‘Leave the baby here,’ I said suddenly. ‘Just talk to her, see?’
We all stopped suddenly. Jane looked at the window. You could hear screams and men shouting.
‘I said I’d bring her her baby …’ she whimpered.
We started on her again and got the baby off her and bundled her out of the door. Outside, in the hall she realised it was useless to fight us and got her courage back. ‘All right, then! All right!’ We stopped. ‘I’ll tell her, right?’
Downstairs someone kicked the house door. It was violent, so violent the whole house shuddered. Jane looked at me for a second. Then she ran downstairs.
Sham and I ran back and hid behind the curtain to watch. Sham had his hand over Sy’s mouth to stop her squealing. The street was emptying fast, except for that woman and her thugs. The shopkeepers were putting down their shutters, people were running to get away. The thugs were smashing up shops and banging in and out of the houses, but they couldn’t get into ours. They’d finished with that girl. She was crawling across the road for her baby. One of the men had picked it up and handed it to her, and I don’t think it was too badly hurt. All around Mrs Tallus was a thick wall of people, looking this way and that, moving fast, looking dangerous. Then Jane stepped out onto the street.
Somewhere there was a siren. Next to her was the boy they’d beaten up, lying on the ground by the wall, covered in blood. Jane stopped and looked at him for a second.
‘Get on with it,’ hissed Sham.
She ran across the road. She reached up and pulled at a man’s sleeve. I couldn’t look. They’d murder her! She was so tiny. The man wrenched his sleeve away. She tried again. He flung out his arm and swatted her. She flew onto her back in the middle of the road. We lost sight of her, but she was back up in a minute, edging round the crowd, looking for a way in.
The thugs were scared, too. The siren was getting close. Jane tried again. I could see her mouth opening and shutting. Then a car came – a great black thing, screeching round the corner. It was going so fast I thought it was going to hit someone, but they scattered, and it pulled up by the circle of thugs. Now the car was in between Jane and Mrs Tallus. We saw the wall of men open and the lady stooped to get inside. Jane was knocking on the glass, but the car jerked and shot off. All around her men and women ran, bodyguards and thugs and agents, running so hard that in a minute the street was empty, suddenly empty. Jane was almost on her own out there.
She turned to look at our window: we stared back from our safe place. The police siren was very close now. Jane ran back to the house.
13
THERE WAS BLUE light flashing. We lay on the floor out of sight. At last Jane got up and drew the curtains and sat down on the bed. Sham got up and sat at the table with his fists clenched at the sides of his head. He didn’t move a muscle when Jane started weeping. I didn’t go to her, either. She deserved it – she deserved all she got. Like Sham said, she’d promised. You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, not that sort of promise. She’d had it all her way. She’d made me lose Luke, she’d made me give back that money that could have bought me out. Now I was another kid on the street with nothing. I just watched her cry and I thought she had it coming to her, and I waited to see what she would do next.
It was very quiet in that room, except for Jane crying. Sy knew that if she screamed she’d get a hand clapped over her mouth so she just crouched on the floor and whimpered. As far as she was concerned she was back where she started when we found her with that tape over her mouth. We’d turned into people like the men who took her.
After a long time Jane went to the sink and washed her face. She touched carefully the swollen side of her face where that thug had hit her. Then she got her bag, the little black bag that was part of her posh new outfit, and started doing her make-up.
‘We’re going to get out,’ she said, sniffing away her tears and rubbing something on her cheek. She glanced in the mirror at Sham with his hard, still face, at me curled up in an armchair. ‘This place is dangerous. They’ll search. The police. They’ll do a better job than her thugs. Her thugs,’ she repeated viciously.
She was brushing her brown hair now, glancing every now and then at us. ‘We’ll get out, right out this time – out of London to some place where we can get ourselves settled in. Somewhere they won’t be looking for us. Somewhere to stay before we try again,’ she added, glancing at us in the mirror.
Sitting at the table, Sham bared his teeth and twisted up his face as if it hurt him to hear her saying that. He didn’t say anything, just screwed up his eyes and face like that. Jane watched him and then started on her hair again.
‘The train,’ she said. ‘That’s the quickest. We’ll catch a train out, way out. We can talk once we get away. All right?’ she asked, looking at Sham again. He shook his head slowly.
‘All right, Davey?’ she begged.
I shrugged. ‘All right,’ I said.
Now Jane was tidying up, getting the bottle, the baby things. She was talking all the time as if she could convince herself and us that the terrible thing hadn’t happened, that her plan was still on the rails. Sham stayed at the table with his head between his fists. I could see his eyes staring at the table.
When she had everything ready she said, ‘I’ll go first. I’ll meet you at Waterloo Station. Okay? We’ll get a train …’
‘We get the ransom,’ said Sham slowly. He and Jane looked at each other. ‘You mucked it up,’ he said. ‘You don’t keep your promises. Now we get everything – the whole seventeen million. She don’t deserve a baby, that woman. You saw what she did. You saw how she threw that other baby. You saw what they did to that girl.’ He was shouting now. ‘She doesn’t deserve nothing,’ he yelled.
He was shaking with rage and he was nearly crying. You couldn’t tell who he hated most – my sister for letting him down or that woman for not loving babies like he thought she should.
‘She can pay!’ he cried. ‘She pays for everything. She can pay for her baby.’
‘Stop shouting,’ hissed Jane. ‘You want to get us caught? We can talk about it later,’ she said.
‘We don’t need to talk,’ said Sham. ‘You mucked it up.’
‘You didn’t do it my way,’ hissed Jane. ‘You gave us away – we know that, we’re not stupid, are we, Davey? You tried to sell us to the Monroes. If it wasn’t for that old man …’
‘I did it your way!’ he screamed.
‘I made you, I made you, that’s why!’ Jane screamed back. ‘Now you make me do it your way. Try!’
‘You won’t make me – you won’t make me do anything, never again!’ challenged Sham. They were yelling their heads off. They’d forgotten everything. Sy was crying again but they didn’t seem to care.
‘Shut up, shut up!’ I shouted. ‘What are you doing?’ I begged Jane.
She glared at me. ‘All right,’ she said. She was shaking too. ‘Listen – we get out first. Then we talk about it.’
Sham shook his head. ‘No talking. Can’t you see?’ He was begging her to understand now. ‘Look – we have to get her to leave us something. Then we pick it up,’ he explained. ‘Then we leave the baby and then we tell her where to find her. It’s the only way, because if we ever meet her she’ll kill us. We can’t ever meet her. Can we, Fly?’ he begged me.
Sham was right. She didn’t want to be given anything, not even her baby.
‘He’s right,’ I said. ‘We can’t ever meet her.’
Jane looked defiantly at me. ‘You said that about Sham,’ she said. Then she looked away from me. ‘I don’t want nothing of hers anyway,’ she muttered.
There was a window at the back of the house leading out into a narrow alley where the shops dumped their rubbish. Jane slid out and I handed her the baby and the pushchair.
She looked up at me. ‘See you in Waterloo.’ She tried to smile.
‘Leave the baby,’ I said.
Jane winced.
‘Leave her there in the
pushchair,’ I said, pointing to a gap between two boxes. ‘Leave her for Sham or anyone. It didn’t work,’ I said.
Sy was on her hip watching me. She seemed to understand something of what I was saying because she clung to Jane and cried.
Jane shook her head. ‘Not yet, Davey,’ she said. ‘She’s all we got.’
She picked her way past the black bin bags, the piles of litter, the cardboard boxes and heaps of yellow cabbage leaves and disappeared around the corner into the back streets.
We’d been lucky. That’s how I looked at it. We’d been lucky to clobber Shiner, lucky to escape the Monroes in Santy, we’d been lucky not to get picked up on the street by the police or the Death Squads and we were lucky again to get away from Mrs Tallus’s thugs. We were still lucky, in a way. There were a lot of police about but they took no notice of two smart boys waiting for the bus. I didn’t think the same would be true of Jane.
On the way I tried to convince Sham that it was time to pack it in. But Sham clenched his teeth and screwed up his eyes like he’d done in the room – as if it hurt to talk about it. I knew what was going around his mind: seventeen million quid.
I gave it up and stared out of the bus window. I thought of the little room we were leaving behind – the plates still drying on the draining board, the packet of biscuits we’d forgotten in the cupboard, the hoover, the little ornaments on the windowsill and the sideboard, the bed with a real mattress. Jane had been so proud of it. It was all she ever wanted but it was gone forever.
*
She was there at the station waiting for us. I was surprised and disappointed – surprised because she’d got through, and disappointed because if they’d picked her up I’d be rid of her.
She watched us anxiously as we came through the ticket hall towards her. She was sitting on a bench and Sy was pottering about, holding herself up on it. She kept clinging to Jane’s knees and whimpering and looking up at her. Jane stood up when she saw us coming, smoothed her skirt over her legs and sat down again.
She started up again as soon as we got there. How that woman couldn’t be blamed because she was scared for her baby. How it was her baby after all and she was entitled to do what she wanted to get her back. How now that she knew we were too clever, we could meet her again, and that once she saw us and talked to us it’d be different. She whined on and on …
Sham blew up. Right there in the middle of the ticket hall with all those people wandering about he blew up. ‘You shut up!’ he yelled. ‘We had everything. All that money, but you mucked it up because you’re too bloody good for it – too good to take anything and you stopped me taking mine. You’ve got to understand, you’re wrong, you’re wrong!’ He was screaming. He didn’t even seem to be aware that there were people walking past staring. He just wanted her to admit that she was wrong and he didn’t care if the whole world heard.
I shoved him roughly. ‘Shut up,’ I hissed. ‘You want to get us killed?’
He turned to glare at me. His eyes flickered over the thick crowds hurrying around us. ‘Tell her to shut up, then,’ he growled. ‘I don’t have to listen to her.’
Jane’s mouth opened again. She had nothing left to give away. But she couldn’t leave it alone – as if words could change anything.
‘Not here,’ I begged. ‘Somewhere, but not here.’ She looked resentfully at me and nodded.
‘Somewhere else,’ she agreed. She looked at Sham as if she could change him into another person. ‘I’ll get the tickets,’ she said.
And our luck still held. There were police in the station, we’d been arguing in public, but Jane got the tickets and we walked past the ticket man and onto the platform and onto the train and no one stopped us. It was like a miracle to me because I was sure they were looking for us. We seemed to be invisible.
None of us had ever been in a train before. Jane folded up the pushchair and put it on the rack above us and we sat in a row and waited. Sy was whining away the whole time, she hadn’t stopped whining all that time. I could see people watching us curiously but there was nothing we could do about that.
‘Is your baby all right?’ asked an elderly woman across from us.
Jane glared at her. ‘We’re just taking her home,’ she said crossly, tossing her hair. The woman pulled a face and turned away.
Jane gave Sy a bottle and offered her to Sham to hold, but he made an impatient gesture. Sy closed her eyes firmly, as if she could make us and her whole life this past week go away by not looking, and she sucked as if it would save her life.
The train stood at the station for ages. We were sweating, but when it pulled away I was suddenly happy. We were leaving everything behind us. I felt that all the problems in the world were left back there on the station. It was so nice – the speed of the train, the way it rattled smoothly along. We all felt the same.
‘We done it – we got away again,’ Jane whispered in my ear. I smiled at her and even Sham looked up from the window and smiled. It felt so good to be rattling away from London, the streets, the gangs, Tallus, the Monroes, the police. The train got going and it settled down into a steady rattle and roll. People got out newspapers or books or looked out of the window. Sy fell asleep. I was exhausted. I leaned back and closed my eyes and let the train rock me. There was a little sunlight shining across my arms and neck and it felt so warm and nice …
I must have dozed. We’d stopped. People got on and off. I didn’t know where we were going – just away. We waited anxiously until the train started off. I tried to doze again because it had been so nice. I was still trying when Sham leaned forward and whispered to Jane.
‘How much money’s left?’
She pulled a face. ‘About twenty-five,’ she said.
I opened my eyes and stared at her. It wasn’t possible …
‘The room – I had to rent it for two weeks, you can’t rent a room for a day,’ she whispered, glancing nervously at the people on the seats near us. ‘You have to pay an advance and a deposit. And those clothes …’
All that money. Over a thousand pounds – gone.
‘Here …’ Jane dug in her bag and handed Sham a little black purse. ‘You look after it now.’
Sham waved it away in disgust. Once, there’d been seventeen million pounds. Twenty-five quid wasn’t worth bothering with. We’d have sold each other for twenty-five quid a few days ago. He turned away but a little later he said, ‘Go on then. The way you spend it …’ She handed it over to him and looked as if she was about to say something. But she changed her mind and glanced at me instead.
I closed my eyes and tried to let the warm sun, the rocking train and the clitter-clatter-clitter-clatter of the rails lull me back to sleep.
A few more stations came and went. I tried hard but I couldn’t sleep. The evening sunshine died and it was growing dark outside and cold in the train. We pulled up into another station – a big one.
‘I’m hungry,’ I said. I hadn’t had anything to eat all day. I hadn’t been able to manage breakfast. Jane rummaged in her bag and took out the paper bag Luke had given us only the day before. Doughnuts, cheese rolls. We started stuffing – even Jane. At one point I looked up and people were staring at us because we were eating in a way no good clean children, wearing the sort of clothes we had on, ever eat. Jane nudged us and whispered, ‘Eat it nicely …’ She tried to smile at one of the women who was watching.
‘Just a joke,’ she said thickly, through a great chewed wad of bread and cheese. The woman closed her eyes tiredly and looked away.
Sham peered out among the hurrying people. There was a kiosk selling drinks and snacks on the platform just along from us. ‘We need something to drink,’ he said. ‘Can of Coke or something …’
‘There’s no time, is there?’ said Jane.
A man on the other side of the corridor looked across. ‘You’ve plenty of time,’ he said. ‘They stop here to take off some coaches.’ As he spoke the train jolted. He smiled. ‘There,’ he said.
‘Go on, then,’ said Jane, nudging Sham with her elbow. ‘Couple of cans of something. Get some juice for Sy.’
Sham jumped up. I saw him a few seconds later in the queue at the kiosk watching the train anxiously.
I’d bolted my bread roll. I felt a buzzing in the back of my head. I was so tired but I wasn’t sleepy. I looked at Jane and she stared back at me, just looking. I don’t know what she was thinking; she was beyond me most of the time. I glanced back out. Sham was being served.
I looked away – at the man reading his paper, at the people in the seats around us sunk in their own thoughts. Then I looked out of the window again.
Sham was gone.
I nudged Jane and pointed.
‘Maybe they didn’t sell what we wanted,’ she muttered. She sat and chewed at her fingers for a bit, then she leant across and asked the man opposite, ‘How long before we go?’
The man glanced at his watch. ‘A couple of minutes,’ he said.
She nudged me. ‘Go and have a look – he might think he’s got more time than he has.’
Outside on the platform it smelt of dirt and metal. There were people running, walking, some sitting. A man in uniform had started walking down the train slamming the doors. Sham was nowhere to be seen. I walked towards the kiosk, since that was the last place I’d seen him. Beyond the kiosk a man was selling newspapers. There was one of those triangular stands with the headlines on it, and on the front of it was a drawing of Jane’s face.
I stared like an idiot. She was staring out of the paper at everyone. It was just a drawing but it was good. For a second I couldn’t tear myself away, then I looked about out of the corner of my eye to see if anyone had noticed me. I felt I was in a spotlight. I glanced up at the man selling papers. He was shouting something, but you couldn’t understand a word of it. He had a paper in his hand and there was a big pile of them at his feet. On the front page were three faces – Jane, Sham and me.
I ran back to the train. I sat down and begged it to go. I looked desperately at Jane.
‘Didn’t you see him?’ she asked.