Dark Winter

9

Kev had shown me the ‘hidey-hole’, as he called it, the same day he showed me where all the weapons were concealed, just in case shit happened. It was built from the boxes the kitchen appliances had come in, under an open staircase in the garage that led up to a little makeshift loft where he used to stack his ladders and stuff. The kids knew they had to run straight there if Kev or Marsha ever shouted the word ‘Disneyland!’ They were to keep very quiet, and they weren’t to come out until Daddy or Mommy came and got them.

Back down in the kitchen, I took a deep breath and got myself together, then went through into the garage.

In the old days they could easily have fitted three extra vehicles beside the company car Kev always used to keep there, a navy Caprice Classic bristling with aerials. ‘Fucking thing,’ he would always complain. ‘All the mod cons of the nineties, in a motor that looks like a nineteen-sixties fridge.’

The kids’ bikes had used to hang from frames on the breeze-block wall. They’d been disposed of with all the other clutter that families accumulate. All that was left was a collection of unused removal boxes that we’d stacked under the staircase. Kelly had made herself a new Disneyland.

I moved towards them, calling out gently. ‘Kelly? It’s Nick. Are you there?’

When Kev had made his cardboard cave he’d provisioned it with a few dolls, bottles of water and chocolate bars. Last time I’d approached it on my hands and knees, the pistol down my waistband. I hadn’t wanted Kelly to see a weapon, hadn’t wanted her to know there was a major drama going on.

I’d tried to coax her out as I moved Kev’s boxes aside, inching towards the back wall.

And that was where I’d finally found her, eyes wide with terror, sitting curled up, rocking backwards and forwards, holding her hands over her ears, her eyes red, wet and swollen. It was only much later that I discovered she’d seen and heard the lot.

This time I only had to move one of the packing cases. She was sitting against the wall.

‘Hello.’

She was wearing a green T-shirt with some kind of sports logo, red and white trainers, and a pair of low-cut jeans that exposed her hip bones. It wasn’t terror in her eyes this time, they were just kind of sad and tired, and a bit puzzled, as if she was trying to work out why mine looked red as well.

‘Found you at last.’ I grinned. ‘You play a mean game of hide-and-seek.’

She didn’t return my smile. Her blotchy, tear-stained face stared at me as I crawled towards her.

It didn’t matter what state she was in, she was as pretty as ever. She’d inherited the best of both her parents: her mother’s mouth and her father’s eyes. ‘Biggest smile this side of Julia Roberts,’ Kev used to say. His mother came from southern Spain and he looked like a local: jet-black hair, but with the world’s bluest eyes. Marsha reckoned he was a dead ringer for Mel Gibson.

‘Come on, let’s get you out of here. I need some fresh air.’

She stared at me for what felt like for ever, as if she’d been travelling to some far-off place and just come back, and was trying to work out how everything had changed. Finally, she gave me the briefest and bleakest of smiles. ‘Sorry.’

I shifted a box to make it easier for her to get out. ‘About what?’

She glazed over again, as if she still wasn’t quite connecting. ‘Today.’ She shrugged. ‘Everything.’

‘It’s OK, don’t worry. Hey, you still like playing on swings?’