The Missing Link (3 page)

I experienced that sudden, overwhelming terror that happens in dreams, just before you wake. I sat up, shrinking away until my back met the wall, waiting for that blessed moment when I would open my eyes on to reality; mundane and secure. But it didn’t come.

‘Darling,’ said Danny. ‘My darling has come.’

I had a sudden image of the bird flying into my face, its wings flapping, its long, pointed beak probing my eye sockets.

‘Say hello,’ said Danny, sounding groggy, a bit like Boris Karloff, as he battled with the sedative still lingering in his bloodstream. ‘Say hello, Darling.’

‘Hello,’ said the bird.

‘Hello,’ I said, suddenly enchanted.

‘I told you she would come,’ said Danny. ‘I told you to watch out for my darling. You have to come with us, Christie. I can’t go without you.’

‘Go where?’ I said, but I was still waiting for the dream to be over.

‘Scotland,’ said Danny. ‘To Mother. The darling will bring us.’

I noticed that Danny had got himself dressed. He was holding the corner of his
banky
, which streamed out on the floor behind him.

‘Your mother’s mad,’ I said. ‘And so are you.’

‘She told me,’ said Danny. ‘She told me someone would come to get us. She gave me this.’

He opened his fist and revealed a fat wad of notes. I sat up on the edge of the bed and tried to get a better look. But at that moment the bird rose up from the lamp and flitted towards the door, its wings whirring like a bat in the small bedroom. I flinched away, then looked up again. The starling was gone, and Danny was lumbering after it on unsteady legs, dragging the stupid old blanket behind him.

‘Danny!’ I called, but softly, aware that the rest of the household was asleep. Aware, even though I didn’t know it, that what was happening was not for the adult world to know.

He ignored me, and I heard him sliding down the stairs, on his bum, as usual.

I flopped back on to the bed, trying to figure out what was going on, still hoping that it might be a dream. I had almost succeeded when I heard the soft click of the front door opening, and that little whir of wings again, down in the front hall.

I should have woken Mom and Maurice. If I
had
, none of it would have happened. We would have been back in bed within half an hour, Danny doped up again, the bird chased outside where it belonged, back in the darkness. But I didn’t do it. Maybe because it was all so strange and secret. Maybe because I was still angry with Maurice. I don’t know. But what I did do was jump out of bed, drag my jeans and jumper on over my pyjamas, and stuff my bare feet into my boots. I slipped down the stairs commando style; swift and silent, and grabbed my jacket off the peg on the wall.

And there I was. Out in the pre-dawn darkness, breathing frosty plumes into the air.

Danny was a good distance down the street, shuffling along in his penguin gait towards the main road. I could just make out the quick dart of the starling ahead of him as it passed beneath a street lamp.

I turned back towards the house. I could still wake them. Or I could have, if I hadn’t just closed the front door behind me and locked us both out. I’d have to bang like hell now to get them up. Better to catch Danny first.

He was already at the end of the street, waving his arms in some kind of weird delight as he wobbled along. If a squad car passed he’d be in the nick before he could blink. I bent and laced my boots, then set out after him.

8

BY THE TIME
I got to the end of the street, Danny was away down the main road, moving in a cumbersome dance along the footpath. He was going surprisingly fast, and the starling was darting around above his head, in and out of the street lights. I caught them up and nipped round to stand in front of Danny. He sidestepped and pushed past me, his face split by an enormous grin.

The exercise was clearing the sedative from his system.

‘Going on the bus, Christie,’ he said, flashing the roll of notes in front of my face. ‘Going to Scotland.’

‘No way, Danny,’ I said, trying to get in front of him again.

He laughed delightedly and swung the filthy blanket at me, blinding me and knocking me off balance. I grabbed it and hauled hard, swinging him round to face me. At last he stopped, and for a moment there was fear in his eyes.

‘Come on, Crispy.’

My heart sank. I had been living with him for six months now, and I knew the warning signs. If he flipped now, here in the dark empty streets,
I
wouldn’t know what to do. My secret trick might work, but it might not.

I glanced back the way we had come, considering the possibility of racing back for Maurice. But we were much too far from home. By the time I got there and coaxed Maurice out of bed, Danny could be miles away, trundling happily towards his fantasy Scotland.

‘Listen, Danny,’ I said. ‘It’s OK. I’ll go to Scotland with you. But not now, all right? It’s not a good time.’

‘It’s a perfect time,’ said a little piping voice from a branch behind my shoulder.

I turned round. The starling was sitting there, glaring at me, sinister as a little raven in the gloom.

I couldn’t get my head around what I was hearing. Danny laughed and whooped, and started to shamble off again, swinging his blanket up around his chest like a poncho.

‘No, Danny!’

I ran after him and tried to stop him again, but his eyes had that wild look and he had started to gulp air. He was giggling and singing, and the pitch of his voice was rising. I was in for trouble.

‘Steady down, now,’ I said. ‘Come on, I tell you what, I’ll walk you to the bus stop, all right? But you have to slow down. You have to hold your breath.’

Danny nodded and linked his arm into mine and we walked on, the bird ahead and behind like a tiny shadow. Danny could hold his breath for longer than anyone I had ever met. He
seemed
to be able to hold his breath for longer than was humanly possible. I had timed him once for more than six minutes, and he wasn’t blue or anything.

We had discovered it by accident, just playing games, a kind of contest. But I soon realised that after his marathon sessions Danny was always calmer, sometimes almost normal. So once or twice, when he looked like getting over-excited, I had tried it out; getting him to hold his breath and see what happened. It had worked. He had held and held and held, and by the time he let go, the crisis would have passed. That was my secret; the thing I never told Maurice or Mom. The little bit of power I held in the family circle.

I watched him now as we walked. I watched him as closely as I could, convinced that he must have some way of cheating. But I couldn’t see it. He wasn’t taking tiny quick ones, and he wasn’t letting anything in or out, even slowly.

And it was working. I could see the lucidity returning to his eyes. I hoped that by the time he was finished holding I’d be able to talk some sense into him.

But he held all the way to the bus station. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t have a watch so I couldn’t time him, but it must have been more like seven minutes than five. When we got there I couldn’t believe he was still standing, let alone walking. But what mattered was that my trick had worked. He was sane and calm, and now he might listen. The early coach to Dublin was standing ready, but for some reason no one had
been
allowed to get on yet, and quite a queue had formed. Danny moved forward to join it, but I pulled him away and pinned him against the wall.

‘Now, Danny,’ I said, trying to sound brotherly and clever; sounding like a teacher instead. ‘I don’t think this is a great idea, not just now. What do you think?’

In answer he shoved the fistful of notes into my hand and said, ‘You buy the tickets, Christie.’

‘I will, Danny,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think this is the best bus to go on, do you?’

‘Yes,’ said Danny. ‘Best bus.’

‘But this is the Dublin bus,’ I said. ‘It’s not the Scotland bus.’

A shadow of doubt crossed Danny’s face, but then his face brightened again.

‘Dublin first,’ he said. ‘Then the boat. Then Scotland.’

He pushed away from me and made to join the line. Everyone turned and looked at Danny, and then pretended that they weren’t looking, which was worse. But, unusually, no one looked back. There was a nervous intensity about the people in the queue and I tuned in to a nearby conversation.

‘It’s on account of the oil crisis,’ a smartly-dressed woman was saying to a young man with a briefcase. ‘It’s all getting much worse, you know. There’s talk of all kinds of emergencies happening. The bus might not run at all.’

I tried to hide my relief. That would have
been
perfect as far as I was concerned. It would avoid the blow-up that was now beginning to seem inevitable.

‘Do you hear that, Danny?’ I said. ‘The bus might not be going at all.’

‘We can walk,’ said Danny.

I laughed, but I wasn’t so sure that he was joking. I had seen him in action before. If he made up his mind to do something, nothing short of sedatives would stop him.

Just then a driver broke away from a blue-uniformed gathering by the office and came over to our bus.

‘We’ll bring you to Dublin,’ he announced, ‘But you’ll have to understand that we can’t guarantee any buses coming back. We haven’t got a directive from the minister, yet. But any bus could be the last.’

People nodded and murmured and glanced at each other, but not at us.

‘So if you don’t have to travel, we advise you not to, all right?’

One or two dropped out of the queue and walked away, presumably going home, but the others tightened up the line, expressing their mutual decision to travel. The driver opened the bus door and got into his seat.

I tried to draw Danny aside, but he had begun to press forward with the other travellers.

‘Now wait, Danny,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about this some more.’

‘No talking,’ said Danny. ‘Going to Scotland.’

‘Oh, God,’ I said. What was I going to do
now
? If I stopped him getting on the bus he’d throw an out-and-out wobbler. There was no doubt about that. And he wouldn’t do any breath-holding for me, either. Not if I was thwarting him. I wished I had woken Maurice.

The others were nearly all on the bus. We were at the back, and I was still trying to work out a last minute stroke of genius when the starling landed on my shoulder. I jumped and shook it off, but it came back again, clinging on to the fabric of my jacket with sharp claws.

‘Put me in your pocket, Christie,’ it said. ‘Then get on the bus.’

9

I STARED STRAIGHT
ahead of me, completely gobsmacked. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t make the starling’s speech fit into my version of reality. My mind jumped through hoops. It was a toy, a clever machine. But it wasn’t. It had just learned a few words, like a parrot. But it hadn’t. There was a magician around, throwing her voice. I looked around. There wasn’t. But while I was standing there trying to figure it out, this crazy twist of fate was continuing to work on me. Because Danny was already clambering aboard the bus, pointing me out to the driver, shuffling up between the rows of seats.

I was seeing it all but I couldn’t make sense of it.

‘In your pocket, Christie,’ said the starling.

‘Are you getting on or what?’ called the bus driver, revving the huge engine.

I would never get Danny off that bus now. Not without the wobbler of a lifetime. I had a sudden vision of the bus in chaos, and of me dragging him by the feet, backwards down the steps on to the footpath. I did the only thing I could. I stepped forward.

As I did so, the starling fluttered madly at the
breast
of my jacket, and I pulled open the flap and let her into the big poacher’s pocket in the lining. By the time I was finished I was on the bus, the driver was giving me strange looks, and I was staring at the bundle of notes, all sweaty in my fist.

A shock ran through me. The notes were a joke, some sort of toy money. I was about ready to crack.

‘Dublin, is it?’ said the driver, losing patience. I nodded, scrabbling at the money, opening the roll. In the middle, to my relief, were the familiar Irish notes: fives, tens, twenties. I handed one over, and the driver printed out the tickets and counted out my change. In my pocket I could feel the starling moving around. Something dropped on to the floor beside my foot. A stub of a pencil. Then more things: an old chocolate wrapper, a broken Warhammer piece, an ice-lolly stick. The bird was making herself comfortable. I didn’t pick them up, and hoped that no one had noticed.

Danny had found a seat at the back. I sat down beside him and inspected the funny money. It was sterling; some English and some Scottish.

It was for real, then. Danny’s mother had given him this money. Somehow or other, she really did expect him to make his way to her, in Scotland. And somehow or other, I had allowed myself to get dragged into it.

Danny was giggling. ‘Yay, yay. Going to Scotland,’ he said.

I smiled to humour him. We were stuck as far as Dublin, anyway. But I had no intention whatsoever of going any further.

PART TWO

1

AS THE SUN
rose, Oggy and Tina were just waking up in their doorway. Oggy gazed at Tina with that eternally devoted look that dogs have, but Tina looked back with suspicion.

‘I had a funny dream about you,’ she said.

‘Did you?’ said Oggy.

‘Hmm,’ said Tina. ‘It wasn’t a dream.’

The cleaners arrived with the keys to the shopping centre.

‘How’s it going, Tina?’ said one.

‘Got any fags?’ said Tina.

‘Get yourself a chimney if you want to smoke,’ said one of the others.

‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘And a house to go with it.’

‘Thanks,’ said Tina. ‘Bite her, Oggy.’

But Oggy didn’t. When the women had gone inside and locked the door behind them again, he said, ‘They weren’t so bad. They were only messing.’

‘They weren’t,’ said Tina. ‘I hate them.’

‘Oh. Don’t hate them,’ said Oggy.

‘I hate everybody,’ said Tina, staring into space. ‘Everybody except you.’