by Jules Grant
I mustn’t look sure because Nan raises her eyebrows as if she knows something I don’t, hands me the paper and I look at it.
It’s typed, like a proper notice of something.
27th January 1979. Baby Robertson. Stillbirth. Male foetus. Full-term vaginal delivery. 7.8 lbs. Then some words I don’t understand.
I look at Nan. Male what?
I was a babba meself, she says. Hadn’t a clue what was going on.
I still don’t get it. What does full-term mean?
It means he was alright inside me, she says, Then he just came out dead. No reason.
You had a baby before Mam and it just came out dead?
She nods.
What did it look like?
Don’t know, I never saw him, says Nan.
What, not even at the funeral?
She shakes her head slowly. They just took him away, no funeral, no nothing. Not even a name.
She smooths out the paper.
Now I know the pop’s gone to her head, just like Donna always said it would, because Rosie Shadbolt had a baby brother Cam who came out dead last year on account of coming too soon, but there’s pictures of him in the living room. Even Rosie got to see him, and Mam and Donna went to the funeral. And Rosie and her Mam have a cake every year now, on his birthday, like he’s a proper person.
I shake me head. No funeral? Don’t be daft. Where’s he buried then?
I don’t know, she says.
He must be somewhere, Nan? Think.
She looks at the paper. They didn’t keep tabs love, back then. I tried to find him after but they just said he would have been put in with someone else, underneath like, without telling anyone. So there’s no way of knowing.
Why though, Nan? Did he come too soon through the drink?
Nan looks straight at me, and if I didn’t know she’d already had two tinnies and a chaser I’d swear she’d gone stone cold sober. You listen here, she says, I never touched a drink back then.
Then she strokes the paper, folds it back up, pops open another can. Too many questions missy.
After that we sit on the bed for ages and she shows me paper pictures, most of them blurry and creased, but you can make out Nan with her hair all done nice, holding Mam when she was a baby and smiling. Oh, says Nan, she was always a bonny one.
There’s one of a tall man with trousers all wide at the bottom and a kind of sleeveless knitted top, leaning on a weird-looking car. That’s your Granda, she says. Car-mad, he was.
At the bottom of the box there’s a little tiny see-through plastic bracelet.
What’s that for?
Turn it over, she says, and you’ll see.
I turn it over and there’s writing inside. Baby Robertson, St Mary’s Hospital.
It was your Mam’s, that, when she was born. I saved it, she says. Then she picks up the bracelet, starts to cry. Pass me over that halfy, she says.
I root around in the carrier bag, find the half-bottle of voddy, pass it over. Then she’s going through all the pictures again, humming, Daaah da dah dah pahrumpah pum pum, over and over, under her breath.
I sneak the picture of Mam in the white dress at her Holy Communion, put it under me pillow face-up, snuggle down so there’s only the pillow between us, cheek to cheek. Then Nan looks up, looks round the room, nods. We’ll have to get everything sorted, she says, kind of vacant.
She must mean the mess.
Don’t fret Nana, go to sleep. I’ll do the tidying tomorrow, I say.
20
By the time I get over to Warrington it’s half-eleven. Jilly’s is packed and I have to fight my way to the bar.
Mel and Jen are already there with a message from Lise. Aurora’s gone missing, says Mel.
I feel my stomach hit the deck. Have they tried her nan’s?
They haven’t. Relief washes over me. It’s OK, she’ll be there, then, I say. Tell Lise to kick the door in if they have to. I’m gonna swing for Marie.
I check out the bar. Nothing out of place. Deena behind the taps serving, girls from Crewe at the back table, rowdy, laughing. Harj wrestling with some babe on her knee. She gives me a nod and I nod back, keep one eye on the door.
We go over to the back, to the leather settees raised up on the plinth, three girls drinking champagne, giggling, one with a dark bob, cute, in a white leather mini.
We turf them off. They pick up the bottle, move away.
I sit down. Jen and Mel opposite, across the coffee table. The Crewe girls pull up their stools.
I only let my guard down for a second and someone pulls at me from behind, puts a hand over my eyes. I grab the hair, pull down, hard. Someone comes flying over my shoulder, hits the coffee table smack in the middle, crashes on to the floor. Then I’ve got my knee on her throat, glass everywhere.
In the corner of my eye the Crewe girls are on their feet, ready to party.
It’s Bambi so I let go.
Jee-sus Donna, she says, picking herself up, brushing the glass off her vest. I’ve missed you too hon.
Now me and Bambi got history, but not the sort you talk about and that’s all I’m saying. All you need to know is she can be trusted, no matter what, and there’s insurance on that.
I’ve got some bother, I says, by way of apology.
She sits down beside me, looks around, looks back at me, brows raised.
No, they’re all cool, I tell her.
When everyone’s sitting down again we get back on it, and I bring things back round to the boys.
It’s not just Fats and Mad Daz any more, I tell them, Tony must be in on it, has been since the get-go. Want to get rid of us permanent, divide our patch up between them.
So first we need to roll him, I say, but it’s got to look legit. A proper deal, something he’d kill for. Get him out somewhere to do the pick-up, and then we’ll be waiting. But it won’t work if he thinks it’s coming from me. And don’t think he won’t check it out, I tell them. He’s a paranoid twat at the best of times.
I’ll get Izzie and the girls up in Morecambe to set it up, says Jen. Got a direct line to the south, they bring everything over at Jerez, then via Paris to San Sebastian where we pick it up. Float it up to Bindle Cove in the north, back down the M6. Route’s sound, never been rumbled yet, Tony will know that.
Sounds too easy, says Sonn.
It’s got to sound like a big shipment, I say, make it worth his while.
Mel pipes up about the new stun-guns. Pick them up in Bangkok market, a ton each, no questions asked, she says.
Gonna put the life sentence out of business for armed robbery, Jen says. Well smart.
Or Skorpions, says Mel, worth their weight in gold, cheaper to run than a Mac and only one or two getting through since the Brummies shut down the link; everyone’s desperate. She shrugs. Even if the stun gun catches on for armed robbery, we’re still gonna have to smoke someone now and again, aren’t we?
Can’t argue with that.
Leave it to Izzie, says Mel. She can think up a package that’ll bear up if he checks.
Still leaves Fats and Daz, says Mel.
When you’ve got two armies coming at you from both sides, you got to think things through careful. No point doing more work than you have to, taking something head-on when you could slip round the side. You have to think about what they’ve got in common, and, more to the point, what they haven’t.
I got an idea, I say, but it’s a long shot. The Darts and the Cheetahs both want us gone, I say, but they won’t trust each other completely, that’s for sure.
So we turn them against each other, says Sonn.
Then they’ll be too busy with each other to work out what we’re doing? says Mel.
I drain the rest of my Coke. What do you think Tony would do if he thought Mad Daz had double-crossed him?
Everyone laughs.
Then we can let Tony take care of the Cheetahs, says Mel.
And vice versa, says Sonn.
Now you’re talking, I say, if we’re st
ill alive by then.
Another couple of hours and we’ve got a plan.
You’ve all got your jobs, let me know when it’s sorted, I says. Now get me a drink.
Jen comes back with a jug of margaritas and a couple of stray women in tow.
Suzy wants to meet you. She says it Sooozeee like a kiss. Then she smiles, as if she’s offering me something sweet.
Suzy comes over. Painted red mouth, a perfect bow, Jessie J. on acid. Any other time I might have played along, but I haven’t the heart for it tonight. I guess the stress must just be getting to me. I manage to say hello, just so’s I don’t offend anyone, but they can tell my mind’s not on it. After a while Suzy shrugs, whispers something to Jen, wanders off.
Another round of drinks. The sweet salt of the margarita makes me think of Carla, how she said one day we’d drive down through Mexico in the back of a pick-up drinking tequila gold, watching the dust billow up from the wheels, sun low like a blood-orange over the dunes. God knows what film she saw that in.
Mel holds out a Benson’s, You staying over?
I get a grip. Hell yes, let’s drink to the plan. And I reach for the jug.
By three a.m. we’re on the third jug of margaritas and Deena has got the tequila shots lined up on the bar. Suzy turns up right next to me, and somehow she looks a lot better than she did before, or maybe she’s just got closer. Whatever.
I watch her lips move, red bow flexing in and out, smile even though I can’t hear a word over the music. I hold up the shot, nod over at Mel, Here’s to oblivion.
Mel looks a bit worried so I grin. Theirs, chickadee, not ours.
I wake up at nine, head banging shoulder throbbing mouth like the bottom of a ferret’s cage, Suzy doing a reasonable impression of a death-rattle down my ear. I hear someone banging around downstairs in a kitchen.
I pull my good arm out from underneath, roll over to the edge of the bed, and wait for the dizziness to pass, stand up. I sit down again quick, think I’ve pulled a muscle in my leg.
Carla grins. Less acrobatics, more loving, she says.
I go over to the window, pull back the nets, look out. The glass mists up with my breath, ghostly. I wipe it away with my fist.
From the window I can see across the yards and down the ginnel, into the terraces backed up on the next street. Across the ginnel there’s a house with boards on the windows, steel mesh on the door where the council have secured it. Someone’s taken a spray can to the bottom boards. A big heart, Trafalgar red, Fuck Love written right across it.
Across the back yards, grey snow clings on to the roof of a shed, in between the barbed wire and glass shards on the tops of the walls.
Then something catches my eye at a bedroom window three down, little soldier in Batman underpants, hardly even school age, standing right up on the windowsill, watching me. One slip and he’ll be through that window, down into the yard. I wonder where his mam is, whether he’s got one. He gives me the finger.
Behind me, I hear Suzy turn over.
I drop the net down, reach out for my clothes. Time to get going.
21
I kick the bike into action, head back out on the A57.
My arm feels strange, pins and needles in my hand, and this travelling around is going to get me noticed soon, I reckon. It won’t be long before someone spots me over at Jilly’s or round Warrington way, reports it back to Tony or Daz.
People don’t look for things right under their nose, Dad used to say. The closer you are to something the less you can see it, and the first place you come to is the last place you’d look, and by the time I get to Mina’s I reckon I’ve got it.
I let myself into the yard from the alley. Mina’s in the kitchen when I get there, and I whistle low, just to let her know it’s me, it’s OK. She opens the back door and lets me in, locks the door up behind me.
She gives me a hug and her hair smells warm and light, lemony. Takes me by surprise once I’m in there, how safe I feel.
Hey, you’re sweating, she says.
I push her away, more rough than I mean to, sit down at the table.
I tell her most of it, apart from the Suzy thing, which was nothing and even if it was something it’s none of her business. Don’t want to risk hurting her either, on account of how pain has a way of clouding people’s judgement.
I’m going to move into the lock-up, in the cellar, I say. That way I’ll be close, can keep an eye on everything.
Good idea, she says. They’ll never expect it.
I tell her I’ll leave the Ducati here, in the back shed, bury it under some old boxes she kept from the move. Then she’ll spread it about that I’ve taken off on Carla’s new bike. Just the thought of those shitheads running round chasing their own tails looking for a brand new red Ducati with CAR 1 on the reg makes me smile.
After a while I tell Mina about Kim, don’t really know why, make her swear to keep it secret. She nods, and, even though I can see the pain dull in her eyes, I feel sorry for her, she says.
I’m feeling weird now, sweaty and cold all at once, must be getting the bastard flu.
Mina tells me to take my jacket off, gets me a clean sweatshirt, asks me if I want a can.
Got whisky? Painkillers?
I put the kettle on. Mina goes upstairs, brings down a blister-pack of codeine, pushes two out on to my hand. Put the rest in your pocket, she says, I can always get more. She brings a half-bottle of Grouse out from under the sink.
I fill the mug halfway with whisky, top it up with hot water, put three sugars in to take away the taste, take the codeine. I need to lie down for a bit, I say.
Upstairs and the pain is a dull throbbing now, but the sweats are still coming. In the bathroom I look in the mirror, see my face pasty and grey. I lift my arms to take my T-shirt off and go dizzy, the room spinning. Shouldn’t have taken codeine and whisky together on an empty stomach, I guess. Either that or the flu’s got a proper hold.
I grab the sink, twist round so I can see. In the reflection the skin around the bandage on my shoulder is red, tight and shiny, looks swollen.
I press on the bandage and the pain’s hard and hot, makes me want to spew. I try to remember where I’m supposed to be going next, who I’m seeing, but everything’s gone dark at the edges somehow, sticky, as if I can’t get my breath.
Next thing someone’s pushing at my feet and I hear Mina’s voice. I realise it’s the bathroom door pushing against me and I’m jammed face-down between the toilet pan and the sink, feet against the door. The pain I thought was in my shoulder has moved up to my head only ten times worse.
I bend my knees, pull my feet away from the door then Mina’s leaning over me, Christ, Donna, what have you done?
I grab hold of the sink, pull myself standing. One side of my head feels like someone’s done me with a machete.
Shit, I dunno, I say.
Mina pushes my hair back. You must have hit your head on the way down, girl, that’s gonna be a shiner.
I look into the mirror and already my left eye is barely open, huge egg coming up over the eyebrow. I press my cheekbone gently and feel a stab of pain.
I shake my head. Fainted. Then knocked myself out on the bog. What a twat.
I hear this noise, halfway between a cat that’s been stepped on and a snort.
I look at Mina and her eyes are bright, shoulders shaking. I put one hand up, hold my face. Fuck, don’t make me laugh, it hurts, I says.
Then we’re off, me clinging on to my face and the sink for support, her with her legs crossed, fist jammed in between her legs, giggling like a couple of kids at a fart competition. All we need are the matches.
Afterwards things calm down, she helps me and we sit down on the bed. Help me get the sweatshirt on, I says. I can’t stay here.
I feel tired all of a sudden, lie back on the bed feet still on the floor. She lies back beside me, takes hold of my hand and we stare at the ceiling. You alright? she says.
Half an hour later she�
��s back with the van, parks it in the ginnel, helps me up into the back. The codeine must be working, and apart from my face I feel almost normal.
Thank the Goddess for tinted windows, she says.
Fuck that, I say. I tinted them myself. What’s the Goddess got to do with it?
Then we’re off laughing again and she’s shaking so hard she has to put the blankets down, and if anyone came round that corner now we’d be dead meat.
Once we’re in the lock-up, Mina opens the van doors, helps me out, starts to unload the boxes. I go over and open the hatch, swing the ladder out with my good hand. We use the pulley, lower the boxes down.
Inside the shelter it’s cold and still. I unpack the camping stove, put it on the ammunition box, roll out the sleeping bag on to the stone shelf.
You can’t sleep on that, goes Mina, you’ll do yourself a mischief, it’s too hard.
She’s right.
Come over here then, I say, take my mind off it.
22
I wake up early, listen to Nan snoring for a bit. I get up, get dressed, take the pots to the kitchen, get Nan’s purse from the drawer. Empty except for a piece of ribbon and two bus tickets.
I go back through and sit on the bed.
Wake up Nan.
Nan opens her eyes, all bleary. Alright love? What’s up? What’s the time?
It’s nine o’clock, time to get up.
Christ Almighty that’s the middle of the friggin’ night, she says.
Go and get your money Nan, we need shopping.
Shopping? She pushes herself up on her elbow. I can see the sticky bits in between her eyelashes. Shouldn’t you be at school?
I’m not going to school no more, I’m in hiding, I tell her.
In hiding? What’s that when it’s got its keks on? snorts Nan.
Get up Nan, I say, I’ll run you a bath.
I go into the bathroom, turn the taps on, look round for some bubble bath but there isn’t any. I go into the kitchen, get the washing-up liquid, apple and raspberry leaf, sniff it. Smells nice. I squirt a load into the bath, watch the bubbles foam up like magic. I go through to the living room, put the fire on. Then Nan shouts from the bathroom, Where d’ya find the bubble bath then? Lovely!