“I don’t go to school.”
I turned to her. “Really? How do you learn?”
“Mum homeschools me.”
“Wow, that’s so cool. I wish Dad homeschooled me. I asked him but he says he’s too busy.”
“It’s okay, I suppose. It can get a bit lonely.”
“You can come round here anytime you want. If I’m still at school, you can just come and play in my room. Or Dad could draw you.” Dad was always looking for fresh subjects to draw. “Except he’s obsessed with kittens and circuses at the moment, so unless you dressed up like a clown or a cat, he might not want to.”
Stacey laughed.
“Hey, they’re saying there’s a man-eating panther on the loose,” I said, remembering. “Apparently, it escaped from the circus.”
“Who says?”
“People at school.”
“Did you see it when you went to the circus?”
I tried to think back, but Dad’s stories were already mixing with the truth, and I couldn’t separate what was real and what was fable. “I don’t think so. Dad says he can’t remember it, anyway.”
“Maybe it had already escaped,” she said. I could see the excitement building in her eyes.“Wanna go look for it?”
“Nah,” I said, spotting the tops of the mobiles out of the window. “I’ve got something even better to show you. Come on.”
We ran down the two flights of stairs. The back door slammed forcefully behind us as we went out into the garden.
“This way!” I shouted above the wind, and then I was pushing past her and running down to the meadow, the grass rushing beneath my feet, and she was behind me, unable to catch me up. I was as fast as her now, I realized with a flush of jubilation. We flew over the grass, the gale pushing us onward. Coming to a stop at the edge of the meadow, we beamed at each other, the wind stealing our voices.
Still grinning, Stacey turned and saw the mobiles, and her smile faded.
“Dad made them,” I said proudly, looking at them with relish. Some had stopped moving, wedged and jammed by the wind, but others were rotating faster than usual, screeching painfully in disharmony. I ducked as a huge steel disc came whirling toward me, missing me by inches.
“They’re monstrosities.”
“No, they’re not,” I said. “They’re beautiful.” Remembering Stacey’s nettle dare, I said, “I dare you to go in.”
But she shook her head, taking a step back, a look of horrified fascination on her face as she stared at the swinging pieces of metal. A plastic bag flew through the air, catching her shoulder for a moment, making her jump. I laughed nastily.
“You go in if you’re so brave,” she said.
“Okay, I will.” I shot a guilty glance at the house, but Dad was nowhere to be seen. Taking a deep breath, I stepped in between the structures, my heart hammering.
The roar of the wind in here was like the whistle of an overboiling kettle. The mobiles surrounded me like a pack of hungry wolves, moving stealthily as if they were hunting me. As I reached the middle of the meadow, the sound of the wind disappeared altogether. The mobiles were close now, blocking my path at every turn. Across the meadow, in a shadowy corner, something crouched, watching me.
Stacey was shouting. With a shiver, I tore my eyes away from it and looked at her. She raised her arm, pointing behind me. I turned to look, and something slammed into my shoulder, knocking me to the ground.
I lay, pinned to the earth. Slowly, the mobile began to drag me helplessly along the ground, my face scraping against the soil. My hands scrabbled to grab hold of the grass, my fingers slipping against something shiny in the ground, and then the propulsion stopped and I was being hopelessly, piteously pressed into the earth, an insistent hand driving me deeper into the meadow.
With a crack, a searing pain shot through my arm. The mobile above me came to a stop, whining and creaking, eager to be moving. All the wind in the whole of the Suffolk sky was rushing toward me. I looked for Stacey, but she was gone.
I lay on the ground, the scream of bone juddering in my arm, and I screwed my eyes shut. Something was tickling my face. I squinted upward. A huge black cat was sniffing me gently, pressing its nose into my ear, its tongue smoothing my forehead with gentle wet laps.
“Do not worry,” it said, its gruff voice full of hurricane. I closed my eyes. A day, a week, a month later, I opened them again. Two faces appeared above me, Stacey’s small muddy one stained with tears, and Dad’s huge bristly one, white under his dark beard.
* * *
I came home from hospital the day after the hurricane. The sky was lemon pale, as if the wind had cleared not only the clouds but had sucked up all the water too to make a weak cordial of the sky. As we walked delicately through the gate, my arm heavy with plaster and bandage, I stopped. Where there were usually branches, gesticulating in the breeze, there was only a vast expanse of sky. Our huge beech tree lay across the garden like some great slain beast, its topmost branches reaching up to my bedroom window as if pleading for help. I tiptoed up to it and laid my hand on a thin branch, marveling at how quickly things can change: how only a few hours ago it had been high up in the sky, dancing in the wind, far, far out of reach.
In the house, Stacey stroked my white fingers. My arm was broken in two places and the cast was tight on my skin.
She wrote and drew all over the cast, making use of my felt-tip pens until a riot of color gamboled across the white plaster, words hardly readable and definitely spelled wrong, but I loved them. Best of all, Dad said Stacey was allowed to visit me whenever she wanted. I wanted her to come every day.
On the eve of my homecoming, Dad didn’t come to tuck me in. I whispered to Stacey as she gently fussed around me, tightening the duvet round my body, “Do you think my dad is going to leave like my mum did?”
“Nah. He’s got nowhere to go.” She pulled a tatty pack of sweets out of her pocket, the words Parma Violets running across it, and offered me one. I shook my head, remembering their cloying taste from last time and the nauseous feeling it had conjured in me.
“But he’s angry with me,” I said.
“No, he’s not, idiot. He’s angry with himself. What sort of dad lets their daughter go into a field of moving metal? It’s like something out of Indiana Jones.”
“Then why doesn’t he come and see me?”
“Grown-ups deal with angry feelings differently to us. He’ll come soon, I’m sure.” She lifted my cast gently to tuck me in better, placing it carefully on the bed.
I looked down at it. It was very itchy. I caught sight of a red heart on the white plaster.