Page 48 of Cross Her Heart

That’s what Tony’s sister Jean had said two years back when Charlotte had been puking with the measles.It all has to come out somehow. Don’t fight it. It’ll make you better.Maybe it does. Maybe that’s why she shoved dog shit through old Mr Perry’s letterbox and laughed at him, even though he’s never done anything to her. Maybe that’s why she sprayed her name big over the school wall with the can she found in the alley where the boys shoot up. Maybe that’s how it’s all coming out, all the rage that’s wrapped around a bubble of something else, something deep inside she couldn’t explain if she tried, something horrible and desperate.

They haven’t made anything better though, these things she’s done. They’ve just brought the police and the social and more warnings, and her ma screaming at her and Tony and the belt and always always, through the jumble of her thoughts, is the tight tear in her stomach since the chippy. It didn’t turn out to be a one-off. It wasn’t ever going to be. She should have known. Morespecial friendsand always a fish supper she feels sick eating after as if that makes it all normal. As if that makes it atreat.More pills, more often. Sometimes she feels like she doesn’t know what’s real or not any more. Surreal maybe.Surreal.A new Katie word she didn’t understand and still doesn’t even though Katie’s tried to explain it. But she likes the sound of it anyway. Surreal makes everything sound cleaner. Safer.

Nothing is safe though. She’s still sore from Tony’s beating after the woman from the social left last Tuesday. The belt has left welts across the back of her thighs, and there was something different about it this time. Something animal in his face. It made her think of the chippy and she didn’t like it at all. His face, the sound of Daniel crying and Ma soothing him. Her own shrieks and shouts as the belt came down, hating herself for making a sound. She didn’t cry. Not even after, when she was alone. Instead she lost herself in their song, hers and Katie’s. Playing it over and over, loud in the headphones.

She’s out of the house as much as she can be despite what the police and the social say about school and happy families. Ma and Tony sleep late and she’s gone by the time they wake. She shoves some milk or juice and bread at Daniel over the side of his cot and gets out. They can play their happy families, the three of them. That’s what they want anyway.

Causing havoc or seeing Katie is how she spends her days. Katie. Oh, she lives for Katie. They have their den now, here in Coombs Street. There’s blankets on the ground that Katie snuck out from home, some candles Charlotte nicked from the big shop in town, a couple of old cushions from the youth centre over on Marley Street. It’s here she feels safest. She lights another cigarette as Katie speaks. Ma trouble, that’s what Katie’s got. The opposite of Charlotte’s. Too much love, that’s Katie’s problem. Everybody loves her.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t smoke this around you,’ Charlotte says, and laughs. Katie does too as she shakes the blue inhaler and squirts it into the air.

‘I don’t have asthma. Even the doctor knows that. I don’t think he’s put anything in this thing. He’s probably given me an empty one to stop her going on and on at him. He said my lungs were fine. But did she listen? Of course not. It’s her who stops me breathing. She’s going to suffocate me soon. Wrap me up so tightly she’ll never let me go.’

‘How come you’re not at school?’ Charlotte’s lungs are tight with smoke. She’s smoking more. She wishes she had some booze but Tony only had two cans left in the fridge and she chickened out of taking one. She’d rob something later. From the shop. Or somewhere. Or maybe one of her ma’s pills. She’s getting itches for them a bit like the fags.

‘Forged a letter. Family problems. It’s easy. Summer hols start soon anyway. It’s only sports days and activities left, and my mother won’t let me take part in those if she can help it.’

It’s easy for Katie. Katie’s a good girl. If Katie had to go to the chippy and then told about it, people would believe her. They’d help her. No one would believe Charlotte. Or they’d say she brought it on herself. Maybe she did. Maybe she is a little bitch like her ma says when she’s angry.

‘Come on,’ Katie says. ‘Let’s go for a wander.’

They clamber out the window, keeping an eye out that they haven’t been seen and their secret den is safe. Charlotte holds the cigarette out for Katie, who takes it and puffs once before giving it back. She doesn’t inhale. Charlotte would rip the shit out of anyone else for that, but she knows Katie only smokes for her. Because Charlotte does it. Not in atrying to impressway, but in abeing as close as they can beway. Best friends. No, something more. There are no words for what this is between them. Charlotte doesn’t want words for it. Words might break it.

They throw rocks at the wrecked houses just because they can, and for a little while they pretend they’re the last two people on earth in the wasteland left after a nuclear bomb like in that programme on the telly a few years back that her ma still talks about sometimes because it scared her so much. Eventually, survival stories exhausted, they head towards the Rec and the crappy playground there.

They’re inside the gates when Charlotte freezes.

‘What?’ Katie almost whispers it, so attuned are they to each other’s feelings that she stills too. Charlotte feels Katie’s hand slide into hers. She grips it. Her rock. Her strength.

‘My ma,’ she says. ‘And Daniel.’

Katie gasps a little, and her eyes widen. Their real lives have always beenother,Katie’s in her big house and posh school, and Charlotte’s in her scummy estate. But now, here, a door has been opened.

‘Come on,’ Charlotte grunts, tugging Katie backwards.

‘But I want to see.’ Katie pulls the other way, nodding Charlotte to the overgrown bushes on the other side of the railings. Charlotte glares at her. ‘They won’t spot us.’ Katie leans in and kisses Charlotte’s nose. ‘Don’t be a wuss.’

The word makes Charlotte grin almost as much as the kiss does, even though she doesn’t want Katie to see, she doesn’t want her shite life to be real to Katie.Wuss.No one around here ever says that. They have to move though, otherwise Ma will spot them soon enough. The Rec’s not busy because the weather is crap and the bins haven’t been emptied for ages so all thegoodmums take their bairns up to the big park where it’s clean and sometimes there’s an ice-cream van parked up, but Ma would never do that. Not without it being a special day and even then it would depend on her, or Tony’s, mood.

They wriggle through the bushes, quietly giggling as the leaves and hard thin branches jab into them and snare their clothes, until they’re both camouflaged behind the railings. Two pairs of eyes peering through shrubbery. Katie is alive with excitement, and Charlotte wonders how her family must seem to her. Ma, scrawny and in a cheap old anorak, her hair lank and pulled back into a ponytail. She probably hasn’t had a wash. She looks like she got dressed fast to get out of Tony’s way. A good job she hadn’t nicked one of his cans, Charlotte decides, if Tony’s in one of his moods. Daniel has Peter Rabbit tucked under his arm as Ma lifts him carefully into one of those swings with the safety rail, one leg on either side. She handles him so gently it hurts Charlotte’s heart.

Once he’s settled, he gives her a smile and chews on Peter Rabbit’s ear as she pushes him, not too hard, just enough for him to enjoy. Tony used to push Charlotte on the swings, but he’d push her so high she’d be crying out in terror for him to stop. He found it funny. She’s never seen him do that with Daniel.

They can’t hear what she’s saying but Ma’s laughter carries on the breeze. It’s sweet and soft and whatever she’s saying to Daniel is full of care. Charlotte bites hard on the inside of her cheek, her mouth metallic as she breaks the skin.It all has to come out somehow.

She glances over at Katie. ‘Can we go now?’

‘She was never like this with you, was she?’ It’s a question but it isn’t. Katie knows the answer. ‘She really loves him.’ Her voice is soft, talking to herself rather than her friend, but the words are like knives in Charlotte. She holds on to the imaginary steel slicing her. She’ll make it part of her.

‘Yeah, I wish he’d disappear,’ Charlotte says, bitter, watching her ma lift him gently out and on to the ground, face full of concern.

‘Imagine if he did,’ Katie says, a half-smile on her face, lost to the fantasy already. ‘Or if he died. Imagine how she’d feel. Maybe then she’d realise how much she loved you.’

It’s a sweet thought, but Charlotte knows nothing can make Ma love her. Ma looks at her like she’s bad and dirty and sheis, but she only used to be bad. Ma can’t look at her straight because of what she and Tony make her do.

‘I’d run away,’ she says. ‘Leave them alone. With each other.’

‘No.’ Katie’s voice is hard and she crouches, pulling Charlotte down too, so their knees are under their chins and it makes the welts on the backs of Charlotte’s thighs burn fresh. ‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘We’drun away. Together. We will.’ She pulls the shell she brought back from Skegness from her jacket pocket and holds it up against Charlotte’s ear. It’s not the first time Katie’s done this but it still seems like magic to Charlotte, the sound of the sea coming from it.

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