by Fiona Foden
“Er … no. Actually, I was thinking, it’s probably best if I don’t.”
“Why’s that?” she asks with a frown.
“I just don’t think there’s much point. I mean … this place has all the stuff we need – all the furniture and even cutlery in the kitchen. We don’t want to muddle up our personal stuff with the things that belong to the flat, do we?”
Mum brushes a strand of dark hair from my face. “It doesn’t matter if our things get mixed up, Josie,” she says softly.
“Yeah, but it’ll be easier for us to leave quickly,” I explain, “if we keep our own stuff in the boxes.”
That’s when she gives me a really intense look, and says, “Josie…” Then her eyes fill with tears and she stops abruptly. “Come through and sit in the kitchen with me.”
She leads me there, as if I couldn’t find my own way down the corridor with its beige walls and doors to all the other bedrooms (there are six of them, plus two bathrooms and a living room – this place is huge). “You think it’s not worth us unpacking,” Mum starts, switching on the kettle, “because we’ll only be staying for a short while, right?”
“Yeah.” I nod. That’s me, ever practical.
“Josie, love…” She rubs at her tired eyes. “I don’t know how long we’re going to be here, OK, but it’s not temporary. You know you’ll be starting school here in the autumn…”
“Yes, but—”
“We can’t think of it like, like … we’re just here for a few weeks.”
“But eventually,” I cut in, “we might be able to save up enough money and get another boat—”
“There are no plans to get another boat,” Mum says, reaching across the table to clasp my hand. “I’m sorry, darling, but those days are over. I need to work full time now, and this is our home…”
“It’s not our home!” I jump up from my chair, sending it clattering against an ancient dented fridge behind me. “I’m miles away from Bella and Murphy and we don’t know anyone here. And it smells horrible…” Mum gets up and tries to hug me, but I push her away. “Leave me alone!”
“Josie,” she says firmly. “Listen to me. We’ll just have to make the best of it, OK? We have a huge flat – you must admit, we were so cramped on Promise…”
“I didn’t mind,” I grumble.
“Well,” she says briskly, handing me a cup of tea, “this is the best I can do for us right now. I need to look after you and Ryan and there’s no one else to help us.”
“What about Grandma and Grandpa?” I ask.
Mum presses her lips together. I mean Dad’s parents – Mum’s died before I was born – who live in New Zealand. As far as I can work out, Mum was never their favourite person. They reckoned it was her crazy idea to raise Ryan and me on a boat (actually true). And, according to them, it was also her fault that Dad caught the pneumonia which might have caused his heart problems (of course that wasn’t anything to do with Mum. When I was a bit older, she explained to me that they were hurting too, and just needed someone to blame). Anyway, my grandparents were so angry and upset that they left England and moved as far away from us as it’s possible to be.
“Sorry, Mum,” I say quietly, when she still hasn’t replied.
She raises a faint smile and brings the mug to her lips. “It’s OK, love, but I don’t think Grandma and Grandpa are likely to come running to our rescue any time soon.”
“We don’t need them,” I say firmly, ashamed of my outburst.
“All I need,” she says, squeezing my hand, “is for the three of us to be together and as strong as we can be.”
I nod and sip my hot, sweet tea.
“So,” she goes on, “can we make a bargain, Josie? That we’ll try and look on the bright side from now on?”
I mull this over, wondering how I’ll do this when I’m already missing Bella and Murphy like crazy, not to mention the only home I’ve ever known. “I’ll try,” I say quietly.
Mum smiles, her eyes glinting in the dim kitchen light. “You’re an amazing girl,” she says, getting up from her seat and planting a kiss my forehead. “Now, back to bed, OK?”
Stifling a yawn, I hug her, then pad quietly down the stale-smelling corridor to my room. But instead of climbing straight into bed, I pause by my window again, thinking maybe, if I look hard enough, there’ll be a star. Just one will do, to remind me that they’re still out there somewhere.
I keep looking until something catches my eye. With a gasp, I realize there’s a boy out there, all alone in the street, standing astride a bike. He’s looking up at me. My God – he can see me in my black and white spotty Dalmatian pyjamas! Heart pounding, I jump back and lurk in the shadowy darkness of my room. How long was I standing there, and how long was he staring up? Is that what people do around here for fun – cycle around in the middle of the night, peering into people’s windows? That makes him sound creepy, but in fact, he isn’t at all. He has a mop of dark hair, a sweet, inquisitive face, and is making no move to cycle away. Although I can still watch him, I don’t think he can see me. I moisten my dry lips with my tongue, trying to muster the courage to walk back towards the window, and maybe make eye contact with him. I sort of want to. There’s something intriguing about him, like he could actually be a friend. What would I do, though – smile and wave? Or force open the heavy old window and ask why he’s roaming about at half-one in the morning? He’d probably laugh and zoom away.
I take a step forward. The boy is looking around, clearly in no particular hurry to go anywhere. I step forward again, wondering where he lives and what his name is – maybe he’s a neighbour, or goes to the school Ryan and I will be starting in September. This is dumb, I realize; there are tons of schools in London and anyway, Mum hasn’t managed to finalize which one we’re going to yet. I’ll probably never see this boy again. The weird thing is, I want to. I want to know what brings him out to the city streets at night.
Taking a deep breath, I make my way back towards my window. Seeing me there, the boy raises a hand in a sort of wave, and his face bursts into the sweetest, cheekiest grin I’ve ever seen in my life.
Then he’s gone.
I blink down at the space he’s left, wondering who he is and whether he’ll come back, if I wait long enough. Down at the end of the corridor, I hear Mum switching off the kitchen light and making her way past my door to her own bedroom. “I hope you’re in bed, Josie,” she says as she passes.
What can I say – “Er, no, Mum, but listen, an amazing thing’s just happened”? I can still picture the boy’s incredibly cute, open face and, despite everything that’s happened these past few days, the thought of him lifts my heart.
As quietly as I can, I tiptoe across the worn chocolate-brown carpet, slip into the creaky old bed with its lumpy mattress and pull the sheets around me. “Josie?” Mum calls out softly.
“I’m going to sleep now,” I reply.
“OK. Goodnight, love.”
As her footsteps fade away, I breathe in deeply, aware of a faint wood-smokey smell. Where is that coming from? I realize then that it’s the scent of the logs we burnt on our cast-iron stove on Promise. Somehow, even though we hadn’t lit it since spring, the smell has followed us to London. I close my eyes and inhale it, hoping it never fades away.
Then something new flickers into my mind, as bright and warming as a flame. It’s that boy on the bike, smiling up at me. As I drift towards sleep in my strange new home, my head is filled with stars.
I wake up next morning thinking, Was he for real? Slipping out of bed, I pad across my room, past the tatty white wardrobe and wonky chest of drawers, and peer down to the street. Of course the boy hasn’t come back. The only person out there is Vince, with another tight, stripy T-shirt stretched over his belly as he unloads crates from a van.
By the time I’ve fixed myself a bowl of Cheerios – Ryan isn’t up yet
, and I guess Mum must be down in the pub kitchen already – I’ve remembered her “look on the bright side” line. Maybe I missed its importance last night. It wasn’t just a casual request, I realize now as I crunch spoonfuls of cereal. It was a plea. She needs both me and Ryan to help her make this work. Glancing around the kitchen at the murky brown cupboards – what is it with the nasty colour obsession in this flat? – I try to figure out precisely how I might make myself feel joyously happy about living here.
OK, there are lots of things we have now that we didn’t have on Promise, such as:
- A bath. I have to admit, our old shower – which worked with a whining, battery-powered pump – was pretty pathetic. Like being dribbled on by a kitten, basically. The bath here has yellowy stains and looks as old as the building itself. But it’s also massive, probably designed for five Victorians to all splosh around in at once.
- A proper flushing loo instead of one filled with blue chemicals that you have to empty yourself at the sanitary station. That’s the place where boaters’ toilet stuff goes. We had to chug along the river, tie up at this little concrete building, carry out our loo and tip its contents into this big toilet place. It was never a favourite activity of mine.
- A toaster with many settings (two/four slices, regular/frozen bread) plus a removable drawer for crumbs. On Promise, we didn’t have non-essential appliances like computers or hairdryers, and we didn’t have a crumb drawer either. And we were PERFECTLY HAPPY WITHOUT ONE THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Whoops. I forgot our “look on the bright side” pact for a moment…
- A proper front door. At least, the pub has one. The door to our actual flat is next to the bar, to the right of the huge flowerpot where my pork scratchings plant will soon burst forth, ha ha. That’ll show Princess Chantelle…
- Oh, and my very own double bed! How could I forget that?
I put down my spoon as Ryan appears in the kitchen. Wearing just his boxers, he grabs the milk carton from the table, takes a noisy slurp and slams it back down. “Sleep all right?” he asks, plonking himself on the seat opposite mine.
“Yeah.” I nod. “Yeah … I didn’t expect to, but I did.”
He grins. “Me too. It’s all right, isn’t it, having a room that’s actually big enough to swing a cat in?”
“We don’t have a cat,” I remind him.
“Oh, c’mon, Josie. You have to admit, we couldn’t live on Promise for ever…”
“I thought we could,” I exclaim.
“Yeah, well … things change, don’t they?” His eyes darken as he tips an enormous mound of Cheerios into his bowl and sloshes milk all over them.
“I guess so,” I reply, stealing a glance at him. I realize now that he’s missing his friends – Tyler and Jake especially – and our life on the river, just as I am. Only he’s determined to make the best of this, because he knows we have nowhere else to go.
And if my hairy big brother can do that? Well … I guess I can, too.
After checking in with Mum, who’s being shown around the pub kitchen by Maria, I head out on my own. I promised Mum I wouldn’t venture too far and, although she looked unsure, she could hardly stop me. After all, how else am I supposed to fill the summer? By hanging out in the flat all day? “Maybe Ryan could go with you,” she suggested, at which my brother snorted into his hand.
So, here I am, having escaped my mustard bedroom … to do what, exactly? Prowl the streets like a cat. It’s another hot, airless day, and Bella and the others will probably have cycled to the lake again, and be plunging into the cool water right now…
No, I shouldn’t be thinking about that.
Instead, I focus hard on looking as if I know where I’m going, rather than wandering aimlessly. I pass a row of dingy terraced houses and a gang of kids and teenagers all messing about on scooters and bikes. Groups of old ladies are chatting and laughing outside a community centre, and a furious-looking woman is pulling a wailing toddler along by the arm.
I’m on the main road now – it’s far busier than the side streets around the pub – passing run-down shops with boxes of wilting vegetables outside. On a whim, I turn down a narrow alleyway strewn with bottles and cans. I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’m looking for. It’s not as if I’ll make friends, wandering about on my own. What did Mum say about me getting to know people – that it’ll happen naturally when I start school in September? September! That feels like a lifetime away. Anyway, what will I do then? March up to someone and say, “Hi, my name’s Josie”? Is that what you do? Or d’you hover around the edges of the school grounds, hoping that someone notices and takes pity? It was easy with boaters. Every so often, a new boat would arrive at our stretch of river, and occasionally that new boat would have kids around my age on it, and we’d become friends. Sometimes they’d move on, and a new family would take their place. It all happened quite naturally.
I stop and look around. The alley has brought me to an old skate park with houses on every side. Every inch of the high walls around it is sprayed with graffiti. There are ramps, railings and a huge concrete bowl thing. There isn’t a living thing in sight – not a blade of grass, or even a dusty dandelion poking through a concrete crack. No people either.
Where does everybody go around here? It’s the summer holidays. Thousands of kids just like me are off school. What do they do? Surely they can’t all just hang about the streets all day?
I plonk myself down on one of the ramps. You wouldn’t think a great curve of concrete would be comfortable, but it feels like a huge, smooth radiator as I lie back on it. I pull out my phone from the pocket of my shorts and call Bella.
“Josie,” she yelps. “You’ve only been gone a day but it feels like ages already. I miss you so much! What are you doing?”
Hearing her voice makes me smile. “What am I doing? Missing you like mad, of course. Oh, and I’m lying on a big concrete ramp in a skate park.”
“Right.” She laughs. “Well, you’ll be glad to know Murphy’s OK.”
“Is he? He’s not pining for me, depressed as hell?”
Bella chuckles kindly. Of course, I don’t want him to be refusing his food or teetering on the very edge of her deck, as if about to end it all by leaping into the river (he can swim anyway, so that wouldn’t work). “I’m sure he does miss you,” she says diplomatically. “So, anyway, what’s your new place like?”
I start to describe the huge old pub with its terrible painted sign and the flat upstairs that used to be a hotel. “Sounds great,” Bella says, sounding almost envious.
“Yeah, well, it’s not. It’s as if someone looked at all the colours in the world and thought – right, let’s pick the very worst ones and paint the flat with them.”
“Aw,” she says with a heavy sigh. “Couldn’t you change your bedroom around and ask your mum to do it up for you?”
I turn this possibility over in my mind. “She doesn’t have time for that. She’s virtually living downstairs in the pub kitchen already, finding out how everything works and what kind of meals the regular customers like best.”
There’s a small pause, which makes Bella feel horribly far away. “Have you met anyone yet?” she asks.
“Just Vince and Maria. They own the pub and live a few streets away. They seem like kind, nice people … unlike their daughter.”
“What’s she like?” Bella wants to know.
“Um … not exactly friendly. Anyway, listen – last night, I looked out of my bedroom window, and there was this boy in the street, staring up at me.”
“Ugh, creepy!” she exclaims.
“No,” I say quickly, “it wasn’t like that. He looked … nice. Sort of lost.”
“And this was in the middle of the night?”
“About half-one in the morning, yeah.” I bite my lip, knowing how weird this sounds. “Anyway,” I add, “what’s everyone been up to?”
&n
bsp; “You’ve only been gone a day,” she laughs. “You know what it’s like around here. Nothing ever happens.”
“Come on, there must be something.”
“Er … oh, I know! Tyler and Jake dared each other to wear their mum’s swimming costumes and swim from one side of the river to the other in them.” Her voice starts shaking with giggles. “You should have seen Tyler in this red and white polka-dot bikini…”
I nearly choke with laughter. “No! Did you get pictures?”
“Wish I had, but I couldn’t find my phone and it was all over too quickly.” She snorts loudly, adding, “He’d never have done it if you were there.”
“What d’you mean?” I ask.
“Oh, Josie… I’m sure he had a crush on you, you know. It was obvious, that last day we went to the lake.”
“The day we were leaving,” I mutter.
There’s a pause, and I bat away a wasp from my face.
“Rotten timing, I guess,” Bella agrees.
“Yeah. So what else has been happening?”
“Uh … nothing much. A family on a hired boat had engine problems and moored next to us…”
“Where Promise used to be, you mean?” A wave of yearning grips my heart.
“Um … yes,” she says, “and Dad helped them out and they cooked dinner for us.” My vision fuzzes. It all sounds so … perfect. It’s not Bella’s fault; I did ask for news, after all. “Why don’t you ask your mum if you can come back and spend at least some of the holidays here?” she suggests, as if tapping into my thoughts. “You can squeeze in with us. Stay as long as you like – for the whole of the holidays if you want to. Mum and Dad would love to have you here…”
“Maybe,” I tell her. But even as I say it, I know it wouldn’t feel right, giving up on the Bald-faced Stag so soon. Like abandoning Mum (and, yes, Ryan too).
“So … tell me more about the pub,” she urges me.
I try to think of something funny to tell her, but all I can dredge up is a description of biting into what I thought was a strange, thick crisp, but was actually a chunk of piggy skin. “Oh,” I add quietly, “and two girls have just walked into the park and they’re coming this way.”
