Cold Bath Lane

by Lorna Dounaeva

  Sam’s eyes met mine. “You don’t want to do this. You’re angry. But fighting with Dad ain’t going to solve nothing. We’re a family. We stick together.”

  I felt my whole body tremble. “I don’t want Dad in our family. Everything he touches turns to shite.”

  I hoped that Sam would agree with me, but he only yawned.

  “I’m very tired. You must be, too. We should all get to bed. Things will seem better in the morning.”

  “You’re such a wimp!”

  I kicked the table, causing a can of beer to fizz all over the floor. It wasn’t enough, not by a long shot. But for now, it would have to do.

  I climbed the stairs to bed, my wounds sending little shockwaves of pain through my body. I slept for a few hours, woken only by the sound of Dad yelling.

  “Help! We’ve been robbed! We’ve been robbed!”

  I shuffled painfully down the stairs.

  “Look at the state of the window! Look what they’ve done!”

  I squinted at him. “You broke it. Do you really not remember?”

  He darted a furtive glance at me, and then back at the window, as if I was trying to trick him.

  “You’re giving me a headache. Fetch a glass of water for your poor old Dad.”

  “I’ll do nothing of the kind.”

  “Wassat?”

  “I think they’ve got into the water supply. We’d better not touch it, in case.”

  His eyes widened, and I saw that he’d swallowed my lie. It made me feel a little better.

  He gulped. “We’d better get someone in to fix the window, or they’ll be coming in and out of here, taking stuff.”

  At that, I laughed out loud. The idea that we had anything worth taking. It really was too much.

  Dad looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. His eyes flickered suspiciously over the cuts on my head.

  “Have Sam ring someone. Tell him to make it quick.”

  I didn’t know why he couldn’t tell Sam himself, but that was the way Dad operated. He was forever giving us messages for each other. Too lazy to leave the room and talk to people himself. You would think we were all his personal secretaries, the way he acted.

  Sam did manage to get someone round, and I took Alicia round the shops while it was being dealt with.

  “Let’s go to Woolworths and look at the tapes,” I said.

  They had listening stations in there now, where you could listen to the chart music for free.

  There was a song playing when we went in, an upbeat number that made me want to dance.

  “I really like this song,” Alicia said.

  “Me too.”

  “Can we get the single?”

  “I’ll find out how much it is.”

  I had housekeeping money, as usual. If I cut out the fruits and vegetables, we ought to have enough for the single. I picked up a copy and walked towards the till.

  “I want sweets!” Alicia squealed, as she spotted the brightly-coloured display.

  “Not today.”

  I steered her past the pick ‘n’ mix, and into the queue to pay.

  “Hi Jody,” said the girl at the till.

  I blinked. “Dawn?”

  She had brightly lacquered fingernails and her hair was now blonde.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, seeing all my stitches.

  “Fell out a window,” I said, as if it happened all the time.

  “Only you,” she said with a laugh. Alicia copied her laugh, as if trying it out.

  “Hey, that brother of yours is getting proper beefy,” she commented, as she rang up my purchase.

  “What, Sam?” Now it was my turn to laugh. To me, he was the same big lummox he’d always been. But Dawn’s face was serious.

  “He spends a lot of time working out,” I told her.

  It was true, Sam was always up in his room, lifting weights.

  “Yeah, well, it shows,” she said, blushing a little, as she handed me the receipt. I felt an odd prickle as our hands touched. I don’t know if it was her I missed, or the lost childhood she represented.

  “Take care,” Dawn said.

  “Yeah, you too.”

  25

  When Sam finished school, he joined the fire service. Dad played the part of the proud father perfectly, but there was a wicked gleam in his eyes as we attended his graduation. I don’t know exactly what he was up to, but I had a feeling it had to do with his business.

  “Don’t worry, Jody Bear. There are other things you can do,” Dad said.

  “I know,” I said, side-stepping his embrace. I wished he would stop calling me that. It was so embarrassing. I was a grown woman now, eighteen years old last month. Not that anyone had bothered to throw me a party or anything.

  “Happy Birthday!” Alicia had said, handing me a little jewellery box.

  I had thought for a minute that she had conned some dough off Dad to buy me the little frog earrings we’d seen in the window of Argos. But when I opened the box, there was a disgusting dead frog inside.

  Alicia howled with laughter as I dropped the frog on the floor.

  “Go on, get out!”

  “Oh, come on, where’s your sense of humour?” Dad said.

  “What’s funny about a dead frog?” I demanded, feeling the heat on my face.

  “Here,” said Sam, setting down a large brown parcel on the table. “Maybe this will make up for it.”

  I gawked at his present. No prizes for the brown parcel paper, but it looked like a really big box.

  I tore off the paper, dying to see what was inside.

  “It’s a.. it’s a…sewing machine!”

  I remembered that Christmas years ago, when Dad gave me the Hoover.

  “Now you can mend all my jeans and socks and stuff. And you can make yourself some new clothes. You could do with some nice dresses or something to smarten yourself up.”

  I stared at it, stunned.

  “What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?”

  I opened and closed my mouth, not trusting myself with words. It was a very generous present, and I didn’t want him to take it back. I had just hoped it would be something for me. Really for me. Like a computer.

  I traipsed up to my room and took my Fame video down from the shelf. I opened up the case, pulled out a wad of cash and counted it, enjoying the feel of the notes. I had been secretly saving up for a while now. It wasn’t easy, given my cider habit, but whenever Dad gave me money for groceries, I put a little aside. I also rifled through his pockets on a regular basis. The old skinflint burned through the dough when he was smashed. He could spend fifty quid a night down the Halfway House. Half the time he couldn’t even remember how much he’d spent.

  However much money we made, it was never enough for Dad. He had got a bee in his bonnet about finding a wealthier clientele.

  “You should find a nice, rich boyfriend,” he told me. “And get yourself pregnant. Then we’ll be quids in.”

  His advice made me feel sick, least of all because I knew what child rearing entailed. Alicia was ten now and more or less standing on her own feet. No way was I ready to take on another child.

  “What we need,” Dad said, “is to learn the art of networking. We need to make richer friends. Richer acquaintances. You’re only as rich as the people you knock about with.”

  He must have read that somewhere, probably in one of the tabloids, as I’d rarely seen him read anything else. He seemed to think that by spending time with rich people, the wealth would rub off on us, as if the money just rolled off them. You’d think it fell from their pockets as they walked.

  “Where are we going to meet rich people?” Sam asked. “You’d have to go to the city or something. There aren’t many rich people round here.”

  “I could go to the city,” Alicia said. She was always up for an adventure.

  “No,” said Dad, “you’re too young.”

  Alicia glared at me, expecting me to say something, but I merely pushed the foo
d around my plate. I didn’t really see how hanging around rich geezers was going to change anything. They would probably sneer and laugh about us behind our backs. Still, there was no arguing with Dad. Better to nod along and wait for him to move on to the next thing.

  But later that week, I saw a poster in the corner shop window. It was for a kid’s holiday camp, modelled on the popular American ones, with lots of activities and campfires. And they needed people to work there. I showed Dad the ad.

  “That sounds like the sort of place that would attract rich people, don’t you think?”

  I sent off for a brochure. The pictures were dreamy. There were acres of beautiful forests and the children looked adorable.

  “They’re not going to hire you, are they?” Sam sneered.

  “Why not?”

  I’d raised Alicia, hadn’t I? Maybe this was something I could actually do.

  “No way,” he said. “They will want people with qualifications. People who actually finished school.”

  I folded my arms. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted that job. It would be like a holiday, looking after little kids in such beautiful surroundings. And best of all, it would give me a break from Dad.

  The form was long and complicated. I swallowed my pride and asked Sam to help me with my spelling and grammar, so that it would look OK. Then Alicia and I walked down to the corner to post it.

  After that, I waited expectantly. A week passed and then two. By week three, I had given up the ghost. I slunk up to my room with a litre of cider and a joint. I didn’t come out for days. I assume Alicia still went to school each day, but I didn’t bother to check. There didn’t seem to be any point to any of it. Nothing ever got any better.

  Then, one miserable May morning, I was awoken by the sound of the doorbell. I rolled over and looked at the clock beside my bed. It had gone ten and the house was quiet. The doorbell rang again, more incessantly. I thundered down the stairs to give whoever it was a piece of my mind. But when I got to the door, a smiley-faced postman stood there, dripping like a drowned rat.

  “Bit wet today,” he said, cheerfully, handing me my post. There was a package for Sam, and a letter addressed to me. I could barely read my own name on the envelope, it was so smudged.

  “Ta,” I said, and shut the door behind him. I watched as he plodded merrily down the path, and up the next one to our neighbour’s. What must it be like to be so content with your life?

  I looked again at the letter and tore it open. To my great astonishment, it was an invitation to attend an interview at the holiday camp I’d applied to. Camp Windylake, it was called. My hand shook as I read the letter. It was as if I had been trapped behind an invisible door all my life, missing out on this great party that was going on on the other side. My heart swelled with excitement. If I could just get this job, maybe I would finally get to go to the party.

  I fretted over it for days, wondering what I was going to wear, what I was going to say.

  “I’ll need a suit,” I told Dad.

  “You’ve got a sewing machine, haven’t you? Bloody make one.”

  “Oh, come on, Dad. I ain’t that good yet. Please, can I have a few quid to buy something new?”

  “You always want to spend my money.”

  “You’ve got to spend money to make money. Think of it as an investment.”

  To my surprise, Dad laughed.

  “Alright then, Jody Bear,” he said, pulling a few notes from his pocket. “You go out and get something really special.”

  “Thanks, Dad!”

  I counted the money. It wasn’t nearly enough to buy a new suit, but I knew better than to quibble. Besides, I had a bit saved. I could dip into that, if need be.

  I ran into the lane, where Alicia was playing. “Come on, kid. We’re going shopping.”

  We caught the bus over to the shopping precinct and walked in and out of the shops, checking out all the sale rails, but there weren’t any clothes in my price range. Not to be beaten, we scoured the charity shops until I found a crimson trouser suit.

  “Can I try this on?” I asked the woman at the desk.

  “If you must.”

  The jacket had huge shoulder pads and the trousers were too long in the leg, but nothing I couldn’t fix with my sewing machine. The real problem was finding some smart shoes to go with it. All the second-hand shoes looked battered and worn, and there was hardly anything in petite. In the end I bought a pair of black school shoes. They were a size too small, but they looked quite new, and that was all that mattered.

  I had never been for an interview before and didn’t really know what to expect. The people who ran the camp were a terribly wholesome couple called Coral and Irvine Wentworth. Coral had bright, sparkly eyes and a face that lit up whenever she spoke. They each wore a cross around their necks, and I prayed that they would not ask me about my religion. For all Dad’s dislike of ‘heathens’, I hadn’t set foot in a church in years, and didn’t know Adam from Eve.

  My lack of a proper upbringing didn’t seem to be a problem. Coral’s eyes filled with compassion as I told them how young I had been when Mum died, and my experience of raising Alicia. She and Irvine darted frequent looks at each other. They communicated non-verbally, sending telepathic waves across the room to each other. I had never met a couple who worked in such total harmony before.

  “Well that’s it for us,” Coral said at the end of the interview. “Unless you have any questions?”

  I struggled to decode the hidden message behind her words. Was I supposed to say something? Of course, I was. But I had no idea what.

  “Have many other people applied?” I finally asked.

  “A few,” Irvine said with a smile. “Of course, not all of them were suitable.”

  He and Coral exchanged looks again and I was desperate to break their hidden meaning.

  “It’s so important to find the right type of person,” I said, carefully. “When there are young lives at stake. Looking after children is a much bigger responsibility than many people realise.”

  Coral nodded earnestly. “That’s exactly right. Some people just view this as a job, but we think of it more as an opportunity to shape young lives and set these children on the correct path in life.”

  I nodded as though I understood what that meant. I had come to learn that you could go far by listening to people and letting them talk.

  “It’s so important that they find the correct path,” I echoed.

  I caught the train back to London, feasting my eyes on the lush countryside that lined the way. I’d brought along a flask of coffee and a small bottle of whisky, and I drained them both by the time I got home.

  The happy postman arrived again two days later. I seized the letter from his hand.

  “I got the job!” I gasped, as I tore it open.

  He beamed from ear to ear.

  “Congratulations! Enjoy your day!”

  I went inside and fell back onto the sofa, staring at the dents in the wall. “I got the job,” I repeated to myself. I still couldn’t quite believe it. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before.

  As soon as I got over my shock, I rang Coral to accept.

  “Irvine and I were thinking,” she said. “Why don’t you bring your sister along with you? We think she would really benefit from the experience.” She paused. “Free of charge, of course.”

  “Do you really mean it?”

  I couldn’t believe that these people would go to so much trouble for me, a complete stranger. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for us. It was only for one summer, but who knew what it might lead to? It felt like a new beginning. Finally, we had found a way out of Cold Bath Lane.

  26

  I was bowled over by the sheer beauty of Camp Windylake. The grounds were astounding – acres and acres of land and all kinds of trees, some of them hundreds of years old. I had never seen so much greenery. At school, we had had the hockey pitch, but it was as much mud as anything. Endless ra
in had swamped the grass and water had puddled around the goal posts. Here, the grass glowed with morning dew.

  The trees were perfectly spaced to give just enough sun and shade. The sun shone strategically on individual blades of grass, highlighting their different shades of green, and showing off the perfect edge of each blade. If there was ever an argument for the existence of a higher power, then this was it.

  Young children scampered around in delight, saying things like “Goodness, it’s frightfully good to be back,” and “Alfie, you must meet my old chum, Clarence. Have you signed up for the rugger? It’s thoroughly top-hole!”

  It took me a while to tune in to their lingo. I’d never met such posh kids in my life. Not a single swear word escaped their lips as they greeted one another, and I’d be willing to bet not one of them could hot-wire a car. Not that the kids in my neighbourhood were all thieves and thugs. It was more of a badge of honour, learning to hot-wire a car. Much like the first time your mum lets you go down to the corner shop on your own.

  We found Coral at the registration table. She eyed up Dad with distaste, but gushed over Alicia. She was a lot smaller than other girls her age, and her height gave her a diminutive look and an innocence she didn’t possess.

  “My, what a lovely dress you’re wearing,” she said, looking at Alicia’s yellow pinafore.

  I had tried to anticipate what the rich kids would be wearing, but boy, had I got it wrong. Their clothes were all terribly practical, and in quiet, earthy tones. I’d never seen anyone under thirty wear such clothes. No one wore anything the least bit colourful or loud. They all looked ready to blend in with their surroundings.

  “I want to see my cabin,” Alicia said, as soon as we’d registered.

  “Come on then,” said Dad. “It’s the one nearest the campfire, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Why did he have to choose today to become so interested in our lives?

  A butterfly skimmed my shoulder and danced millimetres in front of us, leading the way. Birds cheeped noisily up in the trees, but not a single one dive-bombed us, or attempted to make off with our stuff.