Annie woke up to the phone ringing. She was lying on the brown corduroy sofa with the blanket tucked around her and another quilt laid on top. Her eyes struggled for a second to focus, and when they did she saw Matt standing by the window in his boxers, his iPhone to his ear.
‘Calm down. Just calm down,’ he was saying to whoever was on the other end of the line.
Annie sat up, rubbing her eyes. Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror, hair sticking up wildly on the side she’d slept, and began madly trying to flatten it down. The light in the room was hazy, as if the sun had only just risen and was yawning itself. She looked around for a clock and saw the one by Matt’s bed said four.
‘OK, where are you?’ Matt was talking really slowly. ‘Yes. Yes. OK. OK. Stay there. I’m coming. No. No I won’t tell your mother, I promise. Just stay there. OK.’ He ended the call and strode over to the chair where his jeans from the night before lay.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know. It was River, he’s pissed somewhere. He’s with a girl who keeps passing out and being sick and he doesn’t know what to do.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Annie jumped up from the sofa and grimaced when she looked down at her leather leggings and top from the night before. ‘Do you want me to come?’
Matt paused as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. ‘Yes. Yes please.’
‘Can you lend me a jumper?’
He half-laughed, as if that was the most he could summon up under the circumstances and threw her a navy blue hoody. ‘Claire’s wellington boots are by the back door if you want to wear them?’ he said.
‘OK, yeah,’ Annie followed him down the stairs. At the back door she pulled on the pink pearlised wellies and a dark-green gardening jacket that she presumed was also Claire’s and jogged after Matt, the too-big wellies making a squelching sound as she walked.
‘Very fetching,’ he said when she caught up with him.
Matt was wearing a grey sweatshirt and some natty microfibre jacket that looked like it would keep you warm and somehow save your life if buried in an avalanche.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To the wasteland.’
‘Classy.’
What remained of the wasteland was round the back of the new-builds. An area of scrub land that, after plans had been approved for the new estate, locals had campaigned to have conserved for wildlife. But the developers had ‘accidentally’ hacked down most of the trees when they built the first lot of houses and used that as a reason to suggest they should raze the rest of it to the ground.
Annie and Matt marched together through the park, past her mum’s house ‒ all dark ‒ the bowling green, the flats, the allotments and the old manor house, finally arriving at the barbed-wire fence of the wasteland. It was so cold their breath clouded like cigarette smoke and their fingers and toes tingled, numb. Annie could see River sitting on one of the sawn-down cherry tree stumps, holding the tiny drummer girl in his arms, his black jacket wrapped round her. As they got closer they could see her face was white, ghostly in comparison to the blackness of her hair. Her red lipstick was smudged on her chin.
When River looked up and saw them, Annie had never seen such relief in a person’s eyes. He looked about twelve.
‘I don’t know what to do. I didn’t know who else to call. Her dad would kill us. She’s not allowed to be in the band or with me. And now…’ He was crying. ‘I don’t think she’ll wake up.’
Matt shrugged off his jacket and with one arm holding River steady, used the other to place the coat over the girl. Beneath their feet the grass crunched with frosted dew.
‘Listen, mate, I’m going to take her off you, OK?’ he said with a quiet, soft authority that made River nod. ‘Annie’s here too, see look, there’s Annie.’
When River glanced up, Annie did a little wave.
‘OK, now you have to let her go and let me carry her, OK, I’ve got her. Now tell me what her name is.’
‘Clementine,’ River said and wiped his nose with his shirt sleeve, his hand shaking. ‘Clemmie.’
Annie took her own coat off and draped it over his shoulders. ‘Put this on,’ she whispered to River who just seemed intent on watching Matt as he laid Clemmie out on his jacket and was kneeling down so that he could check her breathing.
‘Is she dead?’ River asked, sniffing again.
Annie felt a bit sick and could feel herself holding back panic the way she’d seen her parents do in an emergency. River’s face was all blotched and red and terrified.
Matt shook his head. ‘No, she’s not dead, mate. She’s OK. I think she’s just probably had too much to drink.’
River inhaled a shaky breath and put his hands over his face as his whole body started to shudder.
‘River?’ Annie put her arm around him. ‘Honey, has she taken anything else apart from alcohol?’
Matt looked aghast at the question but Annie gave him her best big-eyes to shut him up.
River shook his head.
‘You’re sure?’
He nodded.
‘OK.’ Matt stood up, lifting Clemmie up like she weighed nothing more than a rag doll, and wrapped the jacket back round her. ‘We’re going to have to take her to hospital. Just to be on the safe side.’
Five hours later and the four of them were sitting round a table in the cafe. Clemmie, who had been sick numerous times before being examined by a tired, disinterested junior doctor and told off for drinking more than her body weight would allow, had sipped a hot chocolate, wolfed down a bacon sandwich and was lying curled up in the booth with her head in River’s lap, fast asleep.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me take you home?’ Annie had asked.
‘There’s no one there,’ Clemmie had replied. ‘My parents are in Hong Kong on business and my sister’s in Spain on holiday.’ She’d done a little shrug and then sat back, swamped by the green overcoat. Annie had tried not to look shocked that this sixteen year old was living pretty much on her own, and instead focused on the sweet fact that she hadn’t let River’s hand go, ever.
While her family had their annoyances, they’d always been there. Her mum, while frantically busy and permanently stressed, had always stopped and listened whenever Annie sidled into the kitchen with some veiled problem that she wanted to chat about while pretending that she didn’t. The forgotten memory of them watching Extreme Makeover together on a Thursday night, when her dad and brother were at canoe club, made her smile. If she forced herself she could probably even dig up a memory of her brother not being so bad. Didn’t he once walk her home from a party when she was a bit pissed and hide her from their dad? Hadn’t he warned off that bloke at school who thought that Annie had given his younger brother the run-around?
River coughed, distracting her from her daydreaming, and she glanced up to see him watching her and Matt.
‘I just want to say, you know, thanks,’ he mumbled.
Annie shrugged a shoulder as if it was nothing, ‘That’s OK. We’ve all been there.’
Matt snorted. ‘You might have done. Mate, you’ve gotta be careful with what you’re drinking. You’re only seventeen.’
‘I’m not your mate.’
‘Fine. What shall I call you? Son? See you flinch at that. This is ridiculous.’ Matt sighed, tired, angry and exasperated. When River didn’t reply he pushed his hair back from his face and said, ‘I’m just going to have to call your mother.’
‘No!’
Annie closed her eyes for a moment. It was like sitting between two bulls waiting to charge. ‘Look this is so stupid,’ she said. ‘You had a really great evening. We thought the band was amazing. River, you’ve had a massive shock. Matt, go easy on him, all seventeen year olds drink too much sometimes, just, River, maybe try and learn something from this? And both of you, just, I don’t know, get to know each other. Go and paint the front of my cafe together.’
There was a pause as both of them looked at her, the same frown, the same eyes.
‘Are you serious?’ Matt asked.
‘Yes. There’s pot-loads of turquoise paint. There’s sandpaper for the wood. Go on. Go. And when your little drummer girl wakes up, she can help as well.’ Annie watched as they both sat, neither moving till the other one did. ‘Go!’ she said again. ‘Get to work.’
Matt was about to object again when River slid himself out of the booth, carefully resting Clemmie’s head on his folded-up suit jacket, and said to Matt, ‘Do you want to paint or sand?’
Matt closed his mouth, surprised.
Annie had to hold in a smile.
‘Erm.’ Matt looked past River to the window where the rising sun was starting to melt the crisp morning dew. ‘I’ll sand, I suppose.’
‘Ok then,’ River mumbled and sloped off to pick up the pots of paint stacked up by the kitchen door.
Matt glanced at Annie.
‘Off you go then,’ she said with a wink.
He took a breath and his shoulders visibly relaxed. ‘Thank you,’ he said and she nodded.
‘My pleasure.’