‘I’ll get them to you. Some of the early details have been redacted to protect her new identity.’
‘You said Evie broke someone’s jaw. Who was it?’ I ask.
‘A male member of staff found two thousand pounds in her room. He figured Evie must have stolen the money and took it from her, saying he was going to hand it over to the police.’
‘What happened?’
‘Evie knew he was lying.’
‘Where did she get the money?’ I ask.
‘She said she won it playing poker.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘I wouldn’t bet against her.’
3
Angel Face
I enjoy the mathematics of smoking. Every cigarette takes fourteen minutes off my life, according to a poster I read in a doctor’s surgery. When I add the six minutes it takes to smoke each one, it makes a total of twenty minutes. An hour for every three. I like those numbers.
I’m only allowed four a day, which I have to smoke outside in the courtyard while a member of staff watches over me, ready to confiscate the lighter afterwards in case I try to burn the place down.
Sucking hard on the filter, I hold the smoke inside my chest, picturing the toxic chemicals and black tar clogging my lungs, causing cancer or emphysema or rotting my teeth. A slow death, I know, but that’s life, isn’t it – a long, drawn-out suicide.
I’m sitting on a bench where I can feel the coldness of the concrete through my torn indigo-coloured Levis (which I stole from Primark). I slip a forefinger through one of the frayed holes and widen the tear as far as the seam. I press my thumb into the skin on my thigh, watching how the blood rushes back into the pale blotch. Although barefoot, I don’t feel the cold. I’ve been in colder places. I’ve had fewer clothes.
Pulling my foot into my lap, I begin picking off my toenail polish, not liking the colour any more. It’s too girly. Dumb. I should never wear pastel colours – pinks and mauves. I once experimented with black, but it made my toenails look diseased.
I think about the group session. Guthrie brought a guest – a shrink with a strange name: Cyrus. He was handsome for an old guy – at least thirty – with thick dark hair and green eyes that looked sad, as though he might be homesick or missing someone. He didn’t say much. Instead he watched and listened. Most men talk too much and rarely listen. They talk about themselves, or give orders, or make decisions. They have cruel or hungry eyes, but rarely sad eyes.
Davina knocks on the window and shakes her dreadlocks. ‘Who are you talking to, Evie?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Come inside now.’
‘I’m not finished.’
Davina is one of the ‘house mothers’, a title that makes Langford Hall sound like a boarding school rather than a ‘secure children’s home’, by which they mean prison. There are locks on the doors and CCTV watching the corridors and if I kicked off right now, a three-person ‘control and restraint’ team would wrestle me to the ground and truss me up like a Christmas turkey.
Davina knocks on the glass again, making an eating motion. Lunch is ready.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You have to eat.’
‘I’m not feeling well.’
‘Do you want another red card?’
Red cards are given for misbehaviour and swearing at staff. I can’t afford another one, or I’ll miss our Sunday excursion. This week we’re going to see a movie at Cineworld. My life always seems better when I’m sitting in the dark with a warm tub of popcorn between my thighs, watching someone else’s shitty life flash before my eyes.
Nobody ever gets a green card. You’d have to cure cancer or bring peace to the world or let Mrs Porter look at you naked in the shower – girls only, of course – she doesn’t look at boys the same way.
Crushing the cigarette against the brickwork, I watch the sparks flare and fade, before tossing the butt into the muddy garden. Davina raps on the window. I roll my eyes. She jabs her finger. I retrieve the butt and hold it up, mouthing the word ‘satisfied?’ before popping it into my mouth, chewing and swallowing. I open wide. All gone.
Davina looks disgusted and shakes her head.
Back in my room, I brush my teeth and reapply my mascara and foundation, hiding my freckles. I won’t earn another strike unless I’m fifteen minutes late for a meal. When I arrive in the dining room, most of the other kids are finishing because boredom makes them hungry. The room smells of baked cheese and overcooked Brussels sprouts. I take a tray and move past the hot food, collecting two pots of yoghurt, a banana and a box of muesli.
‘They’re for breakfast,’ says a server.
‘I didn’t have breakfast.’
‘Whose fault is that?’ She takes back the muesli.
I look for a place to sit down. Whenever I spy an empty seat, someone moves quickly to deny me the place. They’re all in on the game. Eventually, one of the girls doesn’t react swiftly enough and I get to a chair first.
‘Freak!’ she mutters.
‘Thank you.’
‘Dyke!’
‘You’re too kind.’
‘Retard.’
‘You’re welcome.’
I peel the top from a tub of yoghurt and spoon it into my mouth, turning the spoon upside down and pushing my tongue into the hollow. I’m aware of people moving behind me, so I keep one arm braced across my tray, preventing anyone from flipping it over.
I can’t stop them spitting or putting bogeys in my food, but it doesn’t happen so much these days, because most of them are frightened of me. The same is true of the staff, especially Mrs Porter who calls me ‘that devil child’.
I don’t mind the name-calling because I’m harder on myself than any member of staff. Nobody can hate like I can. I hate my body. I hate my thoughts. I am ugly, stupid and dirty. Damaged goods. Nobody will ever want me.
The bully barks. The bully laughs. The bully wins.
4
Sun sinking. Autumn cold. I run along Parkside, zigzagging through the gate into Wollaton Park, where a sign warns me that I’m entering a deer calving area and that no unleashed dogs are allowed. The sky is streaked from edge to edge with pale trails of jets that have passed in the stratosphere.
Jogging beneath a tunnel of bare trees, the asphalt path moves like a conveyer belt beneath my feet. Things come and go – park benches, garden beds, walkers and cyclists. I run twice around the lake before climbing a rise towards the Elizabethan country house that gives the park its name. Wollaton Hall once took my breath away, but I’ve grown tired of its grandeur because it seems to be showing off.
Deer raise their heads, pausing from their grazing, as I ghost past them along an avenue of lime trees towards the eastern entrance to the park. My right hip twinges, but I like the pain because it helps me focus. Wearing jogging shorts, a quilted red windbreaker, woollen hat and light-weight runners, I move in an easy rhythm, turning back at Middleton Boulevard and retracing my route through the park.
Running is many things to me. Calmness. Solitude. Punishment. Survival. In a world beset by problems that I cannot control, I can tell my body what to do and it will obey for as long as it can. When I run my thoughts become clearer. When I run I imagine that I’m keeping pace with a planet that turns too quickly for me.