D Page 6

  Dhikilo took the money without looking at it. She was frightened now, and quite keen to escape, and it seemed she would get her opportunity if she just said yes to everything, no matter how bonkers.

  “Yes,” she said. “Shall I go now, Professor?”

  “Yes, yes,” urged the old man, standing up from his armchair. “By all means.” He located Dhikilo’s trembling hand and shook it firmly. “Splendid! Until this evening, then! Or tomorrow morning, perhaps. You might want to have one more night’s sleep in your own bed.”

  “Yes,” said Dhikilo, feeling extremely odd. “Thank you.” And she made for the dark hallway, hoping the front door would simply open and let her out.

  “Choossse wisely,” said Mrs Robinson, in a voice that tickled the small hairs in the nape of Dhikilo’s neck.

  Back to Normal

  Dhikilo walked briskly back towards the familiar part of town. Walked? Well, OK, maybe she ran.

  I’ve just escaped, she told herself, from great danger.

  The sky was calm and the sun had come out again. Birds twittered in the trees and there was no thunderous spooky music coming out of nowhere, like you get in a movie where dangerous things are happening.

  The Professor has gone mad, Dhikilo told herself. He was already mad before but he’s much madder now and he should probably be in a special home for mad people.

  She thought of the Professor’s dog turning into a sphinx. That was impossible and must have been an optical trick. Malcolm and Ruth had once taken her to a museum in London called Believe It or Not! where a man welcomed you in but he wasn’t real and you could see through parts of his body and when the welcome speech was over he vanished. That’s what the sphinx must have been: a hologram.

  Dhikilo crossed a street and turned a corner and was back in the part of Cawber she knew well. Everything looked reassuringly normal (well, she would’ve preferred the Poundland shop not to be called Pounlan, but fairly normal) and that made her feel better. She passed the secondhand bookshop with the plastic bins full of tatty, rain-dampened old books and the books looked exactly the same as always, and that made her feel better, too. Normal was good. She should definitely have as much normal as she could get.

  The most normal thing Dhikilo could think of was to go back to school for last period. She didn’t know what time it was. Malcolm and Ruth had given her a phone for her birthday but she seldom remembered it and was always leaving it uncharged and comatose in the kitchen, and anyway, it wasn’t much use to someone in the bottom percentile of befriendedness. She looked up at the sky and decided it wasn’t as late as the Professor thought.

  * * *

  “I’m back from the funeral,” said Dhikilo to the school secretary when she got in.

  Miss Dowd, who had a sign on her desk informing visitors that she was Miss Ow, looked at Dhikilo as if she didn’t quite recognize her. “Oh, yes?” she said, frowning. She didn’t seem to recall the arrangement, even though she was the one who’d required the permission letter from Dhikilo’s parents.

  “Am I in time for last lesson?” asked Dhikilo.

  “It’s alreay starte,” said Miss Dowd. “Ages ago.”

  “Which lesson is it?” asked Dhikilo.

  Miss Dowd looked disapproving. “On’t you remember your timetable?”

  “I’m having a very strange day,” pleaded Dhikilo.

  Miss Dowd checked. “It’s History,” she said.

  “History is important,” said Dhikilo.

  “It’s almost over now,” said Miss Dowd.

  “Can I go in anyway?”

  Miss Dowd peered at Dhikilo over the edge of the desk. “You’re not in uniform.”

  “I didn’t have time to go home and change,” said Dhikilo. “Because I didn’t want to miss any more school than I had to, Miss. Because I love school so much, Miss.” She took a deep breath, hoping that Miss Dowd would be smart enough to get the message. “Especially History,” she added.

  * * *

  Everyone stared at her when she entered the classroom. The clock said there were only eleven minutes to go before the bell would ring. The other girls must think she was insane to have bothered to return. Their fingers were twitching in anticipation of getting hold of their phones and doing all the stuff that Dhikilo didn’t do.

  “Miss Bentley will forgive me,” said Mr Dunstable, now known as Mr Unstable, “if I on’t repeat the centuries we’ve covere so far.”

  A ripple of laughter went through the room. Mr Unstable couldn’t help smiling himself, probably thinking he was awfully clever, although, in Dhikilo’s opinion, a genuinely clever teacher never makes children laugh at other children.

  The lesson was about the ancient Egyptians. The ancient Egyptians got quite a lot of attention in the British Education System. When you were a little kid you drew pictures of pyramids, and when you were older you learned about Dynasties and various Invasions, but it was always the Egyptians and sometimes a bit of Hitler, Napoleon or the Romans. Somaliland didn’t exist. One nice thing about ancient Egypt, however, was that it included the long-lost Land of Punt, which Dhikilo was convinced was modern-day Puntland, which was right next to Somaliland, which brought the subject closer to home, even if home was actually Cawber.

  “Miss Bentley,” said Mr Unstable in a slightly annoyed tone. “I have mae the effort to inclue you, but it appears you are not making the effort to inclue us. So, let me ask again: what were the reasons for the ecline of the Egyptian empire?” Seeing no spark of inspiration on the face of Hikilo Bentley, he surveyed the class as a whole. “Anyboy?”

  No hands went up.

  “Noboy?” said Mr Unstable, sounding mightily disappointed in the youth of the modern world.

  * * *

  When Dhikilo got home, Ruth was angry with her.

  “The bath is filthy,” she said. “Absolutely filthy!”

  Dhikilo couldn’t deny that. Ruth had left the tub untouched and, sure enough, it still looked as though a bunch of moles had had a fight in it, except that Dhikilo now noticed that those same moles had apparently rolled around on the floor as well and flicked mud onto the walls and the mirror.

  “I’m sorry, Mum,” said Dhikilo. Usually calling Ruth “Mum” made things all right, but not this time.

  “I on’t know what to o with you,” sighed Ruth. “I really on’t.”

  “I’ll clean it up now, shall I?” said Dhikilo.

  “No, I’ll o it,” said Ruth. “You’ve misse school toay; I’m sure you must have some homework.”

  So that was that. Within a few minutes, Dhikilo was in her room staring at a Science book while the clunking and sloshing noises of an angry person cleaning a bathroom carried through the house. The words on the page danced in front of Dhikilo’s eyes and stubbornly refused to enter her brain. Then it was time for dinner.

  “How was the funeral anyway?” asked Ruth, not angry any more, as Dhikilo sat down at the table.

  “It was...weird,” said Dhikilo. She wondered if she should talk to Ruth about what had happened. Discussing it with grown-ups might help the normalness come back.

  “Well, I hope it in’t upset you, that’s all,” said Malcolm.

  “It’s not goo to think about sa things,” said Ruth.

  “An this Oerfiel chap ha a jolly goo innings,” said Malcolm. “Ninety-nine! A few more weeks an he woul’ve got a telegram from the Queen an been a celebrity in the local paper!”

  “He’s gone to a better place,” said Ruth.

  Dhikilo ate some of the cauliflower cheese on her plate. She could see that talking about the Professor with Ruth and Malcolm would only make things weirder.

  “Can I cook tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Why?” said Ruth. “On’t you like the cauliflower cheese?”

  “It’s delicious,” said Dhikilo. “Thanks, Mum. But I could cook tomorrow’s dinner. To make up for the mess I made in the bathroom.”

  “You on’t have to make up for anything, sweetie,” said Ruth, smiling wearily. “Just try not to make such a mess in future.”

  “Anyone for puing?” said Malcolm brightly.

  * * *

  After dinner, Dhikilo went back up to her room and tried again to read about Science and the words refused again, and she tried to write an essay for English, but as soon as she’d written her name at the top of the page she started to worry about what Miss Forster would do to it with her nasty red pen. Then she felt unbearably tired and sleepy, even though it wasn’t very late, and she got into bed, and it was no use trying any more to push away the memory of Mrs Robinson’s sharp teeth because when you’re asleep you can’t control what comes to you in your dreams.

  And Dhikilo dreamed of running down a dark dead-end street, pursued by a sphinx.

  Because

  The next day was a Saturday and all was forgiven. Malcolm made avocao toast for breakfast, and Ruth suggested that they might all go to Over later in the ay. Dhikilo didn’t fancy going to Dover. She just wanted to go to the post office.

  Why the post office? Because of the money that the Professor had given her. In her relief at escaping from his creepy house, she’d forgotten about the money until this morning, but once she’d extracted it from her pocket, she found that it was two hundred and eighty-five pounds.

  I can’t keep this, she thought. It would be like stealing from an old blind crazy person.

  The idea of going back to the Professor’s house was out of the question. She would post the money to him. She retrieved, from her schoolbag, the not-too-crumpled blank envelope which had contained her funeral-permission letter. She wrote the Professor
’s name and address on the front. She got a fresh sheet of paper and started to write:

  Dear Professor,

  I am returning your £285, because

  but then remembered he was blind and wouldn’t be able to read it. Also, she didn’t know what should come after “because.” She put the banknotes into the envelope and sealed it up tight. It was quite a fat packet and would need a special stamp.

  “I’m just going out for a little walk,” she told Malcolm and Ruth.

  When you have finished reading this book, you will know how outrageously untrue this statement of Dhikilo’s was, but at the time, she meant it.

  * * *

  On the way to the post office, a couple of things happened which were arguably normal but actually, in the circumstances, not normal at all.

  Firstly, a man was handing out leaflets about an election. “We must think about where we’re going!” he called out to uninterested passers-by. “I mean, where we’re really going! There’s still time to change irection an get on the right track! But we may never get another chance like this!”

  Secondly, two ladies were handing out booklets about their religion. They weren’t from Somaliland but they were dark-skinned and that made them a rarity in Cawber. The booklets said: THE WORL TO COME—ARE YOU REAY?

  Both the ladies smiled at Dhikilo, with big white happy smiles. Dhikilo wondered if her mother’s smile had been like that.

  The nearer Dhikilo got to the post office, the more doubts she had about the envelope with the money. The Professor’s name was full of Ds—did that mean that the post office would refuse to deliver it unless she crossed them all out? And she hadn’t put a postcode on the address—Molly’s mum hadn’t told her that part. And the envelope felt squashy and crinkly to the touch, very much like a wodge of banknotes inside a thin sleeve of paper, so maybe someone in the post office would realize it was money and tell her it was against the rules to send it?

  As she walked past the supermarket, two tall old men dressed in identical clothes were going in. She only glimpsed them for a second and maybe they weren’t dressed identically at all and maybe if she’d seen their faces she would’ve found that they actually looked nothing like each other, but she couldn’t help wondering if they were a couple of Mrs Robinson’s silent ectoplasmic “helpers.”

  Although, of course, that was all nonsense, just a mad story told to her by the Professor.

  FOR THE BEST MUM IN THE UNIVERSE, proclaimed a poster in a gift shop.

  She would undoubtedly have wanted to know you, the Professor had said, on that day when she was crying. He was not an evil person and it was no use trying to convince herself that he was. He was a good person, a kind person, and she’d missed him. She was missing him now.

  One of the last shops before the post office was a charity shop whose profits went to a sanctuary in Dover for lost and abandoned cats. Its window display was normally full of cardigans and dresses that only a charity-shop dummy would wear, or very popular books that weren’t popular any more, or toys that children used to play with years ago.

  Today, there was something different in the window. A dummy exactly Dhikilo’s size, of dark brown plastic or whatever shop mannequins are made of, wearing the sort of clothes that a thirteen-year-old girl in an extremely cold place might wear, all in white and pale blue. Boots with thick soles and fur inside. Trousers that looked as though they would stay dry if you splashed them with a bucket of water. Gloves with strokeable downy material on the outside and a rough rubbery texture on the palms, for grip. A shiny fleecy jacket with a white star on each arm, just underneath the shoulder. A hat that was halfway to being a helmet, with a generous amount of fur inside it. All of it looking good as new.

  Price labels hung off the various parts of the outfit and even though Dhikilo was not as good at mental arithmetic as Mariette, she could tell that the whole lot would cost a great deal less than what she had in the envelope.

  YES, WE KNOW IT’S SPRING, said the handwritten sign underneath the display. BUT THIS IS ENGLAN, SO IT WILL BE WINTER IN A JIFFY!

  Dhikilo hesitated. A large family of Italian tourists needed to get past her and she stepped out of the way, a little closer to the shop—right in front of the door. There was a small, computer-printed poster taped to the door urging people to adopt a particular cat, a young female, from the sanctuary. She is a bit wilful and incline to go walkabout, the text explained, but she will surely settle in the right home.

  Dhikilo stood reading and re-reading the message until an impatient voice behind her said, “Well? Are you going in or not?”

  The Land of Liminus

  Half an hour later, Dhikilo put down her two bulging parcels and knocked on the door of 58 Gas Hill Garens. The windows were shrouded with curtains just as before. The front garden was no less dead and still smelled of cat pee.

  This time, there was no delay before the door swung open.

  “Come in, Miss Bentley!” shouted the Professor from beyond the carpeted corridor. Dhikilo let herself in and hurried to the sitting room, almost tripping in the dark as she shuffled along with her heavy bags.

  The Professor’s parlour was not quite as gloomy as it had been yesterday because the fireplace was ablaze. The same junk mail that had been delivered to the Bentleys’ house this morning—leaflets advertising garden tools, pizzas, sofas and local politicians—had also been delivered here, and was proving very useful as fire-lighters. Mrs Robinson picked up another one—What’s On in Cawber—with her teeth, padded over to the fire and tossed it in with a flick of her jaw. It went phizz and burst into cheerful orange flame.

  The Professor looked a bit less tired and dishevelled than he’d looked the day before. His hair and beard were combed and he was wearing proper shoes instead of the tartan slippers.

  “Did you bring the snow clothes?” he immediately enquired.

  “Yes,” said Dhikilo.

  “Most excellent girl you are.”

  “There’s lots of change,” said Dhikilo.

  “Change?” echoed the Professor, puzzled, as she rummaged in her pockets.

  “You gave me more than I needed,” said Dhikilo, walking up to his chair and tapping him on the coat-sleeve so that he would know she wanted to put something in his hand. He still seemed puzzled as his fingers wrapped around the banknotes that Dhikilo placed on his palm.

  “Ah!” he said. “That sort of change!” And, to Dhikilo’s alarm, he crumpled the money in his fist and tossed it towards the fireplace. His aim was quite good, and at least one twenty-pound note landed in the flames.

  “Why did you do that?” said Dhikilo.

  “Because money is not what we need in our present circumstances. Not what we need at all.”

  Sensing that Dhikilo wasn’t satisfied with this answer, he sighed and added, “When I was young—even younger than you—I was poor and had to work in a factory. Horrible place! I dreamed of a windfall of money that might rescue me from misery. My dream came true. I got the windfall. I was a very rich man. Still am. But now the whole world is in trouble, and my riches can’t rescue it.” He paused. “However... I have a feeling you can.”

  “Is this about the D?” said Dhikilo.

  “Yes,” said the Professor. “It’s about the D.”

  “Do you know why it’s disappeared?”

  “A letter doesn’t just disappear from the alphabet by itself,” said the Professor. “The D was stolen. It still is being stolen! Each day, more Ds are spirited away from where they belong. Thousands of them; hundreds of thousands; maybe millions of Ds from all over the world.”

  “Where are they going?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping you’ll find out.”

  The fire was putting out a lot of warmth and Dhikilo wished someone would open a window to let some cool air in. The two bags full of winter clothes seemed a very silly idea at the moment.

  “Am I...am I going to Switzerland?” she asked.

  The Professor frowned in puzzlement. “Switzerland? Why Switzerland?”