Red Read Free

were crushed leaves stuck in pockets of muddy water. Fallen from their branch, adrift. That’s me. Come back, Peri, come back. Stop it. Stop these thoughts. You are alive. He has found you and fed you and he has promised to come back.
    â€¢ • • • •
    She sat up and ran her thumbs through her salty hair, trying to break up the muddy clumps. Her skin was dry and itchy. She scratched her back and neck. Her fingers brushed against a leather cord. She pulled at it and from under her T-shirt came a long, looping strand and on the end of it a solid metal tube. She spat on it and rubbed it clean. Smooth metal locket. Who had given it to her? Did she always wear it?
    Was this a clue to who she was? She gripped the locket tightly, ignoring the pain in her hands.
    She wanted Peri to return. She stood up and saw him picking his way over the slabs of broken concrete. She waved and called out, ‘Peri, Peri.’ Then as he came closer, she felt silly and she stepped back into the shadow and was silent as he came up to her.
    â€˜What did you get?’
    â€˜Food. There’s enough fruit for a few days and they had packets of stuff – special rations that soldiers have. There’s even chocolate. And I scrounged a backpack and I got you some clothes.’
    He shook out a bag on the ground. Coloured T-shirts, men’s and boys’ style, landed at her feet. ‘I had to say they were for me,’ he grinned and waved his hand over his skinny chest. ‘You’re nearly as big as me. I reckon they’ll fit you.’ He sat down. ‘Any visitors while I was away?’
    She shook her head. ‘As if. I found this, though. I was wearing it round my neck.’ She passed him the locket.
    â€˜Weird,’ he whispered. It lay flat on his palm. He stroked it with the fingers of his other hand, turned it over and traced a tiny ridge along the top. ‘It might open. There might be something inside.’ He scratched it with his thumbnail. ‘Pity we haven’t got a knife or something sharp.’
    â€˜Couldn’t we ask at the centre?’ said Red. ‘We should go in there anyway. There must be records and people looking for other people. Someone must know me. I’m not some freak from another planet.’
    Peri shrugged. ‘It’s crazy, Red. Nobody’s got time for a kid like you. They’re putting up tents but there are way too many people. All their computers are down and there are piles and piles of clothes and toys but only a few people to hand them out and everyone’s sticking up photos of relatives they’ve lost and there are reporters and cops and everyone’s going totally wild.’ He passed the locket back to Red. ‘We can go back there tomorrow but if you want to find out who you are, I reckon you’ll have to do it yourself.’

CHAPTER TWO
    IT GREW DARKER. PER I WRENCH ED OPEN THE DOOR S OF the car.
    â€˜You can have the back seat if you like. I’ll take the front.’
    Red curled up on the cracked plastic, her head on the door’s armrest. She smelt fungus and decay. In the mud on the floor was orange peel and screwed-up bags that had once held takeaway food: the smell of stale pizza slices, hamburgers, tomato sauce and cold fat lingered.
    Through the broken back window of the car, the stars were vague and indistinct, half covered with streaks of cloud. She stared at them, wishing she could identify them in some way, to know them. Eventually her eyes closed and she fell into a troubled sleep.
    â€¢ • • • •
    In the morning, over a handful of dried apricots and chocolate, she said, ‘I want to go back and look around where you found me.’
    â€˜Why? There’s no one left out there,’ Peri said. ‘When I found you I’d been all round that part.’
    â€˜I still want to see it,’ she said quietly. ‘It might make me remember something. And I want to