Lily Roberta did a generous thing. ‘I’ve got something for you. To help you, you know, on your travels round the world.’ Her face, a rosy, barbarian face, a face, Gerda thought, of fruit and brambles, the eye-whites bright as the wild strawberry flowers that grew all over their London garden, was flushed for a second with generous love. Lil was holding out a subway card. ‘Got it from the idiot whose phone I nicked.’
‘Hey, why you giving her that?’ ‘No-o-oh!’ ‘I want that!’ From the group around Beard Boy, there were mutinous cries. ‘Man, she’s really got the hots for her.’
Once again, it was all in the balance. For a second, Lil Robber paused. Then she said loudly to Gerda, so everyone could hear ‘And what are you going to give to me? What is your favourite thing that you’ve got?’ Gerda saw that Lil had to show her power. ‘For real,’ Lil said, looking deep into her eyes, ‘Because I saved you and I love you, don’t I?’ She said the last bit very quietly.
Without hesitation, Gerda reached into her hand luggage and pulled out her book, To the Lighthouse. She handed it over, reverently, but Lily took it with an angry frown, looked at it briefly, then threw it on the ground. ‘That’s no use to anybody.’ She eyeballed Gerda, about to lose her temper. ‘Are you trying to cheat me, then?’
But Gerda stared back into the angry dark eyes. ‘I wouldn’t do that. I know what you did. Take my gold bracelet,’ she said under her breath. ‘It’s gold, isn’t it. From my mum. I didn’t nick it, she gave it me. Snatch it from me. Then they’ll be pleased.’
‘Why should I give a fuck about them? No, you got to give it me.’
A ragged mixture of jeers and cheers went up from the parentless, awkward children as Gerda took off her bracelet, kissed it, and handed it to Lily. The morning light burned on the gold.
Lil Robber tried to put it on her wrist, but failed, and held it out towards Gerda, stern-eyed. Gerda fastened it carefully on the lean brown wrist.
‘You know I’ll sell it, but not yet.’ Lily hugged Gerda tenderly, roughly, and took her face between her hands, then turned one hand so the metal of her cheap Goth ring tickled the softness of Gerda’s throat. ‘Now get the fuck out of here to wherever you’re going. The end of the world. I’ll meet you there.’
‘See you at the end of the world,’ said Gerda. ‘You ought to free those pigeons,’ she shouted, over her shoulder, as she ran into the trees, and Lil Robber shouted cheerfully ‘Fuck OFF!’
After a bit, they stopped following her, the motley grey figures from the camp on the rock, curious about her, hating her, and soon she was back on the neat little path where sheeny-thighed joggers ran with well-kept dogs, going fast and straight in the direction of the Plaza, the world of Eloise, the world of privilege, where, in the end, Gerda has to live.
Yes, I’m an inside girl, mostly, Gerda thinks later as she goes through the doors of Rizzoli’s Bookstore, which she spots by chance as she wanders south. To the Lighthouse, rather more dog-eared and dusty than before, is back in her bag, but she wants another book. There is an eleven-hour flight in her future.
‘I want to read A Room of One’s Own,’ she says. ‘By Virginia Woolf. It’s very famous.’
The young man at the counter looks soft as a girl, with floppy hair falling over his eyes. Gerda is fresh from her nights in the park, newly hard, and ready to judge him.
‘Oh yes, I know all about her,’ he said. ‘We just ordered a set of her books, as it happens. There seems to be a lot of interest in her.’
‘It doesn’t matter whether people are interested,’ said Gerda. ‘She’s just great. It’s just a Fact.’ (Though she knows her history teacher would call it an Assertion.)
With the book in her bag, she slips down into the subway. She watches two people go through the turnstile before she dares to use her card.
It doesn’t work once; it doesn’t work twice – damn Lil Robber and her useless gift! – but on the third go, Gerda floats through, and is drawn, thanks to her magic pass, into the charmed, unstoppable system that will deliver her around the world, to JFK Airport, where she washes in a basin and drags clean clothes, rather squashed, from her bag – first time she’s changed them since she left home. Yay, Victory over the Cleanpolice! – and yet, it’s nice not to be stained and crusted – to Check-in where she no longer has the ridiculous suitcase to check in, through Security (good, no knife, she knows that Dad will buy her a new one), to Gate 32 of Turkish Airlines, to kind flight crew who pamper her, this sweet young girl whose red hair smells of soap, and a seat in which she reads her new Virginia Woolf with growing wonder, then sleeps like a baby; thus finally, bright-eyed and rested, to Atatürk Airport, Istanbul.