Kate Hamer: The Girl in the Red Coat

Mum’s reading the book now that tells you everything that’s going to be happening. The programme she says it is, though I thought that was something on the telly.

‘What kind of story would you like to hear?’

I say fairies because I can’t put into proper words the things in my head: swords glinting in the dark; pirates with hard yellow eyes; things that happen under the sea; creatures with furry mouths that whisper secrets.

We find a tent called ‘Once Upon a Time’. Inside, there’s a pretty woman with silver glitter on her face and little pink wings drooping down her sides. The tent’s lit up with coloured lights that twinkle on and off. When everyone’s sitting cross-legged on the mat on the ground she reads this story about a fairy that has to earn her wings by doing good deeds. But all the time she’s reading out loud it’s like she’s trying too hard and it’s making her worry. Her forehead keeps crinkling up and when she puts on the voice of the fairy it’s high and squeaky and her wings start looking sadder and sadder. And as well the fairy’s just too good to be true, especially when she swears never to let a bad thought cross her mind ever again. Bad thoughts happen in everyone’s mind — I know I’ve got them. So when the story finishes I start pulling on the sleeve of Mum’s green jacket.

‘Did you like that?’ she asks.

‘Yes, it was lovely.’ I don’t want to say about the sad wings or the too-good-to-be-true fairy. ‘Can we go somewhere else now?’

We find another tent where a story’s going to start in half an hour.

‘Let’s bag a place,’ says Mum and because hardly anyone’s there yet we can be right at the front. I sit on the floor mat under the wooden stage and the empty chair that’s ready for the storyteller.

Mum’s looking at the programme again. ‘You’ll like this one, Carmel. It’s a real writer and she’s going to be reading a story she wrote herself.’

The tent’s soon full to bursting, even people standing at the back.

I look over my shoulder and it’s then I see the man.

He’s standing against the wall — if you can call it a wall as we’re in a tent — he’s got white hair and glasses and he looks just like my storyteller in the drawing. And I smile at him because he looks like that and he smiles back. He’s staring right at me.

The writer comes in from a gap in the tent behind the stage. She’s old with short spiky grey hair and she’s got on this long glittery pink skirt with little blue boots poking out from underneath and her dangly earrings are the shape of question marks. She’s got a basket too. It’s a long time before she settles in the chair. She takes a big blob of pink bubblegum right out of her mouth and glues it onto a piece of paper in her basket. In the basket there’s books and her knitting showing out of the top with the needles stuck into a ball of red wool. I’m getting the feeling she’s been knitting right up until it was time to start the story and then afterwards she’ll go straight back to it.

The first words of the story are: ‘The day her dad left Cassandra was so upset she went out into the garden and buried her favourite doll …’

I listen and listen because it seems to me that the girl in the story is just like me. I can feel Mum looking at me sometimes but I don’t let that take my listening away. The story finishes and the writer looks right over her red glasses and says, ‘Would you like to ask me any questions?’

There’s quiet for a bit then a woman at the back puts her hand up and asks, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ Though I can tell she only asks this because the quiet is embarrassing and she’s filling it up so it won’t be so bad for the writer. But the writer answers anyway. Her ideas, she says, come drifting towards her, and she’s got no way of knowing where they came from. They just come floating right towards her like out of a fog. It’s not much of an explanation but I can tell she’s telling the truth as best she can.

Other children start asking questions. ‘Why did you call the girl Cassandra?’ and ‘What happened to the dog that was in the beginning of the story and not the end?’ This question makes the writer smile and she says the dog was there through the whole story but she’s only written about him at the start and maybe that was a mistake. That’s very interesting to me, because I never thought you could make mistakes in stories. She starts saying things about who you can talk to if you are upset like Cassandra — teachers, friends and of course there’s always your nan and grandad.

That’s when I put my hand up.

She points to me straight away — like I knew she was going to, because all the way through I can tell she’s been interested in me. She kept looking over at me when she was reading and finally I think I have something quite interesting and unusual to tell her.

‘I don’t know any of my grandparents at all.’

She’s smiling and leaning forward, she is interested.

‘Why, dear?’

‘Because my dad’s parents are dead and my mum hasn’t spoken to hers since I was a baby.’

Mum pulls her arms in the green jacket round and hugs her knees.

But the writer understands, she leans forward even more and says, ‘How fascinating! I just knew you’d have something out of the ordinary to tell me.’

My question seems to finish everything and people start leaving.

‘Did you like that?’ Mum asks. But I just nod; I can’t really say anything after speaking like that in front of everyone.

‘Let’s go and have a bite to eat then, Carmel. You must be getting hungry. I know I am.’

And I’m grateful to her because I know she probably wants to ask if I felt like the girl in the story when Dad left, and I did, but I don’t feel like talking about it.

We buy hot dogs and eat them sitting on the grass on top of a little hill so we can see everything below: the tents; the big book; the crowds with the people on stilts standing up taller than anyone else. We chew for a bit then I look down again.

‘What’s that?’ I ask. There’s smoke on the ground and the people are sticking up out of it with their legs invisible.

‘Seems like there’s a sea mist coming.’

‘Oh, I thought there was a fire.’

‘No, just a bit of old fog and look, it hasn’t reached us here.’ She laughs and her blue eyes light up all bright.

I put the last bit of hot dog in my mouth and squish it with my teeth. I decide I like the mist. It makes everything seem even stranger than before and I like that.

‘I love it here,’ I say, because I do and the feeling of it has suddenly rushed through my body.

‘Do you, honey?’ Mum’s finished her hot dog and she’s sitting with her face turned up to the sun. ‘I do too.’ And she looks happier and prettier than I’ve seen her for ages.

But then she turns into a spy again.

DAY 1

How many times have I gone over what happened next? How many times more? Fated for it to run and run, a tape that as soon as it ends rewinds back to the beginning to start again.

After lunch it got busier — the prospect of a children’s storytelling festival a magnetic draw for parents of bored holiday kids. The lovely weather of the morning that had lured so many people on a day out was changing. The sun kept trying to break through but the cold mist poked its fingers into us, so we kept our coats on. I felt the first pricklings of a panic attack — something I imagined I’d left behind — but Carmel was still excited, buoyed up with being somewhere new and the ancient magic generated by the stories. We walked among mothers pushing buggies and families studying their programmes and the people in costumes handing out leaflets or free bottles of water. At first I just kept glancing down to check for the flash of red beside me.