Kate Hamer: The Girl in the Red Coat

It became noisier. There were bangs and smoke from firecrackers being let off, the smoke mingling with the creeping mist. Cheers as a mass of yellow balloons was let off and careened across the sky like a crazy wayward double of the sun dislodged from its mooring. Smoke from burning burgers infiltrated its meaty smell into pockets of the crowd. Thoughts of the school trip started coming back to me, where the teachers had lost her. The maze where she’d disappeared.

So I held onto her hand but it felt slippy, always at the point of breaking loose, so sometimes all I had was a finger or two. Don’t fuss, I told myself, just make sure she’s next to you. She wants to be a big girl now. But I looked for that flash of red and it was gone, replaced by a fat woman who didn’t seem to feel the cold, the jellied weight of her arms hanging down beneath the short sleeves of her pink T-shirt, silver stars bursting across her breasts. She leaned down and stabbed a shiny blue helium balloon on a stick inside a pushchair. ‘Here,’ she grimaced. ‘Now shut up.’ Then the red of Carmel’s coat appeared and I could breathe again. I reached for her hand, feeling just thin air and this time a man in a Fair Isle jumper, carrying a little girl in pink boots on his shoulders, had come between us. ‘Can you see the bear?’ he called upwards. ‘Can you see the bear?’ Then some leaflets were thrust at me and there was Carmel again and I dropped the leaflets onto the churned-up ground and found her hand and held it tight, so I couldn’t lose it. Then the air began to get more and more lacy with fog.

‘Just keep hold of my hand,’ I shouted down.

My resolve on the train, how quickly it had been dismantled. And everything, I know, would have been forgotten if that day hadn’t been preserved forever, my panic a brick in the building that was made, hour by hour, of events — standing there for all time instead of crumbling away into memory. I didn’t mean to but maybe I sounded cross too — I expect so. So sometimes the very worst thought becomes a train that doesn’t stop.

The thought: Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault? Was it my fault?

Mum’s voice turns sharp and cold like the fog. We cross the field to the biggest tent where they sell books. The fog comes in the tent with us like it really is smoke. There’s some thin rain too, the kind that gets you very wet, so everyone is coming inside. And I seem to be able to hear her better inside, exactly what her voice is saying: ‘Carmel, stay here. Stay so I can see you. I nearly lost sight of you then.’ When all I’ve been doing is stopping to look at books.

There’s tables piled high with them and she buys me a couple. While she’s paying I turn round and I’m facing the stomach of a man. I look up at his head and it’s the man from the tent and from the drawing again. He’s tall and old-fashioned in a way I can’t really explain. There’s nothing like a top hat or long hair or anything but he’s not quite the same as the other men around him, like he could have stepped out of olden times. He’s got on a white shirt very ironed and with no collar and a black rough suit. I smile up at him again but he’s gone.

I turn round back to Mum and she’s taking a plastic bag of books from the lady behind the stall.

But even inside she wants to hold my hand tight, tight every second. That’s OK at first but if I want to stop at a stall and hold a book it’s annoying.

‘Look.’ I point over. ‘Look over there.’ There’s puppets of knights and horses hanging up and jiggling about by themselves. I want to go right up to them and see how they work.

She doesn’t even hear and her hand’s feeling sweaty and slippery so I make mine stiff like a claw so it’ll be difficult to hold.

‘If you don’t hold my hand, we’ll have to go straight home.’ She’s sounding tired and cross and I’m really angry with her now for spoiling our lovely day. I try to nip the anger back in and explain.

‘It’s just that I want to look at books and I can’t because you won’t let me go.’

‘Well, we can stop holding hands when we get to a stall. How about that?’ She smiles a stiff little smile that’s not real.

I say, ‘Oh, alright then.’ I still feel cross with her because it’s not fun any more now I know she’s not enjoying it.

We come to a stall piled up high.

‘Let’s look at this one.’ I only say that because I want a rest from her.

I look at the books and they’re so babyish — Where’s Spot? and things like that. I don’t want to go back to being yanked about so I look very slowly and carefully. Spot with his bone, Spot’s day out. And the baby books make me feel even crosser but I carry on looking anyway, picking each one up.

‘Why d’you want to look at those, Carmel? They’re for little kids.’

‘I want to look at those fairy stories over there.’ I go moving up the table.

I turn over the pages of a fairy story book. The drawings aren’t that good but I look at each one anyway: the princess with her pea; Cinderella in rags; the wolf looking silly in a frilly red cloak. I move up to look at something else. People press around me and I’m being whacked on the back of my head with someone’s handbag.

I’m in such a bad mood now. It’s not often I feel like this and I don’t like it. It’s like everything’s wrong — especially me. Now I just want to be on my own. To go back to this morning in my room when the sky was blue and everything was lovely. Everyone has come into this tent now the storytelling has stopped for lunch and people want to buy something and get out of the rain. I’m getting so squashed I think the table is going to cut me in half.

Then I have an idea — to scrunch myself right down and walk like I saw a toad walk once, till I’m under the table. So I do — the tablecloth only comes halfway down but it feels free and safe and secret under there. I decide to look out for Mum’s boots that she’s got her jeans tucked into and then I’ll come out.

There’s a box of books and I take a peek into it and there’s piles of the book I used to read when I was little about a skeleton. I take one out and it’s not like when I was seeing Spot the dog. I don’t feel babyish, it’s like being back little again but I like the feeling it gives me this time. So I read Funnybones and look at the pictures. Sometimes I touch them too, I don’t know why.

When I get to the end I realise I might have been ages. But I’m not sure. Sometimes things happen so it feels like I’m not really there at all. It’s like the time the headmaster was talking about when I was sitting on the bench — looking at a tree blowing about — somehow my brain got slipped and in the world there was only me and the tree. Then it slipped more and I was in a creepy dark tunnel where I’d been before but that day was the longest time it had happened for. Though I didn’t want to try and tell them about that.

And just now the same thing happened with Funnybones and there was the book and me but I didn’t go as far as the tunnel. I went back to being five for all that time and it had felt nice.

There’s less legs now so I crawl out. I’m a bit worried that I might have been a long time, I’m not sure. I look about and can’t see Mum.

I carry on picking up books. I don’t know what else to do. I should look for her, I decide. Maybe I’ll find her waiting for me at the end of the table but I get to the end and she’s not there. I stand there for a bit. Then I think, she must have got pushed back by the people and I try to look but I can’t find the back of where everyone’s standing. They just seem to melt into other people and it’s the opposite from earlier, I’m longing to see her now. My breath starts coming in and out quickly because I want to find her so much. I walk round the tent for a while. I go back to the same table where I lost her — twice, three times — and she’s still not there so I walk out of the tent and across the field.