Eggshell Days (38 page)

“Sorry.”

“Did you fall asleep?”

“No. I tried but it was too hot.” Maya was beaming, pleased to have someone to talk to after so long, but Mog looked worried, embarrassed, a bit disconcerted.

“Didn't you feel us moving? We've been traveling for hours.”

“Yes, but…”

“Don't worry, don't worry, it's okay. We can easily turn round. We're not in a hurry.”

“No.” Maya climbed out, steadying herself against the wooden doorframe as the bus turned a corner. “You don't understand. I meant to come with you. I'm a stowaway.”

“You are?” Mog didn't know how to tell her she couldn't be. She didn't want to be rude, not after all the help Maya's family had offered.

“Only as far as a train station. I'm going to London.”

“You are?”

“If that's not too much trouble.”

“Does Emmy know?” Mog asked, but she knew damn well Emmy did not.

“Not exactly,” Maya said cautiously.

“So you've run away?”

“Not exactly.”

Mog looked at her out of the corner of one eye. She saw a glimpse of herself in the child, a lack of fear and a self-taught independence. As she opened one of the two cartons of value orange juice left over from the send-off and poured juice into a chipped mug, she asked, “And what else is ‘not exactly'?”

*   *   *

Cathal was so used to seeing ten-year-old girls in the street and imagining that they were Maya that when the ten-year-old girl in Niall's street really was Maya, he barely reacted.

He was sitting in his car, which was parked illegally on double yellows outside his brother's former council flat near Tower Bridge, wondering how much longer he should wait before he gave it up as a bad job.

He didn't immediately recognize Maya's orange and purple hat, the one he had last seen lying in a puddle in the bottom of a yellow dinghy, but why should he? He had been placing her in Cornwall, in the garden, on her bike. In fact, it wasn't until he watched her press the intercom and put her mouth close to it that he came to.

“Hiya, Maya,” he said, out of breath. He'd made the same joke a few times in Cornwall. That they might be friends was about the best he could hope for.

She looked at him blankly at first. The tube from Waterloo had been busier than she remembered and the smell and noise were horrible. She could feel the fumes going up her nose and staying there. Everyone looked different. They all had gray or spotty skin and no one looked at you. She'd been beginning to wonder if she had shrunk in Cornwall, because London hadn't been this big when she lived here. And she'd begun to feel even smaller when Niall hadn't answered her ring.

“Cathal!” she said, dropping her bag at her feet.

There was no triangular formation this time, just a nice simple straight line.

“Are you all right, darling?” The parental concern was out before he could stop it.

“Fine, thanks.” Well, she was now.

“What are you doing here?” Did she know?

“I've come to get Niall.”

“So have I.”

“Is he expecting you?”

“No. Is he expecting you?”

“I don't know. I sent him a message but he hasn't replied.”

“Bit of a last-minute thing, was it?”

“Bit.”

“You've come to get him? Where are you taking him?” He put his finger on the intercom too.

“Back to Cornwall.”

“You came here on your own?” The penny was beginning to drop.

“Yes.”

“Good journey?”

“Fine, thanks.” She jiggled around, holding her legs together. “I wish he'd hurry up and answer. I'm bursting to go to the loo.”

Cathal looked around. “Why don't we go over the road and get a pizza? You could go in there, and we can see from the window if he turns up.”

“I'm not hungry. I've been eating those chocolate ladybirds you gave me all day.”

“You kept them a long time.”

“I know. I kept them for emergencies.”

“And this is an emergency, is it?”

“You tell me,” she said. She sounded so
old
.

“I think it probably is,” he said truthfully.

They started to walk, but Cathal suddenly realized they had to do something else first. He had just seen it all from another point of view.

“Let's just tell your mum you're here, that you bumped into me, yeah? I've got my phone in the car. It's all charged up. It won't take a minute.”

“I've spoken to her already.”

“When?”

“On the train. She called me. I've got her phone.”

“She ought to know you're here, with me.”

“No, I don't think so,” Maya said, shaking her head.

“I think we should.”

“It'll just make her worry more. She'll think we arranged it.”

“Well, we'll just have to tell her we didn't, won't we? We can't all carry on like this. It's mad.”

“I know.”

“She needs to know you're safe. I need her to know you're safe.”

“Can we do it from the restaurant? Otherwise I'm going to pee all over the pavement.”

*   *   *

Emmy asked the guard why the train was going so slowly.

“Track repairs,” he said, not lifting his eyes from punching her ticket.

“What, still?”

“It's not my fault. You want a safe network, don't you?”

She of all people did. She remembered a long-ago nightmare, of Jonathan shouting, “Carriage C, Carriage C,” and of her and Maya dying in the wreckage to the sound of mobile phones and being matched in the emergency morgue by their identical crooked little fingers. She thought of the question they all used to ask themselves: If this was our time, would we have died happy?

“Yes, I do,” she told the guard. “Tell the driver to go as slow as he needs.”

“That's very kind of you,” he replied sarcastically. “I'm sure he'll appreciate your permission.”

Emmy wished she had thought of changing from the clothes she had worn for Mog and Dean's send-off, a ridiculously upbeat mix of a tight green silk camisole top, a pink ruffle-neck jersey cardigan, and cut-off jeans she had trimmed with a length of silver-beaded fringe. It had been a conscious display of effort, wanting to show everyone that she was making tracks to get back on course, ready to make the most of what they had left. But now she felt ludicrous. She fiddled with her cardigan, trying to pull it surreptitiously across to cover her breasts. She put her ticket back in her sheepskin backpack and had the last slug of Rescue Remedy. Maya's note was in there, too.

She tried to stop imagining walking the streets of London with a photograph of Maya in her hand, accosting tramps and policemen to ask if they had seen her, to stop seeing her daughter's face on the front page of the
Evening Standard
and on the television news. It was willful self-torture, not least because she already knew Maya was safe. God bless mobiles!

Maya had been absolutely in control. “I'm on a train,” she'd said. “I know how to get to Niall's, and I'll phone you when I get there.” Which should be about now. According to Mog, her daughter could only be about two hours ahead.

Poor Mog had been so apologetic when she'd phoned Bodinnick. “I'm sorry. She wouldn't let me call until she was on the train.”

“At least you've kept your promise to her. That's more than most of us have done. Did she say anything about why she's gone?” Emmy asked.

“Well, just that she wanted Niall.”

“That's all?”

“I got the impression that was enough.” She left out the rest. It was too complicated to simplify, and anyway Mog thought she owed it to Emmy to let her hear it firsthand.

The train chugged out of the tunnel and meandered along the Devon coast. Emmy had no choice. She would just have to put her faith in a ten-year-old. She looked at Sita's mobile. Any minute now it might leap into life and tell her all was well. As soon as it did that, it wouldn't matter how slowly the bloody train went. In the meantime, she just had to trust Maya to get it right. It wasn't as if she was Asha. She had negotiated the tube on her own to Niall's a few times before. She had defiance, she had money, she had her own two feet. But still Emmy imagined the tramps. Lesser fates never occurred to her.

She sat back, rested her head against the window, and looked out at the orange cliffs and the fishing boats on the murky green sea, wishing she had the peace of mind to enjoy them.

*   *   *

“Do you like olives?” Maya asked Cathal.

Neither of them had looked across the road for ages. They had forgotten why they were there. It was nothing to do with eating pizza or needing the loo or seeking sanctuary from the rain. It was as if whatever they had been waiting for had arrived, even though they had only just got hold of the menu.

“I love them. Do you?”

“Yes, but only the black ones.”

“Oh, the green ones are horrible.”

“Yuck! Do you like pepperoni?”

“Love it.”

“And me. What about anchovies?”

“No. Vile things. You might as well lick the bottom of a boat.”

Maya laughed. “Pineapple?”

“Like it cold, can't stand it hot.”

“Snap.” She turned over for puddings. “What would you choose out of apple pie or chocolate fudge cake?”

“Chocolate fudge cake,” he said, crossing his fingers.

“Me too. Pecan pie or crème caramel?”

“Pecan pie.”

“No,” she said. “You're wrong. You wouldn't. You'd choose crème caramel.”

“Oh, sorry, can you repeat the question?”

“Pecan pie or crème caramel?”

“That'd be crème caramel, definitely.” He knew what she was doing.

“Right, what is your favorite color?” she asked.

He looked at her carefully. “Orange or purple,” he hedged.

“You're only allowed one.”

He drew in a breath. “It's a difficult one.”

She took off her denim jacket and showed him her purple hooded top with the silver star.

“Purple, then.”

“Is the right answer.”

He looked at his watch. “Do you want to order?”

“Have we got time?”

“Read your mum's text again. What time's she getting in?”

“Paddington at 8:25. Is that long enough?”

No, Cathal wanted to say. It's not long enough at all. But it's a start.

“That's long enough for the pepperoni, the black olives, the chocolate fudge cake
and
the crème caramel if you want.”

*   *   *

Niall was surprised to see Wreckers Ale for sale at the station buffet. He had no real thirst for Roy Mundy's favorite tipple and just one warm can cost him more than an entire lunchtime round at the Cott but he slugged it back anyway as he wandered restlessly up and down the platform. He didn't particularly want to smoke, either, but he did that, too.

He knew he looked terrible—he had slept in his clothes last night, although sleep was a loose term for the twitching of his semiconscious body on the floor of the van—so he tried to keep his gaze away from people. When he had had enough of wandering, he found a space away from the benches and the waiting rooms and the information boards, put his hands in his pockets and stood. The only place to look was the floor.

When the train eventually trundled in, forty minutes late, he hung back. It came to a wheezy stop, not that he could see much of it through the ungracious scrabble of travelers fighting to get on and off. He stayed where he was, making no attempt to move forward, still staring at the dirty concrete platform. People tutted him, barged him, and thought rude things about him as they piled on, but he was oblivious. He didn't give a damn whether he was an obstacle or not.

When he looked up, he realized he was hallucinating. The woman sitting in the window seat that had come to rest at precisely the point on the platform where he had chosen to stand looked just like Emmy. She had pink sleeves round denim knees and her feet were on the upholstery. Her hair was hanging in a glossy curtain and she was dreaming about something.

Niall wanted to touch her, to feel a warm hand or a soft cheek or a curve through the cloth of her jeans, and because he was so tired and thought it wasn't really happening anyway, he tried. He reached out and put his hand against the cold window. Slowly, amazingly, another hand on the other side came up to join it. A hand with a hair tie around the wrist, hidden in a collection of silver bangles. A hand with a crooked little finger.

The explosive collision of their mutual recognition catapulted them both into action. He ran toward the door, which had already been shut by the guard in preparation for pulling out, and she scrambled in panic out of her seat, over her bag and into the fray. He yanked the metal handle, jumped on, and by the time he had slammed it behind him, there she was. Emmy.

“Are you okay?” she asked. His hair was sticking up in clumps for want of a good wash, but his brand of personal hygiene, or the lack of it, was again immediately familiar. It might even have been love at second sight.

“I will be,” he said.

And they returned to her carriage and sat in silence with their eyes closed and their hands tightly in each other's, wondering what it was about trains and which single thing it was that had conspired to save them.

*   *   *

At Bodinnick, Sita lay on the lawn, enjoying the feeling of the sun-warmed blanket beneath her and the burble of family life around her.

She watched the house martins dipping and diving in the brilliant blue sky, catching their food midair. Their fledgings were learning to fly, taking tentative excursions from their mud homes in the eaves, returning often, presumably to rest. Soon the colony would leave, without fuss.