It was just starting to get dark when Pip strolled through the hospital car park, wondering about what she was going to do next. According to the wall clock inside the hospital, it was seven o’clock, which was usually the time that she made dinner for herself and Sully. Mostly they had fried eggs or sausages or beans on toast. When they’d had a winning day at the races, before Sully started feeling so tired all the time, they would sometimes ‘splash some cash’, as Sully called it, on chops, or even takeaway. Those were good days.
Pip fingered the cash in the Barbie wallet. She had forty-two dollars and fifty-five cents left from their last win a couple of months ago, which she’d been saving for groceries to tide them over until Sully’s pension arrived. She needed to eat, though, and going to a burger place would give her time to think about what she was going to do next.
She chose Fast Eddie’s because it was big and there were heaps of kids. Most were with their mums and dads, but some older kids were on their own in the queue, pushing and shoving and shouting at their mates. Not wanting any trouble, she avoided them and stood behind a man with two little girls wearing the kind of fussy frocks that would look ridiculous on Pip – not that she’d ever had or wanted one.
The queue shuffled forward and Pip ordered a burger and chocolate shake. It was still her birthday after all. She found a table in the corner and a newspaper. Out of habit, she looked for the racing guide, expecting that this late in the day it would be long gone. Usually someone had stolen it by lunchtime.
Today, for some reason, they hadn’t, and Pip read it with interest. Sully had always liked a ‘flutter’, which was what he called gambling on horses. Pip had gone to the races with him since she’d been quite small. She still remembered the first time, sitting on his shoulders as the huge horses thundered past with tiny jockeys on their backs, and people pushed forward screaming and waving.
The noise and colour and atmosphere made it very exciting. But Sully wasn’t very good at picking horses. Usually he lost all his money and more, and when he lost, the only thing that made him feel better was drinking. That bit Pip didn’t like. When she was small, she had been very scared when he left her alone at Number 3 Greene Lane to go down the pub.
When she was seven, she had watched a man go crazy happy at the races. ‘I won! I won!’ he had screamed. That was the day she’d realised you could win money as well as lose it – although most people lost most of the time.
By reading the racing guide in the paper and watching the racing news on TV, Pip had become quite good at picking horses. She knew all about odds and tracks and form, and since she was eight, she and Sully had done a bit better. As a result of Sully’s changed fortunes, he rarely got crazy drunk although until recently he had still liked to amble down to the pub of an evening.
Today, she read the guide as she munched her burger and slurped her shake. Most of the horses she knew of, and there was one in particular that interested her. She was a three-year-old called Tall Poppy and had been a runner-up a few times. Some of the people at the races said she was ‘up ’erself’, which meant they thought she looked better than she was. But Pip thought she looked like a champion with her gleaming chestnut coat, long legs and fierce eyes.
‘Finished, kid?’ a man said, interrupting her thoughts. He was young with a stubbled face and stained T-shirt with a rude slogan. Before she could say no, he had grabbed the racing guide and headed for the door.
Annoyed, Pip stared down at the part of the newspaper he’d left behind. The photos on the open page showed the inside of a very nice house with a huge sofa that you could spread out on to watch the equally big TV. The backyard had a big green lawn surrounded by flowers and in the corner was a trampoline that looked brand new.
According to the paper, you could buy it for $1.15m+, which Pip knew was a lot of money – much, much more than she and Sully had won at the races even if you added all the good days together. Pip knew Elliott Street was at the other end of Spring Hill, where posh people like her classmate Matilda Browning lived. It was as far from Greene Lane as you could get and still be in Spring Hill.
Thinking hard, she finished the last bite of her burger and drained her shake. Matilda was rich. She never said so but Pip could tell. Still, she was friendly and tried to be nice to Pip, even when the other kids sneered at her messy hair, second-hand clothes and white-bread Vegemite sandwiches.
Pip looked outside. It was pretty dark now, and she was starting to get tired. As she couldn’t go home until Sully got better, especially now the cops might be watching the house, she really needed to find somewhere to sleep. Ginger, who was seventeen and had been homeless for three years, always said if you were living on the street then choose a nice street. Elliott Street was almost certainly a nice street if Matilda Browning lived there.
Right now, it was Pip’s best option. She might find an unlocked garage or shed, and even if she had to sleep in a park, she probably wouldn’t be hassled the way she would be if she hung around here much longer.
The rowdy teenagers she’d noticed when she’d first come into Fast Eddie’s were still hanging around by the doors sniggering at everyone who went in or out. It was the only exit, so she would have to hope they left her alone. First, though, she needed to pee. And perhaps she could make her trip to the bathroom doubly useful . . .
When she’d seen to business, she left the loos, pushed the door open and stepped out into the car park. A kid with a thin face and long nose nudged his mate in the ribs. His mate, who had fair hair cropped close to his skull and a balloon-like face with a million freckles, sized her up.
‘What’s in the pack, then?’ Freckles asked.
‘Stuff.’ Pip tried to barge past, but they and their other two mates were crowding her, blocking her escape.
‘What stuff?’
‘My stuff.’
‘What if we say it’s our stuff?’ Long Nose challenged.
‘You can say what you want, doesn’t mean it’s true.’
‘If we take it, it’s ours,’ said a kid with greasy brown hair and a tattoo of a snake running along his arm.
‘You’ll have to get it first,’ Pip said, again trying to push past.
The boys shoved her back. ‘Hand it over,’ said Freckles.
‘Maybe we should leave it, boys,’ said the fourth kid, nervously. He had short, spiky black hair. ‘People are watching.’
‘Let ’em,’ said Long Nose. ‘Give us the bag, monkey-face, or we’ll bash you.’
Pip shrugged. If they wanted it that bad, they could have it. ‘Okay.’ She let them snatch the pack from her and watched them race across the car park, yelling with glee.
Turning, she picked up the plastic bag containing her stuff that she’d left inside the door, and headed in the opposite direction.
She hoped the boys didn’t look or sniff too closely at the pack’s contents before they stuck their hands right into the putrid, cockroach-infested garbage she’d stolen from the bins around the back.
Imagining it, she grinned as she headed for the nicer side of town.