The Ant Colony Page 8

  “Hello,” it said again. “Anybody in there?”

  It was probably Steve, but with no spyhole how could I be sure?

  “Suit yourself,” it said, and then the bare feet were on the stairs and he knocked lower down and I started breathing again.

  Mum came out of the loo looking folded and angry. I don’t know if Mick was still in there and I didn’t ask. I put the bed away cos I was sick of looking at it. We didn’t have a dustpan and brush to sweep up the crumbs so I blew most of them under the sofa. It was a bit crunchy under my feet so I put some socks and shoes on and it made sense to get the rest of me dressed as well.

  “What are you doing today?” I said when she came back from the kitchen.

  She was still just in her underwear. She didn’t answer me.

  “I need some clean clothes,” I said.

  She said, “Sorry, Bo.”

  I didn’t know if she was talking about the laundry or about crashing out in the bathroom with beard-face. “Don’t be,” I said, but I didn’t mean it.

  Then I told her about the power cut and Sam climbing in everything.

  “God, we didn’t hear any of that,” she said.

  I went to the fridge and poured all the milk that was left into a cup and I didn’t leave any for her, not even a drop for some tea. “Nope,” I said. “You didn’t.”

  “I have to go out later,” she said.

  “Where you going?”

  “See some friends.”

  “Who?”

  “You don’t know them.”

  “When will you be back?”

  She put her head in her hands and she groaned her morning groan, and she said, “Bo, lighten up. You’re not my mum.”

  I glared at her when she said that, and I know I looked stupid standing there in my too-small clothes and my dirty hair, but that was her fault. “Yes, Cherry, I know,” I said. “But you are mine.”

  And then I told her what Isabel said last night, the thing I wasn’t supposed to hear, about telling someone, about reporting Cherry to the authorities for not looking after me properly and always being out and out of her head. I laid it on pretty thick. I probably made it sound much worse than it was really.

  I shouldn’t have done that.

  Mum just sat there in her bra and knickers, with her bare legs folded underneath her and her feet all dirty and her tummy creased like a crocodile’s tail and her mouth open.

  I left her there and I went to see Sam.

  I said, “It’s me, Bohemia,” at the same time as knocking, and I knocked gently so I didn’t make him jump.

  “What do you want?” he said. He didn’t even open the door.

  “Can you get my mum a job?” I said.

  “God. I don’t know. Doubt it.”

  I didn’t know what else to say and I hadn’t even meant to say that straightaway. I just stood there looking at the line on my side of the door where his black floor met the squishy old hall carpet.

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” I said.

  I counted to ten in my head and I didn’t go away even though I know he wanted me to. Then he asked me if my mum was all right.

  “No,” I said.

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “Everything.”

  Sam opened the door then. We both looked at his big feet. He didn’t have any shoes on.

  “Can we go out?” I said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Please, Sam, just for a minute.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Wherever you like,” I said.

  “I’ve got to go to work,” he said.

  I had to beg and beg.

  He put some shoes on and we went downstairs and outside. We didn’t see anyone. It was cold and my arms were too long for my coat. They stuck way out of the sleeves and every time I tried to pull them down things got too tight across my shoulders.

  “I’ve grown,” I said.

  Sam was really tall, but his coat looked fine on him. I asked him if he’d stopped growing. He looked at his hands as if he’d be able to tell. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “But you’re enormous.”

  “My dad’s six foot four,” he said.

  I said I wondered if my dad was tall. “I’ll have to wait until I stop growing to find out. If I’m really tall then maybe he is.”

  “Is it your dad who’s got your red hair?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen him.”

  “Not a photo or anything?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you should ask Cherry where it comes from.”

  “What?”

  “Your hair. It’s what I noticed about you the first time I saw you,” he said. “I remembered you because of your red hair.”

  I made a face. “I hate it.”

  “Don’t be mad,’ he said. “It’s great. You’ll like it when you’re older.”

  “I’ll dye it when I’m older,” I said.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  We were walking past the Tube and he asked me if I’d ever been to the National Gallery.

  “The what?”

  “Trafalgar Square. You know, Nelson’s Column, sculptures, fountains, National Gallery?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Me neither and I always wanted to.”

  “So let’s go,” I said.

  I asked him why he’d thought of it. He said he’d heard there were loads of beautiful ladies in there with hair like mine. He said we should see them.

  “What about your work?” I said.

  “I was lying. I start at seven. We’ve got ages.”

  Sam was funny on the Tube. As if he had to think harder than anyone else about where to put his ticket and which way he was going, stuff like that.

  “It’s like you’re from another planet,” I said.

  “I thought I was heart-breakingly cool,” he said, and I laughed some more cos he so wasn’t.

  “Mornington Crescent!” he said, like that was something. We’d only gone one stop.

  “What?”

  “My mum listens to it on the radio. It’s a game that doesn’t make any sense.”

  I said, “It’s at the bottom of the High Street.”

  “Well, I know that. But it’s this game and she laughs out loud, and she doesn’t even know why.”

  He stopped talking then and I watched him cos I knew he was thinking about his mum. It must be a nice picture to have of someone in your mind, them laughing their head off at the radio.

  Trafalgar Square was huge and it had fountains and everything. I’d been past it on the bus loads of times, but I’d never stood in the middle and seen how huge and fancy it actually was. Everything was this pale golden colour, the floor and the buildings and stuff, like they got cleaned in the night while everyone was asleep.

  The National Gallery was free, except for this big see-through box of money that you could put what you wanted in. Some people had put 2p’s and some had put five pound notes, and there were buttons and bits of pocket fluff in there too, maybe from people who thought the pictures weren’t up to much.

  I liked them. I really did. There were so many to look at I thought my head might fill up with pictures and have no room for anything else.

  The women with the red hair like mine were beautiful and draped over sofas like they had nothing else to do with their time. After a bit they looked all the same, but there was a wrinkly old lady I liked. From far away she looked like an actual photograph. Then when you got close, like you would to a real old lady, her skin was pink and green and yellow and purple and all the colours you could think of, and it was obvious somebody had done it with a brush. Her eyes had lots of things to say, more than the bored girls on the sofas. I looked at her for a long time.

  I put half my money in the box on the way out. I would’ve put in more, but I wanted a sandwich.

  We walked to th
e river and the tide was out, so we climbed down in the stones and the rubble and stuff. Sam picked up a piece of old plate and gave it to me. It was about the size of a 10p with two leaves on it. He said they were ivy. They might’ve been green once, but now they were all faded and blue. I held on to it. It was smooth under my thumb. We had to watch where we walked. There were chunks of old wall and rusted bars and bits of glass everywhere.

  “You all right?” I said and he nodded.

  He said, “You?”

  I said my mum made me sad. It was the first time I said it out loud to anyone ever and it made me want to sit down and cry.

  Sam said he thought my mum needed some help and I said I was doing my best. “Not from you,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything to that.

  “Did you run away, really?” I said, and he frowned at me and shook his head. I asked him, wasn’t that what Isabel said? “You know, that nobody knows you’re here.”

  “She doesn’t know that for sure.”

  “Yeah, but it’s true though, isn’t it?”

  He laughed, like an out blow of breath, and he didn’t answer.

  “I ran away once,” I said. “I didn’t get as far as you.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I got to the station, but I didn’t have any money.”

  I was looking at the tiny cracked patterns on the bit of plate he gave me. I was picking at them with my finger.

  “What did you do?”

  “I walked home.”

  “Did you leave a note?”

  “Course.”

  “And what did Cherry do when you got back?”

  “Oh, she didn’t notice,” I said. “She thought I was in my room the whole time.”

  He looked at me then and put his hand out and messed up my hair. “What about the note? Didn’t she see that?”

  “It fell down the back of the cupboard. I got it out later.”

  Sam looked at me and I looked at the grey soupy water. “Did you leave a note?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t know what to say.”

  “That’s bad. You should leave a note.”

  “Why?”

  “So people know you’re going and stuff. So they don’t think you got kidnapped or fell down a hole.”

  “Well, I didn’t leave one,” he said. “I fell down a hole. I didn’t think anyone would mind.”

  “Why did you go?”

  “Why did you go?”

  “I asked first,” I said.

  Sam said he asked second and then neither of us said anything. He took the bit of plate out of my hand and stared at it.

  “I went home after half an hour,” I said. “You’re still missing.”

  He didn’t look at me or the river or anything. He just carried on picking at the bit of smashed plate.

  “Can we not talk about it?” he said.

  When I got home there was a pile of clean clothes for me on the sofa, folded up and nice-smelling. Mum had her hair tied back and no make-up and comfy clothes. She was smiling like she’d done something amazing and everybody had to celebrate. I wanted to smile back, but I was still cross.

  I picked up the first few shirts and dropped them on the floor on purpose. “I can’t wear those,” I said. “They’re way too small.”

  Mum’s smile cracked and she grabbed her keys off the side, and she said, “Right, I’m going to go and have words with that cow downstairs.”

  “What?” I said, and I wanted to take what I’d just done away again. I wanted to walk in and hug her and say thanks for washing my stuff.

  “That old woman on the ground floor,” Mum said. “The one who reckons she’s telling the social.”

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  “Why not?” Mum yelled at me.

  “She didn’t call, did she,” I said. “They didn’t come.”

  “I’m not having you judging me thanks to her,” she said. “I’m not scared of an old woman.”

  I tried to stop her. I held on to her arm and I said please like a hundred times, but once my mum’s decided she wants to have it out with someone that’s usually kind of it.

  I put my hands over my ears and sang so I wouldn’t have to listen to the shouting.

  Steve came up from the basement. I saw him through the window. Mick came out of his flat and shot down the stairs so fast he bounced off the walls. He sounded like a box falling. I could hear them talking, trying to stop Isabel and my mum from tearing each other apart.

  I was glad Sam was at work so he didn’t have to hear it.

  When the front door slammed, I looked out of the window again. It was Mick and my mum. He had his arm around her and she didn’t have anything on her feet. They just stood really close together in the street talking and I watched them through the glass, but I couldn’t hear what they said.

  Isabel wasn’t saying anything any more. I couldn’t hear her.

  I was ashamed to be the cause of all that commotion.

  I should have just kept my mouth shut.

  Twelve (Sam)

  I had no idea how much Isabel knew until she started talking. I was in her kitchen, fixing a cupboard door that had eaten itself around the hinges. Don’t ask me how she’d persuaded me to do it. She said Steve was out. I think it was a trick to get me down there. She probably ate the cupboard herself.

  Bohemia was in the park with Doormat again. We watched them walk off together, her chatting away to him like he was anyone, like he understood every word.

  “How was she yesterday?” she said.

  “Oh, you know,” I said. “Talkative.”

  “Poor you,” she said. “You come here like a hermit on a vow of silence and you get adopted by a ten-year-old with verbal diarrhoea.”

  Isabel said she’d had a fight with Cherry. She said, “When that girl is angry, she is not a pretty sight.”

  “Bet you are though,” I said.

  I had my head in the cupboard. I was taking off the door. My voice bounced off the walls and came straight back at me. I thought about Bohemia in the park with the dog, chatting away, with her skinny little limbs and her Pringles lunches and her tired eyes and her smile. I think we both did. “Poor kid,” I said.

  She said, “That makes two of you.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I am, Isabel. And I’m hardly a kid.”

  “You’re somebody’s kid,” she said.

  I pulled a face at her inside the cupboard. She didn’t see me.

  “How long are you going to keep it up?” she said. “I lie awake at night worrying about you, as well you know.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m not exactly living on the streets. And I have got a job.”

  “You’re doing very well,” she said. “Your loved ones would be so proud of you if they knew you were alive.”

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  “Don’t do what?”

  I breathed out hard and I didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t act all disappointed in me,” she said. “I’m only trying to help.”

  “You know nothing about me,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

  “Well, that’s my point exactly.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And that’s why I moved.”

  “To the wrong house,” she said.

  I screwed the cupboard door back on and I swept the sawdust off the counter with one hand into the other. “That’s done,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  I started walking to the door.

  “You have to call them,” she said. “Or write to them even. You have to tell them you’re alive.”

  “Isabel, please stay out of it.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam, but if you don’t call them then I will.”

  I turned back to her. She was at the other end of the hallway, this small, determined, meddling old woman.

  “Why would y
ou do that?”

  “Because they’re worried.”

  “You sure about that, are you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You don’t have their number,” I said. “How are you going to call?”

  “Well, I’ll find it.”

  “How? I’m not just going to tell you it because you let me walk your dog. I’m not Bohemia. I’m not some motherless little kid who doesn’t know what you’re up to.”

  “Right now you are.”

  I put my head in my hands and I asked her really nicely. “Isabel, leave me alone, OK? I mean it.”

  She wouldn’t let up. “Sam Cassidy,” she said. “Born what, 1991? 1992?”

  I wanted to walk away. “So? I won’t be the only one.”

  “Are you the only Sam Cassidy that went to Highfield School?”

  This cold, floorless place suddenly opened up inside me.

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  “It’s hell for your mum and dad,” she said. “How long have you been gone?”

  “Stop it!” I shouted.

  “They’ll be worried sick. Life doesn’t just carry on for the people you leave behind you know.”

  “You don’t know anything,” I said.

  “It was on your T-shirt.”

  “What was?”

  “The night I got locked out and you let me in, half asleep. Highfield School was on your T-shirt.” She laughed at me. “If you’re going to disappear without a trace, you don’t usually bring your school uniform with you.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I said.

  Isabel shook her head. “Don’t be such a child, Sam. I just want to help you do the right thing.”

  I felt lead-heavy, exhausted. “Why do they need to know where I am?” I said.

  “Why do you think?”

  “Want to know what I think? I think they’re better off.”

  She asked me if I really meant it, if that’s what I believed. “Why are you talking like that?” she said.

  “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  “So tell me.”

  I shouted at her then. I told her no. I said, “Nobody here knows what I’ve done.”