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© Joss Stirling 2010

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For Lucy and Emily

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Leah, Jasmine and the wranglers at the Tumbling River Ranch, Colorado. Also my family, for taking the trip across the US with me, and risking the white-water rafting expedition in the Rockies.

The car drew away, leavi

ng the little girl on the verge.

Shaking with cold in her thin cotton T-shirt and shorts, she sat down, arms locked around her knees, her light blonde hair blowing messily in the wind, pale as a dandelion seed head.

Be quiet, freak, or we’ll come back and get you, they’d said.

She didn’t want them to come back for her. She knew that for a fact, even if she couldn’t remember her name or where she lived.

A family walked by on their way to their vehicle, the mum in a headscarf, carrying a baby, the dad holding the hand of a toddler. The girl stared at the worn grass, counting the daisies. What’s that like, she wondered , being carried? It was so long since anyone had cuddled her, she found it hard to watch.

She could see the glimmer of gold that shone round the family—the colour of love. She didn’t trust that colour; it led to hurt.

Then the woman spotted her. The girl hugged her knees tightly, trying to make herself so smal no one would notice. But it was no use. The woman said something to her husband, handed over the baby, and came closer until she could crouch beside the girl. ‘Are you lost, sweetie?’

Be quiet or we’ll come back and get you.

The girl shook her head.

‘Mummy and Daddy gone inside?’ The woman frowned, her colours tinged an angry red.

The girl didn’t know if she should nod. Mummy and Daddy had gone away but that was a long time ago.

They’d never come for her in the hospital but stayed in the fire with each other. She decided to say nothing. The woman’s colours flared a deeper crimson. The girl cringed: she’d upset her. So the ones who had just driven away had told her the truth.

She was bad. Always making everyone unhappy.

The girl put her head on her knees. Perhaps if she pretended she wasn’t there, the woman would feel happy again and go away. That sometimes worked.

‘Poor little thing,’ the woman sighed, standing up.

‘Jamal, wil you go back inside and tel the manager there’s a lost child out here? I’l stay with her.’

The girl heard the man murmur reassurances to the toddler and then footsteps as they went back towards the restaurant.

‘You mustn’t worry: I’m sure your family wil be looking for you.’ The woman sat beside her, crushing daisies five and six.

The girl started trembling violently and shaking her head. She didn’t want them looking—not now, not ever.

‘It’s OK. Real y. I know you must be frightened but you’l be back with them in a minute.’

She whimpered, then clapped a hand over her mouth. I mustn’t make a sound, I mustn’t make a fuss. I’m bad. Bad.

But it wasn’t her making al the noise. Not her fault.

Now there were lots of people around her. Police wearing yel ow jackets like the ones that had surrounded her house that day. Voices talking at her.

Asking her name.

But it was a secret—and she’d forgotten the answer long ago.

I woke up from the old ni

ghtmare as the car drew to

a halt and the engine fel silent. My head pressed against a cushion, sleep dragging on me like an anchor, it took me a while to remember where I was.

Not in that motorway service station, but in Colorado with my parents. Moving on. Moving in.

‘What do you think?’ Simon, as my dad preferred to be cal ed, got out of the dodgy old Ford he’d bought in Denver and threw his arm dramatical y towards the house. His long grey-streaked brown hair was getting loose from its tie in his enthusiasm to show off our new home. Pointy roof, clapboard wal s, and grimy windows—it did not look promising.

I half expected the Addams family to lurch out of the front door. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, trying to drive off the gritty fear that remained after one of my dreams.

‘Oh, darling, it’s wonderful.’ Sal y, my mum, refused to be daunted—the terrier of happiness, as Simon jokingly cal ed her, seizing it in her teeth and refusing to shake free. She got out of the car. I fol owed, not sure if it was jetlag I was feeling or dreamlag. The words I had in my head were

‘gloomy’, ‘wreck’, and ‘rotten’; Sal y came up with some others.

‘I think it’s going to be bril iant. Look at those shutters—they must be original. And the porch! I’ve always fancied myself a porch kind of person, sitting in my rocker and watching the sun go down.’ Her brown eyes sparkled with anticipation, her curly hair bouncing as she jumped up the steps.

Having lived with them since I was ten, I’d long ago accepted that both my parents were probably off their rockers. They lived in a little fantasy world of their own, where derelict houses were ‘quaint’ and mould ‘atmospheric’. Unlike Sal y, I always fancied myself as the ultra-modern kind of person, sitting in a chair that wasn’t a haven for woodworm and a bedroom that didn’t have icicles on the inside of the windows in winter.

But forget the house: the mountains behind were stunning, soaring impossibly high into the clear autumn sky, a dusting of white on their peaks. They rol ed along the horizon like a tidal wave frozen in time, caught just as it was about to curl down upon us. Their rocky slopes were tinged with pink in the late afternoon light, but, where shadows fel across the snowfields, they turned a cold slate blue. The woods climbing their sides were already shot through with gold; stands of aspens burned against the dark Douglas firs. I could see a cable car and the clearings that marked the ski runs, al of which looked almost vertical.