The Girl in the Red Coat

50

The dress is laid out on the stage. Gramps must have done it when I went to the toilet. It makes me feel funny looking at the dress all empty. It’s in a spotlight, blue on white. Round the neck and the bust there’s the silver nylon lace and it glitters in the light. For a moment it’s like it’s me lying down on the stage flat and empty and the real me, the one that’s looking, isn’t there.

I guess I’ll have to put it on. The forces saying I have to are too much again. They are Munroe and Gramps. They are the waiting chairs. They are every Bible for sale and every believer in this field. But if I do that right now I’m worried I’m going to disappear and the dress will be everything.

I go outside to get away from it all. What I’d like to do is tear the dress to shreds but I’d get into so much trouble I hardly want to think about it. I realise I’m still frightened of Munroe and remember Mum saying if you’re frightened of someone then you should think of them in a silly situation — like in their pyjamas brushing their teeth — and they stop being frightening. When I was little I’d think of people with poo on their faces, that seemed the silliest thing you could think. But the picture of Munroe with shit over his face somehow just makes him scarier so I blank the thought out and shove my hands into the pockets of my red jacket and wander down the path kicking small stones.

Then I hear this lovely voice and for a second I can’t see who it is and I really think the archangel Gabriel has come down from on high and is speaking to me directly.

‘Carmel.’

There’s no one in front of me.

‘Carmel, Carmel. Is it you?’

I look round and it’s Nico. I’m sure it is. It looks like him only taller, and real handsome. He’s leaning against one of the entrances to the tents, so tall and good-looking he’s better than the archangel Gabriel.

My breathing goes all funny when I see him. I’ve waited years for this to happen.

He comes right up to me and he’s so tall I have to bend my neck to look at him. ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘haven’t seen you since we were little kids.’

For some reason while I speak my hands waggle either side like I’m trying to swim because I feel I need to balance or I might fall over. ‘Nico. You sound like a proper American now.’

‘So do you.’

‘Do I?’ It’s funny but you don’t really know how you sound to your own ears.

I remember about his sister, I’m not sure if I should ask — in case. But I do anyway. ‘Is your sister, is she … here?’

He smiles and it runs over me, nice prickles. ‘No, but she’s still surviving.’ He wants to change the subject, he’s thinking of something to say. ‘Look at you — all your buttons are done up the wrong way.’

Then slowly, slowly he undoes the shiny brass buttons on my jacket and does them up the right way. All the time he’s doing this I’m shaking and I hope he doesn’t notice.

‘Carmel?’ Gramps’s voice comes floating out of the tent towards us. I do so wish he’d go away.

‘The old man and Dorothy still taking you on the road?’

‘Dorothy’s gone now.’

‘Carmel …’ Gramps is sounding twitchy now.

‘Bye then.’ Nico reaches over and flicks one of my buttons and makes a pinging sound. ‘Catch you around.’

‘Carmel …’

I watch Nico walk away with his hands in his pockets. I want to call him back or run after him but I stand there watching. And I feel so sad to see him walking away, so deep-down sad, like he really is an archangel and he’s the only one that could ever save me.

‘Carmel, we need you here …’

Now Nico is small in the distance and it’s the sky taking my attention away from him and from Gramps. What strange light. Is it only me that can see it? There’s quiet over the camp for a minute. Over the tent selling alarms that remind you to pray and T-shirts that say ‘SAVED’ across the chest. Crucifixes to dangle in your car. Tiny white Bibles to bury with dead babies. The big tent at the entrance to the field where a prayer service is held every hour, on the hour. Even hush from there. Then floating down on the wind. A voice. It sounds like it doesn’t belong to anyone. It sounds like it’s leaking from a radio.

‘The doctors who took away Chandler’s bandages could not believe their eyes. Where there were third-degree burns only two days before, the skin was completely clear. They were astonished …’ It’s Munroe rehearsing, I realise. The voice floats and twists down the path like a plastic bag in the wind.

There’s the dress again. Waiting.

‘Where have you been, girl? Folk’ll be here soon.’ Gramps has taken his coat off and rolled his shirt sleeves up like a workman.

‘You look worried today, Gramps.’

His forehead’s crinkled up into a frown and it’s shining with sweat under the lights. Because of where he’s standing on the stage there’s a green spotlight on his face. A little explosion of a giggle escapes me.

He looks up, sharp. ‘What’s so funny, Carmel?’

I wish I hadn’t of laughed. Now I’ll have to explain.

‘You remind me of something. That’s all.’

‘What thing?’

I don’t want to say. He doesn’t like me talking about before. ’Course he never says this, I just know, and before gets blurry for me now even if I did want to talk about it.

‘Mum took me to a pantomime …’

‘Pardon?’

‘It’s like a play. There’s a princess and a prince. And two funny women that might be men …’ I’m trying to remember now. ‘But the thing I liked most was the genie. He came out of nowhere in a puff of smoke and the light on him was green and so were his clothes. But I can’t remember if he was supposed to be bad or good …’

He cuts in. ‘Sounds like a pile of Godless fakery to me.’

I knew it would make him cross.

‘Time to get changed, Carmel.’

Then he’s gone but his face seems to flicker still in the green light. I walk up to the dress and Gramps’s face is there too in the folds — where a tummy should be. I sweep it off the stage with one hand and give it a good shake. It’s only a stupid old dress, I tell myself, far too small for me now.

A waft of icy air drifts through the open flaps of the tent. I unbutton my jacket but I’m not going to take anything else off, not today. Anyway, I don’t want to feel the dress against my skin — to feel all the summers, all the people that have grabbed onto my hands. I don’t want to feel Dorothy right next to me. So I slip it over my jeans and my T-shirt that says ‘Frank’s Chicken Shed’ on it that we got free one time for eating chicken wings.

‘There, there she is. My girl, my girl.’ Gramps’s voice is almost a wail coming from the back of the tent. ‘Come, child, do it up. It’s half falling off you.’ And he comes over and starts buttoning me up at the back and nearly choking me.

‘You’ve got your other clothes on underneath.’

‘I’m cold, Gramps. Can’t you feel the cold sneaking around?’

He shakes his head and wipes the sweat away from his forehead to show he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

‘She’s trussed up in that dress like a killed deer. ’Bout time you took her shopping, Dennis,’ Munroe grumbles and Gramps wants to answer him back, I know he does, but Munroe’s turned away already and he’s slotting a CD into the player and cheesy music fills the tent. We face each other in a triangle with things unsaid in each of our mouths and it’s almost a relief that a family arrives, pushing a girl about my age in a wheelchair up the aisle.

Then there’s fake smiles plastered over Gramps and Munroe’s faces and I go sit on the steps of the stage to be quiet.

Then they come and it’s like they’re never going to stop — until all the seats are full and there’s people standing at the back and crowding into the aisle and Munroe’s rubbing his hands together. The sneaking cold is driven away and the tent feels like the roof is going to melt right off.

Finally, Munroe takes the stage and the coughing and the talking and the shuffling stops dead. He starts pacing up and down, silent — working himself up. When he goes past the microphone you can hear his breathing — heeeehaaaaw heeeeehaaaaw.

When he’s worked up enough he launches himself at the microphone all spitty and excited.

‘I can feel the holy spirit right here. Right now. Hey, I’m expecting the roof to blow off any second the power of it’s so mighty …’ There’s lots of shouting from the crowd but then the music changes. He times it all beforehand — I’ve seen him do it.

‘Now there was this little boy. Name of Chandler. One day when his parents were out back little Chandler decided to do a very wicked thing. He decided to play with a box of matches. Little children here — don’t you be doing this. It was also a foolish act and when you hear what happened next you’ll find out why. What Chandler didn’t know was that his pyjamas he was wearing — ’cos it was nearly bedtime — were of the flammable variety …’

I stick my fingers inside my collar and give my neck a good scratch. I see the girl that came in first, the one in the wheelchair, is staring at me, she’s parked up right at the front. She gives me a wispy smile. Her skinny knees in black tights are half covered with a red-and-white polka-dot dress so she looks like Minnie Mouse. She’s got the most gorgeous shoes; they rest on the metal platform of her wheelchair and they’re gold with red jewels on them and they even have really high heels but I don’t suppose it matters, she doesn’t walk on them anyway. They’re just for show.

I love her. I don’t know why but I love her on sight and she’s looking at me and smiling and I smile back and put my hand up and give her a tiny wave and she lifts a skinny hand and waves back.

Munroe’s finished his story about Chandler who went up in flames so even his fingers had a flame coming off each one so it was like his tenth birthday had come early with each finger lit like a birthday candle. He’s onto something else now.

‘… it’s like we’ve all got personal cell phones we can keep in our pockets and in the directory under G there’s a direct line to God and we can talk to Him any time, any time …’

Him talking about phones gets me thinking. There’s a secret pocket in my coat with some money Gramps doesn’t know about — an old lady gave me a couple of dollars extra for laying hands on her husband — because I’ve been planning one day to have my own phone. I haven’t got nearly enough but I might have when I’m older and then even he won’t be able to stop me. And maybe I could try and phone my dad. Can I remember his number? Only the very beginning bit but there must be a way of finding numbers out. And he might be pleased and he might not. He might have another little girl now with Lucy — but it could be just to say hello, surprise, how you doing?

But then the people facing me come back pin sharp into focus and all the steps I have to go through to phone Dad seem so big and confusing I wonder if I’ll ever be able to manage it.

It’s Gramps’s turn. As they change over I hear Munroe saying, ‘Keep it short, Dennis,’ and my cheeks burn for Gramps. He doesn’t say anything for a good while and the crowd gets restless. Get on with it, Gramps, I think, you’re losing them, and I nearly jump up and shout Hallelujah or Amen like I did this morning in the car. But finally Gramps has started.

‘Acts Eight. Twelve to sixteen — “so they carried out the sick on the streets and they laid them onto beds and pallets that, as Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on some of them”.’

His finger is pointing up to heaven and he gets carried away so he moves without thinking out of the white spotlight so he’s green again. I sigh.

And then the girl and me are staring at each other. We can’t stop it. It’s like we’ve fallen in love or something. Only not like it is with Nico. Not trembly and excited. I love her like I’m a knight on a horse and I want to gather her up and make everything better for her — to look after her and keep her safe. She peeps out under her long red fringe at me with her big soft brown eyes. Now my palms are burning, itching. I concentrate on her to see what light she has burning inside her but it’s hard with the spotlights being different colours. I think there might be light enough inside her, I’m not sure. Everything’s wrong today. What with the green lights and Munroe and his story about little Chandler who I’ve never heard of.

I feel a stab in my heart as a thought pierces — what if it’s all not true? What if this thing, this thing I think is a gift, is only an idea Gramps has put there? I bring the thought up to my face and look at it and it lies an ugly lump in my hands. I don’t want the thought to be right and I try to rub my hands together to squish it and make it disappear, but I get covered in it and it’s terrible. The one time I really want to feel the swelling warmth in my fingertips, the hum going through me — the one time when I want to reach out to this lovely girl and lay my hands on her and say, ‘You can get up now. Take off those high heels because they might be hard to walk in at first, but walk, walk right out of that wheelchair’ — I can’t because all I can feel in my hands are cold dead stars. I have to concentrate on not moaning I feel so bad.

Gramps must have finished now without me realising, the coloured spotlights are drowned out by big white ones and I hear him saying, ‘Whoa now, each will have their turn. You have to line up,’ because people are pushing and pressing forward and some have dollars in their hands that they’re waving about; Dorothy would’ve loved it.

They’ve let in too many people — the ones lined up at the back are pressing forward and I feel very tiny squashed against the stage. Where’s Gramps? I look round for him and catch a glimpse of his face, he’s come off the stage and he’s trying to fight his way through the crowd but he can’t and his face is all pushed out of shape. Then there’s a terrible screeching sound from the microphone and the crowd around me cover their ears and hang back and at least I can breathe a bit. I put my fingers up to my face and I must be crying, it’s wet round my eyes. Because I’ve realised the one person I need to heal — to lay hands on and rearrange the torn and twisted insides — is Mum. And I never will, but if not her, then it has to be this girl.

The feedback screeches again and then it’s Munroe’s voice booming out. ‘Stand back, folk. Stand back right now. Mercy will be seeing everyone today. You need to wait your turn.’

And the crowd turn from a pack of baying wolves to ones that are sniffing about and thinking what to do next. There’s a smell coming off them too. A smell of warm hair. I think, it’s not me that’s wrong — it’s this. If I could just be calm and quiet I’d be fine. I decide something: this is the last ever time I’m going to lay hands for Munroe or Gramps. I’m going to tell Gramps today and however much he wails and shouts he’s not going to change my mind because if I carry on like this it’ll go away.

Then Gramps is by my side and all I can say is, ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ Because I don’t want to see any of the wolves. I only want that girl with the gold stilettos and for everyone else to go away and leave us on our own.

‘Carmel, come back, come back,’ I hear Gramps’s cry as I fight through the crowd. But I won’t. I won’t do anything till I find her. It feels like my life depends on it and I catch a glimpse of her through the bodies — red hair and a gold shoe in between people’s legs.

‘Stand back now.’ It’s a roar from Gramps, so loud the crowd actually do start hanging back like cowed dogs. But the stink they’ve made stays, hot and heavy.

As I push past, people reach out to try and touch me but I shove them off. Some even wave paper money at me but I push that away too. For a horrible minute I think she’s going to get squashed by a tall man in a frayed old suit who seems so overcome by spirit he looks like he’s drowning. But he lurches off towards the door and I’m beside her clutching at one of her skinny hands that feels like a broken bird in mine. I look down and I think flowers are bursting out of her fingers and then I realise they’re coloured rings and I’m nearly cutting myself on the petals of plastic roses.

‘S’OK. S’OK. Sorry.’ I loosen my grip and say right into her ear, ‘What’s your name?’

She says something back but her voice is a wisp so I have to put my ear right next to her mouth.

‘Say again.’

‘Maxine.’

I want to help Maxine so much but the ugly thought that got smeared all over me is there and to try and make it wash off I say, ‘It’s true. It really is true. I can heal you, Maxine. I can.’

And she says nothing but smiles at me and nods and her hand trembles in mine and I get really, really close to her and she smells of baby powder.

I kneel in front of her. At first the stupid dress gets caught under my knees, just about slicing my neck at the back. I grab onto the hem and yank it up without letting go of her with my other hand, scared that this horrible crowd will separate us, because they think she’s not important at all — and it doesn’t matter if she’s forgotten as long as they get their money’s worth that will go into the sack afterwards at the door.

‘Let me touch your stomach,’ I say. She unbuckles the harness and I can feel how hollow her stomach is under the polka-dot dress. I close my eyes and I try to grope around for what I’m always looking for, the glow, the ropes of light, but I can’t feel anything. When I open my eyes she’s there patiently waiting. I’m crying and I press harder trying to find the glow but I don’t want to hurt her so I don’t press too hard.

She’s saying something again so I lean in to hear. She says, ‘Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.’

I scrabble my tears away. ‘No, no. It does, it does, it matters more than anything.’ I’m shouting and crying now but I don’t care. So I focus this time. I let the crowd around me melt away and instead of their dog smell I catch onto the wafts of baby powder coming off Maxine and float on them. This lovely girl, I think, with her Minnie Mouse costume and her sweet baby smell, let me help her. If I never help anyone again, let me help her. And slowly there’s a glow and a humming, faint at first, and I concentrate hard, fanning away at it with my mind, trying to get it going like a bonfire on a rainy day.

Keep going, I’m thinking, keep going. And the fire jumps up, flaring beneath my hands.

And I’m falling into her. Her flesh is collapsing around mine as I fall and the liquids in her body wrap themselves round me, red and gold. I’m right in the middle of her: worming through her body, round the pipes of her veins, bumping against bones and wriggling through her guts.

Then I pop my head into her head and I’m working her body from the inside, or we’re working it together. So I open her eyes and I can see — I can see me kneeling down in front of us.

I can feel her mouth on my face and it’s smiling. But Carmel in front, she’s crying again. There’s tears slipping off her face and we’re saying, ‘It’s alright, everything’s gonna be alright.’ And I can see Carmel — because I know her so well — feels bad. She’s thinking — it should be me saying that, I’m the one that can get up and walk about on my two legs, not her.

Soon, I think, any minute I’ll inflate and put my arms through hers like I’m putting on a jumper, and wriggle my legs down into hers like they’re jeans. We’ll kick off those high heels, and they’ll fly across the tent and land — clonk, clonk — on the stage, and when I’ve done that I’ll surge forward and stand up wearing her body like a dress. I’ll walk about in it, and as I do, she’ll find she can do it too. And somehow, I haven’t figured out how yet, I’ll be able to step back out and she’ll be left standing and walking but strong this time, strong as a tree, and after we’ve separated she’ll keep my energy inside her and it’ll stay there forever.

But there’s a ripple of disturbance through her body and I get shaken about like a bottle of milk. And I bounce around so much I end up bouncing right out of her till, whoomf, I’m back inside myself, kneeling on the floor in front of her wheelchair.

Mayhem is breaking out. I look up to find Maxine and some person I can’t see is spinning her wheelchair around. The wheelchair arm whacks me in the face, whipping my head sideways on its stem.

I put my hand up to my face because I really got a thump there and the voices and tumult around is like the tower of Babel Gramps is always talking about. From the floor all I can see of Maxine — through people’s legs — is her shoes bumping up and down on the footrest of her wheelchair as she’s shoved out of the door and as she reaches daylight, the sun flashes on her gold shoe as it kicks into the air. Then gone. I kneel there holding my face and crying and people keep falling over me. Eventually I say to myself, ‘Get up, Carmel.’ And I do.

Gramps is nowhere to be seen.

I join the crowd and they’re taking no notice of me now — Mercy, the miracle girl. I’m just another body getting squashed as we all fight each other to get out into the open air.

Outside, the cold stings my cheek and each gasp of fresh air is so freezing it hurts inside. At first I can’t work out why everybody is leaving in great swarms like ants marching towards the gate. But then dotted around I see even bigger, blacker ants and these ants are police in uniforms. One is holding up something to his mouth and speaking through it and his words come out in a robot’s voice.

‘This is an illegal religious gathering with no permit. Leave immediately …’

There’s a buzzing of angry voices because there’s people who don’t want to leave. They want to carry on buying Bibles and getting healed and they were probably looking forward to the worship at four o’clock round the giant cross. Munroe said he was expecting transcendence and epileptic fits and all manner of things caused by the holy spirit alighting down. People falling flat on the ground dead even. I could tell he’d been looking forward to it.

I see Nico coming towards me — I’m so glad to see his face I want to throw my arms around him and kiss him. But I’ve wanted to do that since I was about eight, so no change there. Then Nico actually puts his arm around me and I’m nearly dizzy with the feel of it, strong, like a man’s almost. It’s like I’ve been dreaming about all these years.

‘Quick. You’re gonna get crushed here, Carmel. People are getting mad.’

I say, ‘Yes, Nico.’ Because all of a sudden it’s like we could be boyfriend and girlfriend together and we’re making decisions just the two of us.

People are gathering round the policeman with the voice machine and someone tries to throw a rock at him and it misses but even so he takes his gun out and waves it round in the air.

‘Disperse immediately. Disperse immediately. This is a gathering with no permit.’

One of the crowd yells out, ‘And Jesus Christ didn’t have no permit either. You sayin’ he’s an illegal?’

The crowd around the cop jeer at him and some are praying with their eyes rolling back into their heads and the cop starts looking scared and I know how he’s feeling because when I first witnessed the speaking in tongues I could hardly believe my eyes and I was scared too. Even though I’m over that now and sights such as those are as normal as breathing to me.

I can feel Nico’s hand on the small of my back and it’s setting the bones there shivering clackety clack, rippling up and down like my spine’s turned into a snake. ‘OK, honey. Let’s get you somewhere that’s safe.’

I nod at him and the crowd pushing and pulling us melt away for a minute. Even the cop with the gun melts because Nico called me ‘honey’.

‘Over here.’ He grabs my hand and leads me to one of the corners of the tent where it’s pulled tight with ropes staked into the ground. We both crouch down behind the rope and use it as a guard but people’s legs knock against it, nearly falling on top of us. And quite truthfully I think I could have found a better hiding place on my own, though I don’t say because I love having Nico looking after me like this, and I don’t ever want him to stop being behind me with his warm chest against my back.

Because I’m thinking about hiding places the hobbit houses at the place Gramps first took me pop into my head.

‘I remember hiding …’

Nico says, ‘What?’ I was talking to myself almost.

I turn my head. ‘It’s not important. I’ve just remembered hiding when I was little. There was a row of tiny houses with doors and the doors had round holes cut in them.’

‘Was it a place where they put poor people?’

‘I guess.’

‘They had them in Romania too. I saw them — my uncle told me they used to lock people inside and they’d have to bash away at a rock and they only got something to eat when the rock was small enough to push through the holes.’

I don’t know why this shocks me so much. ‘So they were for locking up? Not hiding?’

‘If they were the same.’ Nico’s breath tickles my ear as he speaks.

Then I see Gramps. ‘What’s he doing?’ He’s rushing up to one of the cops, one of the ones who’s got his gun out.

‘Stop it, Gramps, stop it,’ I shout out, even though I know it’s useless because the noise of the crowd is too much. But Gramps is pulling on the cop’s sleeve now and he looks like he’s trying to explain something and for the life of me I don’t know what he’s playing at.

‘Gramps, don’t,’ I shout. ‘Come over here.’

‘Calm down, he can’t hear you,’ says Nico in my ear. ‘He’s probably explaining how this is just a gathering of the faithful so they’ll leave us alone.’

‘No, no. He wouldn’t do that. He’s mortally terrified of cops. He’ll do anything to avoid them.’

Gramps’s eyes are everywhere and at the same time he’s pulling at the cop’s sleeve and babbling at him. The policeman’s big and muscled and he’s jutting his chin towards Gramps with one great meaty hand fingering the butt of his gun. His fair eyebrows the colour of sand pull tighter and tighter together, but Gramps can’t seem to see any of this happening and won’t stop his babbling.

‘I’m worried about him. What’s he up to?’

Nico holds me tight in his arms. ‘Nothing you can do there, Carmel. You leave them both to it, looks like trouble to me.’

Gramps’s eyes don’t stop scanning and searching and I wonder — is he looking for me? There’s this expression on his face that’s not only wild and afraid but something else — like he’s drowning in some kind of relief. The cop does some talking on the radio with one hand and with the other he’s reaching for his belt.

Then I see him locking a metal band round Gramps’s wrist.

I want to jump up and say, ‘Ta-da, surprise,’ like I used to when I was a little kid, to make everything better, to calm everyone down. And I do jump up and Gramps sees me, I know he does. But all he does is lift his hand that isn’t cuffed to the cop in a kind of wave that isn’t really a wave. It’s more he’s giving me some kind of blessing from a distance, sending it winging over the field. Then the cop cuffs his other hand and tugs on the cuffs making Gramps jerk — a fish on a line. He walks away leading Gramps, who’s like a bull now, not a fish, because he has no choice but to stumble after.

‘Oh no. No.’

‘What’s happening?’ Nico’s standing up behind me now.

‘Gramps said he was going to get judged today.’ For a moment I feel like one of the tents has fallen on top of me and I don’t care even that Nico’s there or not.

‘What’s the old fool done?’ he says, and when he says that it doesn’t seem to matter about his strong arms or his lovely eyes.

‘Don’t call him that,’ I say, tears stinging in my eyes.

He shrugs. Now it’s not like we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, but we’re like Mum and Dad were in the old days, getting ourselves geared up to have a fight. I’ve got my nose in the air pointing up at him and his eyebrows are curling down. Then his mother’s coming towards us and calling his name like he’s a five-year-old. Her gypsy earrings have gone and she’s wearing a jacket with fluffy white fur round the hood and stretchy pink slacks over her great big American behind and we’re back being kids again.

‘Bye Carmel.’ He leans down and kisses me on the mouth so quick it’s over before I know what’s happening.

‘Go find the other one you came with. Go find him — he’ll look after you.’ That’s the last thing I want to do but he steps over the rope to join his mum and I watch until they get lost in the crowd and I can’t see them any more. I realise then that Nico’s probably not thought about me, like I have him, all the time, for years and years.

A freezing wind is blowing. It blows in from the direction of the cross and as it blasts it seems to peel people away, they blow on past towards the car park. Back to their cars where they can crank up the heating and take themselves back to where they belong. Back to their homes where they’ve got beds and microwaves where they can heat up pizza for their dinner. Back to gardens with swings, or trampolines that are tumbling across the grass in the wind.

A fat lady blows past me. ‘Ice storm coming,’ she calls. ‘Better find your folk, child. Better find them and get safely out of here to your home, the Lord willing.’

‘I have no folk,’ I call back. ‘There is no home.’

But she doesn’t hear me and then she’s gone. Ice crystals shimmer in the gap she’s left. I shiver; only Nico’s kiss is still there to keep me warm — my first ever kiss — burning on my mouth, melting the air around it.

I walk across the field. Everyone’s nearly gone now — just a few stragglers moving towards the car park. The cold wind sounds like a song and at first I think the words are like my name. Then I realise the song isn’t meant to be understood, unless you’re ice or wind. Its words are creaking and humming in a different language. I’m thinking of another song though. One that my mum used to sing sometimes when the wind blew round our house and the tree tapped on the wall — ‘The North Wind doth blow. And we shall have snow. And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?’

When I was little I felt sorry for the robin once I was tucked into my warm cosy bed, thinking of it shivering out there and pecking away at the cold ground. So Mum told me to put on my dressing gown and together we went out the back door and scattered some crumbs on the garden that was all black and frozen.

My jacket — my nice warm jacket. I go back through the tent flaps that are rolling in and out like a wave from the wind. Inside there’s tipped-over chairs scattered across the floor. One lady’s hat has been stood on so it’s a flat pink cake. The lights are still on, shining on the spot where I fell inside Maxine’s body, the green one on the stage where Gramps stood trying to summon up the spirit. Too cold for spirit here now, with the sides of the tent making noises like a boat in a storm.

I find my jacket folded up at the back of the stage among the coiling wires. There’s a heaviness making the jacket lean to one side when I feed my arms into the sleeves. Gramps has put a drink in the pocket. It’s something he does sometimes; he knows this can be thirsty work. The can of Coke is freezing in my hand but I pop the tab anyway. The icy bubbles are hard and shining, the taste of brown diamonds, bursting on my tongue.

I sit on the edge of the stage sipping Coke with the tent flapping and blowing around me. I think — I won’t see Gramps again. He wanted to go with that cop. When he left there was relief on his face. The metal cuff went round his wrist and he wanted that — to feel its cold grip tightening round his skin and bone. I’d thought he was raising his hand to bless me somehow or give me luck. But now I realise he was saying goodbye and that I was never going to get to tell him how I wouldn’t work for him again.

Goodbye Carmel, and after he had gone I’d felt a certain gladness for a moment — that everything might be different now.

The wind’s died down outside. The tent is still at last. When I lift the door it’s stiff and hard and there’s a shattering like tiny glass is breaking and I realise the canvas is iced up hard.

Outside the world is white and for a minute I don’t recognise it. The tents look like a row of ships stuck in a frozen sea. I think — I’ve gone in one door and come out of another into this beautiful place, though of course I know that can’t be true. My feet spin around in crazy circles and I have to reach out to a pole and my hand nearly sticks to it.

I shiver and pull my jacket close round me and I realise I’m still wearing the white dress over my jeans — its frilly bottom is sticking out under the red. It hardly matters — there’s not a soul about to see. I’m like the queen of Iceland here alone in this strange land. I slip and slide back out onto the path. There’s the cross at the end against the sky and I start to feel afraid. I walk slowly up to it huffing out smoky breath. It’s turned into a cross-shaped glacier with icicles hanging from its two branches.

I wonder what I’m going to do now with Gramps gone probably for ever. I want to cry but I can feel the water freezing in my eyes before it gets out and I think soon I must leave or I’ll die like the robin in winter. I wonder if I’ll be found — frozen to the spot — and sometimes I feel scared and sometimes like I’m going to fly because I can’t decide whether I’m alone, or free.