I didn’t reply, of course I didn’t. But I did want to see the rabbits and I was getting hungry. I had no idea what time it was, or even whether it was morning or afternoon, but I knew I was ravenous. He must have heard my feet.
‘Lenny, if you’re going through to the front perhaps you could bring me my stick. It’s beside the rocking chair. This bench is a little low and I’m having trouble getting up.’
Again I didn’t reply.
‘Lenny?’
I’d heard him but I was halfway gone.
Rosie and Miss Weatherbeaten were sitting on the front step of the hut. There was a little overhang of the roof with enough room beneath it for two chairs. But there weren’t any chairs so they just sat on the step. They had jam sandwiches in their hands and were sitting together but with a distance of two feet between them. Rosie was watching Miss Weatherbeaten intently over the top of her sandwich. She had jam on the end of her nose.
‘There’s a sandwich for you on the dresser,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten.
I went back in for the sandwich.
‘Take Mr Tait his stick first, Lenny. That’s his bread you’re eating,’ she said.
I was so hungry I’d eaten most of the sandwich before I got back to him. I handed him the stick.
‘Lenny . . . ,’ he said, before I could escape.
‘When are we going to find Mavis and my mum?’ I interrupted him.
‘Could I please have a sandwich too?’ he interrupted back.
I looked at the crust in my hand. Mavis. She always made a fuss about crusts and I had to show her you just had to eat them.
I had just stepped out the back door and given him his sandwich when there was a bang, and then another, and then another and before I knew it I was back inside the mouth of the door, back against the wall with my heart thumping, just like it was a close mouth on Kilbowie Road. I heard a thwack against the side of the hut from roughly where Mr Tait was sitting, followed by, ‘Ow!’
While I was still standing there he appeared in the doorway rubbing the back of his head with his hand.
‘What was that?’ I breathed.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ he said. ‘What a fright!’ He laughed and hung onto the door and patted his chest. ‘Are you okay?’
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘It’s the sound of a sheet of wood being dropped on another sheet of wood, or something like that.’
There was another sound, one which I recognised as a hammer, bang, bang, bang, on a nail, bang, bang, bang, on wood. I’d heard that sound at my uncle’s house when he and my dad were building the hen coop. I wondered if there were hen coops here. We hadn’t stayed long enough to see my uncle’s hens, and then the war started and they both went away. I didn’t mind that sound once I knew what it was, but my heart thumped anyway.
‘Lenny, will you come and sit with me on the bench, please?’ said Mr Tait.
I didn’t reply.
‘Please?’ he said. ‘I want to tell you something that’s really quite important.’
The funny thing about Mr Tait was that despite being a scary man with a big stick for naughty kids like me, he had a very soft voice, a very kind voice, and he had given us all his food from his little brown suitcase, even though he didn’t really know any of us, and he’d walked over the hills with us in the middle of the night when he could have stayed at home in his shelter, though to be fair, his shelter was horrible and dark, his home was destroyed and it had that woman’s face in the bricks.
And when he said he had something important to tell me I didn’t really want to know because important things might be things about Mavis or my mum that weren’t the things I wanted to hear. They might not be the good news that they were alright and were on their way to Carbeth. What a lovely thought that was, Mum and Mavis walking over the hill on their way to here!
So I stayed right there against the wall at the end of the bunk beds while Mr Tait shuffled about at the back door. Finally he slid down onto the doorstep and made himself comfortable there with his back to me. I looked at the top of his head while he spoke. I could actually see the top of his head and not just his hair. The skin there was white, whiter than his grey hair and it was full of grit, and I wondered if that was what I had inside me. It certainly felt like that sort of grit that was inside of me, as if the bombs and the noise had gone right through my skin and inside my very flesh so that I couldn’t get it out. It wasn’t the kind of grit I had hoped he’d meant.
‘I just wanted to tell you not to be scared now,’ he said, ‘and whenever you get a fright, like that fright that we just had, just keep reminding yourself that you’re safe now. Look at this lovely place! How could we be anything but safe here?’
George, the killer bomber, puttered away in the distance. I listened to his drone until it died. Of course I’m not scared, I wanted to say, not of the killer bees, not really. But I was scared of him and of Miss Weatherbeaten and of the bad boys and Bella who thought I was a boy. I was scared to think certain things; I was scared of what I saw when I closed my eyes. I was scared of . . . .
I looked at the top of his head again. I was scared of not having grit. I was scared of being a jelly that couldn’t stand up. I flexed my knees to make sure, my back still flat against the white wooden wall.
‘I’m not scared,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said, and I thought he might be secretly laughing at me. ‘But when you get a fright like that just remember that all this will pass, this jumpiness and f . . . and worry.’
‘I’m not scared,’ I insisted. Wasn’t he listening? What was the point in talking if he wasn’t going to listen? ‘I’m going to walk back over and find Mavis,’ I said.
I hadn’t really thought about this; it just came out, and then I suddenly remembered something odd that he’d said earlier on.
‘How do you know I’m tough like my mother?’ I said.
‘I work at Singers.’
‘You know my mum?’ My back came off the wall.
‘Yes.’
I didn’t know what to ask him then so I stood there with this strange piece of news and let my mouth hang open in readiness.
‘Oh, look, there’s those rabbits back again,’ he said.
I nearly looked out the door, so nearly, but I stopped myself just in time.
‘So you know my mum,’ I said, still trying to understand.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was me who identified her when they pulled her out, remember?’
‘No!’ I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to see it.
‘And I know your dad is gone,’ he said. ‘Lenny, come out here and see the rabbits. Don’t be hiding in there. They seem to have a burrow somewhere over there. Come on. Come and have a look.’
He stood up from the step and I saw him wobble and grab the door jamb to steady himself, so I had to go and look, and he was right, there really were four little brown rabbits in amongst the grass, only about ten feet away, their little white tails bobbing in a sea of green and pale yellow so you couldn’t lose them in the shadows. They were different from my friend’s rabbit, not so brown and their ears weren’t black, but as soon as I came off the doorstep they ran leaping into the bushes in a great panic. Run, rabbit, run, just like in the song, except I didn’t have a gun.
‘How was she?’ I said. I was back inside the door again. He was leaning on the wall outside.
‘She was drowsy and couldn’t speak very well,’ he said. ‘That’s why I had to tell them who she was, and her legs didn’t look very good, but the rest of her was fine I think. I don’t know. But she’s in safe hands.’
‘So she’s . . . ?’
‘She’s alright. We’ll just have to wait and see.’
‘She’s not going to die?’
‘I don’t think so. We need to wait and see. You know this is Sunday? Perhaps we should say a little prayer for her.’
‘So she didn’t say anything about me, or Mavis?’
‘Only that she wouldn’t leave without you and Mavis. Not at first.’
I felt like my throat had been torn out. I couldn’t speak. Then he said what I already knew, ‘We don’t know which hospital she’s in but there aren’t that many hospitals and that’s what the communication centre at the town hall is for. They’ll be able to tell us where she is.’
‘That’s where I’ll have to go then. Today,’ I said. There was a pause. I noticed his hands were trembling a bit. Perhaps it was the cold breeze.
‘What about a little prayer then?’ he said, and although I knew my mum didn’t really like prayers, I thought any little bit would help, which is what my gran says, any little bit helps, and anyway I was sort of praying already, only it was more like wishing extra hard and promising to be good and to never let Mavis out of my sight ever again once I’d got her back.
So I didn’t reply and he started to pray, right there at the back step leaning against the wall, and his voice went softer than anything, softer than the wind that was tickling my neck, softer than the hair on a rabbit’s back, softer than Rosie’s whisper in the night.
‘Dear God,’ he said (like he was writing God a letter). ‘Dear God, please make sure Lenny’s mum and Mavis are alright and bring them safely to us here as soon as possible. Amen.’
It was like he’d heard the wishing inside my head and I looked down and saw my tears make little wet dots on the rag rug so that the grey-blue was purple and the yellow-brown was orange, and I sniffed back the snotters and wiped them on the sleeve of my new green dress.
The shoe! Mavis’s shoe! I didn’t have my old dress on so I didn’t have her shoe.
‘Oh!’ I cried and started pulling at the covers of the bed where Rosie and I had slept. Mr Tait’s shadow fell over it. ‘I can’t see! I can’t see! Out of the way!’ I said and I pulled at the blankets until everything was all over the floor. Tangled up in the sheet I found the torn remnants of my dress with the shoe still in its pocket.
I looked up at Mr Tait who was in the room now to the side of the door so the light could get through. It was the first time I’d actually looked at him. He was a bit blurry because I still had tears in my eyes and he looked at me, then looked away, then looked at me again. This wasn’t his room. It wasn’t mine either. I pulled the shoe out of its pocket and waved it at him by way of explanation.
‘Mavis’s?’ he said.
I nodded.
He seemed to be going to say something but it was me that spoke first.
‘It’s very quiet. Where’s Rosie?’
I didn’t wait for him to answer; how would he know anyway?
They weren’t on the front step, or anywhere I could see from the front step. I still had my ripped-up dress in my hand with Mavis’s shoe in the pocket. I wrapped my hand round the pocket and squeezed and squeezed. I didn’t want to go out there, but I had to find Rosie, so I stood on the little creaky front doorstep and shouted.
‘Rosie!’ I shouted. ‘Rosie! Come back here now! Rosie!’ I didn’t shout very loud to begin with because I didn’t want anyone but her to hear me, but when she didn’t come, when no-one else came except Mr Tait who I could feel standing behind me with his stick, I shouted a bit louder.
‘Lenny,’ said Mr Tait.
‘Rosie!’ I said, louder still. ‘Got to find Rosie,’ I told Mr Tait, in case he hadn’t realised. ‘Rosie!’
I stepped out onto the little muddy bit by the front door so that my shouts would carry further.
‘Lenny, she’s fine,’ he said, as if I was listening. ‘She’s with Miss Wetherspoon.’
‘Rosie,’ I shouted again. That sickness began to rise again and I thought I’d lose my jammy piece that I’d just eaten. Bang, bang, bang went my heart, and my ears were hot. Bang, bang, bang went the hammer on the fallen pieces of wood. Boom-crash went the bomb, and I fell back over the doorstep onto the bit where the chairs should have been and landed on my bottom. I banged my elbow on the hut wall on the way down.
Mr Tait and his wobbly legs bent down to help me back up. He took me inside the room and sat me on the old sofa then he went straight back outside with his stick and started shouting for Rosie. I was scared for her, scared for her being out there on her own, and scared for her being with Miss Weatherbeaten, so I crept over and watched him through the window, the same window that had been behind the dark-green leafy curtains with the threads hanging down the night before. He went over to the big beech tree with the rope swing, still calling her name, and hobbling very badly with his stick. There were people there that I hadn’t noticed and they pulled back to let him through, and just for a second I saw her.
I saw Rosie.
She was on the rope swing, her new blue dress all puffed out by the wind as she glided forward and then sucked back along her legs as she swung back. Her hands gripped the rope as tight as could be and her face was flushed with delight. She was flushed with delight even though I knew her whole family was dead, and she just wouldn’t hear it.
Miss Weatherbeaten was hovering about, ready to catch Rosie if she fell off. She had on her coat with the furry collar. There was still dirt all down it, as if she hadn’t even shaken it, waiting for the wind to shake it for her I suppose. She was smiling too. Didn’t she care that she’d lost her very close friend? Didn’t it matter? Maybe the friend wasn’t important after all but still I was annoyed with her for smiling like that and with Rosie for going off without telling me and for going with Miss Weatherbeaten, and to the rope swing of all places, which I was dying to have a go on but couldn’t!
Mr Tait stayed where he was, perhaps the ground was too rough for him to go any further, but he waved first at Miss Weatherbeaten and then at Rosie, and some voices drifted down the hill and through the open door of the hut and right into the room where I sat watching by the window.
‘. . . flying . . . ,’ I heard Rosie say.
Other voices I didn’t know made those stupid whooping noises people always make to little kids.
Mr Tait started coming back down the hill towards me. I went and sat back on the sofa where he’d left me. The horse over the stove was galloping in the wind from the door. The glass on the stove door was black. Mr Tait was taking a very long time. I looked at the glass door and it began to worry me. It was very dark and I thought I’d better not get too close, just in case it blew out like the glass in our fanlight at home, so I got off the sofa and went and sat on the floor by the dresser so that I could look out from the shadows over the grass and up to the big tree with the rope swing and all the people gathered round it. Mr Tait was nowhere to be seen.
There was no ticking clock in that hut like there was in our house, even though there were three-and-a-half rooms in there and we only had one, and I wondered how anyone knew when to go to school or to work (I didn’t know the huts were only meant for holidays and weekends), and I wondered for the first time about the people who lived there, the people whose hut we had broken into like thieves. What if they just arrived right there and then and found crumbs on their floor and their beds all slept in and unmade?
Mr Tait and Mrs Mags, from the other hut, suddenly arrived and startled me.
‘Oh!’ said Mrs Mags, who was startled too. ‘I didn’t see you there in the corner.’
I didn’t reply.
‘Lenny, Mrs Mags is talking to you,’ said Mr Tait.
I stood up.
‘Lenny,’ said Mrs Mags, turning my name over in her mouth. ‘What’s that short for, then?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Lenny?’ said Mr Tait, egging me on.
I hugged the shadows.
‘It’s short for Leonora, I think, isn’t that right, Lenny?’ he said.
How did he know, nosey parker? It’s none of his business what my name is. He’s not my dad. Lenny is my dad, short for Leonard. Leonard Gillespie. Lenny. Like my dad. Missing presumed dead. Missing.
‘Mrs Mags has kindly boiled some water for you to have a bath in,’ said Mr Tait in his soft voice.
Was he mad? I didn’t have time for a bath. It must be at least lunchtime and we still hadn’t set off to find Mavis and my mum.
‘I was going to bring it over here,’ said Mrs Mags, ‘but your stove’s gone out so you’d better come over to ours and we’ll close all the curtains. Mr Tait and I will make sure nobody disturbs you.’
I imagined Mr Tait standing guard outside the door with his big stick, waving it at George the bad boy.
Rosie and Miss Weatherbeaten arrived in the doorway, throwing more shadows over me.
‘How kind!’ said Miss Weatherbeaten to Mrs Mags when she heard about the bath plan, and then they got more and more excited, or so it seemed, at the idea of getting our stove warmed up and of filling a proper tin bath in front of it and putting me in it and then putting Rosie in it, and I squashed myself up against the wall in the shadows behind the dresser where they seemed to barely notice me again, and I closed my eyes and stuck my thumbs back in my ears so that I couldn’t hear them talking or the bang, bang, bang of the hammer further down the field.
So it gave me quite a jolt when I felt Rosie slip her arm around my back, and before I knew it I’d hit her on the head, a big whack over her ear. I don’t know who was more upset, Rosie, me or Miss Weatherbeaten and, as if I was doing everything I possibly could to make things worse, I shouted at Rosie to never run away from me again, ever. I shouted it really loud so that I cut through all the friendliness of the grown-ups and a great big silence came crashing down on us.
Poor Rosie’s eyes filled up and she ran back to where Miss Weatherbeaten was standing by the stove and disappeared into her big coat with the old-fashioned furry collar. They all stared at me in horror, Miss Weatherbeaten, Mrs Mags and Mr Tait, so I came out of the shadows and pushed past them all, bouncing off Mrs Mags’s big round tummy and ran into the little bunk room at the back and hurled myself onto the bed Rosie and I had slept in. I pulled the covers around my ears so that I wouldn’t have to listen to them being angry with me, and I wouldn’t have to listen to Rosie sobbing again, especially seeing as it was all my fault.
A strange silence fell.
A little while later Miss Weatherbeaten came through and shut the back door with a snap. I heard her stop by the bed then move on back through to the stove room, and when I stuck my head over the blankets I could smell coal being lit in the stove, a wisp of smoke hanging between the bunks. The sun had stopped beaming in the little window on the door and the room was cold, even though I was under the covers. I got scared again because no-one had come to give me a row for hitting Rosie and shouting at her, which is what they should have done because it was a terrible thing to do to poor Rosie who’d lost all her family, all dead and gone, when all I had to worry about was Mavis, missing presumed dead, and my mum’s legs.
It had gone very quiet through there. No-one was moving and I think Mrs Mags must have gone. Miss Weatherbeaten had a louder voice than Mr Tait, quite high and piercing, especially when she was being a teacher, but Mr Tait’s voice seemed to carry right through the hut, even though it was soft, so that I could hear what he said better than I could hear her.
‘She’s right, you know, Rosie,’ he was saying. ‘You must always tell us where you are. Most especially you must always tell Lenny where you are. She’d be so upset to lose you.’
‘But Mr Tait, she was with me. She was perfectly safe,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten. ‘Surely as long as one of us knows where they are . . . ?’
‘Yes, but Lenny didn’t know she was safe. Perhaps just for now we should always tell each other where we are, all four of us, even if we’re only going outside for a little sit, or to the . . . the back,’ he said. The cludgie is what he meant.
‘I’m not sure Lenny deserves such consideration,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten. She was louder now so I could hear her. I wondered if it was deliberate. My Auntie May does that too when she’s annoyed with you. ‘And now she’s hit poor Rosie. You’d think she’d have a bit more understanding.’
‘And you hit Lenny yesterday,’ said Mr Tait.
There was a shocked silence. Nobody moved, not a floorboard creaked.
‘That was different,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten, after a while. ‘She was hysterical.’
‘She’s nine,’ said Mr Tait. ‘She’s seen things no-one should ever see. She doesn’t know where her sister is or even whether she’s alive. She doesn’t even know where her mother is. I don’t think she deserves to be hit.’
There was another long silence.
‘I know how hard your loss is,’ said Mr Tait.
The covers were down from my ears now, ears that were straining to get back through the bunk-room door to hear more, but Miss Weatherbeaten didn’t reply. When Miss Weatherbeaten did start talking again it was in such a quiet voice I couldn’t make her out at all. Then there was a loud bang, bang, bang as someone tapped the side of the stove with the poker or something like that which made my heart jump and race all over again. I tried to remember what Mr Tait had said about what to do if you get a fright like the one we had this morning, but I couldn’t remember anything, my heart was beating so fast. I even forgot what I was trying to hear and why it had been so important, and then I got very tired and slumped back down under the covers.
After a bit I realised Rosie was standing at the doorway. She was pulling her earlobe, of course, so I was instantly cross with her, which I didn’t mean to be. I didn’t mean to be so mean.
‘Rosie,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you, and I didn’t mean to shout.’
Rosie didn’t say anything, but she sprang like one of the cats in our back court, and sat down on the bed beside me. When she’d been there for a whole five seconds she wriggled down and stretched out beside me and put her arm around my middle. I put my arm round her too and hugged her in tight, wishing she was Mavis.
‘Sorry,’ I said again, grateful for her warmth.
‘That’s alright,’ she said. ‘Mr Tait told Miss Weather we’re going to go over the hill to stay in a tent. I’ve never been in a tent.’
‘What hill? What tent?’ I said.
‘I don’t know. Don’t be angry!’ she said.
‘I’m not angry!’ I said, angrily. ‘I don’t want to go and stay in a tent, and the only hill I want to go over is the one back to Clydebank to find my . . . .’
‘Me too,’ she said, before I could finish. ‘Then we could live in a tent after that.’
I shook my head, and held my breath. Someone was going to have to explain things to Rosie. Someone had to make her listen. I didn’t want it to be me; I’d no idea how to say what needed said, but I thought I might ask Mr Tait to do it.
‘What time is it,’ I said after a bit. ‘We need to get going or it’ll be too late.’
But she had taken back the arm that lay around my middle and was fiddling with her earlobe again.
‘Rosie, you have to stop pulling at that ear of yours,’ I said, like a proper big sister. ‘You’re going to make it bleed again.’
My outburst of sisterliness didn’t make any difference so I decided we had to get up instead.
‘Come on,’ I said, and shoved her over a bit so she had to get up. I took hold of the hand that was at the earlobe and led her back through to the stove room.
‘I’m sorry for hitting Rosie,’ I announced, still holding Rosie’s hand as evidence.
‘Of course you are,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten drily.
‘You never meant to do it in the first place,’ said Mr Tait.
No, I didn’t. But how did he know that? I wondered if he’d ever hit anyone with his stick without meaning to.
‘I didn’t mean to be rude to Mrs Mags or you or anyone either,’ I said.
I said a special sorry to Miss Weatherbeaten, not because she deserved it but because I knew there was something I didn’t understand and it seemed like a good idea. She and Mr Tait exchanged glances, then she slapped both palms on her knees twice, like I’d seen her do at school when she was about to give us instructions. Her mouth tightened up, she licked her lips and straightened a stray hair.
‘Thank you, Lenny,’ she said. More glances flashed across the room. ‘And . . . I’m sorry too, for slapping you last night. I think we’re all a bit upset, don’t you?’
‘I’m sorry you lost someone,’ I said, feeling brave now.
‘Oh,’ she said.
That’s all she said. I thought she might say more, like what her special friend’s name was and why, if she felt like a sister, she went to the pictures without her that night. She didn’t have a real sister of her own, poor Miss Weatherbeaten. But she didn’t say anything and her mouth that had been tight, wasn’t tight any more, in fact she looked as if I had just slapped her.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. She reached into her coat pocket and brought out a rag and wiped her eyes with it. It wasn’t a rag. It was the silk scarf she had been wearing when I first saw her in the La Scala.
‘I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ I said. It was true. I’d much rather she hadn’t. Rosie, who was still holding my hand, gave it a big squeeze and moved right in beside me, standing on my toes, so I think she felt the same. I was worried now. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.
There was a knock at the door and then almost immediately Mrs Mags stuck her head round to say the water was ready and that someone whose name I can’t remember was just rinsing out the bath. Why didn’t Rosie and I just come over now?
Miss Weatherbeaten slipped out the back into the bunk room, embarrassed, I think, by her tears. I decided I had to take charge of things.
‘I’m sorry but we haven’t got time for a bath today,’ I said as politely as I could. ‘You see, we have to go over the hill to Clydebank to find out where my mum is, and Mavis.’
Mr Tait stood up from the rocking chair.
‘Lenny,’ he said. ‘It’s too late to go down there today.’
‘No, it’s not,’ I said. ‘It can’t be. We have to go today, now, right now. I have to find Mavis.’ It seemed like a simple fact to me, not complicated or hard to understand at all.
‘We have no way of getting there,’ he said. ‘I’ll go in the bus tomorrow.’
‘No, we have to go today,’ I said, getting cross now. ‘I have to find Mavis.’ How many times had I said that and still no-one listened?
‘Thank you Mrs Mags, we’ll be over in a couple of minutes,’ he said.
I tried to smile at Mrs Mags as she was leaving but my face was still sore and I didn’t really feel like smiling.
‘Miss Wetherspoon, why don’t you go over first with Rosie?’ said Mr Tait.
Miss Weatherbeaten appeared, red-eyed, from the other room and nodded.
‘I don’t want to go!’ said Rosie.
‘What an ungrateful pair you are!’ said Miss Weatherbeaten. ‘I came back through all that mess in the town to find you, Lenny, to make sure you were safe, even though I told you to stay in the town hall and you didn’t, and all you can do is be rude, and shout.’
‘I didn’t ask you to come back,’ I said.
‘You . . . !’ she said and I saw her hands twitch while she was speechless, so I took a step back.
‘And I didn’t ask for a bath.’
‘You . . . !’ She looked as though she was going to explode. She had bombs too, I could tell, but different ones from mine. ‘You’re filthy. Of course you need a bath. Now get out that door and say sorry and thank you to Mrs Mags right this instant, IMMEDIATELY!’
‘No!’
‘Yes! How dare you say “no” to me!’
‘No!’ I said again.
Rosie started up crying again only this time she was really screaming, making as much noise as she possibly could, and in behind all that while we were shouting at each other about being selfish and losing Mavis and all the rest of it, I could hear Mr Tait’s steady voice saying things like ‘Now, ladies’ and ‘Would you both please calm down and be sensible’ and ‘Lenny, I think you should stop’ and ‘Miss Wetherspoon, that’s really not fair.’
And suddenly I got very scared. The noise was so violent somehow, bouncing off all the walls of the big hut, that I thought the ceiling was going to come down on my head or the stove was going to explode through its glass door, and it felt as if all the windows were shaking and the floor was rumbling under my feet and that the world was about to end. Mavis is what I was thinking, Mavis. So I shoved past them, just like I had done earlier and I opened the front door and rushed out onto the front step where it was still bright and sunny. There were people outside, not close but close enough to see me if they looked.
I didn’t want them to see me, not in the mess I was in with no hair and my old filthy dress which I’d flung over my head with the shoe in the pocket. The tears were running down my face again, salty in the cuts, so I took off down the hill behind the hut where I hadn’t looked before and I couldn’t see anybody, just more huts, lots more huts. I ran on down the steep hill through the long dead grasses until I came to the road, and there I straightened out my clothes and wished I had my coat. I set off towards Clydebank, along the road we had come, or so I was hoping although I wasn’t entirely sure.
Looking back I saw the long low building which was the Halfway House pub where we had turned in, and over to my right across the fields, stood a farm and behind the farm shone the big yellowy sun. It was a fierce golden yellow with no heat and it threw its light over the hills beneath it, making the shadows of the cows stretch out in gigantic lines; a yellow glow like the orange one that had hung over Clydebank.