THREE POINTS ON A TRIANGLE

a novel by

Philip Gillett

chapter 1

‘Me mum said not to speak to strangers.’
‘Did she tell you about keeping off the railway?’
‘No.’
‘Told you about trespassing, didn’t she? Know what that is – trespassing?’
The boy shakes his head.
‘It means going on other people’s property when you shouldn’t. Like this railway. You shouldn’t be here.’
The boy looks at the ground.
‘There’s dangerous machinery here – you can get yerself killed going on the railway. Know that?’
‘No.’
‘Can’t say you ain’t been told now.’
The old man is unshaven. Uncountable layers of clothes are caked in grime. His teeth are decayed. His breath has the stench of tobacco. The boy runs away, his steps never faltering as he jumps over the rusting, weed-covered tracks. He hears the old man shouting as he scrambles onto a loading bay long since stripped of machinery. By standing on the heap of ballast he can grasp the top of the wall. Not caring that his clothes rub against the soot. Only when he is perched on top of the wall does he look back. The old man has retreated to the goods shed. The boy jumps down to the pavement and walks slowly away. There is no need to hurry any more.
A quiet street. The wall of the goods yard extends along one side. By the kerb are the hulks of abandoned cars. They trap the sweet wrappers and fish and chip papers which have blown along the gutter. One house in the terrace on the other side of the road has been empty for so long that layers of dust-covered posters are peeling from the lower walls. A few houses are still occupied. A cat sniffs at the milk bottle on one step. The concrete lamp standards are stark in their newness and set in squares of glistening asphalt. The only people in sight are two girls playing hopscotch. Their shrill voices grow still as the boy approaches. They watch, making no effort to stand aside as he nears them. His steps falter, but he keeps walking. 
‘Do you wanna play with us?’ the thinner girl asks.
He does not answer.
‘We’re talking to you,’ she says, barring his way.
His eyes are fixed on the pavement as he tries to push past. 
‘Who do you think you’re pushing?’ she asks, gripping his arm. She has thrust her face close to his, so that he is brought close to the sore on her lip. He looks away. 	
‘What are we gonna do with him?’ she says, still holding him. 
‘Teach him to answer us,’ her red-faced friend says. ‘Get him against the wall and teach him manners.’
‘And have a look through his pockets. I think we’ll do that.’
He tears free and runs, not heeding what the girls call after him. The road slopes upward. Though his pace slows and his breathing becomes laboured, he does not stop until he reaches the main road. Then he draws back his head, panting, his eyes tracing the curve of the concrete lamp standards until he is dizzy. Fumes from the slowly-moving lorries, cars and buses tickle his throat. The houses are tall, with basements reached by precipitous steps from the pavement. By walking close to the railings and looking through basement windows he glimpses a cat sitting on a shabby armchair and a half-eaten breakfast on a table. He enjoys glimpses of other people’s lives. 
At a road junction the end house has been torn down. Secondhand cars crowd the site. Prices are marked in white on the windscreens. The boy admires the newly-polished bodywork and sparkling chromium. He wants a car when he grows up.
In the side street where he lives, the houses are meaner. It is a road where children play. The front doors open onto the pavement. Dominating the skyline is the power station chimney, its sulphurous, yellow smoke lifted and spun by the wind. On winter days the smoke drifts low, mingling with traffic fumes to form an acrid blanket over the neighbourhood. Outside the furniture factory on the corner, the pavement is broken by vans backing against the doors. In wet weather water overflows the hollows and pools under intact slabs, to be pushed upwards by the weight of unwary pedestrians. Today the depressions are filled with dust. 
The boy’s home is shabbier than others in the street. The glass in the front room window has been broken for months – a sheet of cardboard covers the opening. A fallen slate overhangs the gutter. Milk bottles have left greasy rings on the step. He knocks on the cracked, blistered door panels.
‘Over here,’ comes the cry. ‘Head it!’
He watches the older boy playing football. In school holidays the smack of the ball against walls and the shouting of the players provides a constant accompaniment to the life of the street. Sometimes bottles are knocked off steps and rivulets of milk run between the glass shards, to mingle with the dust in the gutter.
The boy is still watching the game as the door opens. He does not notice at first.
‘Come in if you’re coming,’ his grandmother urges. ’Never play football, but you’re always watching them.’
He takes a last look at the game before following his grandmother inside, closing the door carefully behind him. The hall grows dark. He brushes against the clothes on the hallstand as he passes. The smells are familiar: the rubbery odour of his mother’s raincoat, his grandmother’s winter coats, musty with damp, and his own school raincoat. Sometimes when he is alone he nuzzles against the garments, imagining that they are swallowing him. 
In the living room his grandmother settles back in her armchair. She is mending a cardigan. He watches fascinated as the needle weaves in and out of the coarse fabric.
‘Yer mum’s not in, if that’s what you’re waiting for. No good hanging around here. Dunno why you can’t go and play with the other kids stead of hanging round here all the time.’
‘I’ve been out.’
‘For half an hour.’
‘I wasn’t gonna come back yet.’ 
‘Then why did you? All I know is you’re here now. Most mothers’d kick you out in the morning and make you stay out. You have it too easy, me lad.’
Her hair is dark like his mother’s, but he knows that it is dyed. She keeps the dye in the kitchen cabinet. When she washes her hair, his mother has to rinse it with kettles of hot water. The dye stains the chipped earthenware sink. 
His mother has lovely hair. It reaches around her shoulders, so that it shivers with its own life when she moves her head. In some lights it looks black. It always glistens as though it is newly washed. Sometimes she ties it in a ponytail with an elastic band. He likes to stroke it, revelling in its softness.
His mother has broad, high cheekbones. When the boy stares into her face, he knows that nobody can be so beautiful. Her cheeks are pale, but in cold weather her cheeks redden like those of the girls at school. Her lips are delicate. He does not like them coarsened by lipstick. She can make her eyes seem huge. Sometimes they glisten as though they are about to brim with tears. His grandmother’s eyes might have been like that, but now they are ordinary. Only her high cheekbones betray the family resemblance.  
‘I suppose you’re gonna start hanging around me now – stop me working.’
He goes back to the hall, not closing the living-room door. As he climbs the stairs, the thin carpet does little to muffle his steps. The wood creaks. The doors on the landing are pulled to, making the staircase dark. He does not like the gloom. He is relieved when he opens his bedroom door and the evening sun shines in his eyes. It is a small bedroom. Through the window he can see the backs of the houses in the next street. The back yards are divided by makeshift wooden fences. A line of washing can fill a yard. The walls are whitewashed to the height of the back door, though now the whitewash has weathered to grey. A tin bath hangs by each back door. He cannot see to the end of the row of the terrace. Above the slate roofs with their jumble of television aerials and leaning chimneypots looms the new block of flats. At night its lighted windows seem to hang in the darkness. When he cannot sleep, he watches in wonderment until only two or three lights are left. His mother said that soon they will be going to live in a flat.
The boy turns away from the window to rummage amongst the comics stacked beside his bedside cabinet. The only other items of furniture in the room are the bed, a cream-painted chest of drawers and a chair which is too rickety for use downstairs. Under the chair he keeps his magazines which his mother gets from other girls at work. When the pile grows too large, his grandmother makes him throw them away. He tries to pick out the most interesting ones, but when he looks at them they all contain something of interest. Piled on the chest of drawers are the books. With his pocket money he buys second hand books from the market. Going there on a Saturday morning takes him into a different world. The smell and the feel of the books excites him. He can make up stories about their previous owners, or skim through a whole row of books, deciding which one to buy. Time loses its meaning. 
A train clatters along the viaduct. The area is crisscrossed with railway tracks. A few lines are busy, others are only used by occasional goods trains, while some have been disused for as long as he can remember. He likes watching the trains on the main line. From his vantage point near the viaduct he speculates on the lives of those people in the crowded carriages – and what they think of his neighbourhood. He has never been on a train. From road bridges over cuttings he glimpses the disused lines. He calls them burnt-out lines. The rails are dark with rust. His dream is to follow one of the lines to its end. 
As he bounces on the bed, the springs twang. When he tires of this he lies still, staring at the damp patch on the ceiling. The ceilings of all three bedrooms are discoloured by damp. Once his grandmother showed them to a man from the council, but he never did anything. 
Outside, a girl is crying. He knows that it is Margaret, because she is the only girl nearby. She lives two doors away and is his own age. Yesterday he watched her mother taking her to the dentist. She hung back, screaming, as her mother hit her and dragged her along. That pleased him, for he is afraid of her. He found out later that she was having a filling. It was satisfying to imagine her crying as the dentist drilled her tooth. 
Once she kept looking at him as he played in the yard. He tried to ignore her, but as he dug for worms he knew that she was watching. 
‘David.’
He pretended not to hear.
‘Dave-e-e-d.’
He took no notice when she threw a stone. It landed behind him. The second hit him.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ she called as he looked up. Her face was pressed against the palings of the fence. He wanted to run into the house. 
‘Wotcha doing?’ she asked.
‘Playing.’	
‘Playing what?’
He turned away without answering.
‘You're not playing nothing,’ she persisted. ‘Wotcha doing?’
He went on digging with a stick, shielding what he was doing from her view.
‘You never go out playing with anybody else,’ she accused him. ‘You never play in the street.’
‘I don’t have to.’
‘Why don't you?’
He shook his head.
‘You ain‘t got a dad, have you?’
He stared at her.
‘See – I know about you,’ she said, pleased at having captured his attention. ’You live with yer mum and yer nan and yer mum ain't married. It ain't legally –   having babies when you’re not married. Me mum said.‘ 
He went back to the house without answering. Her knowledge frightened him. That night he tried to understand how somebody as good as his mother could do something wrong. Her image haunted him. She was speaking to him so gently. Her eyes are luminous. When he saw Margaret in the garden the next morning, he hid behind the coal shed and threw mud at her. 
He tries to read a comic, but the crying distracts him, bringing her words back to him. He slides to the foot of the bed, from where he can see the gardens. Margaret kneels in her yard, her hands clenched and her face screwed up with tears. She cannot know that he watches with such fascination. She wipes her face on her sleeve. It is something his grandmother will not let him do. The girl turns away as she drags her handkerchief from her pocket. If he knocks on the window, she will not know where the sound comes from. 
‘Are you gonna stay up there?’ his grandmother calls. ‘Yer mum’s gonna be in soon wanting her tea.’
He puts the comic aside and takes a final look at the girl. She has got to her feet. She knows his secrets. Excitement wells inside him. 
‘David!’
Sometimes he sees Margaret in the garden when her father is there. The boy watches carefully how father and daughter get on. Once he asked his mother why he did not have a father. She gave a weak smile and shook her head.
‘I'm not going to call you again,’ comes his grandmother's voice.
He hauls himself off the bed and goes downstairs. His grandmother concentrates on her mending. She shows none of the gentleness which lights his mother’s face. He does not want to be close to her.
‘I've been calling meself hoarse down here. Didn’t you hear me?’
Without answering, David takes the tablecloth from the dresser drawer and unfurls it over the table as he does each day. It is a task his grandmother gave him. She said he took too much and gave nothing. He smooths the cloth, so the creases in the thin plastic hardly show. The table is ready to be laid. He goes into the kitchen. It is a small, gloomy room with green-painted walls and a painted table. He collects a packet of margarine from the food safe and bread from the bin, taking them back to the living-room. Cutlery and crockery come from the dresser.
‘There’s some jam in the cupboard. Nobody else bothers to buy it around here, so I have to go out spending my pension money.’
David lays the table carefully, the way his mother showed him. He knows that it will please her. The handles of the knives are discoloured. He puts the one with the cracked handle by his grandmother’s place.
‘You’ll have to start making the tea as well soon. You’re not always gonna have things done for you.’  
‘I’ve laid the table.’
‘Did you get the jam out?’
‘No’ 
‘I might as well save me breath round here.’
The boy goes into the kitchen. The cupboard where food is kept has a wide shelf on which bags of flour and sugar are kept. Above this are narrow wooden shelves for tins, jars and packets. The jar of jam is on a high shelf. Strawberry jam. His favourite. He stands on tiptoe, his fingers touching the bottom of the jar. He eases it forward till the base overhangs the shelf. As it topples, he tries to grasp it. The jar bounces against his outstretched arm and is tossed away in his attempt to catch it. The glass breaks with a dull crack. He stares at the jam spattered over the pitted red tiles, not believing.
‘What have you done now? What have you broken?’
The boy looks back, afraid of his grandmother’s voice. She is coming into the kitchen. There is no way to hide what he has done. As she comes close, he turns away, holding one arm across his face. She hits him again and again till he cries out. Grass crunches under his feet.
‘Why don’t you mind out what you’re doing?’
‘It fell down when I was getting it,’ he whines again and again, but she takes no notice. His legs crumple. He sinks until he is squatting on the floor, his back against the doorframe.  
‘Get out of it. Go on – get out!’ She is pulling him to his feet, grunting with the exertion. ‘Get out – I’ve gotta clear this up now.’
He scurries to the back door. As he throws it open, the brass handle bangs against the wall. 
‘That’s it – go and break the door as well.’ 
The door slams behind him. He is outside. It is always cool immediately outside the door – the sun never reaches there. Moss grows on the concrete. There is a smell of drains. The walls of the houses are on three sides. A fence shields the back door and kitchen window from those of the adjoining house. 
Garden is a grandiose term for a square of concrete surrounded by strips of earth, where little grows except weeds and clumps of mint. It is out of sight of the living room and kitchen windows. His grandmother would have to be in his bedroom to see him from the house. 
Margaret has stopped crying, her attention gripped by something in the garden beyond the bottom fence. She gives no sign of having heard the commotion, or of being aware that David watches her, his tears forgotten. Then she turns, as though instinct has told her. She smiles. 
‘Hello, David.’
He grins sheepishly, not replying. 
‘Come over here,’ she tells him, stepping on the flower bed in her own garden to get to the fence. David obeys. The two children stand facing each other across the intervening garden. 
‘Wotcha doing?’ Margaret asks. 
David stares at her, suspicious of her friendship. 
‘Eh? Wotcha doing?’
‘I just came out here.’
‘What for?’
‘Dunno.’
‘You must have come out here for something. I saw you doing something just now.’
David is silent.
‘Why don't you wanna tell me?’ When her question meets with no response, she asks, ‘Have you had a row with yer mum?’
When he stands by the fence, his grandmother can see him from the living-room window.
‘I’m talking to you, David.’ 
‘I didn’t know what you meant.’
‘Did you wanna get out the way of yer mum?’ 
‘No.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I was getting a jar of jam out the cupboard and I dropped it.’
‘Did it break?’
He nods, feeling the tears returning.
‘Was yer mum angry?’
‘It weren’t her.’
‘You mean it was yer nan?‘ 
David’s expression is sufficient answer.  
‘What’s she do?’ Margaret persists.
‘She started hitting me, so I ran out.’ 
‘Me mum’s got a mood on like that.’
He does not respond.
‘Did you cry?’ Margaret persists. 
‘Not properly.’
‘I did a bit. Sometimes me mum gets sorry then and then she starts being all nice. She didn’t this time, though.’ 
The girl seems to speak as much to herself as to her audience. David glances uneasily towards the living-room window. He cannot see his grandmother.
‘Do you like yer mum?’ Margaret asks. 
‘More than me nan.’ 
‘She looks nice, your mum.’
'She is.’
‘How old is she?’
‘I dunno.’
‘What is she – twenty-four? She weren’t very old when she had you, was she?’
David looks down, not answering.
‘You‘re going all red. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You came out yer mum’s inside. Did you know that?’
‘I don’t wanna talk about it.’ 
‘Lots of boys are like that.’ 
He will not look at her. He asks, 'Wotcha do all the time?’ 
‘How do you mean?’ 
‘During the holidays.’ 
‘Sometimes I go round me friends, or else I go out with me mum. Have you got a record player?’
David shakes his head.
‘We’ve got one. You can come and listen to it if you like. Me mum’s got loads of records. She likes Cliff Richard best.’ 
The boy does not answer. 
‘Do you like Elvis?’
‘I dunno.’
‘You must know.’
‘I don’t know much about him.’
‘Everybody knows Elvis.’
‘I’ve heard of him.’
‘What do you do?’ 
‘Go out.’
‘I never see you. You never play with the others.’
‘I've got a special place.’
‘How do you mean?’
He looks away, aghast at his admission.
‘Where?’ she persists.
He hesitates.
‘Where is it, David? Wotcha talking about? I thought we was gonna be friends.’
‘This place nobody else knows.’ 
‘Where is it?’
The words are on the tip of his tongue. 
‘All right then, don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know about yer stupid old special place.’
‘You’ll tell everybody.’
‘No I won’t.’ 
‘You’re gonna.’
‘Are you gonna tell me where they are, or not?’
‘There‘s this old railway line that’s not used.’ He feels a sense of relief now that he has confessed.
‘Wotcha do there?’ she wants to know.
‘You can do what you like there – all the tracks and everything are there.’
‘When are you going there next?’
‘I dunno. I went there today and some old man was there who said it was private– ’
‘Who was he – one of the railwaymen?’
‘I dunno.’  
‘Sure it weren’t some old tramp? You don’t wanna take no notice of them.’
‘I’ve gotta go,’ David says, not wanting to lose all his secrets. He turns away abruptly, but his resolve falters. He cannot face his grandmother.
‘Yer mum ain’t called you.’ 
‘I’ve gotta go to the toilet.’
‘I’ll wait till you come out then. I wanna know about this railway place.’
‘I’ve got the other one to do,‘ he mumbles. 
‘You’ve got one of them old-fashioned lavatories, ain’t yer – with the wooden seat going right across. I can see it when you leave the door open. We’ve got a new one with a plastic seat. It ain’t half cold when you sit on it in winter. David –   I’m talking to you.’
But the boy is heading for the outside lavatory. He closes the door behind him, giving no sign that he has heard. He pushes the bolt deep into the frame.
‘What’s happening about tomorrow?’ Margaret calls. ‘Are we going down this place you said about?’
The back door opens. The dustbin lid clangs. His grandmother is throwing away the broken glass. Margaret and his grandmother have made him a prisoner. He cannot be free until his mother comes home. The tiny window high in the wall giving a view of the sky is the window of a cell. He is in a cell. He squints through a crack between the door panels, but he cannot see whether Margaret is waiting. He turns away with the despairing expression of a prisoner who cannot escape. Rush-hour trains clatter over the viaduct. His eyes stray to  the bare wooden seat and the crazed earthenware pan. There is a musty smell.  He knows the intimate details of his surroundings: the tiny cracks across the ceiling, the buttons of brown paint on the bottom of the hinges and the knob of the bolt worn shiny with use. He is glad that there are no spiders. A battery lantern is fastened on the wall opposite the window. On cold days, beads of water cling to the metal case, as they cling to the cistern. When he was younger, his mother had to turn the lantern on for him when he used the lavatory after dark. She waited outside the door. He was glad of her closeness. The light reflected against the opposite wall and cast strange shadows. Now he is big enough to turn on the lantern himself, he tries to use the lavatory as little as possible after dark. 
He sits on the edge of the seat and kicks his heels against the wooden planks. If he waits long enough, surely Margaret will go away.
*
‘That you, Carol?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that you?’
Carol does not bother to compete with the noise from the radio. 
‘You’re late, ain’t you?’ her mother complains as she goes into the living room.
‘I was looking in the shops.’
‘So long as it was only looking. I don’t want you buying stuff on the never-never.’
‘Where’s David?’
‘You know what he’s gone and done? Gets a jar of jam out the cupboard and drops it. New jar, that was.’
‘He didn’t mean to do it.’
‘Never means to do anything, that boy. Wonder is they haven’t put him in the special class.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with him. Where is he?’
‘Out the back. Keeps out the way when there's anything to be done. You can put the kettle on now you’re here.’
Carol goes into the kitchen. As she fills the kettle, she is confronted by her reflection in the small mirror over the sink. There are lines beneath her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. As she leans forward to examine the telltale marks more closely, the kettle overflows. She turns off the tap, not bothering to look in the mirror again.
‘You washing yer hair tonight?’ her mother calls.
‘No.’
‘I wanna soak some things in the sink.’
With the gas lit, Carol goes back to the living room. Her mother is buttering bread.
‘Don’t do any for me.’ 
‘You must have something.’
‘I’m not hungry, mum.’
‘Three slices won’t hurt you. You’re all skin and bone as it is. I dunno what you have to go on a diet for.’
‘I’m not on a diet. I’m not hungry, that’s all.’
‘Anyone would think you was about fifteen, the way you carry on.’
‘Wotcha gonna soak? You said you wanted to soak some things in the sink.’
‘David’s pants, some of me own things.’
‘I was gonna wash David’s stuff.’
‘You’re always going to. Trouble is you never get round to it.’
‘I do.’
‘Once in a blue moon.’
 ‘I don’t wanna argue.’
‘S’pose you’re gonna go out there and tell him his tea’s ready.’
Carol glances at her mother in the way a child might. She begins spreading margarine thinly on David’s bread in the way that he likes. Her fingernails are short and unvarnished.
‘Just fancied a bit of jam,’ her mother says.
‘Do you want me to go down there and get some? It don’t close till six.’
‘He can go tomorrow. He ain’t got nothing else to do, so he might as well make himself useful. Used to be you moping about all the holidays. Didn’t think I’d have to go through it again.’ 
Carol goes into the kitchen to make tea. When she has finished, she leaves the pot to stand on the cooker and goes outside. The garden is empty. When she pushes the lavatory door, it does not open. She goes back indoors and takes the teapot to its stand on the table.
‘I thought there was a bit of marmalade left,’ her mother says. ‘Have a look.’
Carol looks in the cupboard. The tiled floor is still damp.
‘There’s none here,’ she calls. 
‘Sure it isn’t behind the sugar?’
‘I just looked.’
‘Did you look behind the sugar?’
‘Yes.’ She goes back to the living room.
‘I know I left some. I suppose he’s had it.’
‘David can’t reach up there.’
‘He can if he stands on a chair. I dunno why you always stick up for him.’
‘I’m just saying – he hasn’t had your marmalade.’
‘Get on with yer tea. You make me sick sometimes.’
Carol takes her place at the table and plays with her food. Her mother pours tea.
‘Only got him to blame cos we ain’t got no jam. You can’t go saying that weren’t his fault.’ 
Carol does not answer. She appears intent upon her eating. Wraiths of steam rise from the three cups of tea. 
‘I thought you called David.’ 
‘He’s in the toilet.’ 
‘Just fancied a bit of jam on me bread. Now I’ve got to make do with sugar.’ 
‘Do you want him to run down and shop and get some?’
‘Be closed by the time he’s ready.’ 
Carol leans forward as she eats. She chews slowly, watching the back door. The seat of her upholstered chair is worn to a hollow, so that the front bar of the frame presses into her thighs. Her mother pushes the sugar bowl towards her.
‘I'll have it in a minute.’
‘Suit yerself.’ 
The cistern is flushing. Carol watches the back door. David does not acknowledge her presence when he comes in. 
‘Don’t forget about washing yer hands,’ she tells him. 
He uses the green soap intended for washing clothes. All the time Carol watches him. He dries his hands carefully on the towel behind the door. When he comes to the table, he begins eating the bread which she has cut.
‘Did you use my marmalade?’ his grandmother wants to know, glaring at him. His mother stops eating. 
‘I’m talking to you,’ his grandmother says. ‘Did you take the rest of that marmalade?’
A silence comes to the room. David glances at his mother, his eyes appealing  for support. 
‘I told you he hasn’t,’ she says. 
‘He's old enough to speak for himself. He should be by this time.’ The older woman’s eyes fix upon the boy. ‘Did you finish up the marmalade that was in there?’
‘He don’t even like it,’ his mother says.
‘It’s funny where it’s gone then, if you ain’t had it and he ain’t. You notice he’s not saying nothing.’
‘What marmalade?’ he asks. 
‘I had some left in the cupboard there and now it's gone. Chivers, it was. I suppose you broke that jar as well and didn’t tell no one.’
‘I’ll get some more tomorrow,’ his mother intervenes. 
‘Marvellous where all the money’s coming from to buy jars of marmalade every day for him to break. What you give for housekeeping don’t go far. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I can’t afford anything more, mum.’
‘I dunno why you can't get a job with a bit more money, stead of staying in that sweat shop.’ 
‘It’s all right,’ Carol mutters. 
‘Too lazy to go looking for something better, that's your trouble. When did you last have a rise?’
‘Last year.’
‘What are you now – twenty-six? And you're too scared to ask for more money.’
‘I get the same as everyone else there.’
‘You’d believe anything they tell you.’ As the old woman lifts the bread to her mouth, sugar falls on the tablecloth. Carol looks away. David clutches his own bread all the time. As he hears sugar falling on the plate, he looks down at his own plate. His grandmother chews noisily.
‘Who was you talking to out there?’ she wants to know. ‘I heard you talking somebody.’
‘He was in the toilet,’ his mother says.
‘Before that. He was talking to somebody. I head him, so don’t say he wasn’t.’
David glances at his mother for guidance. She has stopped eating. Her face betrays worry. 
‘Why’s everything have to be a secret round here?’ his grandmother complains. 
‘Margaret said something to me.’
‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place without making a mystery of it?’
‘He didn’t know what you meant,’ 
‘He must be blooming stupid in that case.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that.’
‘It’s about time he started getting to know some of the other kids. He's getting like you was at his age.’
David watches his mother. Her face has coloured. She looks down at her food.
‘The trouble I had getting you to school sometimes,’ the older woman continues. ‘Screaming and yelling. Some mornings I had to drag you there –  and wait outside to make sure you didn’t run out again.’
The boy regards his mother curiously.
‘Thought you’d grow out of it when you went to secondary school. Stead of that, we had the same old performance.’
Carol clutches her throat. She is coughing and gasping for breath. Her face grows red. The others look on as she gets to her feet and hurries into the kitchen. There come the sounds of her retching and being sick in the sink, followed by running water.  
She is calmer when she returns. Breathing deeply, she steadies herself against the back of her chair before sitting. 
‘What was all that about?’ her mother asks. 
‘Bit of bread went down the wrong way.’ 
‘You wanna start changing your ways a bit, me girl. You come home every night and sit in front of the tele. You can’t go hiding away all yer life.’
‘I'm tired when I come home from work.’ 
‘If you get tired all the time at your age, you wanna go down the doctor’s.’
‘I got a bit of bread stuck in me throat, that’s all. You don’t have to go to the doctor for that.’
‘You wanna come down the bingo sometimes. Get you out meeting people stead of hiding away.’ 
‘There’s David, ain’t there?’
‘He don't need a baby-sitter at his age.’ The old woman pushes the last of the bread in her mouth, chews a few times and washes it down with tea. ‘Always weak, your tea.’ 
‘I put two spoons in it.’
‘You need three with that Coop tea.’
Carol begins eating again. 
‘So are you gonna come down the bingo?’ her mother probes.
‘I wanna listen to something.’ 
‘You get on with it then. Do what you like – I don’t care.’ The older woman wipes her hands on her pinafore. ‘You’ve made enough mess of yer life already.’ 
‘I wanna listen to a radio programme, that’s all.’ Carol watches her mother draining the cup.
‘Suppose I’ve gotta wait till I get down Mabel’s before I get a decent cup of tea. Like blooming dishwater, that was.’
‘You asked me to make it.’
‘You could have made a decent cup while you were at it, couldn’t you?’ She  heaves herself to her feet. The boy watches her lumbering into the hall. The treads creak as she makes her slow progress upstairs.
‘Who's Mabel?’ he asks. 
‘Auntie Mabel – the big lady who gave you those sweets.’
‘What’s nan go there for?’ 
‘They play bingo.’
‘What’s bingo? She keeps saying she’s going down the bingo.’
‘It’s this game where you can win a lot of money.’
‘She don’t win, does she?’
‘She likes going.’ 
‘Can we play one day?’
His mother smiles fleetingly. ‘When you're a bit older, if you want to.’
The boy eats, satisfied. When he looks as his mother again, her eyes are glistening.
‘You might as well have this,’ she says, pushing the remains of her bread towards him. 

chapter 2

‘David.’
Nothing happens.
‘David – come down here when I tell you.’
The boy goes downstairs slowly. His grandmother has left the front door open. She makes her way back along the hall. 
‘Get a move on,’ she calls. ‘Somebody to see you.’
Margaret is balancing on the step. She smiles as he appears. She wears faded jeans.
‘Are we going to this place you said about?’
David glances back fearfully, but his grandmother has gone into the living room and shows no interest. 
‘You said about it yesterday – about going down the old railway line.’
He grips the edge of the door, not answering.
‘What’s the matter?’ Margaret presses. ‘You’re not scared of that man you said about, are you?’ 
‘No.’
‘So are we going?’
‘All right.’ 
‘What’s the matter, then?’ 
‘I’d better tell me nan.’
‘Go on then.’ 
‘David turns away, conscious that Margaret is watching. He goes into the kitchen, where his grandmother is washing up. He has to go close before she notices him.
‘I’m going out.’
‘What about the shopping? When do you think you’re gonna do that?’ 
‘I dunno.’
‘Made yer bed yet?’ 
He shakes his head. ‘I was gonna.’
‘You'd better get on with it then, hadn’t you? I’m not doing everything round here.’
As the boy goes back to the hall, his grandmother calls, ‘When do you think you’re gonna do the shopping?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Dunno nothing, do you? Well you'd better go and get the bread or they’ll be sold out.’
‘I could get it on me way back.’
‘Forget it, more like. You get it now. The money’s on the dresser with the list.’
When David goes back to the front door, Margaret is kicking at the step. She looks at the shopping basket he is clutching. He avoids her eyes.
‘I heard her say. Do you want me to come with you?’
‘I’ve gotta make me bed first.’
‘Let’s get on with it then.’
David does not move.
‘I thought you wanted me to help you?’
‘I dunno.’
‘That’s a stupid answer.’

‘It’s stupid then.’
‘Am I gonna help you or not?’ 
‘Not with making the bed.’
‘Give us yer basket then and I’ll wait here. Come on – hurry up.’
David hesitates. 
‘What are you waiting for?’ she asks.
‘I'll be back in a minute.’
‘Go on then. I’m not gonna steal the basket.’
He goes upstairs to the room where she has never been, from where he has  watched her. She must not discover that. Smoothing the sheets over the bed and tucking the edges under his mattress in the way his mother showed him. The door is open. He works quickly, straightening the blanket so that the bed looks tidy.
When he goes downstairs again, Margaret is standing in the hall, studying the shopping list.
‘We've gotta go to the grocer’s and the butcher’s – that’s about all,’ she decides. ‘It shouldn’t take long.’
‘It’s gotta be the butcher’s she likes.’
‘All right.’
‘One me mum always goes to.’
‘I said all right.’
He feels self-conscious about leaving the house with Margaret. As they walk to the main road, she keeps hold of the basket.
‘How far is this old railway?’ she wants to know. 
‘Not far.’
‘There's lots of old railways round here.’
David does not answer.
‘Do you always go on yer own?’
‘Yes.’ 
‘Why’s that?’
David admires the Jaguar. He sees it parked in the same place every day. One wing is dented. Rust shows at the edges of the bodywork. It belongs to somebody who works in the furniture factory. 
‘David – I’m talking to you. Why do you always go round by yerself?’
‘Cos I want to.’
‘You’re funny.’
‘If you had a car like that, wouldn’t you keep it clean?’
‘Cleaner than that. Me uncle’s got a car.’
‘What sort?’ 
‘A Ford Prefect. You like cars, don’t you?’ 
‘I’m gonna have one when I grow up – and it won’t get dirty like that one, either.’ 
‘I like riding in big cars. We went in one when me cousin got married.’ 
‘What sort?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Was it a Rolls?’
‘It was big. That’s all I can remember.’ 
‘You have to earn thousands and thousands before you can have a Rolls.’
‘This one was hired.’
They have to walk in the roadway to pass the van backed against the factory entrance. The men who load the van are laughing.
‘Do you like liquorice?’ Margaret asks.
‘Why?’
‘I'm gonna get some if you do.’
David does not reply. The two children turn into the main road. David watches the cars. He walks close to the kerb. When he glances at Margaret, she is looking straight ahead.
‘Do you like liquorice?’ she repeats. 
‘I dunno.’
‘Haven't you ever tried it?’
‘A long while ago, but I’ve forgotten what it tastes like.’
‘You can’t forget.’ 
‘Why not?’ 
‘Have you ever had liquorice allsorts?’
‘No.’
‘I have loads of sweets.’
They are outside the grocer’s shop. David hangs back.
‘Take it then,’ Margaret says, thrusting the basket towards him.
David does not move.
‘What’s the matter now? You’re not scared of going in a shop, are you? Mind out – somebody wants to get past.’
He moves closer to the shopfront. A woman edges by.
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ Margaret offers. ‘You’ll have to ask for the things yerself. I’m not doing that.’
David watches her face as he takes the basket. He expects her to break into giggles, but she returns his gaze sternly. He leads the way into the shop. It is crowded with displays. A myriad of inviting smells which he cannot identify vie for attention. He gives the list to the woman behind the counter and waits without speaking, holding the money tightly as she collects the items. He does not look at Margaret.
The shopping for groceries is soon completed. Margaret does not go into the butcher’s shop with him. David hands the list to the man behind the counter and watches without speaking, fascinated as the liver is weighted on the glass tray of the huge white scales. 
The basket is heavy as he carries it home. Blood soaks through the wrapping around the meat. Margaret is silent. The breeze makes smoke from the power station chimney unfurl lazily across the sky. Workmen are removing a drain cover from the road. David slows to watch. He edges closer to Margaret as an old man in a grubby, khaki raincoat shuffles by.
The railway viaduct is visible from the corner by the furniture factory. Cables hang from a latticework of galvanised girders still glittering with newness. The first time the boy ventured into one of the arches, there was a sound like thunder which made him run screaming into the open. He ran all the way home, expecting to find comfort in his mother’s arms, but she was not there. Later, when he knew there had been no accident and when the mystery drew him back to the scene, he discovered that the noise which frightened him was no more than a train passing overhead.
The entrances to some of the arches are choked with weeds. Others arches are filled with heaps of ballast, dark with grease, or are boarded in and used as workshops. A man in one workshop shouted at him. David makes a point of not going near it.
‘Have you got a key?’ she asks when they come to his front door.
‘We’ve gotta knock.’
‘I’ve got me own key.’
They wait in silence for the door to be opened. 
‘About time too,’ his grandmother grumbles. ‘Thought you were gonna be half the morning.’
‘We had to wait,’ David says.
‘Bet you let people push in front of you.’
‘We didn’t,’ Margaret tells her, but his grandmother is shuffling back to the living-room. They follow her. David lifts the basket onto the table. There are red marks across his fingers where the handle has dug into his skin.
‘Did you get everything?’ the old woman asks.
He nods.
‘Where’s the change?’ 
He fumbles in his pocket for the coins and gives them to her. 
‘Did you make sure everything’s there?’ she persists. ‘I know what you are.’
‘The man ticked them off on the list,’ Margaret says.
‘That don’t mean nothing.’ 
The children watch her sorting through the shopping. 
‘You’ve got everything, for once,’ she has to admit. ‘Makes a change.’
‘Can we go out now?’ Margaret asks.
His grandmother ignores her and glares at David. ‘Have you make your bed?’
‘Yes.’ 
‘You can get out from under my feet then.’ 
The two children go outside. David closes the front door. At the far end of the road, the older boys are playing football. 
‘Which way do we go?’ Margaret asks. 
David watches the smoke pulled across the sky in thin, curling strands by the breeze which he cannot feel.
‘David – I’m talking to you!’
The sound of his companion’s voice makes him look at her. 
‘Why don’t you ever listen?’ she complains. ‘No wonder nobody wants to go out with you.’
‘I was listening.’ 
‘Are we going to this place you said about?’ 
He nods.
‘Why don’t you say much?’
He watches a black cat walking in the kerb. It sniffs at a newspaper screwed into a ball, touching it with its paw.
‘David – you’re doing it again.’
He watches the cat playing with the paper.
‘Are you gonna sulk now, just cos I wouldn’t go in the butcher’s with you?’
‘Who says you’re coming?’
‘What’s up now?’ 
‘I don’t have to take you.’
‘You’ll be breaking yer word if you don’t.’ 
‘What are we gonna do then?’ 
‘We could go somewhere else.’ 
The whine of a circular saw comes from the furniture factory, precluding conversation. Sawdust billows across the pavement. The children hurry past on  their way to the main road.
‘Why don’t you play with the other boys?’ Margaret resumes.
‘I do sometimes.’
‘I’ve never seen you.’ 
‘You don’t know everything I do.’
‘You never play football in the street.’
‘I don’t like football.’ 
‘Why haven’t you told anybody else about this place we’re going to?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Don’t you wanna have people to play with?’
David stops.
‘Wotcha stopping for now?’ Margaret complains. 
He examines a car parked by the kerb.
‘What are you doing? What’s so special about it?’ 
‘It's a GT.’
‘What’s that mean?’ 
‘It’s better than the ordinary one – more powerful.’ 
‘So what’s GT stand for?’ 
‘I said – it’s more powerful.’
‘But what’s it stand for? You dunno, do you?’
David walks on without answering.
‘I only wanted to know what GT stands for, that’s all.’ Margaret says, catching up with him. ‘Why don’t you say if you don’t know?’
They continue along the main road, not speaking. David does not stop to look at the cars for sale on the corner plot, or to watch the workmen shovelling broken tarmac into a lorry where the road is being repaired. He walks more quickly than usual. Turning into a side road. They are beside a high brick wall which stops them from seeing into the yard. 
‘Have you ever been over a bridge like this in a bus?’ Margaret asks.
‘I did once,’ he lies.
‘You feel as if yer inside’s coming out.’
‘I know that.’
‘What are we gonna do when we get there?’ 
‘Depends.’
‘What – on whether that man’s there? He can’t do nothing, can he? Can he, David?  He’s nothing to do with the railway.’
‘He might be.’
‘Me mum says you can come to tea one day.’ She watches for his response, but he gives no sign of having heard.
‘Say something then,’ she urges.
‘What?’
‘You ain’t got many manners, have you?’ 
‘Wotcha mean?’
‘Do you wanna come to tea or not?’
‘I’ll have to ask me mum.’
‘How far have we gotta go?’
‘We’re here. We’d better slow down a bit till this woman goes past.’
‘I ain’t been down here before. It looks as if it don’t lead nowhere.’ 
David is silent.
‘Like a blooming secret society, this is, having to wait till everybody’s gone.’
‘You wanted to come.’
‘I dunno whether I do now with you being a misery.’
David walks on without looking back. Margaret hesitates, but runs to catch up with him. She tugs at his shirt, pulling it out of his trousers. When he pulls himself free, she stumbles. 
‘You never say you’re sorry, do you?’ she complains.
‘What for?’
‘You nearly pulled me over then.’
The woman has passed. David stops. 
‘We have to climb over the wall here,’ he explains. 
‘So? Think I can’t climb?’ 
‘And we’ve gotta make sure no one’s watching.’
‘So what? They’re not gonna care, are they? It’s only an old railway yard.’ 
‘We don’t want people knowing we’re here.’
‘Supposing somebody’s watching out a window or something? We dunno, do we? What are we gonna do – stay here all day just in case?’
‘I just wanna make sure nobody’s watching.’
‘What’s on the other side?’
‘You’ll see.’ 
‘Wait a minute.’
‘Now what’s the matter?’
A man approaches on a motor cycle. The roar of the engine grows loud enough to drown all speech. David waits till the rider turns into the main road and the noise subsides.
‘He weren’t gonna care, was he?’ Margaret says. ‘Wotcha think he is – a plain-clothes cop or something?’ 
‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.’
‘I dunno what you’re scared of.’
‘You have to put yer foot in there.’ He points to where a brick is missing halfway up the wall. 
‘Did you pull it out?’ 
‘It was done already.’
‘Somebody must have found out about the place first.’ 
‘No.’ 
‘There’s that man you said about.’
‘He only came yesterday.’
‘We can go over now.’ 
David digs his foot into the opening, grips the coping and hauls himself to the top of the wall. After looking quickly around to make sure that nobody is watching and that nobody is in the yard to challenge him, he jumps down on the other side. Margaret lands beside him a few moments later and brushes dust off her jeans. He watches her face as she looks at her surroundings.
From a shallow cutting between the house-backs, the two tracks leading into the yard diverge into four, which curve sharply beneath the bridge. The rails are dark with rust. Grass hides the ballast. The windows of the goods shed are broken: shards of glass covered in dust are left in the frames. Sheets of rusting corrugated iron lean against the wall.
‘I didn’t know there was so much space in here,’ Margaret says, staring around. 
‘Nobody knows about it.’ 
‘Can you make the points work?’
‘They’re all rusted up.’
‘There’s levers over there.’ 
‘I know – I’ve tried them.’
But Margaret is not listening. She jumps down to the track from the loading bay. David watches her tugging at a points lever with both hands, but it does not move. When she calls him to help, her shrill voice resounds through the shed. He goes to her hastily, so that she will not draw attention to them. 
‘It might shift if we both pull,’ she tells him.
Four hands clasp the pitted metal lever. Their bodies touch as they pull. The lever does not move. 
‘You’ll have to pull harder,’ she urges as he lets go. 
‘It’s all rusted up,’ he repeats as she strains against the lever. Obediently he puts his hands above hers in a concerted effort which yields no better result than before. She turns away, unwilling to admit defeat.
‘Don’t no trains come here any more?’ 
‘It’s all closed now.’ 
‘There’s a lamp on the buffers over there. Let’s see if it works.’
As she runs to the buffer stop, David scans the windows of the nearby houses. Nobody is watching. When he catches up with Margaret, she is standing on tiptoe, wriggling the lamp with both hands. David clenches his hands as he watches. 
‘Don’t take it off,’ he cautions. 
‘Why not?’ 
She succeeds in lifting the lamp off the bracket. It almost topples from her grasp. David backs away. 
‘Wotcha scared of?’ she demands.
‘People can see.’ 
‘So?’
‘That man might come.’ 
‘He’s only an old tramp, ain’t he? Are you gonna help me open this or not?’
‘All right.’
‘We’ll take it back to that platform thing. Then we can see what we’re doing.’
They make their way back to the loading bay. Margaret climbs up first and squats on the rough concrete. David joins her. Forgetting his fears, he watches as she tries to prize the lamp open.
‘The catch is all bunged up,’ she tells him. ‘We need something sharp.’
‘I haven’t got nothing.’
‘Haven’t you got a penknife?’
‘No.’
Margaret drops the lamp. It clatters on the concrete. She sucks her finger and then examines it.
‘Broke me fingernail,’ she explains. She stands, kicking the lamp on to the track. ‘Bloody thing.’ 
David looks on helplessly.
‘What else is there to do?’ she wants to know.
‘Wotcha wanna do?’
‘I dunno. What do you usually do?’ 
‘Sometimes I bring me comics down here and read them.’
‘What’s the point in coming all the way down here just to look at comics? Let’s play something.’ 
‘What?’
‘Can you run fast?’
He nods.
‘You always nod like that. Why can't you just say yes?’
He shrugs.
‘Bet you can’t run as fast as me,’ she goads. ‘We’ll have a race to the bridge and the one who loses has to do what the other one wants. Wait till I say “go”.’
‘Are we gonna start from here?’
‘We might as well get on the track.’
They drop down to the track and stand poised between the rails.
‘And go!’ Margaret shouts.
She leads from the beginning. While David picks his way between the rails, she runs heedlessly. The distance between them grows, David tries to lengthen his strides, but he is getting out of breath. He stumbles on a sleeper. Margaret is well ahead.
She waits for him beneath the bridge.
‘I thought you said you was a fast runner?’ she greets him as he struggles to her, panting. ‘You’re right useless, you are. Can’t even run a little way.’ She waits for him to recover before she adds, ‘Bleeding liar, that’s all you are. You’ve gotta do what I want now.’
David does not look at her. He hitches up his trousers which have become loosened with running. A smile comes to Margaret’s face. 
‘You’ve gotta kiss me,’ she declares. 
David pretends that he has not heard.
‘You agreed, didn’t you? You said if you lost, you’d do whatever I wanted.’
He remains silent, staring past her, not replying. 
‘Go on then.’
A car turns off the main road. As it passes over the bridge, there comes a faint drumming sound through the space underneath.
‘Are you scared?’Margaret asks. She watches David’s face intently. Her lips quiver. ‘Do you want me to close me eyes?’ 
David nods. He looks disinterested. When Margaret’s eyes are closed, he studies her. She is motionless and vulnerable. He glances around. He can escape while she is unknowing. 
‘I’m waiting,’ she prompts, not opening her eyes.
He stares at her as though she is some strange creature. Her lips are pushed forward. He leans towards her, ready to dart back if she should burst into laughter. But she does not. His lips touch her cheek for an instant.
‘David’s getting daring,’ she taunts, opening her eyes.
‘What are we gonna do now?’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘We’ve gotta do something.’
‘You’re changing the subject cos you were afraid of kissing me and you don’t like talking about it.’
David shakes his head.
‘You kiss yer mum, don’t you?’
‘Well?’
'You’re not scared of that, are you?’
He walks into the yard without answering. 
‘Come here,’ she calls.
He looks back, hesitating. 
‘What’s that way?’ Margaret demands, pointing beyond the bridge.
‘Nothing much.’
‘There must be something.’ 
‘I think it’s the docks.’
‘You don’t know, do you?’ 
‘It don’t matter, does it?’
‘Let’s go down there.’
‘What about the men?’
‘What men?’
‘Working down there.’
‘What about them?’ 
‘There’ll see us.’
‘So what? You’re not scared, are you? It’s gotta be better than the this old yard.’ She begins walking towards the world on the other side of the bridge. 
'I like the yard,’ David whines, catching up with her. Yet in spite of his reservations, he admires her daring.  
Beyond the bridge, a siding runs beside the two lines. The retaining walls on either side have brick buttresses. Margaret points. 
‘Look.’ 
‘What?’
‘That place like a little house.’ 
‘It’s a signal box.’ 
They go closer. Paint peels from the wooden walls. The windows are matted with dust. Margaret climbs the steps to the door.
‘Let’s go back,’ David urges. 
‘What do they wanna go and lock it for?’ she complains, rattling the handle.
‘Somebody’s gonna hear,’ he warns. 
‘Who?’ 
‘Anybody who’s around.’ 
‘There’s no one here.’ She kicks the door. ‘See?’
‘I thought we were gonna go down the docks?’
‘You didn’t want to just now,’ she points out, abandoning the door. ‘You’re scared of everything, you are.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Come on then.’ 
She leads the way along the track. Beyond the next curve, the retaining walls give way to wooden fences at the bottom of large, overgrown gardens.
‘You wouldn’t think we was in the middle of London,’ she marvels. ‘It’s like being in the country – all them trees and bushes.’ 
David does not answer. 
‘What happens when yer mum’s on holiday?’
'She does housework.’ 
‘Don’t you go anywhere?’
‘Down the park sometimes – or we go to the pictures.’ 
‘Don’t you ever go to the seaside or anything?’ 
‘No.’ 
One house backing onto the railway is gutted. A few charred roof timbers remain. Sky shows through the empty windows. The remains of the fence overhangs the retaining wall. A broken pram lies in the long grass at its base. The other houses are occupied. Water runs from an overflow. Several windows are open.
The retaining walls are higher where the railway passes beneath a road. The gib of a crane shows beyond the bridge. 
‘I wonder why they don’t have trains along here no more.’ Margaret muses. ‘They’ve gotta bring the stuff out the docks somehow. I’ll have to ask me dad. He works there, so he knows.’ 
Her father is a big man with a loud voice and huge hands. His hair is always greased and combed back. Once he lifted Margaret off the pavement and held her upside down till she screamed. David is afraid of him.
The railway lines end abruptly beneath a bridge. A wire fence stretches across the cutting. Beyond the bridge, the retaining walls cease at the edge of a building site. Further traces of the railway are overshadowed by scaffolding. The jib of the crane glimpsed earlier hangs over the concrete skeleton of a block of flats. 
‘I thought you said we could go all the way to the docks,’ Margaret accuses. 
‘You said you wasn’t going all the way.’
‘Not into the docks, but I thought we were gonna get as far as the gates.’ She stares through the wire. David detects something wistful in her tone which he cannot understand.

chapter 3

‘You going out then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Taking him?’
‘Not if you mean David.’
Carol is combing her hair in front of the living-room mirror. Her mother is looking at the newspaper.
‘Gonna be late back?’
‘I dunno.’
‘When you said you was going out, I thought you was taking him to the pictures.’
‘No.’
‘Going out on yer own, are yer?’
‘No.’ 
‘Meeting somebody from work?’
‘Somebody I know, that’s all.’
‘Dunno why you have to make a mystery out of everything. Got yerself into enough trouble last time, not saying nothing till it was too late.’
‘You’d better leave the hall light on.’
‘Where’s David?’ 
‘In the garden.’
‘Give me a bit of peace. Better than hanging round in here.’ She turns the pages of the paper and squints at the radio page. 
Carol goes upstairs. Before the wardrobe mirror she looks at her reflection,  tossing her head back in carefree fashion and running her fingers through her hair to judge the effect. She lingers, holding the pose. The ticking of the alarm clock hardly disturbs the stillness of the room. A dog is barking outside. Her hand falls as she becomes conscious of the theatricality of her pose. 
Her father decorated the room when she was still at school. He bought the bed when she outgrew her childhood one – David uses her old one. The wallpaper is yellowing. The scratches on the headboard go unnoticed. There is no dressing-table in the room; the jars and bottles containing her make-up are spread over the chest of drawers. Behind them is a mirror in a cracked, plastic frame. She goes to the window in the corner of the room. She can see David playing in the garden. She smiles. As she opens the wardrobe door, she whispers his name. Her few clothes are arrayed before her. She runs her hand along them, enjoying their texture. For a moment there is excitement in her heart. Deciding what to wear for her night out is pleasurable. She takes out the green velveteen dress which was once her favourite. A stain still shows where David dropped ice cream on it. Reluctantly she puts it back. The metal hangers clang. All her clothes are shabby – all of them.
*
‘Way you’ve done yourself up, it’s a wonder you didn’t get yerself a new dress while you were at it.’ 
Carol puts her raincoat over the back of the spare armchair without answering her mother. 
‘I dunno why you wanna take that thing – it’s not gonna rain tonight.’
Carol looks at herself in the mirror over the fireplace. Her mother watches.
‘Don’t usually have all this palaver when you go out. What’s it all in aid of?’
As Carol goes to the back door, her mother calls ‘Everyone must be struck dumb in this house. No one ever answers.’
David is kneeling at the bottom of the garden, digging with a trowel. He looks up at the sound of his mother’s steps on the path. She smiles.
‘Wotcha doing?’ she asks.
‘Looking for worms.’
‘What for?’
‘I’m seeing if we’ve got any.’
‘I’m going out now.’
He nods imperceptibly. 
‘I dunno when I’ll be back. I might be late, so don’t make a fuss about going to bed.’
He nods again. 
*
Seven-thirty. Carol stands by the underground station. She casts covert glances at the men who pass. When one catches her eye, she looks away. She clasps her handbag tightly. Snatches of conversation reach her.
‘...I says to her – you do what you like, but I’m sticking here...’
A neon sign flashes in the window of a shuttered dry cleaner’s shop across the road. A burglar alarm is ringing. 
Carol turns when the lift doors clang. People spill into the street: shopgirls and workmen, all coming home. The doors close. She watches a bus stopping on the other side of the road. It moves off almost immediately. A black woman is the only passenger to alight. As it pulls away, Carol wrinkles her nose at the diesel fumes wafting across the street. 
‘...Look what they did last time. And that was at home! Bloody useless, they are...’
‘...They’ve gotta win on Saturday, or they’ll go down...'
‘They never will.’
A sweet shop is still open. The man who comes out walks in Carol’s direction.  She shifts position and avoids looking at him. He is too busy pulling the wrapping from a packet of cigarettes to notice. The foil falls at her feet.
Two youths approach. They are talking loudly. 
‘...What for?’
‘I wasn’t gonna hang around and get done, was I?’
‘They wouldn’t have cared.’
The conversation ceases as they near Carol. She looks at her handbag to avoid their gaze. She hears their steps stop.
‘What’s yer name, darling?’
She looks up. They are grinning.
'That’s right – you. No one else here, is there?’ 
She shakes her head and away. 
‘All right – be like that then.’
Not until the youths have moved on does she dare to look back. Her gaze lifts above the shop-fronts across the road. The facades of the tenements above them are decaying. She knows that everything is shabby, yet it is her neighbourhood – the place where she was born and brought up. She looks above the tenements, to where the blue sky of early evening is streaked with cloud. That helps her to dream. 
A young and well-dressed man approaching the bus stop opposite attracts her attention. She takes a letter from her bag and scans it, pushing it back hastily as two girls pass. They are laughing. One nudges her companion. They both look at Carol. She is shaking. Her knuckles are white as she grips the bag. They glance back her as they enter the station. She knows that they will talk about her. Her mouth is open as she gasps for air. The man at the bus stop notices. He stares at her, but he does not move. 
Relaxation comes. Her body grows limp. Her grip on the bag loosens. She is still. It is as though her muscles can no longer sustain the burden. A bus stops on the opposite side of the road. When it draws away, the man has gone. Nobody gets off. For a moment, Carol is unobserved. She is calmer now. She watches an old woman hobbling along the opposite pavement with the aid of a stick.
The clatter of the lift doors makes her turn, startled. The lift disgorges its occupants. She holds her bag tightly again. The crowd soon disperses. Only one person hesitates. He is her own age, yet with the awkwardness of a growing boy. He approaches her, smiling cautiously as though unsure of his response. 
‘Are you Carol?’ 
She nods, smiling back. 
‘Sorry I’m a bit late. I just missed a train and there was a long wait.’ 
‘It don’t matter.’
‘The doors were closing as I got on the platform.’
‘That’s what always happens to me.’ 
‘What do you want to do?’ 
‘I don’t mind.’ She smiles, noticing his lips. They are cracked and dry. 
‘Have you had anything to eat?’ he asks.
‘I had a bit before I come out.’
‘I wondered if you wanted to go for a meal.’ 
'I don’t mind.’
‘If you’ve had something already...’ 
‘I didn’t have much.’
‘Perhaps we can have something first and then go to the pictures or something, if there’s anything you want to see.’
'I don’t care what’s on. Makes a change just going to the pictures.’
‘That’s settled then.’
‘Nice and quick.’
‘Do you know anywhere to eat round here?’
‘There’s not much.’ She scans the empty street helplessly. ‘There’s a Chinese restaurant along here – if you like it.’ 
‘Do you want to go there?’ 
‘I’ve never tried it.’ 
‘Do you want to?’ 
‘I dunno how much it costs.’
‘I’ll pay.’
She hesitates.
‘We can have a look,’ he suggests.
They walk away from the station. Carol is on the inside.
'There's not much around here,' she explains. ‘There’s a lot of cafes, but they only open during the day.’ 
‘I thought it would be easier for you, meeting here.’
‘It’s quite near home,’ she admits. 
‘It wasn’t too early for you?’
‘No – I get in by six, so it was nice.’
‘I know you said you worked locally.’
A silence grows between them. Carol shivers though the evening is warm. She glances at Paul. She has not called him by his name. 
‘I shan’t want too much to eat,’ she warns. ‘I never have much when I’m out.’
’We don’t have to eat if you don’t want to.’
‘If you want something...’
‘Do you know when the film starts?’
‘I never thought of looking.’
‘We could go straight there if you like.’ 
She hesitates. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘How about popping down there first to see the times?’
'It’ll be a change just to go to the pictures. When I go it’s what David wants.’ 
‘The last film usually starts around half past eight.’
‘Or we could go to the restaurant first.’
They turn off the main road.
‘I’m following you,’ Paul says. ‘I don’t know my way around here.’
‘It’s only just down here.’
‘I shouldn't have been late, should I? Makes a bad impression.’ 
‘You couldn’t help it.’
‘I could have left home earlier.’
The restaurant has been open barely a year. It is smarter than other shops in  the neighbourhood. Curtains conceal the interior. Carol hesitates as they come to the entrance.
‘Do you wanna go in?’ she asks.
‘What do you think?’ 
‘It looks expensive.’
‘You said – there’s nowhere else to go.’ 
‘We could get a hot dog or something. There’s a Wimpy that’s just opened   near the pictures. That looks nice.’
‘Let’s go in here. Be adventurous.’
They sit at a table near the window, facing each another. Carol looks wonderingly at the menu.
‘Are you having Chinese?’ Paul asks.
‘I’ll just have an omelette, thanks.’
‘I’ll have the same.’ 
‘You don’t have to.’ 
‘I haven’t tried Chinese food either.’
After Paul has ordered, Carol stares absently through the curtain at the street. Her hands are clenched under the table.
‘What’s your little boy’s name?’
‘Eh?’ She turns to Paul, startled.  
‘You said in your letter – about your little boy.’ 
‘David – it’s David. Not very original, is it? Still...’
‘It’s all right.’ 
‘He’ll probably wait up for me.’
‘So you can’t be out too late.’ 
Carol smiles.
‘What’s work been like today?’ Paul asks.
‘All right. It’s just working in a factory. Every day’s the same. Yours sounds more interesting.’
‘There’s nothing exciting about doing wages.’ 
‘You must be good at figures.’ 
‘So long as you’ve got O-level maths. A lot of it’s looking up tax tables.’ 
‘I couldn’t do it.’
‘Course you could.’
‘I was hopeless at school.’ 
‘How’s David getting on there?’
‘It’s the summer holiday at the moment, so he’s at home. He goes back in a couple of weeks.’ 
’Does he like it?’ 
‘He don’t say much. I had a bit of trouble with him at first, but I think he’s settling down now.’ 
‘I suppose you can’t get out much.’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t like leaving him. He don’t get on with his nan.’ 
‘I remember you said you lived with your mum.’ 
‘I can’t do much else really.’ She hesitates, wary of confiding in a stranger. ‘It gets a bit awkward sometimes, but I can’t afford to live on me own.’ 
The two other couples in the restaurant talk with easy intimacy. Carol watches enviously. She turns to face Paul again, aware that he is looking at her. When he smiles, she tries to smile back. The woman at the adjoining table glances at her, curious and appraising. 
They eat in silence. Carol tries not to catch her companion’s eye. She eats slowly. Her hands show no trace of tremor now. Several times she glances towards the door to reassure herself that her raincoat still hangs on the stand. It is the only coat there.
Paul finishes first. Carol tries to eat more quickly, but the food lodges in her throat. She coughs. Her knife clatters on the plate. Other people turn to see the cause of the disturbance.
‘Went down the wrong way,’ she explains, patting her chest. Her cheeks have  reddened. She puts down her fork. ‘I can’t eat any more.’ 
‘Do you want some coffee to wash it down?’
‘If it’s not too expensive.’ 
Paul orders. As the waiter clears the table, Carol wipes her mouth with a paper napkin. When she has finished, she puts it in her bag. 
‘All right now?’ Paul asks.
‘It went down the wrong way,’ she repeats. 
‘Thought I was going to have to slap you on the back or something.'
‘Or hold me upside down – that was what me mum used to do.’ She grins, aware that she is talking too loudly. The realisation makes her colour again.
‘I think you’re a bit old for it now.’
‘Did you get your car? In your letter you said you were going to see one.’ 
‘It was already sold when I got there, otherwise I could have driven here today and we could have gone for a ride.’ 
‘That would have been nice.’ 
‘I’m still looking around.’
‘I’d like to learn to drive.’
‘Why don’t you try?’
‘I couldn’t.’ 
They wait without speaking till the coffee is served. They do not look at each other. Beneath the table, Carol rubs her thumbnails together. 
‘It’s nice in here,’ she says, looking around as the waiter goes away.
‘It makes a change, eating out.’ 
'It’s lovely to get out. I’m not much of a cook.’ 
‘I’m sure you are.’ 
She shakes her head. As she sips her coffee, her eyes drift to the couple holding hands across the table. 
‘What do you do in your spare time?’ Paul asks. 
‘I don’t get much.’ 
'I meant in the evenings – after you come home from work.’
‘I always seem busy, what with the washing and shopping and that. I feel too tired to do anything else.’ 
‘What about your mum – does she do anything?’ 
‘She does the cooking.’ 
The conversation lapses. Carol’s glance steals back to the other couple. 
‘Want anything else?’ Paul asks when she puts down her cup. 
‘No thanks.’
‘You don’t want any sweet?’ 
‘No – it was lovely. Thank you.’ 
‘Shall we go?’
They leave the table. Carol puts on her coat, so she does not have to watch  as Paul pays the bill. She takes a final look around the restaurant, savouring the exoticism of bamboo screens and prints of Chinese scenes on the walls and the luxury of fitted carpets. She has never been to such a place before. 
Outside, the air has become cooler. In the lengthening shadows, the warehouse across the road assumes the grim aspect of a prison. A tramp clutching a cider bottle leans against the wall.
‘Shall we get a bus?’ Paul asks.
‘It’s not far.’
They walk without speaking. Carol grips her bag tightly, not looking at her companion. The few shops are old and shabby, the windows crammed with goods which nobody buys. Cobbled driveways intersect the pavement at the entrances to warehouses and factories. The battered wooden doors are padlocked. Wire grilles protect ground floor windows. Dust is thick on the glass.
The pavement narrows. Carol hangs back. She can see the shine on Paul’s trousers and the scuffs on the backs of his shoes. She half closes her eyes as the evening sun glints on the windscreens of passing cars. A group of black youths watch from across the road. Their voices are loud. She looks down.
Where the pavement widens, Paul waits for Carol to catch up. She moves to the inside again. 
‘At least we’ve got good weather,’ Paul remarks. ‘I thought it was going to rain this morning.’ 
Around the corner, the road is wider and busier, the shops more modern.  Carol looks at displays of clothes such as she has never worn.
‘It’s not the sort of cinema where you have trouble, is it?’ Paul asks.
‘I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of any.’
‘I know you get it in some of them.’
‘I haven’t been there for ages.’ 
‘At least you won’t have seen the film before.’
‘When I was a kid, I used to come here on Saturday mornings. I hated it if I had to miss a week.’ She smiles at the recollection of a world lost to her.
By the window of a television shop, an elderly couple stare through the grille at the silent images on the screens. 
‘I wonder if the sets get left on all night,’ Carol says. ‘You’d think they’d overheat, or something.’
‘I spect there’s some sort of time switch.’
She smiles. ‘If we can’t get into the pictures, that’s what we’ll have to do – stand outside the shop and look at the tele.
‘We should get in easily on a weekday.’
The cinema canopy is brightly lit. Carol hangs back as Paul buys the tickets. She gazes at the surroundings which she knew so well as a child. The entrance is so spacious that it never seems crowded. A wide, curving staircase leads from the foyer to the circle. The carpet dulls all sounds. Yet some of the grandeur she knew as a child has been lost. The walls are yellow with tobacco smoke. The carpet on the treads of the stairs is frayed. Even the lighting concealed behind cornices no longer seems magical.
Paul leads the way through the two sets of doors into the auditorium. The film has already begun. They follow the usherette ever nearer to the screen until the bobbing light of her torch comes to rest on two vacant seats in the centre of a row. Carol follows Paul as he squeezes past the other film-goers. When she sits down, she does not take off her coat. Her hands are clasped firmly around her handbag. She ventures a glance at Paul. His face is lit by the reflection from the screen. He is already absorbed in the film. 
*
‘It was all right once I got into the story,’ Carol decides. 
Walking towards her home. Ahead are the lights of the station. 
‘I keep kicking myself,’ Paul says. ‘I should have checked up when the main film started. It’s silly to go in halfway through a thriller.’
Carol does not reply.
‘Which way is your home?’
‘Why?’
The sharpness of her tone makes him glance at her.
‘I wondered whether you wanted me to walk back with you.’
‘Have you got time?’
‘I’m sure it’s not too far.’
‘If you could come to the end of the road.’
‘Okay.’
‘It’s not far now.’
Passing the station. 
‘I don’t like walking back by meself at night,’ she explains.
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘When will you get home?’
‘I’ll be all right. So long as I get a tube train before they stop running.’
‘It made a change – going to the pictures.’
‘Good.’
‘So long as I don’t have nightmares.’
‘Do you think you will?’
‘I do sometimes. Now so much now, though.’
‘You should have said. We could have gone somewhere else.’
‘It weren’t all that scarey,’ she assures him.
He hesitates before asking, ‘Have you met anybody else like this?’
The silence is prolonged and awkward. Carol twists her fingers around the strap of her bag.
‘I only joined a few weeks ago,’ she finally confesses. 
‘I’ve met a couple of other girls.’
‘I wouldn’t go to a marriage bureau or anything like that – not where you have to go for an interview.’ 
’I’m glad you did apply, otherwise we wouldn’t have met.’
Carol is silent. The couple follow the main road, where David walked earlier in the day. They stop by the furniture factory.
‘Is this it?’ Paul asks.
Carol nods, avoiding his face. She shivers.
‘Getting a bit cold now,’ she remarks.
‘I’m glad I met you.’
‘I’ve gone and dragged you out of your way. I’m sorry.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
The silence grows as she gazes past him, along a street made colourless by sodium lights.
‘Thanks for the meal and everything,’ Carol says, trying to smile.
‘I enjoyed it.’
‘I’d better be going. Let you get home.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
They hesitate, neither wanting to be the first to turn away.
‘Goodbye then,’ Carol says, glancing at him.
‘Goodbye.’ He avoids looking at her as the words tumble out: ‘Do you want to meet again, by the way?’
‘I’ll have to let you know.’
‘You can write – or ring me, if you like.’
‘I’ll write,’ she promises. When she turns away, she does not look back until she reaches her front door. By then the corner is empty.

chapter 4

‘I s’pose you want jam on it.’
David looks up at the sound of his grandmother’s voice.
‘Don’t matter when you go and break a whole new jar, but that don’t stop you eating it when I get another lot.’ She pushes the jar towards him. The boy spreads jam on his bread.
‘And don’t get it all over yer clothes like you usually do. Oughtta be wearing a bib, the way you eat.’
The sink in the kitchen empties with a gurgle. The door to the kitchen is closed. The boy begins eating with his head held low over the plate and both hands around the bread. His chair creaks as he wriggles. The bulb casts a harsh light over the table.  
‘I hope you’re staying out for the day,' David’s grandmother says. ‘Not having you moping round the house, getting under me feet.’
The boy pulls his lip over his teeth and tries to pull off a piece of bread by gripping it between his lips. Jam oozes around his mouth.
‘Turn the radio on,’ his grandmother says. ‘Let’s have a bit of music. Gets on me wick, sitting here with you.’
David slides off his chair and goes to the dresser. The portable radio was bought second hand. The rexine case is worn, exposing the hardboard underneath. The voice of Elvis fills the room. His grandmother’s dentures are loose. She has to keep pushing them into place with a rattling sound which makes David look up. 
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she demands. 
Obediently he looks away.
‘You wait till you’ve got false teeth – see how you get on.’
The boy has not cut his slice of bread. It hangs over the back of his hand, impressed with the marks of his teeth. The jam glistens. He pulls the packet of cornflakes closer, so that he can read the print on the side.
‘Didn’t I just say? Don’t have no more cos yer mum’s gonna want the milk.’
The boy thrusts his neck forward like a pigeon to swallow before saying, 'I was reading the packet.’ 
‘You’re always reading something, you are. Wonder you don’t strain yer eyes.’
‘I like reading.’
‘Time you started going out and playing with the other kids.’
The boy continues eating.
‘I’m talking to you.’ His grandmother’s voice is harsh. ‘Can’t you answer for once?’ 
‘I don’t wanna play.’ 
‘Scared of them, more like. You’re gonna be real little namby-pamby when you grow up, my lad.’ 
The boy looks at her without understanding.
‘Look what you’re doing!’
His bread falls jam downwards on the tablecloth.
‘Look what you’ve gone and done now. Pick it up then.’
The boy peels the bread off the cloth and puts it on the plate. He scrapes jam off the cloth with his finger. His mother has finished washing. She comes out the kitchen wearing a fawn cotton dress with its belt unfastened. She is holding a deodorant stick. The cloying, sweet smell pervades the room.
‘Stinks, that stuff,’ his mother says.
‘Everybody uses them.’
‘I don’t care. It still stinks.’
‘Can you do me dress up at the back, mum?’
‘Let’s finish this.’ 
While she waits for her mother, Carol puts the stick on the dresser. Her dress hangs loosely over her shoulders. David looks at her back. The sound from the radio has degenerated into a thudding rhythm. The case vibrates.
‘Come here if you want me to do it up.’ The older woman wipes her fingers on her apron. Her mouth is bulging with food. ‘You’ll have to bend down – right down.’ 
Carol bends forward in front of her mother.
'Right down.’
She squats on her haunches, as though she is a child again. Her head is bowed. Her mother squints as she fumbles with the tiny eyelets above the zip. David sees the skin stretched white over his mother’s knees and the dress pulled tightly around her body. 
‘You was late last night,' his grandmother remarks.
‘I was in by eleven.’ Carol is ineffectually pulling at the hem of her dress.
‘That’s late for you. Keep still if you want me to do this.’
‘I said I might be late.'
‘Where did you go?’
‘Nowhere much.’
‘What you mean is you’re not gonna tell me.’
‘All I wanna do is get this done and get off to work.’
‘I dunno what they put hooks at the top for when there’s a zip.’
Carol sighs.
‘I s’pose you went to the pictures,’ her mother says. ‘Nowhere else you’d go round here.’
'What if I did?’
‘I’m only saying. No harm in that, is there?’
‘I’ll do it meself,’ Carol says, getting up.
‘You get on with it then. Can’t I say nothing about what me own daughter does?’
She pays no attention as Carol struggles to fasten the top of her dress. The music has stopped. An announcer reads a news bulletin. A train clattering over the viaduct makes a vase on the dresser rattle as Carol fastens the top hook and sits at the table. David watches her tipping cornflakes into her dish. 
‘Is this all the milk we’ve got?’
‘The milkman didn’t leave any – or else somebody pinched it.’
‘Can I have the rest of this?'
‘Wotcha think it’s there for?’
‘I didn’t know if you wanted another cup of tea.’ 
‘You have it.’
Carol eats. The others hear the cornflakes crunching in her mouth.
‘Dunno why you’re so scared to say when you’re going out with yer boyfriend,‘ her mother says. 
Carol continues to eat without replying. 
‘Wish you’d go out a bit more often. It’s eight years now.’
‘You dunno anything about it.’ Carol’s voice is sharp.
‘That’s right – I’m just yer mum. I dunno nothing.’
‘I don’t wanna keep talking about everything I do.’
‘Time you got over all that business.’
‘You dunno what I do.’ 
‘Do you think I can’t guess what you get up to? All them letters you keep hiding away and all that fuss about getting ready.'
‘Can’t you leave it, mum?’
‘Bout time you faced facts for a change.’
Carol’s spoon clatters on her dish. She rises from her chair.
‘That’s it – run out like you did when you was a kid,’ her mother calls as Carol runs into the hall. ‘You used to lock yerself in the toilet. At least you’ve grown out of that.’
Carol steps sound on the stairs. 
‘You’d better finish them cornflakes,’ her mother tells David.
A door slams, making the vase on the dresser rattle again. Floorboards creak in the bedroom overhead. The boy eats slowly. The music on the radio is loud again. Carol’s mother wipes her hand across her nose. He watches. 
‘It’s like sitting here with a blooming fish,’ she complains. ‘Why can’t you answer?’
He looks down at his food.
‘David – I’m talking to you.’
He stares at the bread. He has stopped eating.
‘You’re as bad as she is. Are you gonna finish them cornflakes or not?’
‘No.’
‘I’d never have dared answer like that when I was a kid – get it shoved down me throat.’
David puts down the crust and slides off his chair.
‘And I wouldn’t have been allowed to leave the table till I’d eaten everything on my plate.’ 
He hesitates.
‘Are you gonna finish yer bread or not?’ his grandmother presses.

‘I don’t want it.’ He turns away, going through the kitchen where the air is still warm and moist and scented with his mother’s soap. The brass handle of the back door rattles as he turns it. Outside, the air is cool. Sparrows abandon scavenging the bare earth and fly to the fence to watch as he approaches. He does not hear his mother leaving the house.
*
‘How long are we gonna stay there?’
‘I dunno.’
They are walking in the shadow of the wall. Chalk marks on the pavement show where children have played. 
‘I’ve gotta be back for dinner,’ Margaret says. ‘We’ll have to bring some stuff here one day – food and that. We could have crisps, biscuits – ’
‘And orange drink.’
‘It's good in a flask, cos you can get it to stay cold. We’ve got one at home we can use if me mum lets us.’ 
‘All right.'
‘You don’t sound very keen.’
David gives no sign of having heard.
‘You’re funny, you are,’ she says. ‘Why do you keep coming here by yerself?’ 
‘Because I like to.’
‘What – better than coming here with me?’ 
‘Yes.’
They stop at the place where the brick is missing. David looks around to see whether anybody is watching.
‘What’s the matter with you? Why are you so scared if somebody sees?’ 
‘Let’s get over the wall.’
‘All right. Give us a chance.’
Margaret digs her foot into the crevice and lifts herself up. David glimpses her white knickers as she swings herself onto the coping. From her position astride the wall she looks down at him.
‘Come on then. You was in a hurry for me to get up here just now.’ 
‘I’m waiting for you to get down the other side.’
‘l can stay here if I want.’ She wriggles backwards. ‘There’s plenty of room for you.’
‘Everybody can see you.’
‘So what? Come on, David – I’m not gonna. push you off.’
David climbs up to join her.
‘Bet you can’t knock me off.’ she says when he is facing her. 
‘Let’s get down.’
‘Why? Is the little boy scared of getting hurt? Is he gonna start crying?’ She swings her other leg over the wall so that she is facing the yard. Below her is the ballast heap. ‘We’ll try and push each other off.’ She wriggles closer to David as she speaks, pushing him before he can resist her. He loses his balance. When he clutches at her sleeve to stop himself from falling, she pulls free. 
Lumps of ballast are dislodged from the heap as he lands. The skin on his hand is torn in his effort to break his fall. He examines his injury while he is still sprawled on the heap. Blood wells from the tissue. His cheeks are quivering with suppressed tears.
‘You were s’posed to fight me,’ Margaret complains, landing beside him. ‘Wotcha done?’
He holds out his hand.
‘That’s nothing. I’ve hurt meself worse than that loads of times.’
‘You didn’t give me time to get up there properly.’
‘Wotcha spect me to do? Sit there till you push me off?’
Tears of blood run from around his knee and drip on the ballast. He stares, mesmerised yet repulsed.
‘It’s hardly bleeding at all,’ Margaret says contemptuously. 
‘It hurts.’
‘Poor little boy wants to run back to his mum.’
‘What are we gonna do now?'
‘Sure you’re all right? Sure you don’t want an ambulance?’
‘Let’s have a look at the shed.’
He gets to his feet and limps across the tracks. Margaret follows. 
‘We’d better make sure that man ain’t here,’ he warns. 
A single track runs through the shed. The huge wooden doors at one end are padlocked; at the other the chain around the bolts is broken and the doors hang open.
‘Come on then,’ Margaret urges, going inside. 
David hangs back.
‘Come on.’
‘I didn’t mean go in.’
'You're scared.’
‘The man might be there.’
‘Nobody’s here,’ she says scornfully.
He hesitates inside the doors while his eyes become accustomed to the dimness. The thick walls muffle the noise from outside. 
'It’s like a church,’ Margaret calls, her voice resonating through the building.
‘We oughtta be quiet.’
‘Why? Nobody’s here.’ Her voice has risen in defiance. The words echo around the two children as though taunting them.
‘He might be asleep.’
‘He’d have woken up by now.’
‘Let’s go outside.’
‘Nobody’s here. Wotcha so scared of?’
‘He might be in there.’ David points to the office at the rear of the platform. 
‘Let's go and have a look.’
‘Let's go down the cutting,’ David suggests, but Margaret is already hauling herself up to the platform. He follows reluctantly. 
The office door hangs from its top hinge and drags across the concrete as Margaret pushes it open. A stench of sweat and urine greets the children as they venture inside. Margaret coughs. 
‘That old bloke you saw must live here. Don’t half stink.’
A small window high in the outside wall lets enough light into the office for them to see a coat lying over a torn mattress, blackened with grime. The floor is littered with wine bottles, newspapers and empty tins. Charred wood and paper are scattered around the metal stove.
‘We'd better get out before he comes back,’ David urges.
‘He’s gone. We never saw him yesterday, did we?’ 
‘He might have been watching us.’
‘So what? He's not s’posed to be here, is he? He’s only some old tramp.’
‘He’s gonna know we've been here.’
‘He can't do nothing, can he?’ She kicks a tin across the floor. ‘I bet he never washes. He's a real dirty old man.’
‘Let's get out.’ 
‘In a minute.’
‘It's better outside.’
‘Wotcha scared of?’ She is looking at him, waiting for his answer. ‘Pinch something – or are you too scared? You always chicken out.’
‘I don’t have to, do I?’
‘Take that coat off the mattress.’
‘Why?’
‘Take it outside.’
‘You do it.’
‘I’ll tell everybody you’re scared.’.
‘Tell who?'
‘You ain’t half stupid – you know that?’
‘If you say so.’ 
‘What’s the matter with you? All you’ve gotta do is pick up that coat.’  
‘Why should I?'
‘Cos I’m telling you to. Take it outside.’
‘I wanna see you do it.’ He stares at the coat. It fails to conceal the stains on the mattress. A pigeon coos in the darkness of the roof.
‘Go on,’ Margaret prompts. 
He backs towards the doorway. 
‘I’ll do it then,’ she says contemptuously, going forward. She wrinkles her nose against the smell as she holds the coat by the collar and drags it off the mattress and across the floor. ‘It ain't half heavy – you have a feel.’
David shakes his head. He steps out of the way as Margaret drags the coat through the doorway. An empty baked bean tin is caught underneath the fabric and scrapes along the concrete.
‘We’ll put it over there.’ She nods to the darkest corner of the shed. ‘Then he won’t find it.’
‘There might be rats.’ 
‘We’d have frightened them off by now.’ 
The tin rolls to the edge of the platform and clatters on the track as she drags the coat away.
‘How’s that?’ she calls. ‘Can you see it?’ 
‘I can see you.’
‘I meant the coat, stupid.’
‘No.’ 
‘Good.’ She emerges from the gloom, rubbing her hands on her frock. ‘Come on then. Let’s go outside if you’re scared.’ 
The air in the yard is fresh and warm after the fetid atmosphere of the goods shed. The brightness of the sun makes David blink. 
‘We had a mouse once,’ he reveals. ‘It was in the cupboard underneath the dresser. Me mum found it and started screaming.’
‘Did you catch it?’ 
‘Me nan put a trap down for it at night. I didn’t see it, cos she put it in the dustbin before I got up.’
‘Our cat catches mice. She sits in front of a hole for hours and she won’t leave it. And when she gets one, she holds it in her mouth and it’s all wriggling. She plays with them in the garden and then she eats them.’ 
‘Catch me – you've gotta catch me,’ David says suddenly. He runs across the tracks before he finishes speaking and heads for the cutting. Margaret follows. He waits for her beneath the bridge. She is panting. 
‘You’re slow today,' he goads her. 
‘You started running before I heard what you said.’
‘You couldn’t keep up with me.’ 
‘I could have done easy if we’d both started at the same time. You knew you wouldn’t win any other way.’
‘It's a game – like we had yesterday.’
'When?'
‘When we had that race.’
‘I didn’t start before you.'
‘You did.’ 
‘Like a little kid, you are.’
‘You've gotta do what I tell you.’
‘Wotcha talking about?’
‘Like I had to when you won.’
‘That’s different. We agreed before we started.'
‘We didn’t. Anyway, you don’t have to come here.’
‘I can come here any time I like, and I don’t have to ask you. If I wanted to, I could bring me friends here and you couldn't do nothing about it.’ She glares at him. A rumble of traffic comes from the main road. ‘Wotcha want me to do?' she asks eventually. ‘I might do it. Depends what it is.’
The boy is silent.
'David – wotcha want me to do?’
‘Kick yer legs up against the wall like you do in the playground.’ He watches her face for her reaction.
‘How do you know?’ 
‘I saw you through the railings,’ he mumbles, not looking at her. 
‘Do you watch me playing?’ 
‘I just saw you.’
‘I’ve seen you standing there, gawping through the railings.’
‘I don’t,’ he shouts.
‘Wotcha want me to do it for now?’
Somebody is shouting on the bridge overhead. The children’s conversation lapses as they listen.
‘You make me do things,’ David says reluctantly. 
The shouting has ceased. There is silence under the bridge. The children stare at each other. 
‘The ground’s all dirty,’ Margaret says. ‘You’ll have to put something down for me to put me head on.’
‘I ain’t got nothing.’ 
‘You must have something. Give us yer shirt.’
‘No.’
‘I won’t do it then.’ 
‘It’ll get all dirty.’
‘No it won’t. Are you going to or not?’
David unfastens the top buttons of his shirt and pulls it over his head. 
‘You’re wearing a vest,' Margaret says wonderingly. ‘It ain’t half clean – like in the ads on tele. What soap powder does yer mum use?’
’Omo usually. I only put it on this morning.’ The shirt hangs around David’s arms as he struggles to pull it over his wrists. He is blushing. 
‘What 's the matter?’ Margaret asks as he hesitates. 
‘Nothing.’
‘Get on with it then. Put it on the ground.’
David obeys, laying his shirt over the ballast. 
‘You don’t have to stand so close.’ she tells him. ‘I'm not gonna fall.’ She frowns. ‘You're not gonna tickle me, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘Say it then.’
‘I promise.' 
She kneels. ‘I’m gonna do a headstand,’ she announces. ‘If I do a handstand, I’ve gotta put me hands wide apart and I’m not putting them on all that dirt and stuff.’ She lowers her head on to the shirt. Her legs seem to acquire a movement momentum of their own as she kicks upwards. They fall the first time, causing a smile to come to David’s face. The second time she walks her legs forward and throws them into the air from a crouching position. They make an ungainly somersault before falling again. She no longer seems concerned that anybody is watching.  She grunts as  she launches her legs upward. One rises over her head and settles against the brickwork of the bridge. The other follows, describing the same arc so that both feet are flat against the wall. This time she holds the position, her features pressed into a grimace, her skirt around her chest, till she grows tired and pushes her feet away from the wall. Her legs make their somersault again and she is crouching on the ground.
‘Satisfied now?’ she asks. She uncurls herself and sits on the shirt, hugging her legs against her body. She looks up at David. She is grinning. ‘Was that better than watching in the playground?’ 
‘I only saw you do it once in the playground.’ 
‘You said you was always watching me.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You’re always lying, ain’t yer?’
‘No.’
‘You must do it without knowing.’
David looks puzzled. 
‘Watching me standing there at playtime, gawping at me through the railings. Do you like me?’
David stares at her dumbly.
‘You look stupid,’ she tells him.
‘So do you.’
‘Not as stupid as you. Nobody can look that stupid.‘ She scrambles to her feet. 'There’s yer shirt down there – do you want it?’
He picks it up. The greasy, black marks betray what Margaret has done. 
‘You’ll have to tell yer mum you fell down or something. Aren’t you gonna put it on?’
He complies. 
‘What are we gonna do now?’ she asks as he pulls it over his head. ‘I’m not sticking round here till dinner time if you’re gonna be moody like this.’
The shirt conceals his look of satisfaction. 
‘Well?’ she asks.
‘Well what?’
‘What are we gonna do?’ 
‘I dunno.’
‘What’s down there?’ She points to the cutting beyond the yard.
‘Let’s build a house.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘We can have it under here. We can use all the old bits of wood and stuff.’
‘Make a proper house, you mean?’
‘Against the wall.'
‘We've got an old rug at home – we could have that. It’d be good. Then we could get old bits of furniture and stuff people have thrown out. We can find loads of it in derelict houses.’ 
‘It’s a bit damp down here, that’s the only thing.’
‘It's not gonna rain.'
‘It will eventually.’
‘We’re gonna be back at school by then. Anyway, we’re under the bridge, ain’t we, so it’s all right.’ 
‘There’s been water dripping down.’ David looks up at where water dripping from the road has stained the brickwork green.
'We could use them sheets.’ She points to the corrugated iron sheets leaning against the goods shed. ‘Are you gonna help me?’ 
'All right.’
*
An unshaded fluorescent tube hangs over the square table. An assortment of chairs are ranged around the edge of the room – easy chairs, upright and tubular chairs.
‘Who’s left all that paper on the table?’
‘There’s half me sandwiches in there.’
‘I was gonna throw it away.’
‘You leave it.’
‘Did you read about that factory in the Midlands?’
‘What about it?’
‘Where there was a strike cos they didn’t have a rest room.’
‘That’s what we oughtta do – have a strike. Get a few things changed round here.’
‘Anybody got any matches?’
‘You’ll be setting the whole place on fire one day.’ 
‘I only smoke in here, don’t I? Mrs Verity sees to that.’
Voices. Smells or food, hair spray, soap and cheap perfume. The women who went out to lunch are returning. Carol continues brushing her hair with slow, careful strokes.
‘I s’pose she’s all right really. I mean you’ve gotta be strict about smoking with all that wool on the floor.’ 
‘Don’t give me all that. Me friend works in a factory where they smoke.’ 
'Not in the workshop. They never let you smoke in any of these places.’
‘I came in here this morning cos one of me eyelashes came off. I weren’t in here more than a couple of minutes and she’s waiting outside the door – that Mrs Verity.
‘”You wasting more time?” she said. Bleeding cheek. Then she went out before I could say anything. Didn’t half feel like having a go at her.’
'She’s getting too big for her boots, that one. Power’s gone to her head.’ 
‘If she does it again, I’m looking for another job.’
Carol pays little heed to the conversation. She is looking at herself in the mirror, as though hypnotised by her reflection. Her fingers press against the brush until the bristles dig into her flesh. 
‘S’cuse,’ comes the voice from behind her. She sees Val looking over her shoulder. 
‘Must wash me hair tonight,’ Val says as Carol moves to the side. ‘Keeps going all dry. It’s this new spray I’m using.’
Carol puts her brush back in her handbag. 
‘Saw you last night,’ Val continues. ‘With a bloke.’
‘Where?’
‘In the pictures.’
‘I didn’t see you.’
‘I was sitting about ten rows back. How long have you been going out with him?’ 
‘Not long.’
‘I didn’t think so by the look of you.’ 
Carol moves away. The girls are returning to the workroom, where the noise of the music is loud.
‘Haven’t even finished me sandwiches yet,’ one complains.
‘You said you wanted to go on a diet.’
‘I’ll only have them in me tea break.’
'You’ll never lose weight that way.’
‘So?’ 
‘I thought that’s what you wanted.’
‘Jeff says he likes me plump.’ 
‘You don’t wanna take no notice of them,’ comes a quiet voice from behind Carol. She turns. Ivy is frail and tiny – the oldest worker in the factory. Carol smiles gratefully. 
‘You don’t have to tell them yer business.’ 
‘It don’t matter much.’
‘You keep yerself to yerself if that’s what want.’ 
‘He ain’t really me boyfriend – I only went out with him once.’
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘I don’t s’pose I’ll be seeing him again.’
’You’ll meet a man you like, don’t worry.’
Carol avoids the older woman's eyes. She does not reply. 
‘You will, luv,’ Ivy insists. ‘There's a lot of men would give their right arm to marry a girl like you. Wish I’d been as attractive as you when I was your age. How’s that little boy of yours getting on?’ 
‘Not so little now. He’s on holiday.’
‘What – with a party from school?’
‘I meant the school holiday. He’s at home. That’s part of the trouble...’ 
‘Getting somebody to look after him, you mean?’
‘Me mum can do that, but it’s difficult to go out. And you have to explain it to people.’
Ivy squeezes her hand. ‘You’ll find somebody who doesn’t mind about that. You see if you don’t.’
Carol smiles gratefully.
‘We’d better get back before Mrs Verity comes looking for us.’ 
Carol nods. She follows Ivy back to the workroom, leaving the rest room  empty.

chapter 5

‘Do you go every Saturday then?’
‘Most Saturdays.'
‘And you buy things?’
‘Sometimes.’
Margaret looks at him wonderingly. ‘Fancy spending yer money on books.’
‘Usually I just look at them.'
‘How much pocket money do you get?’
David hesitates.
‘How much?’ she asks again.
‘One and six usually.’
‘Not much, is it? Me dad gives me more than that, and then me mum gives me something on top.’ 
‘Me mum buys me things as well – comics and that.’
‘I get them, but me mum still gives me something. There one girl in our class gets four shillings a week.’
They are silent for a while, marvelling at this. The pavements are crowded with Saturday shoppers. Baskets knock against the children’s legs. Voices the children understand vie with unknown tongues which enliven the shabby streets. Costermongers call to passers-by. Their barrows line both kerbs. Straw and wrapping paper cling to the wheels. Bruised fruit is squashed on the granite setts beneath the shoes of women clustering around the displays. Some stalls are bright with dresses. On others the unshaded bulbs make the cellophane wrappings of shirts glisten. Tarpaulins are draped behind the stalls, turning the narrow pavement into a tunnel and hiding the shop windows. There are shops selling everything from clothes to second-hand furniture. Shoppers and stallholders in the market cafe drink tea from thick, white mugs.
‘Me mum got me a frock here,’ Margaret says, tugging at David’s arm. They are beside a stall piled with print dresses. He watches her examining the fabric in the way the other women are doing.
‘Do you think this would suit me?’ she asks, holding a dress against her. He mumbles an answer which she cannot hear, but she does not care. She is already burrowing deeper into the heap of clothing.
David watches a fat woman selling jewellery. Her fingers are short and podgy. The way skin wells around her gold rings fascinates him. She smiles when she serves a customer, her eyes becoming lost behind pebble glasses. The fat ripples on her face as she speaks– 
‘What about this one? Do you like it better?’
Margaret’s voice cuts across his thoughts. He looks at the gaudy pink dress. 
‘Do you like it?’ 
‘I dunno.’
‘You must know whether you like it.’
‘I don’t wanna start looking at frocks.’
‘I shan’t be long. If there’s anything good, I can come back with me mum this afternoon.’
David watches as Margaret once more becomes engulfed in the mass of women around the stall. He watches their legs moving with quick, slight movements as they jockey for position. Suddenly he is pitched forward. 
‘You’ll get yerself knocked over if you go standing there,’ comes a gruff voice. David turns. The man is like a giant, his red face glistening with perspiration. The boy mutters an apology and moves closer to the fat woman. On the trays around her, jewellery glitters in a thousand colours. 
‘It’s three shillings, that one,’ she tells a girl fingering a brooch with a huge purple stone. ‘You won’t get a bargain like that again.’
The girl notices that David is staring. He turns away quickly. 
‘You want something for your mother?’ the woman asks. She is looking at him. He shakes his head. He is backing away. Confusion shows on his face.
‘You like these?’ she asks, thrusting a tray towards him. The stones sparkle. ‘Only two shillings, these ones. You want to please your mum?’
‘Look where you’re going,’ somebody shouts as he turns away. When he bumps into people, he no longer cares.
‘What is it?’ Margaret says irritably as he tugs at her arm. 
‘Let’s get on.’
‘Why? Can’t the little boy amuse himself?’ 
‘I wanna go.’ 
‘Let’s get going then. Can’t wait a minute, can you?’ She lets go the dresses and moves away from the stall. When she turns, David has not moved. ‘I thought you wanted to go in this shop?’ she demands.
‘You don’t have to come.’
‘I thought the idea of coming here was so’s you could show it to me.’ She looks at him wonderingly. ‘You’re funny sometimes, David. If you didn’t wanna show me, wotcha go and tell me about it for?’
He looks down.
‘So are we gonna go there or not?’ 
‘All right.’
‘You’re funny. The way you go all sulky.’
David pays no attention. Though they walk together, he does not look at the girl beside him. 
‘And you never answer when I say things to you.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Why didn’t you wanna go in the grocer’s?’
‘Cos I didn’t.’
‘That’s stupid.’ 
Glimpsing shops selling old clothes: faded dresses and double-breasted suits with wide lapels, coats worn threadbare at the cuffs and nylon shirts with stains under the arms. 
‘I hope this shop we’re going to ain’t like those.’
‘It is.’
‘I dunno whether I’ll come in.’ 
Passing a flower stall. The flowers are in metal buckets filled with water. The scent pervades the narrow street. 
‘Everybody’s come out shopping this morning,’ Margaret remarks. 
The crowds grow. The children squeeze between the legs of grown-ups. The women’s shopping baskets are full. Everywhere there are voices. 
‘How far have we gotta go?’ Margaret asks.
‘Just along here.’
‘You’ll go in this place, but you were you scared of going in the grocer’s.’
‘I wasn’t scared.’
‘They’re not gonna eat you.’
‘Shut up.’
They have stopped walking. 
‘Are we gonna go to this place or not?’ she presses. 
‘l dunno why you said you’d come in the first place.’
‘All I did was look at some frocks and now you’re sulking.’
‘You can go back and look at them if you want and I’ll go on to me shop.’
‘I said – I can come back here with me mum.’
They glare at each other. 
‘I’m getting sick of this,’ Margaret says. ‘It’s all right when we go where you want, but you don’t like it when I look somewhere.’
‘We’re here now.’ David nods towards the stalls.
‘Where?’
‘Behind here.’
‘Let’s go in then.’
They squeeze between the tarpaulins to the narrow pavement. Power cables hang overhead. Nobody walks there. The shop is inconspicuous with its faded paintwork. Books are piled inside of the window.
‘This place?’ Margaret queries. 
David nods.
‘I thought it was gonna be something good, not this dump.’ 
‘Are you gonna come in or not?’
‘It’s filthy.’ 
David pushes open the door without bothering to answer. The interior of the shop is dark. Books and magazines fill the shelves and overflow onto the piles of pamphlets, canvases, engravings and maps on the floor.
‘That’s it – shut the door in me face,’ Margaret complains.
‘I thought you didn’t wanna come in.’
‘So long as we don’t stay here all the morning. I come all the way down here specting to see something good and we end up in this dump.’
‘What’s the matter with it?’
‘What happens now?’
‘I wanna look at some things.’
‘It stinks in here.’
‘It’s all the old books.’
‘I don’t think much of it.’ She looks around scornfully. A well-dressed woman browses among the books on a table. An elderly man bends over a stock of books piled in the window.
‘Look at him,’ Margaret whispers. ‘He goes and gets a book out, looks inside the cover and then puts it back. He don’t even look at what’s in it.’
‘He's looking at the price,’ David explains. 'Perhaps he can’t afford much.’
‘Why haven’t they got any books with pictures?’
‘They have.’
‘Stupid old drawings. What about comics?’
David turns the pages of an atlas, pretending not to hear.
‘David – I’m talking to you.’
‘There’s loads of adventure books and story books over there. Have a look at them.’
‘Where?’
David closes the atlas and leads her to a table near the window. Margaret flicks through the pages of the topmost book without interest.
‘You don’t have to buy it just cos you’ve looked at it, do you?’ she asks suspiciously.
‘Course not.’
‘Good, cos I’m buying this old muck.’ She picks up another book and skims the pages. Her gaze strays to the window. The Saturday crowds are visible between the tarpaulin screens. Their voices intrude faintly into the shop. A dog sniffs around the backs of the stalls. A man selling pot plants brings one around the back of a tarpaulin to strip away the dead leaves out of the public gaze.
‘Why don’t they leave the door open?' Margaret complains. ‘It ain’t half stuffy in here.’
‘It blows things about if the door’s open.’
‘Better than having this stink.’
‘It’s all right,’ David insists, not looking up from a book of battleships of the First World War. 
‘It’s not gonna blow books around, is it?’
‘Can you be quiet, please?’ the man behind the counter calls. 
Margaret scowls. ‘Load of old rubbish they’ve got here,’ she says loudly a few moments later, banging the book closed.
‘There’s some girls’ books over there,’ David tells her.
‘They’re all about a hundred years old. I’m not coming here no more.’ She goes to the door and pulls it open. The noise of the street fills the shop. David pretends to be reading as she glares at him. ‘Are you gonna stay here?’
When he does not answer, she goes outside without bothering to close the door. She waits on the pavement and stares across the road. Reluctantly David puts down the book and goes to her. She pretends not to notice.
‘You can stay in there if you want to,’ she says at last. 
‘I don’t.’
‘I dunno what you wanted to go there for in the first place,’ she says, dodging between the shoppers while David stumbles to keep up with her. ‘Wotcha think I’d like it for?’ 
‘You can look at books.’
‘There’s nothing worth looking at.'
‘There was.’
‘The way you kept on about it, I thought it was gonna be something special, not some old junk shop.’
‘I like it.’
‘You can go there then – so long as you don’t spect me to go with you.’
‘You didn’t even look at anything properly.’
'Nothing to look at, is there? There’s enough old books at school without looking at them in the holidays.’ She slows so that David can catch up with her and leans close to murmur, ‘You can get fruit down here.’ 
‘You can buy just about anything down here.’
‘I mean taking it, stupid.’ She stops suddenly, catching David unawares. ‘How do you fancy it?’ 
‘What?’
‘Taking stuff back to the goods yard and eating it in our house. You ain’t half slow sometimes.’
David stares at her.
‘Well?’
‘S’posing we get caught?’
‘You mean you’re scared. Why don’t you go back to yer shop and look at yer books?’
‘What do you wanna take?'
‘Dunno. Depends what we can get.’ 
‘Let’s go down the house and get it straight.‘ 
‘We will when we’ve got something to eat. I dunno what you’re worried about – nobody’s gonna bother if we nick something. And if anybody did, all we’ve gotta do is run in the crowd.’
‘Where are you gonna take it from?’
‘Where do you think, stupid? Off the stalls, when the man’s got his back turned, or else off one of the boxes round the side. You get loads of stuff there. Once there was a whole load of us come down here, nicking stuff out of boxes. They couldn’t do nothing cos we was everywhere.’ She smiles at the recollection. David sees the fillings in her teeth. She adds, ‘There’s an old bloke with thick glasses who’s got a barrow down the end. You can take anything off there cos he can’t see yer.’ 
‘I don’t want nothing.’
‘Well I’m gonna, even if you don’t come.’
‘I’m not hungry.’ 
‘I’ll tell people you’re scared.’
‘They might get the police in.’ 
‘You’ve just gotta do what I do.’ 
David cannot argue any more. They dodge between the stalls and walk in single file along the pavement with Margaret in the lead. A side road intersects the market. Boxes of apples and peaches are stacked beside the tarpaulin. Margaret signals him to halt. 
‘I’ll see what the old man’s doing and when he’s busy serving at the other end, we’ll grab some peaches and run down that side road. I’ll say when.’ 
David watches as she peers around the edge of the canvas. He notices her thin legs, the white skin mottled pink. If he pushed her, making her pitch forward, everybody would see her. Then there would be no stealing. 
‘Now!’ she hisses, sauntering from the shelter of the tarpaulin. She takes two peaches from the boxes and saunters around the corner. Now she is out of sight, David emerges from behind the stall. The old man has not noticed him. He takes an apple from the topmost box and runs. Margaret is waiting around the corner. 
‘You shouldn’t have started running straight away. That’s how people notice. Now we’ve gotta get away.’
They run to the main road, not bothering about the people who stare at them.
‘We'd better slow down,’ Margaret cautions as they turn the next corner. ‘If a copper sees us running with this stuff, he’s gonna start wondering.’ For the first time she notices what David has taken from the stall. ‘Wotcha go and get that for?’
‘It was on top.’
'I said get peaches, didn’t I? You have to go and nick an apple.’ 
‘I didn’t have time to get peaches.’
‘It ain’t even a decent apple. It’s all bruised.’ 
‘Let’s get back to the house.’ 
‘You’re useless at this,’ Margaret complains, leading the way along the main road. David clutches the apple tightly. As the two children cross to the turning beside the railway yard, black clouds are taking the sky and turning day into twilight. The two girls who once talked to David are playing on the other side of the road. They are absorbed in their game. 
‘Hold these then,' Margaret says, thrusting the peaches into his hands.
The two girls pay no attention as she climbs the wall. David strokes the soft downy skin of the fruit. As he looks up, he sees her knickers as she perches on the coping.
'Give us them.’
The first drops of rain are falling as he stands on tiptoe to hand up the fruit. 
‘Now you climb up and I’ll give them to you on the other side.’
‘Move over then.’
Obediently she shuffles back and David climbs alongside her.
‘Come on then,’ she urges.
‘That woman's watching.’
Margaret follows his gaze. A woman carrying her shopping along the other side of the road is looking at them.
‘So what?’
‘She’s gonna know.’
‘Let her.’
David lets himself down on the other side, anxious to be hidden from the street. 
‘S’posing she says something?’ he worries. 
'Who to? I’m not sitting up here all day.’ Margaret holds out the fruit. ‘Take them then – and don’t drop them, or they'll bruise.’
He reaches up, taking the fruit. Margaret drops down beside him. 
‘Don’t squeeze them like that,’ she screeches. ‘Give them here. You're useless, you are.' She takes the peaches and examines them. ‘You’ve gone and pushed yer thumb in this one. I said to be careful, didn’t I?’
'How do you know I did it?’ 
’Cos they was all right till you came along and started squeezing them.’
‘It don’t matter, does it?’
‘Course it does. They go all slimy when they’re bruised.’
Raindrops smack against the concrete as the children cross to loading bay.
‘S’posing she tells a policeman?’ David want to know. 
'Who?'
‘That woman who saw us climb over.’
‘We ain’t done nothing.’
‘She’s seen us with this.’
‘So? We’ve got some fruit. She dunno where it’s come from, does she?’
David is silent. A rumble of thunder heralds the breaking of the storm. 
‘Come on – don’t hang about, or we’re gonna get soaked.’ 
The rain runs down their faces and saturates their clothes. It beats down the grass and the weeds, the noise obliterating all other sounds. When the children reach the shelter of the bridge, their clothes are clinging to them.
‘We’ve gotta get a fire going so’s we can dry our things,’ Margaret decides. ‘That’s how you catch cold – wearing damp clothes.' She lays the fruit carefully on the ground. When she looks up, David is watching. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘We can’t have a fire – we ain’t got nothing to light it with.’
‘What’s gonna happen when we wanna come here in the cold weather? We’ve gotta have a fire then.’
‘It ain’t cold now.’
‘I know it ain’t cold, don’t I? The thing is to move that old stove out the goods shed and get it going.’
David is silent.
‘We’ve gotta get our clothes dry.’ 
‘It’s too heavy.’
'You dunno, do you? You ain’t tried moving it yet.’
David stares at her helplessly.
‘You’re scared of going in the shed again,’ she accuses him.
David watches the raindrops drumming against the exposed surfaces and creating a translucent screen which keeps the rest of the world at bay. 
‘We might as well eat the fruit now,’ Margaret says. 'We can’t go out.’
‘We oughtta get our house up.’
‘We can’t while this is on.’ 
‘We ain’t got nothing to sit on.’
‘There’s the newspapers.’
Margaret brought then from home. She said that the house would be a proper home if David read them, because her father read the Daily Sketch when he came home from work. They have lain under the bridge overnight. The pages are damp now. Watched by David she spreads them over the ballast.
The children sit close together. Stones press through the paper. David  wriggles. Margaret makes herself comfortable by lying on her side.
‘We’ll have to get our house up,’ he presses, looking at the pile of corrugated iron sheets. Only one has been put into position. It stands at right-angles to the wall, held in place between two wooden stakes.
‘No hurry, is there?’ 
‘If we’re gonna have a house, we’ve gotta put it up.’
She is wiping dust off one of the peaches. ‘You can make do with the apple. Don’t see why you should have this when you were too scared to take it.'
Enviously David watches as she bites into the fruit. 
‘This is lovely,' she tells him. ‘You'd have liked this. Pity you’ve gotta make do with an apple.’
‘We oughtta try lifting one of them sleepers.’
‘We tried before, didn’t we? It’s no good unless there’s about six of us.’
‘That means telling other people.’
‘So what?’
He studies his knees, not answering, picking at the blackheads. 
‘Don’t matter if a few of me friends know about it, does it? Does it, David?’
He bites into the shining green skin of the apple.
‘What’s the matter?’ Margaret asks, seeing his expression. 
‘It’s bitter.’
‘Let’s have a taste.’ She takes a bite at the apple and spits it out. ‘It’s a cooking apple. You ain’t half stupid sometimes. No wonder it’s bitter.’ 
‘I didn’t know.’ 
‘All you’d gotta do was take a peach.’
‘I’m not gonna eat this.’
‘Throw it away then.’
David stands. He throws the apple as far as he can into the yard. For a long time he stands looking at the rain.
‘What are you doing?’ Margaret asks. ‘Do you want a bit of this?’ She holds out the peach.
‘All right.’
‘Come here then.’
He obeys. 
‘Say thank you,’ she scolds as he snatches the fruit. 
‘Thank you.’ 
‘Don’t force yerself.’
'You don’t have to peel them,’ she says scornfully, watching him. 
He bites into the fruit. 
‘You can always spit the skin out if it’s tough,’ she explains. ‘And don’t eat all of it – just the bruised bit.’ 
‘You’ve got two.’
‘I got them, didn’t I? You’ve had enough. Give us it here.’ 
He gives back the peach. Margaret bites into the other side. 
‘You’re a kid still,' she says. ‘You don’t even know how to eat a peach.’
‘You’re not grown up.’
‘At least I’m more grown up than you are. Girls grow up earlier than boys. Didn’t you know that?’
He does not look at her.
'Didn't you?’
He scans her face. She appears to be serious. He has not noticed her eyes before. They are grey, flecked with green. There is nothing in them which betrays pity.  
The rain grows louder till it beats like hail on the ballast. 
‘The trouble is you’re always by yerself,’ she explains. ‘It makes you backward. That’s what everybody says about you – you’re backward.’ 
‘They don’t.’
‘Yes they do. You never play with the other boys. Everybody knows about you.’
‘I don’t like playing football.’
‘You don’t like anything the others do.’
‘I don’t have to, do I?’
‘It’s cos you’re backward. Me mum says you ought to be in the special class at school.’
‘I’m not backward,’ he shouts.
‘Why don’t yer mum get married?’
‘Mind yer own business.’
‘Now you’re being silly.’
‘I can if I want.’
‘She’s nice looking, yer mum.’
‘Is she?’
‘How old is she?’
‘Not all that old.’
‘She don’t go out much, does she?’
‘Do you like me nan?’ he asks, intrigued in spite of himself as this outsider’s view of his family.
‘She don’t half get cross.’ 
‘I don’t like her as much as me mum.’
‘Is that cos she yells at you?’
‘She always does that.’
‘I’ve never seen yer mum get mad.’
‘She don’t – not often. It’s always me nan. She yells at me mum as well.’
‘Why hasn’t yer mum got a boyfriend?’
‘She writes to people.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘People she wants to know.’ 
‘Who?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Don’t she ever go out with them?’
The sound of the rain lessens. A brightness comes to the yard as the storm clouds move away.
‘Me mum says she oughtta get out more and meet men.’
‘Do you talk about us?’
‘They all say her mum’s attractive.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘You’ve got eyes like yer mum.’ Margaret is watching him closely till he has to look away.
 ‘Who’s they?’ he repeats. 
‘Me mum and me Auntie Maureen and everybody.’ 
Sunlight glistens on the roof of the goods shed. 
‘I keep thinking she’s gonna get old and be like me nan.’
‘Me mum says you’re like yer mum used to be.’
‘Why?’
‘Cos she didn’t play with nobody.’
‘It’s cos of me she don’t go out much.’ He does not look at the girl beside him.
‘Perhaps she’s waiting for the right man to come along,’ Margaret says. She watches curiously. ‘Are you gonna get married when you grow up?’
‘What about you?’ he asks.
‘I’m asking you.’
‘I spect so.’
‘Wotcha keep turning away for?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘When I get married, I’m gonna have loads of bridesmaids.’
‘What about cars?’
Her brow wrinkles.
‘Do you want big cars?’ he explains.
‘Course.’
There is a haze of vapour over the goods yard. The two children watch in awe.
‘It’s like clouds,’ Margaret says at last. ‘Like low clouds, only it hangs above the ground.’
‘That’s what clouds are – all the steam.’
‘Let’s go out there.’
Without waiting for a reply, she gets to her feet and goes into the yard. She moves slowly, looking about her as though she is in an unfamiliar place. The half-eaten peach is still in her hand. David follows.
‘You can smell it,’ she marvels. ‘All warm and damp. And when you get close, it all clears.’
‘Let’s try running through it.’
‘Come on then.’
They run, jumping over the rails. Margaret sprints ahead, seeking to hurl herself into the mist. She soon gives up and stops running. David comes beside her. Both children are panting.
‘Everything looks different,’ she marvels. ‘I wish we could keep it like this.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Everything’s bright.’
He looks around, trying to see the world through her eyes. But she has already lost interest in the conversation. She is scanning the ground.
‘I’ve lost me peach. I was holding it just now.’
‘You must have dropped it when you was running.’ 
‘I know that, stupid.’
‘Wotcha gonna do?’
‘Look for it. Wotcha think?’
They retrace their steps, their eyes fixed on the ground. It is David who tires first. He glances at Margaret, but she is intent on her search. He stops.
‘I thought you was looking,’ she says when she notices. 
‘I was.’
‘You’re not now.’
‘It’s not gonna be much good if you do find it.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s gonna be all dirty.’
‘Where’s the other one?’
‘Still on the paper.’
They go back to the bridge. The sun is warm on their faces.
‘I ain’t half hungry,’ Margaret complains.
‘We have apples sometimes at home.’
‘That ain’t much good if I’m hungry now, is it?’
‘I was just saying.’
‘We have all sorts of fruit – oranges, bananas and everything. Sometimes me mum makes a fruit salad and puts evaporated milk on it.’
‘We have oranges sometimes.’
‘Do you have ice cream?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘We have it every Saturday in summer.’
‘We had some last Saturday. Me mum got some.’
‘Was it the one with three flavours?’
‘No.’
‘I like the chocolate bit.’ 
‘This was vanilla - Lyon’s vanilla. It was a big block.’ 
‘If I had an older brother, I bet he’d go out with yer mum, cos we live so close.’
‘I wish I didn’t have to live with me nan.’
‘Yer mum don’t have to stay there, does she?’
‘I dunno.’
‘I’d go somewhere else if I was her.’
‘They keep having rows.’
‘She ought to clear off and leave yer nan to it.’ 
David does not answer. They do not speak again until they come to the bridge. Margaret takes the second peach. This time she does not offer it to him.
‘We’ve gotta find some more bits of wood to hold up the corrugated iron,’ he reminds her.
‘Go and have a look round the signal box,’ she orders. ‘There’s loads of stuff round there.’
He does not move.
‘Go on. I’m not gonna run away.’
He walks to the signal box on his own. 

chapter 6

Carol is kneeling on an old duster to wash the kitchen floor. Her sleeves are rolled up.
‘You still not eating?’ her mother says.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Carol responds, not looking up. 
‘Sooner you get over him the better,’ her mother says.
‘Over who?’ 
‘I dunno, do I? You never tell me nothing.’
Carol does not reply. Her body swings rhythmically with each arc of the cloth over the red tiles. 
‘Was it the one you wrote to yesterday?’
‘I wanna get on with this.’
‘Wonder you’re not writing yer letters. Always writing to people, you are. It never seems to get you anywhere.’ She watches Carol moving the bucket and duster to a dry section of floor. ‘Dunno why you wanted to go washing that on a Sunday morning for – just when I’ve gotta start cooking the dinner. Now I’ve gotta go across the wet floor to get to the stove.’
‘It’ll be dry in a little while.’
‘I wanna get the joint in.’
The joint lies in a roasting tin on the table. It is already smeared with lard. 
‘I haven’t got round that side yet.’
‘Let’s get it in before you start, then, or the meat won’t be done. I’ll leave you to it and if I can’t get the potatoes done, we’ll have to go without.’
‘There’ll be plenty of time, mum.’
But she waits until her mother has put the joint into the oven before she continues with her work.
'Dunno why I always have to get the dinner ready,’ her mother complains. ‘I won’t always be here to do it.'
'We don't have to have a joint.’
'I’m not wasting it, price I had to pay for a little leg of lamb like that.’
‘I said don’t buy it. I'm not hungry.’ Carol insists.
‘That’s all I ever get from you.’
‘You know I don't like roast.’
‘Don't matter what I think.’
‘Can you move over a bit, mum?’
‘Dunno why you couldn’t have left it.’
‘It’s gotta be done.’
‘Lots of things have gotta be done round here, but they don’t get done. Now I’ve gotta walk all over what you’ve just washed to get to the sink.’
‘Can’t you leave it?’
‘Can’t you hurry up a bit? We’ll have dinner at suppertime, the rate you’re going on.’ She crosses the wet floor, leaving a trail of footprints. 
‘Why can’t you wait half an hour?’ Carol whines. 
‘I wanna get things ready now, stead of leaving everything to the last minute. Trouble is you never did any cooking, so you don't know nothing about it.’
‘Wotcha talking about?’
‘What I say.’
‘I do get the meals ready, mum – when I’ve got the time.’
‘How often’s that?’
Carol continues washing the floor. She leans across the wet tiles to wipe away the footmarks.
‘Dunno what all this is in aid of. You could have done it yesterday.’
‘I was busy.’
You could wash the curtains while you’re at it – save me having to get them down.’
‘I might do them this afternoon.’
‘Good job we won’t have to bother with this place much longer. Another year and we’ll be in a flat.’ 
Carol does not answer. She wrings out the cloth, watched by her mother.
‘Might as well talk to meself round here,’ her mother complains.
‘What am I s’posed to say?’
‘You could answer – show a bit of interest. Not that I spect answers these days. I s’pose all this work’s one way of getting him out yer system.’
‘I dunno what you’re talking about.’
‘I dunno why you can’t get to know some of the blokes round here stead of writing off to people.’
Carol shakes her head imperceptibly.
‘You can’t do much worse than you’ve done already. Other girls of your age are married by now.’ 
‘I’m all right.’
‘You can call it all right if you want. Not what I’d call it.’
‘All I wanna do is get this floor washed.’
‘Then I s’pose you're gonna mope about here.’ 
‘I dunno.’ 
‘How long’s this gonna go on for?’
‘I dunno what you mean.'
‘That’s about all you’ve got the gumption for – washing floors. You’ll still be washing floors when you’re getting yer pension, the way you’re going on.’ When there is no response, she adds, ‘You keep getting all these letters from different men – you never seem to meet many of them.’
Carol wipes the base of the painted wall. Dirty water trickles down the crevices in the rough surface.
‘Is David’s father one of them?’ her mother persists. 
‘No.’
‘Thought he might have changed his tune.’
‘He’s gone.’ She stops abruptly.
‘Why you never got the police on to him, I dunno. That’s what you should have done.’
‘It’s nothing to do with the police.’
‘It’s his kid. He’s s’posed to pay you for bringing him up.’ 
‘It’s nothing to do with the police, mum. We’ve been through all this.’
‘It is if he’s breaking the law.’
‘I don’t wanna get in touch with him. I don’t wanna have to see him again–’ Carol breaks off. She shrinks back.
‘What 's the matter now?’ her mother asks. ‘Wotcha done – found a spider?’
‘I don’t like them.’ 
‘You’ve gotta finish now you’ve started, spider or no spider. I’m waiting to get  the dinner cooked.’
‘Look mum, I’ll be finished in a minute. Can’t you do something else for a little while?’
‘Got no more sense than you were born with, you ain’t,’ her mother complains, leaving another trail of footprints across the wet tiles. ‘Well you can get on with it. We’ll have to go without dinner.’ She watches from the doorway. ‘What’s he say then?’
‘Who?’
‘That last bloke who wrote to you.’
‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ 
‘You got a letter from him yesterday and all you’ve been doing since then is fiddling round. You were mending David’s socks and sewing on buttons yesterday. Now you’re washing everything.’
‘You can’t do it, can you? Not with your knees.’ 
‘You haven’t been out the house since you came home on Friday. You used to go out every Saturday.’
‘That was years ago.’
‘That’s what I’m saying – you mope about here all the time. You won’t meet anyone sitting here.’ 
‘I was out on Thursday.’ 
‘And you came down the next morning looking like he’d scared you to death. I s’pose that was one of them people you’ve been writing to.’ 
‘I went out with somebody from work.'
'You ought to start going to dances again – get you used to going out.’
‘I was seventeen then.’
‘So?’ 
‘I’m not gonna start going back there again now.’
‘It’s not as if you've got anywhere else to go, except the pictures.’ 
‘I don’t wanna go to dances.’
'You might start getting to know a few people stead of writing to them.'
'I did meet somebody there once, remember?’ 
‘Who?’
‘David’s father,’ she mutters.
‘I s’pose you're worried about seeing him again.’
‘I just don’t wanna go there. I’ve grown out of it.’
‘You could go with some of the girls from work.’
‘I told you, mum – I don’t want to.’
‘S’pose you think everybody’s gonna be looking at you.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘All you’ve gotta do is go up to some of yer pals at work and tell them you wanna go dancing, but you don’t wanna go on yer own. I dunno what’s so hard  about that if you’ve been out with them before.’ 
Carol ignores her mother. She concentrates on soaking the cloth and wringing it out. She does not look up until she hears her mother going into the hall. Water trickles into the cracks around a loose tile, making it move with a sucking sound as she presses it. From the bucket comes the smell of warm detergent. She hears the stairs creaking as she gives the floor under the table a cursory wipe, taking care not to put her head beneath the drawers where cobwebs fill the voids. Her cloth collects the powdered wood from the flight holes of woodworm. 
The water is becoming dirty. As she rinses the cloth, her gaze strays towards the window. Over the roof of the adjoining house she glimpses blue sky. The sight helps her to dream of the world outside. When she looks away, the kitchen seems darker than before. She shuffles to the remaining stretch of dry floor, pushing the duster with her knees. The kitchen is a shabby place. Dampness has made the plaster erupt, leaving flakes of paint and plaster on the tiles. She wipes the traces away, not bothering with the white smears which are left or the rim of dirt around a raised tile.
The job is nearly finished. She pushes back her hair with her wrist. No sound comes from upstairs. She could be alone in the house. The door to the hall is open. Through the fanlight over the front door she glimpses sunshine bathing the street. The outside world is tempting her, beckoning her to explore everything which it holds and to be with other people. Reluctantly she turns away.
*
‘All we want is a few bits like that.’
‘There ain’t none.’
‘Course there are.’
‘We've looked.’
‘We only want a few bits. We must be able to find them lying around.’
‘Where?’
‘There's gotta be something in a place like this.’
‘We've looked.’
‘What about the signal box?’ 
‘How do you mean?’ 
‘There’s great long planks on the walls. You could pull some of them off.’
David does not answer. The two children are standing beneath the bridge, the sheets of corrugated iron at their feet.
‘Couldn’t you, David?’
‘They won’t come off.’
‘You haven’t even tried.’
‘What about tying the sheets together?’
‘That’s no good.’ 
‘Why not?’
‘Cos they won’t stand up on their own. We’ve tried.’
‘We haven’t tried tying them together.’
‘We’re gonna have to have some wood.’
‘Let’s leave it.’
‘You were the one who wanted to do it yesterday.’
‘I don’t feel like it.’ 
‘Why don’t you wanna take some planks off the signal box?’
‘Cos I don’t.’
‘Why?’ 
‘They won’t come off.’
‘Do you wanna build this house or not?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t look much like it.’
‘You don’t have to come here.’
‘Don't you want me to then?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You don’t care about nothing except yerself.’
David looks resolutely away.
‘Do you, David? Answer me.’
‘Wotcha wanna do?'
‘Look at me then.’
David stares at the goods shed, willing the old man to come out and order them away. 
‘Look at me,’ Margaret shouts.
He turns to her, startled.
‘What do you wanna do?’ she asks in more reasonable tones.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Are we gonna build this house or not?’
Sunday morning. The neighbourhood has a stillness denied to it during the rest of the week. There is little traffic on the main road. No traffic passes over the bridge. David watches the girl who was his companion turning her back on him. When she goes back to the place where they climb the wall, he makes no effort to stop her.
*
A pair of the three-storeyed town houses survive from the terraces which used to line the busy street. Sheets of bright corrugated iron cover the windows  and doors. The front gardens are littered with newspapers, tins and broken bottles. High corrugated iron fences keep the emptiness on either side at bay. On the side wall of the nearest house is a patchwork of wallpaper, revealing with indecent intimacy the home which once occupied the site. The front garden wall ends in jagged brickwork where the pillar beside the gatepost has disappeared. 
It is a street Carol used to know well; now it is unfamiliar. The razing of the houses has given it a brightness which was never present before. A few cars are parked beside the kerb. Some might already be abandoned. Trails of dried mud impressed with the tracks of bulldozers and excavators crisscross the path. Carol picks her way carefully over tilting kerbstones and cracked pavements. When she walked home from school on summer afternoons, the street was alive with children playing on the pavements, gossiping women and old men sitting outside front doors. Now the towers of glass, concrete and grey brick ahead of her are a sign of what is coming to the neighbourhood. The two houses belong to a world which has been left behind.
A tiny girl pushes a pram along the roadway. The handle is level with her shoulders. She is not tall enough to look inside. The baby is crying.
‘Shut up.’
The harsh, raised voice carries easily across the quiet street. The cries of the baby are unceasing. Carol can hear them long after the girl has passed. It is a hot day. Her light coat is unbuttoned. She walks without hurry along the road where she used to experience the dread of coming near her school. It dominated her thoughts as the building dominated the street. Now the grim, red-brick building with its high windows is overshadowed by tower blocks. It looks shabbier than when she was a pupil. The wire fence along the top of the wall is rusting; paint peels from the window frames. An annexe has been added to the side of the building since her day, the yellow bricks emphasising its newness. The gates are locked. She peers between the bars: the faded markings of the netball court where she used to play still show on the asphalt. The brass handles on the entrance doors are still shiny with use. Emotions forgotten since her schooldays surge through her, making her shiver. Her greatest fear came on the days when she was late for school. As on this occasion the yard was empty and the doors were closed. How fearfully she entered the gates; how heavy was the feeling in the pit of her stomach. When the doors banged closed behind her, she was trapped in an alien world of schoolwork which she loathed, meaningless rules which had to be obeyed and cliques from which she was excluded. She can almost hear the babble from the classroom and see the teacher looking up as she pushed open the classroom door. There could be no explanations: she always became tongue-tied. The other girls sniggered. However hard she tried, she could never get up in time.
School was a place of painted brick walls in the corridors, of heavy doors and cold stone floors. The echoing voices and the smells of polish and school dinners are still vivid enough to make her catch her breath. School was a place where apprehension and fear gave way to boredom. On the far side of the playground is the brick shelter where she waited shivering on winter mornings, till a prefect rang the bell and the school doors were opened. All the girls congregated in the shelter. The bench running the length of the building has survived. She is too far away to see whether she can recognise the initials carved into the green-painted wood. Dust and sweet wrappers collected underneath. If the wind was in the right direction, the dust would swirl upwards, getting into everybody’s eyes.
The staircase by the main doors is in a brick tower projecting from the body of the building. As she climbed the stone steps each morning, she used to look through the dusty windows with longing. She thought there was a freedom in the world outside which was denied to her while she was at school. That was her abiding dream. A prefect was stationed on each landing. If she ran up the stairs or if she did not walk fast enough, a prefect shouted at her. How she treasured the anonymity of the streets. 
She remembers the teachers as superior beings who descended on the school from another world. She always wondered where they lived. She could not imagine them having ordinary home lives. That was a decade ago. Now she can think of teachers as ordinary people. Sometimes she wonders whether those she knew are still teaching. Since she left, she has never ventured inside the school to find out. 
A netball post still stands in the corner of the yard. The sounds associated with games lessons come back easily: the excited voices of the other girls who were caught up in the match, the blast of the whistle and the smack of the ball against the ground. Men used to watch through the railings, to call and jeer to the players.
Carol walks on, past the flats. A clothing factory used to stand on the site. In summer the girls who worked there sat outside in their lunch break. She expected to work there, but the factory was pulled down soon before she left school. Only a pair of shops are left from those days. They stood next to the factory. Both are empty and boarded up. One was a sweet shop, where girls from both the school and the factory bought cigarettes and sweets. A metal sign advertising ice cream survives over the door, the colours obscured by dust. 
The pavement widens beyond the shops. There is ample room for the man to pass Carol, yet he does not change his course. When she moves closer to the kerb, he does the same. He breaks into a grin as he comes close. He is in his twenties. From his muscular build and his tan, she guesses that he works on a building site. His arms are tattooed. 
‘Looking sorry for yourself.’
Carol hesitates, gripping her bag tightly. They have both stopped walking.
‘What’s the matter, doll?’ he presses.
‘Nothing.’ Her voice sounds unnaturally loud.
‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ 
She shakes her head.
‘Wouldn’t forget someone like you, would I?’
‘You might have seen me around.’
‘That’s better – bit more friendly.’ 
‘I’m in a hurry.’
‘Where are you going?’ 
‘Can you get out the way, please.’ 
‘I can get you a taxi if you’re in a hurry.’
‘I haven’t got far to go.'
‘I can walk along with you.’
‘I’m not going far.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘You’re going in the other direction.’
‘It can wait. Where are you going?’
She shakes her head. 
‘Eh?’
Without answering, she brushes past him and walks on. He catches her up and walks beside her. 
‘You’re not very talkative, are you?’ he says after few yards. ‘How about coming for a drink one evening – get to know each other?’
She gives no sign of having heard.
‘What evening do you fancy? How about tonight? Pity not to see each other again now we’ve met up again.’
She gives no response. It is as though he is not there.
‘And as we’re getting on so well. What’s the matter?’
She crosses the road. When he follows, she begins to run. He calls after her, but she takes no notice. His voice comes from further and further away. 
*
‘And a box of matches, please.’
‘Are you all right dear?’ the old woman asks as she hands over the matches.
‘Bit out of breath, that’s all,’ Carol says.
‘Look as if you’ve been running a mile.’
Carol takes the change. In the doorway she hesitates, but the man is not there. She lights a cigarette before going into the street again. She draws deeply. 
A few cars pass, but the pavement is empty. She has gone in the opposite direction from her home; now she walks back slowly, glancing over her shoulder frequently. She avoids the main road, taking a lengthy detour between blocks of maisonettes. Only a few had been built when she was at school. In those days she rarely took the long way home, so the area is unfamiliar. At each turning she hesitates, considering which way to go. 
It takes her almost an hour to walk home. Near the end of her journey the streets are older and more familiar. Her legs ache. Her pace has slowed. She no longer glances back so often.
She closes the front door quietly, in case her mother is asleep.
'Is that you, Carol?’ her mother calls.
‘Yes.’ 
‘You’ve been gone long enough. I thought you were just going down the road.’
‘I was.’
She goes upstairs without trying to explain. In her bedroom she takes off her coat and shoes and slumps on the bed. She is without energy and without hope.

chapter 7

‘Wotcha mean – you’re not going to work?’
Carol does not answer. She stands by the dresser with her back to her mother. David sits at the table. He has stopped eating. He watches his mother.
‘There's nothing wrong with you, is there? I s’pose you’re gonna start taking days off when you feel like it now. You know how that’s gonna end up – you won’t wanna go to work at all and they’ll give you the sack.’ 
The radio is on. The voice of Helen Shapiro singing ‘You Don’t Know’ accompanies their words. 
‘Are you going or not?’
‘I told you.’
‘Eh?’
‘I’m not going,’ Carol shouts.
‘I dunno what’s got into you. Never get a civil word out of yer these days. And turn that thing down a bit. Can’t hear meself think.’
Carol hugs the transistor radio. She does not look at her mother.
‘So wotcha gonna do then? Are you going to work?’
The radio blares more loudly as if in answer. The old woman blunders across the room and pulls at the radio. ‘I said turn it off, didn’t I?’ 
Carol holds the set more tightly to her body. Her mother grunts with exertion. From between them come the jaunty tones of the disc jockey. The sound fades as the radio is twisted.  
‘Give us it here.’
‘You’ll break it,’ Carol whines.
‘Give us it here then. I said I don’t want it blaring out, didn’t I? You’ll do what you’re told as long as you’re living in my house.’ 
‘Stop it!’
There is a cracking sound. The case breaks. Suddenly there is silence. The two women draw away from each other. Carol’s mother is holding the radio.
‘Look what you’ve gone and done,’ she accuses. She tries to push the pieces of the case together. ‘Now we ain’t got no radio. And we shan’t be able to get another one, either, if you’re not gonna work.’
‘It’ll be all right,’ Carol says. Her voice is unsteady.
‘How can it be all right when it’s like this? Time you started acting yer age.’ 
‘I’ll get it mended.’
‘You don’t think they’re gonna mend that, do you?’
‘Why not?’
‘They’d laugh at you if you took this to a shop.’
‘What did you go and pull it for?’
‘I still wanna know why you’re not goIng to work.’
Carol turns away, shaking her head.
‘We had all this lark when you was at school,’ her mother reminds her. ‘Thought you’d grown out of it.’
‘I’m not going to work.’
‘Always went in the end, for all yer screaming.’
Carol’s bread lies half-eaten on her plate.
‘Like having a baby in the house again, this is. I s’pose they’ve been talking behind yer back at the factory.’ 
‘No.’
‘You oughtta start sticking up for yerself a bit.’
‘It wasn't nothing like that.’
‘Well I dunno what’s the matter with you.’ She lays the radio on the dresser. Carol turns away, unwilling to face her mother.
‘I’m still waiting to know why you don’t wanna go to work.’ Her mother pulls at Carol’s arm, twisting it until they are face to face. ‘What is it then? What's the matter?’ 
Carol bends double, her eyes filling with tears. Her mother lets go and gazes down at her. 
‘I dunno what’s the matter with you sometimes, me girl. I think you get worse.’
There is a knock at the front door. The stillness in the room is broken by Carol’s sobbing. 
‘Go and answer it then,’ her mother orders David as the knocking comes again. ‘Do something useful for once.’
He slides off the chair, not looking at her. 
‘Hurry up then.’
He hurries to the front door and unfastens the latch. The two children face each other across the doorstep.
‘Are you coming out today?’ Margaret asks.
David stares at her, not smiling and not answering.
‘What's the matter?’ she persists.
‘Just decided you’re not gonna go to work,’ his grandmother is saying in the kitchen.
‘I don’t wanna explain – not now,' his mother pleads. 
‘You’re gonna explain, me girl, cos I’m not having you hanging round here round here all the time with no money coming in.’ 
‘Wotcha gonna do?’ David asks desperately before Margaret can ask what is happening.  
‘I thought we was gonna get our house done.’ 
‘I didn’t know if you was gonna bother.’ 
‘We’ve gotta finish it now we’ve started, ain’t we? You was the one who wanted to get it done.’ 
‘You’re hurting me arm,’ his mother cries. 
‘You wanna carry on like a kid, I’ll have to treat you like one. Put you over me knee and tan the hide off you. Should have done it a long while ago.’
‘I don’t wanna explain,’ his mother whines.
‘Pity you didn't have a father to knock a bit of sense in you. He might have taught you a thing or two about men as well.’
‘Get off, mum.’
‘I s’pose all this has got something to do with a bloke.’ 
‘ls that yer mum and nan?’ Margaret asks, speaking in a low tone. 
David nods, embarrassed. He can hear his mother sobbing.
‘What's it about?’
‘Isn’t it?’ his grandmother insists. ‘Look at me. Is it something to do with a bloke at work?’
David watches Margaret’s face, seeing her curiosity. She looks past him, down the hall, to where his mother is visible in the living-room doorway.
‘That’s it, ain’t it? Something’s happened with a bloke.’
‘Let’s go down there,’ David says, anxious to distract Margaret’s attention from the scene behind him. ‘We could get all the corrugated iron sheets up today. And you said about having a rug you could bring down there. We could take that.’
The girl pays no attention. She seems fascinated by what is happening in the living room. 
‘Perhaps we can find some longer bits of wood,’ he says desperately. ‘We could go down the cutting to the building site – see what’s down there.’
‘Get off – I wanna go upstairs,’ his mother pleads. Her voice has risen in tone till it no longer sounds like her voice. It is a moan which rises and falls uncontrollably. Helplessly David looks at Margaret.
‘What’s yer mum crying about?’ she asks.
‘Are we gonna go to our place?’
‘What’s she crying for, David?’
‘You know what’s gonna happen if you’re late,’ his grandmother says. ‘They’re gonna start docking yer pay.’
‘I’m not going to work,’ his mother insists in an unsteady voice.
‘Are you gonna go, or am I gonna ring them up and tell them why? Tell them me daughter’s too scared to go to work cos she’s afraid some bloke’s gonna speak to her.’
‘Don’t. Please, mum.’
‘Are you going, or do I tell them?’ 
‘I can’t go,’ she moans.
‘I’ll tell them then.’ 
‘Don’t, mum.’
‘If you’re not going.’ 
He hears his mother crying. He cannot look back. 
‘Spect me to everything for you, don't you? Look after you when you was expecting, look after your kid while you’re at work.’
The two children listen as David’s mother sobs.
‘Wotcha standing there for?’ his grandmother calls to them. ‘Get out there and play.’ 
‘Come on,’ Margaret urges. 
‘I’ve gotta put me shoes on,’ David insists.
‘Then go and put them on then stead of standing here,’ his grandmother orders.
He hesitates, the toes of his slippers pressing against the edge of the doormat.
‘Go on,’ Margaret urges.
‘David – I ain’t half gonna give you a smack in a minute,’ his grandmother calls.
He hears his mother crying. He does not move.
‘David – did you hear me?’ 
‘Go and put yer shoes on,’ Margaret orders. ‘I’ll wait here.’
‘There’s the shopping. She might want me to do the shopping.’
‘She ain’t said nothing, has she?’
He turns, going to the stairs.
‘Go on – get off to work before they dock yer money,’ his grandmother dismisses Carol. ‘I’m not having you moping round here.’
David’s mother comes into the hall. Her body is bent. Her mouth quivers. Her face is ugly with tears. David backs away, bumping against the edge of the door. He ventures a glance at Margaret. She is staring at his mother.
‘Are you going out, you two?’ his grandmother calls.
The boy does not answer. He is watching his mother. She does not notice that anybody else is in the hall. She climbs the staircase, guiding herself by holding the banister rail with both hands.
‘I said are you going out?’ David's grandmother has come out to the hall. She glares at the children. David’s lips part, but no words come.
‘Eh?’ His grandmother cups her hand to one ear.
‘The shopping. W-w-what about shopping?’
‘What shopping? There ain’t any, is there?’ 
‘Gotta put on me shoes.’
‘Wotcha on about – shopping, shoes?’
He watches her fearfully. 
‘I said get out there, didn’t I?’ 
He looks down at his feet.
‘Go on – get out of it.’ She bears down on him. David backs away, putting up his arm to shield himself, but he only succeeds in pushing the door closed. His grandmother brushes his arm aside. ‘Told you to get out of it, didn’t I?’ she pants as she hits his head again and again around the head. He has turned away, bending forward to protect himself. ‘Now get out and stay out!’
He pulls the door open and runs outside. The door is slammed behind him. 
‘We can go down our secret place now,’ the girl says gently. She watches. David is crying.
They walk slowly towards the main road. David looks down, his shoulders hunched. Margaret watches covertly, making no attempt to touch him. They pass the boys playing football in the road.
‘I-I was gonna put me shoes on,' David sobs.
When they turn into the main road, he takes no interest in the car. The few passers-by look with curiosity on the boy wearing shabby red slippers.
‘Never mind. We'll be there in a minute,’ Margaret consoles him.
‘I wanted to put me shoes on.’ 
‘We can stay there all day if you like. Keep out of yer nan’s way.’ 
He does not answer. He does not look at his companion. When he tries to rub his eyes dry, he only succeeds in making them redder than before.
Nothing more is said as the children go to their secret place. When they are hidden from sight under the bridge, David crouches on the ground, his head lowered so that his face is between his knees and hidden by his clenched hands. The dirt of the yard is on his slippers.
‘It’s all right now,’ Margaret says, kneeling beside him and putting her arm around him. ‘Yer nan won’t find you here. She didn’t half have a go at you.’ 
He does not respond. 
‘What was it about – yer mum crying and that? What was yer nan shouting at her for?’
‘She’s always shouting.’ 
‘When she was kicking you out, I thought she was gonna hit me as well. What’s she get like that for?’
He sniffs back the tears. ‘Me mum didn’t wanna go to work. Then me nan told her she had to.’
‘What for? Yer mum’s old enough to do what she likes. She don't have to take no notice of what yer nan says.’
‘She gets all crying.’
‘Why didn’t she wanna go? Ain’t she well or something?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Or don't she wanna go there no more?’
‘I dunno. She gets headaches and she stays in bed.’ He sniffs again. ‘Me nan don’t like it cos me mum loses money when she’s off.’
‘Me mum gets headaches sometimes.’
‘I think she had one yesterday, cos she went for a walk in the afternoon and when she came back, she went upstairs. She wouldn’t come down again for tea.’
‘What’s yer nan do?’
‘She wouldn’t take her anything up.’
‘Why’s yer nan make her to go to work if she’s got a headache?’
‘She always does.’
‘I’m glad she ain’t my nan.’ Margaret hesitates before asking, ‘Why don’t yer mum go away?’
David looks up.
‘She could take you and go and live somewhere else,’ Margaret persists.
‘I dunno.’
‘She could, couldn’t she? She don’t have to live with yer nan.’
‘I dunno where she’d go.’
‘She could find somewhere. That’s what I’d do if I was her – find somewhere else. Wouldn’t you like to get away from yer nan?’
David nods. 
‘Why don’t you stay here?’ Margaret presses. ‘We could make it into a proper house and you could live here. No one else’d know. I could get food from me mum and bring it here every day.’ She looks at him with eager eyes.
‘I dunno.’ 
‘Why not? What’s the matter?’
‘There’s nothing here – no bed or nothing.’
‘We can make one.’
‘There’s no water.’
‘So? You don’t wanna go washing all the time, do yer?’
‘There’s no toilet.’
‘So? You can piss up against the wall.’
‘There’s the other one.’
‘You ain’t half difficult sometimes.’
‘Me mum’s gonna get worried.’
‘I can tell her.’
‘Then she’d tell me nan.’ 
‘She don’t have to, does she?’
‘Nan would make her.’ 
‘Tell her not to.’ Margaret glares at him. ‘I’d come here if me mum kept shouting at me like that and hitting me. You wouldn’t have to go to school either, cos nobody’d know where you are.’ 
‘I’d have to go back and get me things.’ He wipes his eyes with his hands. Margaret is watching with interest.
‘Yer eyes go all hot and dry when you cry.’ 
‘I wasn’t crying.’
‘You was. I saw you.’
‘I wasn’t properly crying.’ 
‘I dunno what you’re saying that for when I saw you.’ 
‘What about you – would you go to school?’ 
She shakes her head. ‘Not if I came here.’
‘They’d have people coming looking for us.’
‘They wouldn’t look here, would they?’ 
‘S’pose not.’
She takes her arm away. ‘We’d better get this house built – unless we can open the door to the signal box. I thought about that last night. If we got the door open, we could have our house in there stead of building one.’
‘We’d better not go in there.’
‘Why? No one’s gonna know, are they?’
‘You said we were gonna have our house here.’
‘It’d be better in the signal box.’
‘You said we were gonna have it here,’ he insists. ‘We agreed.’
Margaret stands. ‘No one’s gonna go in the cutting, are they?’
‘I want it here.’
‘We might find some wood in the signal box.’
‘I don’t wanna go walking round in me slippers.’
‘Yer nan’s rotten.’
‘You know what you said?’
‘What about?’
‘Going home to tea with you.’
‘Are you gonna come?’ she asks eagerly.
‘How about today?'
‘I’ll have to see what me mum says. I can ask her dinner time. Are you going home for dinner?’
David shakes his head.
‘I’ll try and bring you some biscuits ‘ Margaret offers. ‘Isn’t yer nan gonna cook something?’ 
‘I dunno.’
‘She’ll be mad if she does and you don’t go back.’
‘You said about staying here all the time.’
‘We’ll have to look for some wood if you’re gonna do that.’ She sounds doubtful. Suddenly she scratches her face. ‘Something's bitten me.’
He draws back as she thrusts her face close to his.
‘Is there a red spot?’ she wants to know. 
‘No.’
‘I bet there’s gonna be soon.’ She spits on her fingers and dabs saliva on the bite. ‘Are you gonna stay there or come and look for some wood?’ 
‘I’ll stay here.’
*
'Carol.’
Climbing the stairs.
‘I’m talking to you,’ her mother calls from the hall.
‘What?’ 
‘What did they say when you got in late?’
‘Nothing.’
‘They must have said something.’
‘They didn’t.’
‘Did you go to work?’
‘Yes.’
‘Funny they didn’t say nothing. I thought they were fussy about getting in on time.’
‘They asked why I was late, that’s all.’
‘So they did say something?’
‘Just why I was late.’
‘Wotcha tell them?’
‘I wasn’t well.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Pity I didn’t phone up and tell them the real reason. You’re not well all right.’
Carol climbs the stairs without bothering to reply. 
‘Tell them I’ve got a family of cry babies,’ her mother calls.
Carol goes into her bedroom and falls on the bed. She lies still, savouring the moment of peace. It is broken by the sound of her mother coming upstairs.
‘Get yer own food it you want anything,’ comes her mother’s voice. ‘I’m going to bingo.’
Carol remains silent as her mother goes into the front bedroom.
‘Did you hear me?’ comes the voice.
‘Yes.’
‘You might as well not say nothing round here. You never get an answer.’
‘I said yes.’
‘Near as I get to a conversation with you.’
‘Is David in?’
‘He’s having his tea. I’ll be late home, so don’t lock up. Do you hear?’ 
‘Yes.’
Carol listens to her mother getting ready. She hears the wardrobe door being opened. The loose floorboard in front of the dressing-table creaks. As she lies still, following her mother’s progress, the evening sun shines on her face. Dust hangs in the shafts of light. She shifts her head so that she is facing the window. The upper sash is pulled down. The top of the net curtain is blackened. The floral curtains bunched on either side have been there for as long as she can remember. They are faded now. One is torn at the hem.
Train wheels squeal against the rails on the curving viaduct. Carol closes her eyes. The wardrobe door in the front bedroom bangs closed. Two men are shouting in one of the gardens. 
‘We’ll be over later,’ comes a voice she does not know.
‘What time?’
‘When she’s ready. You know what she’s like.’
‘We’ve got some lager in the fridge.’
‘Don’t drink them all before we get there.
The sound of the train has faded to a distant, rhythmic clatter, leaving quietness in the neighbourhood. No sound comes from the front bedroom. Carol opens her eyes and stares at the crack across the ceiling which she watched as a child. It has got wider since then. She stretches out a hand to touch the wooden bedhead. Her fingers move along the edge, disturbing the dust, till she lets her hand falls limply on the pillow. After a few moments she wipes her eyes, licking the salty taste from her fingers, making them warm and wet as she rests them on her cheek. Her eyes close once more. From the front bedroom comes the sound of a drawer being opened and banged closed. Her mother goes out to the landing. 
‘I’ll be back about ten. Do you hear?’
‘Yes.’ The word vibrates in Carol’s chest. Her voice sounds unnaturally loud.
‘I s’pose you’re staying in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good thing I’m not stuck here with you two.’
Carol does not reply. The breath leaves her lungs in a sigh too soft for her mother to hear. She holds her breath as the older woman goes downstairs. She tries to hold it for as long as her mother remains in the house. Her body grows tense. She clenches her hands.
‘Don’t forget – if you go to bed, don’t lock the door,’ her mother calls from the hall. 
The front door slams. She breathes out noisily. After taking a few deep breaths, she gets up from the bed. There is a calmness in her which she did not know before. The oxygen makes her light-headed. She has no weight as goes downstairs. 
David is seated at the table. He looks up as his mother comes into the living room. She smiles shyly, as she might acknowledge a stranger.
‘Why don’t you cut the bread? It’s easier.’ 
‘It’s all right,’ he answers.
As though she has not heard him, she sits in the armchair opposite the one where her mother usually sits. Beside her on the dresser where the broken radio lies. 
‘What have you been doing today?’ she asks. 
‘Just played,’ the boy answers when he has swallowed his food. 
‘By yerself?’ 
‘With Margaret.’
‘You didn’t used to like her.’
He does not reply.
‘Do you wanna go to the pictures one afternoon if I give you the money?’
He looks up.
‘As a treat – as the holiday’s nearly ended.’ 
‘All right.’
‘I think there’s a Walt Disney on.’
He nods. 
‘Do you wanna ask Margaret?’
He stares at his mother helplessly. 
‘If you want to,’ she adds, watching for his response. When he looks down at his food, she remarks, ‘Nan’s not coming home till late. Did you hear her say?’
He nods.
‘Do you wanna play with Margaret when you’ve finished, or shall we listen to the radio?’
‘She says you don’t have to live with nan and do what she tells you.’
Carol stares, as thought it is a stranger who talks of her secrets. ‘She’s me mum – she makes me do things,’ she explains. ‘I’ve gotta do them even if I’m grown up, cos she’s me mum.’
The boy nods.
‘What sort of games do you play when you’re with Margaret?’ 
‘We have races and things. And we’re building a house.’ 
‘What made you start playing with her?’ 
‘I don’t play with her all the time.’
‘You didn’t used to like her.’ 
He turns back to his food, not answering.
‘We’ll have an evening like we used to,’ she says.
‘All right.’
‘Remember when we did that in the winter – when we used to sit in front of the electric fire and I made toast?’
‘I liked that.’ 
‘When we listened to ‘The Clitheroe Kid’? It’s gonna be like that again.’
But he is less sure.

chapter 8 

‘I didn’t know it was gonna be this hot.’ Margaret stares at the goods yard from the shade beneath the bridge. David sits on the newspapers, his knees drawn up, his arms clasped around his legs. 
‘We shouldn’t have run so much,’ he says.
‘It’s cos it’s a hot day. It’s nothing to do with running. We only ran from the main road.’
‘And across the yard.’ 
‘That ain't far. Little way like that don’t make no difference.’ She climbs on the pile of corrugated iron sheets. The noise reverberates around the two children.
‘We’ve gotta tie those together somehow,’ he reminds her.
She jumps down and drags the top sheet free. It falls to the ground with a crash.
‘It’s all damp under here – look. And there’s slugs – we don’t want them in our house.’ She shivers. ‘I hate slugs.’ 
‘What about the other sheets?’
‘Come and look at this one.’ She lifts the next sheet. ‘This one’s got them on as well. We’ll have to get them all out.’ She begins pulling the sheet into the sunshine. ‘Come and help me then.’
David gets up and takes the next sheet gingerly, dragging it off the pile and along the ground. The rough edges make grooves in the weeds and the grass. 
‘We’ll lay them all out in the sun and watch the slugs get frizzled up,’ Margaret decides. 
When the task is done, the children sit on the newspaper to rest. 
‘What are we gonna do now?’ David asks.
‘It’s too hot to do much. I wish we had something to drink – something cold. I meant to bring some lemonade. Me mum got some. Wotcha like best – lemonade or cherryade?’ 
‘I dunno.’
‘Wotcha mean, you dunno?’
‘I haven’t had cherryade. We have lemonade sometimes – when there’s something special.’ 
‘Yer mum ain’t got much money, has she?’
‘She works.’
‘I know she works, but that don’t mean she gets a lot of money. I s’pose it’s because you ain’t got a dad. Did you ever know yer dad?’
David shakes his head.
‘Dunno what it'd be like without a dad,’ she admits. 
‘I stayed up late last night. We had toast, me and me mum.’ 
‘Wotcha call late?’
‘Half past nine.’
‘I stay up till then lots of times. I never go to sleep if it’s light outside.’ 
‘Do you look out the window?’
‘Sometimes. When it’s ever so hot like this, I sit on the lino by the window. It cools you off.’ 
‘I’ve got me bed by the window, so I can sit there and look out.’ 
‘Is your room the one at the back, over the kitchen? That’s like my room. I can see you when you’re in the garden.’ 
‘I see you as well.’ 
‘Been watching me, have you?’ 
‘No. I just look out sometimes and you’re in the garden.’ 
‘I bet.’
‘What are we gonna do today?’ he wants to know.
‘I said – it’s too much bother doing anything when it’s like this. It’s too hot.’ She wriggles on the newspaper. It tears. ‘David – is yer mum always gonna live at home?’
‘I dunno.’
‘If we made a proper house, would she come here?’
‘I dunno. She’d have to climb the wall.’
‘If she wants to get away from yer nan, she’d climb it, wouldn’t she?’
He hesitates.
‘Wouldn’t she, David? Why don’t you ask her?’
‘I might.’
‘All you’ve gotta do is ask her.’ 
‘All right.’
‘So you will?’
‘Yes.’ 
Satisfied, Margaret stares at the yard again. ‘It's getting hotter and hotter. S’posing we get all frizzled up?’
David does not answer. 
‘I wish we could get our house built, then we can sit down in it and be cool.’
‘You was the one who wanted to stop doing it.’
‘I want it. I don’t wanna build it.‘
’We’ve gotta get the sheets tied together.’ 
‘Tell me about yer mum. Why don't she have a boyfriend?’
‘I told you.’
‘When?’ 
‘The other day.‘
‘Don’t you know anything about yer dad?’ She watches for his reaction. ‘Don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘No,’ he repeats irritably.
‘Don’t yer mum say nothing about him?’
‘No. I said.’
‘Do you ever ask her?’
‘Me mum said about going to the pictures.’
‘With her, you mean?’
‘I don’t think so. She said about going one afternoon. There’s a Walt Disney on.’
‘All right.’
‘I’ll tell her.’ 
‘I like yer mum.’
Instead of answering, David pushes at the nearest corrugated iron sheet with one foot. 
‘Does yer mum know you come here?’ Margaret probes.
‘She knows I’ve got a secret place, but I haven’t said where.’
‘What about yer nan? Does she know?’
He shakes his head.
‘Would you tell her if she asked?’ 
‘Not unless I had to.’
‘Me mum asks what I’m doing, but I don’t tell her nothing.’
‘I don’t wanna go back to school,’ David confides. He is picking at the hard skin on his hand.
‘Why not?’
‘I hate it.’ 
The passion in his voice makes Margaret stare.
‘It ain’t for another week yet,’ she consoles him. ‘Why don’t you like it?’
‘I don’t like the other boys, I don’t like the teachers...’
‘I don’t mind some of the teachers. The one we’ve got this year – she’s nice. Miss Lamb.’
‘You said about staying here. You said nobody’s gonna find us if we stay here.’
‘We can’t stay here all the time, though, can we? There’s food and stuff...’ Margaret gets up, as though unwilling to continue the conversation. She examines her left palm. ‘I’ve got print all over it.’ 
‘That’s off the newspaper.’ 
‘I know that.’ She moves away, wiping her hand against her dress and staring at the wall. ‘I wonder why the bricks have gone all white.’
‘That’s where the water’s been running down.’
‘It should be sheltered under the bridge.’
‘It’s not rain.’ 
‘So where’s it from?’

He is silent.
‘Let’s go down the signal box,’ she suggests.
As she leaves the shelter of the bridge, David gets up and follows.
*
'Didn’t expect to see you in today,’ Val says.
Carol furrows her brow. ‘Why not?’ 
‘You didn’t look all that well yesterday. You should have taken the day off.’ 
‘There ain’t much wrong,’ Carol says, smiling as if to apologise for the sharpness of her tone. ‘Anyway, I don’t like staying at home.’
‘Are you still in one of the old houses? You must be due for rehousing soon. Then you’ll have a nice new flat to look forward to.’ 
‘It’s me mum.’ Carol’s voice has dropped to a murmur. 
Val pulls a face. ‘You ought to see how I get on with mine.’ 
‘How’s that?’
‘Don’t ask. Why don't you tell old Verity you wanna go to the doctor?’
Carol shakes her head.
‘She’s not gonna snap yer head off.’
‘It’s not like that. It’s all right.’
‘What's the matter then? Tell us.’ 
Carol looks at Val suspiciously, but sees no laughter. 
‘Is it trouble at home? You couldn't have worse rows than us.’
‘It's not really rows.’
‘Is it to do with yer kid?’
Carol looks up quickly. She is shaking her head.
‘Boyfriend trouble?’ Val probes, her eyebrows raised.
‘Nothing like that. There’s nothing really.’
‘I wasn’t trying to be nosey.‘ 
’It’s all right.’
The end of the morning. The rest room is crowded. Val joins the cluster of girls around the mirror, leaving Carol to eat her sandwiches and overhear snatches of conversation.
‘...Me and Jeff didn't half have a row yesterday. We went in this pub and there was this girl there he used to knock around with. She hadn't even seen him. He has to go up to her and start chatting her up, buying her a drink and everything. Leaves me sitting there like a nana.’
‘You should have walked out.’
'I said, “If you wanna go out with her, you get on with it. Don’t expect me to wait around.” I had a right go at him.’
‘What’s he do?’
‘He started getting narked, so I walked out. I was going to the bus stop and he come after me and started grabbing me arm. Then this copper came along.’ 
‘So what happened?’
'I got on a bus, didn’t I? I said I’ll see him tonight, if he wants to come round.’
‘I thought you wasn’t gonna go out tonight?’
‘I wasn’t, was I? Move over. I wanna do me eyes.’
‘Everybody’s having rows – even Carol over there.’
The faces turned to Carol.
‘I never said anything about a row,’ she protests.
‘Did you fall out with that bloke you was with the other day?’ 
‘It weren’t nothing to do with that,’ Val intervenes. ‘She don’t wanna talk about it.’
‘She can tell us herself. She’s got a tongue in her head.’ 
Carol is blushing. 
‘We only wanna know all the gossip. If she don’t wanna join in, that’s up to her.’
‘I’ve got a spot coming,’ one of the other girls announces.
‘I’ve got this special cream you can try.’ 
‘Look out!’
‘No one else can get to the mirror.’
‘I’m looking at me spot.’
‘I’m in a hurry.’
‘Aren’t you speaking to him, eh, Carol?’
‘There wasn’t a row,’ Carol insists. 
‘I reckon you’ve got acne. Me sister had a spot like that and the doctor said it was acne.’
‘You get acne when you’re about sixteen.‘
’Now always. I know a bloke in his twenties had it.’
‘Blokes don’t get acne.’
‘This bloke did.’
Carol eats her sandwiches as the chatter of the other girls swirls around her. 
‘I’ve got another one. Look.’
‘That’s acne all right.’
‘I’m supposed to be going out tonight.’
‘Perhaps you’ve got chickenpox.’
‘It itches when you’ve got chickenpox.’
‘These don’t itch.’ 
‘Perhaps it’s the heat – that makes you come out in spots.’
‘Then why ain’t nobody else got them?’
‘It’s to do with yer pores.’
‘Makes me sound like a bleeding dog.’
Some girls go to the cafe along the road. When Carol started work at the factory, she went with them. It was crowded and hot, with an overpowering smell of frying food which never went away even when the door was left open. She remembers the noise: the staff calling orders, the clatter of plates, the hissing of the urn and the voices of the girls and the workmen. The food came on thick white plates which never seemed properly washed. 
Some of the girls go shopping together. Carol visits the shops alone on the few occasions when she leaves the factory at lunchtime. She rarely visits the clothes shops which are a favourite haunt of the others. Most of her clothes she makes herself.
Ivy sits at the table. Squinting in the mirror of her compact, she powders her face. She smiles when she sees Carol watching. 
‘You going out?' 
Carol shakes her head. 
‘You wanna get out for a breath of fresh air.’ 
The voices or the other girls cut across their conversation. 
‘Dunno whether to leave me hair like this. What do you think?’
‘What's the matter with it?’
‘Didn’t come out the right colour, did it?’
‘Looks all right to me.’
‘I’ve got me cousin’s wedding coming up this weekend. I didn’t want it looking like this.’
‘Is that the one who lives down in Kent?’ 
‘That’s it. What’s happened to Val now?’ 
‘She’s in the toilet.’ 
‘What’s she leave it till now for? Did you hear that, Val? We’re off.’ 
‘She can catch us up.’ 
‘I wanna get meself a sandwich before they’re sold out. I didn’t have time to do any this morning.’ 
The rest room empties slowly. Ivy snaps her compact closed and leaves. Carol is still eating when Val returns.
‘Where’s the others?’
‘They said you can catch them up.’
‘Why couldn’t they have waited?’ 
The door closes. Carol stares through the bars of the open window. The yard is bathed in sunshine. The sky is a brilliant blue.

chapter 9

David waits in his bedroom, reading. The back door of the adjoining house is open. He can hear the radio blaring. It is ten o’clock in the morning.
‘David!’ 
He puts aside his comic and climbs off the bed.
‘I’m not gonna tell you again.’
He goes downstairs.
‘Why can’t you come when I call yer the first time?’ his grandmother complains. ‘I dunno what you have to stick up there for on a day like this.’ 
‘I was waiting for Margaret.’
‘You can do the shopping. Get you out in the air.’
‘S’posing she knocks?’
‘She’ll have to wait, won’t she?’
He has to pass Margaret’s house. He walks slowly, trying to see into the window. There is no sight or sound from inside. On his return twenty minutes later, he expects Margaret to open the door as he goes by. Nothing happens. He takes the groceries to his grandmother.
‘Wotcha waiting for now?’ she wants to know. 
‘Did Margaret knock?’ 
‘No. Why don’t you go and see what’s happened to her? Better than hanging around here getting in the way.’ 
For the third time his pace slows as he passes her house, but he does not ring the bell. He goes alone to their secret place. The sky is cloudy and threatening rain. While Margaret is with him, he does not bother to look at cars. Now he stops to examine the dashboard of a sports car parked in the main road.
In the street beside the goods yard, the two girls play by the wall. Their skipping rope is tied to a lamp post. One holds the free end while the other jumps. As David near them, the skipping rope is still, snaked across the pavement. The girls watch David. He moves into the road.
‘You keep coming down here,’ one of them accuses him. She is a thin girl with dark, lank hair. Her dress is crumpled. Her knees are roughened like boys’ knees. 
‘You keep coming with that girl now, don’t you?’
David stares back at her, not answering, mesmerised. 
‘We’ve seen you climbing over the wall,' her friend agrees. She is fatter and red faced. 
‘You’re not supposed to go in the railway yard,’ the thin girl says. ‘We could get the police onto you for that.’
'Why don’t you say something?’ her red-faced friend asks.
‘I don’t have to.’
‘Eh?’
‘I don’t have to,’ David says more loudly.
‘You’re dirty. We know what you do. You get her in there and then you take all her clothes off.’
‘I don’t.’ 
A high voice, unlike David’s normal voice.
‘Yes you do. We’ve leant over the wall and seen you.’
‘I don’t,’ he shouts.
‘You get her undressed and start feeling her.’
He runs along the gutter, past the lamp post where the skipping rope is tied. One of the girls pulls at his shirt. The second grabs his arm.
‘We don’t like dirty little boys round here. Know what we do with them?’ 
He stares around helplessly. 
‘Me big brother comes out and he throws them over the wall,’ the thin girl says. ‘And when they climb over, he throws them back again. He keeps on till they’ve broken all their bones.’
‘Hold him – he's trying to get away!’ her companion cries, seeing his sideways glance. 
‘Where’s yer friend today?’
David’s arm is twisted behind his back.
‘She’s coming.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Derby Street.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s yer dad do?’
‘I ain’t got a dad.'
‘Why’s that then?’ 
‘Me dad’s dead.’
‘There’s tears in his eyes. Look at him – he’s crying.’
The girls release him. They are watching his face as it screws up with tears. He tries to turn away, but the red-faced girl jerks his face towards her. She pushes his chin upwards.

‘What’s yer name?’ she wants to know. 
Her hand is damp and hot under his chin. He tries to speak, but his jaws are pushed together. Grunting sounds issue from his mouth. The girls laugh. The hand under his chin becomes unsteady.
‘Take yer hand away so’s he can speak,’ the thin girl orders. 
The red-faced girl releases him. He opens his mouth, but no words come.
‘What’s yer name?’ she wants to know.
‘David.’
‘Wotcha crying for?’
‘What’s happened to yer dad?’ the thin girl wants to know.
They watch intently, eager for his reply. He looks away. 
‘Wotcha keep coming here for?’ she continues.
‘Cos he wants to feel that girl,’ the red-faced girl declares. 
‘Why is it always this place?’
He is silent.
‘I asked you something.’
‘Give us an answer, David,’ the red-faced girl urges.
He shakes his head.
‘We said give us an answer.’
They hold him again. He struggles ineffectually.
‘Let’s tie him to a lamp post,’ says the thin girl. 
Their words make him struggle all the more. Panic gives him the strength to break free. Then he is running. The girls are laughing.
He glances back from the top of the wall. The girls have not followed. He drops onto the loading bay and scuttles to his secret place under the bridge. His heart pounds. For a long time he crouches in the shelter of the bridge. The girls do not appear. He does not hear their voices. When he grows stiff, he gets to his feet and goes cautiously from his hiding place. The yard stretches before him, silent and empty. A breeze ruffles the grass. When he first discovered the yard, he liked to walk along the rails curving through the weeds, imagining where they would lead him. Like Margaret, he tried to work the points, visualising the trains which clattered across them on the way to the docks. He had the notion of finding a train and making the railway work again. He started clearing the weeds and grass. That was a hot day. Perspiration ran freely down his face. Though he worked hard all the morning, only a few yards of track were exposed. By lunchtime he knew that the task was pointless. When he went there the following day, he did not pursue the work. Weeds soon grew again on the stretch which he had cleared.
Sometimes he brought his toy cars to the yard and played on the loading bay. By midday the concrete could become so hot that he feared it would burn his skin. He could listen to the conversations of the people walking on the other side of the wall. He enjoys being invisible. 
On the far side of the yard, beyond the tall weeds bordering the yard, are the gardens. They are larger than the ones he sees from his window.  Gaps in the fences have been repaired with metal bed frames and wood from packing cases. Washing hangs from clothes lines. In one garden, children are playing. He can see them through the wire fence– 
‘There he is!’ 
A girl’s voice. He turns, startled, his heart thumping. The thin girl runs towards him. Her red-faced friend scrambles off the loading bay and follows. He glances back, towards the gardens. The children in the garden have heard the shouting and come to the wire fence to watch. He can see their faces.
‘What’s happened to the girl you’re always with?’ the thin girl wants to know. 
‘I dunno.’
‘What was you gonna do on yer own?’
‘I dunno.’
‘What's all these for?’ She nods towards the corrugated iron sheets. Her companion has joined her.
‘We was gonna put them up.’
‘Wotcha mean – put them up?’ 
‘Make a shelter.’
Both girls stare at the sheets. 
‘We couldn’t get anything to hold them up with and the slugs got on them,’ he explains.
‘Do you wanna play?’ the thin girl asks. 
‘Play what?’ 
‘He.’
‘Here, you mean?’
‘You’ve gotta chase us, only you can’t get us when we’re on a rail.’ 
As he starts towards her, she skips back saying, ‘You’ve gotta count out loud to five first.’ 
He counts to five as they run from him. The girl with the red race is nearest. She does not move as he nears her. She grins.
‘You can’t have me cos I’m on a rail.’
He pushes her and loses her balance, toppling backward. The grin has disappeared. He touches her and runs away. On the points he stands astride two rails.
‘You can’t do that,’ the thin girl shouts. ‘It don’t count.’
He runs after the red-faced girl again, but she is safe on a rail when he is several yards from her. He turns. The thin girl jumps on and off a rail, taunting him. It is a game he cannot win.
*
‘Where have you been?’ his grandmother demands when David opens the door. ‘You come in here.’
He senses that something is wrong. His stomach knots. When he gets into the hall, she pushes him towards the living room. ‘Get in there. Didn’t you hear me?’
‘I was.’
‘And don’t answer me back, or I’ll teach you something. I’ve had about enough of you.’
David is propelled into the living room. She bends over him, twisting his face close to hers, so that he can smell her sour breath. 
‘Where have you been?’
‘Playing.’
‘I suppose you was waiting for her down there.’
He stares at his grandmother, not understanding,
‘Were you waiting for her?’ she repeats, shaking him.
‘Who?’
‘Margaret.’
‘She didn’t come.’
‘I know she didn’t come. I’ve had the police round here. And they’ll be back for you. Take you off to prison – and I’m not gonna stop them. You can stay in  there as long as you like for all I care. I’ve a good mind to phone them up – tell them you’re here.’ She glares at him. Her breathing is noisy. ‘I thought there was something funny about all this going round with her.’ 
He is staring at his grandmother, not understanding.
‘You’ve gotta stay in this afternoon when they come. And you’re not going down that railway yard no more. That’s all finished.’
‘How did you know?’
‘They caught her – that’s how. Brought her back in a police car.’
‘What – Margaret?’ 
‘Course it’s Margaret. Who else do you think I mean? It was all tears – trying to make out she didn’t know what was happening.’
He stares. 
‘Right little friend you’ve got yerself there.’ 
‘I wanna go to the toilet.’
‘When they put you in prison, you can’t go when you want, you know – you have to go at special times.’ 
When she releases him, he does not move. 
‘Go on then if you’re going.’ 
He makes his way outside. His body is shaking.
*
David stays in his bedroom throughout the afternoon. He tries to read his comics, but he already knows the stories. He spreads pictures of cars over the bed, but now they hold little interest for him. He keeps glancing out the window, hoping that his grandmother has made a mistake and that Margaret will appear, but her garden remains empty. Though he has not eaten since breakfast, he feels no hunger. Since he was in the goods yard, the clouds have thickened. He watches his grandmother taking in the washing.
A train screeches on the curving viaduct, carrying people who see the neighbourhood every day, yet remain unaware of what has happened. David envies that innocence, yet hates them for their unknowingness. Music reaches him from next door. As well as being deaf, Mrs Gentry is fat. He sees her in the street, walking slowly and pausing every few yards. Her breathing is noisy. He is afraid that she will explode. 
Every few minutes a train passes on the viaduct. He cannot help contrasting it with the unused goods yard. It is not his secret place any more. He has no secrets. Margaret thrust himself into his life and now she has gone, he does not know where. His hands are clenched. His body grows stiff with fear. Nothing in his room – not his books, his pictures or his comics – holds any interest for him. He listens intently to the sound every car. The car which stops will be the police car. 
When he hears a key turn in the front door, he scrambles off the bed and runs downstairs, stumbling in his haste. His mother looks surprised. Before she has closed the door, he presses himself against her. 
‘What’s the matter?’
‘He’s been waiting for the police to come,’ his grandmother intervenes. ‘See whether they’re gonna take him away as well.’
 ‘What’s happened?’
He feels his mother’s voice vibrate through her body.
‘I wouldn’t stick up for him,’ his grandmother rasps. 
‘I dunno what you’re talking about.’ 
‘Him and Margaret – they’ve been playing over that old railway yard.
‘You shouldn’t go over there,’ his mother says gently. ‘It’s dangerous.’
‘There ain’t no trains,’ he tells her. ‘It’s all closed down.’
‘You ain’t heard the best of it yet,’ his grandmother interrupts. 'That Margaret got brought home in a police car. Caught pinching Formica from that wood shop near the baths. Bold as you like – goes in there and takes a sheet of the stuff.’ 
‘David weren’t with her, was he?’
‘Her mum told the police about them going round together.’
‘What’s she wanna go and say that for? He weren’t taking anything, was he?’ 
‘He knew about it. They were gonna use it for this house they’re building down there.’ 
'Did you know about it?’ Carol asks, crouching so that her face is level with that of the boy. David is crying. He shakes his head. Between sobs, he says, ‘I was waiting for her to come. I was waiting down the yard and she never came.’
‘Did you know what she was doing?’ his mother persists.
He is shaking his head and burying himself against her.
‘It’s all right,’ she croons. ‘It’s gonna be all right.’ She strokes his hair. Her lips brush against him. 
‘He’s been going round with her every day, so he must have known what she was up to,’ his grandmother intervenes.
‘He said he didn’t.’ 
‘You try telling the police that – see what they have to say.’
‘Wotcha have to keep frightening him for?’ 
‘If the police come, he’s gotta tell them something.’
Carol does not answer. She leads the boy upstairs.
‘Start sticking up for him and you’ll end up in court as well,’ his grandmother calls. ‘You can lie black and blue for him, but I’m not. I’m gonna tell them the truth. Not putting meself in the wrong for him.’
As he sits on his bed, David’s eyes fill with tears. His mother cradles him gently. 
‘I was waiting for Margaret and she never came,’ he explains, his voice wavering. ‘Then these other girls came and I didn’t want them there.’
‘It’s gonna be all right,’ his mother croons, drawing him against her.   
‘I had to chase them. It was a game.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘I didn’t know where Margaret was.’
‘I know.’
‘And nan says the police are gonna take me away.’
'Nothing’s gonna happen – I’ll make sure of that.’ She lets him cradle his head against her breasts, as though he is a baby. Neither of them hears the trains on the viaduct. 
‘We was gonna make this house – that’s why she wanted the plastic...’ 
The front door bangs.
‘We were gonna build a proper house.’ 
‘It’s all right.’ 
‘Nan says the police are gonna come.’ 
‘You didn’t know what Margaret was doing.’
‘I’ve gotta stay in all the afternoon...’
‘You've just gotta tell them you didn’t know nothing about it.’
‘We was gonna make it a secret house. We was gonna take you there.’
‘Where?’ 
‘It’s under a railway bridge down by the main road. We was gonna make it like a proper house.’
Mother and son hug each other, not speaking. A long time passes before their embrace is broken. 
‘What do you wanna do this evening?’ Carol asks.
‘I want it like the day before yesterday, when nan was out and we had toast.’
‘That’s what we’ll do then.’
‘When’s nan gonna come back?’
‘I dunno. It don’t matter though.’
‘She’ll make me go to bed early.’ 
‘We’ll have to see.’
‘I don’t like her.’
‘She is yer nan.’
‘I wish she wasn’t.’ 
‘She’s me mum as well – like I’m your mum. She gets upset sometimes. You don’t wanna mind her.’
‘I don’t like her.’
‘She’s getting old. She don’t understand about things.’
David looks into his mother’s face, surprised. 
‘You’ve gotta try and not mind her,’ she urges. 
He wipes his eyes.
‘She does a lot of things for us – washing and that.’
‘She’s always shouting.’
His mother nods. There is a stillness in the room. The sound of the radio from the next house has ceased.
‘We’ll have a special tea – just the two of us. And then we’ll listen to something  on the radio. How’s that?’
‘What about the police?’
‘I dunno what’s happening, do I? They’d have come by this time if they were gonna.’
‘She said they were gonna take me down the police station.’
‘You don’t wanna worry about that. So long as you don’t go down the railway no more.’ 
‘There’s no trains down there now.’
‘You still might get trains going through.’
‘There ain’t.’ 
‘ The thing is you’re not supposed to be down there. They’ll say you shouldn’t have been trespassing.’ 
‘We weren’t doing nothing.’
She hugs him. ‘Do you want yer tea now?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
'One of yer mum’s special teas. You’ll have that, won’t you?’
‘All right.’
‘We’ll have a proper nice tea.’
He smiles for the first time since he greeted her.
‘Tell me about what you've been doing,‘ she says.
‘Nothing – just the same old stuff.’
‘What’s gonna happen to Margaret?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Nan said they’d put her in prison.’
‘They wouldn’t do that. She’s too young.’ 
There is silence. Carol looks out the window. The boy follows her gaze. He sees nothing which might interest her. 
‘Gonna come downstairs for yer mum’s special tea?’ she asks, turning back to him.
David nods.
*
David helps his mother to prepare the special tea. They have toast thickly spread with margarine, together with malted milk biscuits and two cups of tea each. They finish with tinned pineapple covered with cream off the milk. Afterwards he helps his mother to clear away. A kettle of water boils on the stove. 
'Soon as we’ve got the washing up done, we listen to the radio,’ his mother promises. ‘Then perhaps later we’ll have a cup of tea.’
‘Shall I do the drying?’ 
‘There’s not much here. You go and put the radio on and I’ll be in in a minute. Or you can go in the garden – play out there.’  
He goes to the bottom of the garden. His eyes are screwed up as he faces the sun. He does not notice Margaret until she calls him.
‘Did you go down the yard?’ she wants to know.
He goes to the bottom of the garden, so his mother will not hear that he is talking to Margaret. The girl climbs on her own fence to speak to him. They face each other across Mrs Gentry’s garden. 
‘I was gonna go down there after, but me mum wouldn’t let me,’ she continues. She examines her bare arms. ‘I’ve been bitten. There’s all gnats round here.’
‘I was waiting for you.’ 
‘Didn’t you hear about what happened?’
‘Some of it.’
‘It’s itching now.’ 
‘Me nan said the police took you away.’ 
‘He had to come out just when I was getting the stuff.’
‘What stuff?’ 
‘The plastic. I thought the bloke was having his tea out the back, then he comes out and sees me.’ She licks her wrist and examines her skin again. ‘I’ve got this great big red spot coming up.’
‘What’s gonna happen?’
‘Wotcha mean? The cops ain’t gonna do nothing, are they? I never got nothing. Trouble is now we’ve gotta find something else to use for the house. We’ll have to look round for some wood again.’
‘You know them girls?’ 
‘What girls?’ 
‘The ones we saw playing down by the yard.’
‘I dunno who you mean.’ 
’Those girls.’ 
‘I dunno what you’re talking about.’ 
‘We’ve seen them before.’
‘What about them?’ 
‘We had this chasing game.’
‘You and these girls, you mean?’
‘I just said.’
‘You was the one who kept going on about not letting anybody else play there.’
‘I couldn’t do nothing. They came over the wall.’
‘You didn’t have to play with them if you didn’t want to.’ 
'I had to chase them.’ 
‘Chase them out of it, you mean?’
‘No. I said – it was a game. We played “he” and you couldn’t be had if you was standing on a rail.’
‘Are they gonna down there with us next time?’
‘I dunno. I dunno what’s gonna happen.’
‘I might know them from school. I’ll have to see tomorrow, if they come.’
He presses his heels into the hard earth, not replying. 
‘Be good if there’s more of us. Then if we meet a tramp of somebody down there, we can make him go away.’  
David shakes his head imperceptibly.
‘Did you show them the goods shed where that old bloke lived?’ 
‘There weren’t no time.’
‘You was scared, more like – scared of going in there again.’
He looks down at his slippers.
‘You’re scared of everything, you are. Scared to go and buy something in a shop, let alone pinch anything.’ 
He turns towards the house. 
‘David!’ 
‘I’ve gotta go in.’
‘Why?’
He goes inside without answering. His mother is wearing one of her mother’s aprons for washing up. She glances at him as he closes the back door. 
‘Were you talking to Margaret out there?’
He remains silent, his eyes downcast.
‘You’re very pally lately. You didn’t used to like her.’ 
David ventures a glance at his mother, not sure whether she is angry. She gets on with the washing up. He lets the silence continue as he tries to grasp the implication of her words. She puts down the dishcloth and turns to him suddenly, as though she has just made up her mind.
‘I want you to go out with other kids, but not with her. She’s not very nice.’ 
He looks down. His mother watches anxiously.
‘Margaret’s always getting into trouble,’ she explains. ‘I don’t want you getting involved with her.’
‘I think she’s gonna call.’
‘When?’
‘In the morning.’ 
‘Yer nan can answer the door – say you’re not seeing her any more.’
‘Shall I put the radio on?’
‘Give it a chance to warm up.’
‘Shall I help with the drying?’
‘If you wanna. Then we’ll get it done quick.’

chapter 10

The wall of white, glazed brick are pitted and stained. The kerbs are high. Iron railings run beside the pavement where the road has been lowered so that lorries can pass under the viaduct. The place is cool and dark. David has waited there for several minutes. 
A woman walks on the opposite pavement. Her steps echo like gunshots as she enters the tunnel under the bridge. She glances curiously at the boy who  clings to the railings beside the opposite pavement. 
When he hears a car coming, he closes his eyes. The note of the engine changes as the car enters the cool, dark world under the railway. Exhaust fumes make him wrinkle his nose.
He left the house early. Neither his mother nor his grandmother mentioned Margaret, nor asked where he was going. To avoid passing Margaret’s house, he walked away from the main road. Once he was out of his own street, his pace slowed. He rarely went in that direction. In some way which he could not describe, the people and the unfamiliar streets seemed intimidating. He did not know what to do.
The sound of the trains drew him to the viaduct. He stood underneath as a train passed overhead. He wanted to run away as the metal plates creaked and the rumbling, filling the cavern, but the experience engulfed his senses like a drug, paralysing him. He knew such excitement as the deserted railway yard could never provide. 
The car has gone. The woman has reached the light beyond the railway. David opens his eyes. The intensity of the tumult is passing, allowing old problems and fears to steal back. He drops down from the railings and retraces his steps out of the gloom. The familiar screech of wheel flanges on rails makes him look up: another string of green carriages negotiates the curve, the pantographs sparking. The terrible drumming in the cavern goes on and on until the last carriage clears the bridge. Then he walks on again, satisfied. 
To reach the main road without retracing his steps along Derby Street involves passing the tenements. The courtyards between the gaunt, massive buildings are always deep in shadow. The children who live in the blocks go about in gangs. He looks up fearfully at the woman shouting from a balcony. Once his grandmother told of a murder in one of the flats. 
A huddle of youths congregate by the doors. Their laughter reaches him. As he comes near, their conversation ceases. He is conscious of being watched. Out of the corner of his eye he sees several youths sauntering towards him. He wants to run, but he knows that his adversaries will run faster. He looks for help, but nobody else is near. The youths are grinning as they close upon him. His steps falter. 
‘You live round here?’ 
He does not answer. He looks around for a way of escape, but the youths surround him.
‘Cod features. We’re talking to you.’
He stares at the faces. 
'So do you live round here or don’t you?’
He looks from one to the other.
‘Eh?’ 
He nods.
‘Fucking lying, ain’t yer?’ 
They push him. He is tossed from one to the other. The breath is forced from his body. He has no strength. 
‘Ain’t yer? You’re a fucking spy.’ 
One of them is shaking him, making his teeth bang together. Another twists one arm behind his back. 
‘Where do you live, cos you don’t come from round here, do you? Where do you live? You fucking lie again and you’re really gonna get it.’ 
‘D-Derby Street.’
‘D-Derby Street. He’s one of them stuck-up lot from Derby Street. He was lying. He said he lived round here.’
‘He needs doing over,’ another of them says. 
‘Yer, let’s do him over.’ 
David is forced to the ground. His knees scrape the pavement. The youths crowd around him eagerly. His eyes fill with tears. 
‘Wotcha doing down here? Fall, did yer?’
He coughs as cigarette smoke is blown in his face. 
‘Get yer fucking head bashed in, coughing over me.’ 
His eyes close as he accepts whatever will happen. 
‘Get that – you don’t cough over me.’
The cigarette touches his cheek. He tries to draw away, but he is held more firmly. 
‘And we don’t like spies round here, see?’ 
He cries with pain as his arm is twisted. 
‘This is what you’re gonna get if we see you round here again, right?’ 
His arm is released. He sprawls across the pavement. 
‘Get up.’
He writhes as they kick him. When he tries to haul himself up, his hands are kicked from under him. He falls back again. His face smacks against the concrete. There is laughter. 
‘Get up,’ somebody tells him. 
He is lifted to his feet and thrust forward. His nose is bleeding. Blood mingles with his tears. Through the blur, he sees that the way before him is clear. He tries to run, but his legs move clumsily. 
‘Keep out of here unless you want some more,’ somebody jeers. 
Pain dulls his body. As he limps away, he wipes his hand across his nose and sniffs. Fear makes him continue walking, not looking back. His tormentors do not follow. 
A main road – a place of dust and fumes, where few people walk and the roar of lorries is incessant. The houses have long since been abandoned. Boards across one front door are torn away; the door hangs open, revealed a gutted hall. Another house still has fragments of net curtains at its upper windows, caught on the broken glass. In gardens, privet bushes and brambles grow unchecked. Barbed wire is coiled across the entrance to a disused church. The windows are smashed. 
He crosses the road while the traffic halts at the lights. Before him, the white-painted masts of a ship rise among the forest of jibs and gantries. He dreams of being able to stow away, but he is afraid of the men’s anger when he is found and of being left to fend for himself in a foreign port. Black smoke belches from the power station chimney. Nearby, the roof of an abandoned factory has fallen in. A faded ‘For Sale’ sign is still fastened over the entrance. 
Two men walk in his direction. They are olive skinned, with shiny black hair. They talk excitedly in a foreign tongue. Their conversation ceases as they near him. They are looking at him. He keeps close by the wall and looks down as they pass. 
The pain is lessening. David’s breathing is easier, though he still sniffs to staunch the blood which trickles down his nose. The noise of machinery comes from a side road. He is interested enough to watch as a bulldozer pushes against the remains of a wall which collapses in a cloud of dust. A house which must have been like his own has been reduced to a heap of bricks which an excavator scoops into a truck. He is fascinated by the gib of the excavator which  carries the wires attached to the bucket. They are controlled by levers in the driver’s cab. David is reminded of a puppet dangling on its strings. His mother once bought him a toy puppet for Christmas. Further along the street, the remaining houses are brick shells, devoid of doors, windows or roofs. Workmen are dismantling the roof timbers and letting them fall into the road.
He walks on. The air is warm with diesel fumes from the succession of lorries which grind past on their way to the docks. Across the road, beyond the wire fencing, are the prefabricated offices of the power station. Behind them, older, grimmer buildings covered in grey dust huddle around the base of the chimney. Dominating everything is the heap of coal the size of a hill. From the wharves beyond, chutes encased in broken asbestos sheeting snake above the buildings and the heap.
Flats have already taken the places of many terraces. He knows from what his mother and grandmother have said that there will be flats on the site of Derby Road soon. He watches the children playing beside the garages. The ball resounds against the metal doors. Sometimes he wishes that he could join in.
Behind the garages is a railway cutting. Through the wire fence between the new brickwork and the side of the bridge, he peers down to the silvery tracks. As he wonders where the line leads, he hears voices. 
'Are we going to Auntie Pattie’s?’ a girl asks her mother. 
‘I said – we’ll go next week.’ 
‘Why can’t we go now?’ 
‘I told you – I ain’t got the time.’ 
‘I wanna go today.’ 
David looks up to see a girl with her mother. The girl hangs back sullenly. Her lips are set tight in anger. Her mother stares at him, curious. He looks away, afraid of a stranger’s concern. Instead of passing, she bends over him. 
‘What’s happened?’ 
Words said gently. David watches her cautiously. 
‘Was it the older kids who did it?’ 
He nods.
‘Where do you live?’ 
He wipes his hand across his nose without answering.
'Haven’t you got a hankie?’
‘No.’
He watches as she takes a handkerchief from her bag. 
‘Let’s clean you up a bit.’ 
He runs, pushing past the girl, fear overriding all other concerns. He does not stop until he rounds the corner at the next junction and the woman is out of sight. Then the tiredness and the pain return. 
Away from the docks and the power station. He walks beside factories and warehouses. Visible above the corrugated iron fence beside the opposite pavement are the cabs of parked lorries. There are so many that he cannot count them. 
So many businesses: precision engineers, printers and fancy goods manufacturers. Outnumbering them are the clothing workshops. The metal bins on the pavement overflow with scraps of cloth. From inside the workshops comes the chatter of sewing machines. 
The pain in his back makes him walk slowly. He admires a gleaming Daimler parked by the kerb. He can see his distorted reflection in the maroon bodywork. Without looking at the boy, a young man in a suit comes out of a workshop. David watches him slipping into the driver’s seat. A puff of blue smoke comes from the exhausts. As the car edges into the stream of traffic, a low-pitched roar comes from the engine. David stands entranced. 
A street which he hardly knows. He presses his nose against the window of a sweet shop, where Matchbox models are displayed on faded crepe paper strewn with dead flies. There are none in the series which he has not seen before. 
A block of flats is set back from the road. He sits on the wall separating the lawn from the pavement. It is still early – earlier than he normally goes to the railway yard. The warmth of the sun lulls him. He closes his eyes. 
Footsteps disturb his reverie. An old woman pushes a pram loaded with carrier bags and bundles of clothes. Her plimsolls have no laces, so that she has to shuffle along the pavement. Her toes poke through the fabric. Woollen socks cover her legs. In defiance of the weather she wears a heavy coat. The buttonholes are torn. String takes the place of buttons. She pauses for breath as she nears him.
‘What’s yer name, son?’ 
She is smiling. The boy looks with fascination at her decayed teeth. 
‘You don’t wanna be afraid of old Kate,’ she assures him, taking a step closer.
Panic seizes him again. He runs blindly. When he cannons into somebody, he stumbles and runs on without knowing who has got in his way. He becomes aware of his surroundings again when he is in a street of tall, gloomy houses. By the railings are overflowing dustbins. Pop music blares from an open window. Children younger than himself play on the steps leading to a front door. He does not notice the doll on the pavement. The girl cries as he kicks it aside, but he dare not stop. Nor does he stop tp watch the men working in the motor repair shop at the end of the street. Not until his breathing becomes laboured does he slow. Then the thoughts abut what has happened come to him. Everything became different when Margaret shared his secret place. Everything had to be talked about and argued over. Her voice became an accompaniment to everything in his mind.
‘No one’s gonna care if we go and take a bit of wood out of an old signal box, are they? Are they, David?’
One house is used as a clothing factory. A man is carrying a bundle of dresses to a van by the kerb. David runs in front of him, brushing against the dresses. They have a smell of new wool.
‘Wotcha scared of girls for, David? David – I’m talking to you.’
Her questions were too insistent for him to ignore.
‘S’posing I started telling other people about this place – wouldn’t you wanna come here no more?’
The pavement narrows beside wooden hoardings. The paving stones are cracked and uneven. From the other side of the panels comes the sound of a concrete mixer. Already the shell of a block of flats in its cocoon of scaffolding rises above the surrounding terraces.
‘David – why don’t yer mum get married?’   
He is walking, his head hanging down. When he passes the entrance to the building site, he shows no interest in the workmen. 
‘We’re gonna build a proper house, aren’t we, David, so’s we can live here when we like.’
Beyond the building site, the street broadens again. The boy watches the stream of cars taking the curve. The surroundings are more familiar to him. Not far beyond the bridge is the turning which leads beside the goods yard.
‘You always get scared of things, you do. You’re stupid sometimes.’  
The shops have been there for as long as he can remember. They are part of the certainties in his world, like the closeness to his mother. The pavement outside the ironmonger’s is crowded with plastic bowls and buckets and galvanised dustbins. From each end of the blind hang brooms, mops and gardening tools. From the doorway comes the familiar smell of soap and paraffin.
The chemist’s shop has a smell which reminds him of the scent his mother uses. His mother took him there to be weighed. The chemist was a tall, stooping man who always wore a white coat and thick glasses. The sliding weights on the silver rods were fascinating to a small boy. He wanted to move them himself, but the chemist never gave him the opportunity. 
‘Aren’t you gonna help any more, David?’ I thought you wanted this house.’
So many times he has stood before the window of the baker’s shop, deciding which cakes he would like to buy. A delicious choice: Bakewell tarts with hard, white icing, or ones with softer chocolate icing? A cream cake or a meringue? His mother buys cakes on his birthday.
 ‘I’m not gonna do it all meself. It’s supposed to be our house, ain’t it?’
In the window of the tailor’s shop, finished and half-finished suits are displayed on pitted chromium stands. When the frosted glass panels behind the display are left open, he glimpses the interior of the shop. It is like an ordinary sitting room with a sideboard, a table and a settee with the patterned cover. The only difference is the sewing machine in the corner. 
Turning off the main road. His breathing has become more even. He walks slowly across the crest of the railway bridge, watching cars bouncing over a strip of road which has been recently repaired. His thoughts are on Margaret: Margaret talking to her friends in the school playground and tossing back her head as she laughs, Margaret kneeling on his shirt in their secret place and standing on her head. 
‘You’ve been watching me in the playground.’ 
However much he protested, she would not believe him.
‘David’s been watching the girls,’ she chanted. ‘David’s been spying.’
His nose has stopped bleeding. Blood dries around his nostrils. He walks close to the wall. Now his longing to be away from everybody is tinged with apprehension and guilt. On the bridge, he pauses, looking along the length of the road. Nobody is in sight. Nothing appears to have changed: the maroon Anglia is still there, along with the Herald which has a thick layer of dust over the bodywork and the windscreen. As he walks on, he half expects the two girls to jump from behind a car. But nothing happens. 
‘It’s gonna be our house,’ Margaret said. ‘If we wanna run away, we can go there and nobody’ll find us.’ 
He was in bed when his grandmother came home the previous evening. He tried to hear what was said, but his mother closed the living-room door. He knew that the conversation was about Margaret.
‘If I had a big brother, yer mum’d probably be going out with him as we live close,’ Margaret had said. She knew so much about him. As she stood beside him in the hall, watching his mother crying, all his secrets were exposed. His mother was ugly when she cried. He felt embarrassment more than pity, yet he despises himself for his feelings and hated Margaret for being there. 
At the place where a brick is missing from the wall. The brick which serves as a step is chipped, revealing the glistening yellow clay. It was not chipped on his last visit. His foot still fits snugly in the recess. He springs up, catching hold of the coping. He can see over the wall. 
‘There’s all slugs underneath,’ Margaret is calling, peering under the corrugated iron sheets. She lets them fall back. ‘They can stay there. Let’s go and look in the shed. There used to be an old tramp living here once. You can see all his stuff there.’
Margaret, the dark-haired girl and her red-faced friend run towards the goods shed.
‘He’s got this old mattress that stinks of beer and stuff,’ Margaret is calling to her new friends.
‘Is he gonna be in there?’
‘He’d have heard us by this time and come out.’
The boy climbs down to the pavement. He sniffs as he walks back to the main road. There is no need to hurry. He has no secret place any more.
*
‘You all right?’ lvy asks. 
Carol stares through the rest room window. She glances back, smiling, as she hears Ivy speaking to her.
‘Just thinking.’
‘What you want is a holiday.’ 
‘Wish I could. I feel like going somewhere hot where I don’t have to bother about nothing.’ 
‘We could all do with that.’
‘All we want is the money.’ 
‘How’s yer kid?’
‘He’s all right now,’ Carol says after a pause. She looks back at the world outside the window. 
‘Time to get back,’ Ivy says. 
With a last despairing glance through the bars, Carol leaves the window and follows Ivy into the work room. 

END