Lilly's hand skimmed across the covers with such anticipation she could nearly burst. Some mornings it took her an adult's while to remember, but today she awoke alert. Her eyes shot wide, but she stayed stock still, only letting her fingers traverse the vast world of the duvet. But there was nothing. Her head cocked upwards, alerting her ears and increasing the peripheral scope of her scanning eyes. Wishfully, she pulled aside the familiar clutter, hoping at any moment to be swallowed whole by this early morning game. She ignored the gentle billowing of the curtains.

'Mum!'

'MUuuumm!'

'What Lilly? What do you want? Stop shouting for god's sake'

'Where's Manu? He's not in my room. I can't find him.'

Silence. 'MUHUUUUM.' screamed Lilly; long enough to demand attention, abrupt enough to not warrant serious reaction. She'd had years of practice in nearly every shop on her street, honing the precious response that could expect and retain her mum's focus, without riling her too much so she would be ignored altogether.

'I don't know Lilly, have you checked downstairs?'

For the first time in three weeks Lilly didn't jump from bed with a smile. Her tangled nightie was wrapped around in a million creases and her hair had gone a day too long with out being brushed or washed; it would be painful. Her unsocked feet schhlapped the cold, hard floor as she trudged downstairs bewildered.

'Heere Manu…Psh wsh wsh.' She could feel the welling in her tummy, putting pressure on the pipes that led to her eyes. But she was far too old to cry. 'heere Manu. Pus pus pus.' Nothing.

'Muhuhum. I can't find him. I've looked everywhere for him... Everywhere mum, I promise.'

Manu was Lilly's first pet, and, like so many first pets, he'd been laired and kept with the promise of commitment and diligence that only a seven and a half year old can envisage. Though Lilly loved her parents as much as that word meant, her distrust forced her to demand a promise from her mum each night that she wouldn't take Manu out once she'd fallen asleep. Lilly could tell her mum wasn't fond of Manu; she hated to see it on her bed, she talked of asma and bad Lungs but no-one on TV ever had asma and they always had the pet on the bed and she said it was mangy and that you wouldn't know where it's been. Each deep breath in out made her mum seem even sillier. 'How can a cat make you stop breathing?' she thought. By the morning of day two she knew she'd won. As the postman popped letters through the door, Lilly just asked, (asking in an answered tone), 'Mum, where's the postman been?'

There was no more argument.

The saucer of milk was empty.

Lilly ran back upstairs, closing the window in her room as she raced in; the curtains were annoying her. Her mind raced to every crevice-cranny her almost-eight year old world held. She pulled out the drawers and pushed back beds, she opened doors, and rifled coats, but nothing. She checked in shoes and in the fridge and in her school bag between books and in the big blue vase she wasn't supposed to touch, still nothing. She checked in the toilet, in the bin, in the saucepan, everywhere. Upstairs, downstairs, rechecking the places she'd already checked, hoping to catch Manu in the game she played. She imagined the old witch downstairs in her big black coat that she never didn't wear. She even remembered her wrapped up the day when poor Lilly got scolded for standing under the showerhead to escape the swelter, and her new shirt got soaked through.

Everyone knew she was a witch; an old dark witchity witch with a coat made from Mr Gonzalez' dog who disappeared last year.

         A Monster rat,
         A Monster rat
         Stole a dog and made him fat
         Cut off his tail,
         Cut off his head,
         Cut off its coat for her instead.

Lilly raced upstairs, then down and back again. The more she ran the more she wanted to cry, and the more she wanted to cry the faster she ran to escape the tears; the real tears. She picked up her dress from the floor. It smelled of yesterday- a time before this morning, when the mess of Manu's hair clung to it like a smell and made her itch. She could only find one sandal; the other would be ten minutes lost beneath the pile of jumpers fresh from the wardrobe's earlier tussled search.

'Mother of Mary Lilly! You're not wearing that yellow frock again, go upstairs and take it of. Look at the dirt on the front of it. You've worn nothing else all week.'

Lilly felt her mum's words pierce any balloon of hope she had. 'What about Manu?'

She opened the door and slipped out on to the stairwell.

She prised the letterbox open just enough to mail her words of departure without being recalled on the part of the dress.

'Mum. I'm going to find Manu.'

Turning from the door, Lilly immediately felt lost. The only place she was sure Manu couldn't be was in the apartment. 'In that case he must be somewhere else, somewhere…' she thought, feeling the immensity of her deduction amplify the gurgle of surging tears. She ran upstairs to the roof. The door was locked. She was sure Manu had not come this way -the idea of ascension would not return until later that evening- she thought of her grandma. She thought of her bedroom window.

'Did she leave by the door or the window?' her eyes scrunched 'Is that why she never came back?' Lilly thought there might have been a connection.

The soles of her red sandals brushed the floor. Her right leg swung like a pendulum as though to assist her ticking brain. 'eummmpph!' went her foot, landing hard on the floor; she was off. Her legs beat down the stairs, firing her forward with each sprung instep, forcing her hand that slidgripped the rail to be even more vigilant. Past her own door, down, down; past the witches cavern, down, around, down; past the Gonzalez', down, down; past the post boxes that brought her nothing, stop, open, slam, out. Stop.

She stood turreted to the spot. Her solid brown eyes scoured the street but she hadn't the determination to arrest. She'd never looked at her street like this before.
An old man with the smell of ageing brushed past, knocking her off balance. He had two strong shoulders that yelped of hard work and in each locked fist, two bags, full of whatever he put there, completed the unjust symmetry as he shuffled away.

'Don't cry.' she said without words. But her eyes were already in the beautiful beginnings of glisten. The street was Saturday full and everybody passed by oblivious to her plight. If I was a cat, she thought, where would I go, what would I do? She imagined herself shrinking down on all fours. Prowling. Surely it would all be different from down there.

Standing with her back to the door, the sun beginning to toast the right side of her face, Lilly reasoned that Manu would have had only two options; left to Princess street or right to Carders. She knew Manu would have been afraid of the roaring combustion of traffic along Princess Street. Lilly's mind filled with a picture of her own even smaller hand, clammily lost in her dad's giant fist the first time they went to the road on their way to the park. Lilly tore off towards Carders, passing Martha's little shop that sold everything. She ran back.

'Hello Martha'

'Oh, good day my little angel, and how are you? ' Martha greeted her formally with a smile. Lilly loved her elevated status.

'I've lost Manu, my cat. He wasn't there when I woke up this morning.' she was aware that her breathlessness hid the weakness in her eyes.

'Ah, you poor thing.'

'Have you seen him? He's small and black'

'No. Sorry dear.'

Martha's words seemed to pull the wind from her stomach.
She bit her lip.

Back out in the street, Lilly's eyes momentarily darted back along the way she'd come. Nothing. She stood at the junction unable to commit to a decision. Her head twisted around once more, taking in all the tiny holes and dark retreats she had over looked in her life 'til now. It was too awful to imagine where those little black caves led. Drains. Across the road, her eyes scoured the playground. A little girl with her mum played on a swing, flanked by two others that hung motionless and downbeat.

She counted three paths that exited the playground on opposing sides to her entrance. She looked left and right and then left again. She swung round to face her door once more, then back, vainly trying not to see the peeled back mesh at the side of the playground she knew was there.

'Hello Lilly.' Someone shouted.

But she was lost to her search. The sound of her own name drew her left, like a hare responding to the huntsman's shot.

Why did so many wear black shoes? She thought. She passed Fernando's bakery, passed the tobacconist, passed the pharmacy with the man who had black hairs sprouting from a blacker spot on his cheek. Her eyes ran the aisles in the supermarket, searching along the floor where detergent was stored and dented tins of sardines lay forgotten. Passed the vegeatables she bought for her mum and the chocolate she never disclosed. Nothing. Ana was at the checkout serving; she'd have been too busy to know anything, her eyes only went from one beeping item to the next. She passed the street on her right that brought her to Rosita's house, where her mum brought her to have stale biscuits. Her eyes ran the length of it, but the possibility of each new junction confused her. She kept running. Her eyes skimmed along like an escaped mouse, clinging to edge in search of a place to hide. She ran down Juame Street, running into a wall of possibility that turned her and sent her back along Carders. Passed the Bank of Santander, passed the bar with bleary-eyed men who stank, passed Ms Borders shop that had the pink shoes she reallyreally wanted. Another road shot off on her left. Water from the hairdresser slushed down a drain. Gone.
Lilly was hot. Her special bollard under the great tree was empty. She made her way over, almost creeping, hoping that Manu would jump out and surprise her. Maybe Manu had seen her run past or he'd just know to come here, by smell or whatever and he'd come bounding over, his little claws scratching at her exposed toes. But there'd be no surprise.

She sat down. Even her eyes were too tired to persist, and, like an old woman in mid-day heat, she slumped inwards. Lilly wanted to cry, but ideas about her age made it impossible.

Lilly had never thought about these streets before, not really, not in this way. She'd wondered about little things, as though everything was unique to her and unshared by anyone else. But today was different. Every thing just exploded. One street ran into the next, and then collided with another, and then another. Paths became streets, becoming roads, becoming motorways that led somewhere very far indeed, even to Sitges; which lay forever down the coast, where they had holidayed last year. But Manu would never be allowed on the train. She thought of the fence in the playground, her mind racing as she imagined where that could possibly lead. 'Poor Manu.'

A little smiling terrier stopped in front of her. It cocked it's leg in fashion, looking up at her with it's tongue languishing out the side of its mouth, while it's water ished from under its scruffy black and white coat. She hated him.

'Giahhhhh.' She scuttled her feet, lifting and throwing one foot a distance of six centimetres and clattering the hard ground in the manner all dogs fear; she feigned giving chase. His message tapered out as he ran off, squeezing his fur-covered perineum to prevent the arbitrary marking of territory.

Lilly was hungry. She thought of the tiny bowl of milk left out for Manu last night, how insubstantial it would be on such day. Standing up to go home, she hoped that hunger would have same recalling influence for everyone.

The spring had gone from her gait as she made her way back along Carders. She didn't peer down as many side streets as she had done. She didn't crawl into the jagged nooks with the spiders, nor silently accost those grown-ups that passed by. They could tell her nothing. The street never felt this long.

'Manu! MANU!' She shouted, as she rushed forward, her eyes trying to focus on the dark shape among poorly stacked boxes and unsellable vegetables that awaited an unceremonious collection. 'Man…' The Terrier's head sprung up defensively, knocking over a box and sending seven soft and shapeless tomatoes out into the pathway. The dog stared straight up in to her red-rubbed eyes, hoping to anticipate her next move- so often she'd scratched his chin and clawed his back- but their trust was lying lame back at the bollard.

Poised like the bull that anticipates the pick hidden within the deathly red curtain, Lilly's shoulders fell forward with the weight of despair, forcing the air from the pit of her stomach out through her nose- her tremoring lips, raw from sharp little teeth, stung as the salt tears slowly fell.
She ran.

Back in the house her mum would be waiting for her. The tears were coming and no pace or stride was sufficient to hold them back. She could feel their trickle on her cheeks as they reworked old ground, biting the skin beneath, tempting her hand to sweep them aside. Her finger pressed the Bell; Again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again.

'Mum.'

The latch released with the dead sound of an axe against hard wood and the door opened under the weight of Lilly's shoulder, tripping her with surprise, off-setting her has she bolted up the twisting staircase.

Upstairs her mum had already un-locked the flat door. Each pace back and forth between kitchen and hall brought her no closer to a suitable explanation as to why Manu had gone, why any of us went anywhere.

^