The Ant Colony

by Jenny Valentine

  Isn’t that why I moved here in the first place?

  Thirteen (Bohemia)

  I waited for Mum as long as I could, but I think she stayed at Mick’s that night cos she didn’t come home. She was making me pay for being cross with her. I did cleaning so she’d be pleased with me and know I was sorry. I shook the sheets and I cleaned the kitchen, then the loo, and then I ran a big bath with bubbles like Mum does. I washed everything, even my hair, now that I had to like it and everything. I had to use washing up liquid cos we’d run out of everything else. It made my hair squeak, but it didn’t fall out or anything so that was OK. I made a bra top out of bubbles and just lay there like a mermaid. It was luxury.

  Isabel knocked on the door and so did Steve, but I was in the water both times, watching my fingers go like raisins, powerless to get out and save them. “I’m in the bath,” I said, and I made lots of splashing noises.

  Isabel said did I want to come down for my tea.

  Steve wanted to talk to Mum. He said it was a rent thing. I really hoped he wouldn’t throw us out for fighting with Isabel.

  I said, “Is it late?” and he said “Is what late?”

  “The rent?”

  “Oh. No, it’s fine. I just wanted to give her a receipt.”

  “That’s a relief,” I said. I held my breath and let go with my feet so my head went under. I didn’t hear what he said next or when he went away.

  After that I lay around in bed for ages, drawing pictures, and she still didn’t come. I must have fallen asleep waiting.

  The next day I played with Doormat, throwing his ruined ball for him down the steps. Isabel said I’d give him a heart attack, making him run up and down like that, cos he was just an old man, and I was worried until she said she was only joking. I watched TV in her house for ages. Then Sam came down to fix something and I had to take Doormat across to the park. I didn’t really want to, but Isabel kept nodding and pointing like I didn’t really have a choice. When I got back we made cakes in paper cases and she said they were so good we should eat them all and not tell anyone. We sat at the kitchen table with our mouths full of cake.

  “Where’s Sam?” I said. “Shouldn’t we save him one?”

  “He’s gone out,” she said. “He’s angry with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m an interfering old woman.”

  “He’s not angry,” I said. “He misses Max.”

  “Who’s Max?”

  “His friend. He knows everything about ants. Sam told me about him.”

  “What did Sam tell you?”

  I asked her did she know that ants are like farmers. “They don’t farm cows, obviously, cos cows are too big, but they farm these little bugs called aphids. They have herds of them and they milk them and everything.”

  “Is that true?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “Well I never. What else did Sam tell you?”

  “He said that ants weigh more than people if you add them all up, but I don’t believe him. He told me about this thing he saw where they poured concrete into an ant place and then ex-ca-somethinged it, like dug it up but really gently, with brushes, and it looked like something from the future, with all these pods and runways and stuff.”

  “Colony,” Isabel said. “An ant place is called a colony.”

  “OK.”

  I put a cake to one side for Sam. I said I was really sorry about the fight she’d had with my mum.

  Isabel shrugged in that way that means you’re pretending you don’t care, but you’re still cross. She said, “Everyone’s falling out with me at once.”

  “I’m not,” I said, and she squeezed my hand across the table and called me dear.

  I wanted to say it was my fault, the fight, cos I’d heard what she said on the stairs when I was supposed to be in bed. I wanted to, but I didn’t want me and Sam to get in trouble for the climbing up the building thing, and then anyway she changed the subject and asked me again why I didn’t go to school, a clever girl like me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, cos Mum wasn’t there to ask.

  “Why don’t you know?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, think about it.”

  I actually did.

  Later, I wanted to see Sam. I went to find him. He wasn’t in his room so I waited. I didn’t mean anything by it.

  He ignored me when he got home. I thought he hadn’t seen me so I said “Hello” or something, and he opened the door and I walked in under his arm. I could see where he’d been sitting before he went to work, right by the window. There was a folded up jumper there, like a cushion, and a mug with cold tea in the bottom.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Nothing much.”

  “Why are you doing it outside my room?”

  “Isabel said you’re cross with her.”

  “I am.”

  “What for?”

  “For being an interfering old woman.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Good.”

  I started breathing on the window and drawing hearts in it. “What did she do?”

  “She won’t mind her own business. She’s into everybody’s secrets.”

  I said I thought she was nice, trying to be helpful all the time.

  Sam looked down at me. He looked angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Where’s your mum, Bohemia?” he said.

  I breathed on the window again. “She popped out.”

  “How long for?”

  “Don’t know.”

  I was trying to draw a house without taking my finger off the window. It’s like a square with a cross in it and a triangle roof, and I know it’s possible, I just couldn’t remember how to start. “She thinks I should go to school,” I said.

  He was frowning out of the window. “Who? Isabel?”

  “Yes.”

  “See? What’s it got to do with her?”

  “I think it’s nice that she wants me to.”

  I asked him if he liked school and he said it was all right. I asked him what his best subjects were and he said, “Maths and football,” which was just weird.

  I said, “What colour was your uniform?”

  “Blue.”

  “How many people in your class?”

  “I don’t want to play now,” he said.

  “Did you have lots and lots and lots of friends?”

  He sighed. “I had a few.”

  I said, “Do you think you’ll go back ever?”

  Sam growled and put his head in his hands and said, “I don’t know, Bohemia. God, you’re as bad as her. Are you working together or something?”

  I said I was just asking. He didn’t look at me or smile or anything.

  I said, “I just wanted to know about school. I haven’t been for ages and I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t know anyone the same age as me and I wouldn’t want to get picked on for being stupid or ginger or new. I wanted you to help me. I didn’t want to know your stupid secrets.”

  I picked up a book that was by his bed. I tried to turn on his mobile phone. Sam said mean things then.

  He told me to leave his stuff alone.

  He said he was the last person I should be asking.

  He told me to go and talk to someone who was interested.

  He said it wasn’t his fault my mum was a drunk and a junkie and a loser.

  He said he couldn’t look after me any more.

  He said, “Why does Cherry forget to come home, Bohemia? Is it because you won’t stop bloody talking?”

  Boy, was he going to regret that in the morning.

  Fourteen (Sam)

  I felt bad as soon as she was gone. Of course I did. She stood by the door and she had her arms folded across her chest like she was hugging herself, I suppose because nobody else would. She said she was going now. She said she thought I was her friend, but clearly she was wrong. She said she was very sorry to have made such a mistake.


  She didn’t say it like that. Bohemia Hoban has a foul mouth.

  I felt bad about it as soon as she left. I should have gone after her and made it better, but I didn’t. I’m an idiot.

  I lay on my mattress without taking my shoes off. I stared at the sky. I tried to sleep.

  I thought about what a bad person I was and I wondered when that had actually happened and why it took so long for me to notice.

  I slept that kind of sleep where you think you’re still awake the whole time. I woke up in the dark out of a dream I couldn’t remember, except I knew it was about Max. The dream got me up and out to the phone box. It wasn’t night and it wasn’t morning. I couldn’t decide. I actually thought I was going to phone him. I’m not sure when I realised that it wasn’t going to happen – somewhere between being out on the pavement and picking up the receiver. I put it down and stood there in the piss stink, looking out and seeing nothing.

  So the next day it was me, for once, banging on Bohemia’s door at some hideous hour of the morning. I said, “Bohemia, come on! I’m sorry.”

  No answer, just the movement of sheets.

  “Really, I mean it.”

  “I mean I didn’t mean it,” I said. “The stuff I said yesterday. I was just pissed off, that’s all. Not at you.”

  The door opened and Cherry’s delicate, haggard face filled the gap. “That’s a weight off,” she said.

  “Where’s Bohemia?” I said.

  “I dunno,” she said. “I thought she was with one of you.”

  “Are you sure she’s not there?” I said. “Not asleep in the bathroom or something?”

  “Who the hell is that?” Mick’s voice growled from somewhere inside. “What’s the time, for Christ’s sake?”

  “She’s not here,” Cherry said. “Go away.”

  I went down to Isabel’s. I didn’t have to knock to get her out of bed. She was already up, wiping the front door with an old tea towel. “It’s vinegar before you ask,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “The smell. I’ve been cleaning my windows.”

  I asked her what time she got up in the morning.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and carried on rubbing the paintwork off. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  She smiled. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said. “I’d never phone them really. I never would.”

  “OK.”

  “I wrote you a note,” she said. “I was deciding whether to deliver it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “On the kitchen table.”

  “Can I read it?”

  She shrugged and rubbed extra hard at some part of the doorknob. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Is Bohemia with you?” I said.

  “No. I’m sure she’s upstairs, sleeping like a baby. It’s six-thirty, Sam.”

  “I know,” I said. “I woke Cherry up.”

  “Ha! Good.” She winked at me.

  “Bohemia’s not there,” I said.

  “Bet she is.”

  “Mick’s there,” I said.

  Isabel rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue. “Right pair of lovebirds.”

  “It doesn’t feel right, Isabel. She’s not here.”

  “That woman couldn’t find her own nose before ten in the morning. Go and look yourself.”

  I went back upstairs and got Cherry out of bed again. She was more bothered by that than the idea her daughter might have gone somewhere in the middle of the night.

  “What time did you get home?” I said.

  “How do I know?”

  Her make-up had dropped while she was sleeping. It filled the slipping, puffy skin beneath her eyes with pockmarks of shadow and glitter.

  “Well. Was it dark?” I said. “Were the birds singing? Were there people about and were they going home or going to work?”

  “Is that you again?” Mick shouted.

  “It was dark,” she said with her eyes closed and her head leaning on the door. “I dropped my keys in the street and I had to use my lighter to find them.”

  “Where did you go?” I asked her.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “It’s nothing to me at all. Can I come in?”

  She laughed. “Help yourself, darling. The more the merrier.”

  The sheets from the sofa bed were all over the floor. The room smelled like an ashtray.

  Bohemia wasn’t there.

  I went back down to Isabel. I said, “Do you think she’s run away?”

  The wrinkles on her face were deep, like they’d been drawn in with a pencil, the ditches of her skin filled with shadow. “Why would she do that?” she said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’s bored of her millionaire lifestyle.”

  “Well, where would she go?”

  “I have no idea.”

  We searched the house then. We knocked at Steve’s. We got Mick to open his place. We looked in the yard. Isabel even checked in Doormat’s basket.

  Bohemia was gone.

  Everyone kept making suggestions.

  Maybe she was at the shops.

  Or gone for a walk.

  Or hiding somewhere we hadn’t thought to look yet, waiting for us to find her.

  Maybe she’d be back any minute.

  Maybe she was upstairs fast asleep after all.

  “She’ll be pleased somebody’s noticed,” I said, but none of them knew what I was talking about.

  Even then, when everyone was being careful not to panic, I knew she’d gone.

  I was worried she’d gone because of me.

  Fifteen (Bohemia)

  I wish I could’ve taken Doormat with me. All the adventures I’ve seen where kids run away and dice with danger, they’ve always got some clever dog on their side. Not that Doormat was probably all that clever, and he would’ve had to be carried cos his legs are useless. But at least he’d have kept me warm at night cos it was bloody cold some of the time. And I couldn’t have taken him without asking. And he would’ve probably barked at me when I was hiding somewhere at a crucial moment, and I would’ve got caught. And I didn’t want anyone to know.

  I stole the money from Sam’s room. I honestly didn’t mean to. It was inside a book. I meant to steal that. He was being horrible to me at the time so I didn’t feel bad about it. I just stuffed it up my jumper when he was glaring out the window and saying stuff about my mum, and telling me he didn’t want to be my friend any more or something. When I got back to my room, all this money fell out and that’s when I knew what to do.

  I didn’t count it. I put it in my sock. It had surprisingly sharp edges.

  I put my warmest and waterproofest clothes on. I took Cherry’s anorak cos it was big enough to keep me dry all over. I filled her pockets with the food that was left over in the kitchen until I was heavy with it. Maybe it was a good thing I wasn’t taking Doormat after all. Knowing how greedy that dog is, he’d probably have eaten me alive, like a walking snack.

  I didn’t leave a note. That was on purpose. Let Sam see how that feels.

  I managed to get past Isabel’s door, but I nearly got caught as soon as I left the house. I shut the door without even a click, and I put my hood up and my head down and I walked to the end of the street. I was going to turn left when I got there and I was checking the road for cars, and right in front of me, in the stinky phone box, was Sam. I looked straight at him and for a second I swear he looked back at me, and then I hid my face and held my breath and kept on walking. I waited for him to shout out my name, but he didn’t. I was happy and a bit disappointed at the same time.

  I don’t know what he was doing there. He wasn’t even on the phone. He was just staring.

  You can’t really travel on public transport in the middle of the night when you’re a kid cos people would ask questions on the night bus. It would’ve taken me less than half an hour to get to
Victoria if I’d waited until later. But if I’d waited, I might not have done it. So that’s why I was walking there at that time in the morning, with no dog for company and my mum’s coat filled with food.

  It’s one of the things me and Mum always did together – walk everywhere cos there was never any money to spare. Isabel said that I never learned anything at home, but she’s wrong cos I got really good at knowing how to get places and I bet that’s worth a load more than your seven times table in the real world. I wanted to remember to tell her that when I saw her again.

  I stayed close to walls and tried not to get noticed, and mostly it worked. I went round the Town Hall at the bottom of the High Street and down Hampstead Road. Past the old cigarette factory that Isabel said they painted to look like Egypt in Las Vegas, past the big flats that went on for streets and streets and one of them was Ray’s, past the funny bar that was pretending to be in Bugsy Malone. There were people working already in the shops opposite the big glass buildings, stacking shelves like Sam did, and I didn’t want them to see me so I went round the back, like three sides of a square, and crossed the road to the round end of Portland Place. It was still dark, as dark as it gets anyway. I know that now.

  There weren’t many people around. I thought I saw a little old lady shuffling along on the other side of the road, but it was me in my mum’s coat, reflected in a window. It made me laugh. At least if anyone came up to me, I could hide my face and pretend to be a mad old battleaxe.

  That’s what Mum said to me once. “If you’re out at night on your own and you want to make sure you’re safe, act madder than the next person and they’ll stay away from you.”

  So I was a cross between Isabel and my mum, walking along, with Sam’s money in my sock and his book getting covered in food in my pocket.

  I crossed over Oxford Street where you normally get herded from one side to the other. There weren’t any policemen with megaphones and there wasn’t even that man who wears the blackboard about how we’re all going to die and rot in hell unless we give up eating cheeseburgers. I wondered what happened to him, where he went at night and if he had a wife that wore a blackboard too, so they could write messages to each other instead of talking.