by Mary Hooper
‘I shouldn’t let him get up again, really,’ I said, ‘but he hardly sees any men and I think he ought to.’
‘That’s right,’ Mark said. ‘You should always have your full quota of men.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ I said, pouring hot water into mugs.
‘No romance in your life?’
I shook my head. ‘How about you?’
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Couple of possibilities on the go.’
He sat down, still holding Jack, who for once wasn’t struggling to rush away and play. Eyes closed, Jack had his head against Mark’s and was rubbing Mark’s cheek as well as his own with the blanket.
‘He looks really sweet,’ I said, almost forgetting that he’d been such a little beast. ‘I wish…’ I hesitated. I’d been about to say I wished his own dad would take more of an interest in him instead of just sending trolls. I didn’t just want a dad for Jack, though, I wanted someone who wanted me as well. ‘There’s this boy I’ve met and chatted to once or twice,’ I said to Mark. ‘He seems really nice.’
‘Does he know about Jack?’
‘’Course!’ I said. ‘He’s met him. He – this boy, Jon – is in the Sixth form near Poppies. I think… think he might ask me out.’
Mark raised his eyebrows. ‘Hmm,’ he said.
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing,’ Mark said. ‘Except I hope you’re not thinking that he might be a permanent fixture in your life.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. But I was, of course. I couldn’t help it. I’d been thinking about Jon asking me out and us getting on really well, and then him taking an interest in Jack and maybe, just maybe… Well, as I’d said to Kirsty, it made a change from thinking about the price of disposable nappies.
Mark looked at me and shook his head. ‘Forget it,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You don’t really know him, do you?’
‘No, but…’
‘Take it from me, Megan, a boy of – what is he, seventeen?’
I nodded. ‘I suppose so.’
‘A boy of seventeen – all he’s interested in is sex. He’ll just be wanting a quick one and away.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘I’ve been there,’ he said. ‘No guy of seventeen is going to be interested in taking on someone else’s baby. A ready-made family to provide for? Do leave off!’
‘So you’re saying I’ll never get anyone!’
‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘I’m just telling you that you won’t get anyone your own age. Not at the moment. No one permanent.’
‘OK,’ I said, shrugging. ‘I’ll just go out with this Jon for a couple of dates, then. If he asks. It’ll be better than nothing.’
‘That’s up to you,’ Mark said. ‘But don’t get involved. You’ll only get hurt.’
While Mark drank his coffee, Jack closed his eyes and his head dropped on to Mark’s arm. I chatted to Mark about various things; about Mum and the mysterious George, and then I tried to think of a way of bringing the subject round to Lorna. Just as I was working out what to say, though, he looked at his watch.
‘Got to split,’ he said. ‘I’m going to a flat-warming.’
‘Can I come?’ I asked wistfully.
‘Got a babysitter?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m only kidding. I haven’t got anything to wear and my hair’s hanging in grease – no one would let me into a party. Tell you what, though,’ I went on, ‘can you put Jack back to bed before you go? With a bit of luck he’ll be off for good now.’
Carefully, without putting on the light, we tiptoed into the bedroom. I tidied Jack’s bed and we laid him in it, with the special arrangement of bunnies, blanket and teddy that he liked. Then we covered him up and tiptoed out.
We went into the hall and as I opened the door for Mark, Ellie appeared with her hair done in little plaits with coloured beads on the ends.
‘Well, look at you, Miss Ellie!’ Mark said admiringly, sending her into full giggle mode. All flustered and daft, she pleaded with him to stay. When he said he couldn’t, she asked if she could go to the flat-warming with him.
‘No, you can’t!’ I said, hauling her in. ‘If I can’t go, neither can you.’
Mark went off, and as I closed the door quietly and went down the hall holding my breath, I heard it: Jack’s familiar starting-up cry, ‘Wah-wah-wah wah!’ Each wah! louder than the one before.
‘Brilliant,’ I muttered to Ellie. ‘The end of a perfect day and the start of a perfect night.’
Chapter Seven
I hated my taxi driver. He was a slimy creep, either wanting to talk about boyfriends or carrying on as if I was personally responsible for what he called the ‘moral decline’ in the country. Almost worse than this, he seemed to take a special delight in turning up just when Jon appeared in the road, or about half a minute after he’d arrived. Whenever he did this he’d say something like, ‘Ooh, spoilt your fun, have I?’ and smirk to himself. I had to put up with him, though. He’d been booked by the local authority for the whole term – maybe longer – and there was no way of getting to Poppies without him.
I thought a lot about what Mark had said about Jon only being after one thing and I decided that it very well might be true, but I wouldn’t mind finding it out for myself. My reasoning was that all boys tried it on, and if I turned down dates just because of that then I’d more than likely go through the rest of my life without having any.
The following Friday morning, just when I was looking forward to another scintillating weekend, Kirsty arrived at the unit in a bit of a mess. I was in the little study re-reading Wuthering Heights before my tutor arrived and trying to work out whether Heathcliff was untamed and passionate or just spiteful and wicked, when a taxi pulled up outside and Kirsty got out, looking as if she’d come straight from bed in the clothes she stood up in. A screaming Stella was clutched in one arm and in the other she held an assortment of things: nappies, bottle, scarf, book, bag – one of which she dropped at every step.
I went into the hall. ‘What’s up?’
She looked desperate. ‘I’m being chucked out of my lodgings!’ she said, and burst into tears.
‘Why?’ I looked at her, amazed. ‘They can’t do that!’
‘They say they’ve got to refurbish the rooms but I know it’s because Stella’s not going through the night yet. They hate me there. They’re always complaining.’
Stella screamed on. Kirsty put the baby over her shoulder and put her own cheek down on to her head.
‘I don’t know what to do…’
I looked at Stella’s little red screwed-up face. ‘Is she crying now because she’s hungry?’
Kirsty nodded. ‘I couldn’t get into the kitchen to warm her milk. And then when I did I found that someone had pinched all her bottles out of the fridge.’ She looked at me desperately. ‘I didn’t have any sterile bottles so all she’s had is boiled water.’
‘Go and get a bottle from Vicki,’ I said. ‘She’s got some formula milk.’ I took Stella from her. The baby didn’t look all that brilliant, actually – she had dried dribble all round her mouth and one of her eyes was sticky.
‘I couldn’t get in the bathroom, either,’ Kirsty said, seeing me looking at her. ‘So she hasn’t been washed. They’re doing it deliberately. They want me out!’
‘Can’t you speak to your social worker?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve tried to but she just says I’ve made myself homeless and if I can’t cope then I should go back home.’ Tears dripped down her cheeks. ‘I can’t, though. My mum doesn’t want me…’
‘Why don’t you tell your social worker that?’
‘I daren’t!’ Kirsty’s eyes widened. ‘They’ll know we’ve been trying to beat the system. My mum said I’ve just got to sit it out no matter what. That they’ll have to give me a flat in the end.’
I patted her shoulder, not knowing what to say. If I’d had a flat of my own, I
thought, then she could have come and stayed with me. For one wild moment I even thought about asking her to come anyway – and then I thought of the state of the place with the four of us all under each other’s feet and didn’t.
‘Go and get a bottle for Stella,’ I said. ‘And then go and speak to Vicki about it. She’ll be able to help.’
My tutor didn’t actually turn up to do Wuthering Heights with me because she had another class, in another town, doing a test, so I shelved the Heathcliff question until later. I was left to my own devices quite a lot there, actually – I was the only one taking A Level English Lit and half the time I just had to get on with it on my own. Today this meant that I could help Kirsty out, though, and because she was really scared about telling Vicki I went with her.
It all got a bit serious then. Vicki said they had to consider Stella’s welfare first, and that if Kirsty was being made homeless by her B and B then she might lose the right to come to Poppies, because her place was being funded by the specific area she lived in. If she wasn’t living in that area there would be no taxis and no funding.
Kirsty just sat there crying, hunched over in the chair with her arms around herself, rocking. I knew she mainly came to Poppies just to have something to do during the day, somewhere to go, not because she particularly wanted to take exams.
‘Are you sure you can’t go home?’ Vicki asked. She sighed and looked at some papers. ‘But even then you’d be out of our area.’
‘My mum won’t let me,’ Kirsty muttered between sniffs and sobs. ‘She doesn’t want me at home all the time. And her boyfriend doesn’t like Stella!’
‘But maybe your mum could speak to him. Your home really is the best place for you, you know.’
Kirsty shook her head violently. ‘I told you – my mum doesn’t want me there!’
Vicki looked down at Stella who was asleep in one of the unit’s carrycots next to her desk. ‘Your baby doesn’t look all that well-nourished at the moment, Kirsty.’
She didn’t – even I could see that. Apart from the general grubbiness, she was so tiny and pale. But then Kirsty was quite tiny and pale, too. And sad-looking in her jumble sale clothes. I’d thought I was hard up, but Kirsty seemed even worse off than me.
‘She’s back to her birth weight!’ Kirsty said defensively.
‘She should be more than that now. What is she – five weeks old?’
‘Six,’ Kirsty said.
‘Are you getting her weighed regularly?’
‘Yes – here,’ Kirsty said.
Vicki looked down again, tapping her pen on some papers. ‘I’m afraid this is quite serious, Kirsty. I’m terribly sorry about your predicament but I’m going to have to let the social workers know about you and Stella. If your landlady chucks you out or makes it impossible for you to live there – well, we can’t have you wandering the streets, homeless. Not with a baby.’
‘But what will the social workers do? Will they get me a flat?’
‘What they’ll do is assess Stella, and assess you, to make sure you’re both getting the care you need.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked. ‘Will they find Kirsty and Stella somewhere else to live? Will it be a flat or another Bed and Breakfast place?’
‘Well, first of all they’ll need to make sure that the sort of accommodation offered in lodgings is suitable for such an inexperienced mum with such a tiny baby,’ Vicki said. She hesitated. ‘It could be that they’ll decide that Stella would be better off being fostered for a while.’
Kirsty started crying again.
‘Just until you’ve sorted yourself out a bit,’ Vicki went on, putting her hand on Kirsty’s arm. ‘Their priority is your baby. If they feel that Stella’s failing to thrive – which means not getting on as well as she should – then they’ll take steps to put that right. If those steps mean putting Stella with a foster mum for a few weeks, then that’s what they’ll do. And in the meantime they’ll be looking for a proper home for you both.’
‘I haven’t been told that I’ve got to leave the B and B yet, though!’ Kirsty said. ‘They’ve given me four weeks’ notice.’
‘But if they’re making things difficult for you, if you can’t get in the kitchen to make your baby’s bottles…’
‘I’ll speak to them!’ Kirsty said desperately. ‘I’ll speak to the landlady and tell her what’s happening. I’ll say I’m getting another place soon.’
‘From the sound of her, I don’t think that will do much good,’ Vicki said gently. ‘But try, though. And if you give me the number I’ll ring, too. We’ll see what we can get sorted out over the weekend.’
‘They won’t take Stella away, will they?’ Kirsty asked desperately.
‘Well, we’ll hope it won’t come to that,’ Vicki said. ‘One more thing – have a think about any other places you could stay. Maybe you’ve got an older sister or aunt or someone you could live with?’
‘No, I haven’t!’ Kirsty shook her head and started crying again.
Vicki said she’d keep Stella in there while she was asleep, so Kirsty and I went into the study room, where Kirsty collapsed in a heap.
‘I know they’re going to take her away!’ she sobbed. ‘I know they won’t let me keep her.’
‘They haven’t said that,’ I said. I thought about Jack and shivered. Although I complained about him, it would be unthinkable not to have him now. If anyone ever wanted to take him away…
‘Look,’ I said after few moments. ‘You’ll have to sort yourself out a bit. If Vicki comes along in a minute and you’re still falling about the place crying then it’s not going to look good. You’ve got to prove to her and everyone else that you can cope with things.’
Kirsty thought about this for a moment, then nodded. ‘OK,’ she sniffed.
‘I’m not being funny but why don’t you go and tidy yourself up a bit?’ It felt a bit mad to be telling someone else to do this, seeing as how half the time I went round looking like a dustbin. ‘Wash your face and brush your hair and I bet you’ll feel better.’
She did that – and did look better – and that afternoon Vicki got some sort of emergency fund money so that she could go out and buy six feeding bottles, a sterilising unit and a big packet of formula milk to replace the stuff she’d had pinched. They were both going to see what they could come up with over the weekend – and Kirsty also had to go round and ask her mum if she’d be willing to let her come home for a while.
Jon came along when I was hanging around for my taxi that afternoon. He looked really good – he was quite brown and his almost-shaved head was tanned, too. Jack was sitting quite happily in the little plastic truck in the front garden, so I opened the gate and went out into the road.
‘Caught you!’ Jon said. ‘I’ve been along a couple of afternoons but I must have missed you.’
I smiled, pleased to see him. I still felt bad about Kirsty, though, so it probably wasn’t much of a smile because he asked me what was up.
I shook my head. ‘Nothing. It’s just about a friend of mine. How are you, anyway?’
‘All the better for seeing you. Anyone tell you you’ve got lovely eyes?’
‘What a line,’ I said, though I was dead pleased.
‘So where d’you live, then?’
I told him and he puffed out his cheeks. ‘Blimey. I don’t know how I’d get over there.’
So you are thinking about it, I thought. ‘It’s difficult without a car,’ I said casually.
‘And even if I got trains or something, how would I get home?’ He looked me straight in the eye and added, ‘Unless I stayed the night, of course.’
I felt myself going red and was quite relieved when my taxi squealed round the corner. ‘Bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you?’ I said.
‘Yeah. Maybe.’ And then his eyes lit up and he smiled a really sexy smile. ‘Doesn’t hurt to ask though, does it?’
My taxi driver dropped me off outside my flats as usual later that afternoon (‘You mind what
you get up to at the weekend with those boyfriends of yours!’) and with Jack slung round my hip, I climbed the stairs up to our flat. Another weekend with sod all to do. Something to dream about, though: Jon and what he’d said. It made me feel all funny just thinking about it…
Witch’s Brew was just coming down the stairs. ‘Lots going on in your flat today,’ she said, patting Jack on the head.
Oh-oh, I thought: Ellie on the doorstep snogging again.
‘People coming… people going,’ she went on.
‘What d’you mean? Who’s coming and going?’
But she was trotting along the walkway to her own flat. ‘You’ll find out,’ she said.
I watched her disappear, wondering what she was going on about. Maybe Ellie had asked loads of kids from school along for a video or something. Well, if she had they could all go home again.
I walked along to the flat. There was no noisy chatter, though, no loud music. Opening the door, I saw that Ellie’s jacket and bag weren’t there, so she wasn’t even home.
Maybe old Witch’s Brew was going a bit batty, I thought, and then I heard Mum’s voice from the bedroom. ‘No, over here!’ she was saying, and laughing.
I just opened my mouth to bellow ‘Mum!’ and ask her what she was doing home, when I heard a man’s voice.
‘Really!’ he said. ‘At your age!’ and then there was more laughter.
‘Lo!’ Jack called, hearing his gran. I just stood there, mouth open and gawping. Mum and a man. In her bedroom. What was going on?
Chapter Eight
I stood there for a moment, wondering what to do. Then I put down Jack and everything else and went back to open and close the front door again loudly so they’d know someone was home. Jack, seizing his opportunity, staggered into the kitchen and went straight for his favourite cupboard. Crash! I heard, as something hit the floor.
From the bedroom, Mum called, ‘Is that you, Megan?’
‘Yes!’ I called back.
I heard the murmur of voices, and then a man said, ‘Well, the sooner she gets used to it, the better.’