10. Ali

When I got to the road I ran. The road wasn’t lit but there was just about enough light and I ran as fast as I could. Which wasn’t very fast or for very long because I’ve never been a runner. I can walk forever through the city and not get tired. But that’s mostly flat, and this road wound itself up the hillside pretty steeply. I’d probably only run a few hundred yards when I had to stop and put my hands on my knees and the breath in my lungs was like a rush of gravel. I was just by the turn up to Sally’s. I looked behind me and there didn’t seem to be anyone there, so once I’d got my breath back I headed into the dark.

My eyes had kind of accustomed themselves to seeing by the light of the stars, but the darkness here pooled beneath the trees on both sides. I followed the track, looking straight ahead, until the branches crowded in and cast their darkness over the road so thickly I couldn’t see anything. I tried to keep breathing. My steps got slower and slower.

I walked into something hard.

I put my hands out. It was rough and cold on the sides and soft and wet on the top. It stretched out at waist height in both directions barring my way. It was the stone wall that ran along the side of the road, and the wet stuff was moss. I’d walked right into it. I stood still and thought about the other side of the track and what would have happened if I’d accidentally veered off that way and how many hundreds of feet the drop was.

I turned, keeping my back against the wall, slowly bent my knees and dropped into a crouching position.

It was completely black in both directions, and even if I felt safe enough to retrace my steps back to where it was lighter, Smith and Jeannie were waiting down there and that would be just as bad as stepping into the void.

I could feel wet moss at the back of my neck, and I heard a scream which might have been an owl. The sweat I’d worked up from running was turning icy cold across the top of my back and between my breasts. I hugged myself and rubbed up and down my arms with my hands.

I could still hear the music from the party, but I was listening to other sounds. The rush of the stream at the bottom of the ravine, the trees creaking their branches, rustles and squawks that startled and alarmed me. I told myself it was just small animals and birds, nothing to worry about, but I jumped every time.

I wondered if it was possible to sleep here like this, cold and scared, and then I wondered where Smith and Jeannie would spend the night, and how they’d managed to track me here so quickly. It was only the day before yesterday I’d left Leeds.

When I got back to the city centre, the first place I went was the indoor market. It’s a grotty place with lots of empty shops and junkie kids hanging around in doorways, and I wouldn’t go there except for this one shop. It sold wool and ribbons and thread, thimbles, zips and buttons, and it said ‘Haberdashers’ on the window in white fancy letters. It had wooden floors and a wooden counter and looked like it had been there for ever. So did the woman who worked there, who must have been well past retiring age and had a face like a walnut.

The first time I went in just to look around and the woman smiled at me. I’d looked at the threads arranged in colour order and the shapes of the buttons, and wanted to cry. The woman watched me.

‘Are you ok, love?’ she asked.

I nodded, and then I left because I didn’t want to cry in front of her. But I went back every now and then and she was always kind to me, and once she offered to teach me to sew but I refused. One time I noticed she had a couple of tubs of scarves, the sort that old ladies tie round their heads, and one of the designs was of horses galloping across a field, and I knew that Jeannie had been there because she had a scarf just the same which she always tied her hair up with. I couldn’t imagine Jeannie in that shop and hoped she’d paid for the scarf and not just nicked it. I knew that once the lady was too old to run the shop it would close, and there would be nowhere like it in the city.

She didn’t open every day, but luckily it was one of her open days. I pushed the door open and the little bell above it rang like it always does. The lady looked up and saw it was me and smiled.

‘Hello love,’ she said.

I mumbled hello back and grinned at her, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I started looking around the shop. I had a tenner in my pocket. It was all I had between me and starvation for the next few days, but I wasn’t going to spend it on food. I glanced at the baskets with the scarves and saw that they were still mostly full and, better, there were still some with the horse design on. I’d never looked at the price before and I hoped I’d have enough. There was a piece of card attached to the side and it said £3.50. I thought that was pretty cheap and that the lady might do better with her shop if she charged a bit more. But it was good for me.

The threads and the needles and embroidery silks were beautiful, but also bewildering. I wouldn’t have a bloody clue where to start. It would be easy to nick them, and one of those instruction books from the shelf below. But I didn’t want to steal in this shop.

Then something caught my eye. In between the threads and the wool there was a rack of knitting needles, and on the bottom row were some crochet hooks. And I was back at my Gran’s house, and it was a wet afternoon in autumn before she started to get ill and slow.

Gran was sitting by her window knitting. She was always knitting. It was like a part of her, the ball of wool in her lap, the needles clacking and the woollen thing growing from them with its miraculous pattern of cables and small neat stitches. That afternoon I was bored and kicking my heels, wishing I could go outside. Gran suggested that I read my book but I didn’t want to, and I was pacing the room, picking things up and putting them down and sighing loudly. For a while Gran ignored me, then after a while she put her knitting aside and said,

‘Ok Ali, why don’t we do something together? Why don’t I teach you to crochet?’

And that’s what she did. She found two crochet hooks from the depths of her knitting bag, one for me and one for her. I looked at the strangely short and deformed single needle, and wondered how on earth I was supposed to make anything with it. But Gran gave me a ball of green wool and showed me what to do and by the end of the afternoon I’d made a small round doily thing. Gran said you could use it to stand a teapot on, so I gave it to her, and she had it in her kitchen right up to when she died.

And for the rest of that winter I crocheted. I made a hat and a cushion cover and even a poncho which I gave to Emma for Christmas. She put it away in her wardrobe and it was never seen again. It was my craze for the whole winter. I went round to Gran’s and we sat by her fire and she knitted and I crocheted. Somehow, when the spring came my enthusiasm waned and I never took it up again.

I picked up a crochet hook and looked at it. I wondered if I could still remember how to do it. It was probably one of those things like bike riding that you never forgot. I chose a ball of rust orange wool and took it with the crochet hook to the counter.

‘I’ll take these,’ I said to the lady, a bit too loudly.

She picked up the hook and the wool and looked at them.

‘This is a quite a chunky yarn,’ she said to me, ‘You might want to get a larger hook.’

I hadn’t realised they came in sizes. She came over with me and looked at the different hooks, and held out a piece of the wool and helped me to choose the right size. The wool and the crochet hook together came to £5.15.

Just as I was about to pay, I picked up one of the horse scarves and said, ‘Oh, I’ll have this as well.’

She folded it and put it in a brown paper bag with the wool and the crochet hook, and I paid her most of the money I had in the world. There was enough left over for a bag of chips. I didn’t want to leave.

She said, ‘Good luck dearie. Do you know how to crochet?’

And I said ‘Yes, my Gran taught me.’

She smiled at that, and I found myself saying, ‘But she’s dead now.’

‘That’s a shame, love,’ she said. ‘But do come and show me what you make won’t you.’

I said I would and felt awful for lying.

The wool and the crochet hook were still in my backpack which was now sitting in my bedroom at Sally’s house on the other side of these woods. There was a breeze getting up, blowing gusts through the trees, making everything shake. Then I heard a crunching noise that might have been a footstep on gravel and every part of me went still. I didn’t even breathe as I listened. If I didn’t move, would they walk past without noticing me? Did I want them to?

After a couple of minutes I relaxed. There were no more footsteps. Maybe it had been a tree knocking its branches or something falling over.

I thought about crocheting. I imagined the hook in my right hand and the yarn in my left and the warm feel of the ball of wool sitting in my lap, turning and twisting as I worked. I imagined my hands making the movements, the hook grasping the stitches it wanted, letting the others slide over its round end, creating a pattern of rosettes and holes. I watched it grow.

After the Haberdashers I went straight to the police station. On the way I removed the horse scarf from the paper bag and dropped it in a puddle. I picked it up, wrung it out and screwed it up tight into a ball in my fist, then shook it open. It was now creased, dirty and damp, which was just what I wanted.

At the police station I told them I knew they were looking for Smith and Jeannie and that I knew where they were. They looked at me suspiciously, wondering why I’d tell them, what was in it for me.

‘They’ve stolen something of mine,’ I said, ‘and I want to get it back.’

The desk officer made a phone call and some other policemen took me to an office where they asked me questions. I showed them the horse scarf and said it was Jeannie’s and that I’d found it in the garden of the house where they were hiding, that it must have fallen out of her hair.

‘She always wears it. I expect she’d not tied it very tightly because she had to get out quick in the raid.’

One of the policemen took the scarf out of the office and a few minutes later he came back. He and the other man exchanged glances and the one who’d been out gave a tight little nod. After that it wasn’t long before I was being put in a police car and we were driving across the city with a police van following behind.

The house looked just the same as when I’d left it earlier. The blinds were all down and both the cars were still missing. The policemen looked at me.

‘You’re sure this is the house?’

I nodded

They told me to stay in the car. There were seven of them, all dressed in black police uniforms with truncheons in their belts. A couple of them had their hands on their truncheons, ready, and I felt a bit sorry for Smith and Jeannie, who’d always been kind to me. But then I remembered Gran’s ring and my thoughts went hard again.

First the police knocked on the door really loud and shouted, ‘This is the Police, open up.’ Curtains twitched in other houses, but this one stayed silent and still. After a couple of minutes they kicked the door in. Just like that.

Thirty seconds later Smith and Jeannie jumped out of a window. They’d obviously been in bed. He was only wearing a pair of jeans, and she was wearing a green vest top and black leggings, Gran’s ring on its thong around her neck, Smith’s shoes in her hand. I was out of the car before I could think. I dived on her and we both fell to the ground.

All I was bothered about was the ring. I grabbed at the thong. She was underneath me and she was twisting and turning like an animal, scratching and biting at me. I tried to avoid her teeth, but the main thing was the ring, and as soon as I had a good purchase I gave a yank and the thong snapped. She yelled because it dug into her neck and hurt her. Then someone was lifting me from behind, and a police officer took hold of Jeannie and snapped some handcuffs on her. I didn’t know what would happen next, but I didn’t really care because I had Gran’s ring held tightly in my fist.

There it was again, slower this time, like someone putting their foot down very slowly, heel first. I held my breath, and there was the other foot. It was definitely a person. Then the attempt at silence was abandoned and they were walking quickly along the track towards me.

I squeezed myself back against the wall, closed my eyes and waited.

The footsteps drew level with me, went past, and stopped. Silence again. Except this time I knew there was someone there just a few feet away standing still and waiting like me. I could hear the music from the party down in the valley and I almost wished I was there where the danger was known and understood. An animal scuttled further up the slope and knocked a stone that came bouncing down the hill and onto the track, landing somewhere between us.

There was the sound of shuffling feet, movement.

‘Hello?’

They might be as scared as me. But the voice didn’t sound scared. I tried to breathe as quietly as I could. Water from the moss on the wall was trickling down my back, but I didn’t move.

‘It’s me, Richard. Is that you?’

And suddenly I was laughing and I was on my feet and I couldn’t stop talking.

‘Oh god, I’m so glad it’s you. I was terrified. I didn’t know who you were but I couldn’t see a thing and I walked into the wall at the side of the path because I couldn’t see which way the path went and then I thought what if I’d done that on the other side and fallen down the cliff so I couldn’t move and I didn’t know what to do and I was so scared.’

I started crying and Richard put his arms and his coat around me and he was stroking my hair and it felt really comforting.

‘It’s ok,’ he said.

I cried a bit more and realised that his shirt was getting wet, so I straightened myself up and he dropped his arms so that we were standing close but not touching any more.

‘I’ve brought you that beer,’ he said. He took a can out of the pocket of his coat and handed it to me.

I took it and laughed again.

‘Thank you,’ I snapped the can open and took a swig. ‘Sorry I disappeared. I didn’t know anyone there and I felt a bit uncomfortable.’

‘Nothing to do with those two standing over by the bridge then, watching everyone like hawks?’

‘Oh. Did you see them?’

‘Yes. But they didn’t see you, so don’t worry.’

‘Well, we have some history.’

‘They don’t look like the sort of people you want coming after you.’

‘No. That’s why I left. But then I got a bit… well, stuck.’

‘Shall I walk you home?’

I looked up at where his face might be. ‘Would you mind? I mean, won’t you miss the party?’

‘The party will keep going for hours. I can go back. Where are you staying?’

‘Up the valley, at Old Barn.’

He took my arm and started walking up the hill, and I found that walking up the track in the dark was really fun. I had the beer in my right hand and Richard on the left, and he seemed to know exactly where he was going and didn’t falter at all, and when I stumbled over a boulder in the path it was funny, not scary. He told me about the circus act that they’d had earlier at the party and what fantastic performers they were.

‘Jimmy, the fire eater Pyrotastic, he’s working for my mum doing some work in our house. It’s amazing that someone who can do that sort of thing has to have an ordinary job as well. He should be on the telly. He should be world famous.’

‘I suppose there’s not that much demand for fire eaters. Not like every night.’

‘I’d watch him every night.’

He started telling me about different circus acts he’d seen and which were his favourites, and suddenly we were out above the trees and I could see the stars and I could see Richard walking along beside me and the track winding up through the fields.

‘I’ll be ok from here,’ I said.

‘Are you sure?’

I nodded and he smiled at me and fished another beer out of his enormous coat pocket.

‘Here you can have mine too.’

He kissed me on the cheek, turned and vanished back into the trees leaving me with a can of beer in each hand. One was warmed by my body heat, but the other was as cold as the earth.