Cross Her Heart(68)

They huddle together although they barely feel the September chill, and for a while they’re silent, their hands holding so tightly to each other Charlotte thinks they might fuse together as one. She wishes they could. She wishes it more than anything. This morning, with Ma and Daniel, was bad, and later, some instinct tells her, will be terrible, but Katie’s news is the worst.

‘I’ll fucking kill myself,’ she growls. ‘I will.’

‘Shh.’ Katie rests her head on Charlotte’s shoulder. ‘Never say that. And let me think.’

Charlotte does, drinking in the exotic scent of Katie’s shampoo but also searching for the Katie smell under it. She wants to breathe it in and she closes her eyes for a moment, imagining filling the emptiness inside her entirely with Katie. There’s space now that she’s let everything else out.

After Katie, glowering and angry and stabbing at the crumbling walls with a shard of glass, told Charlotte her news, it tumbled free from her mouth, all the crap she’s held inside; Tony, Ma, the chippie, how her shite life is turning her to shite from the inside and how scared she is she’ll end up buried in it. How it wouldn’t be so bad if there wasn’t always Daniel there, the loved child who makes her feel unlovable. How at least she had Katie, Katie was her lifeline, her beating heart, her rock to smash the world with, her one good thing.

But now there will be no more Katie. A few more weeks. Precious days that will trickle away too fast. The Battens are moving. Selling the house and taking Katie a million miles away, south to London. A void stretches ahead of Charlotte and she can feel herself on the edge of tumbling into it already. What will her life be without Katie?

Her ma took Daniel away for the weekend this morning. A special treat for my little soldier, that’s what Charlotte had heard Tony say as she slammed her bedroom door. She didn’t say goodbye. Why should she? Who would care? She could hear them though, Tony fussing over them both, speaking soft to Ma and giving her some money.

Charlotte had curled up like a fist on her bed, holding her swollen stomach and staring at the pack of cheap pads her mum had given her the day before when the sticky brown blood appeared in her pants. She wearing one now, a bulky betrayal. The curse. She didn’t want it. She doesn’t like it. She’s still only eleven. She wants her changing body to go back to how it used to look, flat and hard like a boy. Like it was before Daniel came along. When things were better.

Ma has never taken her away for a weekend. She’s never taken her anywhere. And now she’s gone and left her with Tony for two whole days, maybe three, and as her head swirls with drugs and booze and feels heavy and thick on her shoulders, that worries her. It frightens her. Charlotte Nevill, the fearless girl. The troublemaker. The bully. The little bitch.

‘It’s Mummy’s fault,’ Katie says, staring ahead, hard. ‘Everything is always her fault. I wish she was dead.’

‘I wish Daniel had never been born.’

‘We can’t let them do this to us,’ Katie says. She sits up and swivels round so she’s facing Charlotte, cross-legged, before taking hold of her hands again. They’re soft and small and neatly manicured. Charlotte’s, much bigger, with bitten-down nails and torn skin scabbing at the edges, look clumsy. Manly. She doesn’t mind manly. Today she loves her hands.

‘No, we can’t,’ Charlotte shakes her head. ‘We won’t. Let’s run away. Let’s do it.’

‘Yes!’ Katie says. ‘We’ll be free. Together forever.’

Charlotte grins and stands, spinning around like Katie does sometimes when she has too much energy for sitting still. ‘Bonnie and Clyde, Clyde and Bonnie,’ she says and suddenly she’s giggling loud and from her sore gut.

‘Just like them,’ Katie says. ‘In love and on the run.’

‘You’ll be on the run,’ Charlotte says, her head swimming as she stops, part drunk, part high, part exhausted. ‘But no one will come after me. They won’t care. They’ll all be glad to be rid of me. They can have their perfect family if I fuck off. Live in this shite estate, all happy without me.’

Katie pulls her back down, shaking her head. ‘No, we’ll be on the run.’

Charlotte waits for the world to settle. The half pill she took is kicking in hard. Maybe different from the others, she didn’t look at the packet. She likes it, whatever it is. It makes her feel warm and floaty and sleepy. Like there’s a blur between her and the rest of the world. Only she and Katie exist, like in one of their games. ‘What are you on about?’ She leans forward and smiles. ‘Your eyes are perfect blue. Like the sky.’

‘Concentrate, Charlotte! I’m being serious. This is important.’ Katie shakes her shoulders and she tries to focus. She does focus.

‘I’m listening, all right?’

‘Good.’ Katie is intense. ‘Why should they get to be a perfect family? Why should they be happy when they’ve made you so unhappy? Why should I have to worry about Mummy ruining my life forever? She’ll never let me go. Even if I run, she’ll find me.’

‘She should have died falling down those stairs,’ Charlotte murmurs. She hates Katie’s ma almost as much as she hates her half-brother. She hates anything that makes Katie unhappy.

‘Yes,’ Katie says. ‘She should have.’ She pauses. ‘And she still could.’