by Jean Ure
I thought it had been mine, too; but you couldn’t just ignore tomorrow!
“Let’s do something,” said Darcy. She said that now we didn’t look like our old selves any more it would be safe to go out. “I’ll take you up the West End. Show you the shops. C’mon!”
I was quite eager, because the one time I’d come to London, with Mum and Dad, we hadn’t gone anywhere near the West End. Mum had said it was a tourist trap, Dad said it was a temple to mammon, whatever that was. I think he meant people spending their money and having a good time. We’d gone to the British Museum, instead. Which I did enjoy, as it has some extremely interesting things in it, but I would have liked to walk up Oxford Street and see all the big stores.
Darcy promised that that was what we would do. Honey said, “What about the baby?”
“Bring her with us,” said Darcy.
“To Oxford Street?”
“Why not? What d’you think’s gonna happen to her?”
“She might get snatched,” said Honey.
Darcy looked at me and rolled her eyes. I rolled mine back at her. Honey was as bad as my dad! I told her not to be so daft, but there was no budging her. She said she’d heard about that part of London.
“Oxford Street, Soho…the West End!”
She’d seen a programme about it on the television. It was full of muggers and drug dealers.
“It’s not safe to take a baby to a place like that!”
In the end we said OK, we’d leave her at home with the baby while we went to Oxford Street to look at the shops and get mugged.
“You shouldn’t joke about it,” said Honey. “It happens all the time! People are murdered in broad daylight, just for their mobile phones.”
“Yeah, well, just don’t worry about it,” said Darcy. “Nobody ain’t gonna mug me! I dunno why you ever bothered bringing that girl with you,” she grumbled, as we closed the front door behind us. “She’s definitely one slice short of a sandwich.”
“She’s good with the baby,” I pleaded.
“Yeah, I s’ ppose there is that,” agreed Darcy. “Saves us having to cart it around.”
I couldn’t help wondering whether Darcy’s sister had actually wanted a baby, or if it were just “one of those things”. I thought probably it was just one of those things, and for a moment I felt sorry for it and could understand why Honey was so protective. Why she kept saying, “Poor little thing!”
I didn’t like to ask Darcy in case it seemed like I was prying or being critical. After all, it wasn’t really any business of mine.
I enjoyed seeing all the shops and the people in Oxford Street, though not quite as much as I thought I would. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was Honey, putting ideas into my head; or maybe it was the nagging thought, which was there all the time, that not even Mum seemed to care if I’d run away. I hadn’t done it to make her unhappy, and I didn’t actually want her to be unhappy, but I did want her to care!
Darcy told me to stop brooding. She said, “At least your mum never threw you out.”
“Yours didn’t throw you out,” I said. “She just couldn’t cope.”
“Comes to the same thing.”
“Not really,” I said. “You were pretty mean to her.”
“That’s right, take her side,” said Darcy. “What do you know about any of it?”
I muttered, “Only what I saw.”
“Yeah? And what was that?”
“You treated her like she was just stupid.” A bit like Honey’s mum had treated Honey. I don’t know what made me bold enough to say it; I’d never stood up to Darcy before. This angry black look came over her face. She snapped, “Maybe she was just stupid!”
“She was your mum,” I said.
“So? That doesn’t mean she can’t be stupid, does it? All those jerks she used to bring home! I could have told her they were just out for what they could get.”
“I always felt sorry for your mum,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you’re just a soft touch,” said Darcy.
I resented that. I wasn’t a soft touch! I prided myself on being quite tough and street smart. Darcy sneered and said who did I think I was kidding? Then she started on again about Honey; about me “lugging her along like a bit of extra baggage.” She said she was useless.
“A total no-hoper!”
I said, “At least Honey doesn’t leave poor little innocent babies to starve while she goes out enjoying herself!”
That did it. We had this terrible shouting match, standing on the edge of the kerb. People kept swerving to avoid us, cars and cabs swished past, almost within touching distance, and we just stood there, yelling at each other.
When it was all over, when neither of us could think of anything else to yell, I thought that Darcy would most probably flounce off and leave me. I wasn’t going to flounce off and leave her, cos by now we weren’t in Oxford Street any more and I wasn’t too sure how to get back to the tube station. But I wasn’t going to apologise, either! I waited for one of us to say something. It was Darcy who spoke first.
“Well, we got that lot off our chests,” she said. “Let’s go back and have a gander in Gap.”
It was so extraordinary! It was like we’d never stood there on the kerb yelling at each other. By the time we’d mooched all round Gap, and several other stores, trying on various articles of clothing, we were the best of mates again. I thought it was good that we could say all those things and not bear grudges. It wasn’t till we were on the tube on the way home that Darcy showed me what she had brought with her from the last shop we’d been in.
“Da-dum!”
With a flourish, she whipped something out from under her T-shirt. I recognised it at once as a Lycra top we’d both fancied.
I said, “How did you do that?”
“I got the knack,” said Darcy. She grinned. “Want me to teach you?”
“No!” I shook my head. I didn’t care what she thought of me, I wasn’t getting into that again. “Call yourself street smart?” jeered Darcy. “You ain’t got what it takes, girl. You’ll never be a survivor!”
“I’ve survived so far,” I said; but I had this sinking feeling that she might be right.
We got back to find Honey cosily chatting in the sitting room to the big slob from Soup ’n Sarnies. Joe. He jumped up when he saw me and Darcy, like he knew he had no right to be there. Honey ought never to have let him in! For one thing (as I somewhat crossly said to her, when he’d gone) this was Darcy’s place, not hers. You don’t go inviting total strangers into other people’s houses. Flats. Whatever. For another thing, we were supposed to be keeping a low profile.
I read her a long lecture about it, but for once she seemed unrepentant. I mean, normally she took notice of what I said. Normally she would have been ashamed of herself. Today she just looked me in the eye and said boldly that she couldn’t see she’d done anything wrong.
“He just came to check how I was. He brought me these lovely flowers. Look!” She nodded proudly at a bunch of brightly-coloured something or others (I’m not very good at flowers) which she’d stuck into a jug. “I couldn’t be rude to him!”
“You didn’t have to let him in,” I said.
“But he came round specially!”
“Yeah, and that happens to be a measuring jug.” Darcy snatched at it, angrily. “You trying to poison us?”
“I’m sorry,” said Honey. She didn’t actually sound sorry; she sounded more like defiant. “I couldn’t find a proper vase.”
“That’s probably cos we haven’t got one.”
“Well, don’t just pull them out, you’ll kill them!” Honey took the jug back, cradling it protectively the way she’d cradled the baby. “Find something else I can put them in.”
Darcy stared, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. I couldn’t, either. Nobody, but nobody, gave orders to Darcy! Specially not a no-hoper like Honey.
“Please,” said Honey.
“Oh, just leave them w
here they are!” Darcy flung herself into an arm chair, hooking her legs over the side. “What’s it matter if we all go down with the green galloping gunge?”
I wasn’t bothered so much about gunge. I was more concerned with what Honey might have told fat slob Joe. I said, “What did he mean, when he left?”
He’d looked at me and shaken his head and said, “You didn’t have to go and do that to her.”
“What did he mean? I didn’t have to go and do that to you?”
Honey blushed. “He meant my hair. He doesn’t like it like this, and neither do I!”
“I told you,” said Darcy. “It’ll grow out.”
I said, “Yeah, and what’s it to do with him, anyway?”
“He said you shouldn’t have done it!”
He had some nerve.
“I did explain to him,” said Honey.
“Explain?” Alarm bells had started to clang, loudly, inside my head. “Explain what, exactly?”
“Why you had to do it.”
“You told him?”
Honey munched, on her lip.
“You did,” I said, “didn’t you? You went and told him! You idiot!”
“It didn’t make any difference,” muttered Honey. “He’d already guessed.”
“Like he’s some kind of genius?” Darcy swung her feet back to the floor. “He’s got a brain the size of a pea!”
Accusingly I said that if Joe had guessed it must have been because of something Honey had said when she’d been on her own with him in the caff.
“I knew I shouldn’t have left you! I knew you couldn’t be trusted. Now he’ll go straight to the police!”
“He won’t,” said Honey. “I made him promise. I told him that your dad used to hit you and that’s why you had to run away, and why you couldn’t be sent back.” She announced it with an air of triumph. “I said that if you went back he’d bash you to a pulp.”
I stared at her, in outrage. How dare she tell such wicked lies about my dad? He might be a bully, and a self-righteous pain, but he’d never laid so much as a finger on me. Not once, in all the humungous great rows we’d had.
Angrily, I said, “Did you tell him that your mum was a raging alcoholic?”
Honey’s cheeks turned slowly scarlet.
“Well,” I said, “did you?”
With dignity, Honey said, “I didn’t have to invent excuses why I couldn’t go back. I’m sixteen. I can do what I like!”
With that, she marched from the room, taking her flowers with her.
“I’m sixteen,” squeaked Darcy. “I can do what I like!”
“She is,” I said. “She is sixteen.”
“Yeah, sixteen going on six! I told you you shouldn’t have brought her.”
I thought to myself that if I hadn’t had Honey to keep me company, I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to run away. But I wasn’t going to admit that to Darcy, so I just grunted and went, “Maybe.”
“No maybe,” said Darcy. “I bet he’s on the phone right now. Hey, did your dad really used to bash you?”
I said, “No, he didn’t! She had no right to say that.”
“But her mum is an alky?”
I frowned. “I don’t know; p’raps she just drinks a lot. But my dad’s never bashed anyone, ever!”
I spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening waiting for a knock at the door. Well, or more likely a hammering at the door. Or even the sound of splintering wood and the door crashing open as the whole place flooded with armed men. When I told Darcy, she said I was mad.
“They’re not gonna send armed cops just for a couple of teenage girls! Who d’you think you are? Al-Qaeda, or something?”
“They’re not going to come anyway,” said Honey. “I told you…I made him promise. He gave me his word.”
I muttered, “What makes you think he’s going to keep it?”
“He will,” said Honey.
“But suppose he doesn’t?” I hadn’t run away just to be picked up by the police. That wasn’t how I wanted it! I wanted Mum and Dad on the television, pleading with me. I wanted to go home of my own accord, not be taken back in disgrace.
“Just chill,” said Darcy. “You can always go and hide in a cupboard.”
When it came to bedtime and the door still hadn’t been battered down, I began to relax a bit. If Joe had given us away, they’d have been round in a flash.
“I told you it’d be all right,” said Honey.
“We’re still not on the news!”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “There she goes again! You’ve got ideas above your station, you have. Think the whole world’s gonna come to a standstill just cos you’ve run away from home?”
“It’s probably better if we’re not on the news.” Honey said it as if it had just struck her. “That way, maybe, nobody’ll ever come looking for us.”
I said, “Yeah, right.”
“We don’t want them to,” said Honey, “do we?”
I said no, I supposed not.
“So why do we want to be on the news?”
“Cos she wants it both ways,” said Darcy. “She doesn’t wanna be caught, but she wants to feel important. She wants to be a celeb!”
“Do you?” said Honey.
I snapped, “No, of course I don’t! Just shut up talking about it. I’m going to bed!”
Next morning, I woke up feeling quite miserable; I don’t know why. But it was like all sense of purpose had vanished from my life. I’d been so bound up, the last couple of weeks, what with plotting and planning, and laying clues. Then there’d been the excitement of actually taking off, and getting down to London, and finding Darcy. Now, suddenly, it had all gone flat.
I was at a really low point, so that when Darcy made her surprise announcement shortly after breakfast, I just went to pieces. The telephone had rung, and Darcy had gone off to answer it. When she returned she said, “Well, sorry, guys, but that’s it! My sister’s coming back, you’ll have to go.”
I said, “G—go? Go where?”
“Not my problem,” said Darcy.
“But why? I mean, what—I mean—”
“Look, you can’t stay here,” said Darcy. “There’s not enough room, for one thing, and anyway, who’s supposed to pay for all your food?”
“But what are we going to do? We don’t know anyone, we don’t have anywhere else to go to!”
“Shoulda thought of that before.”
“I did think of it before! You told me we could always crash here.”
“I said you could crash here, and I didn’t mean indefinitely. I just meant for a day or two. You’ve been here a day or two.”
“B—b—” My mouth was opening and shutting like a goldfish, without any words coming out. Just bubbles of sound.
“Probably be best,” said Darcy, “you just turn tail and go home. She’s not fit to be out on her own, and what d’you think you’re gonna do?”
“Find a job,” said Honey.
“A job? You must be joking!”
“I’m sixteen,” said Honey. “I can work.”
“Yeah? Doing what?”
“Anything! I’ll earn enough for both of us.”
I finally managed to stop blowing air bubbles and say something. “We’ll both find jobs! There must be some way of making money.”
“Not anything you’d wanna know about,” said Darcy. “You wouldn’t last five minutes! Just go home,” she said, “and play with your Barbie doll.”
She wanted us out by two o’clock. She said her sister was coming back that afternoon and we had to be gone before she arrived.
“She’ll do her nut if she thinks the police are gonna turn up!”
“The police aren’t going to turn up,” whispered Honey, as Darcy whisked herself off down the hall. “Why is she doing this?”
I shook my head, helplessly.
“It’s cos of me, isn’t it? If it was just you, she’d let you stay!”
“She wouldn’t, you hea
rd what she said. She doesn’t want either of us.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know!” I heard the words come wailing out of me. As a rule I am a very positive sort of person; I can sum things up and make decisions quite quickly. But my brain seemed to have gone into a state of shock.
Honey sat there, waiting. I felt this terrible sense of responsibility. Honey trusted me! I was the one who’d encouraged her to run away, I was the one who’d planned it all, it was up to me to come up with a solution–and I couldn’t. I just felt completely useless. I also felt a bit scared.
“Jade?” said Honey. “What are we going to do?”
In defeated tones I said, “I guess we’ll just have to go home.”
“No!” Honey thumped with her fist on the table. “I’m not going back! Not ever!”
“But—”
“No! I’m not!”
“But what else can we do? We can’t live on the streets!”
“I know what we’ll do,” said Honey. “We’ll go and ask Joe.”
eight
I really couldn’t see what good it was going to do, asking Joe, but Honey seemed set on it and I didn’t feel strong enough to fight her. We shoved all our stuff into our rucksacks and told Darcy that we were off.
“It’s for the best,” she said. “Let’s face it…you’d have had to go back sooner or later.”
“We’re not going back,” said Honey. “We’re—”
“Don’t tell me!” Darcy clapped her hands to her ears. “I don’t wanna know! It’s safer that way. Case they come looking for you…I can say I’ve got no idea where you are.”
“Oh. All right! That’s a good idea.” Honey slung her rucksack over her shoulder and opened the door. I trailed dismally after her.
“See ya!” said Darcy.
I said, “Yeah, see ya.” But I didn’t honestly think that I’d ever want to. Partly because she’d chucked us out, but also because I wasn’t terribly sure that I really liked her any more. She’d changed, since coming to London. In the old days she’d been fun, but now she seemed quite cold and hard. Or maybe she’d always been like that and I’d just never seen it.
Honey obviously felt that I needed cheering up. In this bright, breezy voice, like she was talking to a child, she said, “Joe will think what to do!” I made a hrrumphing sound. I had absolutely no faith in Joe. As far as I was concerned, he was nothing but a podgy slob with the IQ of a mollusc.