Promise, said Daniel, towards the end.
Promise? I said to Carla, when I asked her not to steal again.
‘Promise,’ Joe Thomas now says.
We go out of the room. The officer looks at his watch. ‘Can you sign yourself out,’ he says curtly. ‘I need to be somewhere else.’
I find myself walking down the corridor towards the office, side by side with my client.
We pass a large man in an orange tracksuit. ‘Still on for this afternoon?’ he says to Joe.
‘Three p.m. on the dot,’ he says. ‘In the community lounge. Looking forward to it.’ Then Joe turns to me. ‘Table football.’
When I first came here, the officer had described Joe as arrogant, but that exchange had sounded quite friendly. It gives me the courage to bring up something that’s been worrying me.
‘How did you know on my first visit that I’d just got married?’
He shrugs. ‘I always read The Times every day from cover to cover. I have a photographic memory, Lily. Macdonald is an army name. It comes up every now and then.’
Even though I’d first introduced myself to Joe (according to my boss’s instructions) as Lily Macdonald, I feel the urgent need to put some distance between us here. Tell him to refer to me from now on as Mrs Macdonald in a bid to stop him getting personal. Despite the thoughts that are coming into my head.
Luckily, unlike sugar, Sellotape, crisps and sharp implements, I can hide them all.
I have to.
10
Carla
THEEF.
They had spelled it wrong. Carla knew that because she had skipped ahead to the ‘T’s in the Children’s Dictionary.
If she screamed loud enough, Carla told herself, Charlie would be made whole again. Just like Jesus was, even after they’d put the nails in. The priest had told them about it at Mass last Easter. (She and Mamma didn’t go to church very often, although Mamma prayed all the time. Mamma said there were some things that even God couldn’t understand.)
THEEF.
If she continued to scream, those horrid red letters would disappear and Charlie’s poor ripped body would suddenly become whole like our blessed Lord’s. That missing black eye would be back where it belonged, and he would wink at her. Did you think I would leave you? he would say.
And then she’d hold him to her and his soft green fur would make her feel good again.
But the screaming wasn’t working. Not like it did in the flat when she wanted something and Mamma would give in because the walls were thin or because the man with the shiny car was coming round any minute.
‘What on earth is going on?’
A tall, thin, wiry woman marched into the classroom. Carla didn’t like this teacher. She had a habit of pulling off her spectacles and looking at you as if she knew – really knew – what you were thinking. ‘Is that what you’re crying about?’ The teacher – who had a thin bony nose – pointed to Charlie’s remains. ‘This old thing?’
Carla’s gulps spilled out over each other. ‘It’s not an old thing. It’s Charlie. My caterpillar. Someone’s stabbed him. Look.’
‘Stabbed? What a melodramatic word!’ The glasses were coming off. They stared at her from the teacher’s hand. Two pairs of glass eyes made of blue metal.
‘Now stop crying.’
‘Charlie. CHARLIE!’
Too late. The horrible teacher had yanked him out of her hands and walked away. Then the school bell sounded and a tide of children poured into the classroom, including a girl who’d been friendly with Kevin, the boy who used to own Charlie.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Carla hissed, waving the felt-tip note in front of her.
The girl looked at it briefly. ‘Thief,’ she said loudly. ‘That’s what you are. We know what you did.’
‘Thief, thief,’ said someone else.
Then they were all doing it. ‘Thief, thief. Carla Spagoletti is a thief!’
The chanting made her head scream inside.
‘What’s all that noise?’ The bony-nosed teacher was back.
‘What have you done with my Charlie?’ sobbed Carla.
‘If you’re talking about that broken old pencil case, it’s in the dustbins outside. I’m sure your mother will buy you another. Now behave yourself, young lady, or I will give you detention.’
Charlie wasn’t really dead. Instead, he was mixed up with eggshells and Brussels sprout peelings and teabags. Carla had to dig deep into the bin to find him, and by the time she did, her uniform was stained and smelly.
‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered. ‘It will be all right.’ Then carefully, very carefully, she held him in her arms while waiting around the corner for Mamma. (If she’d stayed at the school gates, someone would have wanted to know what she was doing there.)
It didn’t matter that Charlie wasn’t speaking. She only had to wait for three days and then he would be all right again. It would be the same for all of them. The priest had said so.
But now, the more she shifted from one foot to another, the more Carla began to wonder if she and Mamma had missed each other. All the other children had gone home. Even the teachers.
The sky was dark. It would nearly be winter in the valley at home. The cold months there, Mamma often said wistfully, were wonderful! There was always a fire with loved ones sitting round it. Their sing-songs and their arms warmed you up, sent fire through your belly. Not like here where the greedy electric meter gobbled up coins.
Start walking. At first, Charlie’s voice was so soft that she hardly heard it. Then it got louder.
‘I knew you’d get better,’ she said, gently stroking his poor torn, stained fur.
But which way should she go? Maybe right at the crossroads. Now where was she? Perhaps she ought to go left now. Usually, when Mamma met her, they danced along the pavements so fast that it was hard to keep track of the lefts and the rights and the lefts again. They would chatter too about their day. (‘There is this new perfume, my little one. My manageress, she has lent me a brand-new bottle to try it out. Smell it! What do you think?’)
And she would tell Mamma about hers while crossing her fingers. (‘I got top marks in maths again.’)
They’d passed a park now. Was it a different one from the park near their home? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe if they went on, she might spot the shop where she and Mamma sometimes stopped to look at the magazines. ‘You must buy if you want to look,’ the man at the counter would tell them. But so far, there was no sign of the man or his shop. Carla felt her chest tighten and her palms sweat. Where were they?
Look, whispered Charlie weakly. Over there.
A shiny car! The same blue shiny car that sometimes parked outside their flat on a Tuesday or Thursday evening and sometimes on a Sunday.
But today was Monday.
It is Larry, whispered Charlie again. See the hat?
But the woman sitting next to him was not Mamma. Her hair was even blonder than Lily’s – yellowy white – and her lipstick was bright red.
Now Larry was pressing the lady’s lips hard. The teacher had shown them a film about that. If someone stopped breathing, you had to make your own breath mix with theirs to give them life.
Feverishly, Carla knocked on the window of the car. ‘Are you all right?’
Instantly, the yellow-white-haired woman and Larry sprang apart. There was red on his mouth too. Carla felt her heart pounding.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he shouted.
It was a loud shout that came through the window even though it was closed. It hurt her ears.
‘I’m lost.’ Carla didn’t mean to cry, but now that she was safe, she could admit she’d been scared walking down those roads, in the dark. ‘Charlie made me late and Mamma wasn’t at the gate. I think she may have gone home. Or else she is late from work again …’
‘What’s she saying, Larry love?’
Only then did Carla realize she had lapsed into the mother language.
‘Wait there.’