by Roberta Kray
‘Why can’t I go home?’
‘Because you can’t live there on your own, sweetheart. You’re too young. You need someone to take care of you.’
Lolly reckoned she’d done a pretty good job of taking care of herself over the past few years, but apparently this wasn’t good enough. She was left with two options, neither of which held any appeal for her. ‘Stuck between a rock and a hard place,’ was what her mum used to say. She didn’t relish the prospect of making her stay a permanent arrangement but the alternative was even worse. Brenda had spelled it out for her: she would be taken away and could end up anywhere. That would mean being away from Kellston – and from Jude.
‘I’d like to stay here, please.’
‘Good girl!’ Brenda’s smile returned to full beam and she patted Lolly on the arm. ‘You’re better off with us and that’s a fact. Now all you have to do is tell Mrs Raynes when she gets here. You can do that, can’t you?’
Lolly nodded.
‘That’s settled, then. You behave yourself and we’ll get along just fine.’
Lolly lay in bed, gazing into space. It was FJ’s room and it smelled of boy. Every time she breathed in, a musty sweaty odour filled her nose. To keep the worst of the darkness at bay, she had left the curtains open and a thin light slid in from the street lamps on the high street. There were posters on the wall: the Rolling Stones, Goldie Hawn and the West Ham football team.
FJ, Freddy Junior, was Brenda’s younger son and as mean as they came. He had the sly, nasty face of a goblin and acted like one too. He hadn’t taken kindly to being kicked out of his bedroom and forced into doubling up with his brother.
‘Aw, Mum, I’m too old to be sharing. I’m sixteen, for fuck’s sake.’
‘So start acting your age. Where do you expect me to put her, in the bathroom? And mind your bloody language. It’s me you’re talking to, not one of your filthy-mouthed mates.’
‘I don’t see why you have to put her anywhere. She’s nothin’ to do with us. She ain’t related or nothin’.’
‘Don’t be so selfish. The kid’s just lost her mother.’
‘So how long is she going to be here for?’
‘For as long as it takes. Just get used to the idea and stop whining about it.’
Lolly shifted in bed, pulled up her knees and put them down again. She gazed at the ceiling, wondering what this meant. For as long as it takes. She could see the years stretching ahead and couldn’t figure out how she’d get through them. It was hard enough getting through each day.
Every time Lolly closed her eyes she saw her mum sprawled out on the grass. She tried to blink away the image, to conjure up a different picture, but it just didn’t work. That tightness came back into her chest again, the feeling she couldn’t breathe properly. She should have searched until she’d found her. Instead she had gone to Jude’s, scoffed a peanut butter sandwich and sat on the sofa watching someone else’s life fall apart.
Lolly was haunted by what ifs: what if she’d woken up earlier? What if she’d been able to track her down? What if she’d left Jude’s ten minutes before she did? Had she done that she might have seen her mother crossing the estate, heading for Carlton House. She could have leaned over the railing and shouted out.
‘Mum! Mum!’
Her mum would have stopped, looked up and waved. She would have waited for Lolly to run down the steps. And then everything would have been different. She wouldn’t have gone to that place, wouldn’t have taken the lift, wouldn’t have… Guilt slithered its way into her soul. She had let her mother down, failed her. She pulled the blankets over her head, trying to hide from the truth in the hot stuffy darkness.
Lolly wished she were in her own bed, in her own home. She had a sudden urgent need to be in familiar surroundings, to touch the things her mother had touched, to suck in whatever remained of her. The desire was so great she couldn’t fight against it. She threw back the covers, got out of bed, got dressed and quietly left the room.
As she crept along the landing, she could hear heavy snores coming from behind Freddy and Brenda’s bedroom door. Despite the noise, she tiptoed down the stairs, stopping every time a floorboard creaked. Once she reached the ground floor she paused again, alert to any sound from above that might suggest she’d been rumbled.
When she was sure no one was coming after her, Lolly set off again. She knew there was no way out through the front – the pawnshop was protected by heavy steel shutters pulled down every evening when the business closed – and so she headed instead towards the back from where she hoped to be able to get out into the yard and then into the alley that ran parallel to the high street. The dining room provided her first challenge. The curtains were closed and it was pitch black. She didn’t dare put on the light and so frequently stumbled, banging into objects she didn’t remember were there: the leg of the table, an armchair, the base of a lamp. She swore softly, rubbing at her shins.
‘Shit.’
Eventually, after all these obstacles had been negotiated, she limped into the kitchen where she was faced with the fresh challenge of the back door. She could see more in here – a greyish light, the beginning of dawn was coming through the window – but what she saw only filled her with dismay.
There were two bolts pulled across the door, one at the top and one at the bottom. With the help of a chair, she could probably have solved the problem of the upper one but there was no point even trying. The old iron key that was always in the lock during the day was missing. Lolly hissed out a breath of frustration. Where was it? She began to search the kitchen, peering through the gloom. Not on the table. Not by the sink or on the window ledge. She carefully opened the drawers but there were only trays of cutlery, washcloths and tea towels. She checked the cupboards but couldn’t find it there either.
After ten minutes of searching she knew it was useless. She was never going to find the damn thing. She eyed the window, trying to weigh up if she could squeeze through the oblong at the top, the only part that opened. The answer to that was a big fat no. Skinny as she was the space was just too small. She had a mental picture of getting stuck halfway through, wriggling like a fish on a hook with her backside exposed for everyone to see.
Defeated, Lolly sat down on the floor. The key, she suspected, was upstairs, on the bedside table beside Brenda and Freddy. And that was one place she wasn’t going to venture into. She had no choice now but to wait until morning. She was locked in, a prisoner. There was no escape.
5
FJ glared at Lolly over the breakfast table, his resentful eyes following every morsel she lifted from the plate to her mouth. But nothing deterred Lolly from eating. She knew what it meant to go hungry and never refused anything that was put in front of her. No matter how tired or sad or sick she felt, her instincts took over when it came to food.
‘You’ll get fat,’ FJ said, ‘if you keep stuffing your face like that.’
‘Leave it out,’ Brenda said, shooting him a warning glance. ‘There’s not a scrap on her. She needs feeding up a bit.’ She smiled at Lolly. ‘You dig in, love. Don’t mind him; he’s always a grouch in the mornings.’
There were only the three of them at the table. Tony, Brenda’s other son, had already gone to work, and Freddy was still in bed. From what Lolly had observed over the past five days, Freddy spent a great deal of time in bed and the rest of it doing little that was useful. It was Brenda who ran the pawnshop while he went down the pub or sat in the armchair reading the Sun as he smoked his way through a pack of Woodbines.
However, Lolly had more important things on her mind than Freddy’s idle ways. She was still set on going to the flat. As she couldn’t risk revealing her intentions – what if Brenda refused to let her go or insisted on coming with her after the shop was closed? – she had to find a good excuse to explain her absence.
‘I thought I might… er… go and see a friend today. Is that okay?’
FJ gave a snort. ‘What friend? You ain’t got no mates.’
‘Have so!’
‘No you ain’t.’
‘Do!’
‘Don’t!’
‘Course she’s got friends,’ Brenda said, standing up to clear away the plates. ‘What’s her name, love? Does she live near here?’
‘Sandra,’ Lolly said, glaring at FJ. ‘She’s only down the road, near the station.’
FJ kicked her under the table, a blow that landed on her bruised right shin. Lolly jumped, gasping at the pain. ‘Aagh!’
‘What is it?’ Brenda asked. ‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’
Lolly pulled up her leg and rubbed it. ‘Yeah,’ she said with her eyes fixed on FJ. ‘I just… I’ve got… it’s just cramp.’ She knew better than to dob him in. Nobody grassed where she came from. If you lived on the Mansfield estate you knew how to keep your mouth shut. But that didn’t mean she’d forget about it. One way or another she’d get her revenge.
FJ’s upper lip curled into a sneer as he pushed back his chair. ‘Have a nice time with your friend,’ he said. ‘See you later.’
Lolly watched as he left through the back door. He had the same arrogant, swaggering walk as his older brother. She didn’t ask herself why he hated her so much. It was perfectly normal for her to be taunted, to be disliked by other kids. In fact, she would have been more surprised if he’d been nice to her.
Brenda put the dishes in the sink and ran the hot water. She glanced over her shoulder. ‘It’ll do you good, some fresh air, put a bit of colour in those cheeks. Don’t be back late, will you? Tea’s at half five.’
Lolly nodded. ‘I won’t.’ She was desperate to get going, but not stupid enough to leave while FJ might still be hanging around outside. Instead she went up to her room, hid behind the curtain and peeked out through the window. He was standing a little way down the high street with a group of lads she recognised from the Mansfield. She prayed that they weren’t going to head for the estate.
It was a further five minutes before they moved off in the direction of Connolly’s. She gave a sigh of relief. The café was a popular hang-out for the local teenagers, a place where the boys eyed up the girls and vice versa. She had never been inside but had looked through the window often enough. Amy Wiltshire was usually in there after school, flicking her hair while she drank iced Coke through a straw.
Lolly gave them time to get in and settled before putting on her jacket and going back downstairs. She scooted through the living room and into the kitchen.
‘Bye, then,’ she said to Brenda.
‘Half past five. Don’t forget’
‘I won’t.’
Lolly went through the yard, littered with old bikes and bits of rusting metal, out of the gate and along the narrow back alley. It was in an L-shape leading back on to the high street. She had a quick glance up and down the street to make sure the coast was clear before venturing out. Once she was certain she was safe, she half walked, half ran until she reached the main entrance to the Mansfield.
Here Lolly paused, staring down the long path. Her stomach lurched remembering the last time she was here. Her desire to go home, however, was greater than any lingering fears of the place. As she made her way towards Haslow, she kept her gaze averted from Carlton House. She kept her head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone she passed. The last thing she wanted was for someone to stop her and ask how she was.
Lolly rode up in the lift to the fourteenth floor. She took the key from her pocket as she walked round the corner to the flat and quickly opened the door and went inside. The sun was streaming through the windows of the living room, broad stripes of light full of dancing motes. It was all very still, very quiet. She cleared her throat, the noise sounding unnaturally loud in the silence.
The first thing she noticed was that someone had been there. There wasn’t any mess, no major disturbance, but nothing was quite as she’d left it. Everything on the table – the blue bowl, the pile of bills, the jar with its pens and pencils – was in a slightly different position. The chairs were not in their usual place and the cushions on the sofa had been moved.
Not a break-in, that was for sure. The thieving toerags would have torn the place apart. So who? She didn’t like to think of strangers in the flat, people touching things, looking at things. It wasn’t right.
In her mother’s bedroom she noticed that the drawers of the dressing table had been opened but not closed again properly, and the wardrobe door was ajar. Seeing the clothes her mother would never wear again brought tears to Lolly’s eyes. Images jumped into her head: the day her mum had been wearing that cream sweater or that black dress. She reached out, touching the garments with her fingertips. The clothes rocked gently on the hangers; they had an air of despondency, as if they knew they would never be worn by their owner again.
Lolly sat on the bed for a while. She had yearned to come home but now she was here she didn’t know what to do with herself. She slid open the drawer of the bedside cabinet, but there was nothing in it other than a small mother-of-pearl button and some dust. Picking up the button she studied it for a moment before slipping it into the pocket of her jeans.
After a while she rose and went to her own room. Stuff had been disturbed here too. She put her school bag on the bed and started filling it with the few clothes she owned. Brenda had bought her new jeans and T-shirts, knickers, socks and a pair of sandals from the market, but she still wanted the old familiar things. Brenda had also made her take a bath and wash her hair.
‘We can’t have you looking like something the cat dragged in.’
Lolly didn’t know when, if ever, she would be back here again. The council might come and change the locks. They might do it tomorrow or the next day. They would want to give the flat to someone else. What would happen to everything? Would they clear it out, throw it all away? She picked up the book of British fairy tales and put that in the bag too.
Worried that she might not get a second chance, Lolly returned to her mother’s bedroom and stared into the wardrobe again. What to take? She didn’t have much room left in her bag. In the end she decided on the pale pink cardigan, which had always looked nice against her mother’s dark hair. Briefly, she raised it to her face and breathed in the scent. Then she wished that she hadn’t. It made her feel too sad.
Lolly moved on to the kitchen. What remained of the corned beef was still on a plate on the counter. The two apples were still there too, almost completely brown, rotten to the core. She wrinkled her nose at the sight of them. She would have put them in the bin but couldn’t bear the thought of touching the soft pulpy flesh. Instead she turned her back and wandered into the living room.
Despite the sun flooding in, Lolly felt cold. Were there such things as ghosts? She hugged her skinny chest with her arms. She kept thinking she had caught something out of the corner of her eye but when she turned her head to look nothing was there. A panicky feeling began to stir inside her. There was a prickling on the back of her neck and the hairs rose up on her bare arms.
The feeling that she wasn’t alone refused to go away. Eyes were on her; she was being watched. And yet the flat was empty. She knew it was. She had been in every room. If it was her mother’s ghost, she reasoned, she had nothing to be afraid of. And yet the sensation she had was one of danger. It was a noise that finally tipped her over the edge, a sudden creak like a footstep on a loose floorboard.
Lolly stood for a moment, rooted to the spot – and then she bolted from the flat as fast as her legs could carry her.
6
Lolly sprinted down the two flights of steps with the bag banging against her thigh. She ran along the walkway and only paused to catch her breath before rapping on the door. Jude answered almost straight away. He looked surprised to see her.
‘Hey, Lol. You okay?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said.
‘Why’s your face all red?’
