‘They’re not. Not like angels.’
‘Well, to tell the truth Lorna, I’ve always thought angels look a bit silly.’
The child peered at her doubtfully. ‘They’re not silly. They’re from heaven.’
‘Well, they look silly to me. Silly wings, and silly white clothes, and flying about playing a harp. I’d much rather live in the world and be a villager.’
‘Why?’
‘Well. If you’re an angel you can’t eat food, or have a pet, or watch TV, or do anything fun. You have to be extra good all the time and that must be a bit boring.’
Lorna let slip a little huff of surprised assent. She shifted her weight. ‘Were you in school plays?’
‘Certainly. Once I was a door. And once I was a wall. And twice I was a cloud.’
‘A door!’ Lorna laughed. ‘How could you be a door?’
‘Well, I think maybe I was a bit naughty and so they made me be a door as a punishment or something. I would have loved to have been a villager.’ Claire had been too shy for a real part, and so the teacher had made her hold the cardboard stable door. But the punishment story would resonate more with Lorna.
There was a silence. Claire shivered. ‘I’m cold now, Lorna. Let’s go. I have chocolate fingers in my bag but it’s in the staffroom. Let’s go there and warm up a bit, and you can have a couple if you want while we wait for your mum.’ She backed out into the dark, windy playground. After a long while, Lorna appeared, all eyes in the gloom, and something dropped something onto the floor. A yellow highlighter pen. ‘Lorna, did you drop something?’
The girl turned blank eyes towards her. ‘No. I can’t see anything.’
‘This pen?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. Well, let’s pick it up and take it inside. We’re always running out of pens in the infants. What do you do? Eat them?’
Lorna giggled, ‘Can’t eat pens!’
‘Well, they’re always disappearing. Come on, it’s cold. Lorna, where are your shoes?’
‘In the house thing.’
‘Go and get them, and your socks too!’
The girl squirmed and looked at the floor. ‘They’re too small. Hurt my feet.’
‘Well, go and get them anyway.’
The shoes, when she produced them, were cracked and one sole flapped like a gaping mouth. Claire helped her on with her dirty socks and tried to shove her feet into the shoes, but they were clearly too small. ‘How have you been wearing them?’
‘I take them off when I’m sitting down.’
‘But you have to walk in them sometimes, don’t you?’
‘Tiptoes.’
‘OK, look, let’s – jam them on somehow. Look, if we press down the back you can put them on like slippers. See? You really need some new ones . . .’
‘Can I have those chocolate fingers?’
‘Let’s get into the school. Can you walk with your shoes like that? Just shuffle then. Come on, let’s get out of the cold.’
They’d walked inside together, and the shoe situation had been the thing Claire had remembered about the incident, not the crayons. And in light of what had happened after that, the memory of how the whole thing started had hardly seemed significant. Until the staff meeting. But, like she’d said, crayons went missing all the time. And a few of them were in the playhouse? Lorna had picked them up? What did that signify? Nothing.
7
Nobody had answered the phone at Lorna’s house, and Claire wrestled with the school database till she found the address, because Lorna didn’t seem to know the exact address, just the name of the estate Claire was familiar with through court notices in the local paper.
The caretaker had been hovering around them for the last half an hour, hissing impatiently. He wanted to close up.
‘Well, Lorna, it looks as if I’m taking you home.’ Claire helped the girl on with her coat and pushed the heavy door to the playground with one shoulder. Lorna skipped ahead towards the lone car in the car park.
‘I’m going to your house?’
‘No! I’m taking you to your house.’
‘Can I come to yours instead?’
‘Oh Lorna, no. Your parents will be worried about you. Your brother too.’
‘They won’t.’
Claire didn’t really want to carry on down this path, because she was sure Lorna was right. The caretaker turned all the lights off before they got to the car. Lorna stumbled in the dark, and pulled on Claire’s coat.
‘It’s spooky out here.’
‘You can get in the front and I’ll make sure the heating’s on. Right, now. I know your address, but I’m not sure exactly how to get there. Can you tell me when we’re close by?’
Lorna folded herself stiffly in the front seat of the little Fiesta, her toes only just touching the floor. ‘I don’t know it in the dark,’ she murmured.
‘Well, it gets dark early now, it’s nearly Christmas. Do you have Christmas at home Lorna, or do you go to your grandparents?’
The girl was drawing pictures in the window fog. ‘Oh yes. Yes, all the grandparents come over, and my aunties and uncles and we have a big party,’ she replied tonelessly.
‘That sounds lovely.’
‘It is,’ said Lorna, turning around, suddenly animated, ‘it really is. There’s lots of cake and crackers. And sweets. My Uncle Dale does magic tricks. And we play games too.’
‘What kind of games?’
‘Um. Party games? And sing-songs. Christmas songs. It’s fun.’
‘It sounds like fun,’ said Claire, thinking about her Christmases – alone with Mother, barely different from any other day really. ‘It sounds like a lot of fun.’ They were driving through the town centre now, past the forlorn little shopping arcade, the freezing bus stops, the all-day drinkers.
‘And then we all go to the fair.’
‘A fair on Christmas Day?’
‘No, not the fair,’ the child groped for a different word. ‘The circus? And we feed the animals because my Uncle Dale knows the owners. They have elephants and little dogs that do tricks and my mum’s friend swings on the trapeze. They say that I can join the circus when I’m sixteen. I can balance on the string thing.’
‘The high wire?’
‘Yeah. And the day after Christmas we go to the seaside.’