She opened her eyes. Her heart small and wanting.
Slipping the box into her backpack, she pulled Roo’s old T-shirt on over her own, so she wouldn’t be facing the day alone. She wiggled out of the tutu and admired the yellow-black-yellow combination of her clothes in the mirror. She buzzed at her reflection before speeding back down the stairs (not like a bee, whose wings, she knew, beat over two hundred times a second, but like an almost bee, a tribute bee, a LotteBee). Chocolate-steam enveloped her like a hug as she took the cake out and she knew that this day, the day that was also today, she, LotteBee, inde-pen-dent-ly, would find a way to make the shredded pages whole. She left the cake cooling on the side. Roo could eat it later. The thought made her happy.
Today she would bring Mama back and make it all better.
Somehow.
For Roo.
RUNE
Returning to the bed, he lit a cigarette and opened the letter from the Berlin Art Institute again. The letter invited him to contact the admissions team to discuss his options and collect his submitted portfolio. As it stood, he couldn’t attend the university due to a conflict of interests, but the wording of the letter was too official to properly understand.
To be able to leave Papa, to create a different life for him and Lotte. To be free to draw, to create, to make Lotte happy and keep her safe. The possibility had felt tangible, but it had been declined.
His head buzzed, skeletal and scraped out. He folded the letter and quickly popped an oxy from his stash in a small hole he’d made in the mattress.
He heard Lotte fly down the stairs and watched through a gap in the curtains as Joann waited by her car. He could smell the enticing chocolate cake Lotte had made for him; he didn’t know how to be without her. He wished she were the older sister, and he, being younger, could take safety in looking up to her and be allowed to see the world the way she did.
It seemed a better place.
When he was twelve he had chickenpox, insufferable itching all over, his mouth full of sores, even his eyes blurred and sticky; he’d been miserable. Lotte, only eight, had made such a fuss when Papa tried to make her go to school that he relented and let her stay at home to look after Rune.
She sang him songs and made him sugar-water, which they both pretended was lemonade. She spent hours dotting his chickenpox with soothing calamine and when she’d done them all, she started all over again. At the end of the week, when his pox were less irate, they baked cakes in the empty house; they made wooden puppets and a small theatre out of an old box, where they would put on shows for each other. He had been so relieved the following week when Lotte had come out in spots too, that the whole week could happen again. He wanted life to be like this.
Just the two of them.
No matter what.
He watched Lotte and Joann talking by the car and then Joann looked up to his window. He took a step back.
A few minutes later, Lotte’s voice called up the stairs. ‘Joann says she can give you a lift too?’
‘Hurry up then, boy,’ Papa’s voice called from the corridor, and he heard him walk down the stairs.
‘Coming,’ he called, but he waited until he saw Papa start his daily jog to work. When Papa had reached the end of the street, Rune saw him check the straps on his backpack and then his watch before disappearing.
He touched the letter in his pocket cautiously.
He had to do something to get away. Something for Lotte. This had been his only hope. Perhaps he could go to the university and beg. He didn’t want to beg. But he would. He would do anything for Lotte, and he knew if the roles were reversed, she would do everything for him.
He opened his door and listened at the stairs. He knew Papa had gone, but still. It was better to be sure. His vision was viscous, liquid, plumes and funnels taking him back, pulling him back, to a time before.
A time gone.
A time and place that no longer existed.
THEN
FRIDAY 6TH JANUARY 1989
EPIPHANIE – EPIPHANY
They kept moving. Running from home. Flying away down the hill. Across the park. When they finally slowed, Lotte was pale in the grey-yellow street light. Although she held on tight, she was slipping off Mama’s shoulder with every few steps Mama took.
Rune was panting hard, his bag dragging him down. Mama slowed under the lights of the Lutheran cemetery. The headstones jutted from the ground at different angles and early-morning drizzle floated around him, sticking his hair to his neck.
As they walked past the cemetery, he could almost hear the kids at school singing ‘Thriller’ while attempting to moonwalk along the length of the playground. It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark.
Once the song was in his head, he couldn’t stop the words.
It was a sticky song.
He tried to play it fast-forward in his mind, to rush the words through, to speed it up. But like the old record player in the dining room, it wouldn’t fast-forward and just kept winding along.
The tarmac shone ink-wet; the road grew bumpy, then he was walking on paving slabs. They wobbled as he stepped on them, the cracks spitting up water. When he looked up, they had reached the bridge.
Mama placed Lotte on the ground and gave her a kiss, before taking her hand and walking on.
Rune held Lotte’s other hand. She made little whimpering sounds as she walked, slowly. So slowly that before they had crossed the bridge, with a brown sludge of water far below, Mama had picked her back up. He offered to carry Mama’s rucksack as well as his own, but struggled to hold it in his arms.
Lotte flopped back over Mama’s shoulder, thumb in mouth and Moo Bunny in her arms. Her hair bobbed to the rhythm of Mama’s steps.
As they approached the train station, they saw taxis parked up outside, but all was quiet. He watched Mama as she looked around and he could tell she didn’t have a plan.
They had nowhere to go.
The darkness seemed to grip his throat and although he wanted to ask What now?, her silence seemed to steal his own voice.
‘Where are we?’ Lotte asked.
Mama didn’t answer but was already heading towards something, a beacon of light – a car? He followed her, watching his step on the cobbles. At the phone box, she stopped. He put both bags down and Mama put Lotte on the rucksack. She sat on it without complaint as Mama rustled in her pocket for change and shut herself in the phone box.
Rune started to sit, but as he lowered himself he could no longer see Mama’s face, so he stood and watched as she pulled a tiny slip of paper from her T-shirt. She picked up the receiver and dialled.
‘Where are we going?’ Lotte asked, her bottom lip wobbling.
‘Wherever Mama goes,’ he said confidently, not looking away from Mama as she replaced the receiver and tried again. Rune saw her hands shake as she dialled for the second time.
He stood transfixed, trying to know before he was told what might be next for them; after all, this wasn’t the first time they had left. He saw Mama glance at him, and after an age she pulled the phone from her ear before lifting it and dialling again.
He pressed the side of his fingernail into his palm to focus on something else.
The door of the phone box opened with a crash and Mama propelled herself out and picked Lotte up, almost toppling over in the process.
‘Just call this number,’ Mama said to herself, picking up both bags in her spare hand. They were too heavy, and she leaned into their weight. ‘I will answer it, day or night, she said. Fucking ridiculous.’ Mama was almost sinking under the weight of Lotte and she nodded towards the silent, dark taxis all in a row.