Kate Hamer - The Girl in the Red Coat

‘No! That’s not true. You wanted to go to those places; the maze was your idea. Remember?’

She wrinkled up her eyes, then looked troubled. ‘Maybe. So did we both want to lose each other?’

‘Of course not — don’t say that or we won’t stay found. Now come to me and we’ll go home.’

She shook her head. ‘I won’t be able to get over this water, especially with my new shoes.’

Then she turned and started walking into the trees and I could see the wind blowing her hair so the strands lifted around her head.

‘Carmel, Carmel …’ I shouted at the receding figure. Then of course I woke, the shout with the soil in my throat, and stood looking at the bank opposite that seemed to vibrate with her presence still.

‘I will see the real you again,’ I vowed across the water, as if she was still there. ‘In this life or the next I will see you again.’

That was the last dream I had of her when she wasn’t walking backwards.

I know now I died the night of the feast. The knowing comes to me, quick, like a light being turned on. I stagger into the kitchen and fall into a chair and bang the table with the flats of my hands.

‘No, no, no. I don’t want to be a ghost. Save me. Save me.’

Dorothy stands in front of me with both hands up to her face. ‘What in the world is the matter, child?’

‘You mean you can really see me right now?’ I howl. ‘I’m not dead?’

‘Of course not — oh, sweet Jesus, and Dennis out too. What’s happened?’ She sits next to me and puts her arms round me tight.

After a long time I stop crying and sit up.

‘I found some old photos with children and I realised they must all be dead by now and I just started thinking it.’ It sounds silly to say that now.

She sighs. ‘You’ve been alone too much, that’s the trouble.’

‘Dorothy, how long do I have to be here? I probably should be back in school now.’ Days are like beads and I’ve lost count of how many there’s been but I think by now there’s been necklaces and necklaces of them. Lots of nights too, each one sneaking out onto the landing.

My question makes her give a little jump and the thought comes to me that maybe something terrible has happened to Mum and they haven’t told me yet.

‘Why, do you not like us, child?’ Her eyes peep at me from the corners. ‘Perhaps we should think of something nice to do. Take your mind off things.’

‘I want to talk to my dad. Grandad has the number.’ I didn’t see him for so long I don’t know if I can remember it myself.

‘Mmm. I guess.’

‘Why can’t I?’ I feel like banging my hands again.

‘Now then, this will upset your grandfather,’ she mutters. She’s looking at me like she’s scared of what I’ll do next.

‘I want. To talk. To Dad.’ Crying has made me hiccup when I talk.

She pinches her forehead between her fingers. ‘Ah, I remember now. I do have the number — in case of emergencies.’

‘You do? Can you ring it, please? Ring it now.’

She takes a phone out of her bag and presses the numbers and hands me the phone and I’m trembling at the thought of speaking to Dad. Dorothy carries on putting saucepans away but she keeps looking over at me. It rings about two hundred times.

‘Carmel. You’ve been doing that for twenty minutes. This is what’s been happening. We didn’t want to tell you — but he hasn’t answered for days.’ I shoot out my arm to throw the phone down but at the last minute I pretend to just drop it instead. It spins on the table and stops ringing.

Dorothy says, ‘Carmel, that’s naughty.’ But I’m collapsing on the chair and burying my head in my arms because Dad being like I’m not even alive is making me feel like a ghost again.

‘What if we go outside?’ says Dorothy quickly.

I lift up my head. ‘Outside the wall?’

*

When we get to the gate Dorothy puts her hand down the front of her blue blouse and feels about. Then she pulls out a long piece of blue cord and on the end of it is a silver key. So that’s where they keep it, I think, right next to them.

‘No telling about our little adventure to your grandfather now. It’ll be our secret. He’s overprotective, he thinks it’s not safe round here. Do you know what overprotective means?’

I nod, and this being a secret makes me think something I’ve thought before — that Dorothy’s a little bit afraid of Grandad, that she does what he tells her to do on the outside, but on the inside her thoughts are different. I can see them sometimes, in her amber eyes, flittering away with tiny brown butterflies. Then she rolls down her eyelids and blinks to make them go away.

She gives a push with her fingers and the metal gates swing forward.

‘Oh,’ I breathe. Then ‘Oh’ again because it’s a kind of funny shock for me to see the outside and I feel dizzy as if I might fly off into the air. But the strangest thing of all is, for a flash, what I really want to do is to creep back inside the gate again and for it to be closed and locked behind us.

Dorothy is already stomping out, carrying the orange plastic Sainsbury’s bag with a picnic in it.

She turns. ‘What’s troubling you now, Carmel?’

‘Everything looks so big.’ It’s not flat as a pancake like where I live but as though waves have rolled along under the earth and pushed up, making hills as far as you can see.

‘Do you want to go back in?’

I say, ‘No,’ quickly and step outside the gates onto the grass.

‘We’ll walk right round the wall,’ Dorothy says. Her black skirt flicks up into the air as she walks. We start following the path. Soon we’re so high the forest and the silver river below look as small as a farm set. I put my hands on the wall for balance and the stone feels hot from the sun and the wind whips into my face and I want to shout out:

‘I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive.’

*

After Grandad gets back, I wonder if he can guess we’ve been outside. If something gives us away — the fresh air clinging to our clothes, perhaps, or the look in our eyes. He’s more serious even than he usually is. He’s still got his limp, but now it’s just a nuisance to him — something he has to drag around like a bike or a heavy bag. His thoughts are big and heavy too, I can tell. His forehead gets tight like a garlic bulb with a little blue vein raised up on it.

He tells Dorothy to ‘prepare’. I want to ask, ‘For what?’ But there’s something about Grandad that stops you asking things these days. The way his big owl eyes look at you as though you’ve done something wrong. Something bad, snooping and spying again. Being untrustworthy.

Me and Dorothy tidy up the kitchen and he keeps making calls on his mobile phone, always going out of the apartment or into another room. Dorothy’s quiet and peeps over her shoulder at the door. Sometimes she gives me the tea towel or the broom and says, ‘You stay here and carry on.’ When they’re both gone I try my trick of stretching out my ears. It doesn’t work this time and all I can hear are mashed-together words that sound like a washing machine going round.

I start drying the dishes slowly, keeping as quiet as I can, so the sounds coming from me won’t cover their conversation. But I still can’t hear. I feel prickly all over, even in between my toes and inside my bottom. I think I’m scared of Grandad now with his pale eyes and his garlic-bulb head and the way he has of watching me. And he gets worked up really easily, and when that happens you’ll do anything you can to make things better and get him calm again, to make him sit nice and quiet and crack away at his favourite peanuts. But I realise all of a sudden listening won’t make that happen, because of being untrustworthy again.