Baxter squealed and I shook him and then dropped him carefully on the bed.
‘Me now, me now!’ Pixie squealed.
‘Don’t do me, please don’t!’ said Bliss.
‘Yeah, but where will we go?’ Baxter persisted, his voice muffled by the pillow.
‘Well, we’ll go to the adventure playground,’ I said.
Baxter cheered, but Bliss looked worried.
‘What about the big boys?’
The last time we’d gone there after school there were seven or eight boys hanging out there, drinking and smoking and swearing as they mucked about in the kids’ den. Baxter had run up the ramp fearlessly to join them, but they’d thrown a lager can at him and pushed him over. I’d gone to rescue him and they’d thrown cans at me too, and said all sorts of horrid stuff. When I got all the kids home I’d sworn we’d never go there again – though Baxter moaned and complained, saying he wanted to go and play with the big boys.
‘The big boys won’t be there just now,’ I said.
‘Will they be at school?’ Bliss asked.
I nodded, though I was pretty sure they weren’t the sort of boys who went to school. Still, I knew they stayed up half the night, so they’d likely be fast asleep till lunchtime.
‘And we’re really really really not going to school?’ said Bliss. ‘Won’t we get into trouble?’
‘No, I told you, we’re on holiday. Now all go and get dressed. Pixie, I’d better dunk you in the bath.’
I served them cereal for breakfast and I let them put extra sugar on their Frosties. While they were all happily crunching away in the kitchen I went into the living room and picked up the phone. I dialled Mum’s mobile. I wasn’t going to tell her about Mikey. I just wanted to tell her we were all OK – and I needed to check she was fine too. But dialling didn’t get me anywhere. I just heard a recorded message: I’m sorry, it has not been possible to connect your call.
I tried again, just to check, and got the same message. Mum must have her mobile switched off. Too busy with Gordon, I thought, clenching my fists.
‘Lily?’ Bliss was standing at the door.
I slammed the phone down quickly.
‘Were you ringing Mum?’ Bliss whispered.
‘She’s having a lovely time on holiday and says she hopes we’re having a happy holiday too,’ I said quickly. ‘Bliss, you’ve got bright purple lips.’
‘Baxter poured us some Ribena.’
‘You’re meant to dilute it. Haven’t you lot had enough sugar? Your teeth will be black by the time Mum comes back.’
‘Lily, is mum coming back?’
‘Of course she is,’ I said, and I made myself laugh. ‘Honestly, Bliss, you’re hopeless. You always have to get in such a state over things. You’re such a baby!’
I was being horrible to her simply because she’d said aloud the thing that was starting to worry me dreadfully. It made me feel momentarily better to pour scorn on her. It was as if I was mocking my own worries and it might help make them go away. But then I saw Bliss’s poor little face, her eyes watery with tears, and I felt terrible.
I flew across the room and put my arms round her.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t cry. I don’t know how I could have been so horrid. Here, Bliss, you get your own back. Say something really mean and spiteful to me.
Go on, say it.’
Bliss fidgeted. ‘Come on, Bliss.’
‘I can’t think of anything,’ she said. ‘But don’t be cross again, Lily, please.’
‘It’s OK. I promise I won’t be cross again.’
‘Ever?’
‘Well. I can’t really promise that.’
‘All right, promise you won’t be cross again this week,’ said Bliss.
‘I promise,’ I said, and we stood quietly together, still hugging hard.
Then I heard a great swooshing sound from the kitchen. It sounded horribly like someone tipping the whole jumbo packet of Frosties onto a plate.
‘I will get cross with Baxter though,’ I said, running into the kitchen. ‘Baxter, for goodness’ sake. Tip them back in the packet.’
‘I wanted to see how many bowlfuls there were,’ he said. ‘I’m still hungry.’
‘No, you’re not, you’re greedy. Come on, help me clear up, you lot, then we’ll go to the adventure playground.’
Baxter made himself scarce at once, and I had to stop Pixie helping after she dropped a plate, but Bliss was very obliging.
‘Good girl, Bliss. You can take Headless to the playground.’
Headless was Bliss’s favourite cuddly teddy. She slept with him in her arms but Mum never let her take him out because he looked so awful. He used to be called Whitey because he was a polar bear, but now he was a sickly yellow-grey. He really was headless. Baxter had tried to tug him out of Bliss’s grasp and his head had come right off. Mum had tried to sew it back on but she couldn’t stitch it tight enough. His head wobbled alarmingly and fell off again when we were crossing a road – and a car ran over it. Mum wanted to put the rest of Headless in the bin but Bliss wouldn’t hear of it. She loved him more than ever now he was mangled.
‘I want my teddy,’ said Pixie.
‘Yes, we can take all the teddies – we can have a teddy bears’ picnic!’
I wrapped all the battered animals in Pixie’s old cot blanket and took the rest of the Frosties, a packet of Jammy Dodgers and a bottle of Coke from the kitchen. Pixie ran along beside me, wanting to add all sorts of weird stuff.
‘Let’s take a chair for all the teddies to sit on! Let’s take the teapot so the mummy teddy can have tea! Let’s take the washing-up bowl so we can do the washing up! Oh, let’s take the washing-up squirty thing so we can make bubbles!’
Bliss and Baxter could barely talk when they were Pixie’s age, they just mumbled together in their own twin language. I started to wish Pixie was a twin too – she was like a little woodpecker drilling into my brain. Still, it stopped me thinking too much. I was learning that the trick to stop feeling scared was to keep busy busy busy.
So I carted the teddies and their picnic to the door and sent the kids off to the toilet to do a wee because I didn’t want to get all the way to the playground and then have to trail back almost immediately because of an urgent call of nature. I was actually pulling the front door shut behind us when I suddenly stiffened. The door key! I felt sick. The flats seemed to slip sideways, as if there was a sudden earthquake in south-west London.
Mum had gone off with her handbag – and the keys were in a little pouch inside. Had she taken them with her? I rushed back inside, leaving Baxter and Bliss playing with the fork-lift truck, while Pixie started setting up a preliminary picnic on the doorstep. I looked on the coffee table, on the kitchen worktop, in all Mum’s drawers in the bedroom. I couldn’t find a spare key anywhere.
Mikey still had a set of keys, I knew that, and hated the way he could burst in on us any time he wanted. But he was in Glasgow now, so couldn’t help out.
What were we going to do? We couldn’t stay stuck inside the flat till the weekend. And what if Mum didn’t come back then?
I knew you could get new keys made, but you had to have another set to copy. You could get a whole new lock with a set of new keys – folk were doing it all the time on our estate to keep people out – but that cost a lot of money. We didn’t have any money, apart from a few pennies to rattle in an old piggy bank.
‘Come on, Lily, we want to go to the playground!’ Baxter shouted.
‘The bears are hungry, They’re growling, grrr, grrr, grrr,’ said Pixie.
‘I’m coming,’ I said.
I couldn’t keep them in. They’d be like wild bears themselves by lunchtime.
I put the door on the latch and pulled it closed. I looked up and down the balcony to see if anyone was watching. If any kids saw they could get in they’d steal stuff and trash the flat. I stood biting my thumbnail. Still, we didn’t really have any stuff worth stealing. And the thre
e kids had done a pretty good job of trashing the flat already, especially Baxter. We still had his purple crayon marks all over the walls and a great hole in the plaster where he’d bashed into it trying to skateboard. Bliss hadn’t made any marks, but there were lots of discoloured patches on the pale carpet where Pixie had peed, just like a little puppy marking her territory.
I gave the door another pull and set off down the balcony.
‘Come on, you lot,’ I said.
I put my finger to my lips as we passed Old Kath’s flat. We all went on tiptoe – but Kath’s got these great bat ears that are always flap-flap-flapping. There was a tap from inside her kitchen window. I pretended not to hear and pushed everyone past, but Kath was at her front door while I was still trudging for the lift.
‘Hey, you kids,’ she yelled, and she caught hold of Pixie. She moved quicker than a rattlesnake for all she’d got a zimmer frame.
Pixie gave a little squeal. Old Kath kept hold of her firmly with her gnarled old fingers and made ridiculous coochy-coo noises as if Pixie was a little baby instead of a person.
‘How’s my little angel then?’ said Old Kath.
‘She’s fine. The lift’s here. Come on, Pixie,’ I said urgently.
‘Where are you going?’ Old Kath asked, still with Pixie in her clutches.
‘We’re going to the adventure playground and I’m going to be boss of the whole den,’ said Baxter. ‘I’ll shoot anyone who comes near,’ he said, turning his arms into a machine gun and making mad ack-ack-ack noises.
‘That’s not very nice,’ said Old Kath, because he was clearly aiming straight at her. ‘Why aren’t you kids in school? It is monday, isn’t it, girlie?’ she said to Bliss.
Bliss looked agonized and said nothing.
‘Yeah, it’s Monday, but we’ve got an Inset day off school so the teachers can have a staff meeting,’ I gabbled.
‘Honestly! They never had that sort of thing when I was at school,’ said Old Kath. She looked up the balcony towards our front door. ‘Where’s your mum, then?’
‘Oh, she’s just gone down the stairs. She doesn’t like to use the lift because it’s so smelly,’ I lied.
‘Yes, it’s them wretched lads. They pee there on purpose,’ said Old Kath. She glared at Baxter. ‘Don’t let me catch you weeing in the lift, young man.’
‘No, I’ll wee on you instead,’ said Baxter.
Old Kath gasped. I grabbed Baxter and shook him hard.
‘Oh, wait till I tell your mum on you!’ said Old Kath. She clutched her zimmer frame and hobbled to the edge of the balcony.
‘Where is she, then?’ she said, peering down.
‘Oh, maybe she’s gone to buy some cigarettes. We’ll catch up with her. Say sorry, Baxter, and come on.’
I pinched his arm really hard so that he blurted out a mumble that could have been sorry. Then I picked up Pixie and made a run for the lift, Bliss leaping after me, terrified of being left behind. We were in the lift before Old Kath could stop us.
‘You hurt me, you mean pig,’ Baxter whined, examining the red mark on his arm.
‘Yeah, well, I meant to hurt you. All of you, I told you to keep quiet going past Old Kath’s. She’ll still be squawking about telling Mum when we come back. She might even come stomping along to our flat, and then what are we going to do?’
‘Tell her to bog off,’ said Baxter.
‘Stop that silly talk right this minute, Baxter,’ I said, putting my face up close to his. ‘If she finds out Mum’s gone she’ll tell someone. Maybe she’ll even go down the council office and send a social worker to see us.’
‘Well, we’ll tell them to bog off,’ said Baxter, laughing stupidly.
‘Yes, and then they’ll lock us all up in a children’s home,’ I said, as we clattered out of the lift. ‘Separate ones. And you’ll probably end up in a special strict one for bad boys.’
‘Good, see if I care,’ Baxter shouted, but he was looking scared now.
Bliss took hold of his hand and he didn’t pull it away.
‘Mum’s coming back by Saturday,’ she said.
‘Yes, but the social workers will think she’s an unfit mother because she left us,’ I said. ‘You don’t get it, any of you, do you?’
They all stared up at me, eyes big, faces white – and I felt terrible for frightening them so.
‘But it’s all right, everything will be fine, so long as you’re good and keep quiet when I say. Now, come on, we’ll go to the playground.’
We had the adventure playground all to ourselves, apart from one girl who had taken her baby there. The baby was asleep in his buggy, his head lolling. The girl swung listlessly backwards and forwards, looking half asleep too.
I wondered if Mum and I had looked like that once. I suddenly wanted Mum so much. I wanted to crouch down and whimper like Pixie when she’s tired, but I made myself organize the kids instead. I let Baxter stagger up the slide to the makeshift den on top. It was just a few planks of wood but it was where the big boys hung out. Baxter whooped triumphantly when he found a cigarette butt and a crumpled can of beer. He squatted up at the top, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other, yelling, ‘I’m the boss of this den!’
Pixie wanted to clamber up after him and perch there too with her teddies and all the paraphernalia from home, but I knew Baxter wouldn’t want to share.
‘I know a much better place for our picnic,’ I said, and I spread out the rug on the top of the little roundabout. I hoisted Pixie up on top and helped Bliss after her. I felt foolish getting the teddies all settled too, glancing at the girl with the baby, but she didn’t seem the slightest bit interested. So we sat and spun slowly round and round and round, propelled by my foot.
‘More, more, roundy roundy,’ Pixie yelled every time we slowed to a halt. Then she decided she felt sick and giddy. Headless had the same problem. Pixie grabbed him and made him throw up.
‘How can he be sick when he hasn’t got a head?’ said Bliss.
‘He can’t help not having a head. And he’s still very very sick – listen,’ said Pixie. She was making Headless make horribly realistic noises.
‘I think I feel sick too,’ said Bliss, holding her stomach.
‘No you don’t. No one feels sick any more,’ I said firmly, ‘because it’s time for the picnic.’
I got the Frosties and Jammy Dodgers and started sharing them out, giving tiny portions to each teddy too. Baxter came tumbling down from his den, demanding his own share, and some for his fork-lift truck. He was still clinging to his soggy cigarette and can of beer.
‘Throw them away, they’re disgusting,’ I said. ‘You don’t know who’s had their mouths all round them.’
‘Yes, I do. It was one of the big boys – Jacko or Lenny or Big Boots – I’m in their gang now,’ said Baxter.
‘You wish,’ I said.
‘I am. I’m the boss of this whole den,’ said Baxter. ‘I’m your boss, Lily Green, and you have to do exactly what I say.’ He kicked at me and hurt my leg. I decided to teach him a lesson.
‘OK then,’ I said submissively.
‘What?’
‘You’re the boss, Baxter. You can tell us all what to do and when to eat and all that stuff. You’re in charge now.’
‘Yeah, I’m the boss,’ Baxter said, kicking his heels.
‘Are you listening, Bliss and Pixie?’ I said. ‘We all have to do what Baxter says now. He’s looking after us. He’s going to tell us what to do.’
‘You bet I am,’ said Baxter, but he sounded uncertain. He bashed his can of beer on the planks of wood. ‘You girls just do what I say, OK?’
‘OK, boss,’ I said, and Bliss and Pixie said it too. We all looked at Baxter.
‘Yeah,’ he said again, and started picking his nose. He looked at me as if he wanted me to tell him he was being disgusting. I just raised my eyebrows and whistled casually. I made a little crumb meal for all the teddies.
‘Is Headless feeling like eating now?’ I asked,
and Bliss nodded yes.
We three girls helped all the teddies have their picnic too. Then we let them slump over, sleeping it off. We slumped too.
Baxter was watching us.
‘What shall we do now?’ he said.
‘Well, you’ve got to say. You’re the boss,’ I said.
‘Yes. Well. We’ll . . .’ Baxter looked all round for inspiration. ‘We can have some more food,’ he said eventually, licking his finger and dabbing up a few biscuit crumbs.
‘Good idea, boss. So where are we going to get it from?’ I said.
‘We’ll steal it,’ said Baxter, looking fierce.
He looked over at the girl with her sleepy baby in the buggy.
‘I bet they’ve got biscuits,’ he said.
‘OK. Go and steal them then,’ I said.
Baxter swallowed. He looked hard at the girl. She was twice his size and was frowning. She looked like she’d slap him one if he even dared speak to her.
‘Maybe I’m not really hungry,’ said Baxter. ‘This is boring,’ he said. ‘You be the boss now, Lily. You tell us what we’re going to do.’
I had it all figured out. It had just suddenly occurred to me. I was so excited by the idea. I had little goosebumps all the way up and down my arms.
‘We’ll go to the park,’ I said.
‘What park? Parks are boring, boring, boring,’ said Baxter.
‘Not this park. The great park we can see from the flats. The one with all the hills and trees.’
Baxter stared at me. So did Bliss.
They’d come up to the top-floor balcony with me, they’d seen the hills and trees for themselves, but it was like something they’d seen on television.
‘Can we really get to that park?’ said Bliss.
‘Of course we can,’ I said, though I’d never really thought about it before. Mum had never taken us – but Mum didn’t wear the right shoes for parks. She either wore her high heels or flip-flop sandals in summer that let in all the grit and stones and made her swear.
‘Do you know the way, Lily?’ said Bliss.
‘Of course I do,’ I said.