The morning after we left Monkey Man’s house and slept by the river, we started walking again. I kept asking Ma where we were going and if we were going to find a castle. She said castles weren’t easy to find and that it might take a few days.
Ma’s hands were shaking but her eyes were as clear as the air that morning, so I wasn’t worried.
We walked for hours and hours searching for a castle. We must have looked weird, with Ma carrying her rucksack and me still in my pyjama bottoms, cos that was the first time I noticed the way some people can look everywhere except at you.
Like this one woman walking with her kid. I saw her notice us from down the street, cos she grabbed her kid’s hand and dragged him to the other side of the path. When they got close, the kid stared at me. But the ma looked straight ahead. Then the kid said, ‘Mummy, why is that girl wearing pyjamas?’ But the ma didn’t answer. Instead she walked faster till they were past us. And the whole time her eyes looked straight ahead.
That’s the thing. People can see you coming from a mile off. You’re only invisible up close.
We got to this crossroads that had a sign for the zoo on one side and the train station on the other and loads of traffic zooming past. Ma turned towards the train station.
At the entrance to the station there was a coffee shop, and Ma went straight up to the counter and took a load of napkins and turned and walked out. Then we went into the ladies’ jacks. There were people queueing but Ma went straight to the sinks and filled one with water. She took off her T-shirt and started washing everywhere, even under her arms.
‘Ma,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s staring.’
There was this woman that was wearing a posh black-and-white skirt and matching jacket. She was watching Ma with this look on her face like she’d just drunk sour milk.
‘What are ye gawping at?’ Ma said and the woman looked away.
Ma dried herself with the napkins and chucked them in the bin. Then she took out her hairbrush and brushed her hair. Then it was my turn.
I changed into real clothes. Then Ma wet a napkin and rubbed my face so hard it hurt. ‘Ow, Ma!’
‘Don’t be such a whinge,’ she said, but she was laughing.
This other woman came in to the jacks and when she saw me, she shook her head. ‘What are you looking at?’ I said, and the woman tutted. Ma winked at me.
I brushed my teeth and then Ma said, ‘Do you need to use the jacks?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Right,’ Ma said, and when the toilet door opened, she shoved me in front of the tutting woman. ‘Sorry,’ Ma said. ‘We were here first.’
When I got out, the woman was gone. But then a minute later the security guard came in. ‘Sorry, yis can’t be in here,’ he said.
‘Neither can you, it’s the ladies’ jacks,’ Ma said. ‘We’re leaving anyway.’
When we left the train station we went back to the signposts. Behind us was a pub and across the road was the archway that you go under to get into the park, the big one that has the fields and the trees in it. The zoo is just up the road.
‘Wait here,’ Ma said and she went in under the archway. When she came back a while later, she didn’t have the rucksack. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Hungry?’
‘Where’s the rucksack?’ I said.
‘I stashed it. Come on.’
She grabbed my hand and we went into the pub. We sat down at a table that was right beside the door. When the woman came over, Ma said, ‘Give us a menu.’ But a second later, she said, ‘Please.’
We ordered the best food ever. Loads of egg mayo and ham sandwiches, and soup and Coke. For dessert I had a massive slice of chocolate cake with the icing all melted and gooey. Ma ordered the same but she only ate the soup. She had a few pints as well, though.
When we finished, Ma said, ‘Go across the road, under the archway and to the left. Wait for me there.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
I did. I waited ages. So long that I was about to go back for Ma when she came flying around the archway. ‘Come on,’ she said and she grabbed my hand and started legging it towards the trees.
‘Ma, stop, I’m too full of food!’
‘Run!’ she said, so I legged it, even though the chocolate cake was stuck in my throat.
When we got into the trees we ran along a trail. It was all overgrown and bursting with green. There was loads of cardboard everywhere cos loads of people had slept there. After a while, we slowed down.
‘You didn’t pay, Ma, did you? For the food?’
‘I did!’ she said in this voice like she was real offended. ‘I just didn’t leave a tip.’
‘You’re such a liar,’ I said. Ma didn’t reply to that.
We came up to this one guy who was just standing there, staring at nothing. Ma’s rucksack was beside him.
‘Thanks,’ she said when she picked it up and she handed him the bread rolls that had been in the basket when the woman brought us our soup. He took them but he didn’t say anything.
He had tied a piece of plastic into the branches above him to keep the rain off, and below were a few sleeping bags. He must’ve been living there for a while.
‘Coppers been around at all?’ Ma asked, and he shook his head real slow.
We went on through the trees, and I was thinking of the forest with the eyes that followed the princess, when we came up to this big old shed. It was tall and wide, but it didn’t even have a proper roof on it any more. Just wooden beams and pieces of slates, but there were loads of holes in it. I stared at Ma.
‘We’re just resting here, love. Let me sit down for a minute, will ye?’ she said and she went inside.
‘Ah, Ma, it’s a shed!’ I said, cos I knew that meant we were going to sleep in there.
‘More like a barn,’ Ma called out. I followed her inside and watched her. She went to say something but then she stopped, like she changed her mind, and instead she said, ‘One night, I swear on me own grave, just for tonight. The weather is grand, we’ll sleep here and find a place tomorrow. Deal?’
I looked around at the ring of black stones where someone had lit a fire before, and then up at the holes in the roof.
‘Just for tonight,’ she said again.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But you have to help me make it better.’
Ma looked at me and shoved her hands in her pockets, but her eyes were smiling. So I ran out into the trees and grabbed a load of cardboard boxes and brought them back and threw them into the middle of the shed.
‘Come on!’ I said.
Ma laughed and shook her head but she came with me and together we brought back loads of cardboard boxes and piled them as high as our heads.
‘Now what?’ she asked.
‘Now we build a castle,’ I said.
I took down the first box and I opened it out and then started folding it up into a tube shape. Ma watched me do it a few times and then she said, ‘Wait here, I’ll be back.’
And she ran off before I could say anything, so I just kept opening out the cardboard boxes and folding them into tube shapes, and hoping she’d come back. She was gone ages. But then she did come back. With a six-pack and two rolls of tape and a packet of cigarettes.
I started taping the boxes so they’d keep their tube shape, and then we put one tube beside another and taped them together so we had a long tube.
We built loads of tubes and stuck them together, and we made corners as well, so in the end we had this deadly maze with corridors and corners and side rooms, and you could crawl through it and get lost in it for days.
Then we made towers and we put them on top of the maze. With the last of the cardboard, I built a wall around the whole thing.
‘What’s that for?’ Ma asked.
‘That’s to keep the intruders out. We don’t have a moat but the wall’s real high so they can’t climb over it,’ I said.
And Ma sat down and laughed as she drank her last can. And when I was finished building the wall, I sat down beside her and ate the left-over sandwiches that Ma had taken from the pub. There was cake too and it was real good, even though the icing was gloopy instead of melty.
‘We’ll find our own castle, though, won’t we, Ma?’
‘We will,’ she said.
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yeah, love. Tomorrow.’
Ma crushed her last can and threw it away. Then she crawled into the middle of the maze with me and told me a story about a princess stuck in a castle who couldn’t leave till a prince came and rescued her. But I said it was stupid to wait for a prince to come rescue you when you could just find the secret way out, cos there’s always a secret way out from a castle.
And when I fell asleep, I knew Ma would be right there beside me and that we’d be safe in our castle.