The Lost Child

Elaine pulled her dressing gown around her, tightening it where it had fallen open during her bid to get Brodie to stay. ‘Don’t worry about it, no need to be sorry. I can’t imagine anyone being ecstatic about what you’ve just told me, and you’re not a bitch. You are allowed to be upset about this, you know.’

‘You sound like my social worker.’ Brodie accompanied her words with a smirk that reassured Elaine that the ice was beginning to thaw.

‘Well, she sounds like a sensible woman then.’ Elaine said with a smile of relief. Wrangling recalcitrant teenagers was not exactly her area of expertise. She had always been rather compliant herself, not that she’d been given a choice. Jean hadn’t entertained anything less than full compliance from anyone.

Brodie shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and scuffed the toe of her trainer against the floor. ‘Let’s not go there, or you really will think I’m a bitch,’ she said, her mouth twisting into cheeky smile.

Elaine laughed. ‘OK, I’ll promise not to talk like a social worker if you wash up while I get dressed. Then I’m going to go into town to find a supermarket so I can buy some decent food, why don’t you ask Miriam if you can come with me?’

Brodie’s eyes seems to light up at this prospect, as if she scented the whiff of freedom on the air. ‘Cool, I can go to the cashpoint.’

She said it with such glee that Elaine couldn’t help finding the contradictions in the girl both funny and beguiling.

Chapter Three (#ulink_61771218-3916-5a69-80d6-44a37f4ca97b)

Miriam squeezed her bulk between the chair and the stove to reach the squealing kettle. Steam lingered above her head. Wraith-like, it reached down with misty fingers and curled the ends of Brodie’s hair like a trickster might, much to the girl’s frustration. Miriam impatiently flapped it away with her tea towel and filled the giant teapot.

‘Well, someone’s in a good mood this morning,’ she said, giving Brodie a knowing look.

Brodie picked up her phone, ‘Tony gave me some money, I got credit for my phone yesterday so I’m back in touch with civilisation.’ She was unaware of the hidden judgement in her words.

Miriam bristled, ‘You can use the phone here if you want to.’

‘I know, it’s not that. I can get on to the internet now, and I can log on to the school’s website and get my results when they come out.’

Miriam’s mouth formed a round O of understanding. ‘Well, that’s important. I don’t suppose they will post them here. Anyway,’ she said, cramming herself onto a chair with a sigh that told of aching joints and weariness, ‘I wanted to talk to you about Miss Ellis.’

Brodie looked up from the screen that had not been showing the school’s website at all, but her Facebook feed. ‘What about her?’

Miriam didn’t meet her gaze and instead delayed her response by sloshing milk into mugs. ‘Well, it’s just that I don’t want her to think you’re taking advantage by hanging around too much, that’s all. She is a guest you know, and it’s my job to make sure she has a good stay.’

Brodie felt her face flush, ‘I’m not bothering her, she asked me to go yesterday, and she wants me to go round there today too. She’s going to show me how to draw. She’s an artist.’ She was bridling at the inference that she wasn’t wanted.

Miriam poured the tea, ‘An artist? Well, that’s nice. As long as you’re sure she’s happy to have you around. Will you take this in to Esther and tell her I’ll be there with her breakfast in a minute?’

Brodie scraped her chair backwards along the hard floor and stood slowly, hoping that both the noise and the gesture would demonstrate her reluctance. It was lost on Miriam who just passed her the sippy cup that Esther drank from. Brodie took it, her lip curling with distaste as she ventured into the sitting room.

Esther sat as she always did in her chintz-covered chair, plucking and pinching at the arm cap as if something upon it profoundly offended her. Brodie found this incessant habit both repellent and irritating. The gesture suggested a contained malevolence, tempered only by the impotence of Esther’s condition. As Brodie approached, the old lady’s eyes flicked away from the cottage door, which she watched almost constantly. She appraised the black clad cuckoo with a withering look.

Brodie skirted the chair with extreme caution and placed the tea on a side table. She whipped her hand away with whistle stop speed lest the old woman should reach out and grab her with her one functional, claw-like hand. It was hard work for her to suppress the shudder that threatened to reveal her fear of the woman.

‘Miriam says she’ll be in with your breakfast in a minute.’ It was statement for which she received a curt nod before Esther resumed her vigil of the door.

Brodie struggled to imagine who would want to willingly visit the old lady. She had a fleeting mental image of the grim reaper, complete with scythe, popping in for tea. ‘We can live in hope’ she muttered cruelly under her breath.

Once free of Miriam’s fussy ministrations she escaped into the garden. Breathing in the prospect of her few hours of freedom like a condemned man might relish his last meal, she walked towards the holiday let and tried to push away the niggling worries that begged her to contemplate her burgeoning attraction to Elaine. Perhaps she was looking for a mother figure? It wasn’t weird, she told herself, it really wasn’t. She just really liked her and she needed a friend, especially now. Elaine seemed like the first adult she had met who had time for her, who wasn’t more concerned with something – or someone – else. Even the social worker was always looking at her watch and willing Brodie’s time away

She thought Elaine was pretty. She had merry eyes and dimples when she smiled. It made Brodie want to copy her and smile back, and that didn’t happen very often. If she were honest, the vast majority of people irritated the hell out of her, but she was drawn to Elaine and she had no real idea why.

*

Elaine lay on the grass, propped up on her elbows, watching the fascinating, prickly girl who sat cross-legged and diligent, quietly struggling to capture the essence of a tree with pencil and paper.

‘Relax, just let your mind guide your hand’ Elaine said, as the girl scowled and scrubbed at the paper yet again with her dwindling eraser.

Brodie rolled her eyes, ‘It’s easy for you to say, you can do it.’ She pointed at the delicate drawing of a beech tree that Elaine had completed with a few strokes of her pencil.

Elaine laughed, ‘Yes, but I couldn’t draw like that when I was fifteen. I had to go to college and learn. You’ll get there.’

‘Where did you go to college?’ Brodie asked, as if it was something she had been giving some thought to for herself.

‘Bristol, where I live.’

Brodie flung the sketchpad aside, frustrated with her feeble efforts. ‘How come you didn’t move away? I’d have gone to London.’

‘I wanted to,’ Elaine was picking at a blade of rye grass and stripping it with her nails, ‘but my mum didn’t really want me to be away from home. I think the thought of me in a big city on my own frightened her. She was a bit clingy.’ It was a massive understatement and Elaine knew it, but this girl didn’t need to be burdened with that kind of information.

‘Huh, I reckon if I wanted to go to London my mum would have my suitcase packed and by the door before I’d finished the sentence. She can’t wait to be rid of me.’ Brodie’s voice was loaded with dull resignation.

‘Mothers eh? Bloody hard work. Anyway, tell me about you, what do you like? Tell me about your friends.’ Elaine was eager to change the subject. It was bad enough that Jean’s continued presence in the boot of the car was weighing on her conscience, without having to go into territory fraught with mother issues.

Brodie shrugged, ‘There’s a few people I hang out with at school I suppose. But no one likes coming round to our house, Mum freaks them out.’

This was going to be hard work. ‘What about boys, do you have a boyfriend?’ Elaine imagined a sullen, silent goth loping around in Brodie’s abrasive wake.

It was Brodie’s turn to tear at the grass; she did it fiercely, grasping a great handful and brushing it from her hands into an untidy, wilting pile. ‘Nah, all the boys I meet are complete twats. If I ever find one with a brain I might think about it. Have you got a boyfriend?’

Elaine’s hand drifted to her throat unconsciously, once her fingers found that her muslin scarf was still in place she spoke. ‘No, I tend to meet that kind too. But I must admit, I do quite fancy my builder.’ Her cheeks were flushing red with the admission while her brain demanded to know why on earth she had felt the need to confess such thing to a fifteen-year-old girl.

‘Really? Cool. Is he good looking?’ Brodie was intrigued, the sniff of romance making her all ears.

Elaine blushed again, ‘Well, I wouldn’t say he’s Brad Pitt, but yeah, he’s nice in a craggy, rugged sort of way. And he’s funny, which always helps, makes him less of a twat.’ she said with a wry smile, the word didn’t roll as easily from her own tongue.

‘So are you going to go out with him?’ Brodie asked eagerly.

The hand fluttered to the throat again. ‘I don’t know, maybe. I think he’s just being nice because I’m paying him a truckload of money to do up the house. So maybe I’m just being daft.’

Brodie shook her head. ‘Nah, he likes you. Blokes don’t mess about when they’re older. Tony says they haven’t got time to muck about. You should go out with him, see what happens.’

Elaine laughed, amused at the receipt of dating advice from a teenager. Perhaps she should take it. After all, normal relationships weren’t exactly her forte and maybe she needed the practice, the last time she had tangled with Dan it had ended miserably because Jean and life had got in the way. She looked at Brodie; it felt like they were heading into uncomfortable territory again. ‘Hey, why don’t we go and explore the estate? I fancy having a look around the folly, I can see it from my bedroom window and it looks like it might be interesting.’

‘Are we allowed? Miriam told me not to go wandering about on my own.’

Elaine got to her feet, brushing slivers of grass from her clothes. ‘Yeah, why not? The bumf I got about the cottage says that guests are welcome to explore the estate. As long as we stay away from the house we should be fine.’

Brodie shrugged, seemingly indifferent. ‘Might as well.’

*