I suppose what I really need is a good pair of wings. When I was little I used to feel my back and wonder if my sharp shoulder blades might be wings just starting to grow. I still imagined them sometimes, great white feathers tucked up tight like a fan, neat against my back. I’d pretend I could spread them any time I wanted and fly away. Sometimes I wouldn’t walk straight home from school to our first-floor flat. I’d puff my way up all the steps to the top balcony and stand there clutching the rusty rail, peering out, pretending I could just let go and soar over the treetops of the huge park.
Peter Pan and Wendy and John and Michael flew without benefit of wings as far as I could remember. I wanted to check out their flying technique, so I was firm with Baxter and Bliss about my choice of DVD. Pixie was a pushover. She had inherited Bliss’s old Tinker Bell costume and loved wearing it. She ran off to get changed. It took quite a while as she wasn’t very good at dressing herself, usually ending up with a leg in a sleeve or arms through the neck hole. The costume was pretty sticky because she’d spilled juice all down it the last time she’d worn it, but she didn’t seem to care. I fixed her a fresh bottle to keep her quiet while she was watching, and I filled a big bowl with cornflakes.
‘This is our popcorn, like we’re really at the cinema,’ I said, switching the DVD on.
I settled myself in the middle of the sofa with Baxter in the corner on one side of me, where he couldn’t torment the girls. I let him hold the cornflake bowl to make him feel special. I settled Bliss and her teddy in the other corner and squeezed Pixie in beside her, cuddling her close. They all fidgeted and argued and spilled cornflakes for the first ten minutes but then they quietened down and watched properly. It was as if the sofa itself had spread little leathery wings and flown us straight to Neverland.
We didn’t budge until the cast list started rolling.
‘Again!’ Pixie begged. ‘Put it on again.’
‘Don’t be daft, it’s way past your bedtime.’ I looked at the clock. ‘Quick, it’s gone closing time at the Fox. Mum will be back in a minute and if she finds us all up she’ll be really mad. Come on, who can get into bed first?’
Pixie toddled off to her little cot all by herself. It was much too small for her now but she screamed if we tried to make her sleep on the mattress with us. She scrambled over the bars and snuggled up, falling asleep as soon as her head hit her pillow. She was still wearing her Tinker Bell costume, with lipstick scribble all over her face, but I couldn’t be bothered to wash and change her.
Baxter was much more of a challenge.
‘Come on, Baxter, get into bed!’
He squared up to me, hands on his hips.
‘Who’s telling me to get into bed? You can’t boss me around. You’re not my mum,’ he shouted.
He was only clowning around. I always tell him what to do, far more than Mum, but he just wanted to be difficult. I had to tip him over and pull his jeans off his waving legs and then stuff him inside his duvet. He immediately got up again, duvet pulled right over his head.
‘Baxter! Lie down!’
‘I’m not Baxter. I’m the Duvet Monster and I’m going to smother you,’ Baxter growled, staggering about the bedroom.
‘Don’t be the monster, I hate that,’ Bliss said.
She seemed the easiest of the lot. She got into her nightie and lay down on our mattress cuddled up – but long after Baxter was sound asleep she was still awake, snuffling into a teddy tummy. I reached out and put my arm round her.
‘Bliss? Go to sleep,’ I whispered.
‘I can’t. Not till Mum comes back.’
‘She’ll be back any minute,’ I said. I wasn’t sure where she could have got to. It was definitely past closing time at the Fox. She’d said she’d only have a couple of drinks. I hadn’t necessarily believed that – but she’d promised to be back before midnight.
I lay with my arm round Bliss, my legs twined round Baxter’s twitchy little feet, listening. I heard guys yelling and messing about down on the forecourt and then a series of thumps as they chucked beer cans about. They sounded like young lads. Mum wouldn’t be with them. Then I heard a couple having a screaming row and I tensed up, but the woman’s voice was too low and hoarse to be Mum’s. I listened to them swearing at each other and then the sound of a blow. Bliss tensed up.
‘Shh, it’s all right. They’ll go home now,’ I said.
‘Mum?’
‘She’ll be back soon. I bet she’s gone back to one of her friends’ flats for another drink. But don’t worry, she’ll be fine.’
‘Back by midnight?’ Bliss mumbled.
‘Yes, definitely,’ I said, though I was pretty sure it was gone midnight already.
When Bliss went to sleep at last I wriggled cautiously off the mattress and padded into the kitchen. I flicked the light on. The clock showed it was ten to one. I shivered, wrapping my arms round myself. She’d promised to be back by midnight.
A horrible series of images flickered in my head. I saw Mum screaming in a car, a man hurting her; Mum weeping and bleeding in a gutter; Mum lying horribly still, her eyes open, her face blank. I smacked my forehead, trying to make the images go away.
I poured myself a glass of water and sipped it slowly, but I’d started to shiver and the glass clinked uncomfortably against my teeth.
‘Come home, Mum,’ I whispered.
I sat down at the kitchen table and picked at the edge until my nail was sore. My feet were numb with cold so I got up and walked round and round the table. It was nearly summer – Mum had gone out without a jacket – yet I felt deathly cold. I wanted to go back to bed and warm myself up, but I didn’t want to wake Bliss or Baxter. I wished I wasn’t the oldest. I wanted to be the littlest, like Pixie, with people telling me what to do. That was the scary thing. I didn’t know what to do if Mum didn’t ever come back.
I smacked my head again, trying hard not to think it. I wondered if I should put on some clothes and go out looking for Mum – but if the kids woke up and I wasn’t there either, they’d be terrified. And I was terrified at the thought of setting out round the estate in the middle of the night. It wasn’t just the thought of all the drunks and smackheads and bad lads. It was the dark itself. The thought of starting out along the dark balcony and feeling my way down the pitch-black stairwell made me shiver even more.
I went into the living room and lay on the sofa, my head on Mum’s cushion. I could very faintly smell her musky perfume. I nuzzled into the cushion like Bliss with her teddy. The hard edges of the fairy-tale book were digging into my chest. I fingered the pages, thinking of all the weird people trapped inside: Cinderella with her pink and blue and white ball-gowns folded flat; Snow White crushed inside her glass coffin; the Three Bears flattened into floor rugs.
I remembered when I was little and there was just Mum and me. She read me those stories then, over and over. She showed me the label inside the front cover.
To Lily Green, First Prize for Reading, Writing and Spelling.
I couldn’t read myself then, let alone write or spell, but I knew the shape of an L, the dot of an i, the curly tail of a y.
‘It says Lily. That’s my name! Is it my book, Mum?’ I asked.
‘It was my nan’s book. I loved my nan, much more than my mum, your nan. She used to read me stories from this book when I went to visit her. This is her school prize, see. She was ever so bright, my nan. I named you after her, Lily, and you’re going to be ever so bright too.’
I wasn’t that bright. I couldn’t figure out how this Lily could be young enough to go to school and old enough to be a nan, but I liked the sound of her and I loved her story book. I wanted to go and visit her, but Mum shook her head sadly and said she was dead. And now my nan was dead too. She got ill just after the twins were born.
‘So we’re all on our ownio now,’ Mum said.
We must actually have a set of other nans, the mothers of our dads, but we’d never met them either. Mum was right, we were on our own . . . so what w
ould we do if anything happened to Mum?
I was the oldest and bravest. What was I doing, weeping into Mum’s cushion? I turned it over, wiped my eyes with the hem of my nightie and burrowed down again. At some stage I must have gone to sleep.
I woke with a start. I heard scuffling and then foot-steps creeping slowly towards me.
I leaped up, first clenched.
‘Hey, hey, it’s me, babe. It’s only me!’
‘Oh Mum!’
I wound my arms round her and hugged her hard. She sat down on the sofa and I climbed onto her lap as if I was little like Pixie.
‘What you doing sleeping on the sofa, Lily? Did Baxter start kicking you?’
‘No, no, I just couldn’t sleep in with the kids. I was worried. Where were you? You said you’d come back before midnight.’
‘Hey, don’t go on at me! And shush, you’ll wake the others.’
‘What time is it?’
‘I don’t know. Five, maybe? Later – or earlier, whichever,’ Mum giggled.
‘Are you drunk, Mum?’ I couldn’t see her face properly in the dark, but her voice sounded softer than usual, and a little slurred.
‘Drunk with love,’ said Mum, and she giggled some more.
I slid off Mum’s lap.
‘Not again,’ I said.
‘Oh, come on, Lil, don’t be like that. Oh darling, I’m so happy. I can’t believe it. I just went down the Fox for one drink, like I said – and then I met the man of my dreams.’
‘In the Fox?’ I said.
The men who drank there were all from our estate, old guys with red faces and beer bellies, and young lads with tattoos who always seemed angry.
‘Not in the Fox, sweetheart. I went on clubbing afterwards, didn’t I?’
‘By yourself ?’
‘No, I met up with Jenny and Jan, they worked in the canteen too, remember? Well, they were having a girlie night out, cheering Jan up because her bloke’s just walked out on her. They said they were going on to Chancers and asked me to go along too. I didn’t really want to, truly. I haven’t been to Chancers for donkey’s years and it’s all really young kids there. I was all set to come home, I swear I was, but Jenny was very persuasive and I felt I couldn’t let them down under the circumstances, so I went. I so nearly didn’t – and then I’d never have met Gordon.’
‘Gordon?’ I tried the name out. ‘He sounds posh.’
‘Well, he is, kind of. He talks posh anyway, but he tried not to. He’s so sweet. And you should just see him, Lily. He’s drop-dead gorgeous, I swear he is.’
‘Like?’ I said, unimpressed. I didn’t know what my own dad looked like but the twins’ dad Mikey was this big fat ugly guy, and Pixie’s dad Paul was thin and pinched and weedy, yet Mum had thought them drop-dead gorgeous in their time.
‘He’s like a film star, truly. The moment I saw him my heart practically stopped. Think blond hair, blue eyes, tall, with a really washboard stomach, and so tanned. Well, he would be tanned, he lives in Spain.’
‘He’s Spanish?’
‘No, no, he’s just hanging out there for a bit, helping out in his uncle’s nightclub. He’s having a – what do they call it when posh kids muck around for a year before going off to uni?’
‘A gap year. Mum, he’s a kid. How old is he, eighteen?’
‘He’s nineteen, and he certainly doesn’t act like a kid, I promise you.’
‘Mum!’
‘There’s not that much age difference. Seven years. Anyway, I didn’t tell him how old I am.’
‘Did you tell him you’ve got four kids?’
‘Well, I didn’t want to overwhelm him with information, not straight away, like. I will tell him, obviously.’
‘So you’re seeing him again?’
‘You bet. Tonight. We’re going to the Palace up in town. He’s doing a recce of all the big clubs, because this uncle of his wants to expand his own clubs in Spain.’
‘So, is he coming here?’
‘No, do you think I’m mad? I don’t want him seeing this dump, it might put him right off. I’m meeting him up in town, OK?’
‘And you think he’ll actually turn up?’
‘Hey! What sort of remark is that! Yes, he’ll be there. We had the greatest time ever, Lily. I’m not going into details, but believe me – it was great. It was like all the love songs, all the romantic films. We just looked into each other’s eyes and it was like we were on a rollercoaster up to heaven.’
‘Oh Mum! You haven’t half got it bad,’ I said, yawning.
‘You wait till you grow up, Lily. You’ll know what it’s like then.’
‘I don’t ever want to grow up. I’ll be like that boy Peter Pan. I’ll stay young for ever, and I’ll fly – out of the window, up in the air, all the way to Neverland.’
‘What are you on about, you daft banana? Come on, let’s get you to bed. You come in with me, babe.’
So I went and cuddled up in Mum’s bed. It was so warm and soft and cosy just with Mum. Her sheets smelled of her perfume. There were no squirmy little bodies and sharp elbows and kicking feet. I stretched out luxuriously and fell fast asleep.
I didn’t wake up till eleven, and that was only because Pixie was bouncing on my head. I tried to slide her under the covers to have a cuddle but she was too fidgety – and I could hear Baxter thumping and yelling in the kitchen, sounding as if he was throwing saucepans about.
‘Kids!’ Mum mumbled, putting her head under the pillow.
She didn’t get up till lunchtime, and I worried that she might be in a bad mood. It sounded as if she’d been drinking an awful lot last night. But when she got up at last she gave us all a kiss, even Baxter, and then she had a bath and put on her jeans and T-shirt and flip-flops, and said, ‘Come on, kids, let’s go down the shops.’
We hadn’t been out to the proper shops for months. Mum would go to Lidl and Londis every few days, but that was her limit. But now she got us all rounded up, wiped a damp flannel over Baxter and Bliss, gave Pixie a harder scrub, discovering she had lipstick and tomato sauce even in her ears, and then we set off for the bus. I wheeled Pixie in her buggy, while Mum held Bliss’s hand. Baxter won’t ever hold on to anyone. He charged ahead of us and then circled back, leaping about crazily.
‘You behave now, or I’ll tell your dad,’ said Mum.
Mikey’s the only one Baxter will listen to. Baxter insists on having his hair cut really short, just like Mikey, and he tries to walk like him too, swaggering along with his hands stuck in his pockets. Baxter swears like Mikey too. He swore now at Mum, and she gave him a push and told him to button his lip or she’d take him home right that minute. Baxter hunched up and looked sulky, but then the bus came, and there was no one sitting on top up the front, so he could charge up there with Bliss and play at driving the bus. Mum and Pixie and I sat behind. Mum counted out just how much money she’d got. I looked in her wallet worriedly.
‘You haven’t forgotten I need a tenner for my gallery trip, Mum? Everyone else has paid now.’
‘For God’s sake, that school, they’re always on at me for money,’ said Mum. ‘What are they doing, forever taking you kids on all these trips to places. Why don’t they keep you in the classroom and learn you stuff? You don’t want to waste your time and my money going to some gloomy old gallery, do you?’
I swallowed. Mr Abbott was taking all our class on the school trip – and I so loved Mr Abbott. He wasn’t shouty or sarcastic like the other teachers. He didn’t ever tell me off because my socks were dirty or my hair needed brushing. He didn’t act like he thought I was thick. He treated me like a real person, asking me questions and acting like he really wanted to know the answers. I especially wanted to go to the gallery with him, because he said I’d love the paintings. I really liked doing my own paintings at school. I’d painted an angel with huge wings all different colours of the rainbow and Mr Abbott liked it so much he pinned it up on the wall.
‘It’s treat money for the kids,’ said M
um.
I sighed.
‘OK, OK.’
‘And you’re included too, darling. In fact you can have more than your fair share, because you’ve been such a good kid. What would you like, babe? New earrings? Hair slides? Bracelet?’
‘Me! I want earrings!’ Pixie said.
‘Me too,’ Bliss whispered.
‘What about you, son? Are you after earrings too?’ said Mum, leaning over and ruffling Baxter’s stubby crew cut. ‘Long dangly earrings with sparkly bits.’
‘Leave it out, Mum,’ said Baxter, swatting at her. ‘I’m driving the bus. Whoops, now you’ve made me run over two old ladies. Never mind, they’re just boring. I’ll get those young ones too – squish, squash, squeal.’
‘My son, the homicidal maniac,’ said Mum.
‘Your son?’ said a fat bloke across the aisle from us. ‘They’re not all your kids, are they? I thought you were their big sister!’
‘No, I’m their mum,’ said Mum.
‘Go on! You don’t look old enough.’
‘I was a child bride,’ said Mum, smiling.
She was only fifteen when she had me. When I was little we got mistaken for sisters all the time. Sometimes we even played we were sisters. I liked it best when I acted the big sister and Mum was the little one and had to do what I said. We used to play all these lovely games together until Mum lumbered herself with Mikey and the twins. He cleared off and Mum said good riddance. But then she got off with druggy Paul and started Pixie. She is hopeless with men, my mum. She was even tossing her hair about and acting all smiley-smiley with this silly fat man on the bus.
‘Where are you off to, then?’ he asked.
‘The shops, the shops!’ said Pixie.
‘And McDonald’s,’ said Baxter. ‘I’m going to drive the bus right up to the entrance. No, I’m going to drive it into mcDonald’s, right up to the counter!’