Ted

Ted

Is the intruder the Murderer? I think and think but I can’t work it out.

I haven’t been so scared since that time at the mall. That was the last time I came this close to being found out – to being seen for what I am.

Lauren cried and showed me the holes in her socks. She had outgrown all her clothes and she hated the stuff I chose for her. What dad can refuse his daughter clothes? So even though I knew it was a mistake, I said yes.

I picked an older mall, one slightly further out of town, and we went on a Monday afternoon, in the hope that it wouldn’t be too crowded. Lauren was so excited before we left that I thought she would pee herself. She wanted to wear all kinds of crazy pink things in her hair, but I thought there should be limits.

‘I simply couldn’t be seen with you,’ I said to her in a fancy lady’s voice, and she giggled, which showed what a good mood she was in, because she never laughs at my jokes. I wore a baseball cap, sunglasses, and regular clothes in neutral colours. I knew that this shopping trip was a risk, and I was anxious that we should attract as little attention as possible.

Lauren was good on the drive there, looking out of the window and singing to herself, the song about woodlice. There was none of the nonsense that she had tried in the past, trying to grab the wheel and steer us into a ditch or a wall. I allowed myself to hope that this would go well.

When we got to the mall we couldn’t even see it at first, the parking lot was so huge, and we had picked a spot right at the far end. Lauren was impatient and didn’t want to get back in the car, so we walked. It must have been a quarter of a mile, and the morning was close. The big square box of the building got bigger and bigger as we approached. It had fancy writing across it, huge like a giant’s signature. Lauren pulled me on.

‘Faster,’ she said. ‘Come on, Dad.’

I was sweating heavily by the time we reached the doors. The cool air and marble floors were a relief. I had picked a good place; there was hardly anyone else here. Some angry women with small children. Bitten-looking men who didn’t look like they had anything else to do with the day.

There was a big plastic board with a map on it, and I stood in front of it for a while trying to make sense of the floor plan. But I was too anxious and it all dissolved into lines and colours (those were the days before I had the bug man and the pills). Lauren was no help, she was all over the place, peering this way and that, trying to look at everything at once.

I went up to a lady in a brown uniform, with a badge on her chest, and asked, ‘Excuse me, where is Contempo Casuals?’

The woman shook her head. ‘That store closed down,’ she said. ‘Years ago, as I recall. Why would you want that?’

‘My daughter, she’s thirteen,’ I said. ‘She wants to get some clothes.’

‘And she asked for Contempo Casuals? Has she been in a coma?’

The woman was being very rude so I walked off. ‘They don’t have that store here,’ I told Lauren.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this great, Dad?’ Her voice was loud and I saw one of the tired mothers look over at us.

‘If this is going to work, you have to be smart,’ I told her. ‘You don’t talk. Keep close, no tantrums, do everything I say. Deal?’

She smiled and nodded and didn’t say a word. Lauren has her faults but she’s not slow.

We walked along the storefronts, looking at all the stuff. There was so much to see, we could have spent all day there. Piano music came out of the white pillars and echoed on the marble floor. There was a fountain playing somewhere. I could tell Lauren loved it, and if I’m honest, I did too. It was great to just walk around together, out in the open, like a regular father and daughter. I got us an Orange Julius in the deserted food court. Burnt sugar and soy sauce fought uneasily in the air. The tables were all messy like people had just left, burger wrappers and plastic forks and crumbs all over the place. But there was no one in sight.

We went into an empty, echoing department store and I picked up some socks and undervests. All boring white for me, pink and yellow for Lauren. The undervests had unicorns on them.

To entertain her, I started making up names and histories for the bored-looking clerks standing behind their counters. The buck-toothed girl was Mabel Worthington, working extra hours to help her little brother realise his dream of becoming an ice dancer. The guy with two big moles was Monty Miles, and he had just arrived here, straight from his little ice-fishing village in Canada.

‘Those two blonde girls are sisters,’ I said. ‘They were separated by foster care, and they’ve just found each other again.’

‘I don’t like that one,’ Lauren whispered, unhappy. ‘That’s not nice, Dad. Change it.’

‘You’re a fussy kitten today, aren’t you?’ I was trying to think of a good one for those two when Lauren tugged my hand hard. I turned and saw a pair of leggings hanging on a nearby rack. They were bright blue with shiny gold lightning bolts on them. Lauren held her breath as she looked at them.

‘I guess you can try them on,’ I said. ‘I have to come with you into the changing room, though.’

All the leggings on the rack were too small. I looked around hopelessly. The two sales girls came over to us. Close up they didn’t look much alike, after all. They were both blonde, that was all.

The taller one said, ‘Can I help you?’

‘Is this all you have in stock?’ I asked.

‘I think so,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’ I could tell how much Lauren loved those leggings and how disappointed she would be if she couldn’t get them. ‘Don’t you have more in back?’ I gave her my best smile and told her the size Lauren needed. The short one smirked.

‘Something funny?’ I asked. In that moment I hoped the smirking girl actually had been raised in foster care and separated from her family. Luckily Lauren’s attention had wandered back to the leggings and she didn’t see.

The taller woman ignored her friend and said in a professional tone, ‘I can check.’ I noticed that she had a twitch in her left eyelid, some kind of tic. Maybe living with this had made her a nicer person. After a while she came back with more pairs of leggings draped over her forearm, like a fancy waiter carrying a white napkin. ‘These might work,’ she said.

The changing room was long and quiet, hung with white curtains.

‘Go away, Dad,’ Lauren said when we were inside a cubicle.

‘You know I can’t do that, kitten.’

‘At least – don’t look. PLEASE.’ So I closed my eyes. There was rustling and silence. Then she said sadly, ‘They don’t fit.’

‘I’m so sorry, my kitten,’ I said. I really was. ‘We’ll find you something else.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m tired, now. Let’s go home.’

We left the leggings where they lay on the floor in a sad pile of blue sky and lightning. We followed the green exit signs through what seemed like miles of empty aisles: leather goods, lingerie, then into home furnishings.

As we reached the store exit I heard running feet. Someone yelled, ‘Stop!’ When I turned, the tall blonde girl was running towards us through the display living room.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ Her voice shook. Her eyelid was twitching furiously.

‘Is something wrong?’ I asked her.

She held out a handful of blue and gold fabric. ‘This,’ she said, and turned the leggings inside out. They were lined with white stretchy stuff. Lauren had treated this lining like a piece of blank paper. On it she had written, in her favourite pink marker:

Plaes help. Ted is a kidnaper. He cals me Lauren but taht is not my nam.

And then underneath, she had drawn a map to our house. It was pretty good. She must have been watching carefully as we drove.

‘That shit is not funny,’ the woman said. ‘Do you think missing children are a joke?’

I could feel Lauren starting to get upset by her shouting, and by the cursing, so I said, ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know how that happened. Obviously I’ll pay for them.’ I put a twenty and a ten in the blonde clerk’s hand, which was much more than the pants cost, and took them from her. She shook her head at us and her mouth was a grim little line.

We walked back through the desert of the parking lot. The sun was high in the sky, now, and heat was shimmering off the asphalt. When we reached the car I said, ‘Get in please, and fasten your seatbelt.’ Lauren obeyed in silence.

I turned on the AC. The cool air began to dry the sweat on my brow, and I let it soothe me. When I could at last trust myself to speak I said, ‘You must have been planning that one for a long time. Give me the marker.’

‘I left it in the store,’ Lauren said.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘You didn’t.’

She pulled the marker out of her sock and handed it to me. Then she started crying silently. That hurt, it was like a skewer to my heart. ‘You have to learn that your actions have consequences,’ I said.

Lauren’s back heaved with huge sobs. The tears ran in a steady stream down her face. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Don’t send me away.’

I took a deep breath and said, ‘Six months. You can’t come home for six months.’

Lauren moaned. It was a bad sound that made tears poke out in my own eyes.

‘It’s for your own good,’ I told her. ‘It hurts me as much as it hurts you. I’ve tried to raise you right. But I’ve failed. I see that. Defacing property and downright lying. You have to learn that you can’t pull that kind of stunt. What if that woman had believed you?’

The separation that followed was so painful that I have tried to erase it from my mind. We do not speak of it. During those months the birds in the mornings became an even greater comfort. I needed something to love.

After that dark time was over and Lauren returned, I put precautions in place. I always triple-lock the door and lock up the laptop. I always count the marker pens before I put them away. It is not easy but I keep her safe.

Lauren seemed changed afterwards. She was still loud but it was empty, somehow, the temper of a much younger child. My daughter had learned her lesson, I thought.

I am very upset this evening so I make mint hot chocolate.

Recipe for Mint Hot Chocolate, by Ted Bannerman. Warm the milk. Break pieces of chocolate into it and melt them. Add crème de menthe, as much as you like. You can add bourbon too. It’s night, you’re not going anywhere! It should all come together in a smooth goo. You can put chopped fresh mint in too, if you like. Pour it into a tall glass with a handle. If you don’t have one, a mug is fine. (I don’t have one.) Then top with whipped cream and chocolate chips or smashed-up pieces of cookie. You need a spoon to eat this.

I like to make this slowly, stirring the chocolate, thinking about things, which is what I’m doing when I put my hand in my pocket. I often do that, to think, and my fingers meet a piece of paper. I draw it out, wincing. The Murderer. It is the list of suspects I made after the birds were killed. I left it under Lauren’s chalks, locked up in the cupboard. How did it get in my pocket? A name has been added to the list, below Lauren’s. I don’t recognise the writing.

Mommy

Well, that is a very cruel and scary joke. If there is one person who could not have killed the birds, it is Mommy. She’s gone.

I tear up the list and throw it in the trash. Even mint hot chocolate doesn’t help, now.