Kate Hamer: The Girl in the Red Coat

I nod. My throat feels scraped out. He opens the glove box and gets out a bottle of water. It’s only half full like someone else has been drinking from it and I don’t like the idea of that so I try to drink without my mouth touching it too much.

‘We’ll go back to my place for the time being. Just until we’ve heard something. I’ll fix you something to eat.’

‘Alright,’ I say, even though what he’s just said wasn’t really a question.

He starts the car again and it’s so big it sort of flops back onto the road.

I think of something. ‘What about Dad?’

‘Well, I’ve just spoken to him too. He’s on his way to the hospital and he’s very pleased there’s someone to take care of you. He said he can’t think straight right now.’

‘Oh.’ That sounds like Dad. I lean back feeling sleepy and trying not to be. All I can think is that I wish I was at home with Mum and everything was back to normal. That this wasn’t worth a stupid story about a fairy who has to earn her wings. Or even meeting the real writer. Where are fairies and writers now when you need them? If I was with Mum, and everything was OK, I wouldn’t try to get away from her again. I’d stay close to her all the time. I wouldn’t even try looking over the wall at home, not ever.

We drive for a long time. Then it turns into night and there’s blackness around the car. I get so tired I fall asleep.

When I wake up I see the car windscreen and for a minute I think I’m looking at a big broken TV and the swirling outside the glass is the picture trying to come through.

‘You’ve been asleep, little Carmel.’

I turn my head to look and Grandad’s hands are still stuck tight to the steering wheel as if he hasn’t moved all the time while I’ve been asleep. It’s not a surprise to me he’s there because I didn’t forget about him even though I was asleep, if that’s possible. But something’s made me go prickly, I think it’s the way he said ‘little’.

‘It’s fine, dear, to sleep. It’ll help you with the shock you’ve had.’ And he sounds kind again and I decide he’s probably the sort of person who’s not used to talking to little girls — like Dad’s girlfriend — and it makes everything coming out of their mouths sound wrong and squeezed.

He doesn’t seem tired at all. There’s a sort of sparkly energy coming from him now. Mum told me once that can happen if you don’t get much sleep. You stop feeling tired and get … ‘wired up’.

I sit up in the slippy seat that’s warmed up I’ve been in it so long.

‘It’s very dark here.’ I’m trying to see where we are.

‘I’ve taken the B roads. They’re always more fun,’ he says. Though I can’t think what’s fun about it when it’s so dark you can’t even see, except some long grasses lit up by the headlights reaching out and whipping at the car either side. Then he starts singing, ‘I’ll take the B roads and you take the low.’ He laughs at his song like he’s done something clever.

‘Come on, join in, Carmel. I’ll teach you the words. I’ll take the B roads and you take the low …’

‘No thanks.’

He clutches at the steering wheel and laughs again. ‘It’ll be fun. Singing always makes a journey go quicker.’

‘No thank you.’ I’m trying to be extra polite but I really don’t want to sing his song. I just don’t feel like it.

He keeps on trying to get me to join in. But he gives up in the end and says, ‘Not far now.’

I stare into the dark, being like a cat, and I start seeing some black hills. It looks like countryside with not even a single house. ‘I thought you lived in London,’ I say.

‘Well … Carmel. The fact is, the fact is — we did. But when your grandmother died I couldn’t settle. Then I met Dorothy, a true gem of a woman, and for the moment, well — we’re staying in Wales. Waiting to see where the wind will blow us.’

‘My grandma died?’ I sit up. ‘ When did she die?’

‘Several years ago now — did your mother never tell you, dear?’ And he tut-tuts like it’s really sad and the saddest thing of all is Mum not telling me.

‘No, I don’t think she ever told me.’ I’m trying to make it better for Mum, by making out I can’t remember whether she told me or not.

‘I think you would have remembered that, Carmel.’ He’s right.

I decide I can’t really be upset about someone I don’t know — even if she had been my grandma. But it’s funny that Mum didn’t tell me. I’m really wanting to ask why they argued but it seems too rude. Then a thought comes to me that Mum wouldn’t have fallen out with someone for no reason and I make a decision to keep my eye on him, and find out what that reason might be.

I’m so tired now my eyes are burning but it doesn’t stop me worrying about Mum.

‘Can we phone the hospital and see what’s happening to Mum again?’ I ask.

‘It’s too late now. All the staff will be in bed because it’s the middle of the night.’

‘Is it?’

‘Uh-huh. We’ll phone in the morning and God willing they’ll have some good news waiting for us. Besides, we’re nearly there now.’

Then we’re driving up a hill and round and round a winding road and I can hear wind blowing on the car.

‘Here we are at last,’ he says, and in the car lights there’s the tallest pair of iron gates I’ve ever seen.

‘Is this where you live?’ It’s a scary place, but I don’t want to say.

‘Yes, for the time being. It looks very big, Carmel, but we’re only renting a tiny part of it. The rest is empty.’

‘OK.’ I swallow.

He rubs his hands together like people do when they’re thinking of the next thing that has to be done. He gets out of the car and unlocks the big padlock that’s hanging off the gates. With the car lights shining on him it makes his white hair glow around his head. He opens up the gates and comes back into the car.

We drive into a sort of yard and the headlights flash over a great big stone building that looks like a castle. He stops just inside the gates and goes back to lock them up.

When he gets back in I ask, ‘Is this a castle?’

He’s smiling as he switches the engine off and when he does that the lights go out too and everything goes black. Now he’s sitting next to me in the dark and I don’t know if he’s still smiling or not. I don’t know what the look is on his face.

His voice comes out of the dark. ‘No, dear, it’s not a castle. It used to be something called a workhouse in the old days. But developers started doing up part of it, before they ran out of money, and that’s the bit we’re staying in.’ His voice sounds like he might be smiling.

I’ve heard of workhouses. We did them in school for history. They were for people that … that ‘fall over hard times’. But I don’t ask anything else.

‘Time to get out of the car, dear.’

I do but I’m so tired and it’s so dark I’m stumbling around. There’s a cool wind on my face, fresh, that smells of grasses and flowers.

‘Here, let me help you. I thought there was a flashlight in the car but I seem to have mislaid it.’ He laughs. ‘Silly Grandpa.’

I feel his arm round my shoulders, guiding me somewhere, but I keep nearly falling over because I can’t see my own feet and what they might be stepping on. But somehow, even though there’s not one tiny star in the sky to show the way, I know we’re getting near the building because I can feel a kind of heaviness or a great big weight in front of me, like the way bats can.

Then a door opens and light spills out and down over a row of big stone steps leading up to the door and onto the old-fashioned stones the ground’s made of. This one patch of light is so bright it makes the woman standing there look like one of those cut-out paper puppets where you can only see their black shape.