Twenty Questions for Gloria Read online

  —

  “Spoil everything?” Mum asks.

  DI Ryan doesn’t make her back off this time. They’re both waiting for an answer.

  I can’t bring myself to look at Mum.

  “I was enjoying myself with Uman,” I said. “After those messages, I knew it wouldn’t be fun anymore. It would be serious.”

  “Did you open them?” Mum asks.

  I nod. I tell her—tell them—how terrible I felt, once I had.

  “But you didn’t message back,” DI Ryan says.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Why not? One text wouldn’t have spoiled anything, would it? Just to let them know you were safe.”

  I could lie. Invent a reason why I left those messages unanswered. But I don’t. I explain that Uman came back just then, as I sat holding the phone.

  —

  “Phones,” he said. “I should’ve realized.”

  I could barely make him out in the gloom. “Realized what?”

  “They’ll be able to trace us.”

  “My parents?”

  “If they go to the police, yeah. Which they will do. Inévitablement.”

  I felt sick all of a sudden. Of course they would call the police—report me missing; how could I have been so stupid not to think of it? This went way beyond cross, anxious messages. This wasn’t just a busted curfew.

  “Have you messaged anyone?” Uman asked, sitting down beside me.

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Right. That’s good.”

  “But I should. You know? They’re really wor—”

  “We’ll find a pay phone. First thing tomorrow.”

  “Won’t they be able to trace that as well?”

  “We make the call, then”—he mimed running motions with his fingers—“skedaddle.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Is that what skedaddling looks like?”

  “It does. That’s the internationally recognized sign for it.”

  Serious again, I said, “If I leave it till morning, they’ll be out of their minds by then.”

  “Message them now,” Uman said with a shrug, “we’ll have cops swarming all through these woods in no time, bellowing our names. Is that what you want?”

  I looked at him, his features spooky in the flashlight’s glow. No, it wasn’t what I wanted. The phone was warm in my hand. Could we be traced that easily, that quickly? I had no idea.

  Uman picked up the empty biscuit wrapper. “We should’ve made these last,” he said. “We need to be more military about this whole operation. Rations, strategy, comms.”

  “Comms?”

  “Communications.”

  He stood up, pulled something from his jacket. “This, for a start.” It was his phone. Before I figured out what he was about to do, he gave an almighty swing and hurled it into the darkness. I heard it strike a tree some way off before crashing into undergrowth.

  He gave a celebratory whoop.

  “Give me yours,” he said, a little breathless.

  “Uman—”

  “Gloria, we have to do this.”

  After a moment, I let him take the phone from me and send it spinning into the night.

  QUESTION 11: What did you think you were doing?

  DI RYAN:

  Did you give him your phone, Gloria, or did he take it from you?

  GLORIA:

  I don’t know.

  DI RYAN:

  How can you not know something like that?

  GLORIA:

  You wouldn’t understand.

  DI RYAN:

  Try me. I’m not as thick as I look.

  GLORIA:

  I just mean there’s a difference between giving someone something and letting them take it.

  DI RYAN:

  It’s an interesting distinction.

  GLORIA:

  Also, seeing him get rid of his phone—throwing it into the trees like that. [shrugs] I don’t know.

  DI RYAN:

  If he was prepared to throw away his phone, you felt you should do the same.

  GLORIA:

  Yeah, kind of. It showed we were in it together, you know?

  DI RYAN:

  Yes, I can see why he—

  GLORIA:

  [shakes head] It wasn’t just that.

  DI RYAN:

  What else, then?

  GLORIA:

  I guess…it made me see how easy it was to cut ourselves off from what we’d left behind.

  DI RYAN:

  You wanted to do that, did you? Cut yourself off.

  GLORIA:

  Yeah. No. What I’m saying, it was easier to cut myself off than actually deal with it.

  DI RYAN:

  “Deal with it”—like letting your mum know you were all right?

  GLORIA:

  I know, I know. [pauses] I’m sorry.

  DI RYAN:

  So, anyway, Uman asked for your phone and you gave it to him. Just like that.

  GLORIA:

  Not “just like that,” no. I mean, it was my first smartphone—a Christmas present from Mum and Dad. I’d only had it a few months and I knew they’d go ballistic if I lost it.

  DI RYAN:

  All the same, you gave it to him.

  GLORIA:

  Well, yeah, he didn’t have to snatch it from me or prise it from my fingers or anything. Even as he took it, though, I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. But it was too late by then.

  DI RYAN:

  He threw it into the trees.

  GLORIA:

  Yeah. Then he held up his hand for a high five.

  DI RYAN:

  And you high-fived him?

  GLORIA:

  Yeah. [nods] Yeah, I did.

  DI RYAN:

  [pauses] Okay, let’s move on from the business with the phones. I’d like you to tell us a bit more about that day, Gloria. The decision to go off with him and why you didn’t leave a—

  GLORIA:

  Like I keep saying, I didn’t go off with him—we went together.

  DI RYAN:

  Okay, so…you went off, the two of you. No note or message—you just went.

  GLORIA:

  [nods]

  DI RYAN:

  For the recording, please.

  GLORIA:

  No. We didn’t leave a note.

  DI RYAN:

  Why not? Was that Uman’s idea, too?

  GLORIA:

  No. We didn’t even talk about a note. We were just…taking off, you know? That was the whole point.

  DI RYAN:

  What was the whole point?

  GLORIA:

  Who leaves a note to say they’re going on the run? Anyway, I didn’t even think we were going on the run or anything like that. Not then. Not that morning.

  DI RYAN:

  What did you think you were doing?

  GLORIA:

  I don’t know. I don’t know. I just enjoyed being with Uman so much I didn’t want it to stop. Sleeping in the tent and everything. [pauses] I thought it would be a laugh.

  MRS. ELLIS:

  A laugh.

  GLORIA:

  Yeah, taking off somewhere, just the two of us. Skipping school. I thought it was only for a couple of days. Sunday, Sunday night, Monday. We’d be back home by Monday evening.

  DI RYAN:

  That was the plan, was it? Just a day or two.

  GLORIA:

  Yes. No, not really. We never even talked about how long we’d be gone for. I just…assumed.

  DI RYAN:

  You weren’t intending to stay away as long as you did. Is that right? Neither of you.

  GLORIA:

  No.

  DI RYAN:

  But your parents wouldn’t have known that, would they?

  GLORIA:

  [no response]

  DI RYAN:

  You don’t come home on Sunday, you’re missing overnight—they call Tierney’s parents and discover you were never even there the night before. T
hen, Monday morning, there’s a call from the school asking why you weren’t in lessons.

  GLORIA:

  [no response]

  DI RYAN:

  You can imagine what they went through in those twenty-four hours, can’t you?

  GLORIA:

  [quietly] Yes.

  MRS. ELLIS:

  We didn’t have a clue where you were, Lor, or who you were with. Even if you were still alive.

  GLORIA:

  I know, and I’m really sorry. I am. But…I was with Uman. It wasn’t like some guy had dragged me into a car and driven off with me.

  MRS. ELLIS:

  For all we knew, that might’ve been exactly what happened. And, even once the police said you’d gone off with that lad, it hardly put our minds at rest. Not after what he’d done—

  DI RYAN:

  Okay, Mrs. Ellis. Let’s not—

  GLORIA:

  It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like that. I don’t care what you say he did before, you’re totally wrong about Uman.

  QUESTION 12: Are you serious about this?

  I slept badly. Being in a tent in Drop-Bear Woods was different from sleeping in his grandmother’s garden. For one thing, we were fugitives now. For another, the creaks, scuffles, and sighs of dead-of-night woodland are more disturbing than the breeze rustling a suburban hedge, or a cat yowling, or the occasional swoosh of a car. Towns should be scarier because towns have people in them—and people are way more dangerous than any creature you might meet in an English wood. But I was spooked that night. By where we were, but also by what we were doing.

  Uman acted like the hurling of our phones into the trees had been liberating—setting us free. During the night, though, I didn’t feel liberated. I felt cut off. Guilty, too. If I’d had a bad night, what must Mum’s and Dad’s have been like?

  I’d more or less decided to tell Uman I was going home.

  I woke early. Phoneless, I had no idea what time it was, but when I carefully unzipped the flap so as not to wake Uman and poked my head out, a smoky just-after-dawn light seeped through the woods, turning the trees into charcoal sketches. All was quiet, except for the songs of unseen birds. Tired and just-woken grumpy as I was, the effect was calming.

  A movement caught my eye. A few meters away, a family of rabbits loped about the clearing—two adults, browsing, and four young, play-fighting. I held my breath, kept dead still. For a moment, they carried on, oblivious to my presence, then one of the adults spotted me and all six scampered into the bracken, vanishing so quickly and so totally that I might’ve imagined them. Thirty seconds, a minute? But those rabbits were the most magical thing I’d ever seen.

  I waited in the opening of the tent in the hope they’d come back. They didn’t.

  Never mind. I was still smiling inside at the sight of them. At how beautiful the woods looked, now that the darkness had been erased by the breaking of a new day.

  I found somewhere to pee. By the time I returned, Uman had pegged the “apron” (his word) of the groundsheet in front of the tent and was setting out a breakfast of crackers, Nutella, and a carton of orange juice we’d left outside overnight so it would be chilled. To judge by his puffy eyes, he’d slept as poorly as me. But the grin when he saw me lit up his features.

  “Is this the life, Ms. Inexcelsis?” he said, gesturing at the woods. “Or is this the life?”

  As we sat and ate, I told him about the rabbits.

  It wasn’t until we’d cleared away the breakfast things and brushed our teeth and washed our faces as best we could with some of our remaining drinking water, that I said, “Uman, I wish you hadn’t thrown our phones away.”

  He nodded. He had a smear of toothpaste in the corner of his mouth and his bangs were spiked with damp. “I know. It was a bit rash, wasn’t it?”

  His response surprised me. I’d expected him to justify what he had done.

  “We could try to find them,” he said, gazing in the direction in which he’d flung them.

  “Shall I come out with the needle-in-a-haystack cliché,” I said, “or do you want to?”

  Uman spread his hands wide, hung his head. “Sorry. It’s what I do—I act on impulse and worry about the consequences later.”

  “You worry about consequences?”

  “Actually, no, you’re right. I just do the thing, whatever the thing is.”

  Looking back, I can see how childlike it is to behave like that. You have the urge to draw on the wallpaper? Just do it. You want to push your kid sister over in the paddling pool? Just do it. You fancy eating an entire two-liter tub of ice cream? Just do it. To hell with what happens afterward. At the time, though, I saw it differently. Uman’s impulsiveness. It reminded me of how I used to be. Made me long to be like it again.

  “A free spirit,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, just something Mum said about me and my brother one time on holiday. You two, you’re a pair of free spirits floating on the breeze. I was only about eight, so I had no idea what she meant, but the phrase stuck in my mind. It made me think of a dandelion—you know, the seed-head thing—being carried away on the wind like a fairy.”

  “If ever we buy a boat,” Uman said, “we should call it that: Free Spirit.”

  Buy a boat. Right. I smiled but kept the thought to myself.

  I slotted my toothbrush back in the toiletry bag, pulled out the deodorant, and reached under my top to give each armpit a blast. A shower would’ve been good. Better still, a soak in a hot bath, followed by a looong sleep. In a soft, warm bed. All the same, it was pleasant, standing there in the woods, dazed with tiredness, breathing in the fresh air.

  Difference, that’s what it was. It was the first morning of its kind in my entire life.

  “We’ll find a pay phone, if you like,” Uman said. He’d dragged his rucksack out of the tent and was repacking it. “Let your folks know you’re alive and well.”

  I took a breath, then another. “Actually, Uman…I was thinking of going home.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He paused, as if frozen in a game of musical statues. Coughed a couple of times. He did that when he was stressed, I’d noticed. The damage to his lungs was genuine, but sometimes the cough was a kind of nervous tic. He resumed packing. “We can do that, sure. Just head back to Shipley and hop on a train.” He might’ve been talking to the rucksack. “With a bit of luck, you’ll be at school in time for roll call.”

  “You’re disappointed in me, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes you are—I can hear it in your voice,” I said. “You can’t even look at me.”

  He stopped fiddling with the rucksack and stared directly at me. “Was it the crackers?” Uman indicated the spot where we’d had breakfast. “Me having more than my fair share—that’s the real reason you want to go back, isn’t it?” He frowned. “Or maybe the snoring?”

  “You don’t snore,” I said.

  “No, but you do. I’m wondering if you’re leaving from a sense of embarrassment.”

  “I do not—”

  “Gloria, I am disappointed,” Uman said. “But not with you.” He shrugged. “I’m just disappointed this is coming to an end before we gave it a chance.”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant the adventure…or us.

  “How long did you think we’d be away?” I asked. “A few days? A week?”

  “I don’t know. Until we felt like stopping, I guess. Why, how long were you expecting?”

  I told him I hadn’t given it any thought. Which was true. I hadn’t really considered any of it: what we were doing, why we were doing it, how long we’d be gone, where we’d go. The fact that we’d be missed, that people would worry about us and come looking for us.

  “It is crazy, isn’t it?” I said.

  Uman nodded. “Yes. It is.”

  “Good-crazy or bad-crazy?”

  “Both, I’d say.” Then, “Come on, I know it doesn’t matter anymore, but let me show you how t
o disassemble and pack away a pop-up tent.”

  Working together, we took longer than if Uman had done it by himself, but it was fun, in a slapstick kind of way—especially when the tent sprang back open and whacked him in the face, or when we broke off to play Throw Tent Pegs at a Tree, to see who’d be the first to get one to stick in the trunk like a knife-thrower’s knife. (Neither of us managed it.)

  One or two people were on the canal towpath as we headed back. A jogger, his face shiny-purple; a woman walking six different breeds of dog. Smoke writhed from the chimney of a red-and-green houseboat moored near the lock: Annabelle. Not Free Spirit. I wondered what it would be like to live on a houseboat, traveling from place to place, casting off whenever you felt like it and chugging to somewhere new. Dad had lived in a trailer for a bit during his trying-to-crack-the-American-music-business phase and said it was the best time of his life.

  Another glorious day in the making. Still not quite into June, and spring was doing a fair impersonation of summer.

  “I’ll walk with you to the station,” Uman said.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “See you off. Say goodbye and all that.”

  I stopped. He took another step or two then came to a halt as well; half turned to look back at me. What? his expression said. Puzzled, not irritated. We were close to Salt’s Mill; Uman was framed by the arch of the bridge that took the road over the canal just there.

  “Aren’t you coming back to Litchbury?” I asked.

  He looked a little sheepish. “No. Sorry.”

  “What are you—?”

  But I knew exactly what he would be doing instead. He’d be going off with his rucksack and his tent—somewhere, anywhere. He’d be doing this, giving this a chance. Without me.

  I cried then. I was tired. So tired and so overwhelmed by everything. Why did it have to be so complicated?

  By the time I’d finished and he had released me from a long, tight hug and I’d dried my face on my cuff, I had changed my mind about going home. I wanted to go with him after all.