Visits

Big piles of mushy leaves everywhere. Yesterday Billy McCausland slipped on one, twisted his ankle and lay there, coped up, bellowing. I was glad. That’s what he gets for callin’ me names.

But now there’s no-one to play with. The Park kids are either off on mid-term holidays or inside where it’s warm. Inside. Where I want to be, with my books, suckin’ sweets, door locked against my brother. I stick a hand into the inside pocket of my duffel coat, finger the ghost of a big bag of sherbet chews. Raspberry flavour. My favourite. I can taste them. Desire makes me head down the driveway. There’s no-one around by the Thompsons, so it’s easy. They have no porch. The empty mineral bottles are crowded together by the back door steps, like a herd of frozen sheep pushin’ into each

other for shelter. I’m doin’ them a favour really as I slip as many of them as I can into my father’s duffel bag. Borrowed from a hook in the garage.

Anyhow it’s not a garage really. Yesterday it was a café and the day before a centre for spies with special powers. Once I’d unstuck myself from the pebble dash on the walls of our bungalow and made it safely across the patio – you could never be sure what was lurkin’ under the cypress bushes – I discovered the garage had become an agent headquarters and I was to be given a mission, a zap gun, and a handsome man spy to travel with. As I nodded and picked up my zap gun, the garage door swung upwards.

“What the blazes are ye doin’? Put that down! I told ye it was dangerous!” My father grabbed my zap gun.

“Lizzie!“ He shouted in the direction of the open dining room window: “Can ye not give that cutty somethin’ tae do. She’s been playin’ with the blow torch again!”

My mother made me dust the china dolls. All those miserable Parisian ladies trapped behind dull porcelain. Mirrored my own misery I thought. Anyhow today I had stayed away from the garage. Except to borrow the duffel bag of course.

So off I go. On my bike to the shop.

“You’re up and out early.” Mrs McGooley who runs the shop up the road. I colour a bit and heave the duffel bag on the counter which smells strongly of newspaper print from the stacks of dailies spread out by the till.

“Have tae bring ye some empties.” I say, already perusin’ the rows of sweetie jars, the boxes of lollies and crisps.

“It’s the deposit yer after then?”

I nod.

She begins to count and names a sum which is pleasin’ to my ears.

“Now then will ye be wantin’ the cash or a trade-in for some sweeties?”

“Sweeties! “ I shout and begin my selection.

Flyin’ through the damp air a whole lovely quarter of an hour of choosin’ sweeties later, all I can think about is the quiet of the front room. Me stretched out under a blanket with a couple of murders to solve and a ton of treats to suck on while I do so. A sherbet fountain, barley sugar, drumsticks, a jamboree bag, raspberry and lemon sherbet balls and a big monster gobstopper. A packet of Tayto Cheese and Onion as a salty contrast. The key to the front room firmly turned in the lock.

So great is my longing that even the sniggers of some of the older Park ones gathered at the foot of the hill leading up to our drive don’t inspire the usual fear.

“There’s aul’ Crafert.” says one of them pullin’ deeply on a fag. “Wanna drag?”

“No thanks.” I say jumpin’off my bike and pushin’ it as hard as I can up the hill before one of them can reach for my anorak and hold me back.

The drive was empty of cars. All gone to work. Nearly there at our own wee driveway, a ball suddenly flies out from behind a low wall and skitters across the tarmac in front of me. I brake sharply.

“Don’t run over me ball! “ shouts Davey McFarland, one of the twins from two doors down.

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