by Kate Bradley
‘I’ll break you if you don’t quit being so soft. You will be Destiny. And I will be five minutes.’
*
He was outside my window in just under ten. It was black outside and since he was wearing dark jeans and had his black leather jacket over a black hoodie, he was almost invisible. But then he tilted his face up towards me and I saw the pale round of his face against the night: he was everything I wanted. He would guide me through the dark.
I dropped my card down to him.
I waited for him on the bed.
Friday
21:37
Destiny
The door clicked: Aleksander was in. He shut the door and leant against it. I wasn’t sure if he was keeping me in or other people out.
I looked at his face but didn’t say anything. Most people would – he was a mess. But I knew better. His nose was at a strange angle and looked swollen. There was bruising across his face. She must’ve hit him hard.
As much as I loved Aleksander, I felt even less pissed off with Miss for taking me when she showed she cared enough to hit someone for me. I remember how she’d grabbed my hand and dragged me away. How I didn’t dare yell out for anyone to help me, first because I was too surprised, then because I thought someone might’ve called the filth and I would’ve ended up back at that children’s prison that I had to tolerate even though I’ve never done anything wrong. Anywhere – even being alone with a teacher who’s living in a parallel universe – was better than there. In the end, I could see it was just a lift back home – with a crazy lady – but a lift home anyways.
I stood up and picked up my bags, trying to make my point, even though I knew it was useless. ‘I want to get out of here.’
His voice was low, and his smile had that twist, like men do when they want to have sex. ‘What, and waste this room?’
‘Please, Aleksander.’
But he was already next to me, his hands in my hair, tugging my plait loose. He rubbed his hands over my tits, too hard. ‘I have missed you, Candydoll.’ He pushed me against the wall. Destiny, I nearly told him. Call me by my name, but if I was near to asking, I was silenced as he kissed me. For a moment I felt surprised, as if I had forgotten his thick lips, the feel of his tongue.
He must have sensed this, because he broke away. ‘What is the matter?’ He pushed my hair from my face. ‘Have you not missed me?’
‘I don’t want her to come in. Something might happen.’
‘The only thing that is going to happen, is this,’ he said, and took my hand and pressed it against his hard dick. I wanted to take it away, but it would annoy him.
He pulled at my clothes and I was soon naked. He hadn’t even taken his coat off. He forced two fingers inside of me. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said, as he pulled them out so quick it made me gasp. He spat on his fingers and pushed them back harder.
‘What if she comes in?’ I whispered.
He pulled his gun out from his waistband. Then he passed me a condom as he gave me a wink I didn’t like. He held his gun with one hand and pointed it at the door, as I put the condom on, and then he took his dick in the other and pushed it inside me.
He held on to his gun the whole time.
It did not stay pointed at the door.
Friday
22:01
Destiny
I let go of Aleksander’s hand as we walked past the reception desk. The receptionist did a double take and I knew I was rumbled. I didn’t want her to call the room to speak to who she thought was my mum, because of course, she’d get no one and that would be worse. Instead, I headed directly to the desk. ‘Excuse me, is there a 24-hour pharmacist near here please?’
She gave me directions, which I made a point of asking her to write down, like I really needed them. ‘My mum has a really bad headache. She gets migraines sometimes, and the noise and lights cause her a lot of pain.’
She nodded and I could tell from her face that she believed me. Then she glanced at Aleksander and noticed his nose – it was like a neon flashing sign saying: I’m trouble – want some?
I spoke fast. ‘My cousin is going to drive me – which is pretty brave considering he’s just been in a car accident.’ This time, her expression didn’t shift, but I took the directions and left. In my experience, if you give people enough to doubt themselves, they won’t do whatever it is that they think they should do. Most people don’t like to swim against the tide. As I left, I knew she wouldn’t make that call to the room for the fear of disturbing my ‘mother’ with her migraine. She’d think about it, not liking the look of Aleksander, or that I’ve left with him, and she might even go to pick up the phone, doubting that he is my cousin, maybe doubting his injury is a result of a car accident. Her hand may even hover as she thinks about it, but the doubt I’ve created will make her hand drop away and she’ll tell herself that it would be better not to disturb an ill woman because her daughter has got her cousin to give her a lift to the pharmacist to buy medicine, and maybe he’s a decent man despite the scowls, the stocky heavily muscled body and the tattoos on his neck – maybe he’s put himself out to get in a car to drive his cousin. Maybe it would be wrong to be judgemental.
I had to be careful that my smile didn’t turn into a smirk. But then we were away and my hand was back in Aleksander’s. It was late and in the cold of the night, his hand felt warm and strong. Finally I was safe.
He led me to the car park. The van wasn’t there, but his gorgeous Mercedes was. Gary sat in the front and his darling face broke into a grin. ‘Destiny!’ he held up his palm and I high-fived him.
I worried about Gary. He was even more challenged than Jamie Drew in my English class and that is saying something. Jamie has to have a TA in every lesson. I only had English with him, as they mixed us up and didn’t set us for English. Even with his TA, he complained all the time that he didn’t understand anything. Once we studied Macbeth and a whole term later, after doing weeks and weeks of contemporary poetry, the teacher asked him who he thought the speaker was in one of the poems. He said, ‘Macbeth?’ Everyone laughed at him for not realising we had finished Macbeth two months previously, with the obvious clue that we hadn’t taken out our Macbeth texts in all that time, but I didn’t laugh. Instead I though of Gary and how things are for him, and then I thought how hard Jamie’s life is going to be, and I felt sad for him.
I got in the back of the car with Aleksander; he was happy and kept his hand on my leg.
‘You’re not going to hurt my teacher?’ I asked suddenly, aware that she was asleep in her car around the back of the hotel. Aleksander wouldn’t just hurt her for screwing up his face – it would be bad. No matter how she had terrified me, she’d done it for me.
‘I am going to fuck her up,’ he replied, ‘but not tonight. We’ve got work to do.’ He kissed my forehead. ‘And for that, I need you, my queen.’
Friday
22:15
Destiny
It was good to be back in the town I had been in only last weekend. Gary drove us through familiar streets towards what we all called ‘the office’. I felt a small burn of glee – this time I wouldn’t be going back to the children’s home on Monday. Every weekend I got away, I’d have to face more meetings on my return – more telling offs, more threatening me with a secure unit. Before I felt that they wouldn’t do it, because I put my head down at school and stopped giving the care staff grief. But after coming back with my black eye last weekend, I really think they might now.
Well, they wouldn’t get the chance. Now I wouldn’t go back. Fuck them, they couldn’t hold me.
I’d stay with Aleksander.
Aleksander was building us a life. He was right: people like us never did well in the straight world – who would give us decent jobs? But we didn’t need their crap jobs, not when he was making a fortune for us. He even put money in a bank account for me, just for me, my own account. He said he believed in feminism and that meant I had to have my own money. He’d done
proper finance research, both of us going through what our banking options were. That’s what I loved about Aleksander, I thought as I squeezed his hand in the back of the car, Aleksander did proper research on everything. He’d found me a high-interest account, although he was careful to explain that there were no real high-interest accounts any more. He reckoned it was because no one had any savings to put into bank accounts. Well, the legits anyway. Those people like my teachers, who did their degrees, worked hard, and earned shit all. I’m going to do my degree – maybe even a doctorate – but only because I can, not because I want to get a poxy normal job. I don’t need that kind of job, not when my bank account is growing. I already have twelve thousand pounds. I’ve never met a kid my age who has twelve thousand pounds. I reckon those ones on Made In Chelsea will have had real money at my age and I know that when I’m older, I will be like them – driving a Porsche and wearing designer clothes and taking holidays in the sun, even in winter.
Especially in winter.
Aleksander said that if we keep growing the business like we are, by the time I am eighteen, I’ll have a hundred kay. I’d be able to buy my own flat by the time I’m twenty-one. He said I’d need at least a million to buy one of those flashy places in London, so I’m going to wait until I have a million. I want to live in Canary Wharf and write about my life so people know what it’s like to be a kid in care. I’m going to tell everyone about all the shit things that have happened to me. I’m going to blow the whole secret system wide open. I’m going to lobby the government so all those people who are cruel to children get proper justice: real justice.
Then I’m going to adopt three kids. Maybe more. And at Christmas, I’m going to shower them with gifts. It won’t be for them, like it is for me. No one but the state to buy me a present; just a job on an employee’s list of jobs, bought because there’s a council budget for it that seems to get smaller every year – I’m going to buy my children gifts with lots of money and give them lots of love. But first I’m going to get my own home.
I dream of it.
I work for it.
I do what I have to, like everyone else. But I refuse to stay down like people expect. No one has expectations for me, but I have expectations for me and if that means that I have to be tough like Aleksander, I’ll be tough. I am tough. I have been tough and I will continue to do things that might be . . . not very nice, but I will do whatever it takes.
Aleksander doesn’t laugh at me for any of it. He helps me. When he found out that I liked buying interior decorating magazines, he got me a subscription for them. When the first one came in the post it felt amazing, as I had never had anything addressed to me in the post before, but the staff ruined even that. They nicked it first and read it with their coffee; they didn’t mean to be cunty but they creased the pages, so the pictures were no longer any good for cutting out.
I like to make what are called ‘mood boards’, putting ideas together for what works well. Like a stone feature wall from one picture and a polished concrete wall from another. Then adding side lamps and cutting out pictures of sofas that I think will go. Turquoise; acid yellow; ink black. Or aqua and rose pink and washed-out silks. The other kids in the home proper take the piss out of me for it, but they don’t know I am going to have an amazing place. Aleksander loves my creativity and showed me Pinterest. He says I’m going to be an amazing designer when I’m older. Now, every month he hands me all the architecture and garden design magazines so I can keep them nice. He even bought me a proper file to store them in. ‘You’re amazing, Destiny,’ he told me and he looks at all my work. No one else encourages me. Maybe some of the teachers at school. But Aleksander loves me too.
He will marry me, he says when I’m a proper adult, which he says is twenty-one. He says he won’t marry me before, because although he says I’m a real woman in body and attitude, he says I need to be a real woman in spirit too. And that’s why social services are wrong about him. They might look at his charge sheet, they might tell me that he’s a violent crim with a history of robbery and assault, but they don’t know him like I do. We are the same. And he’s the only person that’s ever treated me like my opinion counts.
That means a lot.
That means everything.
I leant across to give him a long slow kiss like I knew he liked. I am his queen. And together we will change our world.
Friday
22:22
Destiny
We arrived at our latest squat. We found it last month, Jay changed the lock and then made sure we weren’t here too much so none of the neighbours noticed. Aleksander found his key and opened the dirty green door.
‘I was here only a couple of hours ago,’ I said, as I looked up, almost expecting to see Miss drive up the road. ‘I came here with her. She even tried to look in the window. But no one was here.’
‘Of course not, we were behind you. Why did you come here with her?’
‘I didn’t know where else to go. She wanted an actual address – where else could I give her? Besides, I knew I wanted to get here and I knew if you were in, you’d have sorted her.’ I shrugged. ‘If you weren’t here, I was hoping she was going to let me go.’
We stepped inside the hallway. The outside of the house was scruffy, but it’s a squat and it wasn’t the worst I’d ever seen. We never tarted them up from the outside because we don’t want the neighbours to know that the house has become occupied. We keep them only for one party, two at most, and then let them go and nobody, except those who come to the parties, are ever the wiser that we had been there.
We line them up in advance, always working two jobs ahead of time. We’ve got one in Grimsby that we’ve not done up yet and we’ve got another in Scarborough that’s ready to go next weekend.
Inside, the house was a bit better. We were here last month and rollered the walls cream. It was a rough job, trim rollered over too, nothing fancy – nothing modern, nothing like I would choose for myself. Just enough to make it decent enough to make drunk people want to stay. I’d added pictures, cushions and sofas I’d bought in a charity shop. It was all for less than a ton. We always do the same: the week before the party we scout round and find some bits and take the time to put them in the place. We always leave it all behind.
We found that when we didn’t tart places up, people didn’t stay. Yes, some scumbags will party anywhere, but they tended to be the hardened druggies and they weren’t our target audience. Our more tender young things needed a place they could feel comfortable, a place they could relax. They needed a sofa they could sit on and a fresh wall and a picture to feel safe. They needed the bullshit. Sure, it takes a weekend to slap on a bit of paint and to put a nail in a wall, but it could be kinda fun, and of course, the rewards made it well worth the effort.
But this one, I noticed, still stank of dog urine – I hoped nothing worse – so I made a mental note to buy some incense for next time. In fact, I decided I’d always buy it in future, as incense would be a good addition at any party as it would make people feel chilled, like they’re around good hippy folk. People who buy organic rye bread and fruit in paper bags.
I pulled out the first-aid stuff I’d bought and tidied Aleksander’s nose. It looked nasty. I cleaned it and dressed it, and Aleksander agreed that tomorrow, after our work was done, he’d go to a hospital.
But it would have to wait: tonight was party night. Tonight our hard work would pay off.
‘We are still going ahead, aren’t we?’ I asked Aleksander, suddenly unsure. I checked my watch. It was late and we should’ve, if I hadn’t been taken by Miss, started about an hour ago.
We went through to the kitchen. Gary had cleaned it before we left last week, but there was no food in the cupboards because we only ever ate take-out. I opened the fridge and pulled a face. ‘There’s no wine.’
‘Don’t whine.’
Aleksander loved homophones. ‘Well done,’ I told him, always keen to help him improve, although his English was alrea
dy perfect. I knew it was important to him to be better.
He went to a cupboard under the stairs and brought out a stack of four huge boxes of wine and put the two white in the fridge. ‘See? We are ready. That bitch is not stopping tonight. Ollie and Jay are already in the pubs, putting the word out.’
Jay’s the best at that. He’s good-looking and he always gets loads of girls. Ollie does all right as well because he makes the most out of his posh accent and that seems to get people to want to come to his parties. Jay and Ollie showed me a picture of their parents’ house – it’s amazing. I once asked them why they don’t use their private school educations and get jobs in the city. Jay laughed and said that they were too lazy. They knew Aleksander because he used to hit them up; then they wanted to deal themselves, coke and weed to their posh friends, so Aleksander supplied them. Then Aleksander’s uncle wanted to bring him in on the big game and we needed more help and so now we’re a gang. It’s been working OK-ish. Ollie doesn’t like me, because I’m cleverer than him and I suspect he’s a raving misogynist, but I don’t care because I hate him more, so we stay away from each other. When I complained to Aleksander about him, he said that Ollie’s coldness was his strength. I think it’s his only one.
‘I reckon by midnight, we’ll be started,’ said Aleksander. He touched his nose and tried not to wince. Aleksander was very brave; it looked terrible, even worse than an hour ago. I wondered how I could encourage him to let me put some make-up on it – the last thing we needed was him scaring a rabbit.
Friday
22:37
Destiny
I changed my mind and wanted beer, so Gary was sent off to find a late-night offy. When he came back, he passed the bottles and the change back to Aleksander, and Aleksander checked the receipt against the coins – Gary’s not allowed money and Aleksander is always paranoid that he’s siphoning off coins here, there and everywhere, trying to build up an escape fund.