The Dead Ex(11)

‘Are you all right?’

A woman’s voice comes at me from a distance. Soft. Concerned. Kind. I need to get under something. Fast. Away from the railing, or I might fall through to the beach below. A car is going past. Avoid the road.

The bench. The one to my right. For Marjorie – Who Loved This Place. I’ve seen the inscription before, along with all the others along the promenade. Each has a story behind it. But I’m in no fit state to read them now.

I’m vaguely aware of being on all fours.

‘Are you all right?’ repeats the voice.

I can feel something wet against my face. The dog?

And then nothing.





4



Scarlet


‘MUM! MUM!’

Scarlet kept screaming all the way from the park to the police station. Hammering the car window with her fists and then with her head. Her throat was sore and her hands hurt. A big blue bruise had already started to come up on her knuckles. Rain was dribbling down, and the glass was misting up, so she couldn’t see out. It made her scream even more in case Mum was out there waving and she couldn’t see her.

‘Stop that awful noise right now,’ said the woman cop. ‘Bloody hell, she’s scratched me again.’

‘Little wildcat.’ This was the other cop in the back of the car. She had a thinner face. Meaner. ‘Like mother, like daughter.’

‘I WANT MY MUM!’

‘You’ll see her if you behave yourself. Got it?’

Scarlet couldn’t cry any more. The tears had emptied from her. Her throat was so rough that it was hard to swallow, and she felt sick. But worst of all was that empty pit of fear inside her. ‘I’m scared I might never see my mum again,’ she whispered.

That was when she saw it. The look.

Scarlet was good at working out what looks meant. She’d had practice. There was the look Mum gave her before the game, which said, ‘Be a good girl.’ The look purple-haired Auntie Julie had given her in the shop which said, ‘Pretend you know me.’ And the look that the uncles gave her, which said, ‘Get lost – I want time on my own with your mother.’

But this one, between the two cops, was different. It said, ‘Don’t let on.’

‘You’ll see her. I promise,’ said the nicer one.

‘You’re lying!’ screamed Scarlet. And then she started banging her head against the car window all over again until they had to hold her arms. Even then she wouldn’t stop. Not even when they got to the big black building in the high street. (The nick. That’s what one of the uncles had called it when they’d zoomed past it once on his black motorbike.)

‘What we got here, then?’ said the man at the desk. He had a shiny head with patches of hair in between. There were lines all over his face too, which reminded her of the atlas in geography. Her teacher had said they showed you how far the land was above the sea. Scarlet had never seen the sea but she hadn’t liked to say, in case the other kids laughed at her.

‘WHERE IS MY MUM?’ Scarlet kicked the desk so hard that her toes hurt through her trainers. It’s what Mum had done when the lady at the council had said their rent was going up. But it hadn’t worked, because they’d told her to behave or else she’d lose all her Benny fits.

‘You’ll see her when we say so,’ said Atlas Man. ‘In the meantime, you’d better behave, miss.’

Then he jerked his head towards a door. It had a black and gold sign on it. Scarlet mouthed the letters. C–H–I–L–D C–A–R–E. ‘Through there.’

The mean-faced cop took both her arms. ‘If someone tries to get you,’ Mum always said, ‘buckle your knees. It’s more difficult for them to carry you then.’

But it didn’t work, because the man from behind the desk was dragging her too. Between them, her legs slid across the floor towards the sign and into a room with chairs and a table. There was a plate of biscuits on top. Chocolate. Her favourite.

‘Scarlet?’

For a minute, she thought it was Auntie Julie. This woman had the same sort of messy purple hair (‘shaggy fringe’, her mum had called it) and black make-up smudges under her eyes. But it couldn’t really be her because there wasn’t a gold stud in her nose. This one was silver.

‘Scarlet is your name, isn’t it?’

‘What’s it to you?’

That’s what Mum had always told her to say if someone asked her a question she wasn’t sure she should answer.

‘It was on your passport, love.’

Passports had to be kept safe in secret places so the cops couldn’t find them. Mum always moved theirs around. The back of the oven. The loose dirty-brown carpet tile in the kitchen. Behind the cracked washbasin, which leaked, because the bloody council still hadn’t fixed it.

‘How did you find it?’ Scarlet folded her arms the way Mum did when someone was being bloody difficult.

‘Your mum had it on her, love.’

‘I WANT TO SEE HER!’ Scarlet kicked the chair so hard that it fell over.

‘Pick that up now and sit on it,’ roared the thin-faced cop.

But Shaggy-Fringe shook her head. ‘Let her stand if she wants.’

Then she crouched down beside her so they were almost the same height. Her eyes were on her. They were kind. ‘My name’s Camilla and I’m a social worker. I know this is a shock, love. And I know you want your mum. But – and you’ve got to trust me on this – you can’t see her right now. Not for a bit, until we’ve got a few things sorted.’