Twenty Questions for Gloria Page 11

  “Please,” I said. “If you still want me to, I mean.”

  “Are you serious about this?” Uman asked quietly.

  “Yes.” I nodded. Laughed. “Yeah, I absolutely am.”

  —

  “He played that situation very well, wouldn’t you say?” DI Ryan asks.

  I don’t give her any kind of answer at all.

  —

  Where to next, that was the issue. We couldn’t stay put, Uman reckoned, in case they’d picked up a signal from one of our phones before we chucked them.

  “You’ll have been reported missing by now,” he said.

  You, not we. Of course. Uman’s grandmother barely realized he lived with her, so she wasn’t likely to wonder where he was. No one else would, either. He didn’t have anyone else. As for school, his attendance had been so erratic I doubted they’d raise the alarm right away. Most likely, the school would contact his “family” first of all. His grandmother, in other words. Good luck with that conversation, I thought.

  “The police won’t be searching for you for days, will they?” I said. “I mean, if you were doing this on your own they wouldn’t even know you were missing.”

  “I suspect your analysis is correct.”

  “So you’d be better off without me.”

  “Oh, well: (a) no, and (b) no.”

  “What a and b? I only said one thing.”

  “Point a, I wouldn’t be better off without you because this fugitivery malarkey—and indeed my life in general—is much more fun with you around. And point b—what the hell is the use of being on the run if no one’s coming after you?”

  We were sitting in a skuzzy bus shelter, sharing a can of Red Bull we’d bought at a gas station on the main road, a short walk from Salt’s Mill. We weren’t waiting for a bus; it was just somewhere to sit. A girl about our age in school uniform stood at the other end of the shelter, texting, nodding along to whatever was playing through her earpieces.

  “Do you mean that?” I asked.

  “Gloria, hide-and-seek with no seeker is like a raspberry roulade minus the raspberries.”

  “No, that your life is more fun with me around.”

  Uman had raised the can to his mouth; he lowered it without drinking. “Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “I meant that too.”

  We sat in silence while I figured out whether to be pleased or embarrassed. The morning rush hour was under way. None of the drivers paid us any attention; to them, we were just two kids at a bus stop. How could the start of our day be so extraordinary while theirs was so same-old, same-old? Look at us! I wanted to yell. Look at what we’re doing!

  Before the silence became awkward, I said, “Raspberry roulade minus the raspberries?”

  “I know—an infinite number of similes and that’s the best I can come up with.”

  We drank Red Bull. The shelter vibrated against my back as a truck rumbled by.

  “We should put some distance between us and Litchbury—between us and here,” Uman said. He made a zigzag motion with his hand. “Dodge and weave. Throw them off the scent.”

  “What, wade along a river for a few kilometers to lose the tracker dogs?” I said.

  “If this was a movie, it would certainly be an option.”

  We had a “window” before they picked up our trail, he reckoned. Okay, so I was officially missing—for maybe eight or ten hours—but teenagers stropped out on their parents all the time. The investigation wouldn’t kick into gear until this morning, when my absence overnight was followed by a no-show at school. Even once they’d broadcast an appeal, though, it would take time for witnesses to come forward; then the police had to sort out the genuine sightings from the rest. It would take longer still to trawl through the CCTV at Litchbury station to figure out which train we’d caught. Then they’d have to work out where we’d got off.

  “For the time being,” Uman said, “they have absolutely no idea where we are.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “From crime novels, mostly. And TV dramas.”

  “Right.” The thought of Mum and Dad surfaced again. This was no TV drama. “I have to find a pay phone,” I said.

  “Yeah, we will. We’ll find one.”

  We’d kept an eye out for one since leaving the woods, but there’d been nothing at Salt’s Mill or along the main road. The guy who’d served us at the gas station was no help. (Who uses a phone booth these days?) It even occurred to me to ask the schoolgirl in the shelter if I could borrow her phone. I never got the chance, though.

  A bus drew up at the stop just then, its doors clattering open with a pneumatic hiss.

  “Come on,” Uman said, grabbing my hand. “Let’s get on.”

  —

  The bus might’ve been headed anywhere, for all we cared. We were on the move again, that was the thing. We were dodging. Weaving.

  “Two tickets, please,” Uman said, placing a ten-pound note in the tray.

  The driver gave him a look. “A destination would be helpful, pal.”

  “Regrettably, I am unable to furnish you with that information.”

  I cut in, asking for two day-riders, and bundled Uman inside the bus. We stowed our rucksacks in the luggage bay under the stairs and made for the top deck.

  “Well done,” I whispered as we sat down. “That driver won’t forget us in a hurry.”

  “Ah, good point.”

  “I am unable to furnish you with that information. Jesus.”

  Uman indicated the tickets in my hand. “What’s a ‘day-rider,’ anyway?”

  “Seriously? Have you never been on a bus before?”

  “I believe our chauffeur may have overtaken one once.”

  I laughed. “You are such a snob.”

  Uman looked pleased with himself. Then his expression changed. “What if this bus is going to Litchbury? That would be a complete and utter catastrophe.”

  It wasn’t going to Litchbury. The road signs said the bus was headed for Bradford city center. Cities were good, according to Uman. Cities had transport links to other cities. They had pay phones, too. But Uman wasn’t thinking about that right then.

  “A few hours from now,” he said, “we could be anywhere in the country.”

  We were in such a hurry that morning. Move, move, move. Putting as much distance—as many dodges and weaves—between ourselves and Litchbury as we could, as soon as possible. It wasn’t just Uman. I’d woken in the woods ready to go home—yet, once I’d changed my mind, it was as if the thought of quitting had never entered my head…and now I couldn’t hit the road fast enough. Or maybe (and this is more likely) I knew, not-so-deep in my subconscious, that if I didn’t throw myself into the fugitivery thing—if I didn’t really go for it—the doubts and guilt would leak back in. And I wouldn’t do it at all.

  So there we were. In Bradford. Scurrying from place to place, almost as if we were being chased along the streets by a posse of vigilantes.

  We got off at the bus-and-train interchange (called Interchange, which Uman thought “supremely imaginative”) and merged with the morning hordes. First thing we did was hit the shops to stock up on rations and buy a map of the country on which to plot Operation Escape.

  Then we changed our appearance.

  “Clothes,” I said.

  “What about them?”

  “When people go missing, the police issue a description of what they were wearing.”

  “Yes. Yesyesyes. Gloria, you have a whiff of genius about you.”

  We’d taken out a chunk of cash in Litchbury but couldn’t risk using our cards again for fear of being traced, so we had to make our money last. A charity shop, then. We found one and kitted ourselves out in secondhand sets of clothes and snuck into some public toilets to change. I’d chosen an emo look: black top, black denim jacket (too big), gray-and-black stripy leggings. As for Uman, he’d gone for a purple zip-up hoodie, pale-green T-shirt, and orange cords.

  “Nice one,” I said. “Very low prof
ile.”

  “I’ve always had a thing for secondary colors.”

  “Your mind doesn’t quite work like other people’s, does it?”

  He grinned. “You noticed?”

  Our own clothes, we bagged up and left on the doorstep of a different charity shop. Apart from the spare sets, which we hadn’t worn yet, and my fake pilot’s jacket, which I couldn’t bear to lose. I buried it in the bottom of my now-crammed-to-bursting rucksack.

  —

  DI Ryan interjects. “Did you dye your hair that morning, as well?”

  “Yep. Right after.”

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “We drew cards. Highest dyes, lowest cuts. Uman drew a three, I drew a nine.”

  —

  We bought scissors and dye and returned to the toilets, shutting ourselves inside the more spacious disabled cubicle. By the time we were done, my light-brown hair was carroty red (the blond came later, I tell DI Ryan) and Uman’s long tresses had been trimmed to a stubbly crew cut. Cutting his hair for him had been nice, intimate; but it broke my heart to see all that lovely, silky hair swirl away with one flush.

  “Hey,” I said, running my fingers over his scalp, “you are a boy after all.”

  “Does that mean you’d be prepared to kiss me now?” Uman asked.

  “I was before, actually. Given the chance.”

  So we did. Right there, in the public toilets: our first kiss.

  —

  Back at Interchange, wearing our charity clothes and startling new hairstyles.

  It was time to make that call.

  I went into a phone booth while Uman waited a little way off, watching me. My palms were clammy, my breathing too fast. Had I even used a pay phone before? Not that I could remember. It took me a moment to figure out what to do, where to put the coins.

  I dialed almost all of the number of the home landline before hanging up. Clumsily, banging the phone too hard in its cradle, so it popped out and swung on the end of the cord and I had to replace it properly.

  Outside, Uman was doing his tightrope-walker impression along the curb. I frowned through the glass at him to stop but he kept right on.

  On a regular morning, Mum and Dad would already have been at work by that time. But this wasn’t a regular morning. With me missing, they’d have stayed at home, wouldn’t they? Waiting for the phone to ring. I imagined one of them—Mum, probably—grabbing the handset as soon as it did and saying my name before I’d even had a chance to speak.

  Gloria, is that you? Oh, thank God—where the hell are you?

  I couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face actually talking to her. Telling her I was fine, I was safe, but I wasn’t coming home yet. Couldn’t face explaining myself. The hundred questions she’d have for me. Or the sound of what I was doing to her—to them—echoed in Mum’s tone of voice. In her tears.

  All the same, I couldn’t leave that booth with the call unmade. They had to know.

  I retrieved the coins, picked up the handset. Dialed again. Only, this time I called the “office” phone in Dad’s study in the loft conversion. They’d hear it ringing—just about—from two floors below (I pictured them in the living room, or kitchen), but if I was quick, there was no way either of them could reach the phone in time to pick up before I’d finished my message. Unless Dad was sitting at his desk.

  He wasn’t.

  “Hey, it’s me. I’m okay and nothing’s happened. Nothing bad. I’m just…not coming home for a bit, that’s all.” Then, after a pause, “Sorry.”

  I hung up. Pressed my hands against the sides of the booth to stop my trembling.

  QUESTION 13: Well, were you?

  With the call made, the message left—our location traceable (for all we knew)—it was time to skedaddle. Time, once more, to consult the Cards of Destiny, as we’d decided to call them. Pink-and-purple stripes, I told myself as I rejoined Uman outside the booth.

  “You speak to them?” he asked.

  “Voice mail.” I repeated what I’d said in the message.

  He gave my arm a rub. “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m good.”

  “That’s your ‘good’ face? All I can say is, I wouldn’t like to see your—”

  “Don’t, Uman. Please.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  I pushed my newly dyed red hair out of my eyes. “Let’s do the thing with the cards.”

  In a quiet corner of the station concourse, we shuffled the pack. We cut. The cards said train. We cut again and they said west.

  So by midmorning we were in Manchester.

  Not that we spent long there, because another straight cut—stay or move on—told us to move on, and a deal picked southwest. Uman opened the map of the UK and drew a line with his finger while I noted down the place names along the route. We dealt again.

  “Church Stretton,” he said, as if practicing a phrase in a foreign language. “Heard of it?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “That bit of the map is very green. And remote.”

  “Green is good,” I said. “Remote is good. And, look, there’s a train station.”

  By that afternoon, we had well and truly skedaddled—leaving Manchester and Bradford and Shipley far behind—and were hiking into the hills where England begins its slow climb to the Welsh mountains.

  Litchbury was two hundred kilometers away, give or take. It felt like a thousand.

  As for the message I’d left on Dad’s answering machine, that call might’ve been several days ago, not several hours.

  “I was a coward,” I said. “I should’ve spoken to them.”

  “What matters is, you told them what they needed to know.”

  “They’ll be so worried, though. So mad at me.”

  “They’ll be so relieved to have heard your voice,” he said, drawing me into a hug. I let myself believe him. Let myself be hugged a little longer.

  We made camp at the bottom of a steep-sided valley, a couple of hours’ walk from Church Stretton. For the last hour, we hadn’t seen any people at all. Just sheep. Hundreds of sheep, strewn around the slopes like torn-off scraps of cloud that had fallen from the sky and become snagged in the gorse. I heard them bleating outside the tent that night.

  Our second night as fugitives.

  Snuggling up to Uman, I whispered, “Do I really snore?” But he was already asleep.

  —

  We spent a week in the Stretton Hills. I’ve always thought of myself as a town girl—never been fussed about the countryside or “getting back to nature” and all that—but those six days of hiking and camping with Uman were just the happiest time.

  Each night, we pitched the tent somewhere different. Dodging and weaving. It was fun breaking and remaking camp, walking around, searching for ever more obscure hideaways. There were plenty to choose from; once you leave Church Stretton and head into the hills, the hamlets and farmsteads are few and far between. These, we skirted around. We avoided roads and lanes, sticking to tracks and footpaths, or just striking out over open moorland where the heather was shin-deep and meadow pipits and whinchats scattered ahead of us like children playing tag. The only people we encountered were ramblers and off-road cyclists, a horse rider or two, and an occasional farm worker, none of whom showed any particular interest in us. A wave, a hello, a cheery smile. That was all. Sometimes a walker paused to ask directions or to comment on the weather, and one time a whiskery old guy loading feed into a trough nodded at Uman’s clothes and said he hoped “all them bright colors” didn’t startle the sheep.

  Apart from that, we had the land to ourselves. Just us, the sheep, and the birds. At night, we’d hear the scuffling of what might have been foxes or badgers foraging near the tent.

  To plot our bearings, we used Uman’s compass and a local map we’d bought at the tourist information center in Church Stretton the day we arrived off the train. Although we continually moved on, we made sure to stay within range of the town so we could sneak back
every couple of days to buy food and drink. I say “we,” but only one of us would go on a food run. Even with radically altered appearances, two teenagers together—a dark-skinned guy with a white girl—might arouse curiosity in a small town.

  We were news, by then. On our third day in the area, I’d flicked through a paper to see if we were in there. We were. Main story on page five: CONCERN GROWS FOR RUNAWAY TEENS, with side-by-side head shots of Uman and me (mine was a hideous school photo, which made me look like my lips had been glued shut). I read the article right there in the supermarket.

  “Police are increasingly concerned for the safety of two fifteen-year-olds who appear to have run away together,” it began, before giving details of the last “confirmed sighting”—by the driver of a bus from Shipley to Bradford. Good. It meant we hadn’t been traced beyond Bradford yet. The story mentioned my phone message, then gave our descriptions (before the clothes-and-hair makeover) and a quote from the head of Litchbury High, calling me “bright, gifted, and popular” and a “valued member of the school’s community.” Not much about Uman. He was new to the school, had a “troubled background” (no details), and had “exerted an influence over Gloria in the short time they have been friends.” Then, a quote from Mum. “Gloria, sweetheart, please get in touch. We love and miss you so much and want you back with us, where you belong. You’re not in any trouble—we just want you to come home.”

  I put the newspaper back on the rack. Shut myself in the toilets for a bit so no one would see me crying. When I’d composed myself, I bought food and drink and hiked back to the tent.

  I told Uman about the article. When I said what they’d written about him he nodded, like he’d been expecting something of the sort. “It didn’t say anything else about me?”

  “No.”

  Another nod. “So I’m the bad guy, then.”

  He said it like he was joking, or as if he wasn’t bothered, but I could tell it upset him.

  “Uman, they don’t know you. Not like I do.” I smoothed my palm over his short hair. I’d loved his hair when it was long, but since it had been shorn off I was addicted to stroking it. “They don’t know us.”

  We unpacked the shopping in silence. I thought he was slipping into another low mood, like that time he shut down on me for a bit when I was showing him around Litchbury. But, as he stowed away the last of the food, he asked if I was okay. Like I was the one who’d gone quiet.