A MILLION ANGELS (5 page)

O
n Tuesday morning I creep into Dad's wardrobe to fill my nose with his smell again. I put his beret back on the shelf and pull down a cap with a golden badge on the front. I tip tap and rap rap my fist along the back wall of the wardrobe, looking for a secret door to another glorious world, like Lucy from
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
. It would be amazing if I found one. I mean, if I actually fell out into another place full of interesting things to see. Somewhere secret, that no one else would ever know about. If I were still six I might even make up a game that it did actually happen and I might dress up like Lucy and get some stuffed
toys to be like Mr Tumnus and all the other people in the book. But I'm twelve and twelve is confusing, so I won't. And anyway, I'm in the real world where nothing brilliant like that ever happens.

Before I leave the house I send an e-bluey to my dad.

 

At lunchtime it's time for the next part of my Bring Dad Home mission. I creep into the art block. It's quiet and dark and all the wonderful smells of paint and clay and glue still linger in the air. The corridor is full of amazing paintings, brilliant colours shining through the gloom.

I put Dad's cap on and imagine myself stamping my big black boots in time with the march. Keeping up with the battalion, saluting my dad, Lieutenant Colonel Taylor-Jones.

I check the corridor one last time for the enemy.

The angel in my chest beats its wings hard, flapping and flapping with fear.

I put my thumb on the fire-alarm glass and press and press until it cracks.

The shrill bell shatters the air and sends everyone flying. We race from the building and bundle into the playground. We wait in our fire-drill lines while teachers walk up and down and call out our names. Checking the register,
making sure we're safe. The fire brigade pile through the gates. Blue lights are flashing. A smile creeps on my lips.

When the fire brigade are certain there's no real fire, we're sent back to our classrooms. Mrs Bostock is fuming. Her cheeks are much hotter than flames. She struts up and down the playground, tutting. She scans the crowd with her beady eyes.

“Whoever here is responsible for this time-wasting nuisance,” she says, “you be sure that I will find you!”

Her eyes fly over me and land on Tory Halligan.

I've never walked around with such a secret before. Something so big that no one else knows, something so terribly, terribly bad.

“Who d'you think it is?” says Jess, bobbing about on the bus seat on our way home. “Did you see Mrs Bostock's eyes when the fire brigade were leaving? She was so furious they were almost popping out of her head.”

I turn to the window. I stare out at the rain and smile.

 

On Wednesday morning I don't want to get out of bed. We've still heard nothing from my dad. He hasn't replied to my e-bluey, he hasn't phoned and so far no one's told us that he's dead.

“When something bad happens over there,” says Mum, pulling up my blind, “they turn all communications off in case things leak out to the press. They have to get their facts right first. Then they tell the families and write their reports. We won't hear from him, sweetheart, until all that's done. But I'm sure he's fine, Mima. If he weren't, I think someone would have told us by now. Come on. Up now! And off to school. Don't let it get to you.”

Mum is so big with the baby she doesn't feel like my mum any more. Her tummy is a huge round egg. I wonder when this baby will hatch.

 

After lunch I creep into the music department. The orchestra is practising in the hall. I peep through the window and see Mr Denergri. He's the conductor and his arms are flailing wildly. His straw-coloured hair has flopped into his eyes. His conducting baton is drawing beautiful patterns in the air and the music is rising like doves. The orchestra is concentrating hard and I'm concentrating on my Bring Dad Home mission. We all have a job to do, but if mine is going to work, I need to turn up the heat. Mrs Bostock needs to fry.

The angel in my chest flaps a feeble beat. So scared, its wings tremble, more frightened than I am of the wind.

Without bothering to check for the enemy, without bothering to march with my dad, I press my thumb into the glass. The shrieking bell spreads through the school like wildfire.

Mrs Bostock is beyond angry. She's more than fuming. She's about to burst.

“This behaviour is unacceptable!” she spits. “I will not have this kind of disruption in my school!”

I rub my tummy, the place where my secret lives.

“I'm offended,” huffs Tory Halligan on the way back home on the bus. “Mrs Bostock had the audacity to drag
me
into her office and accuse
me
of setting off the alarm. Why me? What have I ever done to anyone? My dad's going to have something to say about this.”

 

When I get home I can't settle to anything. I try to squeeze more information about Derek out of Granny but her mouth is zipped shut.

“Not now, pet,” she says, pulling wet sheets out of the washing machine. “Not now.”

Mum can't stop cleaning.

“I think the baby's coming soon,” she smiles. “Looks like I'm nesting!” She strokes my cheek. “I wish your dad was here,” she says. “He should be with us at a time like this.”

I wish I could stand on the kitchen table and shout through a megaphone, I AM TRYING, MUM, I REALLY AM! I'M TRYING TO BRING HIM BACK HOME! But I don't. Instead I make Granny and Mum a nice cup of tea and help them clean out the kitchen cupboards. But I can't see the point, really; they'll only get dirty again.

As soon as I go up to bed I hear Mum switch on the news. I think about the Bean swimming about in its secret world inside her and about Mum giving birth without Dad. Life is so unfair sometimes. Why can't it be fairer? Who makes things happen how they do? I can hear the news banging and crashing over the screen and I know Mum's damp hanky will be all twisted in her hands.

I'm in and out of sleep, hot and sweaty under my duvet. Big baby faces loom in the dark, laughing and gurgling. Blood from Dad's war films keeps bothering my eyes and I'm just about to drift off again when Jess sends another text.

Pip. Pip.
There's been another 1. A suicide bomber this time. What if it's one of our dads?! We had another takeaway for tea. U OK?

I switch off my phone and throw it in my bag. I'm trying to remember Dad's face, but my mind is like butter. He keeps slipping away, disappearing into the blackness of the night. I try to remember our farewell party. I can see Uncle Michael and Dad's friend Phil, but Dad's completely covered in barbecue smoke. It's following him, hiding him, smudging him over. I can see his boots and I can see his kit, but I can't see him. Then everything goes up in flames and the school fire alarm shrieks through my head and deafens my ears. The entire school is crushed into the hall with Mrs Bostock's voice booming. Jess is smiling. She hopes her dad is dead and Tory Halligan has turned into a bird.

I wake up out of breath with dreaming. It's dark. I climb out of bed, creep across the landing and slide into Granny's room. She's still awake, sipping hot chocolate and having a go at the crossword.

“Hello, pet,” she says, pulling back the cover. “Want to slip in?”

“Please tell me a story, Granny,” I say, settling into her
nest. “Tell me about Derek and the Blitz and everything. I really need to know. I'm doing it for my presentation, like you suggested, and I've been looking at books and everything, but it's not the same as hearing it from you.”

“You're just like your dad,” she smiles, offering me a sip of her drink. “You never give up, do you? I'm not sure there's much to say, really. There's so much I don't remember any more.”

“Try, Granny, try. Pleeeeaaasssee?”

And I wish and I wish she'd give in.

“Well…” she says, “when I was small we used to go to Bognor Regis. Every year we'd pack our bags and off we'd go. Then when I was about four we met Derek and his family on the beach. They say you can't fall in love so young, but I knew he was special in an instant.” She picks up the photo of him from her bedside table and kisses his face. “I couldn't resist those eyes, see; well, who could? Then year after year, same place, same fortnight, we were inseparable. True friends we were. Kindred spirits, you might say. And who knows what might have happened if the course of history had changed. But like I said before, if I'd married Derek then I wouldn't have had Daddy and Daddy wouldn't
have had you. And I wouldn't want to be without you, Mima. Life works out, you know, you just have to trust.”

“I don't like trusting,” I say. “It scares me.”

“Well, trusting is the only thing that got me through,” she sighs. “The Blitz rained on London like a storm and everyone's lives were turned upside down.” Her eyes fill and sparkle with tears. “All us kids that hadn't been evacuated already were at school and the rest of my family was home. Then there was a daytime raid one time, see, and we hid in the shelter. Watching. Listening. Waiting. We held our breath. Waiting to see where the bombs would land.”

Granny stops talking. Her eyes look right through me, searching for ghosts in the past. I take another sip of her drink.

“Bombs all around,” she says. “Rubble and shrapnel everywhere. Rooms exploded wide open. Like film sets with pictures left on the walls. Flower vases toppled on the shelves. Furniture left in the rain, waiting for people who never came home. Except me, that is. I did come home… but I was the only one; they'd all gone, see, every one of them. I was numb with fury for a while. I scrabbled through the mess. Searched for them all,
looked for fragments, looked for anything that was left of my family, anything that was left of my life.”

I fold Granny's paper-thin hand in mine.

“That's when I found the photos, see,” she says, “and all the bits in the box. That's all that was left. Then someone picked me up like an insect off a leaf and carried me away. And that was that, the end of the first chapter of my life. Then I was evacuated to Wales, with that box full of bits in my hand and a thousand questions racing around my mind.”

“Were you scared, Granny?” I whisper.

“I was quaking in my boots,” she says. “And if I hadn't learned to trust life I would've driven myself crazy trying to change what happened. But we can't change something once it's done. We can't take words back, as much as we'd like to, Mima, as much as we'd like to try to rearrange it all in our mind. You can't resist what's so. Life is a mysterious thing and we can't control it, however hard we try.”

She sighs. Her hand trembles in mine.

“Trying to control life,” she says, “is like trying to stop the waves.”

“And Derek?” I ask. “What happened to him?”

“I can't answer that, see,” she says. “The last thing I
heard was he and his family were off on some ship to Canada, some great adventure. He said he'd write. But I was gone; I was in Wales. I couldn't find his address in the rubble so there was nothing more I could do. Over the years I've got used to the fact that I'll never know if he wrote to me or not. I've been to Bognor Regis looking a few times, but I never found him. I couldn't remember where he lived. I was so young and in so much shock.” She laughs. “My dotty old memory. The whole thing's a bit silly, really; just sweethearts we were, that's all.”

“What was his second name?” I ask. “Do you remember that?”

“Oh, I don't know, pet,” she says. “I think it was Bach; something like that, anyway. But I had to get on, see, and then I met your grandpa and I tried to leave it all behind.”

“And what about Grandpa?” I ask. “Does Derek mean you didn't really love him?”

“Of course I loved your grandpa, pet,” she says, stroking my face. “Derek was different, that's all. Someone I'll always treasure in my memory and never ever forget.”