On my way to breakfast, I stop to peer around the slightly ajar living-room door. Bonnie’s snoring away in her armchair, her head lolling forward to expose her naturally dark roots, a crocheted blanket crumpled around her ankles.
I sigh and creep over to her, picking up the blanket and draping it loosely over her knees. Her snoring is soft, pretty almost. She looks different when she’s asleep – younger, sweeter – her face relaxed and free from its usual thick layer of stage make-up.
As I watch her doze, the lingering anger from last night begins to fade a little. I haven’t a clue how she manages to get a decent night’s sleep in this horrible lumpy old chair. I wish I could scoop her up and carry her to her bedroom, but, even if it was physically possible for me to get her upstairs, there’d be no point. There’s a reason Bonnie’s sleeping down here and not in her bedroom.
I tuck the blanket round her knees and press my mouth to her cheek. Her skin is cool and soft against my lips.
‘See you later,’ I whisper.
Bonnie murmurs a sleepy reply and turns her head in the opposite direction.
I spend my Saturday mornings pushing leaflets advertising local takeaways and cleaning firms through letter boxes. The headquarters, where I pick up my leaflets, are located above a pet shop on the high street. On reflection, ‘headquarters’ is probably far too grand a description for the higgledy-piggledy collection of rooms.
‘Morning, Ro,’ Eric calls when I arrive.
I stick my head behind his office door where he’s sitting behind his paperwork-laden desk. ‘Morning,’ I reply.
‘Just a few more days at school now, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, we break up on Wednesday,’ I say. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘You read my mind.’
I smile and swipe his Avengers mug from the debris and head into the narrow kitchen, the squawk of birds from the pet shop below just audible over the boiling kettle. I’m rifling in the box of tea bags when Jodie stumbles in. She’s wearing a crop top with huge pompoms sewn onto each shoulder, leggings covered with lightning bolts and a battered pair of gold Reeboks.
‘Are you making tea?’ she asks.
‘Well spotted. Do you want one?’
‘Yes. A million times yes, you little beauty.’
She collapses into a chair, resting her forehead on the tea-stained Formica table. Her choppy bleached-blonde hair flops forward, forming a curtain around her face.
‘Out last night by any chance?’ I ask, teasingly, plopping a tea bag into each of the assembled mugs.
She groans. ‘No shit, Sherlock. Student night down at the George. Three sugars please.’
I spoon three heaped teaspoons of sugar into Jodie’s mug before pushing it under her nose.
‘Thanks, babe,’ she says, groping for it with shaking fingers. ‘You’re an angel without any wings.’
‘You should really eat something too. Want me to pop out to the cafe before we have to head off? Get you a bacon sandwich or something?’
Jodie shakes her head hard. ‘I can’t, Ro. I’ll spew, I swear.’
‘It’ll make you feel better. You need to replace the salts you’ve lost.’
Jodie peers up at me between strands of knotty hair. Her eyelashes are thick and crusty with day-old mascara. ‘You’re far too bloody wise for your age, Ro, do you know that?’ she says, pausing to take a long slurp of tea. ‘I’m twenty, you’re fourteen. I should be guiding you through your disgusting hangover, not the other way round.’
‘Have a biscuit at least,’ I say, ignoring her and pulling the lid off the ancient Quality Street tin that houses the communal biscuit supply. ‘Iron.’
Jodie laughs and reaches for a custard cream. ‘You’ll make a great mum one day, Ro,’ she says, dunking it in her tea. ‘Do you know that?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I say, turning away and tending to Eric’s tea.
*
Ten minutes later, I head out into the sunshine. My delivery patch is near the park, where the streets are wide and tree-lined and the houses big and sprawling with driveways large enough for at least four cars.
I like my job. I like the fresh air, even on the days when it’s freezing cold or tipping down with rain. I like the peace and quiet and being up and about when most people are still lazing in bed. I like peering in through the windows of the houses I leaflet and admiring the spacious living rooms, drinking in the fancy wallpaper and matching scatter cushions and framed art on the walls and fantasizing about the orderly lives the owners must lead.
Today, though, despite the glorious sunshine and cornflower-blue sky, I’m distracted, and even my very favourite stops on the route (the Georgian villa with the sunshine-yellow door, the row of art deco semis with their elegant curved windows, the Victorian house on the corner with its very own turret) can’t get me back on track. I just can’t stop my stupid brain from replaying the events of last night, all the very worst sound bites from my conversation with Jamie making me want to slide between the cracks in the pavement. I lurch between feeling mad at Jamie for being so pushy about walking me home, and mad at myself for giving in so easily. I let my guard down and it backfired. Horribly.
There’s no use in dwelling on it though. I need to move on and learn from it. And that means never, ever putting myself in a situation like that again.
*
I’m almost home when I notice a large red lorry with ‘Addis & Son Removals’ on the side parked up outside 46 Arcadia Avenue.
Number 46 has stood empty since its former occupant, an elderly man called Terry, moved into a care home just after Christmas. I liked Terry. A lot of people would have a problem living next door to a house like ours, but Terry never had a bad word to say. He even let me borrow his toolbox and lawnmower whenever I asked and gave me a chocolate egg every Easter and a Cadbury’s selection box every Christmas. I was sad to see him go, but mostly scared of who would take his place, well aware that not everyone would be as forgiving. Lots of people have been round to have a look, but the ‘For Rent’ sign has remained up and the house has continued to sit empty.
Until now.
I approach with caution, slipping behind the cluster of bushes that separate my front garden from number 46’s, and peer through the foliage. I watch as the removal men unload an assortment of mismatched furniture, cardboard boxes and black bin liners from the half-empty van. I’m struck by just how little stuff there is. I wonder how many vans’ worth of junk my own house contains. Two? Three? Five? More?
A few minutes later, a black SUV with a dented bumper pulls up behind the van. A man and two boys get out, one around ten years old, the other around my age. All three have the same shock of inky black hair and olive skin. All three look utterly miserable.
The man opens the boot of the car and removes a large, clearly very heavy suitcase. It lands on the driveway with a thud. Sighing, he extends its handle and wheels it towards the front door. The younger boy follows, the Arsenal Football Club backpack he’s carrying in his hand trailing on the floor behind him. The older boy reaches for a black sports bag and hauls it over his shoulder. The strap’s too long and it bangs against his lower thigh as he makes his way up the driveway. In his other hand he carries a guitar case covered with stickers. He’s basketball-player tall and dressed all in black apart from a pair of grubby white hi-tops. His features are sharp and delicate at the same time, and make him look like he belongs in the past, in a frock coat perhaps, reciting poetry.
I can’t take my eyes off him.
The boy pauses outside the front door and glances over his shoulder. I hold my breath, terrified I’ve been spotted. But the boy’s gaze fails to settle on any spot in particular before returning to face the exterior of number 46. He looks it up and down through lank strands of black hair, before shaking his head and disappearing inside, the door falling shut behind him with a dull clunk.
Bonnie’s in the back garden, marooned on a rusty sunlounger in the centre of the overgrown lawn. Without access to Terry’s lawnmower, the grass has grown so high it looks like she’s floating on a carpet of green. The back door is open and the radio’s on – Adele lamenting ‘Someone Like You’.
It isn’t quite warm enough for sunbathing, but Bonnie is wearing an itsy-bitsy red bikini at least two sizes too small for her anyway, her boobs barely contained within its flimsy Lycra triangles.
‘Bonnie,’ I say. ‘Bonnie. Are you awake?’
‘Mmmmmm,’ Bonnie says, rolling onto her stomach and tucking her bikini bottoms between her bum cheeks.
‘Did you see? Some new people have moved in next door.’
‘Have they?’ she murmurs sleepily, resting her head on her forearms.
‘A man and two kids.’
‘No woman?’
‘I didn’t see one.’
‘Hmmmmm.’
‘Anyway,’ I continue. ‘We should probably put in a bit of extra effort to get our place in order.’
‘Why?’
‘They might not be as relaxed about things as Terry was.’
‘What things?’ Bonnie asks.
My insides twist with annoyance. ‘What do you think? Living next door to us. To this.’ I gesture towards the house.
‘I don’t see what the problem is,’ Bonnie says.
‘Of course you don’t.’
Bonnie props herself up on her elbows, and peers at me over her shoulder, through heart-shaped rimmed sunglasses.
‘You’re clothed, aren’t you?’ she says. ‘Fed? I mean, I know the house is a bit busy, but the way you act sometimes, you’d think I’d installed razor blades on the stairs or something.’
‘But what if they say something?’
‘Who?’
‘The new neighbours!’
‘Who on earth to?’ Bonnie asks, incredulous.
‘You know who. Social Services.’
Just saying it out loud makes my palms prickle with nervous sweat.
‘Oh, don’t be daft,’ Bonnie scoffs. ‘What could they do?’
What could they do? For starters, send me to live with Dad and Melanie, leaving Bonnie all alone. I once went away on holiday to the Isle of Wight with Dad, and when I got back, the house was such a mess I couldn’t even open the back door properly. If that could happen after just a few days, what state would the house be in after a couple of weeks? A month? A year? An image of Bonnie buried under a mountain of her own belongings, just her feet poking out, invades my brain.
A lump forms in my throat and I can feel tears gathering. I try to blink them away before Bonnie notices. I needn’t have worried though – she’s already flopped back on her belly, her face buried in her forearms.
‘You really are like your father sometimes,’ she says in a muffled voice. ‘He was always worrying about something or other. There’s no need to get in a tizz. They’re only renting. You’ll see – they’ll probably be gone in a few months.’
Her phone, abandoned in the grass, vibrates into life, the screen flashing as a tinny rendition of ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor crackles from its tiny speaker.
I bend down to pick it up, noting the unidentified number before passing it to Bonnie.
‘Hello, Bonnie Snow!’ Bonnie says in an extra-theatrical version of her usual voice.
Even though the divorce went through over six years ago, she still refuses to reclaim her maiden name.
‘Saturday the eleventh? Just give me one moment while I consult my diary,’ she trills.
She holds her phone to her chest.
‘See,’ she says, grinning triumphantly. ‘Who needs a manager, eh?’
She springs off the sunlounger and sashays into the house, her hips swaying in time with the music, leaving me alone on the patio, chewing on my thumbnail and worrying.
Always worrying.