going to fall right in the shit.’
‘I know, Billy, I know.’
‘And then what’s going to happen?’
Ange can’t answer. Life at forty-nine Willington Gardens is certainly not improving. Tina and Petal, next door, are back, the harassing Ed having been thrown out by the law and a new set of locks put on the door by the council. ‘Some good that’ll do,’ Tina told Billy. ‘Last time, the bastard used an axe to get in.’
Most of Billy’s days follow the same routine, boredom, dullness and sterility. An outing with Jacob if it’s not raining, to the shop for baccy and a paper and back. Watching morning telly. Sleeping in the afternoon. Tea and then more telly followed by bed. Sometimes the week throws out a challenge and he has to visit the job centre.
All this while Ange fusses at herself, concentrating more and more on her quest. ‘It’s the little details that’ll catch us out, Billy, not so much the big ones and we’ve got to think and plan ahead so I’m not caught out by something we have overlooked.’
She was thinking of the telephone. When Fabian casually asked for her number she had to pretend to be vague, she told him she rarely gave it to anyone or else she’d be plagued by callers. And Aunty Val is so rude on the phone she’s a hazard to Ange’s career, that’s why they don’t have one in the house. She went, at once, to buy herself a mobile, money she’d set aside for a new dress. Finding enough money for all this is a nightmare. It is essential to appear in a different outfit for her every meeting with Fabian.
That’s when she conceived the idea of Aunty Val, so fluid a creature and so mad, she can be bent and contorted according to circumstances.
‘We?’ said Billy reproachfully. ‘It doesn’t feel as if I come into it.’
‘Don’t start that,’ said Ange, worried enough as it was. ‘I need your support in this, Billy. I depend on it. I can’t carry the weight of it alone.’
Jacob is eight months old now. He is eating rusks which he holds himself. He likes to play hide-and-seek with Ange when she pops her head out from behind a cushion and Ange and Billy worship him, Ange making up for something precious she missed out on herself.
Her make-believe crash was not so very far from the truth.
Save that Ange had no father to start with, and her mother was a passenger of a drunken driver who killed, not only his three companions, but a whole family travelling in the opposite direction. He was bowling along at sixty miles an hour, going the wrong way on a dual carriageway.
Such facts as were required were leaked to Ange by the social services over the years along with little mementoes, photographs and letters. She made a little al
bum, a scrapbook she kept in a shoebox, no bigger than an urn, which represented her mother. She’d been given her mother’s pink lady nightdress case immediately afterwards. Its numerous layers of netting and its hard little china face smelled of Tracy, or that’s the construction she put on it as she grew and the smell never faded… a pungent mixture of Devonshire violets and nail-polish remover. In the box were her mother’s jewels—bead necklaces, two glittery chokers, a thin gold chain, and a whole range of dangly earrings. ‘I wouldn’t wear them, dear, they are rather tarty,’ said foster mother Eileen Coburn. ‘Your ears’ll go septic, mark my words.’
Her ears did go septic. They wept and they bled as she had never dared to do.
Long ago, Ange had decided she was probably better off with Tracy dead, apart from the loneliness of knowing there was nowhere she truly belonged. Tracy was a child of the state, no family. Most of her life was spent in children’s homes. During her nineteen years on earth Ange has gained some unique experience, moving between the classes as easily as does a pound coin. Her homes have ranged from Thirties semis on trunk roads to bungalows in genteel suburbs, from council houses to detached homes with
‘I know, Billy, I know.’
‘And then what’s going to happen?’
Ange can’t answer. Life at forty-nine Willington Gardens is certainly not improving. Tina and Petal, next door, are back, the harassing Ed having been thrown out by the law and a new set of locks put on the door by the council. ‘Some good that’ll do,’ Tina told Billy. ‘Last time, the bastard used an axe to get in.’
Most of Billy’s days follow the same routine, boredom, dullness and sterility. An outing with Jacob if it’s not raining, to the shop for baccy and a paper and back. Watching morning telly. Sleeping in the afternoon. Tea and then more telly followed by bed. Sometimes the week throws out a challenge and he has to visit the job centre.
All this while Ange fusses at herself, concentrating more and more on her quest. ‘It’s the little details that’ll catch us out, Billy, not so much the big ones and we’ve got to think and plan ahead so I’m not caught out by something we have overlooked.’
She was thinking of the telephone. When Fabian casually asked for her number she had to pretend to be vague, she told him she rarely gave it to anyone or else she’d be plagued by callers. And Aunty Val is so rude on the phone she’s a hazard to Ange’s career, that’s why they don’t have one in the house. She went, at once, to buy herself a mobile, money she’d set aside for a new dress. Finding enough money for all this is a nightmare. It is essential to appear in a different outfit for her every meeting with Fabian.
That’s when she conceived the idea of Aunty Val, so fluid a creature and so mad, she can be bent and contorted according to circumstances.
‘We?’ said Billy reproachfully. ‘It doesn’t feel as if I come into it.’
‘Don’t start that,’ said Ange, worried enough as it was. ‘I need your support in this, Billy. I depend on it. I can’t carry the weight of it alone.’
Jacob is eight months old now. He is eating rusks which he holds himself. He likes to play hide-and-seek with Ange when she pops her head out from behind a cushion and Ange and Billy worship him, Ange making up for something precious she missed out on herself.
Her make-believe crash was not so very far from the truth.
Save that Ange had no father to start with, and her mother was a passenger of a drunken driver who killed, not only his three companions, but a whole family travelling in the opposite direction. He was bowling along at sixty miles an hour, going the wrong way on a dual carriageway.
Such facts as were required were leaked to Ange by the social services over the years along with little mementoes, photographs and letters. She made a little al
bum, a scrapbook she kept in a shoebox, no bigger than an urn, which represented her mother. She’d been given her mother’s pink lady nightdress case immediately afterwards. Its numerous layers of netting and its hard little china face smelled of Tracy, or that’s the construction she put on it as she grew and the smell never faded… a pungent mixture of Devonshire violets and nail-polish remover. In the box were her mother’s jewels—bead necklaces, two glittery chokers, a thin gold chain, and a whole range of dangly earrings. ‘I wouldn’t wear them, dear, they are rather tarty,’ said foster mother Eileen Coburn. ‘Your ears’ll go septic, mark my words.’
Her ears did go septic. They wept and they bled as she had never dared to do.
Long ago, Ange had decided she was probably better off with Tracy dead, apart from the loneliness of knowing there was nowhere she truly belonged. Tracy was a child of the state, no family. Most of her life was spent in children’s homes. During her nineteen years on earth Ange has gained some unique experience, moving between the classes as easily as does a pound coin. Her homes have ranged from Thirties semis on trunk roads to bungalows in genteel suburbs, from council houses to detached homes with
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