February (14 page)

I walked on, head down, and passed a loud group of people eating in one of those cosy twenty-four-hour cafés. I was so hungry and wondered for a moment how they’d react if I just walked on up to their table, sat down and started nodding and laughing along with them while helping myself to a big handful of their hot chips.

I was sure it wouldn’t go down well.

And how would the waiter react if I sat by the
table next to them and started reading through the menu?

I knew that wouldn’t go down well either. The problem wasn’t just that I didn’t have enough money. I looked a mess. I badly needed a shower, my clothes were dirty, I knew I must have stunk. I remembered reading about the Vikings and how when somebody did something really bad, their forehead was branded with a wolf’s head and they were declared an outlaw—no longer part of the human community. No-one was allowed to give them food or shelter, or basically have anything to do with them. My grubby clothes, dirty face and hair were my wolf’s mark.

I huddled in the corner of an open-sided shed in the disused railway yards. I tried to direct my attention away from my dark and defenceless position, and my rumbling stomach, and on to the new lead with the Angel.

It was raining. I dragged a few sheets of rusting corrugated iron and leaned them against the poles that held up the shed. They stopped some
of the driving rain hitting me. I pulled my sleeping-bag up tight and tried to keep dry. The roar of the trains under the wind and rain kept me awake for a long time, until finally I fell asleep, too tired to care.

I sat up, sore from lying on the hard ground. The recurring nightmare had shaken me from sleep once again. The white toy dog and the screaming child and the crushing weight of desolation … Why was this plaguing me?

My sleeping-bag was soaked. My right shoulder was still aching and swollen, it just wasn’t healing. I hoped it wasn’t infected.

I got to my feet and rolled the sleeping-bag up and left it tucked into the corner of the shed. I’d only managed a couple of hours sleep but had to get moving.

The sky was lightening and a few people were moving around the city streets already. I walked quite a distance from the railway yards and found myself in an alley where a shopkeeper was unloading fruit and vegetables from the back of a ute. He vanished inside the shop
wheeling an upright trolley. He deftly pulled the roller down with his foot, leaving a box of grapes sitting outside on the footpath.

When I was in Year 1 I pinched Tommy Garibaldi’s aeroplane sharpener when he wasn’t looking. He was the kind of kid that always came to school with the coolest, newest things that everyone else wanted. Before I took it I figured he wouldn’t even miss it, but I felt so bad about it afterwards that I snuck back into class during recess to put it back in his pencil case. I hadn’t pinched anything since then. But now I had no hesitation. I scooped up the box of grapes and ran.

I stopped running when I reached a small park. Lorikeets were squabbling in the trees above me and I sat down near a big gum tree, ripped the lid off the box and pounced on those grapes. I devoured them like a pig at a trough, and before long I lay back on the grass filled to busting point.

I was in real trouble. Nearly doubled over with cramps in my stomach. Maybe the ute guy’d left the grapes out on the street for a reason.

Served me right for stealing them, I guessed.

I cursed the crowd of school kids in the
distance hanging around the bus stop making jokes and talking while I rolled around alone under some tree in some park in some place in absolute agony.

How would my mum feel if she knew her kid was lying in a park, sick as?

Eventually the cramping eased up and I dragged myself further under some bushes where I couldn’t be seen, and slept.

I jumped awake. Something rustled in the bushes around me. I kept still and listened carefully before turning to look.

‘Yeah, it’s a man in there.’

‘Shhh, he’s waking up.’

‘I’ll get him with this one. Watch this!’ said another voice.

A stone flew through a gap in the bushes and hit the back of my head.

‘Bullseye! Take that, bum!’

I could hear the slapping sound of high-fives. Slowly I turned my head and saw three pairs of small, shiny, black school shoes. I didn’t care who saw me, I was furious. How could they think it was OK to treat me, another person, like that? I leapt to my feet, emerging upright out of the bushes like a beast.

‘GRRRRRR!’

They instantly ran like hell, screaming.

‘This could be you one day!’ I yelled out to them.

I stood there in shock, shaking my head, as they quickly disappeared. I thought again of the wolf’s mark. So many people in the city wandered around wearing it.

My mobile was ringing somewhere back in the bushes and I scrambled to find it. ‘Hello?’ I asked, not recognising the phone number. Bright sunlight streamed down and sweat from the heat of the day and my anger poured off me. I moved into the shade.

‘Is that Callum Ormond?’ a woman asked.

Jennifer Smith? The mystery woman?

‘Yes?’ I said, cautiously, looking around me. There was only one little girl on a swing with her mum on the other side of the park.

‘What happened last time we were supposed to meet? You said you were going to be there.’

She sounded genuinely concerned, rather than irritated, and I started to relax a bit—I’d have to stay on guard, but this was definitely not the voice of Oriana de la Force.

‘I was on my way there,’ I said, ‘when something
unexpected came up.’

That was true enough. I wasn’t sure how much to say to her. I really didn’t know who this woman was.

‘Look,’ I added. ‘I thought you’d set me up. How can I know it’s OK to trust you?’

I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. I hoped she wasn’t trying to find just the right lie to deliver to me.

‘I don’t know what I can tell you, Cal. I just know that your father had such big, warm, honest eyes, even in the midst of his devastating illness. He really wanted me to reach out to you. I sat the photo he had of you in his wallet by the side of his bed—the one of the two of you by the car at the airfield, standing there with matching grins—and I held his hand and promised him I’d do whatever I could to help.’

I knew exactly what photo she was talking about. It was taken at air cadets, not that long before he left for Ireland.

‘So what do you want to see me about?’ I asked. ‘Did you see Dad’s drawings from his time at the hospice?’

‘I did,’ she said, and I believed her. ‘But we can talk about that when we meet.’

‘Did he ever say anything about something called the Ormond Singularity?’

‘I don’t think so. He was so sick by the time he came to the hospice. He was very difficult to understand sometimes.’

‘You said you had something for me?’ I said, recalling our earlier discussion. ‘What is it?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.’

I could hear the fear in her voice.

‘I’ll explain when I meet you, Cal. I know this is a dangerous situation. I know it is not easy for you, but it’s not easy for me either.’