Page 56 of The Unforgiven

Morgan and Brooke joined in with Dolly, but Chelsea was the worst. Maybe she was scared of Dolly, that if she didn’t pretend to be friends with her, she’d say bad stuff about Chelsea too, but Chelsea wasn’t scared of anyone, because everyone was scared of her mam, who was unpredictable unless she was out of it on her medication.

Evelyn and Dolly and Brooke and Chelsea and Morgan and Sophie.

It was Sophie that hurt the most because Sophie was kind all the rest of the time, so that was the biggest disappointment, that day when they pretended to all be friends, no one being left out, apologies chanted together than didn’t sound like apologies but more teasing.

Let’s go to the big house together.

You know where the big house is, don’t you?

You don’t know anything.

Let’s go and hang out there, you can sneak out your gran’s gin. We all know she’s an alky.

Alky, a fucking alky. Who has an alky of a gran?

It carried on, weakly laughing along and dreams about being alone and collecting seashells or playing football.

Then they got to the big house, an old half ruin with furniture still inside and a table set for dinner, frozen in time. Itwould’ve been amazing to look round, but Dolly wanted to play a game with Gran’s gin.

Only, the game wasn’t fun. Being the centre of the game wasn’t fun. Being held down, made to drink the gin, and then they pulled off every stitch of clothing, yelling and throwing the clothes around, and the gin made everything hazy and there might’ve been something else in the gin, a tablet because Chelsea said she took a benzo from her mum’s bag because it would be fun to see what happened when it was mixed with alcohol. They laughed at what was under the clothes and made fun and said horrible things but then the memories were hazy, until there was no one else there and it was dark and cold because there were no clothes, no heat and just the littlest bit of light from a high up window because they were in the cellars.

I was locked in, the door barricaded, something heavy in front of it that I couldn’t move. I shouted at them, pleading with them to let me out, but all I heard were cackles of laughter and heavy thuds at the door, stones being thrown, maybe.

“Morgs, what are you doing?” It sounded like Sophie.

“Seeing how hard I can hit the door.”

I waited for them to go, still hearing laughter, still hearing them talk about the rest of their day, going to beach, talking to the boys. I found the door in the darkness, but there was something blocking it. Something put there on purpose what was heavy. Exit unavailable. Vomit everywhere, piss too and something scratching round. So daydreams of being back at home in the tiny bedroom, shared with a brother even though it was wrong, but that was better than being here so going somewhere else as a dream was better.

Cold, so very cold and lonely, pushing at the door to get out.

By the time freedom came, it was morning, and someone had moved whatever had been blocking the door, or maybe I’d already been insane back then and I’d imagine it. There weresome clothes just outside, left in a pile. Enough to cover up and then run back to the caravan. It was probably Sophie who left them. Not Dolly. Dolly would’ve put them in the sea.

The police hadn’t been called. Gran was passed out on the sofa. No one had been missed. I went back later and collected all of the stones that Morgan had thrown to save them for a rainy day.

Kids will be kids, they said. Girls will be girls.

Meek, vulnerable, gentle.

Sugar and spice and all things nice.

That’s what little girls weren’t made of.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Some Manchester mornings contained all the petulance of a fifteen-year-old who’d been grounded by their parents. Swirls of white clouds intertwined with a dark metal grey sky, a threat of rain, but the bigger threat was that it wouldn’t arrive. The air was still, inert, impatiently waiting. A pressure shift, a tightening around us all as we waited for what we needed to do next.

The impact of the weather was understatedly referred to. Inclement weather often correlated to a rise in domestic violence incidents because more people were inside another pressure cooker. The low light made it easier to stay out of sight, scoping out properties to burglar, along with there being less footfall, so fewer potential witnesses. There was also a slight increase in vandalism, graffiti, tagging and smashing windows, usually by bored teenagers with nowhere else they wanted to be. Car theft or theft from cars were another, with people more likely to forget to lock vehicles or windows in a rush to get in when those huge drops of rain started to clatter from a clouded sky.

My mood matched the weather. Frustrated. Waiting. The petulance of that teenager was alive in me right now, even though I was thirty years old and should know better.

The weather affected people’s mood. It had to. We were elemental creatures after all and had a circadian rhythm and a brain and a body that were affected by light. Still, I expected more of myself, and tried to find a way to give myself a dopamine hit as I walked down Oxford Road to Daniel’s offices and the home of psychology students in Manchester, or at least for some of them.

It would’ve been too early for the hatch of students anyway, but it was still Easter holidays so felt like a ghost town. The city was still asleep, getting over the hangover of a bank holiday weekend, and waking to a sky that was unlikely to get any brighter.

I stayed on the main road, my feet following a path they’d walked so many times before. I’d lived in the city since I’d been eighteen and a fresher, halls for my first year, a shared house for my second and third. For my masters, because I was working, I’d been able to afford a room in a flat with one other student, a PhD candidate from China, who was quiet and clever and a really good cook. We kept in touch, although she was in America now at MIT, setting the technological world alight one code at a time. It’d been an unconventional friendship, but a successful one.

We’d both allowed each other to breathe.