‘Take care of yourself, Shaun,’ she whispers under her breath.
Dawn’s room at St Jude’s is number six and at the back of the building on the second floor. It looks right across the sea and she can see the ferry leaving the docks, heading for Calais. Although the room is tiny, it’s bursting with sunlight and has an en suite, a fridge, microwave, a dented chest of drawers and a small single bed. On the bed sits a new duvet cover and pillowcase set, still in its wrapper, £14.99 from Argos (20 per cent off). Dawn has moved into countless rooms over the past twenty years. Bedsits. Squats. Flats. So many towns, so many different places she could never call home. She came close a couple of times… but then she’d catch sight of a particular shade of red hair and have to move on. The cold hard ground of parks or shop doorways had become regular pit stops between addresses. As time crawled on, these pit stops became longer than the brief stays between them. Anything not to be trapped. Being hemmed in must never be an option.
Never again.
Dawn looks around the room and prays that this time it will be different, that this time she will stay. She could even get herself a job nearby. She’d almost left Dover when Reg’s Reptiles had let her go, but something about the town kept her from leaving. She’s had loads of experience – a ton of different jobs. It would just be tricky tracking down references. That’s the problem with changing your life and starting again so many hundreds of times. Still, a change is as good as a rest, they say, and maybe this could be the life she’s been heading towards all these years.
There’s a sound outside the door, and Grace is standing behind it holding groceries and wearing a big smile.
‘We always provide a welcome pack for new residents,’ she says, balancing carrier bags on her wrists as she struggles through the door. She blows the wisps of blonde hair away that have fallen across her face. ‘Just basics. Toiletries, bread, milk and pasta type stuff.’ She starts unloading her cargo onto the top of the fridge. ‘Oh, and tea and coffee, obviously.’
Dawn swallows the ball in her windpipe and tries to suck the tears back into their sockets. She’s not sure where they came from, but she doesn’t have time for all that nonsense. She has unpacking to do.
‘Welcome to St Jude’s,’ Grace says, and she brushes Dawn’s shoulder with her fingers. It’s the briefest of touches but it’s enough to reverse all her hard work.
‘Hey,’ Grace whispers as Dawn sinks to the bed, water freely flowing everywhere from her cheeks, staining her top with mascara-ridden teardrops.
‘I don’t deserve it,’ Dawn blurts out just as Grace is leaving. ‘So many people out there need this more than me – I shouldn’t have gone to the council, shouldn’t have come here. I put off trying for ages because of that. A few more months on the streets wouldn’t have made much difference. I should have stayed away – who was next on your list?’
Grace turns back from the door and hands Dawn a booklet of house rules from her carrier bag. She doesn’t answer the question but gives Dawn’s shoulder another quick squeeze before she leaves. Shaun’s face swims into Dawn’s mind and a plan begins to form alongside it as she looks at the booklet. Rule number three pulls her eyes towards it. No Overnight Guests.
Dawn pulls the clothes from her holdall and places them in the drawers before popping the toothpaste and shower gel onto the tiny shelf above the sink. She leaves the food bits where they are; she can’t remember the last time she ate. She doesn’t really get hungry anymore.
She puts off going to bed for as long as she can, but quickly runs out of things to distract herself with. She switches off the light and guilt hits as soon as she’s under the duvet. The darkness squeezes tight around her, keeping the sleep away and forcing out those age-old pictures that can be drowned out by daylight but never the night. Tonight, it’s not just Rosie’s face Dawn sees. She blinks again and again but she can still see Shaun Michaels between her eyelids. Tomorrow, she promises herself. Tomorrow she’ll save him.
But you couldn’t save me, she hears, right before sleep catches her.
Dawn’s room is already drenched in light when she wakes up, just before six. Her bed is directly underneath the window, so she lies for a while, watching the seagulls soar in the air above the sea. Local people always moan about the racket they make but she likes it. It reminds her she’s there now. Near the sea and away from the city. Not many seagulls in Manchester. They call out, letting each other know which roads have rubbish collections this morning and which houses never do their bin bags up properly.
After enduring a lukewarm shower (a notice on the wall tells her that temperatures are capped for health and safety reasons), she pulls on a pair of light leggings and a long floaty top from New Look, £19.99, buy-one-get-one-free. She picks up her key and clicks the door shut behind her.
The staff flat is across the corridor. According to the information booklet, the night staff take it in turns to sleep in it in case there are ‘incidents’. Dawn can’t decide if she’s comforted by this or not. The office shutters are still down, so it must be too early for a natter. She decides to take herself on a little tour and pads about in her pumps as quietly as she can. The top two floors appear identical and the ground floor is mostly just the office and the foyer. The basement is home to the resident’s lounge and the laundry room; only to be used before 8 p.m.
The lounge is empty of people but the TV is still on low and Lorraine Kelly is smiling down from the wall. Maybe it’s screwed on in case anyone nicks it. Two worn sofas frame the room and there’s a patio door that leads into a small, walled garden that’s littered with fag butts and dandelions. The coffee table in the middle of the room is covered with torn boxes of board games that look like they’ve been there since the eighties. At least they’re trying. Dawn was always quite good at playing Frustration; she likes the satisfying clunk of the push-ey down bit in the middle.
Lorraine’s gone from the telly and now there’s a local news bulletin. Someone’s been found dead, probable overdose. Dawn swipes the remote from the arm of the sofa and switches it off. No point wasting electricity.
The muffled roaring sound of the shutter from upstairs makes her jump, and she runs upstairs to see the office is now open. She’s looking forward to having someone to chat to – she’ll go and make a cuppa for the staff to say thank you for letting her stay. As Dawn strolls towards the office, she wonders if Grace is working today. She stops when she reaches the hatch.
Grace is hunched over a newspaper on her desk, tears falling down her cheeks. Peter’s arm is placed awkwardly across her.
‘It’s all my fault,’ Grace says.
Dawn will leave quietly. She won’t intrude; Grace probably isn’t allowed to cry in front of the residents.
She can just about see the headline in front of Grace. It has the word ‘overdose’ in it. Underneath is a photo of a toilet block in a Dover park. Dawn stares at the paper and back at Grace’s heaving shoulders.
And then she runs.
Chapter 5
Grace
GRACE’S TEARS HAVE MIXED with the ink on the page and she dabs at the newspaper with the sleeve of her cardigan, smudging the article and making it worse. Not that it could get any worse, each word is drilling a hole straight into her heart and she has to look away from the featured photograph as it smiles back at her. It must’ve been taken some years ago before life had come along and stolen all the sparkle.