Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms (20 page)

“Oh. Who sleeps in the stable?”

“What stable?”

“The one attached to your house,
ja
?”

“That's the garage. The car's in it. Nobody drives it, not since my granddad died last month.”

“Then I'll sleep there,” said Will. Daniel raised his eyebrows. She had tried to sound authoritative and persuasive at once, and her voice had come out like Mrs. Robinson's. She added, more softly, “Please, hey, Daniel?”

“You can't. There's no light.”

“I
can
. Please. I've got a flashlight. See, there. Please. You have to let me. It's important. This isn't a game.”

“I can't just—” Dan paused. Upstairs he had a set of plastic Indians. There was one with a knife in his hand, crouched to spring. This girl looked like that. She looked ready to fight.

“All right.” He started digging in a drawer for candles and matches; they wouldn't do much but might give a bit of
warmth. “But I can't get you any blankets. My gran'd notice they were gone. You'll have to sleep under your coat.”

“Fine. That's fine. Quick,
ja
.”

“Where is it, anyway? Your coat?”

Will could feel her ears turning red. “I'll be fine. I just need to be inside, and to sleep, and to think. I can't plan in the rain. It's like ice.”

“You don't have a coat?” She was thinner than anyone else he'd ever seen, and her lips were lined with purple. She'd freeze to death. “How can you not have a coat?”

Will kept herself from throwing the
Supa-Wizz Electric Blender
at his head, but she found it was surprisingly difficult not to. “It's fine! Can you just show me the way,
ja
? Please. And quick, hey. Before your grandmother gets back.”

He said, “Don't rush me. I hate being rushed. Wait—you can have my granddad's coat, if you like. It's that one, underneath all the others. No, not that one. That's my sister's.” And Will dropped the beautiful fluff-hooded jacket as though it were a dead snake. He stared at her. “What's wrong with you?”

“I don't like girls' things. I don't like girls.”

“That's ridiculous.” He picked up the blue coat and unhooked another one. “You're a girl yourself, aren't you? My gran says only cowards hate themselves.” When Will said
nothing, only stared with those unblinking brown eyes, he turned away, saying, “Here—this one's my granddad's.”

It was enormous, and smelled of cigarettes and dust. Will wrapped herself in it; it went round her twice. Despite the urgency in her chest, she grinned. It was like wearing courage.

He was watching her, and as they crossed the square of rubble that was the back garden, he said, “Weren't you cold before?”

“
Ja
. Freezing. Especially at nights.”

“Scared?”

“No.”

He looked skeptical. “Yeah, right.”

“Yes. Of being caught,
ja
. Not of anything else.”

He led her into a square of grass behind the house and round to the garage door. “The hinges creak.” Dan pulled the door back and forth. “Hear that? That can give you warning. If it's me, I'll knock twice first. If you hear the creak without a knock, it's someone else, and you'll have to escape round the back garden. Can you get out of the window?”

Will didn't think that was worth answering. Windows were her specialty. She said, “Thanks. And I'll need water. I've done something to my ankle, I think, and the blisters
are septic.” They had gone from plump transparent cushions to deflated brown patches with loose skin. She was more worried about them than she wanted to admit. “And I cut my hand. There's pus.”

“Pus?”

“
Ja
. Don't you have pus in England? It's like . . . I dunno . . . yellow blood. It means there's an infection.”

“Right. Okay.” He sounded flustered in the dark. He sounded young. “Look, I've got to go. Gran'll be back in a second, and it's my day to set the table. If I don't do it, she'll notice something's going on. She's fierce, my gran.”

“
Ja
. You said.” Will thought she liked the sound of her.

“Did I? Well, she
is
. But I'll bring water, and some food, in about an hour, yeah?”

At the side door he stopped. “One thing. If you're a boy now, what am I supposed to call you?”

Will looked out from under the musty weight of the corduroy coat. Her chest was thawing now. For the first time in what felt like months, Will laughed properly. “You call me Will,” she said.

•  •  •

Alone in the garage, Will dozed, woke, dozed, explored. The silence was complete, and once she had breathed hot air down into her coat, it was not unbearably cold. There was a
box of wrenches, and some bicycle lights that didn't appear to work, and a box full of damp comics.

She fished some out and trained the light of the flashlight on one. She was astonished to find that she was too happy to read. Without warning, Will found that the feeling of being watched and disliked had left her, and along with it, the feeling of being always wrong, and the loneliness that had filled her chest with black tar. Will thought,
Why should it hurt so much to be hated?
She had a feeling it was an important question, but before she could begin to think of an answer, the garage door crashed open.

Will was up and across the floor and crouched behind the car before the door had time to crash shut again—but even so. “I can see your feet, you know,” said Daniel.

“
Ja
, well.” Will stood up. “It's your fault. You forgot to knock.” But he could hear from the shapes of her words that she was grinning. “There's nowhere to hide, anyway. I wouldn't have fit in the toolbox.”

“I'll bring a big cardboard box later. I got you food.” He sounded much less bewildered than before. His voice was thick with excitement as he dropped to his haunches beside her.

“What's this?” said Will.

“Beans on toast. Do you eat beans?”

Will sniffed it. It smelled all right—wonderful, in fact, sweet and salty at the same time—but she hesitated. She wished it were an apple, or plain bread. This would be difficult to eat neatly. It was important, she felt, that she eat the Leewood way, because it was important—quiveringly important—that Daniel like her. She wished she'd brought some paper napkins.

She groped round in the dark. “What are you doing? What is it?” said Daniel.

“I was just looking—they must be here—for the knife and fork.”

“I didn't bring any.” He sounded angry. “I couldn't take them without someone noticing, could I? It's not like we've got mountains of silver, you know.”

“Oh!” She'd said the wrong thing. “No,
ja
. Just.
Ja
. I don't want to make a mess.”

“I wouldn't have thought you were one of
those
girls. Lizzie's like that; she always wants to be the perfect one.”

“No!” Will put her plate down with a thump. If he was Simon, she would've had him by the hair by now. “They said. At the school,
ja
. ‘Manners are a form of thanks.' ”

“Are you being funny? That's just for adults. I don't care if you get sauce all over your face. You can get it in your
ears
if you want to.”

“Oh. Nobody
said
that,
ja
. Nobody told me.”

“Well, now I've told you.” She could hear him smiling in the dark. She felt herself strengthened by it. “Eat,” he said.

The beans were too hot, but Will was painfully hungry. She could feel the skin on the roof of her mouth burning off in little shreds, but they were so filling, and so sweet and deliciously solid. . . . She looked up at Daniel laughing.

“What?”

“You've got sauce on your eyebrows.”

Will threw a bean at him. Even in the dim light she was accurate; she'd been deadly with an air rifle back home. “And now so do you,” she said.

W
ILL DID NOT HEAR THE
car that drew up just before midnight.

Daniel did. He couldn't sleep, or think about anything except the filthy girl alone in the garage. He should have given her his duvet, he thought. Or his curtains, to use as a tent; he could have unhooked them easily. The wind was battering at the house, and she might die of cold. He was just swinging himself out of bed when the noise of the bell cut through the house, and he reached the landing in time to see his grandmother at the spy hole.

“
Daniel!
Daniel, get your young self down here!”

He joined her at the spy hole. Two policemen's helmets hovered at eye level.

His heart dropped to the floor. His knees followed it. “Daniel!” His grandmother hauled him up again. “This is not the time to be sitting down for a tea break.” His grandmother whispered, harsh with fear, “What've you done? If you've been out with those hoodlums again, I warn you, lad—I'll stop your pocket money until you're old enough to draw a pension.”

“I've not! Not for months, gran. I
told
you I hadn't.”

“If you have, lad . . .” She glared at him as she tugged at the door.

But it wasn't that at all. The stockier of the two men held out a blurred photograph. “We have been notified, madam, that the missing schoolgirl—you will've read about it—may be concealed in your garage.”

“What?” said Daniel's grandmother.

“The missing schoolgirl—Wilhelmina Silver.”

“And you are saying what?” Mrs. James was fierce to make up for the fright. She moved to shield Daniel from them. “Are you calling me a kidnapper?”

“No, madam. But a man and a woman saw a person partially answering her description outside your house earlier this evening. It seems they debated for some time about calling us.”

“And why would that be?”

The policemen looked uncomfortable. “It seems the girl had become bald since running away.” The old woman snorted. The stocky man continued, “Nonetheless, they're sure it was her face. They say the eyes were unmistakable.”

“There is no runaway schoolgirl in this house, officer—be she bald, bearded, or mustached.”

“Ah, yes, but her school says the girl is like a wild animal. She might easily have broken in through a window.”

“And be living in the garage? And eating what, tell me? The pliers? Or the Christmas decorations?”

“Please keep your temper, madam. If you could just give us the key.”

“I'm giving you nothing.”

The policemen exchanged looks. “Right. Then if you could come and unlock it for us, madam?”

“We do have a search warrant.” That was the wiry, aggressive one.

Mrs. James transferred her glare to the second policeman.

“I suppose I could do that, yes. Stay here, Daniel.”

“What? No! I'm coming with you.”

“Daniel! Stay here, I said.” But she didn't sound too furious. Daniel thought he could risk it, and followed three steps behind into the night.

His grandmother flung the hanging garage door wide
open. The policemen pushed forward, grunting. And Daniel braced himself to run.

“There, you see. Nobody there.”

Daniel opened his eyes. It was true. And there was nowhere she could be hiding; no matter how small, an African runaway will not fit into a biscuit tin already full of screwdrivers. The men waved their flashlights around in a resentful sort of way.

“Look under the car,” said the sharp-faced one, though they could all see there was nothing except an oil leak. Daniel felt his courage rise. He was on the point of delighted laughter when the wiry officer said, “And if you could unlock the car trunk, please, madam?”

The old woman looked scathingly at them. “No, I could not. The catch is broken. It needs a kick.” And as one of the policemen stepped forward, she said, “
No
, thank you. Daniel'll do it.”

Daniel whispered, “Oh, no. No,
no
,” because he knew with sudden certainty where Will must be. His mouth tasted of vomit. He tapped at the bumper with his toe. “I can't. It's stuck.”

“Oh, come on, kid. Give it a bit of muscle.”

He thumped, hard, at the wrong part of the trunk. “It's broken. See? How could Will have gotten in if it's glued shut?”

“Will? Who's Will?”

The wiry policeman swung his flashlight into Daniel's face. “What did you just say?”

Daniel's face stretched with horror. “I—” His grandmother's left eye gave him a warning look. “I thought—You said— Isn't that what you said the girl's name was?” he said.

“I see.”

“Right.”

“Step aside, please.” They advanced.