SATURDAY WASN’T ALWAYS DADDY DAY: every fortnight it belonged to Nanny Ash and Granddad. The journey to West Heath was so long that there was time to appreciate the ordinary in a fresh light. In summer, ants surged from cracks in the pavement like megacity commuters and, after rain, giant tumescent earthworms surfaced in lilac Lovecraftian coils. There was the hum of the electricity substation that looked as if it had been plucked from Metropolis. And West Heath in sunshine looked forever stuck in the 1950s.
Nanny Ash was very tall and plain – until she smiled. Granddad rarely moved from his armchair, firmly rooted, as if potted. The TV was always on, always Grandstand, until Nanny would later switch over for the Saturday film.
Nanny Ash made the best cups of super-strong Blitz tea, and chatted to Mom, while Granddad talked to the children. It was the same routine – every other Saturday since their lives had begun.
Outside, it started to drizzle. Inside, the TV droned on. Ava’s gaze fell on the front page of one of the newspapers on the coffee table. There was a photograph of the footprint casts taken from the Quarry alongside the headline:
THE MARK OF A MONSTER?
The police would have experts to tell them what kind of animal made such marks but there was nothing in the article that suggested which kind of animal. All it said was the human footprints were a size ten. The police saw the prints as ‘possible important clues’, and she suspected they were already desperate, because how useful were they, really? The prints were not those of a big cat or dog. She thought all the prints were human despite the animal-look of the ‘paw’ indentations. Humans move via bipedal locomotion, their elegant skeletons a bio-engineering marvel for this extraordinary method of getting about. Along with their big brains and opposable thumbs, it was how humans ruled the world, Ava thought, for better or worse. Quadrupeds, for the most part, carry their weight on their digits: equines on a single toe of each foot, pigs on two and dogs on four, making them digitigrades. Human feet distribute their weight from heel to toe. It is little more than a controlled fall, a skill which took time to master, as any toddler would tell you. Everything else about human anatomy fell in sync with this development: skull size, centred magnum foramen, hip width, premature birth, inner ear mechanism, stereoscopic vision.
From heel to toe: the newspaper photograph of the cast somehow didn’t tell this story. The so-called ‘animal’ paw prints were of a human moving efficiently on all fours, not hands-and-knees all fours, but properly. She also noticed that both the heel prints for foot and palm were faint and marked with a soft outline – the person they belonged to was wearing thick gloves, likely mittens. And possibly thick socks on the feet, too. Ava needed to tell Detective Sergeant Delahaye what she’d deduced, even if what she’d deduced didn’t make sense.
She needed to get to a telephone.
Last night on Police Five, Shaw Taylor had given out the investigation team’s phone number and Ava had blinked, as if snapping a picture of it, and stored it in her memory.
Granddad, as if sensing her predicament, reached to the mantelpiece where he kept his loose change and said: ‘Go and get you and your sisters some sweets, Ava.’
Ava kissed Granddad on the cheek and avoided her mother’s glare. Ava walked fast: girls running outdoors attracted unwanted attention. She bought sweets for her sisters then entered the telephone box around the corner from the shops. Her heart beat against her ribcage like a trapped robin. But nobody gave her a second look. The street was deserted, as it would be on a cold rainy Saturday afternoon when the football results were about to be announced, and with the afternoon film starting. Fumbling in her pocket for money, she took a deep breath, pushed coins into the slot, dialled the numbers, and waited.