by Rachel Ward
“So,” said Britney. “I’m Britney and you’re…Jemma?”
“Jem,” I said.
“Right.” Now that she’d got me there, into her room, she didn’t look quite so tough. In fact, she was pretty nervous, making me think the front she’d shown out in the park was just that, a front. Underneath she was as worried as the rest of them. After about a decade of sitting in silence, she found some music to put on and then decided to fix some food, leaving me on my own.
I sat there and looked around. It was a proper girl’s room. As well as all the posters, there was a real dressing table with makeup and jewelry stands on it, and framed photos all over the place: pictures of family and pets. There were a couple of her with a boy, younger than her — in one of them he had thick, curly hair, in the other he was bald, but still with the same big grin on his face. So there was a brother somewhere, was there?
The central heating was stifling after a few days in the open. I was starting to sweat, and I was pretty sure I was smelling rank, too. I took off the green coat, but I was still uncomfortable. I stripped off my hoodie and dropped it on top of the coat on the floor. Lying in a forlorn heap on the rug, they looked disgusting. They were filthy and, looking down, so were my jeans and shoes. Even though Britney’s room wasn’t exactly tidy, I felt really out of place, like a turd on a carpet.
Britney came back into the room, with a big pizza on a plate and a bottle of Coke and a couple of glasses. The smell of the food made me feel hungry and sick at the same time. She held a plate toward me. “Just cheese and tomato, that alright?”
“Yeah, cheers.” I took a slice, not sure if I could actually eat or not. She was tucking in, looking at me and trying not to look at the same time. I nibbled a little bit off the end of the slice, chewed it slowly, and swallowed. It was fine, it settled in my stomach and stayed there, so I ate the rest of the slice and picked up another one. We sat there, eating and drinking. It was bizarre. It was like how you’d imagine teenage kids to be, sitting in someone’s bedroom eating pizza and drinking Coke. But we weren’t just hanging out, talking about boys and makeup. We were sitting there, both aware of the silence, trying to think of something to say.
In the back of my mind, there was still the fear that it could all be a trap. So I asked her, straight-out.
“Why are you doing this? Being nice to me?”
She put her pizza down on the plate. “I’ve never met a celebrity before. Well, not unless you count that one from Skins who switched on the Christmas lights in the town square a couple of years ago, and she was a bitch.”
“A celebrity?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe not a celebrity. Famous, anyway. The whole town’s talking about you. The whole country is. There’s all sorts of rumors about you on the Internet, pictures, too, sightings. Britain’s Most Wanted, that’s what you are.”
“I’m just a kid. I haven’t done anything.”
“Yeah, but they don’t know that, do they? Even if you didn’t do anything, you might have seen stuff. You could be a witness.” She took another bite of pizza. “Did you see anything?”
I thought back to that afternoon. It seemed like a year ago. Before we nicked those cars, before we walked for miles, before we slept out in the woods, before we found that barn…
“You alright? You’ve turned a right funny color.”
I guess the heat and the food and the tiredness had got to me, the room was starting to swim around.
“I feel a bit dizzy.”
Britney jumped up from the bed next to me and took my plate. “Here, lie down. You’ll be alright.”
I lay down, but that was worse. Before I could get up and make a run for the toilet, I was sick, pizza and Coke on her fluffy black cover. She was horrified, and to be honest, so was I. She’d been kinder to me than I had any right to expect, and now I’d wrecked her bedroom. I sat up straight.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I mumbled. God, no wonder I never got asked anywhere.
“It’s OK. I’ll get something to clean it up.” Britney shot out of the room, while I got up and opened a window to try and let the smell out. I leaned against the window frame, breathing in some cool night air. When Britney reappeared with a bucket and sponge, I took the sponge from her hand, dipped it in the bucket, and started trying to remove the mess from all that fake fur. It was a pretty hopeless job.
“Listen, why don’t you take a shower while I do this? Don’t worry about the noise, Mum’ll just think it’s me.” She showed me where the bathroom was and started the shower running.
“Wait a minute, I’ll get you some clean clothes.” She disappeared and came back with a little heap of clean, folded things, including a big thick towel. “Don’t take too long. Mum’s show ends in ten minutes.”
She disappeared again, and I locked the door behind her. The room was filling with steam. I wiped a hand towel over the mirror above the sink. There was someone in there looking back at me, but I didn’t recognize her. She was nearly bald, big rings under her eyes, looked about twenty, maybe twenty-five, vomit down the front of her shirt. I turned away and stripped off my dirty clothes, then stepped into the shower.
Soft, warm water rained down on me. I breathed in the steam, turned my face up into the flow. I reached blindly for the nearest bottle of shampoo and poured a handful, rubbing foam into my scalp and all over my body. As the lumps of froth slid down my skin and gathered in the bottom of the stall, I could feel myself getting cleaner. I scrubbed under my arms, between my legs, and I suddenly thought, I’m washing him away, and felt sad. For the last twenty-four hours, I’d been carrying the smell of Spider with me, on my skin, inside me. All that was spiraling down into the drain.
I turned off the shower and stepped out, soaking wet. I wrapped the clean towel around me like a dress and then bent and toweled my head dry with the end of it.
There was a gentle tap on the door. “You OK?” Britney hissed.
I slid back the bolt and opened the door a fraction. Our faces were surprisingly close together, and we both jumped back a little. “I’ll be out in a minute,” I whispered. I closed the door and quickly dried off and got dressed. The clothes were great, the sort of thing I’d wear anyway. Bit big, but wearable. I gathered up my old things and the towel and padded along the hallway back into Britney’s room.
She’d done the best job she could of cleaning up, but you could still see where I’d thrown up.
“Sorry,” I said again.
“S’alright. Feeling better?”
“Yeah.”
“I was thinking, the best thing would be for you to get some sleep here and leave when it gets light.”
I looked at her. Was she nuts? Or just keeping me here until her dad got in?
“No, really, I should go.”
“You won’t be able to see anything. Set off early — you can leave a couple of hours before anyone’s up.”
She was right, but I just couldn’t see myself bedding down in a cop’s house for the night.
“Won’t anyone come in here?” I asked.
She smiled. “No, they wouldn’t dare. One: I’ve told them not to. And two: They’re scared what they’d find. Not that they would find anything: no drugs, no condoms, no pills, not even cigarettes. Just me. P’raps that’s what they’re scared of. They don’t really get teenagers, my mum and dad. You could stay, see, you’d be perfectly safe.”
It was almost like she was pleading with me. She didn’t seem to understand that she was the powerful one here. My safety was held by a little silver thread, a cobweb. She wouldn’t have to cut it, just blow and it would stretch and break. She only had to raise her voice and shout to her mum and it was all over for me.
“What about your brother?”
“Oh…no. He died last year.”
Me and my big mouth.
“I’m sorry. I just saw the photos. Sorry.”
“It’s OK. You wouldn’t know, would you?”
Well,
I thought, the bald head might have given me a clue.
She was busying herself sorting out blankets and pillows.
“How long is it since you slept in a bed?” she asked.
I had to think hard. “Three nights.” The warmth from the shower, the sheer luxury of being inside had softened me up. I couldn’t face going out into the dark and the cold. Not tonight.
“You sleep there, then. I’ll be alright down here.”
She got down on the beanbag and started to wrap the blanket ’round her.
“Don’t be so soft. It’s your room. I couldn’t.”
“ ’Course you could. You need some sleep. Some proper sleep.”
“No, I couldn’t. It’s not right. I’d rather go than kick you out of your own bed. I mean it.”
“OK, then.” She struggled up and climbed into bed, and I curled up in the beanbag, instantly regretting it. It was bloody uncomfortable.
Britney turned off the lights.
“Night, Britney,” I said.
“Night, Jem.”
Waves of tiredness and nausea were sweeping through me. I was scared of being sick again. The events of the day were filling my head — this morning I’d woken up with Spider’s arms ’round me. It seemed like years ago. It was too much to deal with.
The streetlight filtered through Britney’s thin curtains, and I lay awkwardly, eyes wide open, taking in the room. What would it be like to be this girl? To have a mum and a dad, a cool bedroom, friends to hang out with? And a dead brother. However cozy things seemed, the facts of life were the same. You couldn’t escape death: It would get us all in the end. Which brought me back to Spider. Where was he now? Lying there, I ached just to know he was OK. I ached to be with him.
Somewhere in the room, an alarm clock was ticking steadily away — the noise filled the room, each tick a hammer blow to my head. Three days to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I lay awake in the soft gloom of Britney’s room. Britney, curled up on her bed, had her eyes closed. She was breathing evenly, but I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not. I was exhausted, but wide-awake. I didn’t want to bother her, but it was pretty much torture lying there.
After about fifteen minutes, I was relieved to hear her voice, a soft whisper in the dark.
“You awake?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
“I just can’t sleep.”
“Look, get in here. Put your pillow down that end — we can top and tail.”
There was no way I was going to get any sleep on that beanbag, so I did as she said, gratefully tucking in, curling up my legs so as not to take up too much space. A few days ago, I’d never have done this, got into bed with a stranger, but now it felt OK; OK to be close to someone; OK to trust them.
“I used to do this with my brother, when we were little — top and tail, and my mum would read us a story. You got any family?”
“I live with my foster mum and two little boys, twins.”
“What’s she like? Your foster mum?”
Straightaway, the words shot out — sheer reflex. “Karen? She’s a bitch.”
“Yeah?”
Then, just for a minute, I thought about Karen. What was she actually like?
“Well, I suppose she’s not a bitch. She’s been pretty kind to me, tried to help. Except…it wasn’t the kind of help I wanted. She doesn’t get me, doesn’t understand.”
In the soft darkness, Britney nodded in agreement. “Tell me about it. I don’t think my parents were ever young — I think they were born middle-aged.”
“But they’re alright, though.”
“Yeah, they’re alright. They’ve been through a lot. S’pose I should cut them some slack, really.”
“Britney, tell me to shut up if you like, but…but…if you’d known that you only had a few years with your brother, would it have made a difference?”
She sighed, and I thought I’d overstepped the mark again, but then she said, “We pretty much did know. At least my parents did — they didn’t tell me until near the end. But I don’t think knowing exactly when would’ve changed anything. Even with him ill, we still did things, had fun — between treatments, we went places, had holidays, all the usual stuff.” She paused, but I didn’t jump in — I could tell there was more to come. “And we worked out the important stuff — Jim knew I loved him and I knew he loved me. Not in a stupid way, hearts and flowers, just normal, brother and sister. He could still wind me up something proper, right up until, until…”
“Sorry, you don’t have to…”
“No, it’s OK to talk about it. Death is so normal, I don’t know why everyone gets so hung up about it. We all have to deal with it. Most people you talk to have lost someone, but nobody talks about it.”
It was easier talking in the dark. I didn’t feel so self-conscious, the words just tumbled out. Or perhaps it was just Britney; she was a good talker and a good listener. I felt like I could say anything to her.
“My mum died,” I heard myself blurting out, “when I was six, but I don’t feel anything like you do. I just feel…I dunno…empty, angry. Like she left me. She chose to leave.”
“Was she ill?”
“No. Overdose. It was an accident. At least I’m pretty sure it was. I don’t think she wanted to die, but then again, I don’t think she was that into staying alive, either. The next fix was the most important thing. I’ve always known that, but I’ve never said it to anyone before. I was always way down on her list, never first. She chose heroin over me.”
“But she didn’t make a choice, Jem. You’ve just told me — she was addicted. It was out of her control. She was ill, like Jim was ill.”
“I still hate her for leaving.”
“That’s a long time to hate someone. Maybe you need to let it go.”
I let her words sink in and felt them settle within me. Sounded like she’d been watching too much Oprah to me. Life’s not that simple. Not so easy to move on when the anger you’ve got is what keeps you going.
But it wasn’t the only thing I had now. Spider — the need to see him again, the need to save him — had given me something else.
There was a noise then, a sharp bang from downstairs, and we both jumped out of our skins.
“It’ll be Dad home — I’ll just go and see.”
Britney clambered out of bed, put on her bathrobe, and went downstairs. She left the door slightly ajar, and I picked up the alarm clock from her bedside table and angled it in the light coming in from the landing until I could make it out. Two-fifteen. Their voices were floating up the stairs now; Britney’s soft burr and the deeper bass notes of her dad. I could only make out a few of his words, but the ones I heard made me jump out of bed and crouch down behind the open door, my heart jumping around in my throat.
“…went berserk…eight of us…bloody strong…”
I opened the door a bit farther, straining desperately to hear more. The voices downstairs were competing with Spider’s words in my head: “I won’t go quietly, Jem. I’ll fight them, Jem. I will.”
What had he done?
“…died in his cell…investigation…”
Oh, my God. He’d kicked off like he said he would. I’d told him not to. I’d told him it wasn’t worth it. How could this happen? How could everything be brought to a big dead end, three days early? I wanted to scream out — I didn’t care anymore if I was found. If Spider was gone, I had nothing left. My whole body was a scream, my skin electric. We’d been cheated, cheated of our last few hours, cheated of the chance to say good-bye — it was unthinkable.
The voices were nearer now, right outside the door. I hadn’t noticed them come upstairs.
“Good night, love. Try and get some sleep. I’m just going in the shower.”
“OK. Night, Dad.”
Britney came back into the room. She was carrying a mug, and gave a little gasp as she spotted me behind the door. I saw her eyes widen and she quickly held her index fin
ger up to her mouth. She closed the door, and I slumped back against it, silent tears running down my face. She crouched down next to me.
“What is it?” she hissed.
I couldn’t get any words out.
He was gone.
It was all over.
“Listen, tell me in a minute, when my dad’s in the shower. Get back into bed — I’ve brought you some tea. Here.” She’d put the tea down, and now she was helping me to my feet and shepherding me back to bed.
I couldn’t drink the tea. It was all I could do to keep breathing, black grief pulsing through me. After a minute or so, we heard the bathroom door close and the shower start up. Britney shuffled forward in the bed and put her hands on my legs.