Kitabı oku: «Sadie»
JANE ELLIOTT
Sadie
Dedication
‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Contents
Title Page Dedication Prologue Part One Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Part Two Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Epilogue Also By Jane Elliott Copyright About the Publisher
Prologue
A Manchester Prison, 1985
Something was going to happen today.
The screws could tell. The inmates could tell. Nobody knew when or where; they just knew. Whispered rumours in the corridors of the prison had not gone unnoticed by the authorities, but it’s hard to put out a fire when you don’t know where the flames are. All they could do was watch and wait.
The air of the canteen was thick with the smell of grease and eggs. It would have turned the stomachs of most people, but the prisoners queuing for their breakfast hardly seemed to notice it. They smelled it every Sunday, after all, when their cereal and yoghurt was replaced by fatty bacon, eggs and fried bread. Normally there were boisterous shouts as the inmates queued, but not this morning.
Something was going to happen today.
Vic Brandon was eight years into a life sentence, so he was more used to the bland stodge of prison food than most of the small-timers around him. It still wound him up, though, queuing for his meals with everyone else. He’d been in six prisons since the day he went down for shooting some copper who got in the way of him and a waiting VW – an occupational hazard of being an armed robber – and in each of those prisons he had stamped out his authority within forty-eight hours of arriving. It was amazing how all you had to do was take a blade to some hapless lag if you wanted to have everyone else eating out of your tattooed hands.
‘Bacon?’
Vic looked up unsmilingly at the inmate who was serving. New face, he thought. Didn’t know who he was. It wouldn’t last. He said nothing, but held his tin tray in front of him.
‘Just give him some,’ another server whispered to the bacon man, before turning back to Brandon. ‘All right, Vic?’ he asked with a slightly nervous smile.
Vic nodded curtly as food was placed on his tray, and then went to take his seat at the place that was always reserved for him.
Respect. Hierarchy. That was what it was all about in these places. The screws might insist that he queue up with all the others, but he had his own ways of keeping things the way he liked them. No matter that half his eight years had been spent in isolation wings; no matter that his violent behaviour meant that his chances of parole were minutely small. Cop-killers always served the full stretch anyway. Look at Harry Roberts. Besides, he liked it in prison. On the outside he was a nobody; in here he was a somebody. His missus turned up once a month, done up to the nines and turning heads the way he liked her, and his eyes on the outside told him that she was keeping on the straight and narrow. If she was a trophy in the real world, she was double that in here.
Every now and then, though, he needed to make his presence felt. Today, he had decided, was going to be one of those days.
Something was going to happen today.
Of course, he was spoiled for choice in this place, as it was one of the few lock-ups he’d been in that housed a Vulnerable Prisoners’ wing. The VP wing was like jam to an insect as far as Vic was concerned. Bent coppers, convicted paedophiles – it was where they stuck all the scumbags whose very presence offended both inmates and screws alike. They were kept apart from the rest of the prison population – different sleeping quarters, different recreation times – for their own safety. The only space they shared was the canteen on a Sunday morning, when the promise of bacon and eggs lured them out of their protective bubble. There had never been any doubt in Vic’s mind that his next target would be one of the dogs from the VP wing: that way he could reassert his authority and do everyone a favour at the same time.
He had even chosen his man.
His name was Allen Campbell, another new boy, and if ever one of these sick fuckers wanted the smile wiped from his face, he was it. The word on the corridors of Brandon’s wing was that he was just starting a five-stretch for spiking the drink of a fourteen-year-old with Rohypnol and then doing God knows what with her. Five years, out in two and a half. It wasn’t right. Made Vic’s flesh creep just to think about it, and he saw it as his duty to make sure those two and a half years were as bad as they could be.
The prison authorities were doing their best to keep him safe, but nobody was untouchable. Not if you wanted to get at them badly enough.
Brandon chewed his breakfast slowly as two other inmates came and sat with him. They made a mismatched trio. Brandon was short and sinewy, his balding hair closely shaved. On his left sat Matt, an ageing bare-knuckle fighter doing a six-stretch for GBH, much of his muscle bulk now turned to fat, but still useful in a fight. To his right was a thin, bookish, bespectacled man with a deeply lined face. This was Sean, a counterfeiter at the start of a sentence for flooding the streets with a wave of funny money. A weaselly sort of man who would do whatever it took to ingratiate himself with the right people – not the type Brandon would usually associate himself with, let alone let sit by at mealtimes. But Sean had no history of violence, which made him essential for today’s work. Neither Brandon nor Matt would be allowed to walk out of the workshop without being searched down; Sean was a different matter, and had been instructed to smuggle something out during one of his woodwork sessions.
‘Well?’ Brandon asked eventually.
‘Philips screwdriver, Vic,’ Sean informed him in a reedy cockney voice. ‘Small one, like you asked for.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In my pocket, Vic.’
‘Hand it over.’
There was a fumbling below the table as Sean passed the tool over to Brandon. Vic grasped the handle and ran his finger along the business end of the screwdriver. It was a good weight, and small enough for him to conceal up his sleeve. Not as sharp as he’d have liked. But sharp enough.
‘Off you go, then,’ he told Sean.
Sean looked nervously at him. ‘I thought I might stay, Vic,’ he chattered. ‘Give you a hand.’
Vic just gave him one of his looks.
Sean read the signs well. He stood up from the table, took his half-eaten breakfast over to the slop bucket and then left the canteen.
As he left, the men from the VP wing shuffled in, flanked by three bored-looking screws and ignoring the unfriendly stares from all the other inmates. A youngish man, in his mid-twenties perhaps, Allen Campbell was halfway down the line. His dark hair was close-cropped, his skin closely shaved. A handsome man in his way, but Brandon watched him with loathing. As Campbell accepted his breakfast, a misty calm descended on the lifer. He clutched the screwdriver in his right hand and watched with satisfaction as his prey took a seat at the end of a long table.
He turned to Matt and nodded subtly. ‘Let’s do it.’
The two men scraped their plates into the slop, and then casually walked over to where Campbell was sitting and concentrating on his meal.
‘Nothing like a fry-up, eh?’ Brandon asked quietly.
Allen’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth, and he turned to look up at the two men towering above him. He looked each of them in the eye, sneered faintly and then turned back to his bacon and eggs.
Brandon bent down and whispered in his ear, ‘Not ignoring us, I hope.’
‘Fuck off,’ Allen murmured in a heavy Mancunian accent, not even bothering to look up this time.
Brandon felt the mist descending a little further. ‘No one talks to me like that, you sick little bastard,’ he spoke even more quietly. ‘’Specially not sex cases like you.’
Allen still refused to look at him. ‘And what are you in for, bad boy? Speeding?’
‘It ain’t the same,’ Brandon hissed through gritted teeth. He felt a nudge in his ribs and looked up. Matt was pointing to two screws in the corner of the room: they had spotted what was going on, could clearly sense trouble and were closing quickly in.
‘Do it, Vic,’ Matt urged in a low growl.
Brandon needed no more encouragement. ‘Hold the screws back,’ he told Matt.
Allen Campbell became instantly aware that the situation was about to explode, and he started to push himself up from the table to try to get away. But he was too late. With a deftness that seemed to belie his squat frame, Brandon grabbed Campbell with his left hand around the neck and pulled him up from his seat. The buzz of voices in the canteen suddenly fell silent, and one of the screws shouted as he ran, ‘Put him down, Brandon!’
But Vic wasn’t going to do that. Gripping the screwdriver firmly, he used his right hand to punch the tip into the belly of the squirming Campbell. As it punctured the skin, Brandon felt his victim’s T-shirt become saturated with blood, and his hand became warm and sticky. Campbell exhaled sharply, like a bellows. Vic twisted the weapon fiercely, first one way and then the other. Campbell shouted out in pain and fell to his knees. The screwdriver slid out of his body as he did so, and the blood started to seep out even more copiously, forming a shallow puddle around his midriff.
Brandon looked around. The screws were nearly on him, but he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, he thought. Matt would be able to hold them off for a little bit. He bent over the weeping Campbell, picked up his meal tray and crashed it down on his head. The metal tray had a small, jagged nick on the edge that tore coarsely into Allen’s skin just above the eye.
Suddenly Vic felt the screws’ coshes raining down on him. With a roar, he pushed his arms out to the side, but the screws soon grabbed him, one to each arm. ‘All right, all right,’ he shouted, but as he struggled with them, he could not help aiming a kick firmly in Campbell’s side. Blood stuck to his shoe as Allen groaned loudly, but the screws seemed more intent on dragging Brandon away than helping the bleeding inmate on the floor. They started shouting to their colleagues, ‘Lock down! Lock the place down!’ The hubbub had returned, and there was a palpable feeling of mutiny in the air as a siren started up.
And above it all, there was one voice shouting. It was Vic Brandon.
‘Fucking nonce,’ he yelled. ‘You got what was coming to you. You’re lucky you ain’t dead. You fucking nonce!’
Part One
Chapter One
Wandsworth, south London, five years later
The woman who held the door open was still in her dressing gown and already on the third Rothmans of the morning. Her skin always looked a bit greyer before she’d done her lipstick, but her daughter was used to that. It didn’t worry her too much nowadays. It used to, after the funeral and everything, but her mum seemed better now. Happier.
‘Don’t be late back, love.’ Smoke billowed from her nostrils as she spoke.
‘But I wanted to go round Carly’s.’
‘Not tonight, love. I’ve got a surprise for you.’
She had such a mysterious twinkle in her eye when she said it that the girl immediately relented, looking up at her with a mixture of suspicion and pleasure.
‘All right, Mum,’ she said quietly.
Sadie Burrows kissed her mother, and then slung her beaten-up leather school satchel over her shoulder. It didn’t contain much, but Sadie would never be persuaded not to use it. Her dad had proudly presented it to her two years ago, and even though she knew it was off the back of a lorry, it was her most prized possession. Even more so now he wasn’t around any more.
She slammed the door shut and ran down the path of the tiny front garden of the run-down house that Dad had blagged so hard for them to get; then she hurried down the road that led through the centre of the estate. It was just past eight o’clock, but already the sun was warm and bright as Sadie half ran, half skipped to the small playground where she met her friends before school every morning. As usual, she was the first one there, so she slung her satchel on the ground and sat on a graffiti-covered swing to wait.
Sadie liked it at this park, but it made her sad too. Her dad used to bring her here almost every day. No one ever dared push her as hard in the swing as he did, and sometimes, if Sadie was persuasive enough, there was ice cream on the way back. But it was also here, in the same park where they used to have such fun, that Sadie heard the news. That had been a couple of years ago, on a much colder day than today when she and her friends were wrapped up in mittens and hats. They had seen the ambulance scream past them, but of course they hadn’t paid it much attention – ambulances were always for other people, after all. Perhaps there had been a fight; maybe one of the junkies on the estate had overdosed. Minutes later, though, old Mr Johnson from next door had come hurrying out to find her.
‘Sadie, sweetheart,’ he’d said, out of breath and in a voice made rough by the stinky brown cigarettes he smoked, ‘you’ve got to come with me.’
She was only eleven years old at the time, but she could tell something was wrong. ‘What is it?’ she asked, her eyes wide and her lips trembling.
‘It’s your daddy, sweetheart. He’s not well. The ambulance is taking him to hospital now.’
The rest of the day had been a horrible blur. Mr Johnson had taken her in a minicab to the hospital, where her dad was lying in intensive care, an oxygen mask on his face and tubes coming out of his hands. The nurses had been nice to her, bringing her glasses of orange juice and even some chocolate biscuits, but she knew that people were only that nice when something was really wrong. She kept asking what was the matter with her dad, but nobody wanted to tell her. It was only afterwards that she learned that it was a heart attack. At about six o’clock in the evening, the machine to which her unconscious father was wired started to beep alarmingly. Doctors were called and Sadie and her mother were ushered away from his bedside.
Ten minutes later he was dead.
They didn’t want Sadie to see the body, but she had insisted. She was thankful that they had removed the mask and the tubes – it made him seem more human. More like her dad. In fact, he didn’t even look as if he was dead. Just asleep. Sadie stood on a chair so that she could see him more clearly, but she didn’t cry. She just stared at him, drinking in the sight of the face that she knew she would never see again.
Not until she got home, under her duvet, did the tears come. Then she cried until she could cry no more.
That was two years ago, but it felt like yesterday.
Carly was the first of her friends to arrive at the playground this morning, her hair pulled back tightly as it always was and her face made up so that she appeared older than her thirteen years. She was closely followed by Anna, whose black skin and closely plaited hair always seemed somehow exotic to Sadie, even though black faces were as common as white ones on the estate. None of them greeted each other; they just fell into conversation, which was casual at first but soon became excited and loud as they made their way to school. None of them had any money, but they all had an appetite for sweets. And they had a plan.
‘Who’s going to do it?’ Anna asked as they walked to the edge of the estate.
‘It’s your turn,’ Carly told her.
‘No, it’s not.’ Anna’s voice became louder in her own defence.
‘I did it last time,’ Carly insisted.
‘Yeah, but—’
‘It’s all right,’ Sadie interrupted them quietly. ‘Leave it to me.’
In the old days, Sadie had been able to get anything anyone at school wanted. Or to be more accurate, whatever Sadie brought to school everyone wanted. Her dad would indulgently let her take what she asked for from his ever-changing stocks, and she would supply them, mirroring his wheeler-dealer attitude with stardust that fizzed on your tongue and erasers that came in every shape, colour and smell under the sun. Sometimes she would sell them, sometimes she would give them away – making herself the most popular girl in the school. For a while.
Now, though, she had to find other ways of coming by her stash of goodies.
They were outside the newsagent’s by now. It was part of a parade of shops in the main road that led to the estate, between a dry-cleaner’s and an off-licence. Carly and Anna loitered to one side while Sadie marched brazenly in. It wasn’t a big shop, but there were two small aisles selling groceries and a huge counter of sweets, behind which sat the shopkeeper, who eyed Sadie with suspicion. He had dark skin, white hair and a deeply lined face.
‘Got any milk?’ Sadie asked with a smile.
The shopkeeper pointed in the direction of a tall, glass-fronted fridge in the aisle furthest from him. ‘In the fridge,’ he told her.
Sadie nodded and wandered over to where he had indicated. She opened the fridge, and although she saw three cartons of milk on the lower shelf, she made the pretence of scanning up and down as though unable to find them. Then she shut the door and walked back up to the shopkeeper. ‘Couldn’t find it.’
‘It’s in the fridge,’ the shopkeeper repeated with a frown.
Sadie shrugged, and continued to smile at him.
The shopkeeper muttered something beneath his breath; then he stood up from his stool, walked out from behind the counter and made his way over to the fridge. Sadie watched him carefully. As he opened the door and bent down to take out the milk, she quietly snatched two big handfuls from the sweet counter, shoved them into her satchel, grabbed another couple of handfuls and slipped outside again. She had left the shop before the man had straightened up to close the fridge door.
The three girls ran silently round the corner of the parade, stifling their giggles. Then Carly and Anna huddled excitedly around Sadie.
‘What did you get? What did you get?’
‘Did you get any ciggies?’
‘Course not,’ Sadie scoffed, but not unpleasantly. ‘Ciggies are behind the counter. Anyway, you don’t smoke, Carly.’
‘Course I do.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since last week. Tom gave me one of his, didn’t he?’
Sadie and Anna looked at each other with raised eyebrows, and then exploded with laughter.
‘What?’ Carly asked defensively. ‘What?’
‘We knew you were after Tom,’ Anna screeched.
‘I’m not after him. He just gave me a ciggie, that’s all.’
‘Bet that’s not all he gave you,’ Anna laughed.
‘Shut up.’
‘Look,’ Sadie interrupted them, more to defuse the argument than anything else. She opened her palms to display her haul – chocolate bars, gum, sweets. Carly and Anna moved to grab what they could, but suddenly they heard a man’s voice behind them.
‘Oi, you lot!’
As one, they turned their heads to see who was calling them. The newsagent was running towards them. ‘Give me that stuff back. I’ll call the police on you.’
The three girls were like pigeons dispersing at the sound of gunshot. Quick as a light switching on, they ran in three different directions, Anna and Carly disappearing in opposite ways down the street, Sadie speeding down the alleyway that led past the bins and back into the estate.
As she ran, she nervously congratulated herself on not risking their little shoplifting escapade on the estate. Everyone knew her there, even the shopkeepers – it was difficult to get away with anything. She looked back over her shoulder to see the shopkeeper running after her, and felt a little surge of adrenaline in her stomach as she upped her pace. The alleyway turned a corner and then led out on to an area at the foot of a grey concrete tower block where people parked their cars. There were about fifteen vehicles, all fairly old and run-down. Without stopping to think, Sadie hurled herself into the middle of the car park and hid down by the side of a rusty old blue Fiesta. She tried not to breathe too heavily as she crouched, holding her sweets, and she strained her ears to hear the patter of the shopkeeper’s feet as he emerged from the alleyway – only to find that she had disappeared. She heard him swearing to himself in his pronounced Asian accent. ‘Bloody kids. Always the bloody same.’
Suddenly, to her horror, she saw someone approaching. He raised an eyebrow at her just as she heard the shopkeeper calling to him, ‘’Scuse me, my friend. You seen a young girl running through here? About thirteen, maybe a bit older, long brown hair.’
The man paused, and seemed to be wondering if he should reply or not.
‘She just stole something from my shop, you see,’ the man continued, a bit desperately.
Sadie threw an imploring look up at the man.
‘Sorry, pal,’ he replied in a northern accent. ‘Didn’t see anyone. She can’t have come this way.’
The shopkeeper breathed out in annoyance. ‘Bloody kids,’ he muttered again.
The man watched him go. ‘It’s all right,’ he said finally. ‘He’s gone.’
Slowly Sadie stood up, flashing the man her most winning smile. ‘Thanks,’ she said. As she spoke, the alarm on her digital watch beeped twice. Nine o’clock.
‘Shouldn’t you be going to school?’ the man asked her.
Sadie’s grin grew a bit broader. ‘Yeah,’ she replied, clutching her sweets and starting to slip away. ‘Yeah, I suppose I should. Um … Anyway, thanks again.’
The others, she knew, would be back at their usual meeting place by the swings. Flushed with the success of her adventure, she ran off to meet them.
Stacy Venables had wanted to be a teacher ever since she was a little girl. Her mum had been one, and her dad too, so she supposed it was only natural. Of course, teaching now wasn’t as it was then. Her mum had never had to deal with pupils using four-letter words to her face, and whenever Stacy told her about the things she had to put up with, she would shake her head, tut and start talking about standards. But standards in the cosy corner of Wiltshire where the Venables family lived were very different to standards in inner-city London. Stacy remembered the time her parents had given her what for when she had asked if her eighteen-year-old boyfriend could stay the night. If they only knew what kids nowadays were up to: drugs, sex – they needed so much more than education, she always thought. They needed a bit of care – a bit of what they weren’t getting in the home. That was why she tried to make herself seem accessible to the children. Unlike her female colleagues, who wore severe suits in rough, cheap material, Stacy wore jeans. In summer she wore a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket – much to the disapproval of the disciplinarian headmaster, Mr Martin; for winter she had a succession of thick, woolly thigh-length cardigans that seemed to match her full head of long, curly hair and made her appear, she thought, a bit more homely.
Of course, she was still a teacher, and subject to the disdain and abuse most of the kids at school gave anyone in authority; but every now and then she felt as if she had made a difference, and that made her efforts worthwhile.
Miss Venables stood patiently at the gates to the school. It was ten past nine now, and the two police officers who stood outside the school every morning and afternoon to keep away undesirables had just left. It saddened her that they had to be there, but she knew it was the right thing. Prevention was better than cure, even if some of the older kids were savvy enough to arrange meets with their dealers just round the corner, where there were no uniforms. Last year a boy had been excluded for having a wrap containing three rocks of crack cocaine. Bright enough kid, decent family – you never could tell who was going to go down that line. The police had been called, a fuss had been made and the children had been told that this sort of behaviour was not to be tolerated. Stacy had argued that he should be given help, not exclusion, but hers was a lone voice, soon drowned by the head. She had received a letter from the lad’s parents just a couple of months later, saying that he had gone missing and that the police weren’t hopeful of finding him unless he wanted to come back, but thanking her for everything she had done for him.
It saddened her, too, that they had to lock the main gates to the school, not so much to keep the children in as to keep other people out. You could never be too careful these days.
She looked at her watch. Another minute for the stragglers and then she’d lock up.
Just then, around the corner, came three familiar figures.
Miss Venables had a soft spot for Sadie Burrows. It wasn’t just that she looked appealing, with her glossy long hair, olive skin and those beautiful almond-shaped eyes. Some kids just had something, a spark, call it what you will – when you’d been in the job for a while you found you could recognize it easily, and you knew how rare it was.
It didn’t make her a goody-goody. Far from it – more of a charming tearaway, and plenty of the teachers in the school had marked her out because of that. She was neither brilliant academically, nor poor – just average, although here that almost made her stand out. Sadie could be cheeky and mischievous, just like any other kid. But she was definitely the daughter of her father, a man well known all over this part of London as being able to sell umbrellas in July and sunscreen in December. Just don’t ask where it came from. Tommy Burrows had a twinkle in his eye that he had passed on to his daughter, which meant that whenever she was caught crossing the boundary, it was impossible to stay angry with her for long.
‘Come on, you three!’ she shouted at the girls as they approached. ‘You’re late. I was just about to lock up.’
‘Sorry, Miss Venables,’ Carly and Anna intoned in unison.
‘Why are you late? What have you been doing?’
‘Nothing, miss,’ the two of them told her rather guiltily.
‘Sadie?’ Miss Venables turned to the ringleader with a raised eyebrow.
Sadie looked straight at the teacher. ‘Carly had to get the little ones ready for school, miss. Me and Anna said we’d wait for her.’
Miss Venables looked at each of the girls in turn. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh, Miss Venables. Would I lie to you?’ Sadie looked innocently at her.
‘Probably, Miss Burrows.’ She couldn’t help smiling at Sadie’s banter, perfectly aware that she was being twisted round the finger of this little thirteen-year-old, but somehow not minding. And who was to say that they weren’t telling the truth? She knew that Carly’s mum was off the rails: a child protection officer had informed the school that she was under observation by social services. Single mum, too fond of the bottle – it was a story they heard all the time, and too often the eldest daughter ended up with the responsibility of looking after her younger siblings.
‘All right, girls. In you go, quickly. Straight to your classes.’
Carly and Anna hurried inside, but on a sudden whim Miss Venables called out, ‘Sadie!’
Sadie turned. ‘Yes, miss?’
‘Is everything all right?’
Sadie looked confused.
‘At home, I mean.’
‘Oh.’ She smiled at the teacher in appreciation. ‘Yes, miss. I think so. Thanks.’
‘Good. Well … Off you go.’
Sadie nodded and ran across the playground into the school building, while Miss Venables thoughtfully locked the main gate and wandered back inside, slowly so as to enjoy the warmth of the morning sun on her face.
After lunch she noticed Sadie again. It was Friday, so Miss Venables was on playground duty, doing her best to keep some sort of order among the couple of hundred screaming kids working off their lunch in the early-afternoon heat. Frankly, she dreaded playground duty: it was hard enough keeping a class of forty kids quiet, let alone a schoolyard full of them. And especially on a Friday, when everyone was looking forward to the weekend.
In the far corner, something was going on. A boy – she couldn’t quite make out who it was – was being circled by three other kids. Even at a distance, she could tell it wasn’t a friendly game. He was being pushed about from one to the other and being jeered at. It was going to escalate into something nasty. Miss Venables started to stride across the playground, blowing her whistle. But, as usual, the kids paid her no attention.
Now she could see the boy who was being bullied. Poor little Jamie Brown. He didn’t stand much chance in this place. He was so badly cared for at home that his skin was always dirty and his clothes stank of urine and filth. She suspected physical abuse, and knew that he was being closely monitored; but he would never admit to anything – he was too scared – and the mother always seemed to have a story to explain away any suspicions people had. But Jamie’s peers didn’t know about all that, or if they did they didn’t care. All they saw was a smelly little boy who cowered at every harsh word, and for whom barely a day passed without tears and fights and traumas. Even Miss Venables had to admit that standing too close to him was a bit of challenge, so the moment he had arrived at school she had known what a rough ride he was likely to get from the kids. And she knew that even if she stopped this little fracas, another one wouldn’t be far behind. That didn’t mean she shouldn’t try, though.
Suddenly she stopped.
She narrowed her eyes as she saw Sadie step confidently into the ring.
Ordinarily she would never have stood back to let other kids enter a brawl, but something encouraged her to keep her own counsel for a few moments.
Sadie was older than the boy who was being bullied, but the kids who had formed the ring were her own age and outnumbered her three to one. With casual confidence, she stood beside Jamie Brown.
The bullies sneered. ‘What are you then? His girlfriend?’
Sadie’s face didn’t flicker. ‘What do you know about girlfriends?’ she asked quietly.
A blush came to the bully’s cheek. His eyes moved from left to right as he looked to see what reaction Sadie’s comment was getting from his companions; then he made forward as if to attack Jamie Brown. Miss Venables saw the little boy flinch and, in her most authoritarian voice, started to call out the bully’s name. But as she did so, she saw the bully’s friends grab him by the arms and pull him away. They started scuffling among themselves for a moment, but then they caught sight of Miss Venables bearing down on them. Each of them threw her a scornful look, and then turned and hurried away. A final insult – ‘At least I don’t piss my pants!’ – reached her ears, but she let it pass, choosing instead to hurry up to Jamie and Sadie.
‘Are you all right, Jamie, love?’ she asked, kneeling down so that she could be more at the little boy’s level. But Jamie simply looked angry and confused; he turned and ran to the other end of the playground, where he sat with his back to the wall, alone and avoided, as he always was.
Miss Venables turned to Sadie. ‘You should leave that sort of thing to the teachers, Sadie,’ she chided.
Sadie looked calmly at her. ‘Sorry, miss,’ she said, but there was no apology in her voice. She looked over at Jamie. ‘But I don’t see why they have to be so horrible.’
‘I know, Sadie,’ Miss Venables agreed. ‘But sometimes it’s the easy targets that attract the weakest people. Jamie will be all right. I’ll keep an eye on him. Now run along.’
She watched as Sadie made her way back to Carly and Anna, who were laughing good-naturedly. They didn’t seem to have noticed what had just happened, and Sadie rejoined them quietly, only occasionally glancing across the playground to where Jamie Brown was still sitting by himself.
Chapter Two
The afternoon passed slowly. Sadie sat at the back of the class with Carly and Anna, her chin resting in the palm of her hand; she stared into space as the teacher at the front droned on and on, his monotonous lesson frequently punctuated by barks of reprimand and tellings-off. It was a typical Friday afternoon.
Carly slipped a note under the table. Her childish handwriting asked Sadie in misspelled English if she still wanted to come round to her house after school. Sadie thought about writing a reply, but instead she just whispered back.
‘Can’t,’ she told her friend. ‘Mum says I’ve got to go back home.’
Carly shot her a surprised look, and Sadie understood why. Her mum never told her when she should be back.
Even when Sadie was younger, she had been allowed to wander round the estate by herself. People came to expect it of her. She was forever knocking on doors, fixing her neighbours with her most appealing smile and flogging whatever goods or goodies her dad had a run on that particular week. She understood how difficult grown-ups found it to refuse such a chirpy young girl and she’d got a taste for it. She would always come home, of course, but she never had to be told.
After the funeral, though, things started to become a bit different. Mum would still never tell her when to be home, and at first that was just because it was the way things had always been. But the loss of her man hit Jackie Burrows hard. Sadie would never forget the first time she got back after school to find her drunk. The bottle of cheap vodka on the smoked-glass coffee table wasn’t quite empty, but it wasn’t far off. An ashtray was full of stubs, and the television was on. Sadie’s mum was comatose on the sofa and, try though she might, the little girl couldn’t rouse her. She shook her, tears streaming down her face and crying at her to wake up; but when she did open her eyes, they just rolled unconsciously to the top of her head before closing again. Sadie had been on the point of calling an ambulance when her mother rolled off the sofa and started vomiting on the carpet.
It had taken her two days to get back on her feet again. Sadie stayed away from school to nurse her, bringing her glasses of water and painkillers. Jackie had begged her daughter not to be angry with her, but Sadie was not angry. In her childlike way she understood. At times mother and daughter held each other and cried and cried, but they never spoke of their sadness. How would they have known what to say?
Since then Jackie had never been that bad. But for several months not a day went by when Sadie didn’t come home to find the ever-open bottle of vodka depleted and the ashtray brimming over. And more than once, when the booze had run out and Jackie was in no state to leave the house, she handed Sadie one of the precious ten-pound notes that arrived in her purse courtesy of the benefits office, and begged, ‘Get us a bottle of voddy, love.’
The first time it happened, Sadie was reluctant. ‘I can’t, Mum. I’m not old enough.’
But Mum looked imploringly at her, a horrible, pitiful desperation in her eyes, and Sadie agreed because she didn’t know what else to do. She took the money down to the off-licence with the grey metal grilles on the front where on a number of occasions she had gone with her dad to sell cheap cases of spirits. The first time she tried to buy vodka the owner had been nervous; but she told him it was for her mum, and she soon ceased to have any problem.
Jackie’s habit grew from bad to worse, and soon she was able to drink the same quantities she had that first time without the devastating effect.
And then, a few months ago, it simply stopped. Sadie returned home one day to discover that for the first time in ages her mum had dealt with the washing – a job Sadie had taken over in some unspoken agreement, knowing that if she didn’t she’d just have to wear dirty clothes. Jackie had folded the clothes and placed them on the kitchen table, and as Sadie walked in, her satchel slung over her shoulder, Mum was standing proudly by her handiwork, dressed and sober. She almost managed to look proud of what she had achieved. No matter that the dirty dishes were piled in the sink; no matter that the house stank of cigarettes. Sadie could tell it was a turning point.
That night Jackie even went out. Sadie lay alone in the darkness of her bedroom, wondering where she was and waiting for her to come back, but towards midnight sleep overtook her; she awoke the next morning to find her mum still asleep. She left for school quietly, without waking her up.
At first Jackie’s evening outings were few and far between. But as the weeks passed, Sadie found herself alone in the house of an evening increasingly frequently. Now and then she would ask her mum where she had been, but Jackie would reply evasively. She was lonely in the house by herself at night, and the creaks and cracks that always sounded ten times louder when the lights were off were frightening. But she never said anything to Mum: she was just glad she had stopped drinking. And when they did spend time together, there would be kisses and cuddles and affection; sometimes they even managed to talk about Dad without crying.
Life was getting better. They were going to be OK. Just the two of them.
The bell rang for the end of school, and there was a sudden cacophony of chair-scraping. Sadie closed the book that she had not glanced at since the start of the lesson and tossed it into her satchel. Most of her share of the chocolate bars she had pinched that morning were still in there, she noticed, as she heard Carly speak.
‘So, why does your mum want you home?’
‘Dunno,’ Sadie shrugged, affecting less interest than she felt.
They wandered out into the corridor and walked towards the exit.
By the time they got there, most of the other kids had left. As they walked through the school gates, Sadie saw little Jamie Brown, the boy she had helped in the playground. He seemed to be in a world of his own, scuffing his shoes as he shuffled along and humming dreamily to himself in that tuneless way that always attracted so much derision from the other kids.
‘You all right, Jamie?’ she asked as they passed.
Jamie looked up as though noticing the girls for the first time – which he probably was. The pungent odour of stale urine hit Sadie’s nose, and she did her best to stop her distaste from showing in her face; but next to her she heard Carly’s voice, half-choking, half-sniggering. She glanced at her in momentary annoyance and then turned her attention back to Jamie. As soon as he had heard Carly, he had hung his head straight back down and started to walk away, his cheek twitching nervously. Sadie strode after him. As she did so, and on a whim, she thrust her hand into her satchel and brought out a bar of chocolate. She shoved it into Jamie’s hand. ‘Here you go,’ she told him. ‘You can have this.’
Jamie stopped once more and stared in astonishment at the foil wrapper in his hand. He looked to Sadie as though he had never seen a bar of chocolate in his life.
‘Go on,’ Sadie said to him, half laughing. ‘It’s not poison.’
A look of indecision crossed the little boy’s face, but eventually he shook his head and handed it back to Sadie. ‘No thanks,’ he said in a small voice. ‘I can’t.’
Sadie and Carly shared a surprised glance.
‘What do you mean, you can’t?’ Carly asked. ‘She just gave it to you, didn’t she?’
‘I’m not allowed,’ Jamie said firmly, handing the chocolate bar back.
‘Who says?’ Sadie asked him gently.
‘My mum.’
Sadie looked at him in confusion. ‘But it’s only a bit of chocolate.’
‘Yeah, but I’m still not allowed.’
‘But she won’t know.’
Jamie looked away, embarrassment shadowing his face. ‘Yeah, she will. She always knows. She gets … angry.’ As he said the word ‘angry’, his voice went hoarse.
Sadie and Carly stood awkwardly, unable to think what to say.
‘Anyway,’ Jamie mumbled, his voice a little aggressive now, ‘it’s nothing to do with you.’ And he strode off, walking with more purpose than before and resolutely not looking back.
‘Weirdo,’ Carly observed, but without much conviction. Sadie said nothing.
It was a ten-minute walk back to the estate, and the two girls remained quiet all the way home. Sadie couldn’t speak for Carly, but she had been shocked by the look on Jamie’s face when he spoke of his mother. It was a look of sadness, certainly, but also of confusion and fear. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to feel those emotions when you were going home.
That thought brought her mother’s farewell words this morning back to her: ‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ An involuntary smile flickered across Sadie’s face – like all children, she liked surprises. She liked the anticipation. And most of all, she liked the idea that her mum had thought about doing something for her. It was like the old times, when her dad would arrange little treats for her if he’d made a bit of money.
As they arrived on the outskirts of the estate, Sadie and Carly said goodbye and went their separate ways. In the bright afternoon sunshine, the faceless grey tower blocks almost managed to look cheery, and Sadie continued to daydream as she wandered home, her mind full of what-ifs. What if she were to get back to find the flat as it used to be: full of boxes and the life that her dad breathed into the place? What if they were going out, to the cinema, or McDonald’s? Maybe her mum had rented a video from the shop, and bought them Coca-Cola and crisps.
She wandered up the pathway, put her key in the door and walked inside.
Jackie stood in the kitchen. It was a large room, big enough for a dining table, which they never used. As Sadie stood in the door, her always-present satchel hanging around her neck, she blinked in astonishment. When she had left this morning, the sink had been brimming with dirty plates and pans, and Sadie fully expected to find it so when she returned. Jackie might have kicked the booze, but she was still a long way from being the perfect mum, and it was just a matter of course now for her to have to wash up whatever she needed when she made her sandwich for tea. But this afternoon, the kitchen was pristine. Even the large ashtray had been emptied, although Jackie still had a long, slim cigarette burning between her fingers.
‘Are they new trousers, Mum?’ Sadie asked, a bit disconsolately, as she had been telling her that she needed new school shoes for ages now.
‘Oxfam.’ Jackie smiled a little nervously, stubbed out the half-smoked ciggie and walked forward to embrace her daughter. She planted a kiss on Sadie’s cheek, and the girl turned to look at her mum in suspicious amusement. Mum never kissed her when she got home from school – it just wasn’t something she did.
‘What’s going on, Mum?’ she asked, removing the satchel from round her neck and plonking it in the middle of the floor.
Jackie took her daughter by the hand. ‘Come with me, love,’ she said, unable to hide the quiver in her voice. ‘I want you to meet someone.’
She led Sadie through the kitchen and into the sitting room. As she did so, Sadie felt a lurch in her stomach. Her childish instinct told her what was coming.
The man standing in their sitting room had very closely cropped hair. His face was slightly round and clean-shaven, and his sideburns were sharp and angular. There was a scar, about an inch long, above his right eye, and his lips were pale and pursed. He wore brown trousers, pleated below the waist in such a way that they gave the impression of hiding a bit of tummy, and a pale blue shirt that complimented his piercing eyes. It was his eyes that struck Sadie most of all. They were surrounded by black bags and stared straight at her with a flatness that seemed to contradict the thin smile that spread across his face.
And within seconds of seeing him, she realized that she had met him before. That very morning. He was the man who had sent the shopkeeper packing. The man who had stopped her copping it.
She stared at him awkwardly, her dark eyes narrowing a little and the inside of her mouth suddenly becoming dry. Then she heard her mum speaking.
‘Sadie,’ she said in an emphatically friendly voice, like a hostess introducing two people at a party, ‘I want you to meet Allen.’
She waited for Sadie to say something, but Sadie didn’t.
‘Say hello, Sadie, love. And remember your manners. Allen’s going to be your new dad.’
Chapter Three
‘What do you mean?’
Sadie looked round at her mother incredulously. What was she saying? They were in this together, weren’t they? They were mourning her dad together.
Jackie seemed surprised by Sadie’s reaction. ‘Don’t be like that, love.’
Silence.
Allen spoke for the first time. His voice was deep, quiet and not unfriendly; Sadie could not place his faintly Mancunian accent, but to her it sounded almost musical. ‘Why don’t we have a nice brew, eh, Jackie?’ he suggested to Sadie’s mum.
Jackie responded a bit too quickly. ‘Cuppa, Sadie?’ she asked, even though she knew perfectly well that Sadie had never drunk tea in her life. When Sadie didn’t reply and just remained staring at Allen, she turned. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said, almost to herself, as she walked back into the kitchen. But instead of making for the kettle she first picked up a packet of cigarettes on the side, took one out and lit it with a deep drag.
Sadie’s emotions were running riot, and a feeling of physical sickness arose in her gut. She spun round and walked back into the kitchen, wanting to ask her mum a million questions but somehow unable to find the words for even one. Allen followed her and stood in the doorway. The silence was filled by the clattering of her mum getting the tea things together.
When Sadie could bear it no longer she finally spoke. ‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ she whispered.
‘What’s that, Sadie?’ Allen replied, his voice loud enough to be heard by Jackie.
Sadie shot him a spiteful look as her mum turned round to listen. ‘We just met before, that’s all,’ she mumbled.
Allen raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘No, pet,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Yes, we have,’ she insisted.
‘Sadie,’ her mum reprimanded. ‘Don’t answer back to Allen.’ She turned to her new man. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told him.
‘It’s all right. She’s just getting confused, aren’t you, pet?’
‘I’m not getting confused, I …’ Her voice trailed away as she realized that Jackie was now suddenly too busy making the tea to listen.
Allen approached her, and Sadie became aware of his strong-smelling aftershave. He put his hand into his pocket pulled out a cuddly toy, pink and floppy-eared, and pressed it into Sadie’s unwilling hand. She looked at it briefly. It was not new – she could tell that instantly – and it was the sort of thing that might have been of interest to a child half her age.
‘Squeeze it,’ Allen said.
She did so, and the cuddly toy started to laugh. The laugh lasted for about thirty seconds, during which time the three of them were silent. When it stopped, Sadie looked from the toy back to Allen. He was obviously expecting a ‘thank you’, but she didn’t have the voice to give it to him, and his eyes tightened in momentary annoyance. He looked over her shoulder, across the kitchen and into the hallway. ‘Don’t you think you should pick up your school satchel, Sadie?’ he asked.
Sadie stared at him in astonishment, and then glanced at her mum for some sort of support.
‘Do what Allen asks, love,’ was all she said.
Sadie blinked. She handed the cuddly toy back to Allen, and then turned and walked to her satchel as calmly as her turmoil would allow. She picked it up and hung it on the creaky stair banister where she always kept it; then she ran up the stairs, her feet thumping the floorboards, and slammed her bedroom door behind her. She threw herself on to her bed, hugged her pillow and burst into tears.
After some time – Sadie was not sure how long – she heard the stairs creak as they always did when someone walked up them. There was a knock on the door and, without waiting to be asked, Jackie walked in. She was holding the cuddly toy. ‘Come on, love,’ she said, sitting on the bed beside Sadie and gently stroking her hair.
Sadie continued to whimper into her pillow.
‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ Jackie continued. ‘To have a man in the house, I mean.’
‘What about Dad?’ Sadie asked accusingly through her tears.
‘Oh, love. No one’s forgetting about your dad. It’s just …’ Her voice trailed away, and she continued to stroke Sadie’s hair as she waited for the crying to subside. Eventually Sadie sat up and put her head against her mum’s shoulder. Jackie handed her the cuddly toy. ‘You should say thank you to Allen for this,’ she told her daughter.
Sadie looked at it in distaste. She could hardly explain to herself why she found it such an unpleasant thing, let alone to her mum. ‘I’m too old for things like that,’ she said finally. ‘It’s babyish.’
‘I know love, but Allen … He doesn’t have any children, and he just wanted to do something nice for you.’
As she spoke, Sadie felt a hot wave of guilt passing over her, and she knew she had behaved badly. She stared hard at the frayed carpet on the floor in a gesture of apology, but she prayed her mum wouldn’t make her go down and say sorry. ‘Is that where you’ve been going? In the evenings, I mean. To see him?’
Jackie nodded, and brushed a strand of Sadie’s long hair off her face. ‘Allen’s going to look after us, love,’ she said in a half-whisper. ‘He’s going to make sure we’re not lonely, you and me.’
Sadie continued to stare at the floor. ‘Is he going to live here?’ she asked.
‘Yes. If that’s all right with you. Is it?’
For a moment Sadie thought about telling the truth – that she didn’t want anyone else in their house, that she didn’t want anyone else in their life. But then she looked up at her mum and saw the anxiety in her eyes. ‘All right,’ she muttered.
Jackie squeezed her hand. ‘Shall we go down?’ she asked.
Sadie nodded mutely.
Allen was sitting on the sofa downstairs, his hands behind his head and his legs stretched out in front of him. When he saw the two of them in the door he sat up straight. Sadie felt her mum give her an encouraging little push, and stepped forward. ‘Thank you for my present,’ she said, without fully catching his eye.
Allen stood up, walked over to her and slid the palm of his hand momentarily down the back of her head. When it reached her neck, she felt him stroke her gently on the shoulder and then squeeze slightly. He stepped over to Jackie. ‘You ready?’ he asked her.
Jackie shot a guilty look at her daughter. ‘Um, me and Allen are nipping out tonight. You’ll be all right, won’t you, love?’
The corkscrew in Sadie’s heart twisted a little further. ‘Yeah,’ she said sullenly. ‘I’ll be all right.’
She pushed past them and hurried back up to her bedroom.
By six o’clock she was alone in the house. It was a light, sunny evening, and from her room looking out over the front of the house she could hear the sounds of other children playing in the street. There was nothing to stop her from going out and joining them, or phoning Carly or Anna, but somehow she didn’t have the enthusiasm. Her mind was saturated with the confusion of her mother’s bombshell; it was like a piece of blotting paper that had soaked up so much ink that you couldn’t see its original colour. She could concentrate on nothing else. At times she found herself crying; then she would find herself unable to cry, even though she felt as though she ought to. She made herself a sandwich, but two mouthfuls in she realized she wasn’t hungry, so she left it half-eaten on a plate by the sink. She ran herself a deep bubble bath – that always made her feel better – but it did no good. She put on her nightdress, which was a bit too small for her, and climbed under her duvet in an attempt to shut out the persistent evening light. Clutching her teddy bear, she bit her lip as the words her mother had spoken echoed in the chamber of her mind.
‘Allen’s going to look after us.’
But they didn’t need looking after.
‘He’s going to make sure we’re not lonely.’
But they weren’t lonely, as long as there was the two of them.
‘Allen’s going to be your new dad.’
But she didn’t want a new dad. She just wanted her old one.
The following morning was a Saturday, and Sadie woke early. The ugly feeling that had been with her until she had finally fallen asleep the previous night had not gone away, and she didn’t feel as if she would ever want to get out of bed. But she was thirsty, so, still wearing her nightdress, she crept downstairs, doing her best not to wake anyone.
Allen was already up, leaning with his back to the sink, a mug of tea in his hand. As Sadie walked into the kitchen, she saw his eyes look her up and down and she felt a sudden prickle of discomfort. He looked at her in an enquiring way, and Sadie found herself almost apologizing for her presence.
‘I just wanted a glass of water,’ she told him.
He acted as though he had not heard her and, instead of moving to allow her access to the sink, he looked meaningfully at the kitchen table.
Sadie followed his gaze. There, on the table, was her beloved satchel. It was lying on its side, the sturdy leather straps unbuckled and the contents spilling out. On top of her few school books, neatly arranged in a precise line from smallest to largest, were the sweets from yesterday.
‘Who said you could look in my satchel?’ Sadie whispered, horrified that anyone would do such a thing and moving swiftly to pack her things up. But again Allen seemed to ignore her.
When he finally did speak, it was slowly and smoothly. ‘That’s a lot of sweets for a little girl whose mam only gives her two pound a week,’ he observed. He sniffed, his nose wrinkling as he did so, and then took a sip of his tea. The blue eyes continued to look at her over the rim of the mug.
Sadie looked at him with what defiance she could muster, but she couldn’t help glancing guiltily back at the table. ‘Yeah, well, I’ve been saving up,’ she retorted.
Allen smiled humourlessly. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell your mam.’ And then, almost as an afterthought, ‘I don’t think she’d be very happy, do you?’
He turned and poured the dregs of his tea into the sink. Sadie started to pack her things back into the bag, but stopped when Allen spoke again.
‘You didn’t clear your dinner things away last night.’
‘I’ll do it this morning.’
Allen breathed out heavily through his nose, a contemptuous sound. ‘It’s no good doing it this morning,’ he said in a suddenly irritated voice. ‘You made the mess last night. No one likes messy children.’
A thousand different retorts popped into Sadie’s head. ‘I don’t care what you like or don’t like.’ ‘This is my house, not yours.’ ‘What makes you think you can talk to me like that?’ But suddenly she was tongue-tied. She gazed at his back for a few moments before continuing to pack up her satchel. When she had finished, she looked back at him to see that he had turned and was moving towards her; but he stopped in his tracks as soon as she noticed him.
‘You should go and get dressed,’ he told her, his voice quiet again now. ‘Nice girls don’t walk around the house wearing next to nothing.’ He smiled, and the expression seemed out of place to Sadie. ‘Go and get dressed. Then come back down and we can have breakfast together.’
Sadie gathered her satchel in her arms and, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with the shortness of her nightdress, ran back up the stairs. She threw her stuff carelessly into her room, and then she shut herself in the bathroom and slid the lock closed. Half of her wanted to run into her mum’s room and slip into the bed next to her, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to face seeing the ruffled sheets on the side where Allen had been sleeping, or lying on the linen where his skin had been. She could hear him moving about in the kitchen, but she vowed that she would not leave the bathroom until she heard her mum getting up.
She didn’t have to wait long before Jackie walked down the stairs. Sadie knew what she would be doing – going to find her cigarettes. She listened to the creaking of the floorboards before unlocking the bathroom door and slipping back into her room. She removed her nightie and dressed in a tracksuit – quickly, though she wasn’t sure why. Then she took a deep breath and went back downstairs.
As soon as she walked into the kitchen she could tell that something was wrong. Allen sat at the head of the table, stony-faced, and Jackie seemed unwilling to look her daughter in the eye. A third place was set, with a side plate containing a slice of toast and jam. As Sadie walked in, Allen stood up, picked up the piece of toast, took it to the other side of the kitchen and dropped it in the bin.
‘Sadie, love,’ her mum said, breaking the tense silence. ‘Allen told you he was making you your breakfast, and you let it get cold.’
Sadie was silent, too stunned to speak.
‘What do you say?’ her mum insisted.
The little girl’s eyes flickered between the two of them. ‘I didn’t know,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll get my own toast.’
Jackie glanced at Allen, who almost imperceptibly shook his head. ‘No, Sadie, love. It’s too late now.’ Jackie’s voice was subdued. ‘Try and be quicker next time, all right?’
Sadie opened her mouth to object, but as she did so she caught Allen’s eye. There was something about the stern look he gave her that made her feel suddenly frightened of this man in their kitchen. Too angry and upset to say anything, she turned and left the flat, slamming the front door behind her.
As she made her way to the estate playground, she felt hot tears of indignation welling up in her eyes. Someone called her name in a friendly way, but she didn’t want to speak to anyone and picked up her pace; by the time she reached the playground she was running, and the tracks of her tears were horizontal along the side of her face. It was still quite early, so the playground was deserted as she took her usual seat at the swings.
Sadie just couldn’t understand why her mum was taking his side against her. She hadn’t been out of order, had she? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Then she thought guiltily about the chocolates. It was true that she shouldn’t have stolen them, but they hadn’t done anyone much harm, had they? Not that she thought her mum would see it that way. Sadie really didn’t want Allen to tell Jackie his suspicions, and she hated the fact that this man suddenly had a hold over her.
As the morning wore on, the playground began to fill up – mums mostly, with their kids, but also a few older teenagers, loitering and sharing cigarettes there because there was nowhere else to go. Sadie was used to these people – she recognized most of them and certainly never felt threatened by them – but she didn’t want company this morning; and as the nearby tower block started casting a shadow over the playground, she left with a vague shiver and wandered round the concrete jungle of the estate. By lunchtime, though, she knew she would have to go back: she was getting hungry, and had no money to buy food. And even though she knew she could knock on the door of a neighbour, somehow she didn’t feel like sharing what was bottling up inside her. She headed home.
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