The Theft & the Miracle Page 4

  Hannah sat in an armchair and began to feel better. It was such a friendly room, and as usual it gleamed with cleanliness. Every surface was dusted and polished, the mirror sparkled, and the chair covers looked like new. In fact, she didn’t think they had been there on her previous visit.

  “Have you got new chair covers since I was here last, Mrs. Fallon?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes!” replied Sam’s mother with pride. “What do you think?”

  “They’re very nice.” Hannah blinked slightly at the huge scarlet roses that lay against a background of brilliant white.

  “And just take a look at my new TV!”

  Hannah had no chance of missing this. It was the most enormous set she had ever seen, and completely dominated one end of the room.

  “So things aren’t too bad when Mr. Fallon’s, um, away?” As soon as she had said this she wondered if it sounded rude, and regretted it, but Mrs. Fallon didn’t seem at all bothered.

  “Things are a good deal better when Arthur’s inside,” she said decidedly. “Not that I don’t miss him of course, in a way. But at least when he’s there he can’t drink his way through the child-support money. And of course there’s the cash I get from the cleaning work I do. Five ladies I’ve got now and they all pay very well, I’m glad to say.”

  Hannah had a suspicion that this didn’t quite account for the sudden display of prosperity, but after all, it was none of her business where the Fallons got their money from.

  She got up to help but was firmly made to sit down while Sam’s mother brought pizza from the oven, sandwiches from the fridge, jelly roll, lemon sponge, and finally a large plate of chocolate brownies. Hannah was relieved that her mother wasn’t there to count the calories.

  Mrs. Fallon herself hardly seemed to eat anything, but she made sure Hannah’s plate was never empty.

  After they ate, Sam showed Hannah how to plot a graph to help the three-handed man find his gloves.

  “Old Millie Murdoch still there then?” Eve grinned. “Must be getting a bit long in the tooth now, I’d think. She taught me when I was at Manningham!”

  “What was Millie like when she was younger?” asked Hannah curiously. It was impossible to imagine the teacher without gray hair and anxious lines around her eyes.

  “Stupid old clown even then, I bet!” said Sam.

  “No, she wasn’t stupid,” replied Eve, frowning. “Strange, but not stupid so much.”

  “How do you mean, strange?” asked Hannah.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Eve sounded vague. “It’s such a long time ago, I don’t really remember what all the rumors were about now.” She yawned and began clearing the table.

  “What rumors?” persisted Hannah, helping to stack plates.

  Eve screwed up her eyes in an effort to think back. “I seem to remember one or two funny things happened in class that no one could explain at the time. Probably just us kids wanting to make some excitement in our lives!”

  “What kind of funny things?”

  Mrs. Fallon stood thoughtfully with a handful of knives. “I remember one thing,” she said. “There were these two lads in our class. Martin Dobson and Brian…what was his name now?” She shook her head. “Can’t recall. Anyhow, these two were always giving Millie the runaround. Calling out and saying things to make the other kids laugh and generally making her life difficult. Trouble was, they were good at their sums, better than the rest of us, and I reckon they got bored and acted up.”

  “Don’t blame them,” announced Sam, leaning against the wall and bouncing a tennis ball on the floor.

  “Stop that,” said his mother.

  “Go on, please, Mrs. Fallon,” said Hannah.

  “Yes, well, one day I remember these two were being extra-specially obstreperous like, and Millie set down her chalk and gave them such a look!”

  “What kind of look?”

  Eve screwed up her eyes again. “Kind of a long, hard stare. We all saw it, though we didn’t take too much notice at the time. Anyway, the next day, neither of those boys turned up for school.”

  “Just goofing off,” said Sam scornfully.

  “And they didn’t turn up the next day, neither,” said his mother, ignoring the interruption. “Nor the one after that, nor the one after that! Then when they did come at last, it turned out they’d both woken in the middle of the night with this terrible allover rash—like chicken pox—only it wasn’t chicken pox. The doctor said he’d never seen the like of it before. It left scars too. On their faces especially.”

  Sam had gone very quiet. He had stopped bouncing the tennis ball and was running a finger along his cheek thoughtfully.

  Eve picked up a pile of plates and was about to carry them out to the kitchen when she glanced through the window. “Quick! Social worker!” she hissed urgently.

  Hannah leaped up from her chair in alarm and watched, fascinated, as the whole family, including the twins, went into a rapid and apparently well-rehearsed routine. It was rather like seeing an expert scene change in the theater. The table was cleared and a sliced loaf of bread and a tub of margarine appeared instead. The TV set was wheeled behind a curtain, two shabby blankets were thrown over the new chair covers, the twins had their shoes removed and ancient, hand-knitted sweaters thrust over their heads, and Eve’s canary-yellow blouse was concealed beneath a faded cotton smock.

  Seconds later the doorbell rang.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Fallon,” came a mournful voice from the doorway. “I was just passing and thought I’d drop in to see how you’re all getting on. I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time for you?”

  “Oh, no,” replied Eve, demurely looking down at the carpet, which she’d just had time to cover with a couple of moth-eaten felt rugs. “But you must take us as you find us, I’m afraid. We don’t get much company, only Hannah here. She’s a friend of young Sam’s, and we treat her like one of the family. We haven’t much, but what we have we like to share, isn’t that right, Sam?”

  Fortunately the woman didn’t see Sam’s face during this heroic speech because she was too busy looking at his saintly mother. The social worker was earnest and middle-aged, with a large, pale face and round glasses resting on a wide, flat nose. She wore a plaid skirt and a pair of sensible brown shoes with laces.

  “Well, I must say it all looks most neat and clean,” she was saying. “Really, I don’t know how you manage. I do admire the way you’re coping. It must be very difficult for you.”

  “There’s no point letting things get you down,” said Eve bravely. “We do very well, all things considered.”

  Nobody could deny that, thought Hannah.

  “We must see about getting you something extra for the children’s clothing allowance before the winter sets in, and I expect you’ll be needing some help with the electricity bill.”

  Eve cast down her eyes and managed a pathetic smile, then turned and winked broadly at Hannah behind the visitor’s back. Hannah did her best to keep a straight face.

  “Well, as I said, this is just an unofficial call, and I’ll be along again on Wednesday morning as arranged.”

  Eve showed the social worker out and reappeared a moment later.

  “Darn woman!” she exclaimed. “Why can’t she give us a bit of warning instead of just popping up like a rat out of a drainpipe? What’s she doing checking up on us on a Saturday, anyway? She should leave decent folk alone to enjoy their weekend!”

  Hannah giggled and watched while the stage routine quickly went into reverse and the room and the twins were restored to normal. Then she looked at her watch. “I really ought to be going now, Mrs. Fallon. Thanks very much for everything.”

  “You’re very welcome, my love. Come again soon. Now, how are you getting home?”

  “I’ll walk to the city center and catch a bus from there.”

  “Do you want Sam to walk with you? It’s getting late.”

  “No, it’s okay, thanks. I think I might just stop at the cathedral on the way home.”

  Sam’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. “What do you want in that old place?”

  “Don’t be rude, Sam. If Hannah wants to go there, it’s no business of yours. Besides, I’m sure it’s a very nice place if you’re fond of that kind of thing. A bit drafty of course and must cost a lot to heat, and as for cleaning it! Well, all I can say is I’m glad it’s not my job. Especially those great windows. Just think of the polishing!”

  Hannah had no idea if the cathedral would even be open at that time on a Saturday evening; all the same, she was hoping to catch another glimpse of the Virgin and Child, just in case those calm, gentle features might shed some light on what had happened yesterday. But when she got there she found a small crowd of people gathered outside the west door and a police car parked on the gravel, its blue light flashing urgently in the darkness.

  “Do you know what’s happened?” she asked a man in a raincoat who was staring vacantly at the police car, his hands in his pockets.

  “Not sure exactly,” he replied. “Something about a missing child.”

  It seemed a funny place to lose a child. Feeling flat with disappointment, Hannah walked to the bus stop.

  That night she dreamed that Eve Fallon was swinging high above the ground on an enormous steel platform, trying to clean the great west window with a bottle of ammonia and a very small sponge.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE THEFT

  AS HANNAH WAS FINISHING dressing on Sunday morning, there was a light tap on her door and she opened it to see her father standing outside, twisting his hands together in front of him and looking uneasy. “Just thought I’d remind you,” he began apologetically. “It’s—”

  “It’s okay, Dad,” said Hannah. “I hadn’t forgotten. It’s the anniversary. O
ctober the thirtieth.”

  “Ah. Knew you’d remember. You always do.”

  “How is she?”

  “Just the same as always—you know how she gets.”

  “Has she, um, said anything?”

  “No, no.” Her father shook his head. “If only she would, it would make it so much easier.”

  “I know. How about you, Dad? Are you all right?”

  “Not too bad. It’s worse for her, of course. Well, just thought I’d mention it.” He turned away, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Hannah sat on the edge of her bed and sighed. Exactly fourteen years since her brother Tom had been born and exactly fourteen years since he had died. And not once in all the time she could remember had her mother mentioned, or even alluded to, the fact. It was just as though the episode had never taken place and Hannah had been simply an only child, which she was, of course. But she might not have been, had things turned out differently.

  Slowly she made her way downstairs and into the kitchen.

  “Good morning!” Her mother’s voice was aggressively cheerful. “Sleep well?”

  “Not bad. What about you?”

  “Like a log! Fancy a poached egg? I’m doing one for your father.”

  “Thanks. I’ll make some toast.” She took two slices of bread and put them in the toaster. Then she fetched two plates from the cupboard. “You not having anything?”

  “Not just yet,” replied Mom brightly. “I might have something a bit later on.”

  The toast was slightly burned and brittle, and as Hannah tried to spread butter on it, it broke up, as if it had already taken on the fragile atmosphere in the room. She felt a spasm of irritation. Why did Mom have to be like this? Why did she have to keep herself so horribly brave all the time? It wasn’t fair for any of them. Then she saw that the brightness in her mother’s eyes was caused by unshed tears, and her heart contracted with pity. She longed to put her arms around her, to comfort her, but knew instinctively that it would be the wrong thing to do just then. One day maybe, but not yet. Everyone had to find their own way of coping with grief—that was what Granny said. This was her mother’s way.

  Breakfast was eaten in an uneasy silence, interrupted by guarded, meaningless remarks from Hannah and her father and occasional bursts of feverish chatter from Mom. When they had finished, Hannah stacked the dishwasher and escaped to her bedroom in relief.

  The first thing she did was to go to her bookcase and reach behind the books on the bottom shelf, taking out a bulging, battered folder made of light-green cardboard that had once been stiff but was now limp and furry at the edges. She sat on the bed and took out a sheaf of drawings. The top ones were on real art paper, but farther back they were on ordinary plain paper and farther back still on the thick, colored construction paper she had used as a very young child. All together there were forty-eight sheets.

  She looked at the top sketch, which was of a slim boy in his early teens with light-brown hair, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and standing astride a bicycle, his hands on the handlebars and his gaze fixed on a point in the middle distance. Behind him was a field with horses in it, and to the right of the picture, in the direction of the boy’s gaze, was a rocky, curving coastline, and beyond that, the sea.

  Hannah smiled at the boy. He couldn’t smile back because he wasn’t looking at her, but she didn’t mind.

  Then, one by one, she went through the other drawings. There he was seated at the computer, playing a complicated-looking game; there he was again, swimming in the sea, battling against the surf on the north Cornish coast. Here he was reading a book, his chin propped on his hand in an attitude of contented absorption, and here he was again in his new high school uniform. As she went farther back he got younger, of course, and the sketching less assured. He was pictured playing ball with his father, picking strawberries with Hannah, going to the supermarket with Mom.

  At the very bottom of the pile was a tattered, grubby scrap of blue construction paper. A figure with a round body, sticks for arms and legs, and huge pink ears grinned back at her from a mouth that seemed to have more than its fair share of teeth. She smiled at it. She had been four years old when she drew that, just after Granny had told her about Tom. She remembered the fascination she had felt at knowing she so nearly had a big brother. Her infant imagination pictured him at the age of six, already tall and strong and bold. Then she drew him, confident and at ease with a pencil even at that age, and as soon as she had drawn him he was real. It was as simple as that.

  Since then she had drawn him many times, at each stage in his life, or rather in the life he might have had. When she was younger she used to talk to him, tell him secrets. She soon discovered that with this big brother she need never feel lonely because he was always there for her. Now that she was older she didn’t often speak to him directly, but the sense of companionship, of sharing in the experience of growing up, remained.

  No one knew about the pictures except herself. It wasn’t that they were secret exactly, just private. There were times when she would have liked to tell Mom, and show her the fine son he was growing into, but she was afraid that her mother might be angry, or worse, made even more unhappy by the forty-eight reminders of what might have been.

  She replaced the drawings, closed the folder, and put it back behind the shelf. Then she unenthusiastically took out her science book and tried to concentrate on writing up an experiment on energy and conduction they had done in class at the beginning of the week. It had involved three rods, of copper, iron, and glass, each with a thumbtack fixed to the end. They had then heated the ends of the rods equally with a bunsen burner and recorded the time taken for each of the thumbtacks to fall off. Part of the reason for the experiment was to see which of the three materials would be most suitable for making a saucepan.

  Hannah sighed and started to draw the diagram. She wasn’t especially interested in the experiment itself, but she always enjoyed diagrams and knew that they would help her grade even if she didn’t get the writing up of the experiment quite right.

  Then a sentence in her textbook caught her eye.

  “In energy transfers, the energy spreads out to more and more places. As it spreads, it becomes less useful to us.”

  Her mind wandered away from bunsen burners and saucepans, back to last Friday afternoon in the cold cathedral. The chill had struck her the moment she’d stood on the enormous mat. But then as soon as she’d started to draw the statues she had felt warm. More than warm. Hot. So hot in fact that when she had finished, she felt faint and had to put her head down. And what had that chaplain said? “Strange place to faint—it certainly can’t be the heat. Seems even colder in here than usual!”

  Heat was energy, she knew that. Hannah pushed the book aside and put her head in her hands, thinking hard. If energy became less useful when it spread out, it was logical to assume that it would be more useful when it was all in one place. Supposing that for those few moments when she drew the Virgin and Child, all the energy in the vast building had focused on her?

  She shook herself impatiently. She must be going crazy to be spooked by a school textbook!

  A smell of cooking wafted into the room, and she went downstairs to set the table for lunch. Nobody was hungry, but Hannah and her father made a brave effort to cope with the roast leg of lamb her mother had insisted on cooking, just as if this were a Sunday no different from any other.

  When the meal was over and cleared away, she left her parents sitting over coffee and went outside for a breath of fresh air. Mom seemed slightly calmer now, but she thought they probably needed to be by themselves for a while. Besides, the atmosphere in the house felt saturated with a sadness that seemed to weigh everything down, like a blanket left on the clothesline in the rain.

  The afternoon was sullen and overcast, with the dull, windless lethargy of a day that had seen no glimpse of sun and wasn’t ever likely to now. She turned left out of the front door and walked briskly away from the direction of the main road, along half a dozen streets all very much like her own, to a little park where two small children were playing on the swings. They were watched by a young man who stood looking awkward and bored, his hands in his pockets, waiting for the time when he could reasonably take the children home, his duty discharged for another week.