Emma heard her son clumping up the stairs in his trainers. There was no point getting him to take his shoes off indoors. The bare wooden floors played hell with the soles of delicate socks. “Mum!” He yelled from the top of the stairs and Emma poked her head out of her bedroom. “Oh, there you are. I took your dress back to Marie’s house but she’s not there. Kane said his dad gave her a slap last night and she’s in the hospital.”
“Really?” Emma looked ashen and Nicky nodded at the enthusiastic response to his news flash. “And I saw Big Jason McArthur outside their house smokin’ weed. He said he’s gonna come round and give you one.” Nicky licked his lips and looked worried. “Is he gonna give you a slap or a weed stick?”
“Neither, Nicky. We don’t take anything off Big Jason.”
Nicky followed her from one side of the room to the other, tripping over the sleeping bag serving as Emma’s bed. “Mum, if he tries to give you something you don’t want, do you think I could give ‘im a slap?”
Emma squatted down next to her son’s loyal face. He oozed concern for her in his sad blue eyes. “No babe. He’s a forty four year old smack addict and a patched gang member. You’re a beautiful six year old boy with a big heart and it won’t go well for either of us.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking ‘bout it and I reckon me an’ Mo can probably pop the tyres on his Harley.”
“Seriously Nicky, if you want us in big trouble, that’s the way to go. And anyway, it’s not really a Harley, he just thinks it is.”
“Ok then.” He looked happy.
Emma’s brow furrowed in fear. “Don’t do it, Nicky. I’m telling you. I’ll be really cross!”
“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “Mum?” He fixed intelligent eyes on her face. “That man last night was kissin’ you a real long time. And he was enjoyin’ it. Why was he kissin’ you?”
Emma gulped. “He was giving me a new year’s kiss.”
Nicky rolled his eyes. “Well that’s dumb! It’s only November!”
“He’s Russian,” Emma said, biting her top lip and transferring clean washing from the black bin liner into the suitcase balanced on a rickety cupboard. “Everything’s upside down there.”
“What even Christmas?” Nicky sounded indignant. “That’s sucky!”
“Yep,” Emma answered. “Now please could you wheel your suitcase here for me? Then I can put your clean clothes back in it.”
The child skipped off to his room and brought back his wardrobe on wheels. “I miss Nana Lucya’s house,” he said softly. “With proper beds and wardrobes and stuff. Can we go back there?”
“Nana Lucya died, remember?” Emma’s heart constricted in her chest and she rested her hands on her son’s slumped shoulders. He face planted roughly into her stomach and put his free hand around her waist.
“But I still miss her, Mummy,” he sniffed.
“Me too,” Emma whispered. “Me too.”
Nicky balanced his chin on the belt of Emma’s jeans. “Mum? Nana was Russian too, wasn’t she? But she had Christmas and New Year at the right time. Maybe the man got mixed up.”
“Clever boy!” Emma faked her joviality, realising her mistake too late with this highly intelligent child. Each year it got harder and harder to deflect his questions. “It must be me getting mixed up. Silly Mummy.”
Nicky laughed and repeated the label. “Silly Mummy,” he chortled, placing his neatly rolled clothes in the suitcase and wheeling it back to his bedroom.
Emma breathed a sigh of relief and suppressed the sick feeling in her stomach. “Damn! Susan!” The sudden flash of realisation bit into her consciousness and Emma grappled in her jeans pocket for her mobile phone. She needed to text her friend to apologise for her hasty exit but also to stop her passing on Emma’s contact details to Frederik’s handsome friend. She typed in the hurried text and pressed ‘send’. The phone bleeped immediately and Emma peered at the screen. ‘This phone has insufficient credit,’ the message stated and her text flashed back on screen with an option to, ‘Try again.’ “Not much point really, is there?” she grumbled, knowing the last of her money went on refuelling the hire car before she returned it the night before and then the taxi home.
“I’m not driving on that estate,” the taxi driver scoffed and Emma had argued with him.
“It’s literally down there!” she said. “I can see the house from here!”
“Well you bloody walk there then,” he replied grumpily.
“So you won’t drive onto the estate, but it’s ok for me to walk there in the dark with a sleeping child?” Emma bit.
The man shrugged. “You chose to live there,” he said in an irritating sing-song voice. “Ten quid please.”
Emma threw the money onto the passenger seat and hitched the sleeping Nicky higher over her shoulder. She kept a stiletto in either hand to defend herself. “Actually,” she said through the open passenger window at the smug man behind the steering wheel. “Nobody chooses to live on this estate. God forbid you ever hit hard times!”
“Oh sod off!” he replied and pulled away from the curb, activating his central locking at the same time as closing the electric windows tightly.
It was a five minute walk through the darkened no-go area. Most of the street lamps were smashed and Emma walked barefoot, listening out for sounds that might indicate danger. Many pairs of eyes watched but she arrived home unharmed, with sore feet from the frozen ground and a hole in both soles of her work tights.
She stood in her empty bedroom and contemplated the calamity of no phone credit. Susan wouldn’t divulge her contact details. They went through university, struggling together, one with a toddler and the other with progressive blindness, both robbed of aspects of life but for different reasons. “She won’t give him it,” Emma concluded with a nod of satisfaction.
“I hope you don’t either!” Nicky said with austerity, kneeling down next to the black bag and reaching inside for his freshly laundered school shorts.
“You hope I don’t what?” Emma asked her son, switching her mind back to the present.
“I hope you don’t give Big Jason it!” He grunted as he found his faded sports shirt and flicked it in the air, inspecting it for clumps of the cheap washing powder Emma was forced to use.
“I definitely won’t!” Emma promised, shivering at the thought.
“Marie did!” Nicky piped up. “That’s why Kane’s dad gave ‘er a slap and put ‘er in the hospital.”
Emma shook her head and exhaled. She stared around her at the near derelict house and wondered what the hell she was doing.