It takes us until the seafront is absolutely quiet again, the men long gone, before we finally climb back up to our feet. Before I have a chance to speak, Maeve grabs her drink from me and starts gulping it. Admittedly, after such an incident as we’ve just had, I’m not sure if giving Maeve alcohol is the best thing to do, but there’s not a lot I can do about it now.
“Just… slowly, yeah?” I say weakly.
Maeve nods, before taking another big gulp. I hope there’s not too much alcohol in a Smirnoff Ice.
We walk quietly along the seafront. Resignedly, I open my own bottle and take a long draught. It’s soothing, though I don’t know if it’s the alcohol kicking in or just relief to be moving away from the obviously dodgy spot we’ve just been in.
“I’m hungry,” announces Maeve suddenly. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”
I look over to her; she looks a little manic, swinging her arms at her side with her fingers constantly twiddling, wrapping around each other. Somehow, the combination doesn’t look quite right.
“Alright…” I say slowly, frowning slightly. “Well, what are you hungry for? I guess some shops and stuff will still be open—”
“McDonald’s!” Maeve exclaims loudly, beaming, barely letting me finish. “Chips! My mum never let—”
But Maeve’s manic determination wavers at this. For a minute, the silence is heavy and awkward. For a moment, I dither – but then I remember that the best way to get information from Maeve is to ask questions. If I don’t ask, I don’t think I’ll ever know.
“Is that what…?” I begin, determinedly keeping my voice wheedling and gentle. “Is your mum… really strict?”
I realise that the question comes out a little lame, and Maeve sighs. “No,” she says flatly, but stubbornly. Though the brightness she was exhibiting when we first met seems to be gone for the moment, the determination that went alongside it is resolutely back. “She just… nothing.”
I frown but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to help. It’s quite clear to me by now that I don’t want Maeve to have to go back to her family home. Something has obviously happened there. If nothing else, those bruises, the ones she’s trying to hide from me with her hair… how can I just let that go?
Unfortunately, I can see only one way to try to get her to open up.
“Things were hard at home for me too,” I say carefully. I know that I have to be careful about how much I reveal to her – not because I don’t trust her but because I don’t want her to have to carry it around with her.
“Who says things are hard at home for me?” Maeve asks – but at least the flatness is gone and she sounds a little warmer.
I shrug, watching her closely. “No one,” I say, keeping my tone casual. “But I’m not going to tell anyone if things are tricky for you right now.” As soon as I say it, I wonder if I’m telling the truth. Is it wrong to make a promises like this, that I know I can’t keep?
Maeve sighs. “Look, it’s not… it’s not great but it’s fine, OK? My parents are just really stressed.”
“Yeah, so were mine,” I mutter darkly before I can stop myself. Somehow, I don’t expect Maeve to reply, and she doesn’t.
We walk in silence for a while, the atmosphere a little tenser than before. Maeve stares straight ahead as if she is determinedly not making conversation. For my part, I just don’t know what to say.
Finally, I speak. “What’s your favourite subject at school, then?” I ask, a little feebly.
Maeve turns to me, a slight stroke of incredulity on her face – but she humours me. “English,” she tells me. A little glint appears in her eyes before she speaks again. “But also PE because the teacher’s fit.”
I let out a chuckle, surprising myself. “Yeah, I had a fit PE teacher too. I guess they’re the only teachers walking around in tiny shorts.”
Suddenly my mind fills with an image of Mrs Fletcher – an image of sitting outside her office – but I push it aside. She was fit, focus on that. In any case, something about our shared embarrassment seems to make Maeve smile too. Then she laughs. And before I know it, we are walking and laughing and everything feels a little bit more OK.
*
When we enter McDonald’s, it’s largely as I expected it would be. It’s the nearest food place to all the pubs and bars in town, so during the night it tends to be mostly full of people wanting a drunken snack. That being said, it’s too early for it to be massively busy just yet. There’s a couple of teenagers with red-rimmed eyes who look like they have the munchies, but apart from them, we pretty much have the place to ourselves.
“What do you want?” I ask Maeve, with a little smile. I’m the one with the money, but I don’t want her to feel awkward about it.
Maeve looks up at the menu. To my surprise, she suddenly looks a little bit overwhelmed.
“Um…” She falters for a minute. “Chips?” she says uncertainly. “And Coke?”
Something clicks from what she half told me earlier. “Maeve?” I ask. “Have you ever been in here before?”
For a second, Maeve looks slightly mutinously at me; but then she hangs her head. “I know it’s weird,” she half-mumbles, before finally admitting, “My mum doesn’t let me.”
I sigh slightly; my mum didn’t let me have McDonald’s as a kid either. I understand feeling out of place somewhere that’s supposed to be familiar to everyone. “Don’t worry,” I tell her reassuringly. “I only came in here for the first time a year or two ago. Only since I came into hospital.”
“Silver lining of being incarcerated?” Maeve mutters and I have to smile.
Still, I can tell she’s anxious about the whole thing. “Look, I’ll get us both chips and drinks, and you go and find a table,” I tell her, hoping to make things a little bit easier. Though, I’m sure Katy the psychologist wouldn’t agree with me. She always tells me that ‘avoidance maintains anxiety’ and all that.
It doesn’t take long for me to buy and pay for the food. Now that I’m seeing it and smelling it, I realise that I’m really hungry too. I spot Maeve in the corner, fiddling with her fingers again as she looks around at the tables. She’s picked a big table in the corner, by the window and far from the counter; I suspect that she wanted to be in as quiet an area as possible. I make my way over to the table with the food, and I can see the relief on Maeve’s face as I come closer.
“Thank you,” she says, and dives in.
I’m about to do the same when the door to the restaurant swings open again. I look over automatically – and quickly drop down under the table in panic.
“Er…” says Maeve, somewhere between confusion and amusement. “What are you doing, exactly?”
But this is no time for jokes. I crawl frantically to the far side of the table, so that I’m pressed right against the wall. “Shut up!” I hiss urgently. “The police!”
I can see just enough of Maeve to see her look over to the door, clock the police officers and turn a delicate shade of white. “Oh shit,” she breathes. “Are they going to arrest you?”
I have to stop myself rolling my eyes, even as panic is rising in me. “They’ll be looking for me,” I explain, as quickly but tolerantly as I can. “They’ll take me back to the hospital.”
But as soon as I say this, something hits me. “Maeve,” I say directly. “Will your parents have reported you missing?”
It hurts in my chest a little bit, despite the panic, as I look up at Maeve and she has a rueful little smile on her face. “No,” she answers, a little pained. “They won’t have reported me missing.”
What is going on in Maeve’s house? But right now, I have to force myself to put it out of my mind and not ask any more questions. If the police catch me, then they’ll take Maeve too and she’ll be taken back to that house. For both our sakes, I have to stay hidden.
Fortunately, Maeve seems to understand this without me having to tell her. She keeps her eyes on the table and, with a furtive glance over at the tills, she quietly dumps one plastic cup out of sight on the floor, and rearranges the food so it looks more like she’s just having a really big meal by herself.
(In the middle of the night?! But there’s nothing I can do about it now.)
“I told you I was hungry,” she breathes without looking at me, as she starts on one portion of chips.
I don’t laugh; the situation is too serious. But I have to trust her. Where I’m hidden under the table, I can’t see the queue, the till, the door – or the two police officers. All I can see is Maeve, and a few table legs.
I alternate between crossing my fingers tight and clenching my fists as I sit there in an agony of panic. What’s going on? Have they spotted Maeve? It flashes into my mind just how suspicious it might look for someone so obviously young to be out alone at this time. Granted, it’s unlikely that they’ll leap to the conclusion that she’s with an escaped psychiatric patient who is currently hidden under the table, but it still wouldn’t be ideal if they started questioning her.
Suddenly, I feel a swift kick to my shoulder and I freeze even stiller, now totally motionless. My heart contracts and I hold my breath. Have they seen Maeve? Have they caught sight of me? What’s happening? I’m so frustrated that I can’t see what the danger is.
And then, to my horror – heavy footsteps indicate that large boots are approaching. Police boots? I flatten myself further against the wall. This is it. I’m going to get sent back to hospital and Maeve – well, Maeve might get hurt even more. And there will be nothing I can do to stop it.
The footsteps come nearer and nearer before finally coming to a stop. I wait for a deep, authoritarian voice to tell me to get up, but instead, I hear the sound of chairs scraping back. Chancing a glance to where the sound is coming from, I see two sets of clumpy police boots sat at the table directly next to us.
I don’t dare to shift from the exact position that I’m in – it seems to have kept me hidden so far and I’m not in a position to start trying out anything else. The downside is that where I’m now flattened against the wall, I can’t see Maeve anymore. I hope furiously that if she’s panicking, they can’t tell. Actually, no, I hope they’re paying no attention to her whatsoever. Just a young girl having McDonald’s alone. Nothing to see here.
I can’t quite order my thoughts enough to tune into what the police officers are saying, but I hear the general buzz of their voices. All I can do is hope that their break time is short. How long are police breaks? Five minutes? Or could I be sat here for fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, an hour? I groan internally.
But then something happens that very nearly stops my heart – a small container of ketchup falls off the edge of the police officers’ table and rolls towards me.
Before I know what’s happening, above the table Maeve’s reflexes (which I admit are lightning-fast) kick in and suddenly she throws herself down between the tables, hiding me from view while under the guise of retrieving the ketchup. She grabs the container and sits up slightly awkwardly, holding the ketchup aloft – nothing to see down there, the ketchup is here!
“Here you go,” I hear Maeve proclaim brightly, sat back up. “Don’t want to lose your ketchup!”
Christ, I hope this is more convincing to them than it is to me.
There’s a pause, but to my relief, neither police officer looks under the table. Still, I don’t relax. “Cheers,” says an uncertain voice that I don’t recognise. “Everything alright, here, my love?”
This is exactly the kind of question that we don’t need. Somehow, though, I don’t panic quite as much as I should. Maeve is handling things remarkably well.
“Yeah, all good,” comes Maeve’s breezy voice. “I’m just waiting for my friend.”
Which, to be fair to Maeve, is kind of true. She is indeed waiting for her friend – to come out from under the table. I cringe, still frozen.
“Alright,” says the unfamiliar voice slowly, but sounding – maybe, just maybe – a little less concerned. “Go carefully, yeah? It’s late to be out alone.” There’s a short pause, and I hear a small rustling before the police officer speaks again. “This is my card. Call me if… if you need.”
I don’t hear any response from Maeve – but I see her sleeve move, taking the card. I assume she’s smiling or nodding or something acceptable to the police officers because I hear them go back to their own conversation. All we need now is for them to finish their food and leave.
However, as things happen, I’m sat scrunched up under the table, frozen, for a good while longer. With my phone still lying on the table, I don’t know what the time is, but it feels like an eternity before I hear boots moving again, and Maeve finally pokes her head under the table. “They’re gone,” she tells me, sounding highly, highly relieved.
She’s not the only one. Finally, I’m able to stretch out and clamber out from under the table. I feel stiff and achy as I flop down into my chair again and stretch my legs under the table. Mostly, though, I’m euphoric that they’ve left, and we’ve gotten away with it.
I turn to Maeve, beaming. “Thank you,” I say sincerely. “You were amazing.”
Maeve grins. “I know! I nearly died when they dropped the ketchup!”
And to my own surprise, I find that I’m actually giggling. I don’t giggle! But right now, I’m buzzing so excitably from our close escape that I can’t remember how to be as withdrawn as I usually tend to be.
“Did you leave me any chips?” I ask Maeve, raising one eyebrow playfully.
“I had to pretend it was all mine!” replies Maeve indignantly, but still with a huge grin on her face. She pushes one portion of chips towards me and gives me a cheeky smile before asking, “Ketchup?”
She falls about laughing at her own joke, and though I roll my eyes, I laugh too. Suddenly everything feels hilarious.
“I’m starving.” I grin, starting to shovel cold chips into my mouth. “It must be the adrenaline, I could eat a horse!”
It’s nice to feel relaxed, now that we’ve escaped danger for the moment; it’s nice to feel that being with Maeve and talking with Maeve is just so easy. We get each other! Even though we’re on the run, I feel safe. They’ll never catch us. And, if they do, then at least we’ve had a good adventure.
And if they do, if they do – I will protect Maeve. I won’t let her get hurt again. I won’t let her get hurt like I did.