Dizzy elbows him in the ribs. ‘He’s been plaguing me, more like,’ she says. ‘He got a place at music college in Birmingham, so there was no getting rid of him …’
‘We share a flat now,’ Finn says. ‘It’s a nightmare, but hey …’
We drive on through the night, rattling past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, talking non-stop, then head for Tower Bridge and the river. Finn parks down by the Thames Embankment, under the strings of fairy lights. This is the place Cat and I walked hand-in-hand after our posh tea in The Savoy, where we caught a river boat and then went on the London Eye. Now, the Eye is still, and the dark ribbon of water glitters with reflected light. A pale sliver of moon hangs above it, a perfect crescent in the dark sky.
‘New moon,’ Finn comments. ‘We should all make a wish.’
But for once in my life, I’ve got pretty much everything I need. Mum is on one side of me, Cat on the other, Lucky curled up safely on my lap. Leggit, the big skinny wolf-dog, is stretched out at my feet, and Finn and Dizzy are telling me all about the festivals I’ve missed this summer. Who needs wishes?
Cat yawns. ‘Tired?’ Mum asks her. ‘We can drop you off on the way back. It’s a bit late.’
‘I’ve got a key,’ she replies sleepily. ‘No problem.’
‘We’ll get moving,’ Finn says. ‘We can drive on down to Kent, be at Niall’s by morning. But now we know where you are … well, we’ll be seeing a lot more of you. That’s a promise.’
Finn starts up the engine and we chug away into the night traffic, a deep blue, starry VW van on its way down to Kent via the Eden Estate. Cat’s fallen asleep on my shoulder, her hair brushing my cheek, and Dizzy is telling me that her dad finally got married to his girlfriend, and that she has two new half-sisters. ‘Weird, huh?’ she says. ‘Katie’s four, Stella’s six.’
We drop Cat at her gate, and I see a curtain twitch as she slides her key into the lock and waves goodnight. I hope she’s not going to be in trouble. Finn drives on, finally turning into the Eden Estate. It’s quiet, except for a gang of young men in hoodies lurking near Skylark Rise. One of them chucks a stone at the van, and it clatters against the side door.
‘Tough place,’ Finn comments. ‘Don’t think they like the van.’
‘They don’t like anything, that lot,’ Mum says darkly. ‘But like it or not, this place is changing. It’s been sick and ugly and sad, a place where bullies rule and everyone else has to keep their head down. Not any more. People here are sick of being victims – they’re learning to fight back.’
We pull up outside Nightingale House, spilling out on to the cracked concrete. Everyone hugs, and I hang on to Leggit for a long time. ‘Sure you don’t want to leave her?’ I ask.
‘Not this time,’ Finn laughs.
‘Good luck,’ Dizzy says to Mum. ‘With the Phoenix, with all of it, really. I think you’re right
– you can change things, if you try.’
Then she turns to me, handing me a Mars bar wrapped in star-printed paper. ‘Take care, Mouse,’ she says. ‘Keep in touch. We’ll see you soon!’
‘Do you ever hear from Storm?’ I make myself ask, just as Dizzy turns to jump back up into the cab.
Her face clouds. ‘Sometimes,’ she says. ‘Birthdays, usually. She split with Zak, but you probably know that already …’
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘No, I didn’t. Is he … I mean, what …’
‘He’s still in India, the last I heard,’ Dizzy says softly. ‘Scratching a living, hanging out on the beach, getting wasted. Different girlfriend every week, Storm says. You know Zak.’
But I don’t, of course. I never did.
The icicle lights shimmer softly as we walk into the lobby of Nightingale House. Lucky starts to whimper. I hold him tighter, glancing around, but the place is deserted. ‘Shhh,’ I tell him. ‘You’re tired and it’s late and you’ve had the worst week ever, but everything’s fine now, Lucky. Seriously.’
But Lucky knows better than me, because when we step out of the lift on floor nine, it’s clear that things are not fine. Things are not fine at all.
Two guys in overalls are trying to patch up what was once our front door. They have patched the shattered glass with board, smoothed the splintered wood. They are replacing the locks.
‘No,’ Mum says. ‘Oh, no.’
A uniformed policeman walks towards us. ‘Magi Kavanagh? Martin?’ he asks. ‘I’m afraid there’s been some trouble. A break-in. Some damage …’
Mrs S. opens her door and peeps round it, wrapped in a pink dressing gown, her grey hair sticking up in wisps. ‘Oh, Magi,’ she says sadly. ‘Mouse.’
She pulls the door wide and opens her arms, and Mum goes to her. They hug for a long moment, and when they pull apart, both are crying. ‘Magi,’ Mrs S. whispers. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I heard all the commotion, about eleven o’clock it was, but I was scared to go out. I rang the police.’
Mum just nods, shakily.
‘You might want to stay somewhere else tonight,’ the policeman says gently. ‘There’s nothing you can do here right now.’
‘Please,’ Mrs S. urges. ‘Stay here. If there’s anything at all I can do …’
Mum just shakes her head. She squeezes the old lady’s hand and steps round the policeman, pulling aside the crime-scene tape. We walk into the flat – what used to be the flat. It’s like stepping into a nightmare. The cooker and the washing machine have been torn from the wall and smashed to pieces, and every piece of crockery we have has been broken. Someone has made a pile of the bedding, the curtains, the beanbags, then poured black paint all over them. The bathroom, the hallway and the scratchy nylon carpet have all been splattered too.
On the living-room wall, a single word has been daubed – stupid.
We were that, all right, to think we could go against Frank Scully.
‘He must be back,’ I whisper. ‘And he knows about Lucky.’
‘Guess so,’ Mum says.
What would have happened if we’d been at the flat? Or if we’d gone out with Finn and Dizzy, leaving Lucky alone to recover from the kidnap? I shudder.
‘It may just be an act of random vandalism,’ the policeman is saying. ‘Unless you know of anyone who may have a grudge against you?’ Mum looks over her shoulder, but Mrs S. has retreated back to her flat.
‘I’m standing witness against a man called Frank Scully in a month’s time,’ she says softly. ‘He’s a drug dealer, out on bail. I’m the only witness he hasn’t scared off yet. I think he might just have a grudge, Officer.’
‘Ah,’ the policeman says, scribbling notes. ‘That puts a very different spin on things. We’ll make some enquiries. Once the boys there have made the flat safe for you, we’ll go – we have everything we need for now. We’ll call back around midday tomorrow, but I’d advise you both to find somewhere else to spend the night. You can’t stay here.’
‘It’s our home,’ Mum says, but the words come out as a sob. ‘We’re staying.’
The officer shrugs, shaking his head. The overalled guys are packing up now, checking the new lock, handing over a set of keys.
‘You’re sure?’ the policeman asks. ‘We’d really advise –’
‘Sure,’ Mum says. She steers the policeman into the corridor and closes the battered door firmly, taking a deep, raggedy breath. ‘Oh, Mouse,’ she says.
There isn’t a bit of the flat that hasn’t been trashed and ruined, that isn’t wet with paint or glittering with broken glass.
‘Where are the plants?’ Mum wants to know. ‘My plants!’ But the big jungly plants that reached to the ceiling are gone, along with our TV, our toaster, our clothes. Mum picks up the telephone, a mess of wires and shattered plastic, then lets it fall again.
‘I can’t withdraw my statement, Mouse,’ Mum says.
‘I can’t give Lucky back.’
Mum sinks down into a corner, leaning up against the wall, and I sit beside her, scooping Lucky on to my knee. ‘Do you think this is the end of it?’ I as
k in a small voice. ‘Or just the start?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mum says.
I wake to a hammering on the door, and open my eyes to chaos. The flat looks worse in daylight, if that’s possible. ‘Mouse!’ a familiar voice is yelling. ‘Magi! Open up. It’s me, Jake!’
I stumble to the patched-up door, open it a crack.
‘Mouse,’ Jake says. ‘I heard. What can I do?’
‘You can’t do anything,’ I say. ‘Nobody can.’
I let the door swing wide, and Jake comes in. His eyes skim over the wreckage, registering shock, disgust, anger. He goes to Mum and hugs her lightly, as if she’s something fragile that might break easily. Maybe she is.
‘I had a visit last night from Frank Scully,’ Jake says. ‘He’d found out about Lucky. I acted dumb, pretended I knew nothing. I had to show him that I still had the key, swear black and blue I knew nothing about it. Don’t know if he believed me.’
Mum narrows her eyes. ‘You helped Mouse get Lucky back?’ she asks.
‘I had to,’ Jake says, shoulders sagging. ‘The dog was suffering.’
Mum looks at Jake with a new respect.
‘Anyway, Scully took off in a real rage,’ Jake goes on. ‘I tried to phone you, but there was no reply. Then I heard the police cars, saw the plants –’
‘The plants?’ Mum echoes.
Jake takes her elbow and steers her out on to the balcony. The three of us look down on to the cracked concrete courtyard, now strewn with mangled plants, smashed pots, cushions, clothes, bits and pieces of our lives chucked out like so much rubbish.
‘I wanted to warn you,’ Jake says sadly. ‘I just wasn’t quick enough.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
There’s another knock on the door, and Jake goes to open it. This time it’s Mrs S. with a tray of tea and toast. ‘Oh, my,’ she says, eyeing the mess. ‘This is going to take some cleaning up. I’d best get my mop bucket.’
‘No, really, we can manage,’ Mum argues as the old lady bustles away, but Jake just hands her a mug of tea and a slice of toast and tells her not to worry.
‘Everyone needs help sometimes,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t you chip in, if you saw this happen to someone else?’ He starts lifting the paint-spattered bedding out on to the balcony. When he has a big pile of it, he heaves it over and the whole lot crashes down on to the concrete below. ‘I’ll get a skip,’ he tells me.
Mrs S. reappears with a fresh apron, a mop, a broom and a whole range of cleaning materials, just as Fitz and Chan appear with their mums. ‘Jake said you might need a hand,’ Fitz says. ‘Man, what a war zone!’
Luke and Julie arrive next, along with a couple of the Phoenix regulars who’ve heard and want to help. News travels fast on the Eden Estate, and by mid morning we have more offers of help than we know what to do with. Luke brings a wheelbarrow, and pushes barrowloads of trashed and ruined stuff along to the lift and down to the skip that Jake has organized. The paint-spattered carpet is rolled up and hauled away, bin bag after bin bag filled with rubbish. Slowly, bit by bit, we strip the flat.
Chan’s mum rings around on her mobile for dustpans, brooms and mops, and a squad of helpers cleans up the broken glass, the splinters of wood. Mrs S. wipes the walls with soapy water and bleach, and even Fitz grabs a scourer and gets stuck in. At midday, the police arrive again, and Jake touches my elbow lightly.
‘Time I was out of here,’ he says.
‘Thanks, Jake, for all this,’ I say.
‘Don’t thank me,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Looks like you have a lot of friends.’ He winks at me and slips quietly away.
The flat is chaos, with maybe a dozen people scrubbing, wiping, clearing. My CD player is lying down on the concrete courtyard in a dozen little pieces, but Fitz has his own player plugged in, pumping out a lively techno beat to keep everyone working hard. Someone has brought a large can of white emulsion paint, and Julie makes a start on painting out the stupid taunt.
‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ one of the police officers asks.
Mrs S. invites us along to her flat. She bustles into the kitchen to make tea, and I can’t help noticing that the table is still set the way it was on Friday, the same sponge cake wrapped in cling film, looking a little crispy now. Some of the hundreds and thousands sprinkled across the cupcakes have bled into the icing, the colours running like watercolour paint in the rain. Scully hasn’t been round to see his gran yet – well, I guess he’s had better things to do.
‘We’ve spoken to Frank Scully,’ the policeman says, and Mrs S., emerging from the kitchen with a laden tray, flinches at the mention of her grandson’s name. The policeman, clearly, has no idea that she’s anything to do with Frank. ‘I’m afraid he has an alibi,’ the policeman explains.
‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘He was in Luton at the time of the break in,’ the policeman explains. ‘We know he’s been in the area, and a number of witnesses have confirmed that he was with them, at a nightclub, at the time of the disturbance. I’m sorry.’
‘Me too,’ I say.
‘So … what happens now?’ Mum asks.
The policeman shakes his head. ‘We have no prints, no proof, no eyewitness accounts,’ he says. ‘Frank Scully has a watertight alibi. Unless something new turns up, there’s very little we can do.’
Mrs S. is pouring tea into pretty china cups, but her hands shake and she puts the teapot down. ‘It’s not right,’ she says in a quavery voice. ‘What happened to Magi and Mouse is criminal, but my Frank wouldn’t – he just couldn’t …’
Mum runs a hand through her hair, embarrassed. ‘It’s OK, Mrs S., Frank has an alibi. He wasn’t here last night, so of course, it couldn’t have been him.’
‘No,’ Mrs S. says.
The policeman takes a sip of his tea, then stands, smiling sadly. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘That’s it, really. I’m sorry we haven’t come up with anything more conclusive. Mrs Kavanagh – it’s great to see the community rallying round to help you, but I have to advise you that whoever did this may still be out there. I don’t want to alarm you, but … well, just be careful. OK?’
The policeman turns to go.
‘Wait,’ Mrs S. says into the silence. ‘I don’t think … I mean …’
The policeman puts a hand on her arm, reassuringly. ‘I’m sure there’s really no cause for concern,’ he says.
‘My Frank wouldn’t do something like that,’ she repeats. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. But … well, he’s not telling you the truth, Officer, about where he was last night. He was here, on the estate.’
‘What?’ the policeman says. ‘You saw him?’
Mrs S. sinks down on to a chair, and Mum goes to her, slipping an arm round her shoulder.
‘I called the police, you know,’ Mrs S. is saying. ‘I heard all the racket, and I was frightened, of course, but things went quiet and I looked out into the corridor … about eleven, it was. I saw Frank, running down towards the lift. As I say, he wouldn’t do a thing like that, but perhaps … perhaps he saw someone himself?’
The old lady looks confused, her face crumpled and sad. ‘I just don’t understand why he’d lie about it, that’s all,’ she says.
The policeman looks at Mrs S. for a long time. ‘Are you sure?’ he asks, gently. ‘Are you sure the man you saw running towards the lift was Frank Scully? Could you have been mistaken?’
Mrs S. shakes her head. ‘He’s my grandson,’ she says. ‘Of course I’m sure.’
The policeman smiles and opens his notebook at a fresh page. ‘I think,’ he says briskly, ‘we’ve just got ourselves an eyewitness account.’
By nightfall, the flat is looking less like the aftermath of a small hurricane and more like a place to live again. The walls have been painted white, a green nylon carpet has been rolled out across the living-room floor and new mattresses and bedding have been delivered, courtesy of Luke and Julie.
Cat, with a paintbrush in her han
d and spatters of white emulsion in her hair, has been around all afternoon – Fitz rang her at lunchtime. ‘It’s awful,’ she whispered into my hair when I first opened the door to her. ‘Awful, awful, awful. Scully can’t get away with it this time.’
‘No,’ I said, thinking of Mrs S. with her crumpled face and her pretty china teacups and her iced cakes going stale under a layer of cling film. ‘This time, I don’t think he can.’
Scully was taken into custody a few hours ago, once Mrs S. had given a formal police statement. I could see Mum taking in deep breaths of air as the police car drove away. Her shoulders relaxed, and the fear and anxiety slipped away from her face, her eyes. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ she told me.
Maybe, just maybe, it is. Psycho Sam, the Rottweiler man, turns up while the clear-up crew are eating fish and chips, and promises he’ll cut us a great deal on a new bathroom suite and get it installed next day.
‘We’ll all chip in,’ Julie says. ‘Right?’
‘Right,’ Chan’s mum agrees. ‘No arguments.’
Mum just shakes her head and shrugs, helplessly, and I know she’s feeling the same way I do, overwhelmed with the support and help our friends and neighbours have given us today. I never really felt like I had a family before – it was always Mum and me, against the world. Now I can see that family comes in all shapes and forms. It’s like a whole new constellation just appeared on my star map, and together we can tackle anything – even Scully.
There’s a banging on the door, and Jake staggers into the flat carrying a six-foot potted palm. Behind him, a delivery guy from the local garden centre lugs in a Swiss cheese plant, almost as big.
‘Jake!’ Mum gasps. ‘You shouldn’t have! Oh …’
The tears that have been held back all day bubble up to the surface, misting her grey eyes. Jake just grins sheepishly, ruffling my hair, grinning. ‘They’re just plants,’ he says.
To Mum, of course, they are much more than that.
People start drifting off, promising they’ll be back next day if anything still needs doing. ‘No, no,’ Mum assures them. ‘We can manage now. We’ll be OK.’
Lucky Star Page 13