(This is part of “The Lazenby Family Papers,” two years late. And since it’s been a while, I’ll repost two relevant pages, for context: )
On the day the Farrow family visited the Police Open Day, Lee was seven and his sister Polly was four. It was almost ten years since their uncle, Johnny Farrow, disappeared into Haven Valley Stream.
If you drove for too long, like Grandpa was doing now, it got dark and the stars started shining in the sky. And then if you didn’t watch the road under your wheels, it started to curve up, and soon you were driving up to the stars, right up in the Milky Way. What was there to do up there? Nothing much. Look at galaxies, mostly. Trail around the swirls and dots until you got bored. Nothing much up there in space. People kept going there, but Polly didn’t know why.
Polly pressed her nose into Spike’s fur. Spike smelled the same, no matter what had happened or whether he’d been washed that day, and it always made her feel better. Even if everything outside turned into blackness and stars.
It wasn’t a school day, but Grandma and Grandpa had still woken Lee up early. They’d rushed him through his breakfast (no time for cream on his Coco Pops his morning), got him dressed in double-quick time, stuffed him in the car and zoomed down the motorway.
“Where are we going?” Lee asked.
Grandma turned round in her seat just so she could give him an angry look. “Lee, for goodness’ sake, I’ve told you a thousand times! We’re going to the Police Open Day!”
It was probably true about telling him a thousand times, but he still had no idea what he was going to find when he got there. “What is a Police Open Day?”
Grandma made a noise and turned back around to look at Grandpa. Lee looked back at his book. It was called “The Happy Prince,” and it was about a statue that had come to life and made friends with a bird. Next to him, his sister was playing with her cuddly hedgehog toy, pressing it up to her face as if she was trying to eat it. Lee used to put his toys in his mouth all the time, but he didn’t do that anymore.
Grandma was talking to Grandpa. She wasn’t whispering. She probably thought she was, but Lee could hear her from all the way in the back. “Remember last year? They told us they’d come right up until the last minute, and then they backed out.”
“I remember,” said Grandpa, not taking his eyes off the road.
“Other commitments, they said. Brett knew how important it was to us. But he had to listen to That Woman, didn’t he?”
Whenever Grandma said “That Woman,” she meant Lee and Polly’s mum, who’d moved away last Easter. Brett was their dad, who’d sent them to live with Grandma and Grandpa because he Couldn’t Cope. Grandma got upset and not-whispery whenever she talked about them, but at least she could still say Dad’s name.
“And now look at them,” sighed Grandma, “No idea why this is so important to us.”
Lee carried on reading his story. At the end, the statue and the bird both died (the statue had already died once before, but this time it actually counted) and went up to Heaven, where God said that the bird would sing hymns to him forever. Lee wondered if that was all you did in Heaven. Wouldn’t your voice get tired?
Grandma turned back to them. “We’re going to the Police Open Day because your grandpa’s best friend used to be a policeman, and he’s giving a speech. We go there every year, just to say hello to him.”
“OK,” said Lee, “How long do we have to stay there?”
Grandma made a face. “You are the rudest person I know,” she hissed, and turned back around to not-whisper to Grandpa instead. Lee looked back at his book. The next story was about a giant.
There was a map on the side of the fence. Polly had seen it before, on one of the morning programmes Mum had always watched, glowing with warm yellow light. It was Great Britain- Scotland at the top, Wales at the side (Polly had always wondered how all the whales had got there, if there were so many that the whole country was named after them), and England in between. It looked like a person with wild hair and stubby arms, looking at a little Scottie dog (even though that bit was Ireland, not Scotland). It looked a bit strange, and Polly wasn’t sure if she trusted it. They said that was where she lived, but that wasn’t what it looked like from here. But from here, it looked too big to fit on the side of a fence, so maybe that made a difference.
Grandma pulled at her arm, and Polly followed. She kept her eye on the map until it got too small and disappeared behind her. Maybe if she kept looking at it, she’d see what she was supposed to, and work out how it looked like home.
It seemed like they were stuck in the queue for the tickets forever, but then they got into the big field where all the tents and displays were, and Lee wanted to run around and see everything. There was music coming from somewhere, and he could smell fast food on the air (not that there was much chance of him getting that- Grandma never let them.) There were shops where they sold little plastic toys, and stalls where you could throw balls at targets and win prizes, and people everywhere, looking happy and exploring. Polly looked around with big, bulging eyes, the hedgehog still held up to her face.
Polly had never had an ice cream like this before, a twin ice cream, red and fruity but with two sticks coming out of it. She had a toy at home, Garfield driving a special kind of ice cream van that was on a bike, and he sold ice creams just like this one. You could see pictures of it on the side of the box. Spike looked at it hopefully, but if he had any it would go all over his fur and make him red and sticky and weird-smelling. Polly was going to eat it all herself.
A strange, red, cartoon ice cream come to life. That meant that anything could come to life here. This was a magical place.
Grandma and Grandpa walked fast. “He’ll be by the dog training tent,” said Grandpa, pointing at the other end of the field.
“You said that wasn’t ‘til later,” said Grandma, pulling Polly along like a wheelie-bag.
“It isn’t, but that’s where he’s going to be.”
“Well, that’s what you said last year, and look what happened.”
Just then, Lee saw the most wonderful thing. It was big, shaped like a double-decker bus with nets on the windows, and it was full of children. Lee couldn’t tell whether it was a ball pool or a bouncy castle (or both), but it looked amazing.
“I just want to be able to eat this time.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Dorothy!”
It was so big, it seemed to have enough room for every child in the world. He could hear the screams and the laughter coming across the field, all the other kids enjoying it. He could be there in seconds, among the big cartoon cardboard cut-outs and the weird rubbery smell.
Suddenly, Grandma stopped in her tracks. “Lee, where’s your sister?”
Lee hadn’t even thought about Polly since he’d caught sight of the big double-decker bus. He looked around, and saw nothing but a crowd of adults, all of them two or three times taller than Polly. She could have been hiding behind any of them. She could have gone anywhere.
Grandma could see by the look on his face that he couldn’t find her. “Lee, you were supposed to be looking out for her!” she snapped.
“I’m sorry! I was just looking at that big bus over there!”
Grandpa shook his head. “Brilliant. That’s all we need.”
“Well, go and look for her, then!” Grandma told him, pointing at the crowd. Lee didn’t know where Grandpa was supposed to start looking. It went on for miles and miles.
Grandpa threw up his hands and went off in a random direction. Grandma pulled on Lee’s shoulder, and they went on walking.
The colours were bright, like you got in cartoons, brighter than they were supposed to be in real life. There were people crowding round and throwing balls to win cuddly toys. Polly thought Spike might want to see the other toys, so she put him up on the counter so he could get a good look.
There were some men next to her, throwing balls and laughing. The one nearest to her was bald, not like Grandpa, who had a bit of hair around the side of his head, but all-over bald, like an alien. He threw his shirt off his shoulders and wriggled his eyebrows. You could smell him more strongly when he didn’t have a top on. It was as if he was trying to get in through your nostrils and turn you into him.
Polly didn’t want to be bald and laughing and hairy-chested, so she ran. There was a big patch of grass in front of her, so she went towards that. Patches of grass didn’t try and turn you into something else.
Next to the big patch of grass was a wall, and in that wall was a door.
The door was old and mossy, set into the bricks like it was one of them. It was a door with a curved bit on the top and a big metal latch. Polly had seen a door like this in a book or on TV, and it was a special kind of door. It was the kind of door that had mysterious, magical people and mysterious, magical things behind it.
It made Polly’s stomach jump a bit. She stretched up on tiptoe and fiddled with the latch until it came open.
Through the door, everything was different.
There were faces on the wall, staring at her with open, stretching mouths and empty eyes, staring right at her as if they were trying to work out whether or not to eat her. Polly knew she should be frightened, she should scream and run back through the door, but sometimes things like the faces on the wall didn’t do anything until you started running from them. Until they knew you were scared. So she walked past them with her head held high, and the faces in the wall kept staring but stayed where they were, in the wall, where they couldn’t hurt her.
The wall ended and the faces ended with it. Polly found herself looking at a little clump of trees, with a wooden platform in the middle. Behind the platform was a big bit of wood with pictures of the moon and the stars. The moon had a smiling face on it, with big cheeks and a big chin.
There was a woman standing at the side of the platform, and she waved her hands so that Polly knew to climb the steps up to the platform and talk to her.
As soon as Polly got up there, she asked, “Do you live on the moon? Is that why you’ve got pictures of it just behind you?”
The woman laughed. “You could say that.”
Lee and Grandma had been sitting next to the dog-training tent for what felt like hours. Grandma didn’t want to eat lunch or go and look at the shops until Grandpa came back with Polly. Instead she sat on a chair, arms folded, sometimes looking at her watch and making huffing noises, and sometimes looking at Lee and saying things like, “Couldn’t you have kept an eye on her for five seconds?”
Lee sat beside her, wishing he had his book with him. He wanted to see what was going to happen to the giant and those kids who kept sneaking into his garden. All he had to look at now were the people standing outside the tent. There had been some dogs earlier, too, but they’d had to go back in. And you couldn’t stroke them anyway because they had a job to do. You couldn’t do anything fun round here.
The woman said she knew Polly’s uncle.
“Uncle Johnny died,” explained Polly, remembering what her grandma and grandpa had told her, about how he was in Heaven, springing through the sky after Polly’s friend’s pet dog, waiting in an old train carriage like the one in the photo Grandma showed her of the olden days. Uncle Johnny had been here, once (when Polly and her brother weren’t), and now he wasn’t. The woman couldn’t know Polly’s uncle. Not any more.
“Die?” said the woman, smiling in a way that showed some of her teeth. She had long black curly hair, and purple eyeshadow going straight up to her eyebrows. She was all in dark red and dark purple and dark black, like she was a shadow that had come to life. “Die? Johnny Farrow? That’s the last thing he’d do.”
The woman smelled like expensive sweets, like in that shop Mummy had taken them once where the windows had been made out of curly black metal and everything inside looked like the olden days again. Like that train carriage in the photo. Like Heaven.
“Come back and see me before you go home, OK?” said the woman, “Bring your brother, too. I’m always up for meeting a relative of Johnny’s.”
“OK,” said Polly. She stood up, dusted herself off, and set out to find the door again.
Finally, Lee spotted them on the horizon. “Grandpa’s coming! He’s found Polly!”
Grandma jumped to her feet and strode out towards them. Lee hurried to catch up with her.
She finally reached Grandpa, who looked like he was pushing Polly along as he went. “Well?” asked Grandma, “Where was she?”
“Back by the ice cream van.” Grandpa nudged Polly towards Grandma. “I suppose we’ve missed Mike’s speech?”
Lee looked at Polly, and frowned. She didn’t look upset or anything, but something wasn’t right about her.
“It ended ten minutes ago.” Grandma crouched down and clamped her hands onto Polly’s shoulders. “We are very, very disappointed in you. We’ve had to spend all day looking for you. All the things we wanted to do today, gone.”
Lee realised what was bothering him. “Polly, where’s…?”
“Spike!” gasped Polly, twitching her arms as if she thought she could find him just by doing that.
Grandpa scowled. “That’s what you’re worried about? No ‘sorry’? No…”
“We’ve got to find Spike!” Polly’s eyes were wide with horror. She shook Grandma’s hands off her shoulders, probably without even noticing that she’d done it.
“We haven’t got to do anything, young lady,” said Grandma, putting her hands back and pulling Polly towards her, “We’re about ready to go home, thanks to you. You’ve ruined our entire day.”
Grandpa shook his finger at her. “If we’d had any idea how you were going to behave today, we’d never have let you…”
“Spike!” wailed Polly, tears springing from her eyes.
Grandma put her hands on her hips. “Polly, I swear to God, if we do find that thing, it’s going right in the dustbin as soon as we get home. You don’t deserve…”
Lee had never heard Polly make a noise like the one she made then. It sounded more like a howling dog than an actual human girl. Even Grandma shrunk back from her for a second, and in that second Polly was gone, through the crowd of people and over the horizon.
Lee took off after her. Grandma had been right, earlier- he was supposed to be looking after her. He wasn’t going to let her disappear again.
He managed to keep up with her, and they ended up at one of those booths where you could win prizes. The man running it saw them coming. “Hello, there!” he called out to Lee, “I was wondering if I’d see this little lady again!” He reached below the counter, pulled something out and held it up in his hand.
“Spike!” cried Polly in wonder.
The man grinned. “I hoped you’d be back for him. He’s been keeping me company here since you left.” He handed Spike to Polly, who held him up to her face and nuzzled into his fur like she was trying to merge with him. The man looked up at Lee. “You her brother? Make sure she doesn’t lose the hedgehog again before you get home, OK? He’ll start to feel neglected.” And, smiling at them one more time, he went off to talk to some people at the other end of the booth.
Lee tapped Polly on the head. “Come on, Polly. Let’s go and find Grandma and Grandpa.” He’d expected them to follow him, but they hadn’t. Maybe they’d tried to and got lost? It was probably a lot harder for grownups to move around if they couldn’t fit in smaller spaces.
Polly looked up a little, just so Lee could see her eyes over Spike’s fur. They were the angriest he’d ever seen. “No,” she mumbled.
“What? Come on, we need to go home.”
“Grandma said she was going to throw Spike in the dustbin!”
“She didn’t mean it…” said Lee, but he knew she probably had. She’d thrown things away before, when she was mad. “But we’ve got to go home…” Home was cold now. It had been cold when Mum had moved away, and it hadn’t got any warmer when they’d gone to live with Grandma and Grandpa. It was cold and dark and empty, and no-one wanted you to be there.
Lee looked at Polly, and shrugged. “We’ve got to go home,” he told her, “Where else can we go?”
Polly kept Spike pressed to her face for a few seconds, then lowered him down so that Lee could see her whole face. “I know where,” she told him.
Polly led Lee to the door. The moon woman had said she wanted to meet him. She’d said she wanted to meet Polly again. She’d said she knew their uncle. Polly didn’t mind what she said, as long as she took them to the moon with her.
They’d get in faster this time. Lee was taller. He’d get the latch open quicker.
Polly squeezed Spike tight in case she dropped him and lost him again. She wondered what it would be like in space.
The End
camelwithout 