‘Are you all right, Ollie?’ Joan asked. ‘You look like you need a cold drink.’
I turned to find her right behind me, hands gripping her backpack straps. Her pale face was stark against the midday sunshine, her knobbly legs displaying several scabs and bruises.
‘I’ve got a better idea.’ I smiled, hoping to hide my growing concern. ‘How about lunch instead?’
I nipped upstairs for a much-needed shower while Joan settled herself on her blanket on my third of the lawn. I made a mental note to buy a couple of comfy garden chairs and a table sooner rather than later. The back step was fine to perch on for my morning cup of tea, but it was no good for a lunch designed to fill a hungry child. I made us huge Subway-style sandwiches crammed with cheese, salami and salad, added a bowl of strawberries and thick wodges of carrot cake that I’d picked up in a local bakery. It was twice as much as I’d normally eat, but I’d been working hard that morning, and my urge to feed Joan up was almost primal.
From the way she devoured her food, I guessed my urge was right.
Once Joan had dabbed up every last speck of cake, I stood up, brushing the crumbs from my shorts. ‘Well, I have a bed to build.’
‘Do you need any help?’ Joan asked, hopeful green eyes peeping through her fringe.
‘Are you sure? Can the Fellowship do without you for a couple of hours?’
She jumped to her feet. ‘Well if they can’t, they don’t stand a chance of making it to Mordor!’
‘In that case, your help would be very much appreciated.’ We started walking into the house, before I stopped. ‘What if your mum comes home and finds you missing – won’t she be worried? Had we better leave a note?’
‘No. She’ll just think I’m at the library or in the woods or something.’
I was no parenting expert, but while I supposed that kids had more freedom to roam free in the countryside, leaving an eleven-year-old alone all day seemed a bit much. I might talk to Steph about it next time I saw her.
‘Let’s get to work, then.’
Joan hurried up the stairs, waiting for me to point her to the main bedroom.
‘Ugh!’ Gripping her throat with both hands, she pretended to choke. ‘This is disgusting!’
‘Yeah.’ I cringed all over again when I remembered how Sam had politely scanned the room before asking if I was sure I wanted the bed to go in there. Given the size of the smaller room, I had no choice. Tomorrow’s job was stripping the wallpaper.
‘Why Joan?’ I asked, nearly three hours later, as we tightened the last of the screws. ‘I mean, for your name. It’s pretty unusual these days.’
‘Which is one of the reasons,’ she said, slightly breathless from twisting a reluctant screwdriver. ‘Also, it’s a name for someone strong, and brave, who does amazing feats instead of just reading stories about people doing them.’
‘Joan of Arc?’
‘Yep.’ She sat back, checking if the headboard was tight enough not to wobble. ‘A true heroine.’
‘Well, it beats being named after an actress your dad fancied, which is where Olivia comes from.’
‘I never met my dad.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I stopped twisting and looked at her, mortified.
‘It’s fine. Mum says he wasn’t worth knowing.’
I nodded. ‘My mum says the same about mine.’
‘Did you meet him?’
‘He left when I was six, and that’s the last I heard from him, so he can’t have been that great.’
‘Did your mum have boyfriends after that?’ Joan moved on to the next screw.
‘No. Did yours?’
She nodded. ‘Lots. Archer was the last one but he was horrible, so we packed our bags and snuck out when he was at the pub. We got on the first train, and then rode a bus to the middle of the forest where he’d never find us.’
‘Wow. How old were you when that happened?’
‘I was eight.’
‘It must have been hard, moving here out of the blue. Where did you stay?’
Joan wrinkled her forehead, remembering. ‘It was sort of scary and good at the same time. I was happy to get far away from Archer, but Mum was really worried. She cried a lot when she thought I was asleep. First we stayed in a caravan on the campsite, and then after they gave her a cleaning job, she got more jobs and we moved here.’
‘And you like it here?’ The screws all finished, we picked up the mattress and began manoeuvring it onto the frame.