The Gaps by Leanne Hall (classic literature list .TXT) 📕

backyard. I picture climbing in a window, getting a knife from his kitchen and using it.

As I stare, a man comes out the front door and shuffles down the driveway, past the wheely bins. He’s looking at me.

‘You! I see you!’ He makes it to the letterbox and uses it to keep his balance. ‘Girl, I see you! I know why you’re here.’

I squint and it’s him. Paunchy and balding and much older than I expected. Samuel Pulpitt. He’s not a muscly gym coach anymore but an out-of-shape old man.

‘Yeah?’ I call back. ‘Why am I here then?’

‘You don’t think people have been gawking at me, spying on me all the time? I see through you.’

I can’t believe he is standing right here in front of me, less than ten metres away with only a thin strip of road between us.

‘I know who you are!’ I make sure my voice is deep and strong. ‘You’re disgusting, a rapist and a criminal.’

His mouth flaps open and shut, out of breath from walking up his own driveway. Power surges through me.

‘Do your neighbours know that there’s a predator living next door? What do you think they’d do if they knew?’

‘Listen, I went to jail for that. I did my time. It was a lifetime ago.’

‘You ruined lives. Those women will never forget what you did to them.’

‘Oh, you’ve asked them personally, have you? What you’re doing now is equally disgusting, you spoilt little brat!’ He coughs from the effort of insulting me. ‘This is my house, my life, my privacy!’

‘How can you say that?’ I’m outright shouting now, shouting my throat raw. I am a rage bomb, a firework going off, a nuclear mushroom. ‘What you did is unforgivable and you should pay for it for the rest of your—’

Out of nowhere my breath deserts me, my voice trails off. I’m breathing just as hard as he is.

‘Oh, I see.’ Samuel Pulpitt leans harder on the letterbox. He’s wearing a tracksuit with stains down the front. ‘You’re her age, aren’t you? The Mitchell girl. Do you know her? Is that it?’

A shiver runs through my whole body. ‘No.’

‘Is that why you’re so upset?’

I try to move my feet but I’m frozen. ‘You’re wrong. You’re delusional.’

But maybe it’s me that’s delusional. The man in front of me doesn’t fit the police profile at all and he’s not the sinister abducting machine that the media has painted. He’s old and sick and pissed-off.

‘Why don’t you search my house, if you’re so convinced?’ Pulpitt says but my feet have finally come unstuck and I’m not convinced at all.

I run and run, as fast as I can.

When I reach the train station I’m still shaking all over and my shirt is plastered to my back and my throat hurts and my hands hurt and it was not fun being a detective or assassin and I feel grubby all over.

Even though it’s the middle of the day, there are still quite a few people on the platform and they’re all staring at me but not in the good way, more in a what-is-wrong-with-her way. I walk right to the end and find a bench, sitting with my head in my hands.

If Samuel Pulpitt isn’t Doctor Calm, that means someone else is. There are probably hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of men out there who hate girls and want to hurt them and the world keeps going around and nothing changes. And what can we do? Make a photo, chase a suspect, read the news.

My face is either freezing cold or boiling hot—I can’t tell anymore.

I’m so so tired and term is about to start on Monday and I’ll have to face everyone and put my game face on and it’s as if I haven’t had a holiday at all. Yin will have slipped from everyone’s minds a little bit more, and by the time exams and the formal come around she will have slipped completely, and by the time we’re in Year Twelve and going on to live full and interesting lives she’ll be a puff of dust in the distance, still only sixteen years old.

The tracks hum and I shuffle to the edge of the platform as the train arrives, the robot voice chanting over the PA and then the train comes in fast and loud, squealing metal on metal.

There’s a moment of danger when the train pushes hot dragon breath around me and I’m dizzy and it would be nothing to let myself fall forwards, off the platform and into space. All I have to do is take another step forward, then another. It would be that easy.

The lurching spreads all the way through me as the train streaks past in a rush of sound and wind. I haven’t moved, of course I haven’t, because I don’t want to move, I don’t want to fall, I want to live, I know that. I really want to live. Seconds feel like hours and I walk towards the nearest carriage door. All I can think is: I can’t go on like this.

On the train I find the quietest seat and read Chloe’s message.

Yeah. I talked to a cool artist. Thanks for inviting me.

She doesn’t apologise for leaving the opening without saying goodbye and quite frankly I don’t need her to, I just need her to keep replying to me. I don’t know if I’d describe Genital Gerard as ‘cool’ but maybe it’s an art thing. I read and reread her words, trying to discover more of their tone and mood, but they stay the same.

Mum sits at the dining table with her laptop open in front of her, reading glasses on, a cup of coffee beside her, in an example of the most normal scene you could conjure up in our household.

‘Did you have a nice time at Chloe’s?’ She flips her glasses to the top of her head. I think she knows I lied.

‘Great,’ I say. Our potted