As the night goes on, and the pubs start to close nearby, McDonald’s starts to fill up and feel less like a safe place. Not only am I worried that the police will turn up again to round up those who are drunk and disorderly, but the whole environment is really starting to make me feel anxious. I’m not good with big crowds – and I’m sensing Maeve isn’t either. I open my mouth to suggest that we leave; and right on cue, we hear the sounds of an angry yell coming from the women’s toilets, followed by a smash.
I don’t have time to react before a large woman comes crashing through the toilet door. She doesn’t even stumble out; she flies out. I don’t even have time to react to this before another, smaller woman follows her, marching out of the door and jumping on her without any hesitation.
I lurch back automatically, and beside me, I vaguely register Maeve freezing. I don’t know what to do. This is no play fight; the smaller woman seems determined at the very least to rip the other woman’s hair out. The larger woman shrieks in pain as the smaller woman yanks handfuls of her hair, her arms flailing, trying to land a blow to get the other woman off. Finally, purely as a strike of luck, her fist connects with the side of the other woman’s face and knocks her sideways, hard.
I’m shaking as the smaller woman cries out in pain; but, luckily, security has clocked the both of them, and soon two burly men are rushing towards the women, each grabbing one and pulling them away from each other. Now, all they can do is shout abuse at each other; still, this doesn’t seem to deter them, as they start to yell two tirades that soon merge into one.
I turn around sharply to suggest that it’s time to go; but as I look around, Maeve has already bolted. I catch sight of her at the entrance, rushing through the door like something out of a cartoon. I’m suddenly reminded of myself at fourteen, when my English teacher put on a film one morning (probably at the end of term) and let it play over the lunch hour so we could see the ending. But I never saw the end of the film – there was a graphic domestic abuse scene and I bolted, like Maeve has just done. The teacher had buggered off by that point, so no adult ever got to see my sudden exit. Sometimes when I look back, I wish they had. It would have made things much easier, in some ways, for someone to even have suspected that something was wrong.
But I have to push that out of my mind, and I quickly grab all of my things from the table. Then I hurry out of the door that Maeve has just flown through, winding my way through a throng of drunken club-leavers. I look around; which direction has Maeve gone in?
Luckily, I spot her quickly, not too far from the entrance. I grimace; Maeve is bent over at the waist, vomiting onto the pavement as she hugs her stomach. Maybe it was all the junk food. It’s not a situation I’m desperate to deal with; but it’s Maeve. I guess I have to. I quickly make my way over.
I lay my hand on her back, rubbing gently. To my relief, she seems to know that it’s me, and she doesn’t flinch away from my touch. I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that my touch is comforting her, but she doesn’t flinch, and that’s something.
“You’re alright,” I say grimly. “That’s it. Breathe, Maeve.”
She does so, and it seems to help. Retching a few more times, her body seems to be satisfied that it has gotten rid of absolutely everything from her stomach. She takes a few more deep breaths before finally spitting out the remnants of bile from her mouth. Grimacing, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Luckily, I have a few napkins from McDonald’s stashed in my pocket; I pull out one and hand it to her.
“You’re such a mama bear,” she grumbles, but she takes the napkin with something like gratitude. She wipes her mouth before dropping the napkin into the nearby bin. She blinks. “Probably should have hurled into the bin, shouldn’t I?”
I smile; it’s not the strongest of jokes, but I sense that Maeve wants to keep the atmosphere light. I take my hand off her back, and for a second I think I see something like loss in her face. Like she didn’t want me to let go.
“How are you feeling?” I ask gently.
Maeve sighs. “Sorry. I know it’s grim. I just puke when I get scared. And I was pretty full of ice cream.”
“This is true,” I agree. “I guess I know in future that a second McFlurry would be a mistake.”
“Yep.” She sighs again but manages to pull a smile onto her face.
It doesn’t fool me. Maeve’s right: I’m a bit of a mama bear in certain situations. Granted, I’m not always the best at showing that I care about people – for some reason, the thought of it tends to make me anxious – but one on one with people, I can usually manage it a little bit more easily. And for some reason, I feel comfortable with Maeve.
“Sit down, sweet,” I say, a little hesitantly but keeping my voice gentle. I look around and see a bench not too far down the street, so, putting my arm around Maeve, I lead her over to it. I feel like a teacher. Or a nurse. But most unusually, I feel like an adult.
Maeve wobbles a bit as I get her over to the bench, and as she stumbles back to sit down, her legs nearly give way. Luckily, my arm is still around her, and I grip her tightly as I help her to collapse backwards onto the bench a little bit more slowly than her wobbly legs clearly want to.
“I’m sorry,” she says weakly.
I smile ruefully and shrug, mostly glad she’s seated now. I don’t let go of her just yet, though. “Nothing to be sorry for,” I say evenly. “Just take a minute. When you’re ready, we can get out of here.”
She nods, taking another deep breath. To my relief, she seems to be regaining a bit of colour in her face. I don’t want to try and walk her through the streets of Weston while she’s still feeling dodgy, that’s for sure. But then, to my surprise, Maeve lays her head on my shoulder. My arm is still around her, so I guess it isn’t totally out of the blue – but I’m not sure that anyone has ever done that to me before. Finding it hard to show affection for people tends to mean that they don’t show much affection towards me either. Hesitantly, I squeeze her shoulder and rest my head lightly against hers.
There’s a moment of silence, with the two of us sat still, before Maeve finally speaks again. “Let’s go,” she says, trying to sound upbeat. “So that no one associates that puddle of vomit with us,” she adds, but she doesn’t fool me. I can tell that she’s still afraid of the noise and the violence we witnessed.
Still, I nod. She has a point. “Yeah, let’s go,” I concur. “Probably best that we don’t get arrested for fouling the street.”
We start to walk, not really heading in any direction. I can sense Maeve’s readiness to be far away from the restaurant, and far away from the fight. Me, I’m unsure what to say. How do I make her feel safe when I can’t guarantee that she will be safe?
It’s cold out now – it’s summer, and the moon shines easily through the clear night, but it’s cold. I find I’m curling my hands up into my sleeves. I didn’t really plan my outfit for my escape attempt. What I was wearing wasn’t something that I thought about when I was preparing to leave; so much so, that it’s probably quite lucky I wasn’t wearing pyjamas when I scaled the fence. In any case, I’m in jeans and a thin cardigan, and it’s starting to get cold. But there’s very little I can do about this now.
I turn my attention to Maeve again and for the first time I think properly about what she’s wearing. She’s in a strappy sundress and a zip-up hoodie; her legs are bare and her feet are only covered with open-toed sandals. “Are you cold?” I ask, a little tentatively. “Should we find somewhere else inside to go?”
Maeve shakes her head. “Nah,” she says, in a clear attempt at breeziness. “I’m not cold. Let’s walk for a bit. Ooh, we could start a bonfire!”
A laugh escapes my lips. “Like I’m letting you mix with fire,” I point out, a smile on my face in spite of myself.
Maeve grins. “Yeah, that’s true,” she admits, though she doesn’t seem put out at all. “Then we should keep walking. Is the beach near here?”
I nod. “It’s not far. It’s definitely walking distance.”
“Brilliant!” says Maeve loudly. I’m not surprised somehow when she tries to stride ahead – and quickly realises she doesn’t know where she’s going. She turns back to me. By this point, I’m smiling. “Show me, then!” demands Maeve indignantly, a grin all over her face too.
We walk in companionable silence for several minutes as we pass the joyful landmarks that make up Weston-super-Mare: past big discount shops, supermarkets and streets that are entirely taken up by shit-looking takeaways. As we start to approach the middle of town again, the sounds of a drunken fight blare out from a street or two away. Next to me, I feel Maeve stiffen; and I’m not surprised when she reaches out and grips the fabric of my cardigan.
“It’s OK,” I say bracingly. “We’ll avoid them. We don’t need to go down there.”
Maeve blinks at the floor, and the bravado that has characterised most of her interactions tonight is starting to slip a little. “You can’t always avoid them,” she says softly. She’s right, of course; and I know, sadly, that it’s not something Maeve will forget in a few years’ time.
But Maeve’s attitude to this when’s she so young… well, it worries me. It can’t just be what happened earlier, the men throwing bottles. That was bad – and, in all honesty, I still don’t understand it – but something in Maeve’s demeanour makes me think that there’s not just one bad memory that she’s drawing on.
“Please tell me,” I say gently. “Please tell me who hurt you.”
She sighs and for a moment she doesn’t respond. “You can guess,” she says at last. “You’ve been asking all the right questions.”
Somehow, I’m not surprised. Maybe it’s spending the last two years in hospitals with people who have been hurt too much, but I feel like I’ve got a pretty good instinct as to when something is wrong. What really cemented it, though, was Maeve’s admission that they won’t even have reported her missing.
“Then let’s go to the police,” I say earnestly. “You’re only fourteen, right? They can get you into foster care. You’ll be safe, there.”
Yet even as I say that, I remember a younger kid that I knew when I was living in an adolescent hospital, who ended up in a children’s home for a night. She said it was horrible. In fact, every younger kid that I knew in the hospital should be popping into my mind right now. It wasn’t fun being stuck in those places at sixteen, but being in an institution at fourteen must have been even worse. I can’t promise Maeve that she will get a nice foster family living in a friendly, comfortable home.
More than that, though, I can’t promise that the police will help. I can’t promise that whatever it is that she tells them will be believed. I know too many people who have disclosed things to professionals only to not be believed. I mean, that’s half the reason that I haven’t told anyone much about what’s happened to me. I can’t guarantee that it’s going to be well received.
Maeve seems to be thinking along the same lines. “I can’t tell anyone,” she says hollowly. “It’s too… messy.”
I frown. “Too messy?”
But clearly she is already regretting her words and she shakes her head like she’s ridding her ears of water. “Don’t worry,” she says quietly, before putting a bright, painted smile back on her face. It looks like it takes a large effort, and, honestly, it’s not that convincing, but I know that she has closed the door on that conversation. I can knock, but she isn’t going to answer.
“You know what?” she says almost forcefully, dragging me out of my thoughts. “We should do something.” She doesn’t give me time to protest. “Like really do something. Something we’ll remember.”
I feel my face frowning before I’ve quite caught up with what she’s saying. “I thought we were going to the beach?”
She shakes her head. “Changed my mind,” she says quickly, though she isn’t meeting my eye. “I mean, you have to go back to the hospital at some point, fair enough, but they haven’t found you yet. We could have hours. To do anything. Especially if we go somewhere… exciting. Important.”
My head is reeling slightly. “Right,” I say slowly. “Where exactly did you have in mind?”
Maeve chews on her lip, clearly deep in thought. “I’m not sure,” she says ponderingly. “There must be something. What about the sea?”
I frown more deeply. “Well, yeah, the sea isn’t far,” I answer hesitantly. “But I think it would be pretty dangerous to try and swim in it while it’s dark. And the beach down at the coastline is basically just sinking mud, you have to be careful even during the day…”
“You’ve definitely got an adventurous spirit,” says Maeve with a roll of her eyes. “Jesus. Scared of sand.”
Maeve’s eyes twinkle at me and I know that she doesn’t mean it maliciously. “You can literally die from getting stuck in it,” I protest, but I’m forced to smile. She’s right. I’m not the adventurous kind anymore.
But Maeve’s train of thought has already left the station, puffing on to another idea. “So the beach is out… and I’m guessing that the cliffs are going to be too dangerous for Health and Safety Champion over here…” She raises her eyebrows and I roll my eyes almost dutifully, though I’m still smiling. “What about the pier?”
“It’ll be all locked up,” I point out. “Otherwise it would get robbed.”
“True,” concedes Maeve. “But what about the old pier? The one that burnt down?”
I hesitate. On the one hand, trying to get down the old pier sounds like a horrendously dangerous idea; on the other hand, it sounds like the kind of horrendously dangerous idea that Maeve will insist upon and drag me along with. I’m not sure how to protest against this idea without just sounding like a buzzkill and making her all the more insistent. And there is something in her tone… something desperate, like this is some kind of last-ditch attempt. I’m just not sure what it is that she’s attempting to do.
It pops into my mind briefly that I’m the adult and Maeve is literally a fourteen-year-old child. But this thought doesn’t last long.
“Birnbeck Pier?” I ask cautiously. “Just outside of town?”
Maeve nods excitedly. “Yeah!” she says with fervour. “The derelict one!”
“It’s derelict,” I point out. “I don’t think you can get onto it.”
This only seems to excite her further. “There must be a way!” she insists enthusiastically. “It’s, like, a Heritage site, isn’t it? So they must be trying to preserve it or something?”
There is some logic to this, but it feels pretty specious to me. “That doesn’t mean you can get all the way down it. In fact, that doesn’t mean you can get onto it at all. If anything, that means that they will have it all locked up. They probably don’t want people getting onto it.”
Maeve’s eyes twinkle. “Why wouldn’t they want an escaped psychiatric patient and a runaway teenager getting onto a derelict pier?”
I roll my eyes again. “You think you’re mocking me, but really that’s my point,” I say, though I have to laugh. “I think it would be pretty bad press if we fell off it in the middle of the night.”
Fell through it, actually, I note, and my blood runs slightly cold.
Maeve, though, is all pumped up now. “I think it would be bad press if the police failed to notice a missing person hiding under the table at McDonald’s,” she counters, obviously finding this whole thing hilarious in a slightly hysterical way. “Come on!” she insists. “Nothing about tonight is going to be sensible. Take a risk, Heather!”
I’m about to protest further when something Katy has said pops into my mind. She says that I ‘catastrophise’ – in other words, that I always think the worse. In this case, I’m having visions of Maeve slipping on a loose board and crashing into the sea below, where her unconscious body will be swallowed by a huge pile of quicksand. Normally, Katy would be asking me not to focus on this outcome, but actually in this case, I think that it’s perfectly logical to imagine that. Considering that it could quite easily happen.
But maybe Maeve is right. Where has cautiousness got me? Stuck in a ward that I hate, with no one to talk to because I’m too scared to make friends. I’ve tried to put energy into the things that I should – exams, uni, career – but it’s all collapsed around me. All my friends are getting drunk at freshers right now, excited to be off at uni. And I have nothing.
I stick my chin out slightly, trying to get my expression resembling decisiveness and determination. “I guess we could try,” I concede, and, frankly, the smile I get from Maeve is enough of a reward.
“Let’s go,” she says mischievously.