Poppy Day by Amanda Prowse Page B

not a customer.
    Poppy wandered back towards the salon. Her boss’s dulcet tones had reached her down the street and probably half the people in the next street as well. Her client was still engrossed in a magazine with her hair half pinned up. Poppy didn’t think she had noticed her absence; she may even have nodded off, judging by her slumped posture. Either that or she was dead. Whichever.
    Christine jabbed the phone towards Poppy, extending a painted nail in her direction, ‘’urry up!’
    Poppy ignored her. Sometimes this worked best for both of them. She knew it was Sergeant Gisby before he spoke.
    There was a silence. It was as if the two verbally danced in silence, skirting the issue, unsure how to begin, twisting and passing each other in well-choreographed moves.
    ‘How are you, Poppy?’
    ‘I’m…’ She felt lost for words quite literally; not knowing how to describe what she was feeling or how she was. Poppy Day had, her report said, a fourteen-year-old reading age despite being only six, and an excellent grasp of the English language and its vocabulary . She didn’t have the words because she didn’t have the understanding, ‘… fine.’
    ‘Good. I am glad that you’re all right. No more news, I’m afraid, but I’d like to come and see you when you finish work. Would that be convenient?’
    Would that be convenient? It wasn’t as if she had other plans, or that anything she may have planned could have been half as important as anything he might want to tell her, like whether or not her husband was alive or d… d… not.
    ‘That would be fine, Rob. I’ll be home at about sixish.’
    ‘Great, Poppy, I’ll see you then.’
    Christine pounced. ‘Oooh, Rob is it? See you about sixish? And what, might I ask, would your Mart think about you entertaining gentleman callers of an evening while he’s off fighting for his country, God knows bloody where?’ She delivered the whole speech without drawing breath. She did that a lot, talked until she ran out of air rather than pause, as though she was on a timer.
    Poppy looked her squarely in the eye. ‘What would Mart think? Mmmn… he would think, thank God my Poppy isn’t like Christine and, therefore, not likely to shag the first thing that she sees in trousers the moment her husband’s back is turned.’
    ‘Oh Poppy love, I was only joking!’ She patted the girl’s thin arm with her talons, attempting a girlish giggle.
    Poppy continued to look her in the face, her expression stony. ‘So was I!’
    Christine chose to swallow the lie. Both glad the conversation was over.
     
     
    It had been a very long day. Poppy sat on the sofa in the dark. The silent gloom suited her, enabled her to think without distraction . She replayed the five seconds of vision that she had encountered earlier, trying to see around the corner, to hear more, feel more. There was nothing else, but it was enough.
    It wasn’t often that she wished she had someone to talk to, but this was one of those times and her mate would not have sufficed. Jenna had been in Poppy’s life since junior school, they looked and sounded similar. Jenna was her surrogate family; in fact not surrogate, she was family.
    She had always been there for Poppy when things were bad at home, helping in the small ways that children can. She was still there for her now, not that Poppy was so afflicted or inept that she needed constant care and attention. There was no rota, but Jenna was protective, knowing what she had been through. In this instance, however, Poppy wanted to talk to someone who had life experience, like a mum, ha! Or more specifically a dad – Poppy wished that she could talk to her dad. Having never spoken to or met her father that would have been an interesting inaugural conversation.
    Poppy’s biological father was a ‘No Hoper’. For years she thought the ‘No Hopers’ were followers of a bizarre religion, like the ‘Jehovah’s whatstheirname’ or the ‘brethren of the