Verdigris Deep by Hardinge Frances

Author:Hardinge, Frances [Hardinge, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780230712843
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2008-04-09T06:00:00+00:00

18

Dead Leaves

Ryan did not care whether his parents heard the door bang. The evening air was cool enough that he huffed out small ghost breaths as he broke into a jog. He felt nothing but lightness and clearness, as if someone had rinsed him out with very cold water. His hands were shaking, and he did not know what he was planning, but somewhere Chelle was gasping for breath.

He ran four streets before he saw the lights of the hospital with a throb of relief. But, like many big buildings, the hospital pretended to be closer than it was. By the time he saw the gaudy blue and yellow sign above Basement Bargains, there was a stitch like a tear in his side.

He was not quite sure what he expected – perhaps to find Miss Gossamer had completed her transformation into the mummified cat, slinking off down the street with a squeaking Chelle in her jaws. Instead, on a bench beneath a street lamp he saw Miss Gossamer and Chelle seated side by side. Chelle was stooped over her inhaler, and the old woman’s hand rested gently, reassuringly, upon her shoulder.

Ryan came to a halt. He had never felt so idiotic. Miss Gossamer wasn’t a monster, and no adult could stay angry when confronted by a timid twelve-year-old going into paroxysms of asthmatic terror. They’d talked, both of them had calmed down, he was as useless as ever.

‘. . . and if I’d had a daughter, she’d have been about your mother’s age,’ Miss Gossamer was saying, her words falling light and dry as dead leaves. Ryan didn’t move. He felt that if he stirred he would spoil the tenderness of the moment and crush her sentences beneath his trainers.

‘Do you know,’ continued Miss Gossamer, ‘I can sometimes see the granddaughter I should have had. Just about your age. Reddish gold hair, as mine once was, and a turn-up nose like my mother’s. And big grey eyes. Everybody in my family has grey eyes. She’s wearing green satin shoes with a strap. My old party shoes. I’d have bought a pair just like them for her. Freckles on her forehead and hands, because she plays out in the sun all day. She’s a sunbeam.

‘And I know if I open my eyes she’ll be there next to me, swinging her legs and smiling up at me. But then I do, and she’s not there.’ The old woman’s voice changed and became a strange leaden bleat. ‘No, you’re there. Instead of my beautiful girl, you. You who have no right to exist. And you’re in her seat.’

Chelle’s eyes were wide, and her hands shook as she tried to work her inhaler. High, strained hiccups emerged from her throat, along with another sound, a horrible impersonal wheeze. Nothing was over. Nobody was calm.

‘The worst of it is, your parents are such good people, and they have no idea what you are. Sooner or later I shall have to tell them of course. I can’t leave good people in a house with something like you.

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