Fragments Read online

  ‘Still here,’ I say lamely. My eyes sting from the crying and my body aches from sleeping in the damn straw. I feel hollow inside. Scooped out.

  Ariella’s outfit is a bit less out-there today. She’s dressed in cut-off jeans and a silvery T-shirt. Her hair is all matted at the back. She has the Gomez bag with her and starts taking out what looks like a couple of bagels, wrapped in cellophane, and two cartons of orange juice. My mouth instantly waters and, yet again, my body reminds me it needs some fuel. I pick up a carton of orange juice first and pretty much down it in one go.

  ‘Mummy is very sad today,’ she says matter of factly as she hands me one of the bagels, like we’d just been talking about this.

  ‘Oh?’ I say and unwrap the bagel. The smell of peanut butter hits the back of my throat. I’ve always hated it. ‘Um, are they both peanut butter?’

  She doesn’t blink as she swaps bagels with me. I open this one and see jam inside. Phew. I take a huge bite and feel the energy instantly start to come back.

  ‘Daddy gets cross when she cries and says she has to pull herself together,’ continues Ariella.

  ‘Oh dear.’ I don’t know what to say.

  But this doesn’t seem to bother Ariella much. ‘Mummy says if she had some more help around the place she’d be able to get on top of things. But then they fight. I don’t like it when they shout.’ I almost laugh at the grown-up voice she puts on for a minute.

  Her eyes are lowered as she munches on the bagel and we eat in silence for a little while. Then she does that sly thing with her eyes again.

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone about you,’ she says and something makes fear tingle up the back of my neck.

  I put down the almost finished bagel and look at her but she won’t meet my gaze.

  She’s told someone. I know it.

  ‘If you have mentioned me, even by accident, I need to know,’ I say, trying to keep my voice light, although anger and fear rise inside me.

  Her cheeks flood with colour as she finally meets my gaze.

  ‘I didn’t tell Mummy about you!’ she says. ‘I just said I had a secret and that I wouldn’t share it, that’s all. I’m cross with Mummy because she never plays with me any more. What are you doing?’

  I’ve jumped to my feet and am frantically rolling up the sleeping bag. Got to get away from here. Her mum sounds like she has her own worries but I don’t think I can stay here. It was mad to think I could, even for a day or so. I just needed to get myself together but maybe I’m as together as I’m ever going to be.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Ariella’s tone is panicky and too loud. I shush her, trying to sound gentle in case she has a full-on tantrum and starts wailing.

  ‘I need to go.’

  ‘But you can’t!’

  I don’t hear anyone coming but a face is suddenly there, above the top of the door of the stall.

  CHAPTER 4

  a very experienced babysitter

  It’s a woman in, I don’t know, her thirties, maybe. She has dark hair that’s pulled into a ponytail. The roots are greasy. Her eyes are puffy and her face pale. She gasps and lifts a hand to her mouth before pushing the door open violently.

  That’s when I see the blob shape of a baby, strapped to her chest in one of those sling things. All I can see is a tuft of gingery hair poking out the top, two scrawny little legs with the feet covered and a hand with a tiny, wrinkled, bunched fist.

  ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ says the woman. Ariella scrambles to her feet.

  ‘Mummy, this is Kyla and she’s my friend!’

  ‘Mummy’ fixes me with a look that makes my scalp shrivel.

  ‘I repeat,’ she says icily, ‘who ARE you? And why are you in our stables?’

  I swallow. My mouth has gone completely dry. I wonder if I should push her out of the way and run but I can’t bring myself to do it when she’s carrying that baby.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumble. ‘I’ve got nowhere to go.’ Words start tumbling out of my mouth. ‘I was in care in, um . . .’ – I frantically search in my brain for the name of the nearest town – ‘Arnley . . . and the place got closed down. They wanted to ship us to London and I didn’t want to go so I ran away. I’m really sorry. I’ll go . . .’ I don’t know where all that rubbish just came from. I wouldn’t believe me if I was her.

  ‘Yes, I think you’d better be off,’ she says sharply.

  ‘Nooo!’ Ariella whines. ‘Mummeee! I want her to stay!’

  Her mother opens and closes her mouth, colour rising in her face. For a moment the resemblance between her and Ariella is strong. That’s when a thin, high cry comes from the woman’s chest and the baby’s legs do a sort of frog kick.

  ‘Oh hell!’ says the woman. ‘You’ve set Kit off now!’ She places her hand at the back of its head and starts jiggling, which just makes the baby’s wails take on a juddering, shaky sound.

  Ariella is properly crying now. ‘Please, Mummy!’ she says. ‘Please don’t make her go!’

  I look uncertainly between them, still not sure whether I should bolt.

  ‘Look, you’d better come into the house for a while,’ says the woman with a sigh. ‘I can’t think straight when he’s crying like this.’

  I let out a slow breath. Maybe she can see I’m not dangerous.

  Ariella manages to give me a tear-stained smile while her mother’s eyes are focused downwards on the baby. She turns and gives a gesture for us to follow.

  We follow her out of the barn. The sky is a flat grey today but, even so, the light hurts my eyes after the dimness of the stable. A headache spasms across my forehead and for the first time since I woke up, my cheek throbs. I’m thirsty, dirty and sore and I need the toilet. I haven’t got the energy to run. Something Mum used to say comes into my mind: ‘What will be, will be.’

  There isn’t anyone else in the farmyard, which seems weird after all the activity here yesterday. Maybe it’s a Sunday or something. Do farmers work on Sundays? I can’t even remember a time when days of the week meant anything, anyway. Working for Zander wasn’t exactly a Monday-to-Saturday job.

  We pass several of the big warehouse barns and come to a huge gate over a cattle-grid. Ariella’s mother swings the gate open and waits for us to come through, avoiding my eye all the time. That’s when I know there’s no point entertaining any ideas about her letting me stay here and play at farmers. She’s getting straight on the phone to the police after she’s calmed that shrieking baby down.

  I could run, but the thing is, I really need the toilet. There’s no way I’m going in any straw again. I’ve still got scratches on my bum from last night. I reckon I’ve got fifteen minutes, tops, before she’s calling the cops. I’ll go to the loo. Might get a drink of water and see if there’s any money lying around too.

  We cross a narrow road. Mrs Miserable opens another gate. There’s a sign saying Craydale Farm. The house I could see from up the hill is up a short driveway. It’s old-fashioned looking and red brick with rows of windows criss-crossed with metal. Completely different from the modern one that I stayed in with Cal and everyone. The one that got blown to bits.

  No, no, don’t think about that now, I tell myself. Got enough on my plate.

  We crunch up the gravel driveway, the baby-siren wailing the entire time. Ariella keeps her mouth shut but shoots glances at me every few seconds.

  Parked in front of the house is one of those big hybrid SUVs. The chassis is so high up most people need to use the elevating platform to get into the thing, or so Jax told me, who loved these cars.

  A huge grey dog springs up outside the front door. I stop abruptly. I don’t do dogs. And this is no handbag mutt. This thing is more like a horse. It’s the colour of a rainy sky and has eyes that seem to look right through to my juicy innards. It goes to nudge its massive head against me and my hands fly up in self-defence.

  The dog comes up to Ariella’s shoulder but she casually elbows it out of the way.

  ‘Lie down, Brutus!’ sh
e says crossly. To my amazement, the beast trots away and slumps down with a weary sigh.

  The front door opens and Ariella’s mother walks right in, glancing back over her shoulder as if to check I’m still there.

  ‘Can I use the toilet?’ I say quickly. She stops, looking at me with a blank expression.

  ‘One through there,’ she says. ‘Ariella, you go with her.’

  Yeah, because I’m gonna nick your soap, you stuck-up cow, I think, even though I might.

  Ariella leads me to a downstairs toilet where the walls are painted bright blue and covered in small pictures of flowers in matching frames.

  When I come out, Ariella is waiting for me. She smiles a bit weakly. I reckon even she’s lost hope of me and her mother bonding.

  ‘Mummy’s feeding Kit in the kitchen,’ she says in a conspiratorial way. I nod and follow her through to a big room, brightly lit by spotlights in the ceiling. There’s a huge kitchen table and swanky metal countertops everywhere. Mum would have done anything for a kitchen like this. It’s a bit of a mess, though. There are dirty dishes piled up next to the sink and the table is covered with baby stuff: a changing mat, nappies and one of those colourful gym things babies lie under doing God knows what.

  I stand in the doorway, shuffling my feet. I don’t really know what to do. But I’d like a drink before I go. I’m sort of curious too. I’m not getting vibes that the police have been called yet.

  Ariella’s mother is sitting at the table. The baby’s head is turned towards a huge white breast covered in horrible blue veins. The boob is bigger than the baby’s head. I decide there and then that I am never, ever having kids. I snap my gaze elsewhere.

  ‘Come in for a minute,’ she says, her eyes hard, as though she knows exactly what I was thinking.

  I look at Ariella, who nods vigorously from over by the fridge, where she is getting out a large bottle of Coke. She busies herself slopping it into three plastic cups.

  I slide onto a chair and regard her mother warily.

  ‘Are you going to call the police?’ I didn’t know I was planning to say this until the words came out. I’d rather know where I stand, is all.

  ‘Should I?’ she fires back at me, her eyes never leaving my face. The baby is making a sort of grunty slurping sound and it’s sort of fascinating in a creepy way.

  ‘I haven’t broken any laws or done anything wrong,’ I say, adding for a good two weeks silently in my head. Ariella puts a cup each down in front of me and her mother, spilling some on the table as she does so. But her mother doesn’t seem to care and raises hers to her lips. Ariella sits down at the table and noisily glugs her own drink.

  ‘What happened to your face?’ says her mother.

  ‘I tripped over,’ I shoot back, self-consciously lifting my hand to my throbbing cheek.

  There’s a silence for a moment, broken only by the baby’s weird slurping.

  ‘Can she stay with us, Mummy?’ says Ariella. ‘Please? She can play with me while you look after Kit.’ Ariella pauses. ‘Because you know how tired you are, Mummy. You could get more sleep!’

  I look at Ariella and almost laugh. Little minx knows which buttons to press all right. But it’s a daft suggestion. Me? Stay here? Weirdly, though, her mother is watching me as though she’s thinking about it.

  ‘Can you clean?’ she says sharply.

  What? But I nod my head decisively. ‘I’m really good at cleaning.’ This is a bit of a stupid thing to say but the whole conversation is mad anyway.

  ‘Any childcare experience?’

  ‘I’m a very experienced babysitter. I used to look after my little brother all the time when my mum was at work.’ What brother? ‘And I used to do loads of babysitting back in Sheffield.’ Also a lie. I’m annoyed with myself for letting slip where I come from, though.

  The woman’s face softens for a brief moment. ‘Sheffield, eh? I went to uni there a long time ago . . .’ She looks wistfully into the distance and then back at me.

  ‘If you steal anything, or do anything you’re not meant to, my husband will find you and you’ll regret it. I can’t pay you, but there’s a spare room you can use. I can give you some clothes.’ It’s all delivered in a flat sort of monotone. Is she offering me a job?

  She makes a frustrated noise. ‘I want you to clean the house and help with Ariella. Understood?’

  I blink a couple of times. I’m not sure I’ve exactly got much of a choice at the moment.

  ‘Um, understood,’ I say. I barely get my breath before Ariella has hurled herself at me, knocking the air out of my lungs and filling my mouth with her hair.

  ‘We’re going to have so much FUN!’ she shrieks.

  ‘I’m Charlotte,’ says her mother with a tight little purse of her lips. ‘I’ll show you where the bathroom is in a minute. You look like you need a wash.’

  I don’t have time then to wonder what she meant about her husband. It doesn’t occur to me then that farmers don’t generally sound that scary.

  Or to wonder why Charlotte would take a bleeding, dirty runaway into her house so readily.

  Ariella doesn’t let go of my hand or stop talking for a second as she leads me up a big staircase and along a landing flooded by a rare blast of sunshine. My feet sink into the thick carpeting. I’m suddenly hyper aware of my unwashed body. Funny, it didn’t bother me when horses were my only housemates.

  ‘We’re going to have so much fun!’ says Ariella again, and then, without drawing breath, ‘And your bedroom is right next to mine so I can come in and see you all the time!’

  ‘Great,’ I say with a forced smile. But she doesn’t really notice as she leads me into a huge bathroom with white tiles and one of those old-fashioned claw-footed bathtubs, like I’ve seen on telly. Above the bath are glass shelves with all sorts of bottles of expensive-looking bubble bath. My fingers are itching to open them for a good sniff.

  ‘Mummy says to give you a towel,’ says Ariella and she opens the door of a wooden cabinet and extracts a huge armful of something soft, the same pale yellow colour as the walls.

  Is that a thing people do? Buy towels to match their walls?

  For a minute I’m so gobsmacked by this I stand uselessly in the middle of the room. Ariella finally stops talking and takes a breath.

  ‘Are you all right, Kyla?’ She says my name shyly, as though tasting the sound of it.

  ‘Oh!’ I say. ‘Yeah, it’s all good. It’s nice in here.’ Her eyebrows meet in a frown.

  ‘It’s just a bathroom,’ she says. I picture the nasty green bath and sink in Zander’s place. The blokes never lifted the seat when they peed and, like toddlers, they always left it all scuzzy. And there was always man hair everywhere.

  Maybe it’s just a bathroom to you, love, I think. To me, it’s heaven.

  Ariella doesn’t shift and for a horrible second or two I wonder if she thinks she’s actually going to stay in here while I shower. So I purposefully take hold of her shoulders and march her out of the door.

  ‘See you in a bit,’ I say and before she can reply, I close the door in her face.

  I stand with my back to it for a minute, looking around.

  I don’t really know why I’m here. Something feels a bit off about Charlotte and I don’t know if it’s just the dazed, sleep-deprived new-mother thing or something else. But I really need a shower. And I haven’t got anywhere else to go. I decide I’ll play it by ear for a few days and see what happens.

  I’m just wondering about the whole having-a-shower-and-then-putting-filthy-clothes-back-on problem when there is a sharp knock at the door. I open it tentatively. Charlotte. Unsmiling, of course. She’s holding a bundle of clothes on one arm. The baby is nestled into her neck like a little bug, her other hand almost covering his entire back.

  ‘These should fit,’ she says and hands me the clothes. There’s a toothbrush and some deodorant resting on the top, along with a hairbrush that won’t be any good for my hair. ‘And do something about your face. The
re’s ointment in the cabinet over the sink.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say and attempt a smile that isn’t returned. She gives me a crisp nod and turns away. I gently close the heavy wooden door again and place the clothes on a bench-seat.

  I look around the huge bathroom, wondering if I have finally caught a break. The showerhead is one of those metal rose ones as big as a dinner plate.

  I stand under the hot water and let it run over my face, which hurts my cheek a bit. I don’t know what it is about being in the shower, but the tears I thought were all finished come in a huge wave again, rocking me so hard I have to hold onto the wall with both hands, my head bowed, as the tears mix and fall with the hot water.

  They’re like a violent, sudden storm that passes over quickly and after a little while I reach for the most expensive-looking of the soaps and wash myself carefully, finding new cuts and bruises as I do. Once again I make a pledge to myself: the damage will stay on the outside from now on. Maybe if I say this enough, I can make it true.

  It’s only when I’m out of the shower and getting dried that I look properly at the clothes I’ve been given by Charlotte.

  They’re . . . nice. There’s even underwear, including a bra a bit big for me. Hope I’m not going to have to shove a couple of socks in there.

  The top is made from shimmery material that’s so soft and light it’s like holding cotton-wool balls in my hand. I pull it over my head. It’s cut a bit lower than I’d like and I try to hoick it up a bit. There’s a skirt too. I don’t normally do skirts. This one is black and shiny and when I put it on, it clings to my hips in a way that makes me want to twirl in a right girly way. Maybe Ariella picked the clothes. Although they seem to be a bit sexy.

  So who do they belong to? They’re far too small to fit Charlotte, even before the baby. She’s taller than me by about ten centimetres for a start.

  There are no shoes so I just slip my own sneakers back on. They were in a load of stuff on one of Zander’s recent raids on a clothing warehouse and are still in good nick, so I’m not too bothered about how they look.