They take your shoelaces and belt off you before they lock you up so you can’t hang yourself. It’s this welded box. No windows. The door’s as thick as your leg. Solid steel. When it closes, it’s like the rest of the world just disappears. You can scream and howl and bang – it makes no difference. All you can do is sit there and try not to go mad.
Barbara – what a cow! Going on about my mum – she knows I can’t bear it. It’s her way of dumping me. Then she can say, See – it wasn’t my fault. Billie blew it again.
And then calling the cops on me. The armed-response unit. So that’ll be on my record now. Thanks, Barbara. Just what I needed. They had me fooled for a while. Barbara and Dan, and Hannah and Jim at the Brant. Just for a bit I thought I might actually get my head sorted out, get myself some kind of a life. But it’s like a game they play. It keeps them in work.
I bet they’ll charge me with assault, even though I never laid a hand on her. It won’t even be the WASP now – it’ll be the Secure Unit. Prison for kids. And if that happens, they can take my belt and my shoelaces away all they like, but I won’t live like that. I’ll find a way somehow, even if I have to bite my own veins open, I swear it.
Get it over with, Billie. Just stop mucking around and just … get it done.
I don’t know how long they left me there. Hours. They had that bastard Farrell on the desk when I came in – he’s only in the job because he can bully people. I knew when he came off shift because the nice one came in with a cup of tea. Jolly. He’s the most miserable-looking copper you ever saw in your life, but once you get to know him he’s not so bad. For a copper. The first time I saw him he came into the cell with a cup of tea and stood there looking like his mum had just died or something.
‘They call me Jolly. You can see why.’
‘No, I can’t see why,’ I told him – pretty fed up at the time.
‘It’s my name,’ he said. ‘Jolly.’
I didn’t get it at the time. It made me laugh later on, though. This time he came in with my shoes and stuff and sat on the bench next to me.
‘Armed assault this time, Billie. You’re moving up fast,’ he said.
‘They’re never getting me for armed assault! I never touched anyone.’
Jolly sat there and watched me for a bit. ‘Well, you got away with it again,’ he said at last. ‘There’s no charges. You’re still on a lucky streak.’
‘Lucky? And me in here? You must be joking.’
‘Pretty lucky, if you ask me,’ he said. ‘Waving half-metre shards of glass in people’s faces. She could have had you for threatening behaviour if nothing else.’
I was bent down doing up my laces. I looked sideways up at him. ‘Armed-response unit,’ I said.
He just looked back.
‘Armed-response unit,’ I repeated.
‘She must have been scared silly,’ he pointed out. I waited. Finally, Jolly raised his eyebrows. ‘Not going to look good on report, is it?’ he said. He leaned in closer. ‘The chief spent fifteen minutes in there giving them a right roasting. I saw them in the canteen after. Pretty fed up they looked, especially when one of the lads asked if he could have an armed guard to get him down to the sweet shop and back.’
I started sniggering, but he didn’t crack a smile. He never does.
‘Think it’s funny, do you?’ he said. ‘You won’t when you meet any of that lot out there.’ He jerked his head to the outside. ‘And I thought your name was mud already.’
Very bloody Jolly. But it was true. The coppers hate me already. Now I’d made fools of the armed response. It’s not fair! It wasn’t me made fools of them – it was her, that Barbara.
Not that they need any help.
Jolly nodded and stood up. ‘Your social worker’s here.’
‘Where am I going?’ I asked, following him out of the cells. Jolly shrugged.
In the corridor we passed one of the coppers who’d been at the house on the way out. I couldn’t resist it.
‘What, you still here, not out terrorizing toddlers today, then?’ I asked him. ‘I heard someone had his sweets nicked round the corner. You could always go and blow him away.’
‘Well done, Billie, that’ll make you popular,’ said Jolly quietly.
‘Do you blame me?’
He didn’t answer. I took that for a no.
My social worker, Jodie Grear, was waiting out front. I was putting it on, strutting it up for the sake of the coppers, but once we were outside and she was opening her car for me to get in, reality hit home.
‘What’s going to happen to me?’ I asked her.
‘You’re in luck, Billie. I managed to get respite for you, for a few nights anyway.’
I got in the car. It was supposed to be good news. I suppose it was. I could have ended up in the cells overnight. But you know what? I think I might have preferred that to another carer. Five of ’em in four years. It does my head in. I’m thinking, Are they going to be hard bastards? Are they going to feed me well? Are they going to be nice? Do they want me to be part of the family, or just another client?
At least in the cells no one wants to be your mum.
Jodie started up the car and pulled away, chatting about stuff. Trying to make things feel normal, I suppose. That’s what they do. As if picking me up from the nick and trying to find me a bed for the night is normal.
‘Sorry,’ I said suddenly.
‘What for?’ she asked.
‘Hauling you out. You should be at home watching telly.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, love. It’s what I’m paid for.’
Yeah, I thought. It’s what you’re paid for. Jodie rattled on, but I had to turn my face away. People have to be paid to bother with me. I ought to be nationalized, me. I’m a whole bloody industry, all on my own.
We pulled up outside a terrace house. I had no idea which road it was on. I sat there staring at the door. Big old Billie, that’s me. But when you’re there staring at yet another front door and wondering what’s behind it, you feel about two years old.