Running on the Cracks (2 page)

It’s three in the morning and I’m trying to keep my eyes open. I’m in an all-night café. It’s not like the one in ‘The Streets of London’ that’s full of down-and-outs carrying their home in two carrier bags. Unless you count me, that is. I suppose
I’m
a down-and-out, and I’m carrying my home in one nylon hold-all (which is, in fact, holding not a lot).

The café is called Midnight Oil and there are old-fashioned oil lamps on all the tables. There’s a blue bath full of plants and a green one full of goldfish. The walls are purple and covered in mirrors, which I notice are for sale, but I don’t think I’ll spend my remaining
thirty-four pounds on one of them.

The menu has all sorts of coffee and hot chocolate, with whipped cream, hazelnut, cinnamon, tiramisu – you name it. I’ve been sticking to tea, which is a bit cheaper (but quite enough – £1.50), and resisting the food.

This wasn’t in the plan. I’d been looking for the Youth Hostel when I stumbled on this place, but this is a cheaper and maybe a less conspicuous way of spending my first night in Glasgow. The staff are quite young – students, I suppose – and the shifts keep changing, so they don’t all know how long I’ve been sitting here.

There are other people sitting by themselves: a man with a mobile phone, a woman with a book of puzzles. I don’t think anyone is giving me suspicious looks, but then it would look a bit suspicious if I kept looking round for suspicious looks.

Instead, I’m pretending to be immersed in the evening paper, which I now know off by heart. There’s nothing in it about me, but I
suppose there wouldn’t be, yet. It’s this morning’s papers I’m dreading.

My plan for the day is written in my head:

1. Buy some cheap food
   
2. Get some sleep (where? a park bench if it’s not raining?)
   
3. Find a library where I can
   a) read today’s papers
   b) look up all the Chans in the phone book
   
4. Start looking for …
   

what shall I call them? Granny and Grandpa? You never taught me the Chinese for those words, did you, Dad? But then you hardly ever talked about them. How I wish, wish, wish I’d asked you more, before it was too late.

Here’s what I
do
know about them and about your childhood:

They owned their own restaurant, but I don’t even know what it was called. There must be dozens of Chinese restaurants in Glasgow.

They lived in the basement of a tenement house quite near the restaurant, and you were their only child. All I know about the flat is that there was an alcove in the kitchen, where you used to sleep. Oh, and that there was a square nearby with a big sycamore tree in it. (I know that because there was a sycamore in our London garden too. Mum always complained that it stole the light, but you liked it; you showed me how you used to pick up the winged seeds and twirl them in the air and pretend they were helicopters.)

I don’t know what school you went to, just that there was a brilliant music teacher, but I can’t remember her name. I do know that when you left school you went to the music college and studied the flute. I don’t think your parents were too pleased about that, even before you met Mum – they’d have preferred you to help them run the restaurant.

What else? I know that your father used to love a song about a galloping horseman. And
that your favourite food was your mother’s dumplings, called Nongjia Jiaozi, which you said meant village dumplings. You taught me how to make them and they are still my favourite food.

Not a lot to go on really, is it? But anything would be better than where I’ve just come from. Aunt Sarah was all right, I suppose, though so cool and controlled you’d never think she was the sister of warm, impulsive Mum. Maybe I could have found a way of handling Flo and Caitlin’s spitefulness. I did love the birds, and I thought I liked Uncle John, until that morning I try not to think about.

Here comes the waitress with the shaved head and the nose ring. She’s taken my teacup away. Does she think I ought to go? Should I order another tea? Maybe it would stop me falling asleep.

I hope there won’t be too many Chans in the phone book.

‘Hello, is that Mrs Chan?’

‘Who’s speaking?’

‘It’s … my name’s Chan too. Um … I’m trying to do some research into my family tree and …’

‘Where did you get my number?’

‘From the phone book. It’s just that …’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’

*

‘The number you have dialled has not been recognised.’

*

‘Hello, is that Mr Chan?’

‘Chah twing … (crackle crackle) … Chan … tsiu chong (crackle crackle ) not here.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. I’m looking for either Mr or Mrs Chan.’

‘Chah shing help you liu (crackle crackle) chong.’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t understand.’

Click.

*

‘Hello, I’m looking for my grandmother or my grandfather. Their surname’s Chan.’

‘I don’t think you’ve got the right number.’

*

‘Hello, is that Mrs Chan?’

‘Mrs Chan, yes.’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve got the wrong number. I’m looking for the Mrs Chan who used to own a Chinese restaurant.’

‘This not a restaurant, no.’

‘No, I know it’s not a restaurant, but I wonder if you used to work in a restaurant?’

‘I think you got the wrong number. This not a restaurant.’

Finlay stirred the doughnut mixture and gazed absently out of the van. The Barras market bustled around him but he barely noticed. He sighed a deep sigh.

‘That’s a long face for a Saturday,’ said Marina, scooping a doughnut out of the hot oil and dumping it on to the sugar tray. ‘Cheer up, it may never happen.’

‘It already has,’ said Finlay.

‘What is it this time? School or Mum and Dad?’

‘Both,’ said Finlay. ‘It’s those bloody N of Ms.’

‘Language, Finlay!’ Marina reproached
automatically. She turned the doughnut over in the sugar. ‘I thought N of M was a rock band,’ she said.

‘That’s Eminem and he’s a rapper,’ said Finlay. ‘N of M is short for Notification of Misconduct. They’re these slips of paper the school give you, and your parents have to sign them. Mum said if I got any more she’d stop this week’s pocket money. Then I was late for school on Tuesday and got one. So I forged her signature.’

‘Finlay! This sounds like the slippery downward slope. Did the school swallow it?’

‘Yes, but then on Wednesday one of the other paper boys was off and Rab gave me all these extra houses to do, so I was late again.’

‘And you got another Eminem?’

‘N of M – no, but I would have. I couldn’t face that, so I wrote a note from Mum saying I’d been to the dentist.’

‘Finlay! I wouldn’t have given you this job if I’d known you were such a hardened criminal.’

‘Only the school went and phoned her,’ said Finlay bitterly.

‘What gave you away? The handwriting, was it?’

‘No, it was the Ps,’ said Finlay. ‘Apparently there’s only one in “apologise” and two in “appointment”. What a bloody stupid language.’

‘Language, Finlay!’

‘That’s what I just said – a bloody stupid one. So now that’s the pocket money gone
and
Mum’s going to stop me doing the paper round if I’m late again. I’ll never get that guitar, and Ross’ll probably find someone else to be in his band. It’s so unfair.’

Marina just laughed as she picked up some doughnuts with the tongs and transferred them to a polythene bag. ‘Five for a pound!’ she yelled to the world in general, and then said to Finlay, ‘All this talk of Ps has gone to my bladder. Mind the van a minute, can you, son?’

As soon as Marina had gone it got busy. Finlay sold six bags of doughnuts. There was only one left; Marina would have to fry some more when she got back. Finlay was considered too young to be allowed to do the actual frying – another of life’s unfairnesses.

A teenage girl with glossy black hair and a beige anorak was hovering around the van. A bulky navy blue nylon bag was slung over her shoulder. She looked vaguely familiar to Finlay. Where had he seen her before? She backed away when she saw him looking at her, and a man with three runny-nosed kids came up to the van and ordered candyflosses. Whirling the pink fluffy strands round and round the sticks was something Finlay
was
trusted to do, and it was fun. He took five pounds from the man and turned round to cash it.

When he turned back with the 50p change, he was just in time to see the girl in the beige anorak seize the last bag of doughnuts and run off with it.

‘Hey! Stop!’ In two strides Finlay was at the van door. He jumped down and was after her. Through the candyfloss kids, past a plant stall, round a corner. There she was, diving into a doorway! A second later and he’d have run on past. Instead, he swerved and charged in after her.

He found himself inside a vast low shed full of stalls selling ornaments – the kind of useless things his mother liked to collect. The girl dodged round a table covered in rearing china horses, and past a huge brass gong which dangled from the ceiling. Finlay brushed against the gong and set it swinging gently. A man reached out and grabbed his arm.

‘Slow down, you!’ he said. Finlay wriggled out of his grasp and went on running, his eyes still on the girl. She had stopped by a tall, twisty hatstand and was looking around, searching frantically for a different exit. When her eyes met Finlay’s they filled with panic and she started off again. She ran round the edge of the
building, heading for a door in the far corner.

‘I’ll get there first,’ thought Finlay, spotting a narrow passageway between stalls which led directly to the door. Old postcards, old prints, old books – Finlay ran past them all, gathering speed and swerving to avoid a fat man who was browsing over some old coins.

What happened next happened very quickly: a bumping of shoulders, a foot on a shoelace, a fall. Finlay was on the hard floor, his hands and knees smarting. A few other things seemed to be on the floor too – china things.

As Finlay scrambled to his feet he caught a glimpse of the girl. She had reached the exit door and was disappearing through it. She was going to get away. But that was the least of Finlay’s problems.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ an angry voice was saying. A woman with spiky orange hair was waving something in his face, or rather two things – two broken halves of a hideous purple seal. The fat man and the coin-seller looked
silently on, obviously enjoying the drama.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Finlay. ‘Can you superglue it, maybe?’

It was the wrong thing to say.

‘Superglue! I’ll superglue
you
to the floor till you cough up thirty pounds for this piece.’

‘Thirty pounds!’ Finlay repeated, aghast.

‘That’s what I said. And if those coronation mugs are broken they’ll cost you an extra twenty-five each.’ She put down the seal and picked up the two mugs, appearing disappointed to find that one was still intact but triumphant when she discovered the severed handle of the other one.

‘Running away from someone, were you?’ She eyed him speculatively, as if uncertain whether to suspect him of theft or mugging.

‘No,
after
someone. I do a Saturday job in the doughnut van, and this girl stole a bag of …’

But the woman didn’t really want to know about any crime other than Finlay’s. She thrust
the broken china into a carrier bag. ‘Keep an eye on my stuff, will you – what’s left of it,’ she said to the coin-seller. Then, seizing Finlay’s arm, she marched him back along the narrow passageway, towards daylight and doughnuts and Marina.

Marina. Finlay realised he wasn’t looking forward to seeing her. But perhaps she would still be in the toilet … Or perhaps she’d understand …

She wasn’t, and she didn’t.

‘
There
you are,’ she said. ‘This gentleman says you ran off with his change.’ The man who had bought the candyfloss was standing there with his three kids. Their snot was now bright pink.

‘Oh no! Sorry. I didn’t mean to.’ What had he done with the 50p? It had been in his hand when he saw the girl take the doughnuts. ‘I must have dropped it when I fell. I was trying to catch this thief, you see.’ But again no one seemed interested in his story.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve given the gentleman his money, but it’s coming off today’s wages – and they’re the last wages you’re getting,’ said Marina grimly. ‘Running off like that! Supposing someone had robbed the till while you were gone!’

‘I
knew
he was up to no good,’ said the china-seller, triumphant once again, and proceeded to tell Marina about the breakages. She produced the broken seal and mug. ‘If you’re his mum, you owe me fifty-five pounds,’ she said.

‘I’m not his mum – heaven forbid,’ said Marina, but surprisingly she put an arm round Finlay almost as if she were. ‘But fifty-five quid sounds a bit steep to me. I’d have thought you’d keep your valuable pieces locked up or at the back of the stall.’ She seemed to have taken against the other woman. Finlay listened to them haggling and waited in resignation for the moment when Marina would tell her his name and address.

But to his surprise, Marina was handing the woman a twenty-pound note. ‘That’s for the mug,’ she said. ‘The seal looks like something left behind at a jumble sale, but I’ll give you a pound for it.’

The woman protested loudly but disappeared quite quickly with the money.

‘Thanks, Marina – I’ll pay it back out of my pocket money,’ said Finlay.

‘I somehow doubt you’ll be getting much pocket money with all these Eminems you keep getting,’ said Marina. ‘I’ll take it out of the next couple of weeks’ wages.’

‘But … I thought you said …’

‘Aye, but I’m giving you another chance.’ The battle with the china-seller seemed to have softened Marina’s attitude to Finlay. ‘Now, tell me what happened, you daft wee bugger.’

Finlay resisted the temptation to say, ‘Language, Marina!’ and started to tell her about the girl with the glossy black hair and the beige anorak. And as he relived the
moment when he’d noticed her hovering outside the van he suddenly knew where he’d seen her before. It was in yesterday’s
Sun
. ORCHESTRA ORPHAN MISSING.