The Emporium

Kaaron Warren

Chapter One

Things improved once the mattresses arrived. Before that they’d slept curled up in massage chairs or stretched out on couches that were too short for them and stained with old spills; drinks, food, body fluids, drips from the leaking roof.

They cleared out the secondhand furniture shop of everything except the bedframes, which mostly rested up against the wall.

That area had been a mess, anyway, filled with objects found over many years, the “miscellaneous,” items no one knew what to do with. It was stacked dangerously high; boxes of picture hooks, crates of broken wineglasses, piles of true crime magazines. Things they no longer understood and could barely recognize. They moved the broken things upstairs, finding nooks and crannies in the old shops there, trying to keep some sort of order.

In the front corner of the shop, near the small register, were stacked boxes of ancient cat food. Maud said, “We should take that up to the roof. The birds might eat it if we spread it around.” The other children all agreed, so they piled it outside the shop next-door, a newsagent still stocked with ancient news and magazines. They added the true crime magazines to that collection and headed back to the furniture shop.

Marty stood with his hands covering his face, his shoulders shaking.

“Marty! What’s wrong?” Maud said. “You’ll get a mattress, don’t worry! There’s enough for everyone.”

“He’s sad about the fish,” Bean said. She was so short she could barely see over the counter, but she stretched her toes and pointed. At seven she was the youngest of the children in the Emporium and she hated that. She wanted to be old, like the rest of them. Yet she carried a sack full of soft toys and would bring them out for conversation and cuddles.

Maud looked. Revealed once all the mess was cleared away was a large fish tank. It was filthy, covered with moss and slime, with five centimeters of sludgy water at the bottom. Maud stepped closer. It stank; in the bottom were a dozen long-dead fish, their flesh mostly rotted off, their bones poking through. She sobbed as well, and that set all of them off, all of them sobbing over the starved dead fish. There was much they didn’t remember but all of them remembered the pets they’d left behind.

Carlo pressed his head up against the glass. “Which one is which, do you think? Who is who?”

“You can’t tell, once they’re a pile of bones. They won’t be able to know who’s us when we’re bones,” Julian said.

—

They dragged the mattresses onto the bedframes and laid some in the spaces in between. Bean wanted to take hers into the entrance atrium, a glass-ceilinged dome, so she could sleep under the stars. Maud said, “You’ll freeze to an ice block. Maybe when it gets warmer,” so Bean crankily dragged her mattress into the furthest corner, tucked under an old counter.

—

The children collapsed, exhausted but happy, on the mattresses. They weren’t very clean, though, so the next job was to traipse up to the first floor for new sheets and pillows. The Bedroom Bonanza store had been small but well-stocked. A lot of it had gone to customers outside (everyone preferred their bed linen unused) or in the looting, but there was one alcove the children had been saving for this occasion. They mostly used the stuff that came in through the dock in great mounds. They used the worst-stained bedclothes for other things, like an outer lining for the building as insulation, or they’d tear them up for bags of rags they’d leave outside in the delivery dock. They didn’t get much in return for the rags: a crate of yo-yos (none of them had any idea what to do with them but luckily Julian found a book and that was fun) or a box full of broken, salty crackers, stale but still good for soup, a carton of books, all the same and with the front cover torn off. That sort of thing.

Julian pushed up the roller door of the Bedroom Bonanza and exclaimed. The smell washed over all of them; damp cloth and mold.

“Oh, no!” Kate said. She was the one most looking forward to the new beds. Somehow she remembered the comfort of climbing into a freshly-made bed.

Water had leaked through. They had buckets all over the shopping center and the rhythmic plink plink of water droplets calmed some of them, annoyed others.

The walls were damp and the alcove holding the sheets was inches deep in water.

“It’ll be all right. They’re still in their plastic,” Julian said. He stepped into the smallest puddle and stretched out, passing the packages of sheets out one by one.

—

Carlo led Bean downstairs to the laundromat. It was dark; the line of high windows were dirty and cracked. The lights flickered on when he hit the switch and buzzed quietly; they would keep flickering until they were turned off.

Carlo organized the loads, saying, “I’m not doing it all.” But they knew he would. Carlo used to run the machines alone, and he’d still help when any of them forgot which buttons to push. He got tired of the state of clothes and bedding. With someone else washing it, they didn’t care about how dirty those items were. Once everyone had to wash their own, they took more care.

There were piles of washing in each corner and piled up behind the counter, way higher than the bench top. It had an odd smell, not bad exactly, but kind of meaty. Unpleasant.

Carlo timed it perfectly, filling the machines, adding soap (who knows how old, but it still smelled of soap at least) and closing the lids, then racing from one to the other pressing START. All six machines slowly filled with water and one by one most of the other children crept out. Carlo was mesmerized by the machines and their rhythm, hearing music that made him want to dance.

The machines followed one second after the other, and he spun around, click-spin rock and roll, not caring there was no one there except Bean.

“It’s okay! I know it’s loud! It’s really loud! But the good thing is we know it will stop. Or maybe I’m magic and they will stop on my command.”

Bean shook her head and giggled.

“You doubt the great Carrrlooo?” He rolled his rrrs until Bean joined in. She sat some of her soft toys on the machine and watched them vibrate.

When the machines stopped, Bean went to get the others while Carlo emptied each machine into a different basket. These were ones taken from the supermarket; the laundromat ones had fallen apart long ago or, perhaps, had been used to carry away loot when the shopping center closed suddenly.

The children weren’t sure why it had.

Carlo gave each child a basket of wet washing and they all made their way to the roof. They didn’t like to use the elevators unless they had to, for fear of being stuck between the floors. They told stories of ghosts, forever trying to get out.) The elevators worked before their time, but not since the children had been there.

There was the Very High Roof, but they rarely went up there at the top of the eight story tower.

The much bigger Lower Roof was only two floors up and was flat. The children had found ropes strung up here, with some aprons and workman’s clothes, stiff from hanging in the weather for a long time.

This was where they dried their clothes, and where they hung the freshly washed sheets and pillowcases. They pegged pillows to the line as well, hoping to air them out.

Marty had grabbed a box of the old cat food and shook handfuls out to feed the birds. There weren’t many (the manager had told them it was because the trees were too skinny) but sometimes they did come and perch on the cracked walls, perhaps on their way to elsewhere, somewhere greener. Two black birds and one that was a sickly gray came and pecked at the food, squawked, pecked again. Marty threw more and then the others did. Maud felt momentary joy in this, and she made sure everyone got a handful to toss.

For many miles around there were gray buildings, most of them less than four floors high. “Gravity Leaks,” they called it, meaning tall buildings could not be expected to stay sturdy anymore. Beyond them lay the forest. And way beyond that was the water. From the high roof you could see the trees, or at least the concept of trees, way off in the distance; sometimes Maud would go up there, just to see something green. They didn’t know what sort of trees they were.

Between the forest and the buildings, the Great Fire had laid waste to most everything. When the sun was out, you could sometimes see silvery trails through the black mess, left by people walking toward the forest, perhaps, or to the innumerable mounds that perhaps covered useful items.

Some of these items came as deliveries to the children: dinner plates, cake tins, barbeque grills, coats. Sometimes they were damaged beyond cleaning by ash and smoke, but most things they could wipe clean and sort, awaiting the next time someone needed garden chairs, or metal fence posts, or glass jars, or saucepans. Things the children didn’t always understand, or had forgotten about. Before he ran away, the manager had tried to teach them stuff about the past but they forgot so easily.

—

They made the beds and snuggled down. Maud went into the supermarket and brought back some fizzy drinks and the oldest of the potato chips. If it was a really special occasion, they’d open a fresher packet. Like the birthday they all shared, or perhaps the arrival of someone new. Maud set her suitcase beside her mattress, laying it down flat so she could use it as a table or as a shelf. The others followed suit; they often followed Maud’s ideas. Maud’s suitcase was brown leather covered with stickers.

“No one is very hungry for dinner after all those snacks, are they?” Julian said. He had not eaten the snacks himself; that food made him feel sluggish.

“Me me me!” Bean squealed. “Sausages!” Bean always wanted sausages.

“It’s not really dinner time yet,” Josh said. The only clocks they had were the ones in the clock shop, broken most of them, and only one, which used sunlight for power, still running. Kate could keep time by the music that played, and she was teaching the others to do so as well. They didn’t know the names of most of the songs and couldn’t understand half the words, but they all sure knew the music.

“Carry on,” Kate said. “It’s time for dinner.”

Izzy jumped up. “I’ll do it,” she said. She always did it.

There was no big oven in the kitchen, but there were salvaged burners and a toaster oven and a microwave, and with these Izzy wrought miracles. Most of the saucepans they received were only good for melting down, but they had gathered three good ones, still in their boxes, and these they used. They sometimes got fresh food delivered. Fruit and veggies. They didn’t like that too much, preferring the frozen food. The old manager used to make them eat boiled vegetables. Disgusting.

Izzy made sausages (skinless frankfurts) from the can for Bean, then a big pot of soup. Tins of asparagus soup and asparagus pieces, a can of evaporated milk, a packet of herbs, and with some crackers it was a feast. They took their bowls into the food court and sat in small groups. They didn’t always sit together but after the excitement of the mattresses, they felt like they wanted to be cohesive. There were old menus left on some of the tables, describing food long since forgotten. Sometimes they tried to cook by the menus, invent what they thought Spaghetti Carbonara was, or Eggplant Parmigiana. They’d say, What should we have for dinner, as if anything was possible.

The roof was leaking in the food court, so there were buckets everywhere. Over in the corner, one of them had a drowned rat in it. They’d all vote Julian take that away after the meal. Until then, they’d ignore it. He’d toss it over the dark side of the building. Below, a dozen cars sat rusting. This was where they threw all the dead creatures they found.

Josh gathered up the dirty dishes and dropped them down the elevator shaft. He was the first to do this when it was his turn, arguing that they had thousands of dishes so why waste time washing them? Now they all did it.

—

Bean was the first to jump from mattress to mattress, squealing with delight and the others soon followed, hollering and screaming with laughter as they jumped from one end of the large showroom to the other. Someone put a CD in the boombox. They sorted most sound equipment for sale but held one back every now and then when another broke. The broken ones were sold for parts and elements, like all the phones were. Carlo had the job of pulling them apart. Each of them took responsibility for something. They had to turn it up loud to drown out the playlist, but this way at least they felt they’d chosen what to listen to.

If the manager had been there he would have said, “If you’ve got enough energy for bouncing around, you’ve got enough energy to work.”

But he had long since disappeared. He’d left with pockets full of salvaged (stolen) coins. Maud kept a list of all the things that came into the Emporium, as well as a tally of what went out, so she and the others knew what coins he’d taken. A lot of them were scrounged from the wishing well, but everything that came in was checked for money. He’d given them all lessons in value, but Maud was only fourteen then and remembered very little. That was a long time ago. She was fifteen now and thought she’d be better at learning if someone wanted to try. He’d stopped teaching them things; Carlo said it was because he didn’t want them to know the value of what he was stealing, and that seemed as likely as anything else. Although he was very tired, always, so tired. He didn’t say goodbye when he left but he did leave a map for them, directions to the stash of small, sealed cakes, dozens of boxes, that he was saving for a special occasion. They were stacked carefully on the third floor, in If It Fits, mixed in with the shoe boxes full of footwear that didn’t, in fact, fit.

They hadn’t seen that manager in a long time. It took a while before anyone outside the Emporium noticed. Julian took charge of the orders and Maud (after Rachel left to go to medicine school) was the boss of things delivered, so they didn’t need a manager. It was only when the nurse came in to do the immunizations that the manager’s disappearance was revealed.

Chapter Two

Irma had not been so far out before. The road was bumpy and she made a thing of that, bouncing up and down in her seat, to the enjoyment of the driver.

“You’ll be popping out of your uniform if you’re not careful,” he said, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the back of her seat.

“I’m just glad I packed the cargo nice and snug,” she said. She twisted her head to check the back seat; the two refrigerated vaccine transport boxes were strapped in and steady. They were almost alone on the six-lane road, with only a large delivery truck, battered and scratched, following along behind them. On either side lay high piles of rubble and an occasional standing wall, glass long gone, window spaces letting through light and shadow. The last complete buildings they saw were the twin jails, known as the Factories, tall, clean buildings with tiny, high windows and painted green concrete surrounds. They’d passed a dark stretch of trees. Irma hated looking into that space. She imagined ghosts, and things hanging from the trees. There was something about the growth in there she didn’t like.

Ahead, the shopping center loomed. It looked like rubble from a distance, a much higher mound, but as they approached she saw the sprawling building stood quite well. It was surrounded by a vast car park, now covered with dust and debris and potholes. There were small dark clusters of people, hiding under tarpaulins or sprawled out, baking in the sun. They’d either be moved on before long, whenever anyone could be bothered, or they’d starve out here for lack of food. Very few of them lived in the car park these days. Murder, rape and deprivation pushed them to find other places.

The driver had to focus in order to approach the main entrance.

“Can you see them yet?” he said. “The ghosts?”

“Don’t be silly. Don’t call them that.”

He shook his head. “That’s what they are. All the dead children come here because Heaven is full.”

“Hell as well, I imagine,” Irma said. She was a sucker for men like this; strong, confident, innocent in their ways and susceptible to theories beyond their discernment.

The building spread over about three and a half thousand feet. Most of it was two storied, dirty concrete above, large windows below that. To the side, a tower rose eight stories, with a glass-windowed turret at the top. That was once a fancy place to eat, years ago, the driver told her. He said, “I woulda collected you, all dressed up and smelling of patchouli, and we’d ride the glass elevator right up to the top.”

She said, “I’m gonna have to call you Patchouli from now on, you know that.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Pat. I’ll call you Pat.” She shook her head as he tried to tell her his actual name.

Many of the lower glass windows were broken. Some were boarded up but most weren’t.

She stretched her head forward to see. In her mind’s eye she imagined it and felt a cool sense of calm with it.

Around the base was rubble and rubbish and mess. The stink of it seeped through the car windows; it wasn’t the worst thing she’d smelled, but it had a steady hard rotting undertone that made her want to cover her nose.

Near the entrance hall, a very tall ladder rested up against the wall. It looked rickety and unsafe, and she wondered about the point of it. “You’ll be able to sneak your boyfriends in there,” the driver said. She smiled at the fact he used the plural, and she said, “If you’re not scared of heights. You’ll come visit me, won’t you?” although her stay was only planned for a few days. “I’ll need company.”

“It’s a shit job you’ve got, that’s for sure,” he said. That was annoying; it wasn’t as bad as other jobs she’d done, no competition.

—

The entrance hall was boarded up. The delivery truck had caught up to them and drove around to the side where, Irma saw, a roller door stood open. The side of the truck read, “Children’s Services.”

He pulled up gently beside the delivery truck. “Have you got some sort of system here?”

She reached into her bag and pulled out her most recent memo. “To be honest it’s pretty vague. I think I go in there, get myself set up, get to work. I should be done in two days, given their estimates.” She waved the memo.

They climbed out of the car. It was hot out there, almost airless. The truck driver was emptying out his van as quickly as possible, aided by four helpers. Actually, Irma thought, squinting, they were younger. Maybe thirteen or fourteen, if that. They joked and bounced around, certainly not showing any signs of the flu she was about to immunize them against. That was a good sign.

The driver passed her the two vaccine carriers and her overnight bag. “I’d offer to come help, but they’ve got me on plasma delivery in an hour.”

“I’ll see you in a couple of days, then,” she said, and she walked up the too-steep steps at the delivery dock.

Chapter Three

Marty, Bean, Izzy and Josh, the four children on the dock, paid no attention to Irma. They’d found a box of chocolate (it looked white and crumbly; who knows how old it was?) and were laughing and shoving as much of it into their mouths as they could fit. The delivery driver, a much older man, (“Call me Robbo”) shook his head and smiled. “They love their sugar! They don’t know how it’ll rot them from the inside out.” Bean picked out a scarf to wear, although she had one already, a purple and red threadbare number the others teased her about.

Irma suppressed a sigh. So many opinions she had no interest in . . . “Is there someone in charge here, do you know?”

“No idea, love. The kids do a fine job on their own, to be fair. They seem to know what they’re doing.”

His load looked completely random but then given the nature of the facility, that made sense. There were crates of old shoes, scarves, milk bottles, bottle tops, corks and movie flyers. She didn’t want to put down her bags, but grabbed one small crate from the side of the truck to carry inside. She liked to be helpful and liked people to notice how helpful she was.

The four children helping to carry things still seemed barely to notice her. She didn’t mind that; if they weren’t scared of her, she’d be able to administer the medicine more easily. “I’m Nurse Irma,” she said, smiling. “Would one of you mind carrying my little bag? There are some lollipops in there dying to escape.”

Bean slung the bag over her shoulder.

“Introduce yourselves, kids,” the delivery driver said kindly. “That’s what polite people do.” The children giggled.

“I’m Nurse Irma,” she said again.

The tallest boy, almost to her shoulders, said, “My name is Josh Dior.”

“Ooh, like the designer?” and his face lit up.

“This is Bean,” he said, bodily lifting the youngest, a scrawny, scrappy little child of five or six, seven at the most, with a filthy face and piercing green eyes.

Irma resisted flipping through her notes to check them off. “Hello, Bean,” she said, and nodded. A lot of adults would try to shake this kid’s hand, but most kids hated that patronizing sort of behavior.

“I’m Izzy,” the other girl said. She was about the same height as Josh and exuded a sense of calm. She had dribbled food all down her shirt front.

“Izzy Izzy always busy,” Irma said. Sometimes she couldn’t help speaking in rhymes. It helped her remember names and could put people at ease, sometimes because they were annoyed. The last boy hung back in the shadows and for a moment’s fancy she wondered if the transport driver was right and some of these children were ghosts.

“That’s Marty,” Izzy said. “He’ll be all right soon. He thought his dad was coming to pick him up today.”

Robbo the delivery driver and Irma exchanged glances. The children, or this child at least, didn’t seem to know where their parents actually were. It wasn’t up to Irma to tell them; in fact she’d been asked not to answer questions, that there was a natural time for them to be told their parents or primary caregivers were in jail.

Having spent a month in one of those facilities a few years back (for public urination, something that still made her cheeks burn with shame) Irma felt sorry for the children who thought their parents were in a good place. “You could survive a nuclear holocaust down here. Along with the cockroaches” the driver said, as one went scurrying at their feet, followed by five more. “I’m going to leave you to it. All the best. Keep that ladder against the wall!”

Irma winked at him, then said to the children, “Lead the way!” and followed them inside, from the delivery dock through dank, mold-smelling concrete passageways.

As they walked, Irma said, “Thanks for helping out. I guess we’ll see the manager once we get inside.”

Marty said, “I’ll run ahead and tell her you’re coming,” and before Irma could say anything, he took off, leaping over puddles of greasy water and piles of rubbish.

Izzy pushed open the double doors marked “The Emporium main foyer.” Irma stepped through then stopped to take it in.

The air felt cool and surprisingly fresh. It was brighter than she’d expected; this part of the center had high windows, and the entrance had a glass-domed roof.

There were stacks of items everywhere, but organized, she thought. She could see shop fronts, most dusty and dark inside. The Gallery, with an easel in the window, holding a painting she’d try to check out later. There was the Young World Shop, its window full of tumbled, broken, burnt mannequins. Irma could see piles of new kids’ clothes, looking undamaged, and running along the front, some half-sized train tracks.

“It’s the mall train,” Izzy said. “It used to work, take you around the mall. Not since we’ve been here. Everyone says we should fix it but no one knows how. Wouldn’t that be cool? We wouldn’t have to walk to and from the dock all the time. And they could send it back again all filled with stuff. Otherwise we have to carry it or trolley it.”

Music had played continuously since Irma arrived, all of it familiar but at the back of her memory. She hummed along and the children did too; they had heard these songs many times. “Am I young enough?” they sang. It was a song she knew, but it sat just at the edge of her memory.

There was the Guest Services Desk, piled up now with egg cartons, jewelry boxes, piles of newspaper and dusty items she couldn’t identify from a distance. Signs on the walls were cracked and dusty but she could read the old rules: No Congregating. No Skateboards. No Swimming in the Wishing Well. No Smoking. Keep Doors Closed. Keep Clear in Case of Fire. The place had only been abandoned for about ten years, but it could have been forty or fifty. It wasn’t falling to the ground, but it was definitely grimy and unloved. Paint peeled off doors and walls, and those doors were off their hinges. The place echoed with silence. She could see in the corner one part of the flooring from above had fallen in altogether. She’d heard there was a lot of theft of floor and window coverings, and she could see this was true. Cardboard (some apparently wrapped in old sheets) provided insulation in some areas and covered broken windows in others.

—

Marty appeared at her side. “Here’s Maud. She’s the manager. She’s . . .” here Izzy hit his arm, and when she saw Maud she knew why. He’d been about to lie about her age, or oversell the con.

Maud couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She was all dressed up like a grown-up, with an ill-fitting suit and her hair pulled back into a bun. She had glorious curly hair, though, and this sprung out all over her head. She walked forward on high-heeled shoes, her ankles wobbling slightly.

“I’m Madame Maud but you can call me Maud. I’m the manager.” Bean, the young one, giggled and Izzy put her hand over her mouth.

“Maud, Maud, married a Lord,” Irma said. The children stared at her blankly which was frankly a relief.

Maud reached out to shake hands. Irma saw no reason not to play along. “And who else do we have here?” she said, because they were gathered behind Maud as if waiting their turn.

“This isn’t everybody! Some of them like to stay upstairs or wherever. I don’t know,” Maud said.

There was Kate, about twelve, who carried a notebook with her. “It’s Now I Want to be Just Like You o’clock,” she said. “This can be your song because it’s what was playing when I met you.”

Irma nodded, not really knowing what she meant. “I’ll say Kate, Kate, you are great.”

Kate smiled at that.

Julian told her he was sixteen, clearly proud to be the oldest. She wondered how much longer he’d be there; surely they’d call him up soon. She couldn’t think of a rhyme for him.

Carlo was the neatest boy she thought she’d ever seen. “Are those creases in your pants?” she said. “Do you iron?” He nodded, ducking his head to the side like a little bird.

“And you’ve met Bean,” Maud said. Bean hid behind Julian. “She’s kind of shy but she also hates people.” Everyone laughed at that, even Bean, although she bared her teeth like a dog when she did it. “She’s only seven.”

None of them were ghosts; all were flesh and blood children. Irma hadn’t believed any of them would be ghosts, but at the same time was relieved. She felt foolish and determined not to be so brainless again.

Irma said, “You all look very well. Let’s try to keep it that way.” She held up her medical storage bag. “Let’s get you all immunized. There are top up shots for most of you, and flu season is coming up, so we’ve added that to the mix.”

“Where do you want to set up?” Maud asked.

“Is there a doctor’s office? A chemist maybe?”

“A chemist!” Kate said, happy to help. “It’s my favorite store.”

“I’ll need an assistant,” Irma said. “Would you mind, Maud, if I borrowed one of your people?”

Kate hopped up and down. “I can help! I know where things are!”

“Is that all right, Maud?”

Maud had forgotten she was meant to be the boss. “Well, I’m not going in there. It stinks!”

“They don’t like medicine smells,” Kate whispered. “I do!”

She led Irma up a spiral staircase to get to the next floor. Irma was fascinated by what she saw. The shopping center had been avant-garde in its time and still retained some of its clever design gimmicks. There were long strings hanging down from the ceiling that glistened as she passed them. Fake marble columns that on closer look, revealed little pictures of people at work and play. Pets, too. Mosaics on the floor made of advertising tiles. And everywhere, there were motivational notices. You can be your Best Self, and Look in the mirror and See who you See, and Don’t ever underestimate the Power of Kindness.

The door to the chemist was ajar and inside was a disaster. It had clearly been looted; shelves were tipped over, boxes emptied, glass bottles smashed.

“Let’s get this sorted, see what we’ve got,” Irma said. She recruited those gathered around to help; Kate, Julian, Carlo and Bean.

As they tidied, Bean asked a lot of questions. “Why do you have scars on your neck? Do you have any children and where are they? Where do you live?” Irma answered some, deflected others, and asked plenty of her own. She’d just been evicted and wasn’t keen to talk about that; they wouldn’t understand, not even Julian, she thought. She checked out the chemist, with its well-insulated storeroom, its small kitchen area. It could easily serve as a place to stay; it would do in a pinch. Her only option, if she left the Emporium, was to stay with someone, and there were always strings attached. She was tired of strings.

They stacked, they cleaned, they sorted. Irma noticed a box labeled isopropyl alcohol, half-filled with bottles. She took one out and shook it. She knew she couldn’t drink it. Julian chuckled. “Rachel and me sniffed it once. So gross I nearly chucked it. But . . .” here he leaned close to whisper to her, “There’s a big room at the top of the tower. It’s got a bar. There used to be a nightclub there. Me and Rachel found it.”

Maud hunched over in a bit of a sulk in the doorway, still refusing to enter. “I didn’t like Rachel anyway. She should have given me her scarf.”

“She loved that scarf!” Julian said. It was the print of an old oil painting, gorgeous pink flamingoes reflected on the water.

“I loved it,” Maud said quietly. It was a rare showing of discontent for her.

Irma wondered why they hadn’t decided to make Julian pretend to be the boss, given he was older.

“So a bar, was there?” she said. Already in her mind she was formulating an idea. She liked these kids, liked this place. She could stay awhile. Be the manager. Kate held up a teddy bear that held a heat bag. “Oh, here it is! I’ve been looking for this!” Irma looked at her, curious. It was clearly brand new, still with its albeit faded, damaged tag.

“Must be the one your mum gave you,” Carlo said. “That time when you got a good mark at school.”

Kate nodded, and the others, too. She tucked it into her shirt and later, Irma noticed her stash it in her suitcase.

“Lots of history here I guess,” Irma said. “Lots of memories.” She wasn’t really sure what to say but this seemed to fit. “Who’s first? Kate! You’re a brave one. Come on then. And I wasn’t lying about those lollipops.”

Kate bravely took the injection. “Rachel’s gone off to be a nurse did you know? She went to medicine school.”

“Medicine school?” Irma asked.

“She went a few months ago.” She broke briefly into song as music played. “Everybody Wants the Same Thing. She didn’t really want to go but they told her there was a better life, where she could study and become a doctor. Or a nurse. I can’t remember. I wonder how she’s doing. Julian misses her a lot, don’t you, Julian?”

Irma knew Rachel was not going to become a nurse, or a doctor, but they didn’t need to know that.

“Who’s next?” She was supposed to take their names and check them off and for a while she did, but they were having so much fun giving her fake names, ridiculous things that made them all cry with laughter, that she let it be. They were impressed that she’d figured it out, especially when Josh came back a second time. “Nope! You don’t need two!” She had a couple of them still to go, and sent Josh to find Julian for his injection.

“Most adults can’t tell us apart. Doesn’t matter what we look like,” he said.

She’d give them all basic health checks in the next few days, but for now she was done. She went out to the dock to have a cigarette; Robbo the delivery driver was still there, loading his truck. She wondered what he’d been doing for the last few hours; his ruffled hair told her he’d probably been sleeping. It wasn’t up to her to judge him for that. She had no idea what hours he worked.

“Hey!” he said, happy to see her. They sat together on one of the solid metal boxes on the dock and smoked.

“I thought you’d be packed up and gone by now. Lost all your helpers?”

“Kids!” he said good-naturedly. “All gung-ho at the start then they lose interest and off they go.”

“I may have distracted them,” she said, laughing. He was not as good-looking as her transport driver, but strong.

“You are a distraction, no denying.”

“They’ve got no manager here, did you know that? I don’t know what happened to the other one. None of my business. And they seem to be doing okay. Funny kids.”

“I suspected, to be honest.”

“Poor kids. I feel for them. They all think their parents are coming back. That they’re on holiday or something. They have no idea every last one of them is in jail. I guess it’s okay they don’t know. Well, I was told not to tell them so I guess that’s the best. Hey, did you know there’s a bar here?”

“I did not.”

“Jesus, I need a drink. I tell you, I swear, I almost drank the chemist booze.”

“That’ll kill you,” he said.

“Yeah. But there is a bar! I don’t know if you like a drink or not.”

He considered her then, summed her up is what she thought. “I do like a drink. I’ve lost a bit to it, though, to be honest. But I do like a drink.”

She didn’t tell him that booze had lost her pretty much everything. “So let’s go sometime.”

“Why not? But look,” he said. “Look. I better let them know about the manager business. Just to cover our arses.”

“Yeah. I was going to do it once I left, but you do it.”

They finished their smokes and he gave her a good crisp apple. “See you tomorrow, most like,” he said.

—

Early next morning, before she’d had breakfast, the dock bell rang. None of the children seemed concerned; a few of them wandered toward the dock doors, the others kept on with their business. Most were still in bed, enjoying the mattresses.

“Is there another delivery already?” Irma asked Maud. They were sitting in patch of sun in the atrium, Julian making coffee on a camp stove.

“We get them any old time. Sometimes we wake up and they’ve been overnight. We never know.”

“Hey, gorgeous!” she heard. It was Robbo again. Julian handed him a coffee.

“Back already? Need a hand?” Irma asked.

“Some of the kids are on it. It’s only a small load. Listen,” he said, leaning close, taking her elbow gently, “Listen, I told them. I didn’t want it on my head, not telling them about the manager going missing.”

“Makes sense,” she said. “I would’ve done it when I got back so thanks.”

“But this is the bit you might hate me for. They’ve asked me to ask you to stay.”

“For how long? I’m supposed to go back today,” she said, but she thought to what? What the fuck am I going back to? Shitty job in the hospital, shitty two room apartment that she knew from past trips away would be musty and stink of spilled booze. And that, she remembered, she’d been kicked out of anyway. And, in the back of her mind, in the bit she tried to pretend was dead, there were some other issues. Things she’d done that perhaps she shouldn’t have.

“Till they find a replacement, they said. What, a couple of weeks?”

She nodded. “They’re the bosses. I don’t have anything here, though. I don’t suppose they got you to bring any of my things? They were holding them for me.”

He looked horrified at the thought. “That’d be creepy as fuck,” he said. “Going through your stuff? I can think of a much more fun way to get to know each other.”

She liked the way he smelled, and the way she could see how strong he was, even through his company shirt.

—

It absolutely wasn’t her fault no one told the transport driver not to collect her on the planned afternoon. She didn’t even think of it and had no means of contact if she did. They needed to sort that out but they didn’t, so he showed up to collect her as arranged. He came calling through the door, his voice flirtatious and filled with mirth. He was thirty minutes early through design or poor planning, she wasn’t sure.

“Look at this fucken place!” he said. “It’s a fucken miracle! Whoever designed it was a bit of a visionary, ay? No rush. We can hang for a bit.”

Irma hadn’t gotten a word in yet. “You didn’t get the message? I’m supposed to stay another few weeks.”

“No one told me. But hey, I get paid for the trip, not who’s in my car, so whatever. Only thing is I was thinking we could go have a drink, you know? Just workmates, having a drink.”

She touched her mouth briefly in case she was drooling. “Have a drink here,” she said. “Celebrate my promotion.”

He followed her up to the chemist, where she’d hidden some peach schnapps. She’d done a quicky reccy of the bar; Julian was right. There was some booze there, although most of it was vodka. A few of the older children had tried that but no one really liked it. Sweet drinks tasted better and didn’t make you feel sick unless you drank a whole heap of them. They definitely preferred the schnapps and anything with butterscotch in the name.

—

Irma took Pat to the real estate office wanting the back room of the chemist to be hers alone, not sullied by memories or the scent of another person. One room in the office was set up like an actual lounge room, with fake TV and fake fire.

“I wish I could stay longer but I’m due,” he said, looking at his watch. “We were supposed to jump on board and off we go.”

She laughed at his unintended double meaning, tossing her head back. He smiled. “I could come back,” he said.

“Yes! Do!” she said. She gave him a leather jacket she’d found; it fit him perfectly.

Chapter Four

It was over dinner (microwave pouches with your choice of packet curry) that Irma told the children she’d be staying a bit longer. She pushed a water bubbler lever, feeling thirsty, but just a trickle came out. “We don’t drink that,” Julian said. “I’ll show you the tank later and you won’t either.”

“I’m not a fan of water anyway,” Irma said. “But I am a fan of all of you, so guess what? I’m going to stay for a bit. I won’t be the bossy one, but I will be here to help.”

Bean hugged Irma’s legs and the others gathered around, one big group hug. Julian did a little dance, as if relieved, and said, “Now we can show you where we hide the jellybeans. We only show people who stay.” Bean started climbing Julian like he was a tree, landing on his shoulders. He didn’t mind; he didn’t mind anything. Bean tucked one of her many soft toys under Julian’s arm and he carried that without question.

“I love jellybeans,” Irma said. “Jellybeans for the Bean.”

—

Irma quietly assumed the role of manager. She didn’t say anything to Maud, who honestly had forgotten she was supposed to be pretending to be the boss.

The chemist, upstairs where she could watch down over the children if she stood at the railing, was a mess. Irma spent a day cleaning it up, with the help of Marty and Kate, who asked her many questions about the things they sorted. She told them about medicines, how some could make you feel better, some were for fixing illnesses, and some were for preventing illnesses. Kate found that fascinating. They sorted bottles (although many had been removed) and placed most things back on the labeled shelves. It was interesting the stuff that hadn’t been looted. Bandages and antiseptics were still there, but all of the baby milk powder and nappies were gone. They’d left scented oils but taken the candles. There was plenty of stock left, although most of it was out of date. Irma decided that wouldn’t matter, given the circumstances. She had collected some of the plastic plants and flowers from around the center, and she spent a few minutes dusting them off. She had to do this every day, wiping off strange gray-white dust that was possibly ash, but from where?

She asked Kate to gather up the last children for their immunizations. Maud sat on the bench, watching Irma, her legs swinging.

Irma had sharp cheekbones like some of the women did in the old movie magazines that came in. Her mouth was very thin but she kept it painted with lipstick. The shelves were still stocked with makeup, interestingly, and Irma and the children had fun choosing shades. Maud’s lips were a dark purple at the moment, making her look gothic and pale. Irma didn’t laugh at her though; she was a very serious girl.

Irma said, “I wonder if there’s any hair dye anywhere?” because that was another thing gone from the shelves, and her mousy brown hair depressed her when it came through the dyed red.

Julian came in for his injection. “We can find you anything you need. There might be some in the supermarket, otherwise we’ve probably got a box somewhere. Didn’t we get an order for some a while ago, Maud?” He was the one who knew where everything was. He had the sort of brain that remembered details. He could remember the color of books, if not their titles, and kept track of most of the good food they had. He flinched as Irma injected him but smiled; a joke.

Maud had been thinking. “We never did get a hair dye order,” she said. Her voice stumbled a bit over words she’d never said before.

“Orders?” Irma said.

Maud and Julian showed Irma how the ordering system worked. The orders arrived, apparently, neatly handwritten on A3 paper. They were delivered in sheaves, forty or fifty at a time, with the urgent ones at the top.

“We never see who brings them, it’s weird,” Maud said. “Just in the morning, sometimes we find them in the old café, on one of the tables.”

They walked there, past piles of rubbish, neatly sorted, past walls almost bare of paint, the peelings thick as autumn leaves on the ground. Past empty shops, doors ajar or off their hinges.

The Sunshine Express Café was made to look like a train. It must have been wonderful once upon a time. A train carriage ran all the way through it, and all the seats were train seats. Tracks ran up all the walls (not on the floor, which made sense. Imagine how many people would trip!) and the menu was written on a railway timetable.

“Sometimes we come and eat our meals here,” Maud said. Irma could imagine a time when the café was full of life. Buzzing with food orders and kids, the sound and smell of coffee brewing, the hiss of the sandwiches toasting.

Julian helped Irma into the train. She was aware of how short she was as she stepped up, having to stretch out whereas Julian was comfortable but had no room to move.

Irma looked around the café. There was no food, not even stale biscuits, and no bottles of alcohol. She did find a hazelnut and a vanilla syrup, which would make the cheap, stale coffee here more palatable.

“Isn’t it marvelous?” Irma said. “This would be a great place for a party.”

“The bar’s even better. You can see forever up there. I swear! You stand up there and you can see the future.”

Irma laughed and Julian smiled, a gentle, kindly expression on his face.

Maud picked up a sheaf of orders. Instantly focused, she sat down at one of the tables and sorted them into piles. She told Irma, “Big, small, medium. Then I’ll sort got, haven’t got, don’t know. The ones they say they want first go on top when they come in but I just do it this way.”

Irma looked into the backroom, hoping for supplies of some kind. A massive freezer rested in one corner, with shopping bags, boxes and empty glass bottles on top of it. “Anything good in there?” Electricity hadn’t been an issue to the area, so it might still be.

Maud and Julian shook their heads. “Nothing,” they said. There was a handwritten sign (adult writing) saying, “Do not open, human remains inside.”

“Are there?” Irma asked, fascinated.

“We don’t know. That sign’s been there forever. We were told not to open it. We were told it was a customer who wouldn’t leave, who wanted to eat everything and they died, and no one wanted to deal with the body so they put it in there and forgot about it until the ghost came out and said help me; but no one wants to look in there. What if they are still alive? Preserved or something?” Maud shuddered.

Irma lifted a box labeled “rice crackers,” and dozens of cockroaches skittered out. All three squealed and ran from the storage room, jumping up to sit on the bench, hoping to avoid the awful creatures. “I guess there must be food somewhere,” Irma said.

Julian made a face. “They’ll eat anything. Cardboard, mold, bodies; anything.”

—

Josh found Irma a suitcase. Bright orange, fake leather, with a tag still on it, “George Crowins, Bondi.” It was heavy and Irma felt anxious about what might be inside. She couldn’t cope with anything too sad.

Julian clicked the latches. Inside was someone’s silver collection, stolen or preserved? it was hard to say. It was dull and quite ugly, but worth keeping track of, she thought.

“We’ll stack that in Cool Jewels,” Maud said.

Josh arrived with an armful of clothes. He’d done a great job, got the right sizes and nothing too dramatic. It was all about ten years too old for her, but kids thought anyone over twenty was old. He’d chosen flared trousers, a few tailored shirts, some funny t-shirts, some well-made dresses. She’d never worn designer gear before and enjoyed the textures and the colors. She packed some in her suitcase, stacked some on the chemist bench.

Kate flicked through a stack of photos, handing one to Irma. “That’s you and your boyfriend who died in the war,” Kate stated. Irma laughed; the woman obviously wasn’t her and the man not her type. But the children were very serious. They were giving her a new past. Kate gave her a photo of a baby, clearly taken at least a hundred years earlier. “And that’s you.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Teasing! Hahahaha. That photo is actually one of our ghosts. She isn’t too bad if you’re nice to her.”

“How do you be nice to a ghost?”

Kate farted. “Not like that!”

They fell about laughing. Then they all picked photos out for themselves. Marty picked one of a child of about six, proudly holding a blackboard covered with scribbles. “That was my next-door neighbor. He used to steal all of the pictures I drew and give them to his dad, and now his dad is a famous artist.”

Bean and Josh showed a photo together. It was of an old caravan, incapable of going anywhere. “That was our holiday,” Bean said. Josh nodded. “And Josh and I would ride on the top of the caravan and catch birds for dinner with a big net. Except we fell off and no one noticed and that’s why we’re here.”

Everyone nodded solemnly.

Carlo read off the back of his photo: a lovely pool but a bit breezy for my hair. The photo was of a pretty young woman with a neat haircut being blown in the wind. Carlo stared at her, shook his head. He didn’t want to tell a story.

Julian shuffled through and found another one for Bean. It was of a middle-aged woman, kissing a baby on the cheek. “Helen was godmother to Baby,” he read. They didn’t really know what a godmother was but they’d read fairy tales.

“I’m not baby, I’m Bean,” Bean said, outraged. Julian hugged her. “Of course you are!”

Kate launched into a long story about hers, which was a school photo. She had a story to tell about every person in the picture, but the rest soon lost interest.

Izzy showed them one of a pet bed. A soft purple blanket filled it, a clear dent where the animal had been. She turned down her mouth. “That was my little doggy’s bed. He died because we didn’t give him enough to eat. I fed him all the time, every time I made the dinner, but the people I was living with said he wasn’t allowed that kind of food.”

Irma recoiled, shocked. She was only in part convinced they were inventing these stories; surely that had a basis in truth?

Maud showed them her photo; two old ladies, a man, and a young lady leaning on a black car, with the ocean in the background. Maud envied the easy familiarity of them, the “Taken at Dunbar by George” by someone who knew where Dunbar was, and who George was, and was so familiar with the people in the photo they didn’t need to be named. She said, “That’s my grandma, the pretty lady. Her name was Maud. They named me after her because she died the very night I was born.”

Kate said, “They’re all ghosts now, anyway.”

Over the next few days, the children helped Irma fill her suitcase with clothes, toiletries and other people’s memories.

Chapter Five

Maud pinned the sorted orders up on a wall outside Young World. There were dozens of orders already pinned there, and boxes under all of them. Collected were shoelaces, green plates, blue glasses, henna shampoo bottles, eyeliner, funeral dried flowers (all with RIP ribbons) and much more. A lot of the boxes delivered when Irma arrived sat still unsorted in the general area, and Julian told Irma she should tell the children to get to work. “They won’t do it unless you tell them. We all like being lazy.” So she did tell them, in the nicest way she could, and she handed out lollipops as a sweetener.

“You can help too if you want,” Maud said kindly. Irma got the impression Maud felt sorry for her, that she thought she was a lonely old lady.

“Good idea!” she said.

“Do you want to call out the new orders?” Irma shook her head. It was clearly something Maud relished doing.

“Forty small frames. Twenty pairs of slippers, new. Five workbags.” No one knew what they were. “Three black covers for beds. Sixty stirring spoons.” The list went on. As far as Irma could tell, no one took much notice of the lists, although every now and then an object would be added to one of the boxes. Mostly, they added things to their own suitcases. They’d tell stories as they did so, stories that proved this item belonged to them.

The things that scored them fresh food and juice were coins, high quality clothing, unworn shoes, copper wire they wound into skeins, that sort of thing.

Julian set Irma up to unpack a large, torn box. She did that one, finding little of interest, then another two more, before, in the fourth box, she unearthed more enticing items. Glass inlaid mats, for plants, she thought, but that were decorative in their own right.

“Ooh, look!” Kate said. “Look what I found of yours, Irma!”

Irma knew that nothing of hers could be here, but still she paid attention. It was a sash with lost regalia. Thick silk, the material felt cool to the touch and was quite heavy. It lay satisfyingly flat on her shoulder. There were pin holes and the faintest trace of rust where the regalia once was, so it hadn’t been removed all that long ago. Had the children stripped it before giving it to her or had it arrived this way?

“This sash belonged to the man who murdered my great-grandmother,” she began. She knew they liked murder stories; there were true crime magazines everywhere.

“Why did he murder her?”

“The best question is how. You see how the important bit is missing? The bit that pins on? If you stick that in far enough, in the right place . . . the police won’t even know what you’ve done.” She remembered how that felt. He’d deserved it, that foul old man. He would say she’d deserved what she got, too (that short stint in jail) because of course he hadn’t died. You couldn’t kill an old bastard like that so easily.

“Oooh, look! A tennis racquet!” Irma swung it around, the children watching her. She guessed none of them had played or even watched the game; for her it was a distant memory. “So . . . this belonged to my great-grandmother. And this will tell you the why. Why she got murdered. She was better at tennis than the man who killed her. Some men hate that kind of thing.”

“That’s pathetic,” Julian said. He stood close to her, as if physically wanting to protect her from something. “What sort of man does that? What sort of man thinks that?”

“I’m not saying it’s a good reason!” Irma said. It surprised her how deeply they engaged with stories they must know are not true. “And yes, he’s one of the bad guys.” It was clear Julian had no idea what his own father had done. She wasn’t going to tell him. Perhaps he’d find out one day, perhaps not. How he didn’t remember, at least in part, seemed astonishing. He’d been four when his father slaughtered his mother and two sisters, leaving Julian tucked up in bed. She followed the news, like everybody else did, and there was much discussion about this. Some even thought Julian must have been involved, but clearly he hadn’t. He was just a very good sleeper. Irma felt a small sense of power, knowing so much about these children. They had no idea their cases were written about, discussed, argued about. That they were a matter of public interest.

Izzy sang along with the music (Waiting for the dinner bell ring) then said, “Hey, guess what we got?” A food delivery had arrived but they had yet to look through it. They liked to save that treat up. Izzy had done a quick inventory though. “We got fried chicken!”

“WE DID NOT!” Josh shouted, jumping up and down, and the other children, excited too, joined in. They all ran for the kitchen.

It was frozen.

“It won’t take long!” Irma said. “Come on, by the time you all wash up it’ll be nearly done. What else did we get?”

There was fresh orange juice, and there were bananas. There was cream in a squirty tube. Maud said it must have been for all the silver (Irma checked; it wasn’t her silver they gave away).

“Let’s do dress ups!” Josh said. “What goes with fried chicken?” None of them had any idea. They wandered off, leaving Izzy and Irma to prepare the meal.

—

They all ate together in the childcare center. There were lots of little chairs there, and the floor covering was still quite comfortable, not yet caked in mold or insect trails like elsewhere. There were plastic plants and flowers everywhere, some a bit dusty, but most still shiny and real-looking.

They made a big pile of chicken bones in the center of the room and Julian began poking them into a bottle. He gave it a shake and laughed; it was almost like a musical instrument and the rest of them made one too, dancing around the room to Jitterbug and then Feel my way, before they tired of that game. Then they took their plates to the elevator shaft and threw them down.

“What’s that about?” Irma said. “We should wash, dry, put away!”

“Have you seen how many plates we have? So so so many.” They showed her, in the back of the department store. Many thousands of chipped, cracked and crazed plates. “We’ve got more plates than dishwashing liquid!” Maud said, which made them all laugh, even though it was true.

Chapter Six

A new delivery had arrived. Irma was annoyed; she missed it, missed the chance to see the driver. There were a couple of different ones and she liked them all, really. Liked chatting to them. Maud said, “Don’t worry, he’ll be back in an hour to pick up stuff and take it away.”

The delivery was a couple of hundred shopping bags, crammed full of belts, power cords they’d strip the copper out of, paper clips, notepads. Those they’d tear off the used pages and stack them in a box. They filled a big order and it was ready to go, neatly packaged.

“It’s like a sausage machine. A mess of stuff comes in, neat packages go out.”

“I like sausages,” Bean said.

“Fresh sausages are really tasty,” Irma said, “but I can’t even remember the last time I had one.”

“I like them from a tin,” Bean said.

“How about when you die we turn you into a tin of sausages?” Julian said, squeezing his cheeks together with his hands. Irma was horrified, but Bean laughed till she fell onto the floor.

—

They tipped out another bag and found dozens of flea collars. The ruined ones they’d take the buckles off, but others they could sort. They’d had hundreds of these collars but an order came in a while ago and out they all went, cleaned and sorted into sizes. They got a carton of condensed milk in exchange, and some comic books, although they had a lot of those already.

Marty held one to his chest. “This belonged to my little pup Perry. He was so cute, you should have seen him!”

The others all grabbed at collars too.

Marty said, “He used to sleep on the end of my bed even though he wasn’t allowed to, so when . . .” He paused. He hated to talk about his parents. “When someone came in, Perry would curly up in a tiny ball, and he looked like a cushion! They didn’t even know!”

“That’s like me!” Izzy said. “This collar belonged to my little cat . . . Walky. Because I found her when I went for a walk. And I wasn’t allowed to have her, but she loved me so much they let me keep her after all. I wish she wasn’t dead.”

Maud said to Irma, “Do you have a pet at your house?”

Irma said, “I used to. I had two rabbits who lived in my backyard. It was a really small backyard but big enough for them. They lived off lettuce and carrots and whatever food I had leftover.”

The children didn’t know what she meant by leftovers, and she found it hard to make them understand. “Anyway, the thing is, I had this special friend. And he was so special that I forgot about all other things, even my friends and even those little bunnies. So . . .” there was no way she was confessing she’d let them starve to death. “So they dug their way out of their little house, and under the fence, and off they went. They’re having adventures to this very day, you watch!”

The children all looked at her, horrified. They somehow knew the truth of it, or found the story as she told it awful enough.

A song came on, Irma started to dance to Bad Dreams in the Night. Most of the children joined in, laughing, but Julian wasn’t impressed. “She’s drunk,” he said to Maud.

“Doesn’t matter, she’s fun!” Maud said. They danced around until Irma fell over, taking Bean with her. Bean landed on her wrist, bending it, and then there were tears.

“See?” Julian said. He remembered nothing of his family, but he remembered how a drunk adult made him feel.

I’ve Been Waiting played, and Kate said, “Hey! That’s the lunch song! Should we eat?”

They were having so much fun unpacking the stuff they decided to have a picnic-style lunch.

While they ate, Maud showed Julian an envelope. It was red, stamped “Urgent,” and they both knew what it was. An envelope like this had come in for Rachel, letting her know a place had opened up for her at medical school.

“Who’s it for, do you think?” Maud said. It wasn’t always the oldest who went next. Children as young as seven had been pulled out to go to school. There was an excitement about it but also a fear of the unknown. If they were sent to school together it would be better. This way they never saw each other again, although who knew what happened out there? Maud was tempted to hide it again; she’d put it underneath a pile of material, ragged at the hems but still colorful and not moth-eaten. She didn’t want anyone to go.

“We have to open it some time,” Julian said.

It was Julian, being called up for training. It didn’t say school, it said training. It said he could be an engineer or a carpenter. He wasn’t sure what either thing was, but he said, “Oh well! Next thing!”

Maud went into a sulk, not wanting him to go. Kate, Carlo and Marty gathered around him, asking him questions he didn’t know the answer to. Bean joined Maud in her sulk, adding as many hmmmphs as anyone would listen to. Josh said, “Let me find you your going away clothes,” and Izzy told Julian she’d make him food for the trip. Bean cried, clinging on to him. “I’ll pack you in my suitcase!” he said, and she nodded, thinking this sounded like a great idea.

Irma was quiet.

There were still boxes to unpack so they kept at it. They started to pile things up for Julian, all the best things they found. They didn’t know what he’d need. How much he would be able to take.

Marty untied a garbage bag that was mostly full of shoes. He dragged it over to the stage (they’d found it was easier to sort them on there) and began to line them up. He liked things in order so he sorted them by color, mixing pink high-heeled shoes with hot pink sneakers, and artily painted boots with colorful rope sandals. The children soon messed it up, all of them wanting to try shoes on. Maud (who had long since discarded her high heels) found herself a pair of dark purple ballet slippers. Pulling them on, she danced around on the stage, stepping between all the shoes. Bean, always following, looked around until she found some ballet slippers as well and danced and danced.

There were lots of broken shoes, mismatched pairs, and shoes so filthy no one would ever wear them. They would save buckles, buttons and heel bits; Marty specialized in this. He picked up an almost-new pair of good boots.

“Julian! These would fit you.”

“They would,” Julian said. He sat down and pulled them on. “Perfect.”

“Do you know what we found in a boot once?” Maud said. The others gathered around. “We found a diamond ring. Remember? We tested it by scratching the glass over there.” Irma looked; there was indeed a large scratch. “And the time we found a roll up of money. And when we found a key.”

“We’ve found so many keys!” Marty said. “Never found the lock to match!” Although sometimes they were the generic style, opening small locks of cabinets. That was useful.

—

Josh was in charge of the clothing, but most of them had to help sort it. There was so much. They knew the sort of thing people wanted, and bags of that (things with fancy labels, things that felt nice to the touch, things with diamonds sewn on) went onto hangers and racks. They sorted into sizes and styles; they never had to wear the same thing twice. Some of it they’d used as bedding, before the mattresses arrived, and even now they’d lifted their beds off the floor with old dresses and trousers. Some of the good stuff they saved for themselves, parading around for entertainment.

Julian’s suitcase was brown, trunk-like. It had a lock on it but he never bothered with that. He loved folding the clothing, stacking it up neatly. He was always after storage bins, boxes, chests of drawers. He was the one to go to if you needed something warm or something cool to wear.

So Josh was the one who found clothes for Julian to pack. These would be different to “home clothes.” He was going to training; he needed to look smart. There were pants and shirts, socks without holes. Two good jackets and one big fluffy one.

Julian fitted it all in; clothes, shoes, a dog leash to remind him of a long-dead pet, some of the jewelry, some of the coins. They didn’t know how he would use it or if he would need to, but just in case. He packed in an old watch that didn’t work. “This was my father’s,” he said. “My mum gave it to him. She said that every time it ticked, to think of her and how much she loved him.”

“Awww,” Irma said. “That’s sweet.”

—

Maud knew that it was good for Julian to be leaving, but for the moment she didn’t want him to go. She sat, staring into the fish tank. She wished the fish were still swimming so she could watch them. But there was only sludge, and bones. She wondered who the fish had been. What color and how big. You couldn’t tell from the bones.

That could be any fish in there.

Bean came and sat by her with a big pile of old birthday cards. Her job was to tear them in half, so that the old greetings were removed and they could all write on them for Julian. Long ago the habit became to have birthday parties instead of farewell parties. No one remembered how it started, but, as they told Irma, they were starting a new life so it kind of made sense.

The torn off bits would go down into the parking garage into the paper recycling. They were all scared of the recycling pile in the parking garage. Much as they loved stories, the ones about that massive pile were too frightening, about someone falling in and being drowned there, all eaten up by whatever ate up the paper, turned into sludge like the sludge in the bottom of the fish tank. Underneath the decades of paper lay a river of this sludge, and even a drop on your skin would work its way to the bone.

—

Julian appeared in the doorway, dressed in the “stepping out” outfit Josh had chosen for him, inspired by an old fashion magazine. He wore a beige turtleneck jumper, with a navy blue jacket. He held a striped scarf.

“You look great!” Irma said. “Very grown up. But your hair is a mess!” It really was long, and stringy on the ends.

“You need a haircut,” Maud said. She loved giving haircuts. The hairdresser (Curl Up and Dye, it was called) still had aprons and sharp scissors, so they made their way there.

As Hard Times played, Maud made Julian sit in the chair, where he fidgeted, bored as he often was, but she joked with him and got him to tell stories, and when she was done he cried. “I look so good,” he said. “I actually look good.”

Izzy went to the kitchen to bake some cookies. They had enough That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles supplies to last a lifetime, as long as they had tinned milk or water for powdered milk. Izzy stirred in an extra handful of chocolate chips saved for special occasions, and set the oven going. She never questioned where the power came from; none of them did. They accepted the fact they had light and heat, that music played throughout the day. She pulled the trays out, burning herself as she always did. Her fingers, hands and forearms were crisscrossed with fine lines, remnants of past burns.

Julian leaned in the doorway. “Are those all for me?” Izzy thought he was getting fat and told him so, but he just laughed and shoved three cookies in his mouth at once. She laughed, and he did, sputtering crumbs over the floor. The ants and the cockroaches would clean that up.

Bean ate as many cookies as she could before someone stopped her. She liked sausages and cookies, not much else. She hated beans. She did some horrendous farts, though.

—

They traipsed up to the roof. Julian peered into the distance, one hand shading his eyes. “I see the future,” he said. No one paid him attention, so he said it louder, then they listened. “I can see a new delivery of sweet things, a great big tin of fudge. I can see the water out there, and I’m swimming in it and you all are, too. You all get sent to school in the same place, and we all go swimming whenever we feel like it.”

This sounded too good for words. “But seriously, I will find a way to send a message or something. Keep checking the café. I might be able to send a message about where we can all meet.”

“In the trees,” Kate said. “Way out there. Where those lovely flowers are growing.” All the trees in the distance had large flowers, hanging down.

“You can send us a message, Julian. When you’re in school.”

Irma said, “Don’t get your hopes up, though. I don’t want you to be disappointed. He might not be able to.”

—

They saw a small cloud of dust before they saw the car itself. It hadn’t rained in a long time, months, and the ground outside was dry and cracked. Even someone going by foot could raise a small dust storm.

Julian had grown noticeably stronger over the last few months. Carrying his suitcase in one arm, Bean in the other, he walked to the door. Irma wondered again why they hadn’t decided to pretend Julian was the boss when she arrived, given he was that bit older than Maud. But watching him now, she could see he found it hard to stay focused, would be distracted easily. Maud stayed on the job better. And he wouldn’t have wanted it, anyway. They all thought Maud was the better actor.

The front doors rattled. No one could ever figure out how to open them from the outside so the children had to let people in.

It was two tall people, a man and a woman. She was dressed in black, with tight pants and a fitted jacket. Underneath was some kind of filmy garment, as if she’d forgotten to change out of her nightclothes.

The man was shorter, dressed in soft purple pants and matching warm top. He looked like a cuddly bear, like the ones in the old toy shop with a message on their tummies “I Wuv You” or “You’re the Bearst.”

The man clapped his hands and bounced on his toes. “You guys! It looks great in here. Even better than last time.”

Maud said, “Last time?” and Julian whispered, yeah, remember Brent?” but she didn’t, which was bad. She hoped she wouldn’t forget Julian like that. You shouldn’t forget people. It left a little blank space in your brain like the ones her parents left. She remembered Rachel, at least, but a different pair of people had collected her.

“How are you, Big Fella?” the man said. Maud and Julian exchanged glances. These officials couldn’t really tell one from the other. They were so dumb.

The woman said, “Hello, Julian, got your things?”

He had his suitcase and he lifted it to show her. Izzy gave him a few more cookies, wrapped in a tea towel, and he stuffed those into his jacket pocket.

—

Everybody went to the high tower to watch him go. Up there were vast windows where they could watch comings and goings. They looked out at the rubble, the piles from the demolished buildings. Wondered if there was anything good to be found, anything worth collecting. Should they go to look? With wheelbarrows or old shopping trolleys? Irma told them she saw piles of boxes, things half-buried. She said, who knows what could be out there.

Kate noted down which song was playing when Julian left (I Just Wanna Sleep). They didn’t know the actual names of any of them, but they could hum the tune and they all knew, or could sing, the first few lines or the words that got repeated sometimes. Kate kept the list in a notebook. It wasn’t a reliable way to tell time or witness the passage of time, or perhaps it was.

Kate hummed his song. Everybody was crying, all of the children. They’d watched the car take Julian away and now he wasn’t here. It felt like the car had disappeared into a hole or something. Behind the buildings. Irma explained there was more beyond.

Maud couldn’t remember feeling as bad when Rachel left, but perhaps they did and she’d just forgotten.

“We’ll never see him again,” Marty said. “He probably already doesn’t even remember what we look like.”

That made them all cry even harder.

Irma poured herself a drink. Many drinks. Then gathered up more bottles to take with her.

As they walked back down all the stairs, everyone was crying. “I miss him already,” Bean said, and they all agreed, crying harder. Carlo refused to walk anymore, stopping in the stairwell and weeping.

Irma would say later to Robbo, “It threw me. I honestly didn’t think I’d care so much about these kids. But they were really sad; it was heartbreaking.”

Irma felt helpless, then she said, “How about if we write him a letter? We could all do that! That way he’ll be able to read our letters and remember us easily.” She led them to the post office. She hadn’t been in there but knew there were many mail bags. She’d been intending to check it out, see if there was anything worth opening and keeping.

A motivational sign over the door said, “We are our brother/sister’s keeper.” As they entered, the children fell quiet. Irma had noticed they did this. They spoke mostly in whispers or very quiet voices anyway, but in places like the post office, they became almost silent. There were places that quietened their voices. Possibly people died there. And ghosts deadened noise; they changed the atmosphere so noise didn’t carry. Ghosts didn’t like loud noises or laughter and they hated children. So everyone tried to be quiet near them.

“Okay! Let’s get started!” Irma laid out paper and pens. Many of them couldn’t write so they drew pictures. Marty said, “Let’s write to our parents as well!” and she didn’t stop them, but it almost broke her, seeing such hope, such belief their letters would be seen. They had an innocence about them she didn’t want to shatter. They wouldn’t believe her if she told them; they’d just think she was crazy. Her own parents had died when she was twenty-two, both of them killed in the liquor store during a holdup. Wrong place, wrong time, people said, as if that made any difference. Irma hadn’t even thought about the possibility that one of these children could be the offspring of the people who murdered her parents. They’d be grandchildren, perhaps. When her parents had died and she had to clear out the house, she’d found things that still chilled her to this day. Still made her angry. Even thinking about it, even playing at post office now made her feel sick to the stomach and furious. They’d kept any and every important thing that had come into the house secret from her. Most of it was online in those days, of course, but there were official letters, there were love letters, there were notes from grandparents and gifts still wrapped that she had never received. Why her parents had hated her so much, to do that to her she would never know. It’s not like they left a note explaining themselves. It was just one of those things they’d done to her. One of the things that made her who she was.

Everybody folded their letters into envelopes and without thinking, Irma began to address them all: The Factories, with a question mark because she didn’t know which jail each person was in.

Most of them lost interest then and wandered off after ceremoniously mailing their letters in the post box, leaving Maud and Irma to explore. “Kate loves the chemist but I love the post office!” Maud said. “I love it here!” Together they went through some of the old mailbags, filled with letters. Irma showed Maud how to squeeze them, feel for things inside.

They found a stack of parcels and decided to take them all. It would cheer everyone up, even if there were only socks inside, or someone’s dirty washing being mailed home, or whatever. Irma had investigated the area earlier and knew the possibilities. It wasn’t hoarding, she told herself, not if she was just stacking and sorting, or asking the children to stack and sort. And it wasn’t stealing. All of this was abandoned. The senders and recipients likely dead; at the very least no longer interested in the contents. Julian had told her not to take anything, although why it was up to him, she didn’t know. He’d set himself up as the monitor of belongings, or something.

—

There was a section called the “Dead Letter Office.” Someone, the last worker to leave perhaps, had added the words “this whole place is a” to the Dead Letter Office sign.

Maud didn’t want her to go in there. “It’s haunted,” she said with great certainty. “It’s full of bones. There are bones in there and bodies,” Maud said, nodding. She sat down amongst a great stack of letters. “You can go if you want. I’m going to stay here for a while. It’s peaceful.”

“Apart from the ghost?”

“The ghost is only in there.” Maud indicated the Dead Letter Office. She looked at the letters. “How should I sort them?”

Irma could barely remember. She pointed out the postal codes. “Start with those,” she said. “Sort by number.”

Maud sighed, deeply satisfied.

Irma would have to check out the Dead Letter Office later.

Chapter Seven

Maud was in a deep sleep when a great rumble, a crashing, woke her up. She grunted and turned back over in bed; it was a delivery, she thought. There would be nothing urgent in that delivery. Piles of junk no one else wanted that they would sort and use and try to sell. By the sounds of it, there were weeks of work in the delivery, so a few more hours sleep wouldn’t hurt.

She was woken again by a tapping at her feet. It was Bean.

“They sent me a friend!” she squealed, her voice so high Maud’s ears hurt. “A dear little friend with her own suitcase!”

It was true. Standing near the entrance, where the massive fallen Christmas tree rested, was a young child. They hadn’t had anyone new in months at least; before this one, it’d been three around Maud’s age, who were still settling in.

A large pink suitcase reached the child’s shoulders, bulging with belongings.

Bean whispered, “Ooh! Nice suitcase!” Bean’s suitcase was plaid, very large but with small tears. “I wish mine was nice.”

“Leave her alone,” Maud told her. She went to the child and asked for a name.

“Sally,” she said.

“Come and play, Sally!” Bean said, but Sally hid behind her suitcase

“Take her into the supermarket and find a treat,” Maud said. There weren’t a lot of treats left but they tried to restock when they could. The two girls skipped away.

Maud checked the tag on Sally’s suitcase and added a pin on the map of Australia someone had long ago pinned to the noticeboard. She didn’t really know where she was pinning. It didn’t seem to matter. She tied a piece of string from that pin over to the Directory Map of the shopping center, connecting Sally’s place with a specialty pen store.

They all had their own pins, if they could remember where they were from. One of the few rules of the Emporium was don’t move the pins, because it was easy to forget their origins. Maud didn’t remember anymore unless she looked at her pin.

Every now and then, one who could write would make a list, but not everyone could read it.

I can’t feel nothing played and Maud got on with the job.

—

Over the next while, they sorted the delivery. More came the next day, and more, but they worked methodically, slowly, because they would never, ever get to the end of the junk, so there was no point trying too hard. They never rushed. They liked to look at everything and tell stories, and they tried to fill their suitcases with things that might have been theirs.

They ate box noodles, because a delivery had come in and they all loved them.

They sorted wineglasses into boxes, because requests came through for these. Two hundred champagne glasses, one hundred brandy balloons. They had pictures reminding them of what each glass looked like. They’d get the glasses back in the same boxes, most of them broken. Broken glass went into the parking garage, dropped through the hole in the corner. The old manager used to threaten to throw the kids down there, but since he was gone, no one had feared anything at all. No one went down there. It was like an old game called Jenga, the manager had said. If you pulled one bit out, everything would fall. And the paper recycling pile was down there; no one wanted to go near that.

They could keep whatever wasn’t on the lists. The so-called “high value” items were pretty much worthless to Maud and the other children. What was of value to them were the items that made them think of a time before the Emporium. They talked a lot about those other lives, although the real memories were fuzzier now. They had to remind each other of the details.

Each time they added an item to their suitcase, a story was added to their past lives. Maud picked up a pair of red shoes. They were leather, small, to fit a five-year-old, perhaps. If she closed her eyes, she could remember riding a bike, dragging her feet along, her mother yelling at her to lift your feet, lift your feet.

“Those are my shoes!” Josh said, thrusting them onto his feet and spinning around like a ballerina until he fell over, making them all laugh. His suitcase was a big red one, pale and faded now, but with three deep pockets on the outside full of comics and newspaper clippings. “I swear these were mine,” he said. It was all an invented mythology anyway; she would find another pair of shoes to tell a story about.

Three large cartons of cereal had come in. Breakfast for the next couple of months would be chocolate cereal, barely out of date. What they didn’t eat would go out to the birds on the roof, and the carboard flattened and stored in the old paper shop.

Some of the boxes were labeled: Mum’s sideboard, top shelf. Susie’s toys. David’s cars and trains. Grandma’s back cupboard (wrapped). Carlo found a set of ten silver apostle spoons that Irma claimed as hers. She understood how it worked now; if you had a story, you could keep the item. She said, “That was from my christening. I had a godmother who no one spoke to, but she always sent presents. No one wanted to use these spoons because they thought she might have dipped them in poison. But I always loved them.”

Maud nodded, and Irma tucked the spoons into a pocket. She’d find a good hiding place for them later. She’d taken to stacking things in the empty shop next to the chemist, wanting to keep the chemist clear for work, and for times away from the children. She had a fold out bed in there for quiet naps in the dark.

Grandma’s back cupboard box was full of tacky items from around the world. They sometimes had a call for this stuff but mostly it was rubbish and no one wanted to claim it. Snow domes, decorative plaques, dolls in national costume, spoons, plates. All of it covered with the names of places they didn’t know, and pictures of things they didn’t recognize. Still, they sorted it by name and boxed it up. Someone might like it.

Sally had gathered a pile of the dolls, lining them up. “You got those when you were born!” Irma said. “Your godmother gave them to you.” Even as she said it, she worried about the similarity with Sally’s real story. The children didn’t care, though. They found a small lunch box for the dolls to sleep in, and Sally was happy for hours after that.

They found a briefcase initialed ESB. There were piles of papers inside, all stamped “top secret” or “of utmost importance or in-extreme-confidence.” They piled the paper up to go into the parking garage.

Kate’s suitcase was blue vinyl, in perfect condition. She was very selective about what she placed in it. A very special book. A perfect shell. A small drinking glass. A pair of reading glasses, ornate and set with shining stones.

—

Sally cried herself to sleep every night for a lot of nights, but as memory of life outside the Emporium faded, she settled down and became as happy as the rest of them. She loved chocolate cereal and would eat nothing but. She still cried every now and then, but they realized she was crying because she wasn’t lonely anymore. “My house was so quiet,” she told them. “And no one went to school, and no one was allowed to play with each other.”

The children were never lonely. Sally cried sometimes just hearing voices. She clung to Maud often, like a little monkey, causing Bean to be a bit jealous. Irma tried to take her on occasion, but she really wasn’t interested; she could sense, as they all did, that Irma was more interested in herself than in them.

—

There were hundreds of books in this delivery. They’d use them to stack against the walls for insulation. For making cubby houses. They’d tuck books into alcoves to keep the creepy crawlies from coming through. Books were also the best thing for the fire pit they had on the roof. Kate was in charge of looking after that. Books burnt slowly and didn’t pour out fumes.

They didn’t burn the art books, or the beautiful picture books. They didn’t burn the many pieces of artwork that came to them either; these they hung on the walls, more insulation, layer upon layer of pastorals, portraits, still lifes, beach scenes, marine scenes, huge great sailing ships so cleverly painted the sails seemed to flap in the wind.

They sorted through the sheets and pillows, looking for more blankets. The ones they found were musty and clammy, mostly, but they found if they hung them on the pipes that radiated heat through most of the building, that smell would sizzle out.

They found more bedding in the day care center. There were lots of snacks in there too, just like Julian had told them, and using his hand-drawn map, they found a stash of chocolate eggs that were still pretty fresh.

—

Kate found a pair of shoes with wheels on them.

“Roller skates!” Irma told them. “You put them on and it’s almost like you’re flying.” She had a memory of a first kiss at a roller rink but it wasn’t hers, it was her mothers.

“They were yours when you were a little girl,” Maud said. “See that mark underneath? That was so your sister couldn’t say they were hers.”

It seemed real when Maud said it.

Kate strapped them on. She clung to the walls and to the other children, grabbed onto the fake plants, held onto the backs of chairs, all the while laughing her head off.

“We have a few more pairs around somewhere,” Izzy said. “In the sporting goods store.” No one liked to venture there much. The smell of old rubber, leather and plastic, and the resulting smell of the metal, made it unpleasant. They told each other a team of footballers’ ghosts lived there, kids who died in a bus crash on the way to a match.

The sporting goods store was on the second floor, in a back corner. Irma hadn’t seen much of this area before and took it all in. There was a shoe shop, smelling like fresh leather, a delightful smell. A gift shop, mostly stripped, but with a few items left on the shelf. And “We buy gold.” She doubted there was anything left in there, but she’d check it out later.

“We’re still making lists of all this stuff,” Maud told her. “In case people want it.” The gift store had a fake fireplace, oddly, and a grandfather clock that was clearly made of carboard.

The sporting goods shop was a delight. It was still pretty well-stocked; people weren’t so keen on do it yourself sports these days. Thinking that she could convince some of the delivery drivers to stay for a bit if she entertained them (and in the back of her mind she was planning a party), she collected things that they could play with. She found a soft ball and bat set (Nerf Fun, it was called) and a game of quoits, and there was plenty more she could come back for.

The roller skates were piled in a corner, in a bit of a mess. “We keep adding them when we find them,” Maud said. “No one’s ordered any yet, but you watch, I bet they do now.”

There were enough pairs for all of those who’d followed along. Bean and Sally both cried; their feet were too small. But Maud, Izzy, Irma, Carlo, Josh and Marty all joined Kate. They wheeled around the shop, screeching with laughter, falling over, pulling themselves up, falling over again.

Then Marty rolled out the door of the shop. The passageway out the front was much more slippery, and he headed toward the stairs, much faster than he’d planned. He squealed, a high-pitched sound that had the others trying to race after him but falling over themselves. Irma tore her roller skates off and joined the chase, only to see him slip backward and land with a crack on the back of his head.

“Kate! Run down and get my bag! Maud! Takes his skates off.” Marty wasn’t responding. When she held his eyelids open, the whites of his eyes showed. All her old training kicked in. She’d done part of a medical degree before shifting to nursing; it was her nursing stuff that helped her here. She’d always been good at this. She’d just been sidetracked by life.

—

Irma felt more attached to the children after this. They changed in the way they looked at her; they trusted her now. They loved her, she thought, or at the very least admired her and were grateful to her. Marty had a headache and a massive bandage around his head, but he was apart from that okay. She stopped in at Young World to find gifts for them all, knowing in her heart they had all they needed. She found them clean socks, packets of handkerchiefs, scarves. She made a pot of spaghetti sauce with lots of hidden vegetables. They all ate it, although they made it clear they preferred Izzy’s cooking.

—

The delivery bell rang. Most of the drivers didn’t bother; they just left the stuff on the dock, or piled up outside the walls. So Irma knew it was her favorite, the one called Robbo. and who she rather liked. It had taken her a while to realize there were a few of them; they all looked quite similar. He was in the Children’s Services truck and by now she had realized it was the children providing the service rather than the other way around.

Everything was laid out on the deck. Garbage bags full, boxes, crates, and one white Styrofoam box, addressed to the Dead Letter Office.

Irma wanted to look in, but the driver stopped her. “Best not to know some things,” he said. He offered her a cigarette. She saw then that he’d clearly been in a fight. His face was bruised and two of his fingers bandaged. A partially healed cut split his cheek. Irma touched it gently.

“Some arsehole,” he said. “Jumped me out of the blue. They got him, though. He’s in the Factory, will be there for a while.”

They stood together, smoking. One of the children appeared in the doorway and Robbo tried to hide his cigarette, but Irma said, “They don’t care. It’s not like these kids’ll ask questions. I love them to bits, but it freaks me out a bit that they don’t ask any questions.

“Maybe they can’t see the point in knowing stuff. Maybe they’d rather not know.”

“But they talk about their parents; they just don’t know anything about them. They’re always talking about them being at work, without really knowing what that means.” She pointed to buildings in the distance. “Like, that’s where they are. Right? In the Factories. And they think being here is all about how old they are. Not about their parents and what they owe society.”

“Some people deserve to be in there,” he said. He took another drag of his cigarette and winced as if his cut lip gave him pain.

“Sooo?” she said.

“Misunderstanding,” he said. “Wrong place, wrong time, wrong assumption about what I was doing.”

Bean and Sally appeared beside them. “There you are!” Bean said. “Hiding!” Maud came up behind them.

“It’s all about keeping them safe, right?” Robbo said quietly.

Maud remembered something of life out there. The sense of a “lack of safety.” Whereas here she felt secure. Even with the younger boys battling it out to be “the boss,” with Julian gone, they were easily reminded of the other life, and of the importance of looking out for each other.

—

After Robbo left, Irma watched the children unpack. The Styrofoam box had gone straight to the post office. She’d look at that later.

They unpacked a box of out-of-date breakfast bars they had received in exchange for a crate of flattened drink cans. The bars were full of marshmallows and chocolate, and while the nutrition panel claimed they covered 5% of daily needs, they also covered 95% of salt and sugar limits.

The children loved them.

Irma felt sleepy and half-drunk. Watching them, she wondered if they understood what they were doing. She’d packed up her grandmother’s house and the contrast here, of these children unpacking a stranger’s belongings and claiming stories, was so very different she wondered if they saw the metaphor of unpacking a life, of naming items in order to own them.

Maud saw a shoebox, battered but intact, and claimed it. It was unlikely to hold actual shoes but you never knew. Mind you there were plenty upstairs in the shoe shop. A small percentage you had to match up, but most were already in pairs. Maud and Josh liked pairing the shoes with outfits. She said, “Josh! Maybe we’ll find an animal print pair in here to go with the coat you found!” It was a magnificent coat, soft, long, sleek. Josh had it hanging on a mannequin near the stage.

“I hope not,” Josh said, but he smiled.

Inside the shoebox was a teacup set, carefully wrapped in yellowing tissue paper. Cup, saucer, plate, not chipped, barely used, but very old.

“Oh, look!” Maud said. She turned the cup (cream, with a dark green stripe around the rim) over in her hands. She pretended to sip delicately from it. “This belonged to my grandmother. One day I went to visit her and we sat in the car and watched people play football and drank tea from these tea cups.” She thought for a moment. “I drank Milo, she drank tea. But then something happened to her and she dropped her tea onto her lap and burnt herself and died.”

Josh made a sad face, although he was clearly more focused on unpacking. Maud could picture the scene in her head but the memory seemed wrong, because of the light. Her brain kept shifting it to the Emporium but she knew she’d been outside once.

Carlo dug down into a pillowcase that had pictures of cartoon animals (a lion grooming his mane with an enormous comb, an elephant with loops of string tied around its toes, a leopard in running shoes). “Ooh, I found something for Sally.” It was a small metal cup, designed for a young child, with a big handle and the etching of a teddy bear.

“Here you go,” he said, handing it to Sally.

Sally stared blankly.

“It was a present from the people next door,” Maud said. She was the best at getting stories started. “They gave it to you when you turned one. It used to belong to their little boy but he died.”

“How?” Sally asked, entranced.

Maud held the cup. “Not poison,” she said. “It was a terrible accident. He was playing on the roof and fell off. He thought he could fly. He jumped and he landed on the big tree in your backyard. It was a . . .” Maud closed her eyes to picture it. “It was a tree covered with yellow flowers. He broke some of the branches and died, and all of the flowers from then on were red, the same color as blood.”

Kate showed Sally how to pack the cup into her suitcase. “You can tell the story next time.” She lifted a pair of binoculars out of the suitcase and handed them to Sally, who lifted them to her eyes.

“We can use them next time we’re on the roof, to look a long way away,” Irma said.

Josh found a small pencil case, with drawings of rockets in a childish hand. “Don’t you remember?” Maud said. Most of the stories started that way. She led Josh to his own story. “Don’t you remember?”

He opened the case to find a pile of blunt colored pencils. “I made a map with these. A map of the Emporium.”

“Was it? But the blue is nearly gone. You drew a lot of sky. Or water.”

“Water,” he said. “I drew a map of the ocean, with lots of islands.” He looked around, as if trying to find the map. “We used to sail our boats to all the islands and spend a night on each one. The worst one was full of birds. They hated us camping. They were only quiet at night, and even then we heard them whispering.”

“That was probably ghosts,” Maud said. In the rare times when everything was quiet (air conditioner off, momentary music lull between cycles, everyone else asleep) whisperings could be heard.

Irma found a bag of jewelry and set it aside to check later and stack with her other finds. She knew she wouldn’t be able to take it all, but she wanted as many options as possible. She sat there in the semidark and felt a sense of loneliness drop over her. She craved adult company. She craved action and flirtation. She craved physical contact with an adult male.

She went back to where the children were and told Maud, “You know what? I think I’ll throw a party.”

They shifted dozens of clothing bags. Josh would go through them over the next few days. He had fifteen dress mannequins lined up (he was terrified of the day someone would put an order in for them) and he loved to dress them. He tipped out one of the bags, hoping for a treasure.

“Oh!” Maud said. She reached into the pile. “Look!” She lifted up a bright scarf, all purples and pinks, with pictures of flamingoes reflected on the water. “Have you seen another like this?”

“It must be Rachel’s!” Josh said. “Do you think she sent it to you somehow?” They both looked at the scarf, mystified, before Maud tied it around her neck.

“I love it so much,” she said, almost whispering in awe.

“Rachel sent us her things!” Kate said. They all decided that Rachel’s things returning to them was a message from her to them that everything would be okay. They decided she’d moved up in the world. She could unpack her suitcase and her backpack because she was staying in the same place for a while. They sometimes unpacked their suitcases but no one liked to be unprepared. They all wanted to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

They decided that Julian would send them a message too.

Sally found a packet of black markers. Squatting, she began to draw on herself, and Bean sat next to her to watch. “My dad had some like this,” Sally said.

“And the man, too,” Bean said. They called all of the delivery drivers “man.”

Sally covered her arms and legs with drawings of flowers. “I love them,” she said. The others all joined her, drawing on each other and themselves. Maud drew Julian flying, and also a picture of a cat, with little footprints left behind all up her arm.

Sally drew flowers on everybody. Irma said, “If you really love flowers, maybe you can look after our little flower tower on the roof? The birds love it.”

Sally shook her head, but Bean said, “It’s so cool! Can we both?” and Maud got them set up. Josh found them matching overalls, and Maud found them a small watering can each. They raided the florist, which had a small greenhouse filled with dead flowers and plants.

Irma said, “When I have my party, you girls can be in charge of getting me some flowers to put on the table!”

Chapter Eight

There was a lot to do. After sending out some invitations, Irma started her preparations.

It was past midnight. Music played: it never stopped. We play these parlor games. You say you love me. With most of the lights off, the atrium took on a silvery glow and in her fancy she saw fairies dancing in the corner and flying through the air, racing around as the children did by day.

She realized it wasn’t fairies at all but some of the older boys throwing balls around and other things as well.

With Julian gone, some of the boys thought they could step into his shoes, although Julian was never in charge, he was just calm and clever and helped to solve things. There were four or five of them, she thought, although it was hard to see in the low light. They’d all taken their shirts off and were circling each other. One brandished a baseball bat, another what looked like a mannequin arm. She would need to take control of them sooner rather than later, but she wasn’t sure how. And it was entrancing, watching them. How did they know this stuff? Was it instinctive, or did they have some memory of time outside the shopping center? Of adults in their lives taking part in this violent circling.

Then it was on, all five of them hitting and kicking, still quiet, somehow not disturbing the peace as much as they should.

They were agitated and at this stage only hurting each other, so she didn’t intervene, and they ran out of steam very quickly.

The next day, she gathered those boys together. She’d recognized one, and he quickly told her the names of the others. She took them up to the tower and filled them with junk food; chicken nuggets cooked in the microwave, cheese twists, potato chips, candy canes. She pointed out into the distance to the trees, and the pods hanging off them.

“Do you know what they are?” she said. “Any ideas?” None of them wanted to guess. “It’s people hanged. People like you, like any of you, hanged for violence. Remember the other day, when the driver came all bashed up?” They nodded, and she pointed out. “He’s hanging out there. The guy that did it to him. Hanging out there with all the others. There’s one main thing this society hates, boys. It’s violence. Battle it out with a game of some kind. Best for all involved.”

—

Irma was on a roll, feeding the children. She cooked up a big feast, more chicken nuggets, chips, some zucchini fritters she found stashed at the back of the freezer. She laid out nuts and energy bars. She fed them then asked them to help her clean up. “Let’s make a good impression. Let’s show these people how well we can look after our own place. Then they might leave everyone here.” She gave them all gloves and asked them to clear up the broken glass around the windows. So many broken windows, all the way up the tower. The gaps were covered with clear plastic in most places, so the light still got in, but it was less than perfect. “Be careful!” she told them. They threw some of the glass into the parking garage, but some of it they tossed out windows, in an attempt to deter visitors. Irma didn’t approve of that but they didn’t care.

Buckets sat over the floors, gathering drips of water. Another drowned mouse floated in one and the water in the others was discolored and smelled bad. Irma tipped them out herself. She wasn’t squeamish, after all her years working as a nurse.

—

After the cleanup, they were all exhausted. They sat up in their beds eating snacks, so tired they could barely manage even that. The lights were bright that day for some reason, so some of them made little tents over their beds. It was never completely dark in the shopping center. Maud wrote a letter to Julian and snuck out to mail it.

—

Preparing for the party was one of the best days any of them had ever had. They wanted to dress up (encouraged by Irma, who just wanted them not to annoy her) so they raided Cool Jewels and the formal wear shop. They all dressed in clothes too big for them; Josh tried to get them to change but no one would. The girls put gowns on over their other clothes, the boys, big jackets. They chose the most colorful jewelry. Irma noted none of it was of value. Most of that had gone. But the costume pieces were fun and who knew? Maybe they would be worth something. Certainly some of the pieces were rare.

“This is my mother’s handbag,” Carlo said. This seemed unlikely; it was a massive green thing Irma doubted anybody had ever used. “She used to carry my dad’s dinner in here when he worked . . .” He had to think. “When he worked on the buildings. He worked so hard he never stopped to eat so my mother would come with food for him. In here. You can see crumbs at the bottom.” He opened the bag wide for them to see and while there were no visible crumbs, all of them could imagine such. Everyone wanted handbags then, and that was fun too.

They showed Irma the makeup collection, and how they shaved off the lipsticks so they were as good as new. They tried on all the perfumes (some quite genuinely having memories of these scents) and they did their hair.

They wore hats and gloves. Irma wore black gloves with white stitching. Matching black hat with a black rose. Josh said she looked like a model. Maud thought she looked more like a killer, like a woman out of one of their true crime magazines.

They had a whole wall of pictures cut from magazines for a game they played called “Killer or Actor.” They’d mix up the true crime and the Hollywood pictures, and you had to guess which. It was disturbing to Irma, because some of them even had family members in these pictures. Julian’s father was literally famous for what he’d done, but because Julian was unnamed in the story (the magazine called him “the boy, the spitting image of his father”) they didn’t know.

Marty said, “You should play it at your party too.” The children only vaguely remembered birthday parties but they knew there were always games.

“We might,” Irma said. She wanted a few of them to act as waiters. “I’ll give lollies to the people who do it.”

“Ooh pick me! I want to be the waiter,” Bean said.

“It really will be fun,” Irma said.

She’d asked Robbo to bring food in. Izzy would do the warming up, using the bar microwave.

—

Irma hadn’t worn high heels in a while. She liked it. She liked the extra height and the way it made her legs feel. She looked at herself in a mottled window in a dressing room and felt like something was missing. She looked unfinished, lacking class. She wanted to look as if she was in control.

She walked downstairs to the mannequins, lined up in their fancy gear, and she shucked the fur coat off the shoulders of one of them. She slipped her arms into the sleeves. They felt cool, not clammy like a lot of the clothing, and the weight of the animal on her shoulders gave her a sense of power.

—

Then it was time to wait on the dock. Maud came with her, Kate as well, and Carlo joined them. They tidied up a bit while they waited and they sang, Tell me what you’re doing on the other side and We are family, words taken in by osmosis by multiple playings.

They heard Robbo’s truck before they saw it. It rumbled, and there was a rocketing noise as he drove over the increasingly-ruined parking lot. He backed onto the deck and parked. Slamming his door, he walked around to greet them. His hair was damp and neatly combed and he wore a nice shirt. He took Irma into a big bear hug, lifting her off her feet, saying, “Nice coat.” Irma spun around, showing it off.

There was a banging on the truck’s roller door, and he said, “Your guests are here,” as he lifted it, revealing a dozen or so people. One of them was Pat, her transport driver. That caused a flutter in her blood.

They all carried boxes and bags of food.

It was bright out there and they squinted. For a minute Maud thought one of them was Julian; he had the same loping walk and similar dirty blond hair. They were about the same age, Maud thought, and she was about to call his name when the guy lifted his head and she saw it was not Julian at all but someone entirely different and older. “That’s Jinks,” Pat said. “Good mate of mine.”

“I think we should call him Not-Julian. Because he looks like Julian,” Maud said, and so his name was set.

Not-Julian said, “Man, there are some serious wrecks of cars out there. Anybody claim them? I reckon I could make one go.”

No one answered him.

They were drinking something out of bottles, “Champagne for everyone,” someone said, but it clearly wasn’t champagne. They handed Irma a bottle and she took a sip.

“That’s bloody awful! Come on. The booze in the bar is shit, but not that shit.”

In the back of the truck were three polystyrene boxes, marked DLO for Dead Letter Office. Usually Robbo would take these himself to the post office, where Irma would quietly look through them for the good stuff. She’d found nothing of real value so far, but perhaps these boxes would bring some joy.

“Kids, you take them, okay? We’ve got some partying to do,” Robbo said, and the group of adults cheered. They noisily traipsed through the doors, leaving Maud and the others behind.

“One box each,” Maud said, and they carried them away.

—

Irma led the way upstairs to the bar. She felt full of bubbles, light on her feet, her head airy, free from worry. “If you get lost, walk to No Spitting and walk up the escalator. Turn left and walk to Every Dream Has a Chance to Live and up that hallway is the lift to the eighth floor.” The adults noticed the moss and the mold. They spoke of their own memories of shopping centers of their youth; of first kisses, of stealing magazines, of a first job. They admired the art on the walls, and the rare examples of graffiti. Irma had to hurry them along; she wanted a drink.

They walked past the real estate office, with peeling photos of properties in the windows. The slogan of the office said, “Everybody deserves a castle.” Pat and Irma stood together. She had a moment of pure longing; an impossible dream, a moment of absolute loss.

She wasn’t alone. One of the others said, “Can you imagine? It seems impossible, right?”

They walked past the wishing well. Not-Julian knelt down and peered in. There was still water in there, opaque and stagnant. “Are there any coins left?”

Irma said, “Long since scavenged. And that water’ll rot your fingernails off.” If there was any money left in there it was hers, not this guy’s.

Robbo lifted him up by his shirt collar. “Let’s move on. That drink is calling me.” They walked past a lineup of mannequins and half the adults jumped. One of the women squealed. “Who the fuck is that?”

Maud and the other children had finished their work in the Dead Letter Office and had joined the party. Maud laughed as if to say These adults are not too smart. But fascinating to watch.

They passed no smoking signs, keep door closed signs, do not loiter, dispose of rubbish thoughtfully, de-fibrillation machine here, fire hose here. Not-Julian tried to pry one of the signs off. Irma felt irritated, something she hadn’t felt in a long time. “Why don’t you have a drink from the bubbler?” she said. Maud opened her mouth, but Irma winked at her.

Not-Julian had no interest in water anyway.

They reached a sign saying, in gold, ornate lettering, “Top of the Town Nightclub and Bar (women drink free) Eighth Floor”

Not-Julian pushed the lift button.

“Sorry, none of the lifts work,” Irma said, although the indicator light came on. “And if they work, we can’t always trust the electricity supply. We just don’t know when it’ll cut out. There’s someone literally in one of the lifts. Not this one. But you know, they just got stuck there and there was no one to get them out.”

“Yeah?” Not-Julian said. The lifts doors opened, and he got in. No one joined him. “See you there,” he said, as the doors shut.

Irma and the others walked up the stairs. The bar was empty when they got there, puffed out. They watched as the lift indicator traveled up, down, up down, up, and as it reached the eighth floor again, Robbo levered the door open, and there Not-Julian was, laughing.

—

The bar itself was light, with wraparound windows which had fewer cobwebs and less dust than on the lower floors. Irma had dragged all the bar tables together, lovely things inset with colored bottles and pieces of curious toys and games. She’d found the nicest dinner plates, and there were unlimited choices for wineglasses, if not a wide variety of drinks.

“It looks beautiful!” one of the women said. They all set out the food and Irma poured them drinks. There was some wine, but a lot of advocaat, cherry liqueur, Fejoia vodka and other over-flavored drinks.

On the walls, most of the art remained. It was cheap reproductions of classic paintings, mostly. Someone had a vision at one stage: mostly paintings of isolated trees, forests, backyard vistas. Contrasting these with the trees in the distance, Irma could see what the vision was.

The party ate and drank. Maud and most of the other children helped, hung around the edges. No one noticed them. They were fascinated by the aimlessness, the apparent pointlessness, of what they were watching. Sally in particular was entranced, leaning up against the legs of the adults, wanting them to notice her. None of them did.

“So!” one said. “Did you all hear about the jailbreak? You know how close I live? I could have been raped if they’d succeeded.”

Not-Julian laughed. “I can give you better action than that. What’s with women wanting to be raped all the time? I’d never do that. I’ll never need to.” He really was pleased with himself.

Pat shook his head, but he seemed amused, and in that moment Irma found the man far less attractive. She’d still have sex with him, sure. But she’d gone off him.

Standing at the window, Pat looked into the distance. “Hope they got all them jailbreakers. That’s a few less shitty people on the planet, so that’s good.”

“Keep it quiet,” Irma said. She had forgotten the children were there but didn’t want words to carry. She lowered her voice, so Maud crept closer. “We had the son of one of them here.”

No one was interested in that, so Irma said, “Who wants to come to the roof? View is even better up there.”

They all walked up to the roof, carrying their drinks and bottles, laughing. The air up there was very still. There was no wind, although it could appear at any time. It was early evening, balmy and perfect. In the distance, lights went out then flickered on and off as they watched.

“Lucky you’re not in the lift,” Robbo said to Not-Julian.

Irma had the children set up nerf guns, and roller skates. There was a high wall around the roof; you’d have to try very hard to fall off.

None of them knew how to roller-skate, so there were multiple bangs and cuts. Irma gave Kate the key to the chemist. “Go get my bag of things. And extra bandages and you know that red bottle. And let’s go back to the bar, everyone,” Irma said.

—

They moved the tables aside so there was room for dancing. The floor was filthy; stains everywhere, including two large ones that looked like bloodstains. It was hard to drown out the music already playing so they danced to that, We Like it Like That and You Gotta Dance for Me.

The children joined in at the edges, enjoying the wild movements. All except Sally, who stood, staring at the stains.

“What’s up with her?” someone asked.

“She hasn’t been here long. I guess she remembers stuff from before,” Irma said. She looked around. “Children! It’s late. Time to be.”

They trooped out, except for Maud, who hid behind the bar. She didn’t want to miss this. There was going to be news, information. She was going to learn something.

“Jeez, is that who she is? Is she like under witness protection or something?” Pat said. He had his hand on Irma’s thigh, his forefinger gently circling.

“I guess,” Irma said. They all talked over each other then, but what Maud picked up was this: that Sally’s father had kept a series of corpses in a locked room in their house and that Sally had done the same but with animals, a whole collection of them under her bed.

Not-Julian laughed. “It’s bullshit, of course. The bit about the kid. I mean, right?”

They ignored him, asking more questions. Enjoying the attention, Irma said, “We had Julian Grande here as well. His dad was Marcus Grande.”

“Oh, crap! Jesus. That poor kid.” And again, they all talked over each other, but what Maud heard was this: That Julian’s father had killed his siblings (she couldn’t understand how many of them there were) and his mother and that Julian had only survived because his dad called him Mirror Image, as if Julian was identical and it would have been like killing himself.

Irma and Pat started dancing, and the others, too.

Not-Julian came to the bar for more alcohol and saw Maud crouching there. The conversation had turned to things Maud didn’t understand and she wanted to sneak out but didn’t know how. Not-Julian grinned at her. He reached over for more bottles of strange colored alcohol and walked back over to the group. They were all collapsed on couches now, screeching with laughter and making other odd noises. “I’m gonna have an explore downstairs,” he said. No one responded.

He guided Maud out. None of the other adults noticed or cared. Maud shook her head at the lift so they took the stairs.

“Thanks,” she said.

“They’re all pretty awful,” Not-Julian said.

“Irma is nice. She’s nicer than the last manager we had. Do you think they know about my parents too? If I asked?”

He shook his head. “They won’t say. But look. Look. Don’t tell them I said this. But I saw what was in those boxes. I’ll admit it; I wanted to thieve something. I couldn’t do it, though. I’m not that bad. Every last one holds the belongings of someone who died in jail.

He gave her a strange salute and took off.

—

The other adults appeared over the next hour, stumbling, sleepy, no longer full of stories or joy. They left, all in the back of the truck again, including Not-Julian who carried a big pillowcase full of stuff no one asked him about. Irma went to lie down and the children cleaned up, throwing all the dishes and other rubbish down the elevator shaft. Sally seemed shell-shocked, so Maud took her to the salon and gave her a haircut, which seemed to settle her. They moved their lips to the words of the song, singing I gotta good feeling, all the oohs and aahs.

Chapter Nine

By Kate’s estimation, 360 cycles of songs played before they received Julian’s belongings back in a file box.

The delivery alarm went off and they all gathered by the dock. They heard the beep of a truck backing up and Kate opened the roller doors. Robbo jumped down from the driver’s side and gestured. “Got myself a helper.”

It was Not-Julian.

The smell of the truck wasn’t good. Old sweat, old food, old sneakers. There was the smell of smoke, too, underlying it all.

Irma and Robbo kissed each other to the horror of the children.

“Fire at the jail,” Not-Julian said, wanting to be the one with the news. He began unloading the plastic bags and boxes. “In the food hall. Terrible. They were all trapped.” His eyes were wide. He found this exciting. “They’re not even sure how many dead. A dozen at least. But that’s life, right? And better them than us, I say. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Hey, and ask him what happened to the guy that beat him up.” He gestured to Robbo, then mimicked a hanged man, head hanging at an awful angle. “Good stuff!”

There were a dozen boxes for the Dead Letter Office. Maud made sure she took one of them, then stayed behind after the others left. “I love the post office,” she told Irma. Irma was distracted anyway, with Robbo there. Not-Julian winked at her. “Don’t forget what I said,” he whispered.

—

In the post office, Maud lifted the lid off the first box. Robbo had told them they had to keep them for a few months, then they could sort them, but Maud wanted to see for herself. Inside was a stack of file boxes, some light, some so full they didn’t close properly. All carried a number. She picked up 6-358-Alpha

Inside, she found a man’s watch, some notes and coins, a set of keys with a key ring that was also a bottle opener. She found a small notebook with names and notations inside, a folded, stained pair of socks, a toothbrush and a light metal ashtray.

She took out all the file boxes and stacked them. She opened them one by one until she reached the one that made her recoil. Sitting in that one was a lunchbox with Stan Stedman written on the bottom. There were no cookies inside, but in the file box she found a dog leash and an old watch. It was his father’s, he’d said. He’d said that the ticks had reminded his mum of how much his dad had loved her.

Maud couldn’t quite comprehend what this meant, at an intellectual level, but tears came, because she really did know that this meant Julian had died in the food hall fire at the jail, and she really couldn’t cope.

She stood at the doorway of the Post Office. Below, everyone was busy, unpacking, sorting, shouting at a good find.

“Where’s Irma?” she called out, but no one knew.

She called others to open boxes, too. She said, “Look for anything familiar, and show everyone what you find.”

Bean found a soft toy that she swore was her mother’s. And truly, it did have the same look about it as Bean, and it wore a tiny red and purple scarf to match the one that Bean wore sometimes. Pinned to it was a fascinating brooch made out of half a walnut shell. Maud felt cold, chilled to the bone. What did this mean? Did Bean’s mother die in the fire alongside Julian? She couldn’t bear to think of it. She just couldn’t.

It was Carlo who found Maud’s father’s box. She knew it was his; wasn’t that a photo of her, an actual photo, not a lie? Wasn’t that his mug that he never let anyone else touch, with TOUCH MY COFFEE AND YOU DIE and a tiny, cute cat on it.

Maud tried to feel something, summoning up misty memories of long ago, shells on the beach, digging into the delicate soles of her feet, her father way ahead, belting into the water with a great excited “whoop.”

She pictured him easily, and her mother, too, although she didn’t like to think of either of them. It welled up in her then, and in the others, too, and by the time Irma got to them they were all a mess of hysterical tears.

The younger children really didn’t understand. Bean certainly didn’t, although she carried the soft toy everywhere. Even Josh and Carlo struggled with the concept. Maud felt utterly alone and strange, as if she was dreaming a reality that didn’t exist for the others. Josh was shell-shocked, immobile. For him it was the realization that no one was coming for him. For any of them. No parent would collect them. They all had their suitcases packed ready to go but they were going nowhere. It didn’t matter. They’d keep collecting. Keep telling stories.

That was all they had.

“I hope Julian got his letters at least,” Maud said, but then she knew; she knew. She opened up the mailbox where they had naively posted the letters and of course they were in there, all the letters to Julian and years of other letters that would never be collected or delivered. An animal had died in the box and there were bones and filth, and she hoped that Julian . . . she didn’t want to think about Julian anymore, or about her father.

—

And then Irma found a red envelope delivered to the café.

—

The red envelope brought news for Maud and Bean and three others. They knew their jailed parents had died in the fire. Irma thought about hiding it from them but what was the point in that? She’d just be stealing their goodbye time, nothing else. Music played; so often it seemed to fit and Maud didn’t know why. People come and some people go would be her song now.

Chapter Ten

Bean was excited, with Sally saying, “You’re going to school!”

Irma sat with Maud.

“We’re not going to school, are we?”

Irma wouldn’t answer.

Kate pulled out a box of decorations. “Let’s have the best birthday party ever!”

Josh said, “And let’s find you the best clothes ever!”

Bean didn’t know the truth but Maud did. But still she told stories about all the things. Carlo and the others were crying. “Who’s going to tell the stories when you’re gone?” Carlo said.

“You can all tell the stories! Just think about the people. And keep reading the magazines for ideas. You can describe one of those beautiful big houses and think about all the things inside.”

Bean seemed bewildered. “Is my mum going to be there?” Kate had found her a new suitcase, a bright pink shiny one, and she mostly filled it with stuffed toys. No matter how much they tried to convince her to include clothing and valuables, she refused.

Maud packed all the valuables she could fit. Irma watched her admiringly. “Nothing sentimental for you?”

“None of it really is my story. Except for these.” She added her father’s belongings. Because Bean refused to pack them in her own case, Maud packed Bean’s mother’s items; the brooch made out of a walnut shell, and a locket. Bean would want them one day. Bean had not let go of the Beanie baby.

Maud packed the broken watch face from her father’s box. She felt subdued, sluggish. “Will I need this for school?” she said to Irma. “But I don’t think it’s school.”

Maud started to shake. “You knew, and you let Julian go?”

“I didn’t know. I don’t know for sure. I don’t.” But Irma knew that she wasn’t ready to fight the system then. And deep down, Julian had annoyed her because he’d made a big deal of her drinking. She hated that. She didn’t care that his father was a drunk; she wasn’t a drunk. She wondered if one of the reasons these children invented their pasts was because their realities were too awful to remember.

Maud said, “We can’t let Bean go. How can we?”

Irma thought of Not-Julian saying “good riddance to bad rubbish.” She remembered those children in jail; some of them had protectors. Many didn’t.

“Come walk with me,” Irma said, and she and Maud walked arm in arm, doing laps of the shopping center. Irma could feel Maud vibrating. She was terrified and still a child.

“We can’t let Bean go,” Maud said again. Then, “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to die in a fire. I want my dad. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here.”

“I wish you could,” Irma said. Already in the back of her mind she had an idea. She’d had it for a while, she realized, gathering clues and thoughts and visual cues. She led Maud to the furniture store.

“I don’t want a nap,” Maud said.

Irma showed her the fish tank.

“That just makes me sadder,” Maud said. “I can’t stand it.”

“But the thing is,” Irma said, “remember? We can’t tell one fish from another. And these people, they can’t tell you kids apart with your flesh on. They won’t be able to tell you apart when you’re just bones. They won’t. We can try, at least. We can do that.”

Chapter Eleven

They went first to the elevator that led to the parking garage. This was the one Robbo had told her definitely had a dead body in it. The children agreed; it was a customer who wouldn’t leave, who wanted to steal everything, and they got stuck in the lift and no one ever thought of them again. They hadn’t seen the ghost, but Robbo said he knew someone who had. The ghost would ooze out, calling help me, help me.

Irma got Carlo to help her get the doors open. He really was the most unflappable child. And there was a skeleton in there, some flesh still clinging. The smell filled the whole floor, something like old shoes, almost. There was no ghost. Irma, thick gloves on, rolled the bones onto a bed sheet and dragged it out onto the floor.

Next, she checked the freezer in the café, but there was nothing in there but sludge, regardless of the sign.

Then, with Maud, she ventured out in between the abandoned and ruined cars on the dark side to see if there were any bodies. She found one and stopped looking. It was picked clean by birds and bugs.

She found three or four dead dogs and rolled them up in a sheet, too. The more bones the better. She dragged them all to the stairwell that led to the parking garage. The stairs leading down were made of concrete, covered in green moss. The paper mountain shifted and sighed. She didn’t think she needed to be too careful, but still she walked all the way to the bottom and placed the bones on top of a steel sheet. She wanted them to be found, or at least some of them. The paper mountain filled an entire third of the parking garage.

Chapter Twelve

The parking garage was full of very rusty furniture. Of the ghosts of old signs. Of old cars, parked randomly. The lines of human habitation could be seen in the exposed pipes and wires in the ceiling.

Whispering.

Abandoned things always cluster together. Cash registers, chairs, stools, crates, telephones, bookcases, racks, desks. They cluster even if no one chooses to put them that way. Things were stacked as if people thought they’d be coming back. Weird tanks, weird doors, amazing light fittings, all piled and stacked together. Skeletons of tables that looked like spiders.

There was a stuffed monkey, which Irma took for Bean. She piled suitcases along with the bones, cases filled with random belongings.

Then she set the paper mountain alight.

The fire blazed. No fire alarms went off; there was no longer any such thing. Irma went to the roof in an attempt to SOS signal, but nothing was big enough. In the distance, a car rattled along.

She was waiting on the dock in a state of practiced hysteria when they arrived. It was the same people who had taken Julian, but the man had a bright green suit on this time. Irma threw herself into his arms.

“Oh god, help us, help us. They’ve set fire to themselves, they’ve killed themselves, it’s all my fault.”

“I’m sure it isn’t,” he said, although the woman looked very uncertain of this. “Show us,” he said. “This is Julie and Anne we’re talking about? Known as Maud and Bean?” He named the three others who had been listed in the red envelope as well.

“Yes! Yes!” Irma hurried them. Smoke billowed out of the stairwell, and they could feel the heat.

“It isn’t safe,” the woman said. “No use risking our lives.” She looked at her notebook. “Wasted trip.” She shuffled through her carry folder. “Here, for you to file a report. And of course you’ll be removed from the job for lack of appropriate care. These things do happen in all of our facilities, but they can be avoided.” From the corner of her eye, Irma glimpsed the mannequin that held the magnificent fur coat. “Oh,” she said.

Clever Kate, noticing, shook it off the mannequin and came up to Irma with it. “This is for the rubbish.”

“Would you mind tossing this out for us on your way out?” Irma said to the woman. It was a risk; distraction was good, bribery was not.

The woman was too stupid to realize she was being bribed.

“Still, we should see,” the man said. He and Carlo went downstairs and returned with a pile of charred bones, which they dropped at Irma’s feet like they were dogs returning sticks.

Izzy baked cookies and cakes in a frenzy. They all clustered in the kitchen and ate tray after tray, Irma and the man. The stylish woman, safe inside her fur coat, asked Izzy her name. Irma had already told them not to answer truthfully, so Izzy said Maria.

“Do you want to see my garden on the roof?” Sally said. They have to stay out there. They die if I take them inside.”

“You’ve built a good life here,” the man said.

Chapter Thirteen

Irma received her notice a week later. It was in a blue envelope, not a red one, which was a relief. Maud and Bean (Lisa and Snag, Irma reminded herself. They are Lisa and Snag now) got on with business.

The envelope gave her notice of dismissal on grounds of incompetency. It didn’t matter; she’d been told she was shit before and had bounced back. The notice gave her a date of departure, and said: after this time-date you will be charged for accommodation at the highest possible rate.

That made her laugh.

She tried to notice everything about her as she packed gold and silver and all the good jewelry she could get her hands on, all the paper notes. She noticed the massage chairs, never to be used again, and the small detail of the air vents, artistic and ignored. She noticed the “back in 5 minutes” sign on the book shop, and the dead plants in the hairdresser. She wanted to remember it all.

She packed her bag quietly, not able to face anybody. She couldn’t cope. She understood now why the previous manager had run off without saying goodbye. It wasn’t because he didn’t care, it was because he did. It was too hard. And made harder because she knew that while she’d saved Maud and Bean (Lisa and Snag) the same future lay ahead of everyone else, and she was powerless to stop it.

—

It was Robbo who came to collect her, in a car. “You’ve been crying,” he said.

“Oh god,” she said. “Oh god,” and he drew her into his arms. “It’s Sally, mostly. I think I’ve saved Bean, at least for a while, but Sally . . .”

Maud watched them.

“We should take them,” Robbo said.

“All of them?”

He laughed. “Just the little ones. Sally and Bean. They’re like sisters. And Jesus. Jesus. What they’d do to Sally. They fucken HATE her.”

—

Lisa and the other children went up to the very high tower to watch them leave. Lisa had a wig on and wore dark clothes. She looked different enough. It didn’t matter.

They watched as the car drove away, past Factory, and Emporium, and Factory, and Emporium, and Factory, and Emporium, and Factory, and Emporium, until it disappeared into the trees.