We got in the van.
“Where’s your school cardigan?” said Dad.
Luke shook his head and said, “Dad, I think there’s something wrong with Cally.”
16.
I WOKE UP IN THE MORNING IN MY OLD BED IN a new room. I could smell pancakes. Mum used to make pancakes mean: it’s raining and it’s going to rain all day so let’s stay in and eat goodies and watch telly. Or: it’s a special day, like your birthday.
I crept out into the hallway. Dad and Luke were in the kitchen area talking about me. They weren’t making pancakes.
Dad said, “She’s just taking the sponsored quiet a bit too far. You know what she’s like.”
“Sponsored silence. That was over a week ago; we gave her the money. Remember?”
“What about yesterday at the park? Surely she said something then.” He sighed. “Where did I put the milk?”
“Dad, I’m telling you, she didn’t say a word. I don’t think she’s said anything since you showed us the flat last week.”
“She’s just playing one of her silly games.”
“Well, this game’s even longer than Monopoly.”
You can only let people talk about you for so long. I went into the kitchen area. Dad said good morning, which he never says. He asked me how I was, asked me if my throat was sore. Then he handed me a jug.
“Pop downstairs and ask our new neighbours if they can spare us some milk.”
Dad let me out of the door, but left it open. I heard shuffling behind the door and I knew they were listening.
From our flat you go down the stairs, round the corner a bit and then there is a long passageway to the back yard. In the passageway is the door to Flat 1. Sweet frying smells squeezed out around their shiny red door.
There was a spongy handle and a drum for a doorknocker. A stick was hanging from a piece of string pinned to the top of the door frame. I looked at it for ages. Not because I didn’t work out straight away what you had to do. I just didn’t know what tune to play. On the TV shows that Dad watches, the police bang hard three times, or five times if it’s very serious. So I didn’t want to do that. Then there’s a bang-de-bang-bang that you do when you know them. Four quick knocks sounds like a salesman or someone complaining. One bang wouldn’t sound right. It might sound like someone dropping something.
Then the door opened. A barefoot lady with fair hair tied in a ponytail was holding a plate covered in silver foil.
“Oh! Hello!” she said, bright and happy. “You must be from upstairs. I was just on my way up. We made you some pancakes.” She lifted the foil. “Hope there’s enough. How many of you are there?”
I held up three fingers.
“What’s that you’ve got there?”
I showed her the jug.
“Ah, I see,” she said, taking a step back into their flat. “You can never find anything on the first morning in a new place. Never mind, I’m sure we’ve got plenty to spare.”
She shifted a blue bag on the floor by the door with her foot and beckoned me in.
Their flat wasn’t like ours. The walls were yellow and orange and green. Bits of silver foil fluttered around plastic tubes and wires. There were statues, feathers, stones and bark scattered like junk all round the window sills. Shelves were stacked sky-high with boxes and games and models. Things shimmered and glowed and made you want to touch them. It made you think magic goes on there.
There were sponges taped on the corners of the table, a big wooden table where a boy was sitting. When I first saw him, I just saw the dark shadows around his eyes in his moon-coloured face, his long black fringe bunched up by a pair of blue swimming goggles he’d pushed up on his forehead. His thin fingers felt round the bits and pieces of something he was making.
His mum stamped on the wooden floor. “Sam,” she called. He rolled his head towards us. Then she patted his shoulder, took his hand and touched different parts of his fingers, a bit like typing on a keyboard.
“Our new neighbour’s here,” she said, tapping away. “It’s a girl about your age. She looks very nice.” She smiled and tapped again, said, “She’d like some milk.”
She took the jug from me and put Sam’s hands round it. She snapped the goggles off his head and rolled her eyes. Sam went into the kitchen area, running his hand against the wall on the way. His body swayed as he touched the things around him with the backs of his hands, his elbows, his hips, making contact all the time. Carefully he poured the milk with his fingers around the rim of the jug. When the milk touched his fingers, he stopped pouring and brought the jug back to his mum.
His mum said, “I’m Mrs Cooper and this is Sam; he’s eleven. He’s blind and mostly deaf, but otherwise he’s just like you and me.” She smiled and took my hand. “He likes to meet people in his own way. What’s your name?”
I ran up the stairs. Without the milk. Without the pancakes. Shut my bedroom door and went under the covers. I didn’t want to say my name. Sam didn’t seem like me at all, and I didn’t like it when his hand reached towards my face.
Soon there was a knock at our front door and Dad opened it. I heard Mrs Cooper talking, telling him who she was and she had a boy called Sam, and saying, “Here’s some milk. Is that enough? And we made you some pancakes. Hope you like them.”
The door closed and Luke was whispering, “You should’ve asked her if Cally said anything.”
Dad sighed, “Well, she must’ve done; we got some milk, didn’t we?”
Soon there was another knock. Mrs Cooper.
I heard her say, “Sorry to bother you again, it’s just that Sam asked me to give these to your little girl.”
Dad came in my room and stood there for a while. I stuck my hand out from under the duvet and Dad dropped some things in it. I felt them: two flat circles of plastic with pointed grooves all round the edge. Little cogs from a machine.
17.
I ONLY WENT BACK DOWN TO FLAT I BECAUSE Luke was going on and on at me, trying to make me speak, jumping out and trying to scare me, putting a cold key down my back. He was really getting on my nerves. And besides, when you’ve got two plastic cogs in your pocket, it makes you think that the thing they belong to is not going to work without them.
I crept downstairs without my shoes on, without telling Dad, while he was head first emptying another cardboard box.
I looked at the yellow skin of the drum for ages and listened at the door. I hoped it would just open by itself. I waited and waited. Did my twelve times table a few times. Waited some more. I decided two bangs would do.
I heard a happy shriek coming from inside.
Mrs Cooper opened the door wide. The blue bag was on the floor again, right in the doorway. Mrs Cooper rolled her eyes and kicked it out of the way. Sam was feeling along some shelves. He pulled out a cardboard box from a big stack, knocking some other things on to the floor. He said something, but his voice was strange and I couldn’t understand him. He held the box up. It was upside down but I could see very clearly what it was.
Mrs Cooper closed the door behind me and whispered, “He can’t see and he doesn’t hear much, but I promise you he won’t bite.”
Sam was already at the dining table. He reached out and dragged another chair so it was right next to him. He wasn’t really taking any notice of me. So I leaned on the chair.
He tipped the