A firm hand lands on my shoulder, and I just about jump out of my skin. ‘A word of advice, Mouse, mate,’ Jake says, and his eyes are serious, his grin long gone. ‘You’re a good kid. I like you a lot, you know that – so listen. Frank lost his dog a week or so back – probably just ran off, he wasn’t exactly treating it well, but he thinks someone stole it. If you found the dog, give it back, Mouse. Don’t get on the wrong side of Frank Scully. OK?’
I swallow, hard. ‘I’ll try not to,’ I mutter.
Jake shakes his head, his forehead creased and anxious. ‘Try hard,’ he says.
I spend the rest of Saturday worrying about what Jake said, and most of Sunday trying to find a way to tell Mum about it. In the end, I mutter something about Scully thinking his dog’s been nicked, and Mum tells me not to stress, she’ll talk to Scully if and when he turns up at the Phoenix.
‘I can handle him,’ she says. A prickle of fear snakes down my back, because I don’t think anyone can handle Frank Scully. He’s a madman – Jake just about spelled it out for me.
‘I don’t want Lucky to go back,’ I say. ‘I like having him around.’
‘Me too,’ Mum says. ‘But he doesn’t belong to us. Let’s wait and see.’
I’m so jumpy by Monday, when Mum goes back to the Phoenix, I just about fall off my chair when the doorbell chimes out at midday. Lucky starts barking, his tail waving like a propeller, and I grab his muzzle to shut him up in case it’s Scully out there, raging mad and swinging a baseball bat.
‘Shhh!’ I whisper. ‘Whose side are you on, anyway?’
I shut him in my bedroom and walk to the door. It’s half-term, so the chances are it’ll be Fitz or Chan. I open the door a crack and my heart lurches. It’s not Fitz, Chan or even Scully. It’s a green-eyed girl with honey-coloured skin and a guilty smile, leaning on her bicycle.
‘Surprise!’ she says.
I’m not surprised, I’m horrified. I’ve dreamed about Cat for three nights running. I’ve replayed every word she said to me, every stunt she pulled. She’s cool and funny and she has ‘trouble’ printed right through the middle of her, like ‘Blackpool’ through a stick of rock, but she doesn’t belong on the Eden Estate.
‘Cat,’ I say. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
Her face falls. ‘Well, I am,’ she tells me. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’
‘No! Well – yes. But …’
‘Mouse, aren’t you going to let me in?’
Defeated, I stand back as she wheels the bike inside and leans it against a wall of hanging coats. Lucky has escaped from the bedroom and goes crazy, circling her, jumping up, smothering her with kisses when she bends to make a fuss of him. ‘Oh, he’s all clean and happy!’ she says. ‘His bandana’s good as new! At least he’s glad to see me …’
‘We both are,’ I say grudgingly. ‘I suppose. I just didn’t expect to see you here.’
‘Why not? It’s where you live, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, it’s where I live.’ Her eyes skim over the tall, jungly plants, the beanbags and floor cushions. I know that even though I barely notice it any more, Cat will be smelling the damp, clocking the peeling wallpaper.
‘I found you easily,’ she’s saying. ‘I remembered you said the ninth floor, Nightingale House, and I followed the trail of graffiti through the estate … is that spray-painted phoenix on that funny little hut down there yours too? This place is cool. I almost got chatted up by two lads who talked like Ali G –’
‘It’s not cool,’ I snap, surprised at the anger in my voice. ‘It’s a dump!’
‘OK,’ Cat says, carefully. ‘I just thought …’
I shake my head. ‘No, Cat, you didn’t think,’ I tell her. ‘You just came wandering through the place like some rich-kid tourist on a package tour to trouble. You came to see how the other half live and you think it’s cool and edgy and real, but you don’t have to live it! You don’t know what it’s like. It’s not a game – it’s not an adventure.’
Her face flushes. At my feet, Lucky whines, looking from Cat to me, baffled, and instantly I feel small and mean and spiteful.
I sigh. ‘Look, Cat, forget it. It’s not your fault. You were always going to say the wrong thing – there is no right thing to say about a place like this.’
She looks at me from under her lashes. ‘Different planets, yeah?’ she says. ‘I might not understand much about your world, but I come in peace!’
I laugh, and the tension falls away. ‘It doesn’t have to matter, does it?’ I say. ‘We can still be friends.’
Cat laughs. ‘Friends? Boy, you know how to make a girl feel good.’
I’m smiling then, because maybe I didn’t want Cat to see me here, but she’s here anyhow. She’s here because she likes me, and eat your heart out, Neela Rehman, because I know that this time around the attraction isn’t Mars bars. Cat likes me.
‘Well, show me the view then!’ she’s saying. ‘I bet you can see the whole of London, up here!’
I open the glass door that leads out on to the balcony and we pick our way through the growbags stuffed with lettuce, leeks and flowers, the pots overflowing with herbs and climbers, the fruit bushes, the wilting tomato plants still laden with fruit in a home-made polythene greenhouse. One climber twines all around the doorway, dripping with tiny, starry white flowers, and Cat picks a bloom and sticks it behind her ear.
‘Wow. You’ve got more stuff on this tiny balcony than we have in the whole of our back garden!’
‘Mum loves it,’ I say with a shrug. ‘She’d love a proper garden, one day.’
We lean on the balcony rail, looking out over the courtyard below. The Phoenix is just an angled brown roof from here, its garden a blur of paintbox colours. Opposite, the towering outline of Skylark Rise rises up, with Eagle Heights behind it, blocking out the sun as well as anything you could call a view over London.
‘The only good view is looking up,’ I say, and we tilt our faces up to the blue sky, where a couple of wispy clouds scud along in the breeze.
‘No wonder it’s called Nightingale House,’ Cat says. ‘It makes you feel like you can fly!’ I look at her face, lit up with wonder, and I want to hug her. She likes it here – she really, really does.
‘I bet, when it’s dark, you feel like you’re close enough to reach out and pick a star right out of the sky!’ she breathes.
I don’t like to spoil the dream, but I can’t help myself. ‘There are no stars,’ I tell her.
Cat frowns. ‘How d’you mean, no stars?’
I look at Cat, and I wonder if she’d understand. I’d like her to, I really would. I lean back against the doorframe, and another piece of my history slips out of its box, out of my mouth. ‘There used to be stars, when I was a kid,’ I say. ‘In the country, when I was staying with my dad. I knew how to pick out the Pole Star – I thought it was my own personal lucky star. Then Dad dumped me and I moved to London. There are too many street lights, too much orange glow – the sky never gets properly dark here. No stars.’
‘They’re still there, though,’ Cat says. ‘My dad likes astronomy. He has a telescope in the attic, and he watches the stars on clear nights. He knows all the constellations. The stars are always there, even if you can’t always see them.’
I think about what it would be like to have a dad – any dad, let alone one with a hotline to the stars. I think of Cat’s dad, imagining an old guy in a cardigan who looks at the night sky and sees past the street light glow, right up to the skies. A dad would look after you, fix things when they broke, earn money for treats and holidays, buy you a bike for Christmas or a puppy of your own. Most dads, anyhow.
Not mine. All I have left of him is a memory of a man who can juggle with fire, a man who thought it was OK to ditch his son to go and live on the other side of the world.
‘I don’t believe in all that stuff any more,’ I answer. ‘My luck ran out.’
We sit on the beanbags drinking lemonade beneath the big jungly plants.<
br />
‘Where’s your mum then?’ Cat wants to know. ‘At work? Did you tell her about me?’
‘A bit,’ I admit.
‘What did you say? That I’m gorgeous and clever and funny and brave? That you’re mad about me?’
‘That you squashed my dog,’ I tell her.
‘That’s just so typical,’ she huffs. ‘You have to pick out my bad points. She’d like me, I know she would. Shall I hang around until she’s home?’
‘No, no, Mum won’t be back till gone six, and this place is bad news after dark,’ I tell her. I try not to look shifty – the truth is, I don’t want Cat to meet Mum. Her own mum is pretty, polished, brisk, businesslike. My mum is not.
‘Will I meet her another time?’ Cat wants to know, but I just shrug.
‘She likes all this hippy-dippy stuff, huh?’ Cat persists, looking at the Indian floor cushions, the batik wallhanging, the magazine picture of Buddha peeking out from behind the Swiss cheese plant.
‘Too right. She used to be a traveller – a hippy, I suppose,’ I explain. ‘Years ago.’
‘What made her settle down?’ Cat asks.
Inside my head, I can feel the memories shifting about inside their little boxes. I need to keep the lids on tight, but with Cat looking at me so intently, it’s not easy.
‘Just life,’ I tell her. ‘She got ill and broke up with my dad, and things went a bit wrong for us – we’re OK now, though. We’ve been here almost six years – Mum always says it might be a dump if you look down at the ground, but keep your face to the sun and it’s all about blue skies and freedom.’
‘She sounds cool,’ Cat says, and I just smile.
‘So, what’s the story with that funny little building down there, the one with the red bird graffiti?’ Cat asks. ‘It doesn’t look like it belongs – all that colour, and the garden. Like your mum’s balcony.’
How do you explain a place like the Phoenix Drop-In to a girl like Cat? ‘It’s just a place,’ I tell her. ‘Nothing special.’
‘But …’
Right about then, Lucky jumps up and runs out on to the balcony, barking. ‘Good guard dog,’ Cat says, and we follow him out.
‘Crazy dog, more like,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing there, Lucky, OK? All quiet and peaceful. Seriously, most of the time, nothing ever happens here.’
I trail off into silence as a couple of police cars come screeching into the courtyard below, sirens blazing. They skid to a halt beside the Phoenix, and a bunch of policemen leap out, shove through the gate and into the building.
‘Nothing ever happens here, huh?’
I don’t even bother to answer. All I can think of is Mum – and Scully. I can handle him, she said. I suddenly feel sick, like I know something bad has happened. I’m swearing under my breath, pulling on a hoodie, dragging open the door. Lucky runs out into the corridor, still barking.
‘Mouse?’ Cat is saying. ‘Mouse, what’s up? Where are you going?’
My mouth is dry. ‘You have to go now,’ I tell her. ‘I’m sorry, but you really do.’ I hold the door wide and she wheels her bike out, wide-eyed. The three of us run along the corridor to the lifts.
‘What is it? What’s happening? What’s wrong?’
The lift doors trundle shut and I feel that awful sensation of falling, like everything safe and stable and reliable is crumbling beneath my feet. ‘Mouse?’ she says again.
‘It’s my mum,’ I say in a low, angry voice. ‘She works at that stupid place, OK? And it turns out Lucky belongs to one of the local dealers, a real headcase called Scully. He’s been hanging round the Phoenix lately. Mum was going to tell him we had Lucky …’
I can’t look at Cat. If I do, she’ll see the fear in my eyes.
The lift crashes to a halt and we run out, across the courtyard to the Phoenix. Cat props her bike against the fence and snaps on the lock. ‘You shouldn’t even be here,’ I say, but Cat just tells me to shut up because she is here, too bad, and I must be crazy if I think she’s leaving me now.
Suddenly, the doors swing open and two policeman appear, dragging Scully along in cuffs. He sees Lucky, who is hiding behind my legs, shivering, and his cold eyes lock on to mine, face twisting into a weaselly sneer. ‘You skanky little thief …’
Suddenly he lunges forward and spits at me. A dribble of slime lands on my hoodie. The police retaliate at once, yanking him away, shoving him into the back of the police car.
‘Gross,’ Cat whispers. She finds a tissue, wipes away the slime. ‘You OK, Mouse?’ I nod, but I’m shaking, my face tight with anger. The police car roars away.
I pull Cat into the building. It’s a bright, open room that looks like a small herd of elephants just passed through it, turning tables and chairs upside down and splattering the walls with something that looks like spaghetti. Maybe two dozen people are inside, some huddled in groups, shell-shocked, some picking up chairs, straightening tables, wiping walls.
‘Mum!’ I yell. ‘Mum!’
She comes running over and folds me into a quick, tight hug. Lucky runs circuits around us, tail whirling. ‘It’s OK,’ she tells me. ‘He had a knife, but Luke got it off him and called the police. It’s all OK.’
A knife? It doesn’t sound OK to me. Mum holds me at arm’s-length, smiling, and I notice for the first time the small wrinkles that curve out around her eyes, her mouth. ‘I’m fine, really, Mouse.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s all my fault …’
Mum’s eyes open wide and she shakes her head.
‘No, Mouse,’ she says. ‘This wasn’t your fault – it was nothing to do with you, or Lucky. I never got a chance to even mention all that.’
I frown. ‘So, what . .?’
Mum sighs. ‘I caught Scully selling drugs,’ she tells me heavily. ‘To a couple of new clients, Mark and JJ. I asked him to leave, but he pulled a knife on me … luckily, Luke managed to get it off him and Julie called the police.’
‘Oh. My. God,’ Cat breathes, her mouth a perfect circle of amazement.
Mum turns to Cat, dredging up a smile from somewhere. ‘You must be Cat. The girl with the bicycle, right? I’m Magi. Look, I just need to finish giving my statement to the police …’
She squeezes my arm and turns away again, and Luke, her colleague, a young black guy with trendy horn-rimmed glasses, claps his hands to get everyone’s attention. ‘OK, folks, the show’s over,’ he yells. ‘We’re gonna close for today – business as usual tomorrow. So if you could all just go home?’
Cat looks bewildered.
‘That’s Luke,’ I explain. ‘He works here, with Mum. And that lady over there …’ I point out an older woman with dyed blonde hair. ‘That’s Julie – the boss, I guess. She started the place off.’
‘What kind of place is it?’ Cat wants to know. ‘I don’t get it. What happened?’
So we sit down in a corner and I tell her that the Phoenix, with its brightly painted walls and flower-filled gardens, is a day centre for recovering drug addicts. They come here to hang out, get a hot meal, get counselling, or just talk, read, play chess, help out in the garden. I watch Cat shift uneasily in her seat as she looks around her, trying to sort out the staff from the clients.
‘And that creep who spat at you?’ she asks. ‘Scully?’
‘He’s a dealer,’ I explain. ‘A real lowlife. He’s been hanging around, making out he wanted to ditch the drugs, when all the time …’
‘He was preying on those poor people,’ Cat breathes. ‘You’re telling me he’s Lucky’s real owner? No way.’
‘Way,’ I tell her. ‘And now he knows we’ve got Lucky. Trust me, that’s very bad news.’
Mum walks over, flanked by a policeman and woman. ‘Thanks for calling us,’ the policeman is saying. ‘Let’s hope Mark and JJ are prepared to give evidence in court.’
It’s a big ‘if’, but hope jumps inside me. If Scully goes to prison, he can’t come after Mum or hassle the Phoenix clients – and maybe we can
keep Lucky? Things might just work out after all.
‘This is a great project, but you’ve had your share of trouble,’ the policeman continues. ‘Maybe Eden isn’t the right place for it?’
Mum puts her hands on her hips. ‘It’s the best place in the world for it,’ she says fiercely. ‘This is where it’s needed most. You know what the rates of drug abuse are. How many known drug dealers do we have here?’
The policeman looks embarrassed. ‘We’d love to clean up the estate,’ he says. ‘But you know yourself, Magi, people around here just don’t care.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Mum argues. ‘We do. Look, I’m prepared to stand up and be counted, OK? I’ll testify against Scully. I saw it all, and I’m not afraid to stand up in court and say so.’
‘You sure?’ the policeman asks.
Mum’s grey eyes are serious, steady. ‘I’m sure,’ she says.
When I was eight years old, the social services sent me to see a counsellor. I’d been having bad dreams – seriously, the kind where you shout out in your sleep and yell and fight and wake up covered in sweat. Not good. The counsellor spent a whole year trying to get me to talk things through. ‘You have to trust me,’ she said. ‘I want to help. Anything you say to me will stay private, between us two, but it will help me to help you stop the nightmares. Trust me.’
Yeah, right. Why would I trust her? I didn’t trust anybody else in my life back then. Adults let you down, told you lies and left you stranded. That’s what I thought. That’s what I still think, mostly. They pretend that they’re trying to help you, but really they just want you to stay quiet, keep out of trouble, out of sight. It makes their lives easier.
Not Mum, of course. She’s different. She loves me, she cares, and if she wasn’t always around for me back then, well, that wasn’t her choice. She was ill and she couldn’t be the perfect mum, but still, she tried.
Anyhow, the counsellor tried everything she could think of to get me to open up. She tried role play, she tried hypnosis, she got me looking at funny little ink-spot pictures and asked me what they reminded me of. ‘Ink spots,’ I said.
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