‘Don’t worry,’ the man said, seeing the panic in my eyes. ‘I’m not staying.’
His voice was gentle, the exact opposite of the policemen who’d spoken to me earlier. It was soothing, as if it could guide you into meditation. He passed me the cardboard sheet from his hand. It was big, with a picture of a television printed on the front.
‘That’s your bed,’ he said. ‘Put it under your sleeping bag and it’ll stop the cold getting through from the ground.’
Then he rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a woolly hat with a pink pom-pom on the top.
‘Heat comes out of your head and feet,’ he said, passing it to me. ‘Wear it while you sleep.’
I’d already taken the cardboard so it felt rude not to take the hat.
‘And I’d take those earrings out if I were you,’ he said.
I felt my earlobes. I had a pair of teardrop silver earrings that my grandmother had given me for my thirteenth birthday.
‘You don’t want someone ripping them out in the middle of the night,’ he said.
I took them out.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He smiled again. It was an honest smile, a smile you could trust. But I wasn’t ready to trust anyone, not then.
I watched as the man rummaged in his pockets again.
‘Barbecue chicken wrap,’ he said, pulling out a cellophane package and passing it to me. ‘More your type of thing?’
I gave him a weak smile. I know it was weak, because I felt weak. But it was the best I could manage at the time.
‘I like cheese and pickle too,’ I said. ‘I’m not picky really.’
He placed a finger on his forehead and tapped it.
‘Noted,’ he said.
He began to turn away.
‘What’s your name?’ I said.
The man looked at me, then crouched down, pulling off a moss-green glove as he held out his hand to me. When I felt it wrap around my palm it was like a hot-water bottle. I looked into the man’s pale eyes. He was the first person to touch me in days.
‘My name is Martin Wallis,’ he said. ‘But they call me Robin Hood.’
We found some cardboard at a dumpster behind the pub, then went back to Manor Cottage and set up our beds for the night. I showed Luca how to layer a bin liner on top of the cardboard and checked his sleeping bag to make sure it didn’t have any stitching coming loose. It still had the shop label on. I read the description: water-resistant down, a four-season rating and a pillow pocket in the hood. It was probably the best sleeping bag on the market but, all the same, I knew Luca was going to have a terrible night of it.
I told him it was best to layer up his clothing before he got into the bag but he still pushed his shoes off and started his ritual with the socks. He peeled each one off real slow then placed them across the floor in little rows like he had the night before. As soon as he’d taken off the last sock he began unpacking his leather rucksack. It was mainly full of opaque tubs. He laid them out in rows next to his socks. Behind him I saw something scurry along the wall.
I nodded to Luca’s trumpet case.
‘Do you play?’
‘No.’
He carried on unpacking.
‘Oh,’ I said.
I was kind of hoping he’d pull out the trumpet and play a mini-concert for me right there in Manor Cottage. I love orchestra music. The way the strings flow and the piano music sails along, making you sit back in your seat and melt right into the fabric. My mother used to take me to see the Symphony Orchestra. She was a big fan of classical music, hated anything with lyrics. Now me, I love music that’s got truth in it. Not the stuff about sexy women with big asses but the stuff about life. The kind of music that stirs a person up inside. I don’t think the orchestra stirred Mother up though; I think it placated her. She was never interested in truth.
‘My granddad used to play,’ Luca said.
He’d stopped messing around with his tubs.
‘Was he any good?’ I asked.
Luca nodded.
‘He was a genius,’ he said.
He picked up his can of beer and crossed his legs, turning his body to face me.
‘He was taught by Louis Armstrong. You’ve heard of Louis Armstrong?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s awesome.’
He grinned.
‘He was a pretty awesome guy. He was the only person who really listened to me. I mean really listened. When he died he gave me this …’
He stroked the trumpet case beside him. I felt the key around my neck.
‘That too,’ he said.
I kind of knew the key was precious the first time I saw it, but now it felt heavy, like a weight attached to my soul. I let go of it, letting it drop over my top.
Luca was slurping at his beer. I could tell it was already getting to him because he kept missing his lips when he tried to drink. I knocked back the rest of my own. Luca looked at me with a mischievous grin.
‘I’m going to show you something,’ he said, ‘but you can’t look.’
I rolled my eyes.
‘How can you show me something if I can’t look?’
He sniggered.
‘Just turn around for a second,’ he said.
I rolled my eyes again, before swivelling away. A rat was staring right at me from the other side of the room. Its eyes were glinting red in the light, its front teeth long yellow buggers capable of puncturing tyres. I usually like animals but this looked like a right vicious bastard.
I kept real still, like I wasn’t anything but a piece of furniture. That’s what I used to do when Mother gave me Stillness Lessons. I’d sit in the corner of the room with my feet square on the floor and my arms crossed as she worked on her business proposals at the dining-room table. She’d put a twenty-minute timer on the edge and say she’d only let me go once it rang. I suppose twenty minutes doesn’t sound long but it is when you’re six years old and every time you shuffle or lick your lips or even just blink too quickly the timer restarted. So I learnt to pretend to be a piece of furniture. A cabinet or a bookshelf (being a fridge worked the best), all stiff and straight with no feeling in my limbs. You become less threatening when you become a piece of furniture. No living thing is threatened by a lump of wood.
Behind me I could hear Luca clicking his trumpet case shut and then the whirr as he wound up his lamp. I couldn’t help looking down at the key. It glowed around my neck, oozing light, perfectly in time with the lamp that got brighter with each turn. I watched it glowing against the walls and into the rat’s eyes. But even with the glowing the bastard didn’t move. It was creepy how it just sat there, staring at me instead of scurrying away. It was like it was waiting for something but I didn’t know what. I heard Luca clicking the handle back into place.
‘You can look now,’ he said.
When I turned around Luca was sitting on his knees with an envelope in his hand. It was a big square thing, browned on the edges.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
He looked all excited.
‘A map.’
‘A map?’ I said, smiling. ‘For what?’
He leant in close as though we weren’t the only people in the room.
‘The fortune,’ he said.
He ran his finger all around the edge of the envelope.
‘Granddad put it in the case along with the trumpet and key,’ he said. ‘He sealed it up and put it in the attic with my name across it. It was his last gift to me.’
His eyes were bright as though he was full of a thousand stories. How they played games together, how his granddad taught him all his wisdom and left him little gifts that only the two of them understood. I took a deep breath and reached towards the envelope. Luca snatched it back.
‘Is it OK if I’m the only one who looks at it for now?’ he asked.
It seemed an odd request but I suppose it was all part of the granddad–grandson connection. I sat back and shrugged.
‘Sure.’
I pulled my fingers across my mouth like a zip.
‘My lips are sealed.’
He sighed and nodded as though he was pleased with how the exchange had passed. He shuffled on to his bottom.
‘I’m glad you’re here, Molly,’ he said.
Then he looked at me all serious again.
‘Can you turn back around?’
I wanted to tell him I knew he was going to put the map in his trumpet case but a part of me didn’t want to ruin this little game. When I turned to the wall the rat had gone.
‘None of them believe me,’ Luca said. ‘They never believe me.’
‘Who?’ I asked.
He didn’t say anything but I could hear him winding up the lamp again. I turned around. He stopped winding. He took his glasses off, blowing on them before wiping them with the fabric of his T-shirt.
‘I know it’s there,’ he said. ‘I just know it.’
Luca climbed into his sleeping bag. I took off my shoes, put on all my layers and got into mine too. We both lay down on our cardboard beds, staring up at the ceiling.
I thought of the rat; there was probably more than one. On the streets they left you alone unless they smelt food. Private Pete got nipped on the thumb once, after falling asleep with a burger clutched in his hand.
‘You haven’t got any sweets left, have you?’ I said.
Luca rolled over and rifled through his rucksack. I heard him yawn.
‘No, I ate them all,’ he said. ‘I’ll get some more in the morning.’
I looked up at the ceiling again. There was a circle of light coming from the lamp. It hovered golden, like a faraway sun. I found the metal pillbox in my pocket and pulled it out. On the front were hand-painted wildflowers against a pastel-blue background. I unclicked the latch. I couldn’t see much so I used my fingers to stroke the hairs inside. They were still soft, like down. I put the box away and tried to get comfortable.
You get all sorts of problems sleeping on the streets; mine is my hip. As soon as I lie down I feel pain in the right side, aching and stabbing. It trickles all the way down my thigh. When it’s cold I feel it twice as bad, like icicles pricking my nerves. The old Molly would have found something to ease the pain – something quick, something direct. Instead, I curled up into a ball and tucked my chin to my chest. I focused on the warmth of my body, lulled by the rhythm of my lungs breathing long and slow, waiting for the outside world to slip away. It’s a strange kind of magic, my own disappearing act. It doesn’t ease the pain as easily as the old way of course, but the hard tricks are the ones that stay with you the longest. If I’ve learnt anything in life, I’ve learnt that.
The lamplight faded, moonlight creeping through the edges of the boarded-up windows. As I curled up tighter I saw something glinting by Luca’s side. I squinted until I could see the edge of it, sharp and smooth. It was only when I saw the black handle with a polished screw in the middle that I realized what it was.
We all need things to make us feel safe. For me, it was Rubberband Girls. For Luca, it was a knife.
The Deadly Row of Cars
Rusby had a knife. It was a handmade hunting knife with a ten-inch blade that his grandmother had given to him on his eighteenth birthday. He’d told her it was for whittling; then he sent her the link on eBay.
The knife was a thing of beauty, the curve of the bone handle designed to sit snug in the palm, a rippling marble effect on the Damascus-steel blade. He’d show it to people like it was a new watch, holding it flat out in his hands, angling the metal to the light.
Then one day it was stolen.
We were living in a squat at an old community centre and we’d had a few people over. It was a small building with an open-plan kitchen and a snooker table that stood by two toilets, one for boys and one for girls, though the girls’ toilet was always out of use. Rusby had found us a bed frame and a mattress, and even a couple of falling-apart sofas with cushions that dipped down in the middle like crooked smiles. Across the window were bedsheets instead of curtains, which tinted the room with an orange, otherworldly light. You could almost call it cosy.
Everyone was drinking and shooting up, too far out of it to notice that Rusby had taken off the leather case strapped under his tracksuit and placed it on the snooker table before going into the boys’ toilet. He always took the knife off before going in there because the blade dug into his thigh when he sat down. Usually he’d still take it in with him, leaving it on top of the cistern. He didn’t realize his mistake until he came back out.
He was all obscenities when he saw it was gone, ‘fucking’ this and ‘knobhead’ that. Repeating the same thing over and over, getting louder and redder and flinging stupid things like pens and lighters across the room. Eventually he calmed down enough to do a head count. The only person missing was a small, scrappy lad called Stevie. He was new to the streets and had one of those fancy haircuts, two bolts of lightning shaved into the side of his scalp. He said he was seventeen but he couldn’t have been much more than fifteen. He had one of those baby faces; you could just tell.
Rusby stormed around the hall, a broken snooker cue clutched in his hand, listing all the nasty things he was going to do to Stevie once he found his sorry arse. Things he would do with his knife; things he would do with his hands. Medieval-style torture with iron maidens and racks. How he would hang, draw and quarter the lad and how he knew exactly what that meant. The only bit of history Rusby knew was the gory stuff.
Yasmin from Glasgow was smoking a cigarette on the bed with me.
‘Don’t be so harsh, Rusby,’ she said, waving her hand in the air. ‘He’s only a wee lad.’
Usually, Rusby wouldn’t have said a word to her. Yasmin was a beautiful girl, flawless cinnamon-brown skin, cupid’s bow lips and feline eyes accentuated by a dark flick of eyeliner. She’s a high-class lass, way out of Rusby’s league and he knew it. He could barely string a sentence together when he spoke to her, but he didn’t mind her being around the squat. In fact, she was the only friend I was allowed to see.
A wave of calm seemed to wash over Rusby as smoke rippled out of Yasmin’s pursed lips. Every muscle in his body lengthened; he seemed broader and taller than his usual weedy self, as though he’d been inflated. He pointed his snooker cue at Yasmin.
‘Nobody takes what belongs to me,’ he said. ‘That boy is dead.’
He took his phone from his pocket and made a few calls. Two hours later there were ten men in our squat who I’d never met before. All of them were hunched as they swaggered in, eyes scanning the room, scars across their tattooed faces and necks. I’d seen men like this before, become friends with them, but there was something that radiated from this group – the detachment in their hooded eyes, an animal aggression brimming beneath – that made me shrink down. Yasmin felt it too. She made her excuses, picking up her Dior handbag and slipping out of the fire exit.
These gorilla-type beasts fist-bumped and shook hands, slapping Rusby on the back, talking in mumbles, grunts and head nods. Rusby stood, shoulders rolled back, clarity in his eyes; it seemed plausible that this scarecrow of a man might really be in charge. But then, Rusby can do just about anything when he wants to.
I sat there on the bed, hugging my knees to my chest, eyes skipping back and forth as I watched them plan it all. The locations, the connections, people in security, people in surveillance. They had networks all over the country so if Stevie decided to leg it they’d be right behind him, sniffing at his tracks. They’d hacked into his social media, knew exactly what part of Nottingham he was in and who he was meeting. They planned their attack, what weapons to use, the best alleys to hide in and how to escape without being identified. Rusby hardly said a word, letting his pack unveil the master plan. The poor lad didn’t have a chance.
Rusby got his knife back a week later. He didn’t tell me about it but I saw it by the kitchen sink, pushed into its case with a dark crimson stain soaked i
nto the leather. He saw me staring and picked up the case, winding the leather strap around it, slow and deliberate. Then he looked back at me with that same hooded detachment.
‘The boy’s learnt his lesson,’ he said.
I later found out this lesson had left the boy in intensive care. His parents had been called in because of his age: twelve years old. Tall for a twelve-year-old, but twelve years old all the same. I still think about him sometimes, that little lad, Stevie; I wonder if he went back home to his parents, if he was checking behind him, hoping lightning wouldn’t strike twice like the bolts in his hair.
I didn’t see the hunting knife after that. Rusby started carrying more basic weapons: crowbars, metal poles, nail files sharpened to a point at the tip. All of them were classified as offensive weapons and could put him in prison for up to four years if he got caught, but he didn’t care. He thought he was invincible by then.
One day, after we’d gone to see his grandmother for the usual Jammie Dodgers and tears, I asked Rusby what had happened to the knife she’d bought him. He was biting his nails in that way he did, digging into the flesh.
‘Dodgy Mike gave me fifty for it,’ he said.
He said it so casual, like he’d sold an old bike he’d grown out of and not a hunting knife that some poor lad had nearly died for. But then I realized, it was never about the knife. It was like he said to Yasmin: Nobody takes what belongs to me.
In Rusby’s mind, I belonged to him. Even when he didn’t want me I belonged to him. And in running away, I had as good as stolen that knife myself.
I was woken by a nudging in my ribs. When you sleep on the streets you learn when to play dead. Nine times out of ten you get left alone. The one time you don’t, your ribs get fractured.
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