Cross Her Heart(61)

She’s out of the house as much as she can be despite what the police and the social say about school and happy families. Ma and Tony sleep late and she’s gone by the time they wake. She shoves some milk or juice and bread at Daniel over the side of his cot and gets out. They can play their happy families, the three of them. That’s what they want anyway.

Causing havoc or seeing Katie is how she spends her days. Katie. Oh, she lives for Katie. They have their den now, here in Coombs Street. There’s blankets on the ground that Katie snuck out from home, some candles Charlotte nicked from the big shop in town, a couple of old cushions from the youth centre over on Marley Street. It’s here she feels safest. She lights another cigarette as Katie speaks. Ma trouble, that’s what Katie’s got. The opposite of Charlotte’s. Too much love, that’s Katie’s problem. Everybody loves her.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t smoke this around you,’ Charlotte says, and laughs. Katie does too as she shakes the blue inhaler and squirts it into the air.

‘I don’t have asthma. Even the doctor knows that. I don’t think he’s put anything in this thing. He’s probably given me an empty one to stop her going on and on at him. He said my lungs were fine. But did she listen? Of course not. It’s her who stops me breathing. She’s going to suffocate me soon. Wrap me up so tightly she’ll never let me go.’

‘How come you’re not at school?’ Charlotte’s lungs are tight with smoke. She’s smoking more. She wishes she had some booze but Tony only had two cans left in the fridge and she chickened out of taking one. She’d rob something later. From the shop. Or somewhere. Or maybe one of her ma’s pills. She’s getting itches for them a bit like the fags.

‘Forged a letter. Family problems. It’s easy. Summer hols start soon anyway. It’s only sports days and activities left, and my mother won’t let me take part in those if she can help it.’

It’s easy for Katie. Katie’s a good girl. If Katie had to go to the chippy and then told about it, people would believe her. They’d help her. No one would believe Charlotte. Or they’d say she brought it on herself. Maybe she did. Maybe she is a little bitch like her ma says when she’s angry.

‘Come on,’ Katie says. ‘Let’s go for a wander.’

They clamber out the window, keeping an eye out that they haven’t been seen and their secret den is safe. Charlotte holds the cigarette out for Katie, who takes it and puffs once before giving it back. She doesn’t inhale. Charlotte would rip the shit out of anyone else for that, but she knows Katie only smokes for her. Because Charlotte does it. Not in a trying to impress way, but in a being as close as they can be way. Best friends. No, something more. There are no words for what this is between them. Charlotte doesn’t want words for it. Words might break it.

They throw rocks at the wrecked houses just because they can, and for a little while they pretend they’re the last two people on earth in the wasteland left after a nuclear bomb like in that programme on the telly a few years back that her ma still talks about sometimes because it scared her so much. Eventually, survival stories exhausted, they head towards the Rec and the crappy playground there.

They’re inside the gates when Charlotte freezes.

‘What?’ Katie almost whispers it, so attuned are they to each other’s feelings that she stills too. Charlotte feels Katie’s hand slide into hers. She grips it. Her rock. Her strength.

‘My ma,’ she says. ‘And Daniel.’

Katie gasps a little, and her eyes widen. Their real lives have always been other, Katie’s in her big house and posh school, and Charlotte’s in her scummy estate. But now, here, a door has been opened.

‘Come on,’ Charlotte grunts, tugging Katie backwards.

‘But I want to see.’ Katie pulls the other way, nodding Charlotte to the overgrown bushes on the other side of the railings. Charlotte glares at her. ‘They won’t spot us.’ Katie leans in and kisses Charlotte’s nose. ‘Don’t be a wuss.’

The word makes Charlotte grin almost as much as the kiss does, even though she doesn’t want Katie to see, she doesn’t want her shite life to be real to Katie. Wuss. No one around here ever says that. They have to move though, otherwise Ma will spot them soon enough. The Rec’s not busy because the weather is crap and the bins haven’t been emptied for ages so all the good mums take their bairns up to the big park where it’s clean and sometimes there’s an ice-cream van parked up, but Ma would never do that. Not without it being a special day and even then it would depend on her, or Tony’s, mood.

They wriggle through the bushes, quietly giggling as the leaves and hard thin branches jab into them and snare their clothes, until they’re both camouflaged behind the railings. Two pairs of eyes peering through shrubbery. Katie is alive with excitement, and Charlotte wonders how her family must seem to her. Ma, scrawny and in a cheap old anorak, her hair lank and pulled back into a ponytail. She probably hasn’t had a wash. She looks like she got dressed fast to get out of Tony’s way. A good job she hadn’t nicked one of his cans, Charlotte decides, if Tony’s in one of his moods. Daniel has Peter Rabbit tucked under his arm as Ma lifts him carefully into one of those swings with the safety rail, one leg on either side. She handles him so gently it hurts Charlotte’s heart.

Once he’s settled, he gives her a smile and chews on Peter Rabbit’s ear as she pushes him, not too hard, just enough for him to enjoy. Tony used to push Charlotte on the swings, but he’d push her so high she’d be crying out in terror for him to stop. He found it funny. She’s never seen him do that with Daniel.