Red Read Free Page B

pale cotton shorts and a bright yellow T-shirt with a football logo.
    â€˜Don’t turn round,’ she said as she pulled her red top over her head. Her mud-soaked jeans were harder to take off. She undid the top and rolled the stiffened fabric slowly down over her thighs. The gashes on her hands still stung. Blue-green bruises covered both her knees and were scattered over her shins. She pulled on the T-shirt and shorts and brushed at the dirt on her legs. The clothes were big on her but she felt freer, more able to move.
    â€˜If you had really short hair, you’d look like a boy,’ said Peri.
    â€˜Thanks a lot.’ She felt there was something clever she should say but it was too hard to come up with it. ‘Are you going to come with me?’
    He shrugged. ‘I’ll take you there. Got nothing else to do.’
    â€¢ • • • •
    At the rescue centre there were mountains of clothes and toys, and piles of books and kitchen things. Everywhere were people: family groups with little kids clutching at their parents’ knees, couples with arms entwined, and bigger kids wandering as if they had nowhere to belong. Old people were sitting, hunched on the odd square of bare grass or in the shade of trees, fanning themselves with pages torn from a magazine.
    And noise. Calling out, shouting and crying. Voices buzzed above the sound of the rumbling of generators, the grinding of the gears of slow-moving vehicles and the screech of sirens.
    â€˜Come on.’ Peri grabbed at her arm.
    â€˜There’re too many people.’ Red’s voice suddenly stuck in her throat.
    â€˜That’s good,’ said Peri. ‘No one’ll take much notice of us.’
    Red shivered. She wanted someone to notice her, to know her.
    â€˜Come on. You’re the one who wanted to see this, not me.’ Peri pulled her with him. She followed him like an obedient child.
    Peri fought his way through to the biggest building.
    Around one side, a door led into the main hall. Boards covered with photographs and scribbled messages lined the walls. People swarmed in front of them, some silent, their eyes scanning quickly, others gasping and putting their hands up to cover their faces, their bodies slumped, defeated.
    â€˜So many,’ whispered Red. ‘I’ll never get to look at all of them. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.’
    â€˜I’ll start from the far end and meet you in the middle,’ said Peri. ‘Just see if anyone is looking for a girl of about eleven or twelve, reddish-brown hair, a few freckles, pretty ordinary-looking.’
    â€˜Thanks a lot.’
    She watched him walk quickly away from her. This was so weird. Why was he doing this? One minute he wanted to help, the next he didn’t care. And who was he?
    â€¢ • • • •
    Red’s first picture was a woman in a swimming costume holding a naked toddler. She was pointing at the camera, grinning, while he was squinting into the sun. My daughter and grandson was scrawled underneath and then a phone number, names and an address. Red moved on. People of every colour and age were there: old men and women with faces leathered by years in the sun, grinning surfers, laughing children, men and women holding chuckling infants and babies. Each had beneath it a name, an age and a possible last place where the person was known to have lived or worked or been visiting. Some images showed whole families in front of their beachfront houses. Then there were no pictures, just lists of names. Red moved more and more slowly, weighed down by the disappeared. How could she know if any of these people belonged to her? She didn’t have a name, a face to claim as her own. Her stomach, her throat, her whole body felt empty, lost. If she wasn’t on this board, did that mean no one missed her, there was no one to claim her? Did she belong to no one?
    Peri met her in the