I was eleven and my sister Skye was nine when Mum brought Bobby Barnes home for the first time. He didn’t look like a lame-headed loser so we turned the telly down and said hello.
“Call me Bo,” he said, flashing a snowy smile. “All my friends do.”
So my dumb little sister said, “Hi, Mr Bo,” and blushed because he was tall and brown eyed just like the hero in her comic book.
Mum laughed high and girly, and I went to bed with a nosebleed – which is usually what happened when Mum laughed like that and smeared her lipstick.
Mr Bo moved in and Mum was happy because we were “a family”. How can you be family with a total stranger? I always wanted to ask her but I didn’t dare. She had a vicious right hand if she thought you were cheeking her.
Maybe we would be a family even now if it wasn’t for him. Maybe Nathan would have a grandma and an aunt if Mr Bo hadn’t got his feet under the table and his bonce on the pillow.
I think about it now and then. After all, some times of year are special for families, and Nathan should have grandparents, an aunt and a father.
This year I was thinking about it because sorting out the tree lights is traditionally a father’s job; as is finding the fuse box when the whole house is tripped out by a kink in the wire.
I was doing exactly that, by candlelight because Nathan had broken the torch, when the doorbell rang.
Standing in the doorway was a beautiful woman in a stylish winter coat with fur trimmings. I didn’t have time for more than a quick glance at her face because she came inside and said, “What’s up? Can’t pay the electricity bill? Just like Mum.”
“I am not like my mother.” I was furious.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “It was always way too easy to press your buttons.” And I realized that the strange woman with the American accent was Skye.
“What are you doing here?” I said, stunned.
“Hi, and it’s great to see you too,” she said. “Who’s the rabbit?”
I turned. Nathan was behind me, shadowy, with the broken torch in his hand.
“He’s not a rabbit,” I said, offended. Rabbit was Mr Bo’s name for a mark. We were all rabbits to him one way or another.
“Who’s she?” Nathan said. I’d taught him not to tell his name, address or phone number to strangers.
“I’m Skye.”
“A Scottish Island?” He sounded interested. “Or the place where clouds sit?”
“Smart and cute.”
“I’m not cute,” he said, sniffing loudly. “I’m a boy.”
“She’s your aunt,” I told him, “my sister.”
“I don’t want an aunt,” he said, staring at her flickering, candlelit face. “But an uncle might be nice.” Did I mention that all his heroes are male? Even when it’s a woman who solves all his problems, from homework to football training to simple plumbing and now, the electricity. I used to think it was because he missed a father, but it’s because you can’t interest a boy in girls until his feet get tangled in the weeds of sex.
I fixed the electricity and all the lights came on except, of course, for the tree ones which lay in a nest on the floor with the bulbs no more responsive than duck eggs. Nathan looked at me as though I’d betrayed his very life.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I promise.”
“You promised tonight.”
“Let’s have a little drink,” Skye said, “to celebrate the return of the prodigal sister.”
“We don’t drink,” Nathan said priggishly. He’s wrong. I just don’t drink in front of him. My own childhood was diseased and deceived by Mum’s drinking and the decisions she made when drunk.
“There’s a bottle of white in the fridge,” I said, because Skye was staring at my second-hand furniture and looking depressed. At least it’s mine, and no repo man’s going to burst in and take it away. She probably found me plain and worn too, but I can’t help that.
She had a couple of drinks. I watched very carefully, but she showed no signs of becoming loose and giggly. So I said, “It’s late. Stay the night.” She was my sister, after all, even though I didn’t know her. But she took one look at the spare bed in the box room and said, “Thanks, I’ll call a cab.”
When the cab came, Nathan followed us to the front door and said goodbye of his own free will. Skye was always the charming one. She didn’t attempt to kiss him because if there was one thing she’d learnt well it was what guys like and what they don’t like. She said, “I’ll come back tomorrow and bring you a gift. What do you want?”
Now that’s a question Nathan isn’t used to in this house, but he hardly stopped to think. He said, “Football boots. The red and white Nike ones, with a special spanner thing you can use to adjust your own studs.”
“Nathan,” I warned. The subject of football boots was not new. I could never quite afford the ones he wanted.
But Skye grinned and said, “See you tomorrow, kid,” and she was gone in a whirl of fur trimmings.
Mr Bo used to buy our shoes. Well, not buy exactly. This is how he did it: we’d go to a shoe shop and I’d ask for shoes a size and a half too small. Mr Bo would flirt with the assistant. When the shoes arrived I’d try to stuff my feet in and Mr Bo would say, “Who do you think you are? One of the Ugly Sisters?” This would make the assistant laugh as she went off to find the proper size. While she was gone, Skye put on the shoes that were too small for me and slipped out of the shop. Then I’d make a fuss – the shoes rubbed my heels, my friends had prettier ones, and Mr Bo would have to apologize charmingly and take me away, leaving a litter of boxes and shoes on the floor. It worked the other way round when I needed shoes, except that he never made the Ugly Sister crack about Skye. I hated him for that because although he said it was a joke I knew what he really thought.
The only time he paid hard cash was when he bought tap-shoes for Skye. He’d begun to teach us dance steps in the kitchen. “Shuffle,” he’d yell above the music, “kick, ball-change, turn … come on, girls, dance for Daddy.”
The next day Nathan didn’t want to go out. His friend came to the door wanting a kick-around but ended up playing on the computer instead. I didn’t say anything but I knew he was waiting for Skye.
At the end of the day there was nothing I could do but make his favourite, shepherd’s pie, and read Harry Potter to him in bed. I could see his heart wasn’t in it.
I wasn’t surprised – Skye had been taught unreliability by experts – but I was angry. She’d had a chance to show him that a woman could be as good as Batman and she’d blown it. All he had left was me and I was not the stuff of heroes. What had I done in the past nine years except to keep him warm, fed, healthy and honest? Also, I made him do his homework, which I think he found unforgivable. I thought I was giving him solid gold, because in the end, doing my homework and passing exams were the tools I used to dig myself out of a very deep hole. But how can that compare to the magic conferred upon a boy by ownership of coveted football boots? At his age he thought the right boots would transform his life and give him talents beyond belief. Magic boots for Nathan; dancing shoes for Skye.
Mr Bo tried to teach us both to do the splits. Maybe, at eleven or twelve, I was already too stiff. Or maybe, deep down inside, I felt there was something creepy about doing the splits in the snow-white knickers and little short skirts that he insisted we wear to dance for him. Either way, I never managed to learn. But Skye did. She stretched like a spring and bounced like a ball. She wore ribbons in her crazy hair. Of course she got the dancing shoes.
One evening he took us to the bar where Mum worked, put some money in the juke box and Skye showed off what she’d learnt. Mum was so impressed she put out a jam-jar for tips and it was soon full to overflowing.
Now that I have a child of my own I can’t help wandering what on earth she was thinking. Maybe she looked at the tip jar and saw a wide-screen TV or a weekend away at a posh hotel with handsome Bo Barnes. Or was she just high on the free drinks? Once, she said to
me, “Wanna know somethin’, kid? If you’re a girl, all you ever got to sell is your youth. Make sure you get a better price for it than I did. Wish someone tol’ me that before I gave it all away.” Of course she wasn’t sober when she said that, but I don’t think sobriety had much to do with it; it was her best advice. No wonder I did my homework.
Skye showed up when Nathan had stopped waiting for her. “C’mon, kid,” she said, “we’re going shopping.”
“You’re smoking.” He was shocked.
“So shoot me,” she said. “You have dirty hair.”
“So shoot me.” He grinned his big crooked smile.
“Needs an orthodontist,” she said. “I should take him back to LA.”
“Over my dead body,” I said. “Nathan, get in the shower. Skye, coffee in the kitchen. Now.”
She wrinkled her still pretty nose at my coffee. I said, “What’re you up to? What’s the scam?”
“Can’t an auntie take her nephew shopping?” She widened her innocent eyes at me. “’Tis the season and all that malarkey.”
“We haven’t seen each other in over fifteen years.”
“So I missed you.”
“No you didn’t. How did you find me?”
“Were you hiding?” she asked. “How do you know what I missed? You’re my big sister, or have you forgotten?”
“I wasn’t the one who swanned off to the States.”
“No, you were the one who was jealous.”
“I tried to protect you.”
“From what? Attention, pretty clothes, guys with nice cars?”
I said nothing because I didn’t know where to begin.
She stuck her elbows on the table and leant forward with her chin jutting. “It all began with Bobby Barnes, didn’t it? You couldn’t stand me being his little star.”
“He was thirty. You were nine.”
“A girl doesn’t stay nine forever.”
“He ended up in prison and we were sent to a home. He robbed us of our childhood, Skye.”
“Some childhood.” She snorted. “Stuck in that squalid little apartment – with no TV or anything.”
“And how did Mr Bo change that? Did he stop Mum drinking? Did he go out to work so that she could look after us? Okay, he brought us a flat-screen telly, but it got repossessed like everything else.”
“He gave us pretty clothes and shoes … ”
“He stole them. He taught us how to steal … ”
“But it was fun,” Skye cried. “He taught us how to dance too. You’re forgetting the good stuff.”
“He taught you to dance. He taught me how to be a look-out for a pickpocket and a thief. You weren’t a dancer, Skye; you were there to distract the rabbits.”
“Why’re you two quarrelling?” Nathan said from the doorway.
“We’re sisters,” Skye said. “If you’re good I’ll tell you how a pirate came to rescue us from an evil wizard’s castle and how your mom didn’t want to go and nearly blew it for me.”
“No you won’t,” I said.
“Is it true?” He was as trusting as a puppy.
“Do you really believe in wicked wizards and good pirates?” I asked.
“Next you’ll be telling him there’s no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy.”
“I know there’s no tooth fairy,” he said. “I caught Mum putting a pound under my pillow and she pretended she’d just found it there, but she’s a rubbish liar.”
“She is, isn’t she? Bet you took the cash anyway. Now let’s go shopping.”
“I’m coming too,” I said, because I didn’t know my own sister and I was afraid she might have inherited Mr Bo’s definition of buying shoes.
“You’ll spoil it,” my loyal son complained. “The only thing she ever takes me shopping for is school uniform.”
“What a bitch … sorry, witch.” Skye dragged us both out of the house with no conscience at all.
A big black car, just a couple of feet short of being a limo, was waiting outside – plus a driver with a leather coat and no discernible neck.
Oddly, Mr Bo was not sent down for anything serious like contributing to the delinquency of minors or his sick relationship with one of them. No, when he was caught it was for stealing booze from the back of the bar where Mum worked. Of course she was done for theft too, thus ensuring that we had no irresponsible adults in our lives, and forcing us to be taken into Care.
By the time I was fifteen and Skye was thirteen we’d been living in Care for two and a half years. Foster parents weren’t keen on me because I didn’t want to split up from Skye, and foster mothers didn’t like Skye at all because she was precocious in so many ways.
Crockerdown House, known for obvious reasons as Crack House by the locals, was a girls’ care home, and judging by the number of non-visits from social workers, doctors or advisors, and the frequency of real visits by the cops, it should’ve been called a No Care Home. No one checked to see if we went to school or if we came back. Self-harm and eating disorders went unnoticed. Drugs were commonplace. There was a 60 per cent pregnancy rate.
I was scared rigid and spent as much time as I could at school. Teachers thought I was keen – most unusual in that part of town – and they cherished me. After a while I became keen.
Skye was the opposite.
It was only when a strange man turned up at the school gates in a car with Skye sitting smug as you please on the back seat that I realized she’d stayed in touch with Mr Bo while he was inside.
I knew that she and some other, older, girls regularly went to the West End to boost gear from shops and I lived with my heart in my mouth, fearing she’d be caught. She was never caught and she always had plenty of money. What I hadn’t been told was that she supplied an old friend of Mr Bo’s with stolen goods which he sold in the market. This friend kept Mr Bo in tobacco and all the other consumables that could be passed between friends on visiting day.
“He’s coming out today,” she told me excitedly. “We’re going to meet him.”
I looked at her in her tight jeans and the trashy silk top which would’ve cost a fortune if she’d actually bought it. I burst into tears.
“We’re not going back to Crack House,” she said. “It’s over.”
“What about school?” I wept. “What about my exams?” I was taking nine subjects and my teachers said I had a good chance in all of them.
“We never have to go to bogging school again. We’re free. He’s taking us abroad.”
“What about Mum?” Mum was still inside. She wasn’t just a thief; she was a thief who drank, and she was a bad mother who drank and thieved. Three strikes against her. Only one against Mr Bo. Classic!
“Oh, she’ll join us later,” Skye said vaguely, breathing mist on to the car window and drawing a heart.
“Is this your car?” Nathan asked the driver, impressed.
“Huh?”
“It’s mine,” Skye said, “for now.”
“Will you have to give it back?” Nathan was sadly familiar with the concept of giving a favoured book or computer game back to the library.
“Where are we going?” The last time she and I were in a car together was a disaster.
“Crystal City. I heard it was the newest.”
“It’s the best,” Nathan breathed. “We don’t go there.”
“Why not?”
I said, “It’s too expensive and too far away.”
“I know, I know,” Skye said, “and you got a mortgage to pay and your tuition fees at the Open University. Studying to be a psychotherapist, aren’t you? And both your lives gonna stay on hold till you qualify and hang out your shingle. When’s that gonna be – 2050?”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“You said hell.”
“You’d be surprised what I know. Some of us use technology for more than looking up difficult words.”
“You’ve been spying on us.”
“Cool,” Nathan said. “I want to be a spy when I grow
up.”
“You can be a spy now,” Skye said. “Don’t look back, just use this mirror and if you see a car following us, tell Wayne. Okay?” She handed him what looked like a solid gold compact.
“What sort of car?”
“Black Jeep,” no-neck, leather-clad Wayne said. “Licence plate begins Sierra, Charlie, Delta.”
“That’s SCD to you, kid.”
“Clever,” I said. “Have you got kids of your own?”
“Do I look like a mother?”
“No need to sound insulted. It’s not all bad.”
“Coulda fooled me. Do you do all your shopping from Salvation Army counters?”
“Bollocks,” I muttered, but not quietly enough.
“You said b—”
“Okay, Nathan,” I said. “Haven’t you got an important job to do?”
“Of course I looked you up,” Skye said. “How the hell else would I find you? You’re my big sister – why wouldn’t I want to? I didn’t know about the kid when I started. And I must say I’m surprised you felt ready to start breeding, given the mom we had. But I guess you were always kinda idealistic – always trying to right wrongs.”
“No one’s ready,” I said.
“Hah! Got caught, did ya?”
That was an incident in my life that I didn’t want to share with Skye while Nathan’s ears were out on stalks.
Crystal City is five enormous interlocking domes. It’s a triumph of consumer architecture and weather-proofing. You could spend your entire life – and savings – in there without drawing one breath of fresh air.
Wayne dropped us at the main entrance and Nathan, who can smell sports shoes from a distance of three and a half miles, led the way.
The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Volume 8 Page 50
