Part Two Chapters 13 and 14

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When it is time for the crane to come down it disassembles its own mast.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I say. Then I shout it. ‘WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME.’

Granny isn’t sitting down. She is standing by the window gazing out at the cranes. I can’t see her face properly.

I say, quite gently, as if I was the grown-up and she the child. ‘Why don’t you sit down granny? You’re making me feel giddy,’

Immediately I wish I hadn’t. I don’t like to see granny sitting there on the edge of the sofa, looking like - well, not like granny. Biting her nails. And then taking them out of her mouth, looking at them angrily and sitting on her hands for a moment as if to control them. At last she pulls a packet of cigarettes out of her .bag. I knew she smoked sometimes. But she’s never smoked in our flat before -. now she takes out a lighter too and lights a cigarette and pulls on it gratefully. I fetch a saucer from the kitchen for her to use as an ashtray. I know my mother. .

Actually I am glad of an excuse to be out of the room for a moment. I have a lot of things to get used to. Not just what my grandmother is telling me. I’ve seen a lot of different versions of her before angry, nice, funny, distant, grannies: I’ve grown used to her many different selves, some of them nicer to know than others. It is part of her being a real person, rather than ‘I’ve got to be nice patient person because I’m a grandmother’ kind of stuff,’ which was what my other grandmother, used to be like, the one that’s dead now.

(‘Maybe that’s why she’s dead,’ Trace said when we were talking about grandmothers once. ‘She doesn’t sound cool, not like you’re other one. ‘Yeah, Granny is cool,’ I said. ‘My other granny wasn’t for sure, I don’t think that’s why she’s dead.’)

But this isn’t cool granny. This was one is the opposite of cool; not the granny I know at all. More like granny’s identical twin, perhaps. Like a wrinkled baby. (I’d don’t think I’ve ever noticed before how many wrinkles granny has.)

‘And you believed them?’ I say. ‘They told you you’d killed Ella and you believed them? Rahilah was a twin. Her mother told her she was the blessed one, because she lived. And they told you that?’

How could anyone be so stupid I am thinking? How could anyone think an unborn baby could kill another unborn baby in any proper sense of killing? How could anyone even say it?

‘Alright,’ I say. ‘So you were the bigger and stronger twin and when you were in the womb you so squashed Ella she was born weak and died after a few days?’ (This is the rough, very rough version, of what granny just told me.)

Granny flinches.

‘So who’s fault was that?’ I say, ‘How could a foetus know what it was doing?’

Granny flinched still more at the word ‘foetus.’ As if it was a word I shouldn’t know. But how can I not know it with all that anti-abortion stuff around? (The pro-life people have got a lot to answer for - giving teenage girls nightmares, Trace says.)

‘Of course I know that now,’ Granny says. ‘Of course I know that NOW. But I didn’t know it for a long time and I didn’t want that happening to you. I didn’t want you grieving the way I did.’

‘For Ella?’ I say.

Granny hesitates. ‘For my twin,’ she says. ‘Ella. They gave me her name too. Or rather added it to mine. Ellanora.’’

‘But you’re Nora,’ I say stupidly. ‘Not Ellanora. That’s a stupid name.’

‘Yes. I’ve always left the first bit off. ‘

‘Ellanora, “ I say wonderingly, sadly. ‘Ellanora.’ And again, angrily. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Why should I have told you,’ Granny says, suddenly almost angry herself. “It wasn’t any of your business. Or anyone’s business for that matter. Except mine.’

‘And Ella’s,’ I say.

‘There was no Ella. There is no Ella. She’s dead,’ answers Granny. She stubs out her cigarette and lights another one. I open the window,

But it wasn’t like that for me was it?’ I say, when I sit down again. ‘My twin was only there in the beginning: then disappeared. It happens to lots of people. It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘No.’ granny says ‘No. Maybe not.’ She looks at the open window. ‘I’m cold, Esther.’

I go and shut the window again. Outside the cranes are swinging as usual. I can see one driver in his little cabin. It seems like a dream that I was up there too, high as that. It was a dream: in a way.

‘And you really think Mum would have told me what your mum told you? That it was ..’

I couldn’t say, won’t say, ‘my fault’. It wasn’t. For a sudden moment I am so angry I want to scream out loud. With mum and granny, both.

‘No, not really. Of course not,’ whispers Granny.

‘Why didn’t she tell me I had a twin that disappeared then?’

‘I suggested she didn’t,’ Granny says.

‘And mum always does what you tell her?’

Neither of us answer. (And actually when I’ve calmed down, and thought about it all, there doesn’t seem any reason Mum should have told me. My twin wasn’t such a big deal, really, we hadn’t spent nine months alongside each other in the womb; he or she’d been gone before I was a real person; it was kind of curious, interesting, not much else. OK I was almost a twin, OK, but so are millions of people, Granny said. Nor should Mum have told me about Granny if Granny really hadn’t wanted her to. It was granny’s private secret. Maybe if Mum had known about the Ella stuff she would have told me. But Ella hadn’t put messages on her mobile, Mum never knew who my imaginary friend was; or that lately she’d come back.) None of this means I felt like forgiving either of them. I still don’t.

‘Did mum know that you were called your name and your twin’s both? Ella and Nora?’

‘Why should she?’ Granny says. ‘She wouldn’t even have known I had a twin if her grandmother, my mother, hadn’t told her. And my twin’s name never was Ella, officially. She wasn’t registered, christened her, she didn’t have a name – they said that was my fault too, and that babies who hadn’t been christened went to hell. I don’t know why they added her name – the one they’d meant for her– to mine. But they did.’

Everything comes back to Granny. It is such a terrible story she is telling me that I shouldn’t be angry with her. But I am.

‘You should have told me,’ I say in a little hard voice that I don’t recognise as my own.

‘I know,’ she replies in a voice so small, so desolate, I don’t recognise it as hers, either. And she adds. ‘But then I thought you did know after all. When the messages from Ella came from your phone I thought – I thought….’

‘And you thought I could do anything like that?

‘I must have done, mustn’t I.’ she says. ‘What other reason could there be?’

She has a point. What other reason could there be? Ella came out of my head didn’t she? Didn’t she?

‘Gross,’ I say. ‘Gross, Granny. Creepy.’ And at this we look at each other at last and each of us shudder a bit, and each of us shakes our head.

********

We’re sitting side by side on the sofa now. I don’t know where mum is. She’s being tactful, I daresay, just like mum. I rather wish she wasn’t. I tell granny about Jay then. ‘He’s going to be alright,’ I say. ‘They hit him on the head. They tried to burn his hair off. I know he’d been teasing them. But he didn’t deserve that. They called him a terrorist.’

Granny sighs at this.

I say. ‘A girl rang me on my mobile to tell me. To gloat. So I had her number, Trace and I went to the headmistress and told her the number and the police found out who it was. And when they talked to her she was so frightened she told them about Frankie. He’s gone now. He’s not going back to school. I think he’s been put into detention of some sort.’

‘Poor kid,’ says Granny. ‘I wonder what hell he came out of?’

‘Poor kid? That bully? What about Jay?’ I remember Rahilah too. I am not, not, not, going to feel sorry for Frankie or any of them. Without Frankie the rest of them seem quite normal. But I don’t want anything to do with them even so. ‘He has a horrible mum,’ I say. ‘But so what? So do lots of people. Jay could have died,’ I say. ‘Would you still feel sorry for him then?’

‘Even more sorry for him, possibly,’ Granny says.

I shrug in disbelief. Granny doesn’t hug me the way she used to, I wouldn’t let her hug me now, but she does let my hand lie quietly on hers; her old hand, wrinkled and spotted. It feels very cold. It’s not only Frankie I’m never going to be able to forgive, I think. It’s Granny too, in a way. Not the Granny I knew anyway. Not the one who didn’t tell me what I needed to know.

‘You’re so sad, Granny,’ I say scornfully. Granny doesn’t answer. But she doesn’t stop touching my hand. . ‘Poor Ella,’ I say then. And suddenly, no matter what, this new Granny and I find ourselves sitting there together crying for someone who never lived properly, never had a life, never had a chance to know or be known by anyone. Someone who lived side by side with Granny for 9 months in their mother’s womb. Did it matter? Does it matter? Probably not. But then why, suddenly, almost holding, touching hands, are we both so full of grief?

I don’t know what Granny is thinking. I only know that she gives me my hand back after a while like she is giving me a present. And that we keep on sitting there her and me, side by side, weeping our eyes out. While outside the window the cranes keep on making their wheeling conversations.

(They haven’t much time left to talk together now, though. If they’ve things still to say they’ve got to say them soon. Soon the buildings will be all finished. Soon all the cranes will have gone.)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I still like cranes, a lot. Even though I could have died twice over that cold night, of cold, hypothermia, or of launching myself into the air at that great height, as Ella begged me to. But I didn’t die, not once and there’s a bit of me quite pleased that I actually saw into the driver’s cab and so forth. I even wish I’d seen it better, less doped with sleep, with bewitchment, as I was at the time.

There is no such word as ‘bewitchment’ of course. ‘Outside yourself?’ the shrink they made me see suggested, when I used ‘bewitchment’ to try and explain how it felt. ‘Inside myself’ I said. So far inside myself I couldn’t get out, I’m thinking. But I don’t say.

She’s quite nice the shrink lady. She’s made me understand a lot of things much better, even though she hasn’t a clue really about Ella. How could she? She’s just a doctor. Listen.

‘If something really stresses you, Esther, you can make yourself do things like sleep-walking, climbing cranes in the middle of the night; like sending yourself messages from someone else.’.

‘You mean my getting messages from Ella means I’m mad? Means you think I’m mad?’ (Me: angrily.)

‘I’m suggesting that such manifesting such phenomena mean you are under stress. They do not mean you are mad.’ (Ms Psychiatrist: patiently. We’ve had these discussions before. She’s learned by now that I know quite a lot of long words.)

‘So what’s mad then?’ (Me. Truculently.)

‘What do you mean by the word ‘mad’?’ Esther?’

‘Manifesting such phenomena under stress.’ (Me: smartly.)

Ms Psychiatrist sighs. Then she laughs. Then I laugh. She knows I hear what she is saying – I do too. Yet I still believe there is – or was- a real Ella out there. And I prefer Granny’s version of events, which explains some things Ms Psychiatrist can’t. ‘You were like a radio receiver, Esther, picking up the signals. From Ella.’

‘So you were you sometimes,’ I say.

But either the signals have gone now, or I am no longer a receiver. If they’re still coming they come to someone else. Even so, it is nice to have these people on my side. The shrink lady is cool, I think. Cooler than Granny these days. She feels too sad to be cool. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t like being sad for her.

*******

Rashid. He saved my life. He did. If I’d been out there much longer, I’d have died of hypothermia. Or I could have been so dazed, uncertain, I could really have thrown myself to the ground. I know that. But he dialled 999, he got all the services there, fire, police, ambulance. Everyone. Including my mother.

A fireman climbed up to get me down. It didn’t take him the full half-hour to climb to the top of the crane, because he was swung part of the way up on a fire-engine ladder. But it couldn’t take him all the way to the top, he had to climb the rest of the way inside the tower, the way the driver does, the way I did, on the ladder. He wrapped me in special blankets like cellophane to keep me warm. He carried me down to the fire-engine ladder over his shoulder, in a fireman’s lift. I must have been unconscious by then, more or less. I don’t remember any of it. I only know what other people have told me. All I remember is waking up on the ground and finding myself lying on a stretcher, being carried out of the building site, my mother on one side, Rashid on the other.

How Rashid managed to get himself there, for a girl, not his relative, I don’t know. As a Muslim he wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with me, except what he could not avoid, at school. But he did get himself there. Perhaps the title LIFESAVER or RESCUER gave him special rights in the matter. He sent me flowers in hospital too, even though he couldn’t come to see me himself. He got news to Rahilah, and she came to see me instead, carrying samosas from her mother and special home-made sweets from Rashid’s mother too.
There was piece about Rashid in the local paper, as well as about me. ‘Quick-thinking boy’, it said. There was even a disapproving report on Crane Talk (Another Unsecured Crane) that did not mention either of us by name. At school Rashid was seen as bit of a hero. I was seen either as a heroine –or mad. (Trace definitely thought I was mad, and said so: many times. Just the same she was the one kept on asking. ‘What was it like up there, Esther? What was it like?’ I tried to tell her. But I couldn’t really. I couldn’t remember much, to be honest. It’s sad.)

**********
Ah Trace. An amazing thing, but an anti-climax too- she and he took it all so coolly, that it didn’t seem like anything much. Yet it was a big thing, or should have been. A grandfather finding his daughter and his granddaughter: a granddaughter finding her grandfather: a daughter finding her father. The similarity between Bob, the seventh dwarf’s paintings and Misa’s painting was no accident, after all. He had painted both of them. He really was Misa’s long-disappeared father: Trace’s never-known grandfather. He really was the man from whom Misa’s mum had run because he had bullied her. He wasn’t dead at all. Those sun and moon mobiles that he told me about those weeks ago, had been made for Misa – Artemisa - and for her brother Apollo. (Who doesn’t call himself Apollo, these days, Trace says, just ‘Jack.’) What a coincidence, says Granny. Drily. As if she knows more but isn’t saying,

It doesn’t make any difference really. I find Trace sometimes, in Poseiden when I visit Bob, that’s all. Also she and Misa got special invitations to the private view of Bob’s exhibition at MAC after Easter, along with me and Granny. Misa didn’t go. Nor will she visit the boat. Bob says he doesn’t mind, and maybe he doesn’t. Anyway Trace says she will, in the end. ‘She kept his picture, didn’t she,’ she says. ‘And her moon mobile. She hung it over my cot when I was little. And why did she bring us to live in Birmingham. Where Bob and my grandmother lived, before my grandmother ran away. She says it was just because there was a job here. But there were other jobs she could have. Why did she take that particular one? ’

In the summer we’re going to take the narrow boats out, both of them, Poseidon and Mnemosyne, right out into the country for a week or so. Me and Granny, Bob and Trace. Granny says she can manage the locks and things if we’re all here to help. Trace says if Bob gets too bad-tempered she can always ride with us instead.

It’s nearly summer now. The geese have their goslings; they sit on the grass outside the writer woman’s flats – the woman still waves to me sometimes from her window when I cross the bridge. I wave back. One day she isn’t writing, she is leaning out of the window, pointing at a fat-looking goose just below her. And suddenly the goose climbs to its feet and out from under its wings fall FOUR goslings, tottering a bit in a way that reminds me of Barty. The writer woman and I wave at each other like crazy and laugh. She even blows me a kiss. I’m too embarrassed to blow her one back. I pretend I haven’t seen it, that I’m looking back instead at lovely G.S. BROUGH Washers and Gaskets, still standing there no matter what, next to the Mailbox. But I like it.

(Barty walks now, by the way. He started walking in mum’s sitting-room, the day I came out of hospital. REALLY. )

*******
The flats are finished, except for things like windows and inside decoration. The cranes have almost all gone now. I look out at the window at other people’s homes – or soon to be homes – instead. Things keep on changing, but then they always will. Just sometimes they change for the better.

Stuart has another boyfriend now, for instance. A nice one, called David. They come to see us often.

And there’s the Stampman. Most days now he is sitting outside Holliday wharf holding out his hands with the stamps on. Border wags her tail when she sees him. Granny brings him sandwiches with ham and things inside. (He doesn’t eat the ham. I saw him give it to the ducks once. He only seems to like bread. Maybe he’s a vegetarian. He gives the ducks Granny’s cheddar too. But not always.)

Now Frankie’s gone, his gang has split up. Without him noone dares to behave the way they did round him. Better still, Rahilah has come back to our school. She wasn’t doing well at the Islamic School. She wants to be a doctor, she says, her father agrees with that, so does her mother. If you want to be a doctor competition is very fierce. Without good science teaching you will get nowhere, and the science teaching at Anthony Morris High School in Smelly Poke really is much better than at the Islamic School for Girls, Rahilah says. She and I often do our homework together now, at my house or hers. My marks are improving quickly. Miss Key isn’t worried about me any more, which makes my mother happy too. Good.

Rahilah is definitely, my best friend, even more than Trace is. ‘She’ll turn you into a Muslim before you know,’ Trace says. ‘No way,’ I say. But don’t think I haven’t thought about it. Would I have a family like Rahilah’s if I did? Would my mum be happier? Perhaps I could marry Rashid if I was a Muslim. He and I dare to be more friends these days. We’ve been for two walks along the canal already. He is my protector, he says. I am his sister. We don’t touch each other. Nothing is said. Not yet. We’re only just fifteen after all. For the moment we are brother and sister. There’s years and years and years of the world ahead of us, we hope. But I still don’t really know what’s inside his head.

I’d never ask him to come on our narrow-boat trips, for one thing. He wouldn’t come. Nor would Rahilah - I’d love to ask her, but I don’t think her Dad wouldn’t let her. But he would let her go on little day trips around Birmingham canals; probably we’ll do some of those. It wouldn’t be any use asking Rashid, though, not even for those trips. Anyway I wouldn’t dare.

Jay’s hair is growing back. He’s his old joky self again, almost. Though I don’t think he’ll ever be quite that Jay again, he’s alright. We are friends. But things have changed, as usual; we’ll never be quite the friends we were before.

(Oh and one more thing. I discovered what crane drivers do about peeing up on the crane. They take up a bottle and bring it down again. Of course that wouldn’t do for women crane drivers, like the one who still writes to the crane-driver’s message board, the other Ella -if that is another Ella- I have to assume she is: I don’t know what she does. I’m not going to write and ask her, for sure.)

******

I think of my Ella sometimes. A bit of me misses her - I liked my imaginary friend. But maybe I liked her less when she became so very nearly real.

Poor Ella, I think. It’s better to have a life than not to have had one. I hope she is peaceful now, no longer struggling.

Her last email to me said. Goodbye Esther.

I was crying as I wrote Goodbye Ella, my very last email to her. Life can be so very sad. So cruel, I thought as I sent the words winging into space. They came straight back to me, marked from Administrator: undeliverable mail. I didn’t try sending them again.

A day or two ago my mobile rang once, twice. Then it rang off. When I looked to see where it came from it just said. Unknown number.

That’s it then. Message Undeliverable. Unknown number.

The only place I can say the words now is into my head. I say them:

GOODBYE ELLA. GOODBYE

THE END

Penelope Farmer Lanzarote 2007

PART TWO Chapters 11-12

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Barty comes to the flat as usual that evening. I play with him while Mum makes tea. His tooth has come through – a darling little white thing on his little pink gum; he’s not grizzling any more. He pulls himself up wand walks around the furniture, grinning away, so pleased with himself it hurts. On the other hand he is so near walking properly that I can’t bear it. ‘This time,’ I think, as if Barty’s learning to walk would solve all my problems. This time he’ll do it. I’m sure he’ll do it.

I put a big cushion in the middle of the floor. I pick up Barty, take him over to the cushion and lean him against it. Then I sit a little way away, holding out my arms. ‘Come on, Barty,’ I say. Come on. Come to Esthi.’

He stands there his head skewed round, laughing at me, his two little white teeth quite plain. I feel as if I could eat him. At the same time I am very determined.

‘Come on Barty. Do it for me.’

He does come to me: but not walking. He just drops to the floor and crawls my way.

I put him back. I take his hands off the cushion, so that he wavers standing there. He sits down again, hard, on his bottom. Then he crawls towards me again, laughing. He thinks it’s all a game.

But it’s not a game to me; not any longer. For some reason I’m almost crying. If Barty won’t walk for me, nothing is ever going to go right again, I think.

‘Please, Barty, Oh please.’

He is back at the cushion, still laughing at first. The front of his dungarees says OSH KOSH. (Osh is the name of a town in some funny place a long way away. Beyond Russia? Yes. I don’t know why I know this, but I do.)

‘Please, Barty.’ He stops laughing now. He looks puzzled. His mouth starts going square, a dangerous sign. Is he going to start crying? He’ll never walk if he does that. So I make funny faces at him and then he starts laughing again. ‘Walk, Barty.’

I pull him. This time he takes a step. But then he topples forward. In slow motion I see him landing on mum’s little stool which I’ve not bothered to move. Barty hits his head: hard. A lump comes up almost as quickly as he starts bawling –screaming. I pick him up frantically trying to calm him down but nothing works and now mum comes running – she grabs him up, and as she rocks him looks across at me and says, angrily ‘Have you been trying it again, Esther? What are you thinking of?’

Concern for Barty has made her forget about the need to be nice to me because of my sleep walking. She shouts at me and I shout back and run out of the room, my problems made worse not better. I go to bed, bury my head under the blankets and howl stupidly and loudly, hoping that she will hear.

When I stop finally I can’t hear Barty crying any more. I hear my mother talking to him, I even hear him laugh. I hear my sister turn up to collect him, hear her and mum talking together in the hall – I can’t hear what they say but I do hear the door shutting behind them. There’s silence for a while. Then my door opens. I bury my head again as Mum comes in. ‘Is Barty alright?’ I ask, from underneath the blankets. It can’t have been very clear, but she still hears me.

‘He’s got a bruise,’ she said, ‘but he’ll live.’ ‘Silly girl.’ she adds then; softly; but my head is out from out of the blanket now. I hear every word.

I am still very upset. I feel a bit better after she’s been but not much. And in a while I feel as miserable as ever. I don’t get up for the rest of the day, and I don’t want any supper though mum offers to bring me some.

I sleep quite well though; I don’t dream, that I remember; I don’t sleepwalk. I wake up feeling better, and go off to school not willingly but not quite so desperately.

It’s not raining today; even the wind has dropped. The sun is coming out as I walk in at the school gates. Maybe life isn’t so awful after all, I think. Even when I notice Frankie’s girls smiling at me I don’t think anything of it. They are just smiling at me and I smile back at them.

Everything seems normal enough. I notice Jay isn’t in class, but he said he had a cold yesterday, probably his mum is keeping him home. His mum always does keep Jay at home for the least little illness, even though he’s very healthy and catches fewer things than most of us. It means that today at least I won’t have to worry about him winding up Frankie. Trace seems in a good mood, too. Rashid scrawls me a notice about our maths, signing it Rashidx. Maybe next time Barty comes he really will start walking, Until break-time I am happy.

Even when I see the two police officers – a man and a woman - coming in at the gate I don’t think anything of it. The police are always coming to our school. When it’s not to do with someone selling drugs or something, it’s what’s our headmistress calls ‘public relations’; meaning ‘make friends with your Bobby.’ Or: ‘Police means nice guys here to protect you: they don’t beat anyone up, ever.’ They walk into our classrooms carrying their hats and introduce themselves as Constable This or WPC that and advise us on road safety, etc etc etc. Some classes have even been given tours of the central police station. Lucky them, Trace says. I guess she’s joking.

But these police haven’t come to talk about road safety. When they turn up in our classroom – it’s an English class, our teacher, Mrs Adams, has finished with Lord of the Flies, is trying to interest us in “To kill a Mocking Bird’ a book that is supposed not only to improve our English but our moral attitudes towards Racism, ha, ha, ha - they are not smiling. Standing between her desk and the whiteboard, they talk to Mrs Adams in low voices, while we whisper among ourselves, both curious and scared. Something not nice at all seems to be happening: Mrs Adams is looking horrified. Shaking her head as if to refuse what she’s been told, she turns round, waves at us furiously to be quiet.

We stop talking at once.

‘The officers have something to ask you, class,’ Mrs Adams says. ‘I’m sure you’ll all tell them anything they want to know..’ She pauses. ‘If you know it. ‘ Our silence grows heavier.

‘Did anyone see Jatinder Patel this morning?’ the WPC states, looking around our faces. The policeman standing besides her looks closely at us too. But all they must see apart from worry at this is bewilderment. None of us want to think there’s anyone in our class called Jatinder. If Jatinder is someone we don’t know, maybe Jay himself is alright.

‘We all know him as Jay here,’ Mrs Adams says.

Trace, Rashid and I look frantically round at each other. This is our worst fear, what we’ve been waiting for. I feel so angry with Jay suddenly. Haven’t we kept on warning him? The sun still shining outside the classroom might as well not be shining. I gaze fixedly at the shadows of the window bars in the patch of sun alongside the windows. It feels as if they are widening and spreading. They are spreading in my head, as much as anywhere, It doesn’t matter. Jay’s dead, I’m thinking. I can’t bear it. I can’t. And it’s all my fault. Not just for telling him they wouldn’t mind him because he’s Hindu. For liking Rashid better than him, too if Trace is right. I pray she isn’t.

I reach out and touch Trace’s hand. She doesn’t withdraw it. Just lets it lie there coolly, touched by mine. The two police I see are gazing more fixedly at us than ever. Presumably they are noting the horror and wondering why it should arise so fast at the mention of Jay’s name.

Our teacher certainly notes it. She shakes her head. Before the WPC has had a chance to ask her question again, she says, hurriedly - she’s nice, Mrs Adams - ‘Jay’s had an accident,’ she said, ‘He’s in hospital. He’s not...’

‘When did you last see – Jatinder – Jay?’ the WPC breaks in again, touching her silly black hat with its black-and-white chequered band. She’s got frizzy red hair under it and underneath that freckles. She’s wearing a wedding ring, a wide gold one. I prefer noting these things to her words, which are stopping our world still. I note a buzz in my pocket too – my mobile vibrating. We are supposed to have our mobiles turned off inside school, but you can get round that by setting them to vibrate only; most of us do. This is a message vibrate, not a phone call. But I can’t check messages at the moment.

‘Not dead,’ Mrs Adams says.

Someone – Janice - puts up a hand. ‘Jay was at school yesterday,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t come today, so how could I of seen him?”

‘Has anyone seen Jay this morning?’ the policewoman persists. I look around. Everyone’s faces are blank; even the faces of the girl who hang around with Frankie’s lot are blank.

‘Well, class,’ Mrs Adams says. ‘Well if you do think of anything, if you did see him coming to school, or knows someone who did…’
’
I shake my head. Everyone shakes their heads. And I don’t think anyone is lying not even Frankie’s girl. I want to shout out ‘Ask Frankie.’ But I daren’t. It feels as much as my life’s worth; as much as anyone’s life’s worth.

The policewoman begs a black marker pen off Mrs Adams. Turning her back on us she writes a number on the board. Then she puts the pen down and swings round to face us all again, wiping her hands as if she’s got ink on them. But I don’t think she has.

‘If any of you think of something, anything, ring me. Or ask your teacher to ring me,’ she says ‘That’s the number. My number. Anything you tell me will be in the strictest confidence. Don’t be afraid.’

She touches the uptilted brim of her hat once more; her wide gold wedding-ring catches the sun and flashes a little. The policeman besides her shifts his hat from one hand to the other. He’s wearing a wedding-ring too I notice.

“What’s happened to Jay?’ Trace asks. What we’ve all been wanting to ask, but didn’t dare to; perhaps we didn’t entirely want to hear the answer. At the same time she takes her hand off her desk away from my hand, and folds it with its fellow in her lap.

Write the number down everyone,’ our teacher is saying now, before WPC has the chance to answer. But she does so then; while all our heads are bent obediently, writing. I write the number in my rough book alongside a silly scrawled drawing of Homer Simpson. And a much more careful one of the upper part of a crane with the driver’s cab, drawn it from memory, that I’d been pleased with at the time.

The WPC says. ‘He’s had an accident, I’m afraid. He’s unable to tell us anything about it yet.’

‘Is he unconscious?’ Trace asks. She is of course a doctor’s daughter. If he’s in the QE perhaps Misa is looking after him. Would someone of fourteen be looked after by paediatrician?

I use such pointless thoughts, I use observing silly things like the police officers’ wedding rings, and the pink bobbles on Mrs Adams’s scarf, to distract myself from the screams that are desperate to break out in my head. I try the Simpson’s theme tune, I try Neighbours and Casualty. But nothing works. As I hear the WPC say, ‘at this moment in time I can’t tell you, I’m afraid,’ I stop seeing or hearing anything; I faint onto my desk. Banging my head hard, just like Barty banged his head yesterday. Just like Jay has, probably, if he’s unconscious. Except in his case, probably, someone has banged it for him.

*********
All this is why I too now have a plaster on the side of my forehead, a bruise spreading round my eye. And why I don’t hear the hubbub in the classroom after the police have gone, don’t see the accusing glances being sent the way of Frankie’s girl, don’t see all the people huddled in the playground at dinner time. I am lying flat on the bed in the nurse’s room feeling sick as a dog and waiting for my mother.

I don’t just feel like throwing up; I do throw up eventually. I hear the word ‘concussion’ mentioned. But actually I’m not concussed: I am just sick with fear for Jay my friend. I’m so afraid I almost don’t want to know what’s happened, I don’t ask kind Mrs Adams anything when she comes to see me. But she tells me a little bit anyway. Jay is unconscious. Someone attacked him. He’ll be alright she says. (But maybe she’s trying to convince herself too of that. As well as me.) I miss the whole school being summoned to the hall to be told the news, and given the police number to ring if they’ve any information. I miss walking to the bus past the patch of gardens near the school where Jay had been found, now ringed with striped tape.

But actually I see that just the same. Mum turns up to fetch me after what seems an age. We walk out of the school past huddled groups of kids who look curiously at the big plaster on my head and then go back to their discussions- most of them are looking upset. I see one or two girls crying.

Mum helps me into the car as if I’m an invalid, wrapping a rug round me. We drive the length of the gardens where the blue and white tape is flapping gently in the rising wind. Two or three policeman are standing, guarding it, but nothing is happening inside the tape. The sun is still shining. The bare trees throw long shadows across the daffodils and crocuses.

Mum sees me looking. ‘He’s unconscious, Esther,’ she says. ‘He’s not in a coma. That’s good news, Esther.’

‘Is it?’ I ask.

‘It means his brain’s not too damaged.’

‘What else?’ I say. ‘Noone tells us.’

‘He’s got bruises all over and a broken collarbone. But he’ll wake up in due course. I promise you, Esther. And the bruises won’t last. And….his hair…’

‘They won’t?’ I am not so certain. And then I say. ‘What about his hair? What about it?’

She still doesn’t say. ‘If you know anything about it, Esther?’ She hesitates. ‘You must tell the police.’ So the same thing can happen to me? I’m thinking. I say, because I’m sure it’s what she’s thinking,. ‘Well you see what happens when your daughter insists on going to a comprehensive school.’

‘Do you want to change?’ she asks hopefully.

‘His hair. What about his hair?’ I insist.

‘Shall we find a new school for you, Esther?’

’No,’ I say violently. ‘It’s all my friends. My friends.’ (Mostly they’re my friends, I’m thinking, keeping my fingers crossed. Despite Mum I’m worried sick about Jay. How do I know she’s not skating over the truth until I’m stronger? What about his hair then? What’s happened to it? Why is he so vain about his bloody hair? I’m furious with him suddenly. And then worried all over again.)

Just the same I’m grateful to be put straight to bed when we get home. Mum even brings me hot chocolate and offers a boiled egg. I groan at this. ‘I’d throw it up again,’ I say. But I don’t throw up the chocolate. Ands when she offers me the portable telly I accept it gratefully; along with the extra blankets. On the other hand I slide out from all attempts to give me a hug.

I make her shut my curtains even though it’s not yet dark. For once I do not want to watch the endless discussions between the cranes. I watch all the kiddy TV programmes instead, starting with Tweenies. Going on to Blue Peter, News Round. I don’t take in one word one frame of any of them. It doesn’t matter.

My school trousers are lying on the chair, folded neatly, where mum put them, not thrown on the floor the way they are when I’m left to myself. I notice the bulge in the pocket suddenly and then, about five minutes later, remember my mobile phone.

‘One message’received’ it says, when I dare look at it at last. Huddling back into bed. And also ‘Answerphone message.’ (A missed call? I don’t remember hearing the phone ring. Maybe I had no signal.)

I go into messages and push ‘message options.’

‘Delete Message?’ it offers. I hesitate for a moment.

‘Read message.’ I push instead.

The message says. ‘I’m up the crane. It’s safer there. Join me, Esther.’ It isn’t signed, but I know who sent it; I know that even though it’s from Granny’s number, it isn’t her.

Afterwards I dial up the answerphone . ‘You have one new message’ the smooth voice says. ‘Press 1 to listen.’ ‘First new message’, says the voice. Then another voice whispers in my ear. ‘You see what happens to vain terrorists. Vain ones.’ I don’t recognise the voice. Nor do I recognise the number when I look for that. If I knew whose number it was I think, coolly, through my terror, I’d know who attacked Jay.

Not that I need to know. I know already. Even if I still don’t know what’s happened to his hair.

With the telly still blaring away I fall asleep. And for once I don’t dream anything, not that I remember. I have a surprisingly good and peaceful sleep. Maybe it’s the effect of mum’s hot chocolate. (Thanks mum. I mean it. Your loving – yes- loving daughter. Esther.).

But I wake up in the end. And then I fall asleep again, and that’s quite a different matter.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Some things everybody knows. Or think they know. For instance: there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that I sleep-walked out of my room, out of the flat, down in the lift, out into the Mail Box, then back round into Holliday Street. Goodness knows why noone saw me, noone stopped me, they all say. For noone did. At four in the morning, even under the full moon, there was noone to see, not a single passing policeman or a single passing police car. (They’d looked up the records and there really weren’t. If there had been they’d have stopped me for sure.) Maybe that was why noone saw me. Not because I wasn’t in the street.

There is also this; how did I get out of the front door of our flat without waking anyone? It makes such a big clunking noise that it’s hard to go in and out secretly. It’s true that the chain, usually on at night, was off. But my mother says she can’t remember putting it on that night. So maybe she didn’t, and that was why it was it off. Not because I went out of the door in the middle of the night, and couldn’t put the chain back on from the outside.

The next question was how I got into the building site; not only is it supposed to be like Fort Knox, it is Fort Knox as far as I could tell. Goodness knows I’ve spent enough time trying and failing to find ways in, so I should know. But they found a hole in the wire fence, apparently, cut with wire-cutters. They assume someone else had tried to get in once. Quite rightly they take for granted I didn’t have wire-cutters, that my hands wouldn’t have been strong enough to use them if I had. But the hole was there, and they reckoned it was big enough for me to have squeezed through. In my sleep?!! Cool. Well, if they say so. But if that was so why didn’t their alarms go off? Why didn’t the guard dogs come running and tear me to pieces? If there are guard dogs.

They can believe anything they like. It’s up to them. I know what I think. I believe Ella pulled me there out of time, calling from the stars. I believe she tenderly put the clothes on me so I wouldn’t be too cold and wafted up out of my window still asleep.

The one sure thing I know – and they know because I told them - is that I came to myself, wide awake on a ladder half-way up the crane, under a full moon, the rungs cold under my fingers, my coat not enough to keep me from the cold.

I don’t think I knew what the rungs were at first. I just felt my fingers curled round one cold bar, my toes clutching to another. When the other hand, the other foot reached out to the next bar it seemed an automatic response. Only gradually did I feel the ladder, the structures they joined swaying round me. Only slowly did I know that the light fingers swirling round me, making me feel colder and colder, belonged to the wind. That the silver light that showed me the rungs I was reaching for belonged to the moon.

******

Above my head I can see the meshed floor of the next level up. I can see the big hole in it through which I will have to climb to reach the next ladder. Slowly I crawl up towards it, shivering now. Going down doesn’t seem to be an option. I don’t look down, not till I’ve hauled myself up through the hole, till I’m standing upright, both my feet flat on the meshed surface. Then I look back through the hole out of which I’ve just climbed.

It’s a long, long way down. My stomach goes down with it. I reach in terror for the next ladder and cling to it. For I don’t know how long I am unable to move. The only thing gets me going again is the cold. If I don’t move I will die of cold, I think. But I can’t go downwards. There is no way now, no possible way but up. My terror doesn’t diminish for an instant, not one bit.

I start climbing the next ladder. Each rung in turn burns cold into my hands and feet. The rungs are all now I see and feel. This is like a dream –like a nightmare rather. Maybe it is. The only change is when I reach the next floor up, haul myself through the hole again, my arms aching more with each attempt. I am weak with terror. It gets harder and harder each time and the air gets colder and colder. I can see the dark mass of the slewing-unit clearly now – it’s only two or three ladders further up the mast. I pause before starting on the ladder again. I’m too tired to do anything else. So tired I don’t know what I’m doing. All round me are the diagonal struts that hold up the tower mast; they are the only things between me and the ground. I do not look at them. Except for the moonlight streaming from it, I’m scarcely aware of the sky into which I’m climbing. Which feels nearer than I’ve ever been to it, except in an airliner. And that’s quite different.

I don’t know how long it all takes. But suddenly I’m through the hole and onto the walkway round the slewing unit. On the edge of it, hung over space is the driver’s cabin. It’s blowing a gale out there. I walk out onto one side of the walkway, clinging to the supports that stop me hurtling to the ground and look up at the arms above me – I’m the under the machinery arm here with its weights and pulleys. It is amazing to see it so close – or it would be amazing if I wasn’t struck still with terror and dream and unable to take it in properly. I inch my way round the inner edge of the walkway, clinging to anything I can find till I am under the jib arm, near the driver’s cabin and look out under that. The arm’s horizontal now of course. But it can swing up diagonally, like me reaching up my arm. I’ve seen that often enough. It no longer looks delicate from here. It looks massive. Gross almost. Scary. Everything is scary. Except suddenly I’m not scared. Whatever, whoever I am I don’t recognise. It’s just strange. I wish Trace was here. She’d explain it to me. Wouldn’t she? It’s only me doesn’t understand anything. Still. Most likely never.

The only thing I want now is to get into the driver’s cabin. I want to see the seat I’ve only seen in pictures, to switch the switches, pull the levers, make the thing above my head turn and dance and talk; that way I could talk to Ella; that way maybe I’d be safe. Out here I can’t do any of these things. The arm is held out there like the leg of a huge dead INSECT. An utterly gross dead INSECT.

I inch my way round again. I have to climb up a ladder onto a gantry to get to the cabin. Then I have to open a door and climb down into it. I work that out, easily enough. I climb the ladder, and reach the gantry. I look through the door; but at first all I can see is my ghost; my twin; a little white face with hair flying staring back at me. Ella? I say. But it is not Ella it is me, myself, reflected in the glass, white with moonlight, dark with moonshadow. Go away I say, and pull down the handle. But the door is locked. I shake it furiously,

DO THEY EXPECT THIEVES UP HERE? Well, of course, they’ve got one. Me. Except I’m not a thief, unless unauthorised use of lever – or intended use of a lever – is thievery. I hammer on the door, yelling to my own ghostly face, let me in, let me in. Stupid. I look beyond my face and what do I see there? An empty crisp packet. A can of Coca Cola Lite. (A fat crane driver trying to lose weight?) A page three girl, curling at the edges. A tiny picture of a woman with a shawl over her head and baby on her lap stuck to the glass on the other side – the Virgin Mary and Child actually. (A Catholic crane driver?) A picture of a woman with curly hair, and two little boys with crew cuts. (A family man crane driver?) And then the two levers one on either side of the black seat, the dials and switches, the technical stuff. All of it colourless in the moonlight. And all of it ungettable at. The door is locked. I CAN’T GET IN.

I howl and howl and bang and bang. I bang louder than the wind. Ella, I shout. Ella! Ella!

No answer. But then at last, clinging to that gantry, by the locked door of the cabin, I look out. Out over the city with its lights and tower, out towards our MailBox flats – I’m higher than my own window, but I can’t pick it out from the rest, unless it is the lit one, with a woman moving about inside. My mother?

And then at last I look down. Down and down and down. The site rises and falls like the sea below me. If I bent my head under the strut and stepped out I could fly over it like a bird. My stomach is out there already; my light head too.

In the pocket of my coat comes a vibration. A mobile phone starts ringing. My mobile phone – it’s tune is the Ride of the Valkeries, noone else has that. MY PHONE. I take it out with shaking fingers. Too late. The tune stops abruptly halfway through – derderder der. I put out a finger to fetch up a number for myself but before I can do it starts ringing me again, so startling me I don’t know quite I manage to hang on up there, but I do, with one hand. The other, shaking, almost drops the phone, but somehow one numb finger presses the green button, connects it. I lift the phone to my ear. A voice – Ella’s voice – the one I’ve kept on hearing that reminds me of someone– asks: ‘Coming, Esther, coming? It’s so lovely up here. Jump. You’ll fly forever. Jump.’ And then it hums my tune all the way through. Derderder der, der der der. der. Twice.

Humming it a second time is a mistake. It wakes me up somehow, makes me angry. No, I say loudly, to noone; I’ve pressed the red button and cut the voice off. And suddenly I’m wide awake, terrified, shaking with cold, wanting only to be down and safe and home. It’s a wonder I hold on now, but I do, I creep down from the gantry, and sit on the platform low as I can get – the moonlight shadows the bars across there, across me too, protecting me, somehow. I’m behind bars, I think. I can’t fall. But I’m still shaking with fright, and, still more, with the awful cold.

I curl my icy feet up under my legs in an attempt to warm them. My phone is beeping: it’s running out of juice I realise. It’s right down, it’s almost out when I look to see. Frantically I press names on my address list, press dial. Trace first, it rings. But there’s no answer, except Trace’s message. ‘You rang. Cool. Leave a message.’ Granny’s phone. Switched off. Who else then? Rashid.- I’ve never dared ring him before. I’d almost forgotten having his number but there it is. I press the green phone to call it. My phone bleeps and bleeps again. A message comes up. 'Battery low’. Tell me something I don’t know please. Meanwhile the number rings and rings. Rashid is asleep obviously, everyone’s asleep obviously, I’m stuck up here for ever; or at least I will be till I’ve died of cold. Any minute the call will click off.

Out over my left shoulder in the sky I see Orion suddenly. The Hunter. The only constellation I know. His sword is at his belt. Right now it’s me he’s hunting. Where is he driving me too? Where where where. I am quite lost.

But suddenly then a sleepy voice. Who’s that? Rashid, help. I say. I’m up the crane. At the moment it all comes back to me. ‘WHAT ABOUT JAY’S HAIR? But he can’t have heard me. At that the phone, the screen everything goes dead. And I drift away into the sky with Orion, still murmuring to myself, weeping. ‘WHAT ABOUT JAY’S HAIR?’