It was the silence which woke me, and the daylight blazing in the window from a truly blue sky, reaching over us to the shelves that had no matches. Drips jumped from the roof past the rain-spattered window, the inside of which was thick round the edges with spiders’ webs that stretched along the wall and across the slatted ceiling, heavy with bluebottles.
I pulled my collar tight around my neck and checked Rosie’s breathing like my mum did when Mavis was a baby. My hand rose and fell with her back where she was cooried into me, and I stared up at the ceiling.
I wondered if this was all I’d ever have, just Rosie, and that I’d never see Mavis again. And it felt like dying but without dying because I still had that pain inside me that made me not breathe. So I lay as still as still and the tears ran from my eyes past the top of my ears and through what was left of my hair onto the bed and I wished I could be smaller and smaller so that I wasn’t there at all and didn’t have to feel that way. What if . . . ? I thought, What if . . . ? like a huge hole that was swallowing me up and I didn’t care any more if there was a witch next door who wanted to boil me up for dinner.
A bird sang suddenly like a hammer on metal and the room darkened quickly to shadow then burst alive again as if someone had just passed by, but it was only a cloud. My throat hurt with all the coughing I had done and with holding on. I lay a while longer and tried to keep breathing, then eased myself out of the covers and crept to the door.
In the room, there was a pile of blankets on a sofa and a square little stove which matched the bruises on my thighs. A box of matches sat on a shelf amongst some books. A pair of glasses sat up there too with an inch of candle lying on its side. Small, black hand prints were on the door jamb.
But no witch, just trees and more trees beyond the window and bright, bright sunshine.
Today I will find Mavis and my mum, I told myself. All this nonsense will be over. I will walk over the hill and go to the town hall and tell them who I am and they will tell me where my mum and Mavis have gone. Then I will get on a bus and go there too.
My plan got stuck at this point. I had no money for a bus, and there was Rosie.
Then I saw a rope swing dangling from the cross branch of a big tree. At the bottom of the rope a piece of wood glinted in the sun and slanted towards the ground, inviting me to step up. I went back to the bed to get my shoes. Rosie had woken up and was about to yell, so before she could I said, ‘There’s a rope swing, Rosie. Come and we’ll have a shot.’ So she didn’t yell but got out of bed instead and came with me.
Obviously I had to test it first to make sure it was safe but I didn’t feel like swinging or talking so once she’d uncrossed her grumpy little arms, I helped her on beside me and we rocked lazily back and forth, tripping our toes across the mud below.
It was a shock when Miss Weatherbeaten arrived and a confusion too because I was so pleased to see her and didn’t want to be, but ashamed at the same time for running off.
Miss Weatherbeaten didn’t seem to notice any of this because she was too busy crying into her silky scarf, and then she was laughing and crying all at once.
‘Look at the state of you!’ she said. ‘Just look at your hands! They’re still bleeding!’
This was something I hadn’t noticed but was true.
She had a lady with her in a pink scarf and hat who said she’d found two little girls asleep in her bed, like Goldilocks. Her name was Mrs Wilson and she didn’t look anything like a witch.
‘I used to be a nurse,’ said Mrs Wilson, ‘until I got married and had my family.’ She had a look at my hands too. ‘That must hurt,’ she said.
And when I came to think of it, it did, but not as much as losing Mavis.
‘Oh, how silly I am!’ said Miss Weatherbeaten, dabbing at her eyes. She helped us off the swing (even though we could do it ourselves) and crouched beside us to check my hands, kind again. Mrs Wilson said she had first aid things in the hut and went to find them.
Like Mr Tait at the back door I could see the top of Miss Weatherbeaten’s head. There was no grit in her hair and the hair itself was clean and browny-red with little strands of white and tied neatly back with a piece of brown string. I started to explain that we had just been having a little shot at the rope swing and then we were going to Clydebank over the hill.
‘Well, you can’t go like that,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten. ‘What on earth would your mother think of me?’
I told her my mum would be happy to see me whatever state I was in (like Mr Chippie said), but she wasn’t really listening.
Mrs Wilson came back with a bottle of iodine and a rag and dabbed at my hand. The iodine was the same colour as Miss Weatherbeaten’s hair.
‘Ow!’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ said Mrs Wilson. ‘Bit nippy, isn’t it?’
And I wondered whether she wasn’t a witch in disguise after all, until she gave us both an oatcake from her pink pocket.
‘Mr Tait has gone to town,’ Miss Weatherbeaten said. ‘He had to go, because of work. He went early this morning. He’s going to check at the town hall,’ she went on. ‘He was going to give them your names too, but it’ll be wasted effort now you’re here. Never mind,’ she sniffed, ‘you are here and that’s the main thing. We were so worried!’
I hadn’t meant Miss Weatherbeaten to be worried about me after all that had happened, so I said I was sorry and she smiled. We all started down the hill as if there was no question of doing anything else. Rosie walked backwards holding Mrs Wilson’s hand and she kept her eyes on me and let herself be led.
‘Miss Weather . . . ,’ I put my hand up in the air, as if I was at school.
‘Yes, Lenny?’
‘Miss Weather,’ I said, trying to sound sensible, ‘when is Mr Tait going to be back? What time is it now? I really need to go over there myself. He doesn’t know what Mavis looks like and where she might have gone. Don’t you think I should go over there too, just in case? Shouldn’t I? I mean it’s not that far, not really, and if I left now, I’d be back in time for blackout and you could look after Rosie and make sure she doesn’t follow me this time, and . . . when are we going to tell her they’re all dead? Her family I mean. She thinks they’re just missing.’
‘Well . . . ,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten slowly. ‘It’s not that simple. Rosie’s only four. She doesn’t understand.’
‘But somebody still needs to tell her,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be a terrible shock when she finds out everyone’s lying to her.’
‘I think accusing people of lying is a bit strong, Lenny,’ she said.
‘Well, not lying, just . . . .’
I wondered if it was another of those white lies that my mum said was alright. This one just didn’t seem very alright to me.
‘She can’t understand just now,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten. ‘She will over time.’
I had Mavis’s shoe in my hand again. I hoped no-one was lying to Mavis, or pretending to her. I hoped someone was telling her the truth that our mum was ill in hospital and that I was missing, not dead.
But what if all these grown-ups were lying to me too, pretending that my mum was in hospital with bad legs when really she was dead as a doorpost, dead and gone, under a pile of rubble down our street with her head sticking out, and everyone was just too scared to tell me? What if they knew Mavis was dead too? I twisted the shoe in my pocket and looked at Miss Weatherbeaten. What if the face in the sea of bricks was my mum and somehow I hadn’t known it?
‘Lenny,’ she said. ‘What on earth is the matter with you?’
I looked at her long and hard before I spoke. And after, when she answered, I kept a close eye on her so that I could spot if she was lying. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with grown-ups, there’s so many things they think kids shouldn’t see or hear.
‘Is Mavis dead?’ I said quietly. ‘And my mum, is she dead? In a sea of bricks?’
‘Oh, Lenny,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten with a sigh, the new Miss Weatherbeaten, not the teacher one. ‘Poor Lenny!’
She had watery bits on her bottom eyelids and her lip was twitching and she didn’t seem to have noticed. I felt a terrible churning in my chest and my legs were ready to give way.
‘Your mum is in hospital. We don’t know which one, and we don’t know how ill she is.’ She stopped for a minute to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. ‘But we know she went there and that it’s the best possible place for her to be. We’ll just have to wait and see.’
I nodded to let her know I understood. She seemed to be telling the truth. But I was still thinking, what about Mavis, what about Mavis?
‘Mavis could be anywhere,’ she said, ‘but she’s probably safe, being looked after by someone like you.’ We both glanced at Rosie, who was watching us.
Miss Weatherbeaten put her arm round my back and gave me a tiny squeeze.
‘I want my mum,’ I said quietly, ‘and Mavis.’
‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘Of course. The sooner we get you back to your mums the better!’ She said this loudly with a smile at Rosie.
It was a great relief for me to hear this from Miss Weatherbeaten, but Rosie didn’t have a mum any more. I was irked that Miss Weatherbeaten should be so contradictory. It was a lie but there was nothing I could do.