Solace of the Road (16 page)

But the real me didn’t move. The Holly part was crushed, flat as the mink.

Thunder rumbled again.

Miko and Phil, same difference. Going, going, gone, story of my life.

Fishguard might as well be China.

I was in the middle of a field in Wales with a storm growling in the sky and the cops after me. And all I had to help was a thieving glamour girl who only existed inside my own cracked head.

Thirty-one
In the Black Mountains

Miko used to say you can meet God on the road. Maybe he was right. I thought of Phil with his turned-down lips and suffering eyes and sad music and him buying me sausages when he was a vegan, not to mention the birthday cake. And I thought of him being sorry for my beaten-up mam in Wales and lending me his phone. I’d never really gone in for God stuff. Souls floating up to heaven. People walking out of tombs when they’re supposed to be dead. Mam was brought up Catholic on account of being Irish, but she said churches were a waste of space and the sooner they were all made into nice roomy flats the better. But on that day of my fifteenth birthday, 11 June, I sat in that green field and thought maybe God does exist a tiny bit. Maybe he kind of sits inside people, looking out through their eyes. Maybe God gets inside you and makes you do good things and you don’t even know he’s there. He’d probably never come near my sort. But people like Phil, with his scenic routes and vegan dreams, he loves.

I looked at the money Solace had stolen from him and I felt like throwing it away. Then I thought I’d hang onto it and give it to the first homeless person I saw. Or put it in a church collection box. For now, I put it away in the lizard, in the secret pocket where Mam’s amber ring and my SIM card were stashed.

There was only one chink of blue left in the sky and that was shrinking. I got up and went back to the petrol station. I went straight to the toilets and brushed my real hair. I put the wig back on and brushed that too. Then I went out and looked up at the ugly dirty cloud hunched up over the dark mountains. The air pressed up hard and yellow.

… They are urging the girl to get in touch with her foster parents …
Fiona and Ray. I’d tucked them away into the back of my head, but now they were back times two. I could see Fiona looking at me that first time in my bedroom in Templeton House like I was the last whale, and Ray looking up at me from the garden below, smiling.
Clip-clop
went the shears, and the cloud-letters of my name floated across the sky.

They hadn’t believed the story about me going off to Tenerife. Come to think of it, I didn’t even have a passport.

One call
, I thought,
and it’s over. They’ll know I’m alive so they’re off the hook, but they’ll never want me back. Who could blame them? If I were Fiona and Ray, I wouldn’t want me back either
.

I got the mobile and SIM card out of the lizard and put them back together to see if they’d left me any more messages. But when I tried to turn it on, it died.
There was no charge left. But why would there have been any more messages anyway? They’d probably washed their hands of me.

The mountains darkened and there was nobody in sight. I popped into the petrol station, and with my own last bit of change I bought a Red Bull from the mogit woman behind the counter. Trim used to drink three Red Bulls straight off and then no one could stop him – not Miko, not anybody – he’d just roar and flare up and it was like you had to call in the vet to tranquillize him with a stun gun. I needed some of that, fast.

I sat on a wall and guzzled the drink.
Shake a leg
, I told myself.
Get back on the road before Phil phones the police and they hunt you down here like a fox
.

Then flickering started in the sky. I tramped down the road, thumbing as I went, but nothing much went by and nobody stopped.

The rain started. I turned off a side road, thinking the police were less likely to find me there, and sheltered under a big tree. I took off the wig and folded it safe away at the bottom of the lizard to keep it dry. There was a flash, then, a few seconds later, a thunderclap. I remembered the tree in
Jane Eyre
. Lightning splits it in two and Mrs Atkins says it’s because Mr Rochester proposed to her under it when he shouldn’t have, so Fate is angry because he has the wife in the attic. I reckoned Fate was angry with me too, for stealing the money off Phil. I moved down the road, looking for better shelter.

A pigeon flapped out of a hedge, scared crazy,
nearly stopping my heart. Then a loud clap exploded just across the next field. My insides and outsides swapped places. My life was one long list of wickedness. God had probably decided to murder me with a thunderbolt. I’d end up jellified in my shoes, a smoking mound of ashes. And it would serve me right.

I ran on down the narrow lane. Rain fell in heavy blotches, then started pelting so it hurt my skin.

I got to a strange bridge, made of stone with turreted walls, and under it a small river chasing.

I saw a flash and right after that a clap tore up the sky worse than that army jet. I screamed and cowered against the bridge wall.

‘Spare me, Jesus,’
I cried.

The lizard was sodden and soon everything in it would be drenched, including the wig.

I climbed over the wall and down the bank and got down under the bridge. The water was coming up around my trainers, but I didn’t care.

Then I remembered. Mam. She’d been frightened of storms too. She’d drape blankets over mirrors to keep the lightning reflection from killing you. She’d draw the curtains. She’d take the phone off the hook. She’d pull all the plugs from the sockets. Then she’d lie on the tiger-skin sofa, moaning, ‘Why do we have to live at the top of this bloody tower block, Holl? Why?’

The water was white and swirling. I huddled hard against the stone of the bridge. The storm rumbled and crashed, sometimes near, sometimes far. I got out the amber ring of Mammy’s from the secret zip pocket in the lizard. There were no robbers anywhere to chop
off my finger so it was OK to put it on.
It’ll keep me safe. It will
. I put it on my middle finger and closed my eyes.

You could still see the lightning flash, even behind your eyelids, so I opened them again and stared at the tiny insect stuck in the middle of the amber. It had been trapped there for hundreds of thousands of years, Miko told me, the time I’d showed it to him. He’d said how amber was made from the goo of pine trees, only it was called resin and it had set hard long ago, before there were people even. The dark speck might be an ancient mosquito, Miko said. Or a fly.

I stared at it. Caught. For ever.

Mammy. Where are you?

Between the next crash and the next strike my mind went white and clear and still.

And in the silence, she came to me.

‘Holl.’ Mam’s voice calling, high and strong.

It’s the sky house again with the glass, the balcony, the light. I’m walking down the hall and there she is, in the kitchen, fixing tea. Her face is covered over with a see-through scarf. Like an eastern bride, her eyes glitter through the material. Is she smiling? I can’t see. No, she’s cross. She slams the knife drawer, opens a can of baked beans. ‘Go down to the corner shop, Holl. Get the bloody fish fingers. I can’t go. Not looking like this.’

The picture’s burned out of my brain by another lightning fork. Mammy’s vanished. Instead there’s a knocking on the door and whoever it is won’t go away. So I open it and a woman from the Council’s at the
door with a briefcase and she’s smiling, looking down at me. I stare at the bracelet she has on, coloured discs, clacking against each other.

‘Holly. Is your mother in?’

‘No, miss.’

‘Is her boyfriend there?’

‘No, miss.’

‘You’re on your own?’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Is your mum just down at the shop?’

‘See that on your arm, miss?’ I reach out and touch the bracelet.

‘Do you like it, Holly?’

‘Yes. ’S pretty.’

She takes it off and hands it to me. I make it click-clack and smile at the colours. ‘Reminds me,’ I say.

‘What of, Holly?’

‘Of Mam’s drink.’

‘Your mum’s drink?’

‘Not the colours. The noise. The noise of the ice.’

Then the lightning flashes again and Mam’s taking off the amber ring, feeding it off her hand bit by bit, handing it to me, and her face is white and her hand is shaking. ‘Look after it, Holl. Keep it safe. They’d chop your finger off for a ring like that.’

Look after … Look after …

A last grumble of thunder sounded away in the hills. The water swirled louder and the voices faded. Rain still spat down but the storm had rolled off, fast as it had come. I staggered out from under the bridge,
straightening up. I looked at the ring, glowing on my hand. I stroked it, as if I could bring the tiny trapped insect back to life.

Oh, Mam. Don’t go
.

I looked around at the river and the banks, the bridge, the trees moving in the wind and the mountains. All the colours had gone grey in the strange storm-light. Then the clouds shifted, the sun slanted through, the greens and browns came back and the birds started up again. I fetched the wig out of the lizard, brushed through it and put it on.

I breathed.
There. There now
.

I wiped my eyes and smoothed down the dress. I shivered. I’d got chilled standing in the wet. I got the trousers out and put them on under the dress. Dresses over trousers were old, but down here in Wales maybe they were still reckoned cool, who knew.

Solace gave me a pep talk.
Holl. If you survived that storm, you can survive anything, girl. You’re unstoppable. Telling you
.

My trainers squelched as I climbed back up to the road. I took them off and tied the laces together and dangled them from the lizard’s strap. Then I put the sandals on. They hurt, but they were dry.

I made my slow way back up the side road to the A40. No storm would finish me off. No policeman would recognize me. I was a blonde, all grown up, not a brunette, aged fifteen. I’d thumb my next lift and hit the Irish ferries and I’d be free.
Mammy
, I thought,
stay right where you are. I’m getting closer with every step
.

Thirty-two
The Truck of Pigs

The road shone and the light was warm and strong after the storm. I stood at the top of a good clean stretch, near a gate that led into an enormous field of sheep. If you’d tried to count them, you wouldn’t have fallen asleep, you’d have died of old age. I put my thumb out again, the amber glinting on my hand.

Nothing stopped. Cars and trucks passed, loud and fast. When they’d gone, you could hear the sheep baaing and wind tickling the trees.

I tried the dandelion trick again. Still nothing. Maybe I was the only person hitching in the whole of Britain, and maybe Phil was the only person crazy enough to stop.

After a long gap I glimpsed a car coming more slowly and I stuck out the thumb again. The vehicle was white and blue. I yawned. It rounded a corner and reappeared, getting closer.

That’s when I realized. A police car.

Thickhead!
I dropped the hand and turned, head
down, towards the gate and stared at the sheep. I wagged my finger like I was counting them.

Had they seen me? Were they looking for me?

Had Phil called the police after I’d done the runner?

I was sure the car was slowing, about to stop.

I kept counting like my life depended on it. In my head, they were taking me in and driving me to a cell and then they’d all come – Rachel, the police, Fiona and Ray, the psychiatrists – and they’d talk about me like I wasn’t there.
Holly has chaotic high support needs
, I heard them say, shaking their heads, just as I overheard a social worker say once.

Chaotic. High. That was me all right.

But the police car quickened after it took the bend. It vanished up the road, leaving me behind. I breathed again. The wind played in the wig. The sheep baaed and I baaed back. One of them stared at me and I swear it was the spit of Trim. It had narrow eyes and a long snout and it looked like it would chew up the whole world and spit it right out. I laughed my head off by that gate and had to rub my side on account of the stitch I gave myself. If Grace had been there she’d have hee-hawed too.

Then I went back up to my spot on the bend.

A bone-shaker of a cattle truck rolled up. It was the kind with a cabin in the front and an open pen at the back, where they cram in the cows. But I couldn’t see in because it was more wooden bits than gaps. I imagined it full of beasts heading for the chop. Soon they’d be swinging on hooks in a butcher’s. I put
my thumb out halfway, thinking of Phil being vegan, then my arm dropped to my side. But the truck still stopped.

I didn’t move. A man opened the door and leaned out. He had a plump, round face and curly dark hair on the back half of his head. He was Addams Family meets Jack the Ripper, grinning ear to ear.

‘Want a lift, love?’ he said.

‘Um,’ I grunted.

‘Where to?’

‘Where’re
you
going?’

‘Lampeter.’

‘No good,’ I said. I rolled my wrist like I was queen of the land. ‘I’m going to Fishguard.’

‘I can get you past Llandovery,’ he said.

I remembered Llandovery from the map, only he said it different, Clan-dove-ry. ‘You mean Lando-very?’

He slapped his thigh. ‘That’s priceless. Like calling that dandelion in your ear a dan-
day
-leon.’

He screeched with laughter. I had to smile. I took the dandelion from behind my ear and tossed it aside.

‘You coming or not?’ said the man.

‘What’s in the back?’ I could hear things moving and breathing and see shadowy shapes through the slits.

‘Pigs.’

‘Pigs?’ My nose wrinkled. I remembered Phil and his story about the sheep having their ears punched before they were slaughtered. I stepped forward and peered between the slats and made out some pale bristles and dark patches. Then I heard snuffling and pawing.