CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mia slept. Darkness gathered around her, seeping in from the corners of the narrow boat and settling like a blanket over her. And her dreams were full of muddle and pain. She woke at last, sweating and anxious. Evie and Shannon still sat there, watching her. The boat smelled stuffy, a sweet smell she didn’t recognize.

Evie leaned over her. ‘Awake? It’s getting late.’

Mia felt dazed. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly seven. Look, Mia. You have to tell your dad you’re all right or else he’ll come searching for you and there’ll be police and all that,’ Shannon said.

‘I’ll go with you, if you want. Need to get some food for tonight. The Spar will still be open.’ Evie started getting her coat on, lacing her boots.

Mia cowered back on the low cushions, her stomach churning with fear. This would really be it, this time. It would be like the time she was done for trying to buy cider at the off-licence, only much, much worse. Shouting and threats and she’d be dragged off home to Whitecross or maybe the social worker people would say she had to go into care or something.

‘Leave your bag here,’ Shannon said. ‘You can’t go round carrying that all the time. I’ll look after it. Promise.’ She smiled. ‘You’re scared now, but you’ll feel better when you’ve told your dad you’re staying with us.’

‘Am I?’ Mia looked nervously at Evie, and then back to Shannon. ‘Is it OK?’

‘Well, where else are you going to go? Course it’s OK.’

Mia fished a couple of twenty-pence pieces from her purse.

She pressed the numbers with numb fingers. Her heart thumped as she listened to the phone ringing, then the click as it was snatched up.

‘Mia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where the hell are you? I’ve been worried sick.’

‘Wait – listen –’

‘You’ve gone one step too far this time. What do you think you’re playing at? Can you imagine the scene at the hospital – and when I turned up – but no, it’s not possible for you to imagine anything, is it, apart from your stupid fantasies of doing what you want regardless of anyone else.’

Mia held the phone away from her ear. She turned to Evie who was waiting a few feet away, but her back was turned. Inside the booth it smelled of stale urine and fags. Mia thought she’d vomit any minute. Dad’s voice yelled on and on. She closed her eyes. Waves of nausea washed through her. She gripped the receiver more tightly.

‘Dad, listen. I’m OK, I’m staying with some people – just people, OK? I’m not telling you who. I’ll phone tomorrow when you’ve calmed down. Shut up! I had to get out of the hospital. I changed my mind. Listen! Well, I’d never made it up in the first place, but in there I did. I worked it out. That I don’t want to get rid of it, like all the rest of you.’

He wouldn’t listen. Mia banged the receiver back, pushed the heavy door open and retched in the gutter.

Evie wandered over and put a hand on her back. Mia shrugged it off. She didn’t want anyone to touch her. No one. Not ever again. Close up, Evie smelled disgusting, a mix of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol.

‘Ready? Coming back?’ Evie turned towards the river.

Mia followed. It was beginning to rain again. She let the tears run down her cheeks unchecked.

‘How much money have you got?’ Evie asked her. ‘We need something for supper. The soup’s all finished already.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be daft. That’s what it was for. Anyway, you need to eat. You look starved. Thin as an alley cat. That baby of yours, eating it all up, I suppose. Or do you always look like that?’

Mia shrugged. ‘Dunno. Like this, I s’pose. Dad goes on about it sometimes. And the hospital.’ She glanced at Evie. It was impossible to guess whether she was thin or fat or whatever, under her layers and layers of clothes – bright webby wool jumpers and Indian cotton skirts and leggings and now a thick man’s overcoat wound round with a velvet scarf. She was probably quite small and thin really. Her face was, under the braided dreadlocks and purple head band.

Mia took a five pound note from her purse. She didn’t have much left now, what with the bus fare, and the cafe. But if Evie and Shannon were letting her stay, it seemed right to give over the money and help get some food. She huddled behind Evie as she shopped in the supermarket for vegetables and tins of tomatoes and bread, head down, praying that no one would recognize her.

‘We’ll have soup again,’ Evie said. ‘It’s cheap, and good for you, and you can cook it all in one pan, which makes life easier on the boat. And we’ll have to get some coke for the stove on the way back. Joe on the canal sells it. We’ll go back that way.’

‘Where d’you get your money from?’ Mia asked.

‘Here and there. Selling stuff. The stall. Every so often we do a trip, somewhere like India, bring back a load of stuff to sell. That’s where I first met Shannon, India. People pay good money for cushion covers and hats and bags and stuff when it’s the real thing. Mirrors, embroidery, silk. You’ve seen our stall, haven’t you? Sometimes we sign on, if we’re staying in one place. But mostly we like to keep moving. We’ve been in this dump long enough, only Shannon’s got a thing about this bloke – Joe. And it’s easy to get a mooring here. But we’ll need to move on soon. We haven’t got much stuff left to sell. We need another trip to India, only we haven’t got enough money for that.’

‘Where else d’you go then?’

‘Anywhere. By water. There’s a whole network of rivers and canals – some of them no good any more. But you can get all the way to London if you want. Then again, why would anyone want to do that? It’s better out of the cities really. Unless you’re wanting to hide.’

Mia hung back while Evie haggled with Joe over the coke. Joe smoothed back his long black hair with a coal-stained hand as he talked. Evie finally handed over a wodge of notes, and Joe hugged her before disappearing back into his boat. There were loads of boats, moored up next to each other, all different kinds and sizes, and most of them shabby and patched. They had names like Freedom, Wanderlust, Romany Star. Joe’s boat was smarter than most of the others. It looked newly painted. Bright blue. Kingfisher. Smoke curled up from the chimney; there were pots of herbs and flowers on the top. And piles of yellow bags of coal. Several of the boats had generators whirring round. Lean dogs nosed along the grass at the edge of the towpath. Someone had cleared a patch at the side of the path and made a rough wooden bench, and there was a swing tied to a bough of the tree hanging over the rough ground. An old pram, a child’s bike, a pot of faded geraniums. A whole parallel world, a stone’s throw from the drab streets and shops and houses of the town.

They walked back along the towpath towards the river. Mia helped carry the bag of coke. The rain soaked through her fleece and her trainers squelched through puddles and mud on the path. Her hands were numb with cold by the time they got back.

The boat was in darkness. No sign of Shannon. No smoke from the stove. It smelled of damp river water, cold. Mia wondered how she’d ever get warm again. Back home, Dad would be slumped over the kitchen table, or maybe stretched out in the sitting room with the telly on and a glass of beer. Or maybe Miss Blackman would have rallied to his support, and she’d be there too, offering comfort. Mia felt sick again. She thought of Kate, somewhere in France, or probably Italy by now, sitting in sunshine surrounded by new and exciting friends. Laura, back at Bristol, in those boring halls of residence, but warm and dry and happy in her own way. Becky. Her mum chatting with her while they cooked a family supper. Will, lying on his bed listening to music, or practising his sax, or – she was crying properly now, full of self-pity – phoning some girl, Ali probably, on his mobile.

‘Get the stove going. The stuff’s all there.’

Evie was talking to her. But she didn’t have a clue how to light the stove. She was too cold and wet and miserable to do anything.

‘Get a move on. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and help. If you’re staying here you have to muck in, you know. Pregnant or not.’

Mia fumbled with kindling wood and coke. She tried to remember the way Dad made fires, like they’d had years ago at Christmas. He rolled newspaper into sticks, coiled them round into snakes, placed these among wood and sticks, but maybe a stove was different?

‘For heaven’s sake! Can’t you even make a fire?’ Evie shoved her aside. ‘Watch, then you can do it next time.’

Through tear-filled eyes, Mia watched the little curl of flame lick along the kindling sticks and turn from yellow to blue as she added the coke. Smoke started to billow out and Evie shut the glass door on the front of the stove.

‘There. Keep an eye on it. You control the draught with the little knob underneath, see? And it will need feeding with coke. A fire’s like a living thing. Now, can you cook?’

Mia sniffed. ‘A bit. I can chop stuff if you like, for the soup.’

Her hands were still freezing. And her feet wet.

‘I’m sorry, Evie. But can I borrow some socks or something, and a jumper?’

‘Course! You’re soaked, aren’t you? I’ll find you something.’ She rummaged in a black bin bag under the seat at the back of the boat and pulled out a collection of jumpers, socks, leggings.

Swaddled in strange clothes, Mia huddled next to the stove and chopped leeks and carrots for soup. Rain clattered on the roof of the boat. Mia felt the boat tugging and chafing against the mooring ropes; it wanted to go with the river current, rushing towards the estuary. The two thin ropes were all that kept them safe. She thought of the cold dark depth running underneath them. If you fell in, you would be swept and swirled downstream before anyone heard your cry for help. She shivered.

Mia slept fitfully on the mattress, blankets piled over her clothed body. She woke once to hear voices. Evie and Shannon were arguing about something. A third voice joined in; Mia opened her eyes and saw Joe from the canal standing next to the stove, rolling a cigarette. She closed her eyes again and let the voices drift over her. Later she heard Evie again, fragments of conversation: ‘We could take her… it’d be cool… canal… Bristol… mother… a baby.’

They must be talking about her. She tried to listen, but Shannon had noticed she was awake and shushed Evie, who was saying something about a baby. Mia drifted back to sleep, and when she next awoke the boat was in darkness. She could just make out Evie’s shape under the covers on the opposite mattress. Shannon and Joe had disappeared. Back to his boat, presumably.

The boat bumped and buffeted the bank. The rain still fell. Mia hugged her arms around her own body and wished that she was at home and that it was the beginning of the summer, before everything had gone so badly wrong.