Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
A gripping thriller from WATERSTONES CHILDREN'S BOOK PRIZE-SHORTLISTED Tracy Darnton, author of THE TRUTH ABOUT LIES.Amber's an expert when it comes to staying hidden – she's been trained her whole life for it. But what happens when the person you're hiding from taught you everything you know?When a letter from her dad arrives, Amber knows she's got to move – and fast. He's managed to find her and she knows he'll stop at nothing to draw her back into the extreme survivalist way of life he believes in.All of a sudden The Rules she's spent so long trying to escape are the ones keeping her safe. But for how long?Praise for THE TRUTH ABOUT LIES: 'Thought-provoking and crisply written' – GuardianPerfect for fans of Karen McManus, E. Lockhart and A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 319
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
iii
iii
For Tricia and Pete, who always seem to know which rules to follow and which to break.
The Rules contains content some readers may find triggering, including references to and instances of domestic abuse and violence, PTSD and panic attacks.
Contents
Rule: Trust No One
That’s the strange thing about Dad’s rules. I thought they were just his weird nonsense at first but then I realized I was following them. I mean, choosing to follow them – not just because he’d scratched them up on the massive board fixed to the wall. When Dad said Trust no one, he meant officials, the state, teachers, doctors, even other preppers.
And I followed the Rule.
I still follow the Rule.
I trust no one.
Especially him.
December 1
It’s hard to imagine, but the Bowling Plaza is even worse than usual tonight. A giant, bobbing inflatable snowman is tethered to the roof, casting menacing shadows over the car park. Inside they’ve strung up cheap tinsel and ‘Season’s Greetings’ banners, and a plastic tree with red and green baubles sits on the reception desk, getting in the way. It’s only the first day of December, but already there’s a sickly smell of stale mulled wine and a drunken office party is messing about by the pool tables.
Spotty Paul on shoe duty is dressed as an elf. You’d think he’d have more respect for himself. I don’t like doing anything where you have to wear communal shoes. I’ve had enough of hand-me-down crap. Paul sprays them with a sickly aerosol between each customer, but even so, it freaks me out. I shudder as I put them on. This interests Julie and she makes a note in her stripey book as usual.
“Maybe it’s due to my feelings of abandonment,” I tell her helpfully so she has something else to write down. “Or maybe it’s because I dislike other people’s smelly feet – which is completely 4rational, by the way.”
Can you believe social services still has a budget for bowling and ice cream with Julie? The free ice cream would be OK if I was, like, six years old and on a beach. I’d rather have a double-shot Americano. I don’t want a machine coffee in a plastic cup, so I stare for a while at the ice-cream choices to build the suspense before saying, “Nothing, thanks.”
Julie looks disappointed. Maybe because she is now a grown woman licking a Solero next to a teenage girl sipping at a cup of water. I tell Julie she should cut back on the ice creams. If she takes all her clients out like this, no wonder.
“No wonder, Julie,” I say, tutting.
Julie reddens and makes another note. Does she ever just call it as it is or does she always have some mumbo-jumbo excuse for my behaviour? “So who’s drawn the short straw this year?” I ask.
“We’re having a little trouble getting the right placement for you after term finishes,” says Julie, fidgeting. This is Julie-speak for ‘nobody wants you’.
“How will Santa know where to find me?” I stare, wide-eyed. I see her processing whether I’m serious or not. She just doesn’t get irony.
To be honest, I see the Christmas stuff happening around me like a trailer for a film I don’t get to watch in full; like those adverts on TV where one big happy family sits down at a glittering table with a shiny turkey. It’s not my world. I’m like the Ghost of Christmas No One Wants in a foster home. They have to pretend to like me and cover 5up the fact their own child gets piles of gifts from relatives who actually give a damn.
“So no room at the inn,” I say, and laugh. “That reminds me of something.”
“It’ll be fine.” Julie pats my hand. I shrug her off.
“Tell them it’s only dogs who aren’t just for Christmas – you can get rid of kids, no problem,” I say. “Anyway, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It’s just a day when the shops are shut and the telly’s better.”
Julie’s Solero is dripping down her hand. I watch as the drip plops on to her lap.
“Can’t I stay at Beechwood by myself?” I already know the answer.
The office party’s getting rowdier, singing along to piped Christmas singles from last century. Paul the elf has to intervene.
I start bowling with Julie. “The sooner we begin, the sooner it’s over,” I say.
We take the furthest alley as usual, like an old married couple picking their regular table at the pizzeria.
I watch as she bowls. The ball trickles down the polished lane, heading slowly for the gutter at the side. She looks surprised. I don’t know why. She’s always rubbish at this. I used to think she was letting me win and hate her for it, as if my winning a game of ten-pin bowling would make everything all right in Julie-world. She keeps asking me if I’m OK, if I’m having a good time. Please! In this place? She’s poking in her bag and casting glances my way like she’s got more to tell me. I know the signs.
I win the game, by the way. I always win at things that 6don’t matter.
“I have some news,” says Julie, when we stop for her to take a rest and guzzle a fizzy drink.
Finally. What now?
“We’ve had a letter for you. From your dad. How do you feel about that?” She is obsessed, literally obsessed, with how I feel about everything. “We’ve struggled to find him, as you know. There was some confusion over names and information.” She rummages in her briefcase and hands me an envelope. It sits in my hand like an unexploded bomb.
“If you don’t want to look at it today, we can save it for another time. This must all be a big surprise,” says Julie. She pats my knee. “Turns out he was back in America.” She says it like that’s an achievement – like he’s a film star rather than a waster.
STRIKE! The teenagers on the alley next to us are doing a moonwalk as the scoring machine flashes and plays loud music.
What am I doing in this place?
I look carefully at the envelope addressed to Somerset Social Services. The idiots looking for him must have told him where I’ve ended up. I flip it over. The return address is a place in Florida.
Julie checks her watch. Her concern for me only lasts until eight o’clock. She has to get back to her real life. She fiddles with her wedding ring.
I breathe. I listen to the clatter of the bowling balls and 7the whoops of another strike.
“OK,” I say. “I’ll read it.”
I remove the letter from the envelope with my fingertips as if it’s hot. It’s oh-so-carefully typed, but I’m not fooled by him.
F.A.O. Amber Fitzpatrick
Dear Amber,
I can’t tell you how pleased I was to finally have news of you. I’m sorry for your loss. I can only imagine what you’ve been through. But you don’t need to worry about anything now – I’m here for you.
Your mom made it pretty difficult after we split up, but I never stopped looking for the pair of you. You know I’d never give up. I went to your old addresses, but you’d moved on every time. You always were a hard girl to pin down, Amber. I can’t wait to see what a beautiful young woman you’ve grown into.
I look forward to rekindling that special bond between us.
Your loving father
8“Short but sweet,” says Julie. “He’s been looking for you all this time.”
There’s nothing sweet about my father, but then she’s never met him. She knows nothing real about him. About him and me. I promised Mum in one of her lucid episodes that I’d never tell anyone what he used to do to her … to me. He damaged her forever as sure as if he’d poured the alcohol and the pills down her throat himself. Some secrets are safer kept – especially when your dad’s not the forgiving type.
It dawns on me that Julie’s probably thinking Dad’s the Christmas miracle, appearing to solve all her problems with placing me. She’s seeing a happy reunion in Julie la-la land. But that’s the last thing I want. And now he’s found me, I know there’s no way Julie can keep me safe. Not from him. I can’t rely on anybody but me.
“So how do you feel about your dad getting back in touch?”
Feelings again. Always feelings.
She checks her notebook. “It’s been a while since you’ve seen him. We had a lucky break in tracking him down at last.”
Lucky? He’s always landed on his feet. Like a cat with nine lives. After all Mum’s efforts with fake names and addresses to make sure the do-gooders couldn’t find him, even when she was in hospital and I was playing foster-care roulette.9
“Would you like to write back?”
“No need,” I say.
“You may feel that now,” starts Julie, “but let’s talk about it again when you’ve thought some more. Maybe chat it through with Dr Meadows. It’s a lot to take in, sweetie.”
And as usual she’s got the wrong end of the stick. She hasn’t actually read the letter properly. She doesn’t know how my father operates – but I do. Ten days have passed since the posting date. He’ll be on his way – if he’s not already here. I look around me, suspicious now of the office partygoers. I need to make plans. I have to disappear.
“Now that your mum is…” Julie pulls awkwardly at her necklace.
“Dead, you mean.”
“…no longer here, we could explore other family options.”
Family? My dad? I’d rather be shacked up with some cardboard and a blanket in a multi-storey car park. Mum and I did it to get away from him before. And yet now … now I have more to lose. I have what Julie would call prospects. My grades are good, I want to go to university. I have decent teachers. Not that I’d ever tell them that.
Julie puffs to her feet and waddles over to choose a bowling ball. “Come on, double or quits.”
I think of my neat little room at Beechwood School: the duvet cover that Julie and I picked out at Primark, the posters I carefully stuck to the wall and the row of books on the shelf. There’s a bright orange cushion Julie bought 10me for my birthday that I pretended not to like. Too big to pack now. The furniture is brown and slightly tatty, circa 1999, but everyone’s room is like that. I don’t stand out among the boarders except in the holidays.
Julie heads off to the ladies after all that Diet Coke, while I stare at the wall and try to think straight. I thought I’d made myself invisible, and then Julie’s boss ruins it all by interfering in my business. The letter has tracked me down like a heat-seeking missile and I’m not free of Dad even at the rundown Bowling Plaza. I dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand, cross with myself for getting complacent, for getting to like somewhere, when I should have known it wouldn’t last.
Julie hugs me in the car once we’ve pulled up outside Beechwood. I let her. She won’t be seeing me again. I bite my lip and stare out at the flickering lights on the tree by the main entrance. The angel at the top has broken and the wings are blinking on and off. I was going to help decorate the hall with holly and ivy next week. Proper greenery from the garden – real decorations, not ones made of foil and plastic.
She reaches over to the back seat and passes me a red envelope. Not another letter bombshell.
“It’s an advent calendar,” she says, smiling.
It’s bigger than a normal greetings card, with twenty-four tiny windows scattered across a picture of polar bears wearing knitted scarves. Silver glitter falls off as I touch it. 11Merry Christmas, Planet.
“Where are the chocolates, Julie?” I say. “Did you eat them all?”
Her cheeks flush as she ignores my comment. “Open it up, lovely.”
Inside, Julie’s written in her best handwriting:
Dear Amber, Hope you enjoy opening the windows and are looking forward to the festive season. J xxx
She never quite has the right words. Never sounds normal. Because she fools herself that she’s ‘down with the kids’, she’s added a smiley face. Why would I be looking forward to the festive season, when we’ve already established it’s a major inconvenience finding somewhere for me to go?
“It feels like snow’s on the way,” says Julie, as I stare down at the polar bears. “A white Christmas maybe.”
A cold one, then.
“Could I have some extra cash?” I ask. “I need some toiletries and stuff.”
She marks it in her notebook and hands me thirty pounds.
“I’ll see you next week. We can write a response to your dad’s letter together, if you like. No pressure. Whatever’s best for you.” She smiles. “Maybe with Christmas coming…”
She’s happier being useful, making plans.
“Sure. I’ll think about it.” I shove the cash in my pocket and toss her a bone: “I know I can be a right cow sometimes.”
She blushes, unsure what to say to that as it’s so true. 12I can’t help but feel slightly fond of her and her flowery smocks.
“Take care of yourself,” she says.
I intend to.
“We’ll sort something out for you, I promise. Don’t forget your advent calendar.”
Julie tucks my hair behind my ear.
I get out of the car and lean down towards the window. I nearly say something. I nearly say, ‘Thanks, I know you want to help, it’s not your fault’. I nearly tell her how I really feel and ask for help, but I can’t quite do it. The weight of all that’s happened is pushing on my chest. So instead I tap on the glass.
“Go easy on the mince pies, Julie,” I say.
I turn and walk away.
When I get back to my room, I pull out my rucksack from under the bed. It’s my Grab-and-Go Bag, for escape in the event of catastrophe. Dad would be proud of me. Always have your Grab-and-Go Bag. That’s the Rule.
I pull out my emergency plan, my hands shaking slightly. It’s short. Options in the event of imminent disaster are to stay put and fortify, or bug out and go. I choose the second. I’ll be well away from Dad if he turns up here at Beechwood. My plan has the address of an empty holiday cottage hundreds of miles away in Northumberland and how to get there. It belongs to Phil and Sue, foster carers from when Mum was in hospital. I can’t go back to any of 13the places we used to live in Somerset or Wales – either Dad already knows them or he could easily find out now. Our last home, the farm, I’m never going back there. Phil and Sue’s place, The Haven, is somewhere I came to after that life with Dad ended. And even if he manages to get hold of information from social services, a holiday home would never have been recorded in the chaos of my file.
I retrieve the cash I’ve stashed; notes pressed carefully inside my hardback edition of The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ve been picking up money from the more careless sixth formers who don’t lock up their rooms properly. My contingency fund. I write a note for Mrs Maz the relief matron, signing it from Julie. I say that I’m on an unexpected weekend visit to old foster parents and will be back in time for school on Monday morning.
Phones are too easily traced so I switch mine off and wedge it at the back of my drawer. There’s no one I need to call. No one who will be worried about me except in a purely professional capacity. I have a brief pang of concern for Julie – she might get into trouble or might genuinely worry about me. But she’ll get over it.
Some of the people here are the closest things to friends I’ve had for a while, but let’s get real: I won’t be missed. I’ve been hanging out with Sophie mostly. A girl who’s been chucked out of some of the best schools in Britain, smokes twenty a day without anyone ever catching her and can swear in her posh, little-girl voice in a way that cracks me up. She’s taken on the job of filling in the gaps in my cultural education and I try to show interest in the Netflix 14shows she wants to talk about. She’ll find a new project after I’m gone.
I scan my room for anything else I want to take. I’m not big on clothes. Sophie jokes that I look like an undertaker’s apprentice because I wear so much black. The fact that I rarely smile probably has something to do with it too. I like being the girl who doesn’t stand out, the girl nobody notices. Being inconspicuous can keep you alive. I tie my hair in a low ponytail, put on a beanie hat and add a big scarf that can cover half my face. I pack my decent waterproofs and wear my usual black coat with a deep hood. I don’t want to look like I’m walking in the mountains – I’m just a teenage girl catching a train to family. Normal. Average.
At the last minute, I pick up Julie’s advent calendar. I open the first window to reveal a tiny ‘Letter to Santa’. Ironic. Dad’s letter came with the major implication that I am on the naughty list, for being quite so difficult to find. Thanks to him, I’ve now got no idea where I’ll be by the time the rest of the cheap, glittery card windows are open.
I shouldn’t bring the advent calendar. It serves no purpose.
I pack it in my bag.
Thirty minutes’ brisk walk gets me to the station. I need to think ahead, that’s one of the Rules: think how this will look to anyone trying to find me. I buy two tickets, exactly as set out in my emergency plan. First, I get a single to Cardiff from the bored man at the counter, using my bank card. Julie knows about my bank account – she helped me set it up. I make a meal of it, spending ages looking for my purse, asking inane 15questions about things to visit there so that he’s more likely to remember me. I buy a second ticket for Edinburgh from the machine out of sight of the counter, feeding notes carefully into the slot. My dad came to think all state authorities were out to get him, tracking his movements, prying into his finances and his irregular immigration status. So I’m well trained in concealing my data trail. Or laying a fake one.
I wait for the train in the ladies’ toilets, away from any platform cameras. I dive into a cubicle when a woman enters – and then tell myself not to be so jumpy, to pull myself together, not to draw attention. No one is coming to take me back to school. As my train finally pulls in to the platform, I merge with other passengers and hop on, hood up. I change platforms at Bath, tagging along behind a noisy group of tourists and their wheelie cases.
Pulling into London past midnight, I spend hours drifting between rundown 24-hour fast-food places to keep warm while I wait for the first train north. I don’t use a bank card, just cash, and only if I’m getting the evils from the staff and have to buy something to stop them kicking me out into the cold. This cash has to last me. I drink fizzy drinks and strong coffee to stay awake to keep an eye on my stuff.
It’s easier to do all this if you’ve trained your whole life for it. But I need to add a new worst-case scenario to the list of emergency events we planned for – not one Dad ever mentioned. Running from him.
Rule: Prep For the Worst
The Scouts have a similar rule, but their motto Be Prepared is more about cake sales than hardcore survivalist plans. They are a lightweight organization compared to us. Our Rule was about being prepared for the very worst that life can throw at you. Prepared. Not scared. Other kids in Year 3 could list dinosaurs or football players. I could rattle off SHTF scenarios. That’s Shit Hits the Fan to the uninitiated. Turns out, it wasn’t a topic wholly suitable for show-and-tell.
First, the bad language got me into trouble, with or without an acronym. Then the Shit really did Hit the Fan.
It was my go right after Charlotte, who talked about her rabbit, which was unfortunate timing. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that Charlotte’s rabbit would be put straight into a casserole if the shit hit. Maybe I shouldn’t have opened 17up my Swiss Army knife to demonstrate how I would skin Charlotte’s rabbit. You see, Dad and I were preparing for many things:
War
Civil unrest
Chemical explosion
Fuel shortages
We were preppers. Survivalists. People prepared to do what it took to survive. To sacrifice the odd pet rabbit.
Bio-terrorism
Forest fires
Water contamination
Banking system collapse
Giant solar flares
I was proud of my dad then. I thought he was so much smarter than everyone else’s father because he knew all about how we’d survive while the world was ending around us.
Flooding
Cyber attack
Power outage
Asteroid strike
At that time, when I was in junior school, Dad came and left our lives as he wished. Probably running back to the US to sponge some more money off his mom in Ohio. The grandma I never met. I imagined her baking cookies and apple pies in a wooden house with a wide porch and 18a swing. The reality was probably rather different. She did raise my dad after all.
Spanish flu
Bird flu
Swine flu
Of course, I was an idiot. No excuses. I thought one day Dad would take us with him back to the States to meet my cookie-baking grandma and we’d live next to Disneyland, maybe in Disneyland, in the Sleeping Beauty castle and every day would be perfect. So why wouldn’t I show off my Grab-and-Go Bag and recite the list of impending disasters I’d learned from him?
Pandemic
Ebola
Post-antibiotic resistance
Civil unrest
My teacher was pulling nervously at her collar. Her liberal belief in free expression was grappling with the need to avoid lifelong trauma for a bunch of seven-year-olds. Not to mention the letters of complaint. A red flush slowly spread from her chest up her neck and across her cheeks until finally she tried to intervene.
Earthquake
Tsunami
Alien invasion
Electromagnetic pulse
As I got older, I came to see that Dad wanted something 19bad to happen. So that he’d be proved right. The guys down the pub who laughed at him for spending his money on a gas mask would suffocate to death before his very eyes. All his paranoid fantasies would be vindicated. So what if most people would be doomed? We’d be sitting in a cabin in the woods eating pickles and canned fish, Dad grinning from ear to ear and saying, “I told you so.”
Though by then he would probably only have communicated in giant, angry capital letters: I TOLD YOU SO.
Crop failure
Nuclear war
Drought
Zombie apocalypse
You might think that only a complete psychopath would want an actual emergency, a real disaster. And you’d be right.
December 2
I was never going to get the train all the way to Edinburgh, of course. I sleep in the safety of my train seat against the window and set my alarm for three hours, my arms wrapped round my bag. I get off at Newcastle, helping a family with their buggy like I’m the big sister. They offer me a lift in their taxi and I take it, rammed in the back of a mini cab that reeks of air freshener. The toddler leans against me, head nodding and dribbling down my coat. I tell them I’m a student at the uni and they drop me at my ‘house share’. I stand waving at the gate of a random house until the cab turns the corner, heave my bag on to my back and stride off towards the main road.
Going to the Bowling Plaza feels like weeks ago but it was less than twenty-four hours. I’m queasy and shaky from lack of sleep and treat myself to a bacon sandwich at 21a shabby café with no CCTV. I’m being overcautious but hey, I can’t help myself. It’s ingrained. Mental attitude is what distinguishes a survivor. Self-reliance, doing what you have to do on little sleep. I have to stay switched on until I reach the safety of Phil and Sue’s place.
I cadge a lift further towards The Haven with a Latvian lorry driver who’s only passing through. Perfect. He listens to heavy metal music, not the local radio stations. He’ll be long gone before anyone starts looking for me. If they even bother. It took social services six months to find some of my paperwork once, so I expect they’ll be behind the curve in tracking me down. The police won’t be interested. I’m nearly an adult, voluntarily going walkabout for a while. No big deal.
Dad is a different matter. I’ve avoided him successfully for more than two years. I let myself believe that he’d gone for good. I should have known that with Dad, it’s never over.
The lorry driver drops me at a layby on the A1. I check my map and choose to walk the last three miles, dodging out of sight if a car passes. I don’t want a lift from a chatty local. The rucksack is tight and heavy on my back. I’m obsessive about making sure nothing rattles. That no one ever hears me coming.
Bamburgh is quiet and bleak out of season. Last time I was here it was the school holidays. We walked along the coast, visited the castle, ate fish and chips. I gave Phil and 22Sue a hard time but I guess they were all right. They’ll have a new batch of kids now, crammed in the bunk beds in the back bedrooms down in Somerset.
I take the turning down Beach Lane. Two cats scrap on the road over a torn rubbish bag. The Haven is the last place on the right. It’s a bungalow with grey pebble-dashed walls and a paved front garden, weeds thriving in the cracks around pots of dead plants. It’s not exactly a cutesy holiday home but they’d rent it sometimes in the summer to friends who’d left it too late to find anything good.
The house is closed up, curtains drawn, but I walk slowly round it, peering in, just to make sure. A pile of junk mail lies on the mat inside the glass porch. A key box with a pad code is tucked round by the wheelie bin. Phil was terrible at remembering passwords and PIN numbers so everything in his life was 1066 – the burglar alarm, the cash machine (useful to know, for a tenner every now and then) and the holiday cottage key box. He won’t have had the imagination to change it, I’m certain. There’s nothing worth nicking here anyway. It belonged to his dead mum and is still full of brown old-lady furniture.
I tap in 1066 and the box clicks open. The keyring says ‘World’s Best Husband’. Phil and Sue were into all that schmaltzy stuff – Valentine bears and greetings cards. As though all the love stuff would rub off on the rest of the household – damaged kids like me who scowled at them across the kitchen table. It didn’t.23
The key’s shiny, newly cut, and I fiddle with it in the lock before it works. I step over the post and head for the kitchen at the back. Even once I’ve pulled up the blind, the room is still dingy. I switch on the lights – a fluorescent strip blinking on, dead flies silhouetted in the casing. It’s musty, except for the overpowering diffuser by the door – a smell like disinfectant lemons. I turn on the heating and open the windows to let out the stale air. It doesn’t take me long to check all the rooms. The cottage is much smaller and tattier than I remember. I guess places seem bigger on sunny days, better when you’re on an actual holiday rather than just finding somewhere to lie low.
I fantasize occasionally that I can escape the past, that I can change my identity, shed my old skin and emerge as a different person. But it’s just a fantasy. That kind of change isn’t easy. I prop up the advent calendar on a shelf in the kitchen and open the second door. A sprig of holly. Prickly like me. Maybe that could be a new identity: Holly. I’d fit right in with the Millie, Molly, Izzy brigade at school.
I finally sit down, exhausted and shaky. The Haven is as safe a house as I can make it. The adrenaline’s beginning to drain away. I’m in a place I hoped I’d never have to use and I don’t know how long I’ll be here. My emergency plan doesn’t help. I wrote ‘until I know it’s safe to return to Beechwood’ – but what if it never is? What then? I’m meant to stay one step ahead. That’s the Rule. I guess I’m out of practice.24
I need to keep my strength up. Sue always kept basic supplies up here and I help myself to a lunch of canned vegetable soup and rice pudding, warming them in the dented saucepan on the hob, before my head starts to nod and I drag myself upstairs to crash out for a few hours in the half-remembered back bedroom.
Rule: Leave No Trace
Loud music woke me up. I cautiously padded into the lounge, pulling on a jumper. Mum was kneeling by the wall of Rules with a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush. I dimly recognized the music from when I was little – from a time when it was just me and Mum and she used to scoop me up and dance around the kitchen with music on full blast. She’d make up a reason for a party:
It’s Friday.
It’s a ‘let’s finish tidying up’ party.
It’s an ‘I’ve been paid today’ party.
I didn’t really care about why. I just loved that we were dancing in the kitchen and that Mum was making popcorn in the big saucepan. The kernels fired against the metal lid in a series of pops as the oil heated up. She shook the saucepan from time to time to stop it sticking and then 26she’d lift the lid to reveal overflowing fluffy popcorn. To a five-year-old it was magic. She divided out the popcorn between the two of us and scattered icing sugar through a tiny sieve, like a snowstorm. I’d lick my fingers and wipe them round the empty dish to pick up the last sweet dregs.
But there was no smell of popcorn now. No party. Just blaring music and a sobbing woman. A snippet of music from a decade ago couldn’t get us back there, away from this.
Away from him.
Mum’s face was red and blotchy from crying. A bruise on her left cheekbone spread up towards her eye. Her tears were streaking through the foundation she’d plastered on to cover it.
“Let’s get rid of it all, Amber. Let’s rub the Rules away and everything will be all right, won’t it?”
She scrubbed at the board, water dripping down her arm and on to the carpet, the words blurring and mixing into a mess of smeary white clouds across the wall. Dad shouted from upstairs about the noise. His heavy steps began descending the stairs. I couldn’t fix this. Mum smiled at me. Not a proper smile. Just someone forcing their mouth into a shape.
“See, Amber. They’ve gone. I did it.”
December 5
I’m getting used to living at The Haven. I have a new routine of runs along the coast and dunes, trying to clear my head of my past with Dad, and solitary meals in front of the TV. I know I’m killing time, that I need to think ahead, but this is the best I can manage right now. The Haven’s not exactly ‘home’ – I don’t really know what that would feel like any more – but I’m pleased to see it when I turn back up the lane. Maybe that’s the most I can ever expect.
The ginger-haired guy at the corner shop nods in recognition when he sees me now. Yesterday he commented on the weather. Today he tried to chat, asked where I was staying. I was non-specific. “Oh, you know, in one of the holiday cottages, belongs to my nan.” Trust no one. That was the Rule. He smiles but that doesn’t mean he’s a good guy. I should have kept it simple. Now I’ve invented 28a nan he might want to ask about. Stupid. I replay the conversation in my head, telling myself not to worry. I’m safe here. I should switch to another shop tomorrow – the one attached to the petrol station. It’s further away but a bored shift worker won’t ask me any questions.
I stick my shopping in the fridge and put the kettle on. I spread out the newspaper on the table, switch on the radio. I could carry on living here like this until I know Dad has given up and gone back to the States. I half regret ditching my phone. I could have called Sophie, sworn her to secrecy and asked if he’d come looking for me at school yet. Except I’m not that stupid. No contact is the safest way. But the longer I’m here, the harder it’ll be to pick up that life. And I don’t want to admit it, but if Dad finds out I go to Beechwood, it’ll never be safe to go back.
I work through the newspaper, checking all the columns, seeing if there’s a flicker of a news story on me. It’s been two days since the penny must have dropped with Mrs Maz; she will have called Julie. They’ve probably had lots of meetings. How long before they think I may be at risk and the police go public?
I don’t have a mother to do a sobbing TV appeal, flanked by a doting husband and a family liaison police officer. Maybe Julie would say something. “This is so out of character for Amber (LIE). Amber, if you’re out there, please get in touch. We’re all worried about you (LIE). You’re not in any trouble (LIE).”29
Is being my substitute sobbing relative in Julie’s job description? Perhaps she’ll have media training, get a new dress from Rent-a-Tent on expenses.
I close the paper. I’m not in there.
My eyes flick up to the advent calendar. How many days have I been here? I didn’t open it at breakfast but there’s a new little picture on the bottom left – a gingerbread man with red icing buttons and a fixed smile.
I jump up and look quickly around the ground floor, my heart beating faster. There’s a scruffy bag and a green parka jacket in the back porch. The floorboards above me creak and someone flushes the toilet.
I head for the front door but, as I reach for the handle, a young man in sweatpants and a crumpled T-shirt is coming down the stairs.
“Hey, Goldilocks. Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” he says.
