Tidge is now sitting next to his sister, their backs against the cupboard. They’re singing ‘Let’s go fly a kite, up to the highest heights’. Mouse is inside, writing.
Good grief. My brother is impersonating my sister. The two of them are singing together. My WORST nightmare. It has become reality. I have to get out.
Soli’s conducting using B’s key held high in the air. Mouse eventually puts down his notebook and joins them to steer them into tune. So. Here they all are. Singing away like there’s no tomorrow, singing away as if to lock laughter and light forever in their hearts. Because once again they made it, they’re safe and they’re becoming good at it. Mouse gives up eventually and lets the two of them veer off course.
A sharp knock.
‘Hello? Anyone in there?’
The new boy’s followed them. He pokes his head around the door. Steps inside.
They’re found out. Your blood runs cold. You feel disembodied, floating; the door is unlocked; in the relief of being safe everyone forgot, or they were going to do it next or they’ve become careless or whatever, they’re found out. Caught. Tidge and Soli leap up, glee wiped. Mouse stays in the cupboard, trapped.
‘Hey, guys, what’s up?’ the boy says mildly.
Silence, wire-taut. You will your daughter to do the talking. Will your son to stay quiet.
‘We found this place,’ Soli says carefully, ‘we were just … mucking about.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Like a grown-up is already underneath.
‘All right,’ Soli says. Her frantic thinking. ‘We’re hiding.’ She’s walking across thin ice; any moment it could break, like a pistol shot; you shut your eyes, will her safe; will this boy from the other side gone, gone from their tender lives. ‘Our parents are away. We got in from the street. If we’re turned in’ — her voice goes very small — ‘I don’t know what will happen to us.’ Silence. The ice is creaking, bowing, Mouse pumps his hands in terror, little sickles of blood appear in his palms, from his nails, tiny scythes.
‘Where are you from?’ The voice cold. You do not like him, cannot detect warmth.
‘The north,’ Soli says precisely as Tidge leaps in with ‘The west.’
A new silence. Grubby and wrong.
‘Are you street kids?’
No one answers.
‘Your parents have been disappeared, haven’t they?’
Mouse rams a hand at his mouth to stop a sob because it’s been said, finally, after so many nights of wondering and not daring to say, to speculate, talk it out because it can’t be that, anything but, and now the tears come; no, no, he mouths and nooooo Tidge yells with all the force of his brother’s heart. Because if you’ve been disappeared you’re never coming back, they’re alone, and they’ll never know what happened and their lives will be spent trying to work it out and they couldn’t bear it, they need a compass of certainty to go on with this.
‘They’re away. On business. For a month.’ Soli speaks calmly but you sense the will in her to even out her voice. ‘We ran away. From our uncle. He was looking after us. We don’t like him. We thought a hotel might be a good place to get food. And be … safe.’ She says that word soft like it is lit by a candle and reaches across to her little brother and draws him in tight. ‘That’s all we want.’
‘Hrumph,’ the intruder says as if he doesn’t believe any of it, one bit.
In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.