Ann Troup - The Lost Child

Elaine had to stifle an indignant laugh, ‘When did you get to be so wise, kiddo?’

Brodie shrugged again. ‘When I realised that all these shenanigans are a bit fucking pointless.’

Elaine raised her eyebrows, ‘Nice language,’ she said censoriously.

‘Well, sorry but it’s true.’ Brodie raised a hand and pointed a grubby finger at Elaine’s neck. ‘You wear that scarf thinking that people won’t notice your scar, but the fact that you keep touching the bloody thing every two seconds gives it away. We’re all wondering what’s underneath.’

‘Do I?’ Elaine asked. Her hand reached up again as if it had received a curtain call.

‘All the bloody time! Look at you.’

Suddenly self-conscious, Elaine rammed her hands into her pockets. The urge to check the scarf was immense.

This girl was right. Elaine knew it, she had always known it, but didn’t know how else to be. ‘So why do you keep dressing like that if you know why you’re doing it and it doesn’t work?’ she said in a desperate attempt to flip the attention elsewhere.

Brodie mirrored her by putting her own hands in her baggy pockets. ‘Because my mum’s on benefits and we can’t afford new ones.’ she said bluntly.

‘Right, then we’ll go into town tomorrow and I’ll buy you a whole new wardrobe.’ Elaine slapped the gauntlet down, challenging the girl to beat her and assuming that age would trump gumption. It didn’t work.

Brodie rolled her eyes. ‘Nice one, lovely. That’ll work. Perhaps we can buy a few new scarves while we’re at it.’

Elaine folded her arms, ‘Oh, I see, like that is it?’ She leaned her weight on one hip and regarded Brodie with a mixture of amusement, affront and a tiny bit of admiration.

Brodie’s thin face broke into a sly smirk. ‘Yep. It is,’ she said. Her tongue was literally in her cheek. ‘Anyway, I like being scary. What’s your excuse?’

Elaine sighed, her indignation deflating like a tired balloon. ‘I’m a creature of habit, warts and all. Come on, Miriam will be wondering where you are and I’ve got things to do.’

They walked on, Brodie skipping ahead and kicking at loose stones. She danced around like a drunken football fan, reeling and rolling as she played in the dirt. Elaine envied her the freedom and her youth. Sometimes Elaine felt that she had been born old, like Benjamin Button, except she didn’t get to do the getting younger thing.

At Miriam’s gate they paused and Brodie turned to Elaine, ‘Are you really going to buy me something tomorrow?’ she asked with a sly smile, ‘Only there’s a really nice hoodie in the Animal shop. They do scarves too.’ she added, her tone turning hopeful.

Elaine laughed and slowly shook her head from side to side, a look of wry amusement on her face. ‘We’ll see, you cheeky little mare’.

Brodie beamed at her, and like lightning planted a feathery kiss on her cheek before vaulting over the gate and disappearing into the cottage.

Elaine stared after her for a moment. The infinitesimal weight of the kiss tingled on her cheek like the sting of a tiny, invisible tattoo. She reached up and touched the place where it sat and realised that she was smiling.

*

Alone in the cottage, all thoughts of the tasks Elaine had in mind disintegrated. Burned by unimportance, they fluttered away like ashes on the wind and she was left wondering what to do with herself. Brodie’s observations had made her brave and she took the decision to go upstairs and establish what all the fuss was about.

In front of a black pocked mirror in the bathroom she unwound the scarf and looked, for the first time in a long time, at the ragged scar that punctuated her skin like a Rubicon of angry lava. It ran from the left side of her neck along her collarbone and terminated at the top of her left breast. It was her brand, the mark that divided her from the concept of normal and set her apart from others. Jean had hated it and had forced the habit of keeping it covered. When she’d been a child it had been polo neck sweaters and stiff lace collars and she’d had the constant sense that she was being slowly suffocated. Her face twisted with anguish at the memory and she reached once more for her scarf. Concluding that she was better off with the devil she knew, she carefully wound the fabric around her neck and patted it into place. The motion dislodged a few grains of Jean, which had collected in the folds of fabric. They fell, seeding the room with smouldering discontent.

Chapter Four

Rosemary Tyler looked up from her washing up and peered out of the window. She could see Derry bouncing about at the end of the garden like an overexcited puppy. He was with someone. Ire rising, she strained up to see who was goading her brother now. She saw a woman talking to him. A young woman, who Rosemary didn’t recognise. At first.

Grabbing up a tea towel she strode to the door and marched down the overgrown path, grinding her wet hands into the fabric as she went. ‘Oi, Derry. Inside, now!’

Derry straightened at the sound of his sister’s voice and like a well trained dog he immediately scuttled inside the house. He shied away from Rosemary as he passed, as if expecting a vicious flick from the wet fabric that she held in her hands.

Rosemary saw, with a glimmer of satisfaction, that the stranger was wrong-footed by this. She planted herself behind the gate, folded her arms and said, ‘Can I help you?’ in a tone that conveyed that she had no intention of doing any such thing.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, I’m looking for the house where Ruby Tyler used to live. The lady in the post office told me it was along here, but I can’t seem to find it.’

Rosemary appraised the woman before her. She seemed the timid type, the type that apologised for breathing. ‘This is it, I’m Ruby’s daughter. What’s your business here?’

The woman swallowed, ‘I’m Elaine Ellis, Joan’s daughter?’

‘Am I supposed to know who you’re talking about?’ Rosemary was already impatient with this wilting violet, she had made up her mind to be the minute she had clapped eyes on her.

‘Ruby was my mother’s aunt.’ Elaine explained feebly. She took a step back.

Rosemary wrinkled her brow, the gears of her memory engaging and grinding back the years – she needed to play this cautiously, you never knew what people might be after. ‘Do you mean Jean Burroughs? Jean that moved away?’

‘Yes, sorry, Burroughs was her maiden name.’ Elaine nodded with relief.

‘Bloody hell, I haven’t seen Jean in thirty odd years. No great loss, we weren’t close.’ Rosemary delivered the words with the addition of a dismissive flick of her tea towel. ‘Anyway, what brings you here? If she’s hoping my mum left her any money she’s barking up the wrong tree, all we got was this shit hole and a pile of debts,’ she laughed and indicated the ramshackle building that stood behind her.

‘Oh no, nothing like that. It’s just that she died not long ago, and she sometimes talked about Ruby and here and I was hoping to scatter her ashes in Ruby’s garden…’ Elaine trailed off as both women surveyed the scrubby land that had been used for years as a laissez faire scrapyard. The rusted hulk of an old car nestled among the weeds whilst scrawny chickens pecked and scratched in the dirt. A pair of ageing German Shepherds eyed them lazily from where they lay chained to a post.

Rosemary raised an eyebrow and stared at Elaine with amused scorn. Then she laughed, so much that she had to bend down and brace her hands on her knees in order to catch her next wheezing breath. Rising, she flapped the tea towel at Elaine, ‘Sorry love, but you really do have to see the funny side.’

Elaine looked down at the plastic wrapped urn she carried in her hands then back up at the wasteland of the garden. It certainly wasn’t the bluebell and foxglove paradise she had envisioned. The thought of those grizzled bantams pecking at her mother’s grainy remains and pooping them out amongst the weeds struck a chord within her too, and much to her shame she found it hilarious.