When Poppy crept down the stairs of the home and stepped outside, the world slept. It was early, that was true; earlier than she’d ever been up before. Of course she was often awake at this time, such was the plight of life in the home; clinging to the occasional hour of sleep which floated past in her normal tumultuous nights thrashing around under suffocatingly thin sheets. But this was different. She was up, dressed, alert and ready to start her mission. Yes, Poppy True had a mission. Poppy True had been especially requested; chosen. Somewhere, today, for once in this big, pointless world Poppy True was needed. The feeling hung about her shoulders like a majestic cloak, an invisible shield of beautiful, empowering strength. Of course she’d help. Of course she’d take it – they needed her – she could do anything in the world. But now, faced with the heavy breath of night still sleeping in the shadows, she hesitated. Did she really know the way?
Hearing a slamming door and the rumbling of an engine from a car somewhere up the street she quickly pressed herself flat against the wall, her heart beat thumping in her chest. Entirely unaware of Poppy, oblivious to her mission it moved away from the kerb advancing slowly in the other direction. She sighed with relief feeling, for the first time, the soft whisperings of day time coming to life around her. She pulled her hood over her head, a further layer of protection from this unfamiliar outsideness, and stepped into the street.
Two days she’d estimated. Two days she’d boasted, when they’d asked her how fast she could make it; a new power coursing through her narrow, underfed bones as they’d looked her up and down. She was Supergirl, one of the X Men, Spiderman all rolled into one. How hard could it be to carry such a small thing for sixty miles? The old man had smiled, had nodded, had believed in Poppy with all of his might, with his seventy three years of wrinkled, stooped hope that this girl could do it, that she could deliver this thing and make things right. The younger man was different. He’d stared at her, stared into her, stared through her, an unbending face like cold steel but for a twitch beneath his left eye. Did he think she could do it? Poppy wasn’t sure, but she didn’t care. A memory in soft focus had sang in her head, golden edged and smelling of summer, of cut grass and of a granddad putting a warm, steady hand around her shoulders. She’d do it for the old man.
Her orders were to hug the coast line, to stay away from the major roads, from any roads at all where a twelve year old girl wandering on her own might arouse suspicion, arouse temptation. No, she was to follow the frills of rock and foam, the sands and hills and smaller villages all the way from Edinburgh in the hope that, at some point within the next 48 hours she’d arrive at a house somewhere in the North East of England, a big house, a house rooted into a cliff top, firm against the salty retaliation of the North Sea; a house that ‘she’d know was the one when she saw it,’ where she was to deliver her package. And then what? Melt into insignificance once more, dissolve into the sands she was about to tread, go back to how it was?
She pushed all thoughts of ‘afterwards’ from her head, and headed towards the sea, an unassuming secret agent in second hand jeans. An unsung super hero carrying the future in a purple rucksack with a fraying strap.
The body is an amazing thing. It knows how to act, how to react, how to intuitively take care of itself, often without our conscious input. When it feels threatened, exhilarated, ready for a challenge, a battalion of extra adrenalin is shipped in pulsating through the limbs providing almost cartoon Popeye strength. Maybe this is what made Poppy walk so quickly. Maybe this is how a child of twelve could march, relentlessly along the coast; sharp, wet rain cutting into her face, rocks slippery under foot, at such a tempo; such determination to complete her mission, to prove that she had been a wise choice.
Maybe this is why, in the soft yawning of dusk, when a white car broke all of the normal boundaries and drove slowly across the beach towards her, a tired young girl who had been walking all day found enough new energy sizzling in her legs to run, to head in land, to fight against the gluey pull of the sand dunes as she made her escape. Through a shrill, deafening heart beat she ran, the echoes of slamming doors, of masculine swearing and arguing like a warped, underwater cry swimming towards her. She wove through the dunes, tearing her legs on splinters of dried grass, running for the safety of the gorse bushes, tunnelling through their inconvenient pathways to find a dark, secret place that could embrace her for a couple of hours, to stroke her hair and tell her everything would be ok. ‘I am a super hero’ she repeated her sacred mantra to the beat of a frightened pulse, ‘I am Miss Invisible. Miss Invisible the Super Hero. No one can see me. The good guys always win. We always win. Always. In the end.’ Such had been the mantra of Poppy True throughout her entire life. Today, if only for today, she prayed that it was so.
