The Ant Colony Read online

  Isabel came back with the drinks and sat down in the chair next to Doormat. I stayed standing until she told me to stop it and then I knelt on the floor.

  There were crisps in a bowl on the coffee table. I didn’t eat that many because the sound of them was too loud in my head and I didn’t want to fill the room with crunching. Mick was on to them like only he knew it was the last meal in the building. Little bits of crisp littered his beard like dandruff.

  Isabel said there were more in the kitchen and he should go and get them.

  Mick looked like his bones were melting. “Can’t the new boy do it?”

  “No, he can’t,” Isabel said. “And his name is Country.”

  I wanted to leave. “My name is Sam,” I said, but nobody took any notice.

  “Have you eaten?” Isabel said to Cherry.

  It took her a long time to react, like she was in slow motion, or moving underwater. She dragged her stare away from middle distance, like there was something fascinating happening there, even though the rest of us couldn’t see it.

  “Not hungry,” she said, scratching at the inside of her elbow.

  Isabel frowned and looked over at Steve.

  “Communal spaces,” he said, like that would mean something.

  Mick looked at him and said, “What?”

  “I’ve got the paint and a friend with a bit of spare carpet, but we’ll have to do it together.”

  “Do what together?”

  “Decorate the hallway,” Isabel said. “Don’t you think, Country? It’s shocking out there.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was trying to work out how long it would be before I could get up and go. I was wondering how long a person can be in a room and guarantee to make no impression. I didn’t want to stay too long and get remembered.

  “What about you, Cherry? You going to help?” Steve said.

  “Help what?” Cherry said. “I wasn’t listening.”

  Mick stood up then and said, “Are we done?” His gun tattoo flexed when he straightened his legs.

  “If you like,” Isabel said.

  “Well then,” he said. “I’ve got to go and see a man about a dog.”

  Cherry said, “Can I come?”

  But he shook his head and said, “Not that kind of dog, darling. Sorry.”

  She watched the space in the room he’d left behind, and while she did, Isabel and Steve started questioning me. I should have got up and left with him.

  Isabel started. “So tell me what you’re doing here, come on.”

  What was I supposed to say? Running away. Starting from scratch. Hiding.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know really.”

  “Where’re you from?”

  “You wouldn’t know it. It’s tiny.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Isabel asked if I was a student.

  Cherry said, “Is this Twenty Questions?”

  I said, “I’m not a student. No.”

  “Didn’t think so. You don’t look like one,” Isabel said. “They wear silly tight trousers with the arse down by the knees and shoes your feet would freeze in, and hair in their eyes on purpose. You look more ordinary than that.”

  “I’m very ordinary,” I said, and I wanted it to be true and a lie at the same time.

  “Animal, vegetable or mineral?” Cherry said, and she laughed at her own joke and went back to looking at nothing.

  Doormat suddenly sat up and looked towards the door, down the hallway. We all looked where he was looking, except for Cherry, and there was a knock on the door. I’ve heard that about dogs; that they know five minutes before you get there that you’re on your way home, that they can sense you.

  Steve got up to answer it and then I heard footsteps on the carpet, light, barefoot and quick, and there was this kid in the room, scratching at her head, in a pair of really grubby pyjamas that were about three sizes too small.

  It was weird her suddenly arriving like that. She looked out of place. I knew her straightaway.

  She was the kid I saw before, the day I arrived. She was the girl from the doorway. She was less of an oil painting than I remembered, grey pale with shadows under her eyes, but still that red hair. Doormat was wagging his stumpy little tail at her.

  “Hello,” Isabel said. “What woke you up?”

  “Dunno,” she said, and she was frowning hard at me because I was new.

  “This is Sam,” Isabel said. “Sam, this is Bo, Cherry’s little girl.”

  At the mention of her name, Cherry looked over at her and smiled. “What you doing down here?” she said.

  “Can’t sleep.”

  Cherry carried on smiling, but she didn’t move. The girl came up and stood next to her, leaning her back against the tip of Cherry’s folded knee. She looked at me without blinking.

  I looked back.

  “I’ve seen you before,” I said.

  “She lives here,” Steve said.

  “No, before,” I said. “I saw you before. The day I arrived.”

  “I’ve seen that Andrew Marr before,” Isabel said, “on the Tube, but that doesn’t change anything.”

  “Where’d you see me?” the girl said. Her voice was wiry and reed thin.

  “On the High Street,” I said. “You looked like a painting.”

  She snorted. “A what?”

  “Ignore him, Bo,” Cherry said without looking at either of us. She was lighting another cigarette and her voice was hard through her clamped jaw. “He’s trying to chat you up.”

  The pale of the girl’s face blushed in an instant.

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “What is she, eight?”

  Cherry smiled in my direction, an exhausted, joyless smile.

  “I’m ten,” the girl said, like it was obvious to everyone but me.

  She didn’t look ten. I knew kids who were six that were bigger than her.

  “Was it a nice painting?” the girl asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, that’s OK then.”

  She was still leaning into Cherry. Isabel asked her if she was hungry. The girl shook her head. “I’m cold.”

  “Do you want a hot drink?”

  “OK.”

  Steve was in the kitchen, banging ice cubes into another drink. Isabel called out, “Steve, warm some up milk for her, would you?”

  Cherry had one arm loosely around her daughter and her head bent low, like she’d fallen asleep.

  “What’s she eaten today?” Isabel said. “Apart from what I’ve given her.”

  “Lobster thermidor,” Cherry said, and the girl giggled.

  I felt uncomfortable in there, like I was watching things I shouldn’t. “I’m going,” I said.

  “Don’t be silly,” Isabel said. “Have another drink.”

  Cherry held her glass out for whoever felt like taking it. She lit another cigarette and closed her eyes. “I’m going too,” she said, but she didn’t move.

  Steve was a bit unsteady on his feet. He sat down heavily when he came back in, slopped hot milk on to Doormat. He kept reaching out to ruffle the kid’s hair. You could see she didn’t like it.

  I looked at Cherry, and she had her eyes open and she was watching me. “What’s your name again?” she said.

  “Sam.”

  She asked me if I had any fags. I said I didn’t smoke.

  “Got any blow?” she said.

  “No, sorry.”

  She stopped talking to me then. We sat in the room like we were all alone. The girl finished her drink and put her arms back round Cherry, kind of between her waist and the arm of the chair. It looked awkward. Cherry put one hand out and stroked the girl’s hair. Her eyes moved behind closed lids, flickered beneath the surface like someone dreaming.

  I reminded myself I hadn’t wanted to meet these people. I told myself I was free to leave. So I did.

  “So nice of you to pop round,” Isabel said at the door, like any of it had been my idea.
>
  I wrote a letter in my head.

  Dear Mum,

  How are you? I am living with a bunch of freaks.

  The Story of My Life Part One by B Hoban

  Mum says we come from a long line of Romany Gypsies and that’s why we can’t stay in one place because it’s in our blood to keep moving. She says that was the trouble with my dad, that he was cemented to the floor. She says her granny was the first ever Hoban woman to live in a house. And our real name isn’t even Hoban, it’s a secret, but Bohemia was my great great grandad who was a handsome and magnificent horse thief.

  I asked her if she gave me a boy’s name cos she wished I’d been a boy. She said it would’ve been easier in a lot of ways, but a name’s a name. “Look at me,” she said. “I’ve been stuck with Cherry all my life.”

  What I remember first is the big place, The Haven. It was a huge red house and it had peacocks in the garden. There was a white pony in the field behind. It didn’t like me. It was allergic to grass. If it ate grass, its tummy swelled up like a balloon, so it wasn’t allowed any. I think that’s why it didn’t like me, cos it couldn’t eat its favourite thing and it had to take that out on somebody.

  The Haven was Uncle Derek’s. He was old and he wasn’t my uncle. I didn’t see much of Mum then, or I don’t remember. I don’t know how long we were there for, but it felt like a long time. There weren’t any other children ever. Derek’s children were all grown up and anyway they didn’t come round.

  There was a nice lady called Mrs Betty who put me to bed and woke me up and played with me and made me ride the fat pony who didn’t like me. Mrs Betty had a really red face, like she’d always just climbed a hill, and she wore those sock tights that only go up to your knee. I didn’t like it when the tops of her sock tights showed, and her real leg was all blue and marbly.

  Uncle Derek was rich. Mum told me he made his money out of tights. That made me think of Mrs Betty and her socks, and if Derek was responsible for them. It’s funny the things you can get rich on, like tights and Post-it notes and tea-towel holders that look like animals’ bottoms.

  Mum went to be a model for his tights and that’s how they met. According to her, he took one look at her legs and fell in love with her. Mum’s sister Suzie said that’s the sort of thing Mum lives for, some part of her anatomy changing a man’s life. Mum said she was just jealous cos she lived in a fat boring house with a fat boring man and three fat boring kids. I wasn’t supposed to hear any of that. We didn’t see Suzie for a while after. Mum said just because you have a fat boring sister doesn’t mean you have to like her.

  Six (Sam)

  After that night at Isabel’s house, after meeting the neighbours, I kept out of everyone’s way. It wasn’t hard. I didn’t leave my room if I heard voices or people in the corridor. If I heard the front door go I checked who it was coming in or going out. I timed my movements. I got good at reading the sounds through the walls and ceilings and floors.

  It was Monday, maybe about a week since I’d seen any of them. I was going to the shop to check my shifts, maybe pick up some cans of soup and out of date milk, stuff like that. It wasn’t far. I cut through the little park opposite the end of the street, walked round the back of the high street, turned left and walked in.

  This boy Besnik was at the counter. It was his uncle’s place. He was nice enough to me, though I’m not sure he remembered my name between one meeting and the next. He mainly talked about girls and the plans he had for his car, to whoever his uncle was paying to listen.

  But Besnik wasn’t talking about cars today. He was pointing at one of the mirrors in the corner of the shop, one that meant you could see the whole place like you were looking at it through a fish bowl.

  “Sssht!” he said, putting his index finger up to my face, not taking his eyes off the mirror. “I’ve got one.”

  “One what?” I said, looking up the mirror, not making out all that much.

  “A thief. Look! Look!”

  He banged his finger against the screen of the little CCTV monitor by the till. I could see less on that than I could on the mirror. It was fuzzy and jumpy and grey.

  Besnik loved shoplifters. You’d have thought his uncle set the whole business up just to attract them, that catching them was what a shop was all about.

  “Two Vodka Mules and a packet of Pringles,” he said. “So far.”

  “Breakfast of Champions,” I said, but he ignored me.

  “I’m going to bury her,” he said, his attention whipping between the mirror and the screen like it was life or death, like he was bringing a plane in to land.

  The thing Besnik liked best about thieves was being in the right. He’d have made a really good policeman or headmaster or something. I told him that.

  “Too short,” he said. “Too short, too boring, too dangerous.”

  I wondered what wasn’t boring or dangerous about working in an all night grocer’s in Camden Town, but I didn’t argue. At least he was right about the short thing. Besnik came up to about my armpit and he was a couple of years older than me. So he got his kicks scaring the shit out of people who stole cheese and baked beans and cider, threatening them with a baseball bat, chasing them into the market, calling the police. I didn’t want to be around to see it.

  “Any old milk?” I said.

  “Out the back. Don’t take it all.”

  “No,” I said. “That would be stealing.”

  He scowled at me and then he went back to staring at the shoplifter.

  I had to go round the counter to get into the back. I had to cross the width of the shop to the corner, and then duck under it and go through a beaded curtain into the stockroom, which smelled of yoghurt and mice. I looked right when I got to the corner, so I could see who Besnik was watching so intently on his monitor, who was next in his one-man battle against petty crime.

  It was the girl.

  She had her back to the rest of the shop and her hands in her pockets and her head down. I still knew who it was, the silly little kid.

  I looked from her to Besnik and back to her again. Neither of them was looking at me. I kept close to the shelves and walked towards her, staying out of the corner so I wouldn’t show up on the CCTV.

  What I needed was for someone else to come in, for the bell on the door to go, that infuriating electric one that buried itself in your skull and played out again later, hours after your shift, when it was least welcome, when you thought you had at least twelve hours before you had to hear it again.

  Bing Bang Bong.

  A woman came in with a pushchair and a noisy toddler. I looked behind me. Besnik was trying to watch the monitor, but the toddler’s little hands were all over the sweets, and the mum wanted three lottery cards and some fags and a load of other stuff she kept remembering and banging on the counter.

  “Psst!” I said, and the girl ignored me.

  “Bo! Put it back,” I said. “He’s watching you.”

  She turned and looked at me, and something like terror crossed her face, mixed with a smile.

  “I’m not joking. I know him. I work here.”

  When I said that she nodded quickly without looking round, and she took a bottle out of each sleeve and put them back on the shelf.

  I quickly ducked under the counter before Besnik saw me. When I came back out with the milk, the woman had gone and Bo was paying for the Pringles in 2ps with her sleeves rolled up, all innocence. Besnik was fuming. You could tell he felt cheated.

  “See you,” I said to him, and I left before her.

  I didn’t wait for her. Saving her skin was enough of a favour. I didn’t want to have to talk to her as well. But she came skittering up behind me with this nervous laugh.

  “Thanks,” she said, and she smiled like we were in on it together.

  “You’re mad,” I said.

  She offered me a Pringle.

  “I don’t know how you can eat those,” I said.

  “I like them. Do you really work in there?�
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  I said I did, and that if I lost my job because of her stealing I’d be seriously annoyed.

  “I didn’t steal anything,” she said.

  “Only because I stopped you.”

  It was quiet for about five paces and then she said, “You must nick loads of stuff from there if you work there.”

  “No,” I said.

  She shrugged. “My mum gets everything from places where she works. Loo roll, cocktail sticks, hand soap …”

  I interrupted her. “Where’s she work now?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The pub on our street maybe. Sometimes. I’m not sure.”

  “I’ll warn them.”

  She looked up at me and stopped walking. “Don’t do that,” she said.

  “OK,” I said. “But don’t take stuff in there. You’ll get caught.”

  “All right.”

  “And what are you nicking vodka for?”

  “For my mum. For when she gets back.”

  “Well, that’s sweet of you. Where is she?”

  Bo shrugged. Her mouth was crammed full of chive and onion or whatever it was. She couldn’t get them in fast enough. “Did you have breakfast?” she asked, waving the tube at me. “I’m having it now.”

  “That’s not breakfast.”

  She had to walk really fast to keep up with me. Her trainers scudded on the floor and left her feet just a little bit with every step. She finished the crisps and put the tube half sticking out of her pocket and she ate the flavour off all of her fingers.

  She said, “I’m going to make a pencil case with this when I get in. These make great pencil cases.”

  The front door was open and the carpet was wet, from rain or maybe something else, I didn’t want to know. It squelched a bit under our feet and Bohemia made a pattern in it like a flower, her wet footprint petals fading away as fast as she could make them.

  I said I was going upstairs.

  “OK,” she said, and she carried on treading. She watched the disappearing flowers while she talked. “My mum’ll be back soon,” she said. “Any minute.”