Dear Scarlett

Bing bong
. The doorbell.

I listen, but nothing happens.

Bing bong
. The doorbell again.

My baby brother, Syd, pauses. He’s feeding dinosaurs to the laundry bin. He smiles and hands me a slimy stegosaurus.

Bing bong, bing bong, bing bong
.

Rats. Mum must be deaf or something.

I lower myself from the top bunk, headfirst. I’ve got the sheet wrapped round my waist. It’s how I’d like to escape from a burning house, but this time all the bedding comes with me and I end up
crashing to the floor.

Bing bong!

“Coming!” I yell. I pull on some jeans and peer out of the window. I can only just see through the glass because all the rain there ever was seems to be trying to fall on our house, and most of it’s racing down my window. There’s a battered half-timbered car wedged between the large concrete rectangles that make up the watercress beds at the back of our house. Mr Hammond, the watercress-bed man, is talking to whoever it is, pointing at our front door, but I can’t actually see anybody.

I don’t recognise the car and, for one second, I wonder if something exciting might be about to happen. Perhaps someone’s come to tell me I’ve won something.

I drag on yesterday’s dirty T-shirt, and try to remember if I ever did enter the Sugar Puffs “Honey Monster challenge” or whether the cardboard packet’s still stuck behind the toaster. I’m pretty sure it’s stuck behind the toaster.

Putting my hands on the banisters, and without using my feet, I slide over Syd’s stair gate and arrive silently at the bottom of the stairs.

I look round for Mum. She’s doing her morning
yoga with earplugs. She hasn’t even heard the door.

I stop in the hallway, looking out.

Somebody’s standing on the other side of the glass, pressing against it; but because our front door’s made of this ancient cloudy glass with little ships on, I can only see a shadow. I’m guessing they don’t have an umbrella and they’re trying to get out of the rain.

Bing bong
.

For a moment I wonder if it’s a mad axe murderer, but then decide that mad axe murderers probably never call at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning.

I look again at the shadow. I don’t think it’s a scary shadow, it’s really no taller than I am.

I’ll take a chance.

I yank open the front door.

“Scarlett? Scarlett McNally?” It’s a round shiny man in a sheepskin jacket, with a Father Christmas beard. He is definitely not a mad axe murderer but he doesn’t look like he’s come to tell me I’ve won anything. He looks more like someone buying watercress. I’m sure people who tell you you’ve won something drive cars that were built this century. He’s holding a box.

“Yes?” I say, looking round at Mum, who’s
stretching now. She still hasn’t noticed anything but I expect I can handle this.

“Morning, Scarlett. I was your father’s solicitor.” He’s standing right in the doorway now; half of his jacket’s dark with the rain.

Solicitor?

I don’t know what to say, so I stare at the man. I go on staring at him. I can stare at people for ages, and they can never do it back anything like as well. It gives me the upper hand. I can see he’s getting uncomfortable, so I give him a chance and blink.

He’s looking really confused now. “I’m acting on your father’s instructions.”

“Dad’s – but he’s…”

“Yes, Scarlett, but he left these items in my care, to be given to you on, or around, your eleventh birthday. You were eleven last week, weren’t you?” He grips the box as if he’s about to whisk it away.

“Yes – Tuesday.”

“Well, happy birthday last Tuesday. It’s yours now.” He plonks the box on the carpet, fumbles for the door handle, touches his hat and trips out through the door.

“Why did I have to be eleven?” I ask, calling into the rain.

“Haven’t a clue – perhaps he thought you’d be old enough to avoid some of his less lovely friends?” He scuttles back to his car, his shoulders hunched against the rain. “Don’t get too excited.” The door squeaks as he clambers in and when he closes it, a small piece of wood pings off the side.

Reversing, he narrowly misses one of the watercress beds and lurches off through some puddles. The battered car swings out on to the main road and disappears.

I stare at the box, then I pick it up and shake it. It rattles, but only a little.

Dad.

It’s from my dad.

My dad the burglar. My dad the thief. The person that no one mentions.

He’s been dead for five years.

I sit at the bottom of the stairs, staring at Mum’s back through the doorway of the living room. I almost call her, but then I look at my name written on top of the box, and I don’t.

I could always tell her later.

I can hear Syd dropping cars into the bath. They sound really loud.

Perhaps I
should
tell Mum. She’ll be cross that I didn’t tell her straight away, but then she’ll be weird and moody if I tell her now.

She’s funny about dads. She’s funny about my dad in particular.

Anyway, it’s got my name on it. Not hers.

I pick up the box and carry it up the stairs, to sit on my bed. It fits comfortably on my knees.

The brown parcel tape across the top has one corner that’s not quite stuck down.

I wish the man
had
come from Sugar Puffs; this feels like it’s going to be complicated. I don’t know a lot about Dad, I’m not sure I want to know a lot about Dad, but I’m tingly, my whole body’s fizzy. It’s as if my blood’s turned into fizzy water.

I can’t work out if I’m excited, or scared.

Dad?

This came from Dad?

I tug at the tape.

The cardboard flaps spring open, pushed by a mass of balled-up newspaper.

I jump, breathe deeply and straighten out a sheet of newspaper. It’s old, but it doesn’t say anything special. I feel a slight pang, a dulling. The fizz feels less like tonic water and more like flat cola. But I reach my hand inside.

It closes around something soft, maybe suede? There’s metal inside, it clanks. A jewellery case? Perhaps it’s a velvet purse full of gold rings and emerald necklaces? Some booty from a long-forgotten
heist. I pull it out and run my fingers over it with my eyes closed. No, not jewellery, but a case, holding something metal.

It could still be precious.

I open my eyes. It’s brown and oily, not at all like a jewellery case. A leather roll, tied with two long straps. I fumble to undo them, and it tumbles from my hand, falling open across the floor.

Tools?

TOOLS?!?

Just a load of long thin scratchy tools; not a screwdriver in sight.

A lot of rude words go through my head and then I remember what they are.

They’re picklocks.

I’ve seen them before. I close my eyes and I’m back, tiny, so small I can just see over the side of Mum’s patchwork quilt. Mum’s there, sitting on the bed; she’s doing something, maybe brushing her hair?

Dad’s there too, his long fingers wrapping the tools, slipping the leather strap around the outside and buckling it closed. I can smell him, something he puts on his hair, or is it his jacket? It’s warm and musky.

He picks me up and throws me so I land on the bed and the laughter bursts up from my chest and I reach out for more, but he’s leaving again, like he always does.

He smiles at me, his eyes creased and blue and bright before vanishing through the bedroom door. The memory hovers at the side of my head.

The tools feel really big and heavy in my hand, like something that’s waiting to be mentioned, something that only grown-ups have, but I know Mum won’t like them and she’ll take them away from me, so I slip them under the bed.

I reach back into the box and grope about. My fingers pass over some thin bundles of shiny card wrapped in elastic bands, but I grab the largest thing I can find.

Gone with the Wind
.

I know this book, it’s about a stroppy girl called Scarlett O’Hara. My namesake.

Why on earth would Dad give me that? There’s already a copy here, one he gave Mum when I was born.

I reach back into the box and pull out two bundles of photos and postcards.

I peel off the elastic bands. There’s one of Mum
looking really young and gorgeous and another of someone who I think is probably Dad, looking sharp. Sideburns and pointy shoes. Some people I don’t recognise; some places I’ve never been to.

The tingly feeling’s almost gone away now. There was no golden necklace or emerald ring. I’m back on my bedroom floor with the sound of Syd’s cars clanging into the bath.

All I’ve got is a pile of pictures and a set of tools.

Bing bong
.

Maybe the man’s back to tell me I
have
won the Sugar Puffs challenge.

I stuff the box under my bed. Syd’s on the landing with his arms out, so I pick him up and stumble past the stair gate, letting him clamber backwards down the stairs.

I open the front door.

It’s Uncle Derek and Ellie.

Rats. I’d forgotten about Ellie. She’s coming to sleep over so that Mum and Uncle Derek can both get to work today. He’s on duty now, and Mum’s cooking in the care home this evening. Ellie’s clutching a big pink flowery duvet, and a white fluffy bear. “Hi, Scarlett,” she says.

She’s got this drippy voice that always ends on a
low note and she draws smiley faces over her “i”s. I almost can’t stand her, but then, nor can anyone else.

“Hi, Ellie. Hi, Uncle Derek,” I say, letting them in, forcing myself to smile.

“Morning, Scarlett,” says Uncle Derek.

“Oh,” calls Mum from the kitchen. “Derek!”

She comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her leggings. She stops in the hall and Uncle Derek pecks her on the cheek. She goes red.

So does he.

He’s not really my uncle.

“Oh, Carole, thanks so much, just off to see the new CCTV set-up, in the council offices, yes…” Uncle Derek rubs his chin and twitches in the doorway. He can’t stay still. He’s a plain-clothes policeman and likes running marathons. I expect he’ll run to work today through all the puddles, and then catch a criminal or two and run back with them under his arm. “So, I’ll be back at five-fifteen, all right?”

Mum smiles and picks up Syd.

Ellie and I stare at them.

They don’t notice us.

The thing about policemen, real ones, not the ones in TV detective programmes, is that they’re neat. They shine their shoes, they go to work on time and they don’t fill the doors of their cars with sausage-roll wrappers. Or at least Ellie’s dad doesn’t. Actually, he’s probably the only policeman I’ve ever met.

He’s very clean and he keeps Ellie clean. Today, she’s wearing a blue floral dress with a blue plastic sparkly belt that goes right across the biggest part of her middle.

In spite of the fact that there’s a humungous gale
going on out there, she’s got spotless white socks.

She’s also got thick blue-framed glasses, beaded with raindrops.

I wonder if she can see anything; perhaps she doesn’t even know what she looks like in the mirror.

“Shall I put this in Scarlett’s room?” she asks Mum, holding up her duvet.

“Of course, Ellie, love,” says Mum, glaring at me and pointing up the stairs.

So we go up the stairs, and Ellie puts her duvet on the top bunk, and my room starts to pong of artificial flowers from the washing powder that her dad uses. I almost pull it off and stuff it on the bottom bunk and then I remember that Mum wants me to be nice to Ellie no matter what.

So I don’t; I just stick my tongue out at her back instead.

She picks up a pink flowery sweatshirt that I really hate.

“That’s nice,” she says.

“Yes,” I lie.

And there’s this oceanic silence between us.

“Pity it’s raining,” she says.

“Yes,” I say, meaning it this time.

I’d hoped we could go swimming in the tank
behind the watercress beds. I love it in there, it’s like swimming in an aquarium, but she’s so perfectly clean, Ellie would probably see it as freezing cold water buzzing with pond life; I don’t think she’d like it somehow. Especially in the rain. Mr Hammond doesn’t mind if we swim in the big tank; he says it’s fine as long as we don’t damage the watercress beds themselves. He likes us living here, we’re better than a burglar alarm he says; though how anyone’s supposed to steal a load of watercress I can’t imagine.

Why they’d do it is even more mysterious.

I look out of the window anyway, in case the sun has changed its mind and stopped sulking.

It hasn’t.

Everything outside is grey. Grey concrete around the watercress, the grey tank at the back, the grey landing strip of the airfield next door, the grey control tower.

It’s either grey or wet.

Or both.

Neither of us speak. This time I’m sure I can hear the planets rolling across the universe like tumbleweed.

Downstairs, Mum and Uncle Derek stand out in the rain, talking to each other under an umbrella; Syd’s eating two tomatoes at the same time, and I switch on the TV. Ellie follows me. She sits on the sofa at one end of the room, and I sit on the floor at the other end.

We’re just in time for
The Numtums
. The screen’s full of day-glo dancing squirrels. Syd dances with them, smearing his tomatoey hands over the screen. Perhaps he thinks the squirrels live inside the TV.

There’s this annoying little jangly noise, even more annoying than the telly.

Tch, tch, tch, tchty cha, tch, tch, tch
…

It’s Ellie’s iPod.

She’s lying on her back, pressing buttons on her DS. She’s got very big fingers, very big hands. Very big everything, in fact.

She’s completely wired up.

I get to my feet, slip out of the door, and slink up to my room. I’ll just take a minute, pretend I’ve been to the bathroom, but I need to have another look in the box.

The first thing I touch is
Gone with the Wind
.

It’s yellowed and soft and thumbed. Page
thirty-nine
is turned down, but there’s nothing written on it. I read a few lines, then I sniff the book. It doesn’t smell of anything but mouldy bookshelves. There is nothing about this book that says “Dad”.

Nothing about the postcards either; they’ve mostly got Mum’s writing on them, with little drawings from me.

They’re all addressed to prisons.

I flick through them. There are masses of them. Mostly pictures of Dampington Pier, or the zoo or the town hall. It’s as if Mum and I never went anywhere else. I wonder what Dad thought when he got them, I suppose they were pictures of home; although even when he was out of prison, he never ever actually lived with us. He visited quite often, so perhaps he just did short spells behind bars.

I put the cards in date order. The last one was sent in November. He died just before Christmas. There were baubles on the tree in the church, and a knitted nativity scene with a three-legged donkey that I stared at through the whole funeral. I think I thought that if I was really good, and really nice to the plastic baby in the crib, Dad would come back for Christmas.

But he didn’t.

Mum collapsed after that. We didn’t go out, she just cried all the time and it was the worst Christmas ever.

Soon after, we ended up with Syd’s dad, and then Syd. Until Mum and Syd’s dad got fed up with each other and she threw him out.

We’re not very good at dads in this family.

I push my hands through the crumpled newspaper and feel about inside the box, hoping for something more. The paper rustles as I take out the last few photographs; my fingers touch something small and metal but I can’t quite reach it because it’s jammed under the cardboard flaps.

I turn the box and slap the underneath with my hand. The metal thing shoots over the carpet.

Ping
. It clangs into Syd’s tin of cars.

“Oooh,” says Ellie, running into the room and picking it up. “Here you are.”

I didn’t hear her.

Rats. Rats. Rats.

She crouches down next to me and drops it into my hand. It’s a key. A tiny poxy key, the sort you use on a rubbish padlock from a cracker.

“I came up to see where you’d gone,” she says,
peering into the stuff lying on the floor. “What’s this?”

She reaches her pale freckly arm into the balls of newspaper from the top of the box and pulls out a black plastic canister that I hadn’t noticed. Before I can stop her, she pops off the top and turns the canister upside down.

A metal roll falls at my feet.

“Oh,” says Ellie.

I glare at her.

“I’m only trying to help,” she says.

I pick it up and slip off a red elastic band. I hold the roll in my fingers, turning it round and round. It’s a little metal film roll, like old-fashioned cameras used. There’s a small tab of shiny stuff poking out of the middle between black brushes.

Ellie’s got these baby-blue eyes, which look enormous behind her glasses. They’re fixed on me now. “What is it?” she asks. “Where did it come from?”

She looks so pathetic I have to tell her.

“But your dad’s dead?”

“Yes,” I say. “But he left me this lot for when I was eleven. And I am eleven, now.”

She gazes at it all.

“What a weird collection of stuff.” She picks up
Gone with the Wind
and flicks through it and I have an unreasonable desire to rip it out of her fat fingers. It might be a weird collection of stuff, but it’s mine and it was from my dad, not her stinky fabric-conditioned dad, my tough burglar dad.

But I have to be nice to her, for Mum’s sake.

I’m so close to tears, I stand up and stare out of the window at Mr Hammond bunching up watercress. There’s a big black car out there, and you can tell that it’s really clean, because of the way the rain’s sliding off it. Right now, I’d like nothing better than a wet walk.

Fat chance.

“Are these all the postcards you and your mum sent him in prison?” Ellie peers at them. “Cute drawings you did, Scarlett.”

I turn round, put my hands to the floor and flip my legs up against the top bunk.

“Yes, he must have kept them all,” I say between my teeth. “Mum’s got a matching set.” I try to turn my head towards her, but all the blood’s gone to my scalp so it prickles and feels like my eyebrows are going to fall off. Handstands are a good way to stop crying.

“And this?” she says, holding the roll in front of my nose.

“I don’t know,” I say. I don’t want to look. I don’t want to hope, because I hate the disappointment.

She shakes it. It doesn’t make any noise.

“Well, I’m going to open it,” she says, so I crash my legs down to the floor and grab it out of her hands.

In the end both of us open it. She holds one end and I drag the other out across the room. About halfway I have this horrible feeling that it might be an undeveloped film, but within a centimetre or two, it turns to card and then to a long strip of paper.

We spread it across the floor and stare at it.

Keep looking up, Scarlett, keep up the gym, and don’t trust just ANYONE
.

That’s it, that’s all it says.

Ellie’s big blue eyes blink and stare behind the glasses. Mine almost fill with tears, but I swallow hard, roll the message back inside the container and throw it back in the box.

I do another handstand, and keep doing them until lunchtime.