Twenty Questions for Gloria Page 16

  We played game after game of twenty questions (despite Uman’s annoying habit of choosing the most obscure things for me to guess: cherry blossom, tungsten, Bert Monkey from the Noddy books). Or we talked about Bryher and our plan to get there. Not that we had a plan.

  “Could we swim there?” Uman asked.

  “Uman, the ferry takes two and a half hours.”

  “What’s that in breaststroke?”

  “Exactly halfway between too far and drowned.”

  “Actually, I’m a very good swimmer.”

  “Okay,” I said, “so you could manage sixty kilometers?”

  Uman thought for a moment. “I’ve done twenty lengths of a fifty-meter pool.”

  “You had an Olympic-sized pool at your school?”

  “Yes, of course. But I was referring to the one at my house.”

  Later, after the rain had eased off and while it was still light, we strolled down to the harbor. Casual as you like, just a pair of backpackers mooching around. A few people were out and about—visitors, like us, as well as workers in yellow oilskins or high-vis jackets. The air reeked of fish and salt, engine oil and bird poo. The ferry had returned from the Scillies by then and was moored at the end of an old stone quay, ready to depart again in the morning. It was smaller than I remembered but impressive even so, alongside the fishing boats and pleasure cruisers that bobbed and creaked against their ropes. When I was little, waiting there with Mum, Dad, and Ivan to board the ferry, I used to imagine crossing from one side of the harbor to the other by clambering from boat to boat.

  The idea still appealed to me. I bet Uman would’ve done it, if I’d suggested it.

  But we were there on a mission, not to have fun. We reconnoitered—looking for a way to sneak onto the ferry. Not there and then (cleaners were on board, by the look of it, and men were winching crates of supplies onto the upper deck). But later, in the night, we would return. That was the plan we’d settled on: to make the voyage to the Scilly Isles as stowaways.

  “We will get caught,” I said. “You do know that.”

  Uman shook his head. “It’ll be like those times we cut class and just walked out of school—it’s the last thing they’ll be prepared for.”

  “There’ll be nighttime patrols down here. Men with dogs. CCTV cameras.”

  “Dogs with CCTV cameras.”

  “Uman, I’m being serious.”

  “This is Penzance harbor, not Heathrow Airport.”

  “Anyway, they’ll have raised the ramp.” I pointed out the height from the quayside to the upper deck, the gap between the dock and the side of the ship. “How do we get on board with our rucksacks? Even without our rucksacks?”

  “Can I remind you, we’re only doing Plan B because the cards chose it over Plan A. And because you objected to Plan C.”

  Plan A was to plead with a fisherman to take us across in his boat. Plan C had been to buy replica guns and hijack the ferry.

  Uman would have denied it, but I think we were resigned to the fact that we had reached the end of the road with our fugitivery. That we expected to be caught trying to stow away. But that it was better to finish like this—recklessly, daringly—than play hide-and-seek in Cornwall for two or three days till the last of the money was gone.

  —

  It rained again that evening. In need of somewhere dry to hole up for a few hours before putting Plan B into action, we went to the cinema. The film was the latest Hobbit-y thing. Not my kind of movie, or Uman’s, but it was very long, which suited our purposes just fine.

  “What is a hobbit, exactly?” Uman asked as we queued to buy tickets.

  “A cross between a horse and a rabbit,” I said.

  A boy in front of us—about twelve years old—turned and, as if addressing two kids half his age, told us, “A hobbit is a small humanoid creature who lives in a hole.”

  “Oh, I think I used to go out with one of those,” Uman said.

  The young lad gave him a withering look. “I very much doubt it.”

  We cracked up. “Let’s adopt him,” Uman whispered in my ear as the boy turned away.

  Uman detested the film. One hundred and sixty minutes of his life he would never get back, and so on. “Like all fantasy films, it’s escapist nonsense hidden by a smoke screen of CGI.”

  “You don’t like escapism?” I said, trying not to laugh.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “So what have we been doing for the last ten days?”

  “This isn’t an escape from reality,” Uman said. “This is our reality.”

  Was it? I guessed it was, if we chose it to be. But who gets to choose their own reality, really? And for how long, even if they do? It occurred to me, just then, that we were like small children covering our eyes with our hands and imagining that other people couldn’t see us. Or that the rest of the world would leave us alone.

  “The real reality is still out there,” I said. “It doesn’t go away.”

  “I never said it did,” he replied.

  We returned to an alleyway where we’d stashed our rucksacks behind an industrial-sized rubbish bin. They were still there, protected from the rain by their waterproof covers.

  “Stowaway time?” Uman said.

  “Stowaway time.”

  Butterflies-in-the-tummy time. We would pull off an amazing stunt…or be arrested. The prospect of all this coming to an end was too upsetting. I closed my mind to it. Stopped myself from blurting out that we should just hike off into the countryside, pitch the tent, and extend our adventure—our reality—for as long as possible. We could always steal food once the money ran out, couldn’t we? I didn’t say any of that.

  I simply took hold of his hand and said, “I love you, Uman Padeem.”

  “That’s fortuitous, because I love you too, Gloria Jade Ellis.”

  We’d both said I love you a lot since Uman’s declaration by the cash machine in Bristol. As if we’d discovered a fantastic new flavor of ice cream and couldn’t resist scooping another spoonful whenever we felt like it. I’d never been in love before. Or been loved. But already, I knew more about being in love than anyone who had ever lived.

  These latest I love yous sounded more like goodbyes, though. Like neither of us was too sure when we’d get the chance to say it to each other again after Plan B had failed.

  We headed along a pedestrianized street in the direction of the harbor. The wet ground was slick with a sheen of reflected lights. The bars and pubs had already emptied out by then, but a few stragglers were still making their way home or hunting for fast food. Shouts and laughter echoed along the street. A siren sounded somewhere.

  I saw them before Uman did.

  Three guys coming the other way; maybe eighteen years old. They’d been drinking, you could tell. Uman had just asked me to name my top three films of all time and I’d gotten as far as “One, Juno; two, Little Miss Sunshine…” They were ten meters away. The middle one looked at me, then at Uman; nudged his mates and said something I couldn’t hear. But I knew. Like in school, when a fight is about to break out—the threat of violence leaks into the air and leaves a sour taste in your throat even before the first punch has been thrown.

  “Hey, Paki,” the middle one said. “Nice hat, maaan.”

  The other two laughed. The guys’ shirts were translucent with damp, pasted to their skin, each one buttoned right up to the collar. Red shirt, yellow shirt, green shirt. Like a set of traffic lights. I don’t know why that thought occurred to me just then.

  “I’m talking to you.” The middle one again. Ginger hair, cropped short and quiffed with gel; he was shorter and skinnier than his mates—kind of stringy, almost literally bouncing with unspent energy. The other two (twins?) looked like they’d been sculpted out of dough and had their faces painted pink.

  Side by side, the three of them blocked our way.

  “And your third film?” Uman asked me, as if oblivious to them.

  I slowed to a halt, tugging on his hand to make
him stop too, or, I swear, he would’ve just walked right into Ginger.

  “Are we a deaf Paki?” the guy said. “Or a no-speakie-English Paki?”

  Please, Uman, I thought, just for once, don’t be a smart-arse.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, were you addressing me?” Uman said breezily, laying on the poshness. I groaned inside. “If so, then I’m afraid you’ve erred in your assumption of my ethnicity.”

  Jesus Christ. “Uman,” I hissed, squeezing his hand to shut him up.

  “I’ve what?” Ginger said.

  “Is it my accent that confuses you?” Uman asked. “Or my mode of discourse?”

  Ginger hacked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat on the ground between Uman’s feet.

  “You see, my forebears hail from Turkey and various parts of Arabia, and I was born in the UK,” Uman went on. “So, by no categorization could I be Pakistani.” Then, smiling like it was all an amusing misunderstanding, “Unless you used ‘Paki’ as an indiscriminate pejorative.”

  Ginger stared at him, flanked by his mates. His face was shiny with damp, his nipples distinctly visible through the rain-soaked yellow shirt.

  “Please,” I said, my voice shaky, strange-sounding, “we aren’t doing you any—”

  It was so quick the sound of the fist connecting with Uman’s face seemed to happen before the guy swung his arm. A wet smack, like he’d thrown a tomato at a wall.

  Uman looked as surprised by it as I was. I don’t know if the blow was hard enough to have knocked him down anyway or whether the weight of the rucksack on his back unbalanced him. Whatever, he was on the ground like an upturned beetle. As he rolled over, struggling to free his arms from the shoulder straps, Ginger stepped around him and landed a kick in his ribs. Uman’s grunt sounded more animal than human.

  I screamed then, I think. No! or Stop it! or Leave him alone! Something like that. I tried to get between them but one of the Dough Boys grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the way.

  Uman was on all fours, with one arm free; gloopy, bloody strings of snot drooled from his nose and mouth. Ginger kicked him again, full in the face, snapping Uman’s head back and sending his Rasta hat flying.

  “He’s only fifteen!” I yelled.

  Dough Boy One was still holding on to me and I half pulled us both to the ground trying to free myself. I thought Ginger was going to kick Uman again—just go on kicking his head like a football—but he’d bent over him instead and was jabbing and groping at him, like he wanted to pull his jacket off…or as if he was stabbing him in the chest.

  “Nooo!” I was shrieking, demented, my shoulder nearly wrenched out of its socket.

  Did he have a knife? I couldn’t see—just those hands, the rapid flashes of white. I heard someone else shouting, then saw more people gathering around Uman—and, for a moment, I thought a whole mob was going to join in the attack. But it was two thirtysomething couples and the men were right there, in front of Ginger. They looked like rugby players.

  “Come on, then!” Ginger shouted. “You want some as well? You want some?”

  They stood their ground. “I’m ready when you are, son,” the bigger of the two men said, not raising his voice at all. Behind them, one woman was bending over Uman and the other was using her phone, letting Ginger know she was calling the police.

  Dough Boy One loosed hold of me. “Leave it, Craig,” the other one said.

  “Come on, there’s only two of—”

  They were pulling him away. “Leave it.”

  They must have gone then. I don’t know. I was on my knees beside Uman, helping to untangle him from his rucksack—sobbing, saying his name over and over again.

  “It’s okay, love.” I felt a hand on my shoulder. “The ambulance is on its way.”

  —

  I’d been in the waiting area for a couple of hours when a nurse came to tell me I could see him. He wasn’t in the best shape for a conversation, she explained, but I could have five minutes.

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “He has a concussion, so we’re keeping him overnight to monitor that,” she said. “And he’s broken his nose and might’ve cracked a rib or two as well.” She made it sound as if Uman had inflicted these injuries on himself. She looked Chinese; pretty, smaller than me. “Apart from that, it’s just cuts and bruises.”

  “I saw the guy stabbing him,” I said. I caught myself miming Ginger’s hand actions and instantly let my arms drop to my sides.

  I’d said the same to the paramedics when the ambulance arrived; screamed it at them—He’s been stabbed, he’s been stabbed! But there were no knife wounds; the blood down the front of his hoodie had come from his face, they told me. To begin with, I didn’t believe them—they hadn’t examined him properly, they were humoring me, the hysterical girl. Even now, at the hospital, I had to hear it again from the nurse.

  “No,” she said. “He wasn’t stabbed.”

  “I was afraid he…” But I couldn’t get the words out.

  She smiled. “Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

  A curtain had been drawn around Uman’s bed. The head of the bed had been raised a little and, what with the pillows, he was halfway between sitting up and lying down. His top lip was four times the size of the bottom one and six different shades of red, apart from a zip of white stitches. The nose looked like a fat purple leech feeding on the middle of his face. They’d stuffed each nostril with cotton swabs. Two black eyes were already forming.

  Uman was gazing blankly in the direction of the foot of the bed when I slipped through the gap in the curtain, and it took him a moment to register me at his bedside.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching for the hand that wasn’t attached to the IV.

  He half turned his head toward me and gave a sleepy grimace that I figured was the closest he could get to a smile. “Hey, Ms. Inexcelsis,” he croaked. At least, I think that’s what he said. Mostly it was S-sounds and wheezing and pink-tinted spit.

  I stood there and cried for a bit. Uman squeezed my hand, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “I thought you were going to die,” I managed to say at last.

  “Not me.” Dot nee. Then something completely incomprehensible.

  “Uman, are you speaking Danish?”

  He laughed, then immediately winced and clutched at his side. His cracked ribs.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I said.

  When he’d recovered, he whispered, “I dub oo, Doria.”

  I nodded. Grinned. “I dub oo doo, Ubab.”

  —

  DI Ryan asks if the local police questioned me at the scene of the fight, or later, at the hospital.

  “It wasn’t a fight,” I say. “Uman got beaten up.”

  “Did they speak to you?”

  I nod. “At the emergency department, yeah.”

  “And you…told them what?”

  I take her through the lies I handed the young policewoman, with her face full of freckles and such bad eczema on her fingers it was almost painful to watch her grip the pen as she made notes. I’d been sitting in a corner of the waiting area, both rucksacks propped next to me. When I spotted the policewoman approaching the inquiry desk, I moved to another row so she wouldn’t realize the packs and camping gear were anything to do with me. I’d just settled myself into the seat as the receptionist pointed the cop in my direction.

  She led me to a consulting room across the corridor. It smelled of antiseptic. They hadn’t managed to interview my friend yet, the cop told me. At least, they’d tried to but couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. Not even his name.

  “He doesn’t have any ID on him,” she said.

  I tried not to stare at her chapped knuckles. “His name’s Fernando,” I told her. Same name I’d given to the paramedics. “He’s Spanish. From Andalusia.”

  “Surname?”

  “I can’t remember.” When she fixed me a skeptical look, I added, “He’s an exchange student—he’s only been staying with us a couple of days. Ma
rtinez, I think.” I offered a shrug of apology. “Begins with an M, anyway. Or an N.”

  I spun her the rest of it. A fleshed-out version of what I’d said to the woman on the desk when Uman was admitted. I’m not sure why I lied. Maybe I’d become so used to a life of deceit while we had been on the run that it was instinctive to throw in another dodge, another weave. Or maybe I just didn’t want it to end like this. Or at all. During the long wait at the emergency department, I had been fine-tuning the story. The one in which Fernando, who was staying with my family on a school exchange, joined us on a week’s holiday down there in Cornwall. No, it was half-term up north. We’d been to the cinema (the Savoy, to see the latest Hobbit-y thing—yes, just me and Fernando), and as we were walking down the street afterward…I described what happened. Described Ginger—“Craig, they called him”—and the two Dough Boys.

  My dad was on his way to the hospital, I told her. No, I couldn’t recall the name of the holiday cottage or the address but it was somewhere near the train station. My name? I gave her the name of one of my cousins. And her address in Cumbria. Risky, but it was nearly two a.m. by then and I didn’t reckon the police would be checking it out just yet.

  “This police officer didn’t ask for your ID?” DI Ryan says.

  “No.”

  She tuts, shakes her head. Then, after a pause, “You could’ve just given up, at this point. They were keeping Uman overnight, and it was only a matter of time before the medical staff or the police put two and two together.” She looks at me. “You’d more or less resigned yourself to getting caught if you tried to sneak onto the ferry—and besides, Uman was in no fit state to go anywhere. So why not just call it quits? Right there in the hospital.”

  I don’t answer.

  “Come on, Gloria.”

  “I couldn’t quit for both of us.”

  “What d’you mean?” DI Ryan asks.

  “I had to speak to Uman first. I had to know he wanted to quit.”