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‘Go and sit down on the stool Tosh,’ says the woodcutter, taking a sip of tea from his own green-chipped mug.
Tosh manages to carry his tea all the way to the footstool without spilling a drop. He sits down obediently and starts guzzling the hot liquid. He looks everywhere but at me.
I remain where I am. ‘I’m sorry we trespassed,’ I say.
Though I hardly mean it. Shouldn’t the cabin door be locked? It’s as if he wanted us to find him.
‘No matter,’ he replies. ‘You’re not the first I’ve caught in here and I’m sure you won’t be the last.’
Who else has been here? I suspect Mannis has, looking for booze or money.
‘My name’s Alden by the way.’ He picks up the extra mug and brings it over to me.
I bow my head courteously, accept the mug of tea, and kneel down on the rug.
‘Shove over a little,’ Alden says. ‘I’ll light the fire.’
He disappears outside. He shortly returns with fresh logs for the fire. He stacks them neatly in the fireplace, picks up some lighter fuel from the mantle and sets the logs alight.
‘I’ve got some biscuits somewhere,’ he says.
He rummages around in the cupboard and brings out an oval-shaped tin. ‘Not much left,’ he says, giving the tin a rattle. ‘I’ll have to get some more.’
He lifts up the lid and holds the tin out to Tosh, who looks at me nervously before dipping his grubby hand in the tin and pulling out a fat chocolate digestive.
‘I don’t want one, thanks,’ I say, before he has the chance to dangle the tin in front of me. I hope he can’t hear my tummy rumbling. I feel too ashamed to take a biscuit from a man whose place I’ve entered uninvited. Suddenly, I am a lady. I sit with my knees clenched together. I hold my mug delicately between my thumb and forefinger as if I’m holding the Queen’s China. I sip my tea like a lady at a posh restaurant.
‘You sure you don’t want a biscuit?’ he offers, thrusting the tin at me.
‘No thank you,’ I say in a high-pitched squeak, suited to my newly acquired airs and graces.
He closes the lid. I pretend not to notice him staring at my worn-out trainers, crumpled jeans and dirty, straggly black hair. I gaze at the wall and then the floor - anywhere but at him.
‘Do you live here?’ Tosh asks, between mouthfuls of digestive. He’s made himself quite comfortable. Biscuit crumbs adorn Alden’s ash-rug.
‘What here? In this cabin? Nah, I don’t live here,’ says Alden, vigorously shaking his head. ‘I only come here to chop wood. I take it around to sell.’
‘Oh,’ Tosh says. He sounds disappointed. I can’t think why. Sometimes Tosh is funny like that.
I huddle close to the fireplace. The heat; I can feel the flush on my cheeks. I gulp the warm tea. We don’t often get tea at the bungalow. I’d forgotten how good it tastes.
Once I’m done sipping, I stand up, conscious that we have overstayed our welcome. ‘Thanks for the tea, but we really must be going,’ I say in my politest tone. I squeeze my fingers together, afraid if I don’t, my voice will crack.
‘Where are you going to?’ Alden asks. He sets his mug on top of the cupboard, his eyes searching mine.
Where are you going to? What kind of question is that? A trick one most likely. He already knows where we live.
‘Home,’ I say. That’s all you need to know.
‘You think the bungalow’s your home do you?’ he raises an eyebrow.
‘Yeah I do, so does Tosh,’ I say quickly, before he pounces on him with questions too.
I hand the woodcutter my mug. I snatch Tosh’s mug out of his hands, without checking to see if he’s finished, and hand it over as well.
‘You’re welcome to come here any time,’ he says, taking the mugs from me. ‘My door’s always open.’
‘Thank you, that’s…very kind.’ I reply.
‘Here take the rest of the biscuits,’ he says to Tosh. He reopens the tin. ‘There’s at least six or seven left in here. One of them’s a custard cream. My favourite.’
Tosh scoops up every last one of the biscuits.
‘Thanks Alden,’ he says smiling.
Tosh probably thinks Christmas has come early, what with us having toffees and biscuits in one day.
Alden yanks open the door to see us out. I feel as if I’m walking into a freezer.
‘Go easy now,’ he says cheerily.
‘We will,’ I reply.
I walk out without looking back. I know the woodcutter is staring after us. I can feel his inquisitive eyes boring into my back. Tosh trots after me with his handful of crushed biscuits. He’s probably thinking what a nice man Mr Nosy Alden is.
* * *
Chapter 18
Misty
‘We’re not going back there,’ I snap as soon as we’re out of earshot.
Tosh jumps off a tree-stump and runs to catch up with me. ‘Why not? He’s all right.’
‘You would say that wouldn’t you?’ I say halting to confront him. ‘Just cause he gave you a few stale biscuits.’
I think Tosh believes Alden is going to take us in and we’re all going to live happily ever after.
Tosh once dreamt we lived above a sweet shop. He has the same misty look in his eyes now as he did when he awoke from that dream.
‘No,’ he says, moving past me and ducking under the branch of a bowing tree.
‘He’s kind I can tell.’
‘Yeah I bet he’s kind,’ I mutter under my breath. ‘The kind of person who’d report us to the authorities.’
Tosh begins to hum as he munches on his second biscuit. It’s as if none of what I say matters any more.
‘You best wait for me,’ I shout after him. ‘Mannis might be back.’
Tosh slows down, but he does not stop altogether. I get ahead of him.
Together we race across the lawn. If Mannis were to ever find out we had gone into the woods. My legs turn to jelly thinking about it. I’ve made a stupid, stupid mistake.
* * *
Chapter 19
What If?
We arrive back at the bungalow in no time at all.
No one’s home yet. We go to the kitchen and open two tins of soup.
Tosh wolfs his soup down cold, and then takes the rest of the biscuits to Our Room, without saying a word. I have a horrible feeling he’s going to sneak off to see Alden in his cabin whenever he likes.
I grind my teeth in anger. We should never have gone in the first place. There’s something odd about Alden. I can’t work out whether it’s a good odd or a bad odd. If he were ever going to report us to the authorities, he would have done it by now.
A big “What If?” enters my mind. What if he comes up to the bungalow and he sees how we’re living. Someone will take us away for sure.
I pace back and forth in the kitchen. I stop to stare out of the dusty window above the kitchen sink. I let the sunlight pierce my eyes. I feel uncomfortable, worried even. I can still feel the woodcutter’s eyes on me. How much did Alden know about what went on in the bungalow?
Tosh comes running into the kitchen.
Biscuit crumbs seemed to have worked their way into his hair. I dust them off.
‘Ouch Kate! Why’d you have to be so hard?’ He clamps his hands to his head and bulldozes me.
‘Cause your head’s like a bog brush that’s why,’ I say. I duck out of the way as he takes a run at me.
‘Can we clear out the junk room now?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’m choosing!’ he cries, before shooting off down the hall.
I’m not in the mood for clearing out any of the junk rooms, not without Saul. I wonder what job Rick has him doing. ‘Some rotten job, and I bet he don’t pay him,’ I say aloud.
My life has changed. I accept and embrace it for what it is: surviving. I have to try to keep going for Tosh’s sake. I have to try to make him happy. It’s what Ellie would have wanted me to do; it’s what mum would have expected me to do.
* * *
Chapter 20
Junk
I stand in the battered doorway of the junk room Tosh has chosen. I gaze at the mould-splattered pink walls lined with graffiti. The plaster has fallen away in places, revealing strips of old wood. The curtains are black velvet. The tattered, holey strips of the remaining fabric, lie cast about the room like sea kelp on an unkempt beach. A giant crater sits in the middle of the ceiling. I think a grand chandelier once hung from there.
There’s no telling what the size of this room is with all the junk piled almost to the ceiling. Tosh has climbed the great mound of junk. He gazes down at me.
I shake my head. ‘You chose the easiest one then?’ I say.
‘We’re not going anywhere are we,’ he shouts.
I can’t say anything to that. However, I have no idea where to start.
Tosh throws a deflated rubber ball at me. It lands at my feet.
I suppose we’ll have to start at the top.
* * *
Chapter 21
The Crate
As it turns out, clearing out the room is a good thing. All my emotions seem to drain away like the sand in the hourglass in Alden’s cabin. I stop fretting about Saul and the Woodcutter.
When the first shade of darkness falls, Tosh runs to Our Room to get the torch. The torchlight’s weak, but I’m afraid if we use candles the pile of junk will go up in flames.
Mannis hangs on to the batteries as if they’re made of gold. He has a couple of torches of his own lying around somewhere. I’m going to exchange our batteries with some of his when I get the chance. He knows a candle can burn out quicker than a torch. Sometimes, I think he enjoys the thought of us wandering around lost in the dark.
Every so often, we listen out for the sound of clumping boots. Mannis’s clumping boots. They’re Doc Martens, not his though. He nicked them off a runaway. They’re two sizes too big for him. Mannis has small feet, and if he’s not shuffling in his Doc Martens, he’s waddling in them.
We also listen out for Dock’s voice. Sometimes, he staggers and sings at the same time. If his head was right and the drink didn’t turn his words to mush, I’m sure he would have the voice of an angel.
I can’t listen out for Saul. He hardly makes any noise. His footsteps are as light as a bird skimming across the water.
Tosh and I carry away strips of rotting wood and damp boxes, dumping them in the two rooms either side of us.
We pant and wipe our faces on our sleeves. We take the good wood and pile it in the hall. We come across rolls of old carpet and newspapers, damp with mildew or yellow and crisp.
One good find, sets our hearts racing and lifts our spirits. At the back of the room pressed against an oil-blackened window, we discover an unopened crate. The crate smells as damp as everything else does. The wood’s the colour of charcoal and the nails are all rusty. The crate itself is intact. And it’s heavy. It sends us stumbling and sliding down the junk slope like snowboarders careering down a mountainside.
We carry the crate to Our Room.
‘I’ll get a hammer,’ I say.
I rush to the kitchen and return a few seconds later with the puny hammer in my hand. I use it to yank the nails out, one by one.
‘You’re taking too long, just bash it open,’ says Tosh, kicking at the bottom of the crate impatiently.
‘Stop it will you! You don’t know what’s in there.’
‘It’s not going to be plates is it?’ He argues. ‘We would have heard them break.’
Eventually, I manage to prise the lid off the top of the crate. A black bag sits inside it. I open it to find some damp and dingy-looking books. Four of them are bound in leather. The rest are sleeveless hardbacks. They’re more like floppy hardbacks now.
‘Ah what!’ Tosh exclaims. ‘Rotten old books.’
‘They’re not that rotten,’ I say doubtfully.
He pulls one out, a dull orange book from the bag, and flicks through it. The print is small, black and covered in a green and black mould.
‘Oliver Twist.’ he says, reading the spine of the book. ‘I’ve seen that loads of times.’
‘Books and musicals aren’t the same,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll read it to you one day.’
He shrugs, sighs, pulls out another book, examines the spine, and then tosses it to the floor. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if they had pictures in them,’ he complains.
‘Careful,’ I warn him. ‘These books are really old.’
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘Honestly Tosh, I don’t know what’s gotten into you,’ I say, taking on mum’s scolding tone.
I take out a thin green leather book. I look through the first few pages, scrawled with faded black ink. The writings joined up. I was never very good at reading joined up writing. ‘I think this one’s a diary,’ I say, holding it open for Tosh to see.
He shakes his head despairingly.
I return the green book to the crate.
Tosh goes quiet. The rims of his eyes are all red and his eyelids are puffy. He tries to run his hands through his hair. His fingers get stuck halfway in. He tugs them out again and looks around, forlorn. I had hoped he’d be excited about the books. I hate to see him like this, walking around with the same look on his face he had the day he awoken on the park bench to find mum gone. I told him she would come back for us one day. He doesn’t believe me, which is why he doesn’t talk about her any more. It’s why he no longer calls for her in his sleep.
‘Let’s take a rest and get cleaned up,’ I say, enthusiastically. ‘We’ve done enough for today.’
We return to the junk room to check over our efforts. The mound of junk has gone down three-quarters of the way. ‘Not bad for a days work,’ I say.
Tosh replies with a sniff.
‘We know we’re done, when we see the mice run,’ I say, grinning at him.
Mum told me that once when we were cleaning out the attic. There were never any mice though, and we weren’t so much cleaning it, as we were looking to see if the landlord had anything up there we could sell for a few quid.
Satisfied no one else will claim the room, I shut the door behind us. Mannis never goes into any of the rooms, not even ours, without our permission. His domain is the kitchen. He doesn’t let New Ones go wandering around the extra rooms. He’s very strict about that. And he only lets them sleep in the kitchen and the hallway.
We carry the dry wood into the kitchen and stack it in the corner.
Afterwards, Tosh and I go to the washroom to scrub our hands and faces clean and change out of our mucky clothes.
We return to the kitchen. I fling a pile of dry wood into the bottom of the stove, light a match and throw it in, leaving the stove door wide open.
Mannis would have a jelly-belly fit if he could see us now, sitting cross-legged right up close to the flames.
‘Close that ruddy door,’ he’d say. ‘Or I’ll roast you in the stove myself.’
I can feel the heat, hot and prickly on my face. For a split-second, I’m back in the woodcutter’s cabin.
Tosh reaches his hands out to the flames. I slap his palms away from the fire.
‘Where do you think the woodcutter lives,’ he asks, picking at a piece of broken lino.
‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ I say, pouting. ‘He’s nothing to do with us. We shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.’ We shouldn’t have.
He gives me a sidelong glance. ‘Then why did we?’
‘Don’t know,’ I say, hunching my shoulders. The flames perform a hypnotic dance, leaping, spinning and twisting before my eyes. ‘I wanted to see who was chopping the wood, didn’t I?’
That was it. No other reason. So why I had not gone before? Why had I waited until now? What had changed? Me? I can’t say. Perhaps, Ellie’s death has made me braver.
‘I didn’t know anyone was chopping wood?’ he says.
I turn my head abruptly to face him.
‘You never hear the woodcutter’s axe? Never seen him?’ I ask, amazed.
‘Nope.’
‘But I always ask Mannis about the woodcutter. Don’t you hear me asking?’ He needs glasses, and there must be sponge between his ears.
Tosh lowers his eyes. He breaks off a chunk of lino, snaps in half, then in quarters.
‘Yep, but I’ve never seen him and you never talk about him to me.’
I relax my shoulders and return to my fire gazing. I always assumed Tosh knew about the woodcutter, that we had spoken of him together. What does it matter? He knows about the woodcutter now and I really wish he didn’t.
* * *
Chapter 22
Pirates Chest
We hear the screech of a car braking to a halt outside the front door. We lurch to our feet, sharing anxious glances. The driver gives two short blasts of the horn.
The fire seems to shrink away from me, zapping the heat from my skin.
I put a finger to my lips. Quiet and stay, I tell Tosh.
I tiptoe to the door and press my ear against it. If the Wolf’s back it means Saul’s back, and for that I am glad. I don’t want the Wolf to take him away again. I’ll have to do something to see he doesn’t. The question is what?
I flinch as the front door slams open.
I hear Mannis grunting like a pot-bellied pig: ‘Keep it moving!’
Then I hear one loud thud after another. It sounds like an elephant’s about to come crashing through the wall.
‘Where’s Rick? the lazy bugger.’ Mannis is saying.
I venture a little way into the hall. I do a good impression of Saul. I press myself to the wall in the vain hope that it will make me invisible.