over and I think I tear my skirt and I hurt my bottom. And now Callum is looming over me and he isn’t saying anything, which just makes it scarier. He has clenched his fists up really tightly and he’s breathing really noisily and there’s a little bit of spit at the corner of his mouth. And I kind of know that he’s not really going to kill me, but I still kind of think that he might.

I scuttle along the ground like a crab or something (only a crab that goes backwards and not sideways), and Callum follows me but quite slowly. His eyes look really mad. But I’m going faster than him so at least I’m getting a little bit further away from him. And I think I should get up and run away from him
and find a teacher but now I’ve scuttled backwards into somebody’s legs so I’ve stopped and fallen down onto my bottom again. I think at first that they must be Charley’s legs, but then I see that Charley is still over by the wall, trying to get his tennis ball out of a drain.

Then the girl from yesterday steps past me to stand between me and Callum.

‘Get out of my way!’ says Callum. He sounds a bit mad.

The girl just stands there, looking at him.

My bottom really hurts. Maybe I’ve broken my bottom bone. I try to look at my bottom to check but it’s too tricky. When I look up again I can see that the girl has stepped towards Callum and pulled back her hair from her face and Callum has gone white and his eyes are very wide open. I think probably this is because of how the girl’s face looks, because of what the complications and infection must have done to it, but I can only see the back of her head so I can’t be sure.

Callum is crying now and his breathing has gone funny like he’s forgotten how it works. It’s like each breath in is much bigger than the next breath out and so he is inflating. And his face has gone very white and he is shaking. Charley is still over by the wall, but he is looking over at Callum now and he keeps taking one step toward him and then one step back again, over and over, and it looks like a funny little dance. And he
has the dirty yellow tennis ball in his hand and it looks like he’s squeezing it very tight.

And now I think Callum has wet himself and I wonder if the puddle of wee he’s standing in will make the lights in his trainers stop working, but I don’t think it will. And then he falls down onto his bottom into the puddle of wee and he’s making funny wheezing noises and his face is all screwed up.

And I don’t think he’ll try to do revenge on me now.

The girl turns round and smiles at me and holds out her hand to help me up. She had already let go of her hair so her face is half covered up again now and I can’t see what Callum saw, and I think that is a shame because I think it would be interesting to see.