‘A bit. I’m not trained or anything. I just like it. I did all my sisters when they had their prom. Mum said it was only fair ’cos I wasn’t allowed to go to mine,’ she replied through the grips in her mouth.
‘Why weren’t you allowed to go?’
‘I knocked one of the teachers out cold.’
‘Knocked them out?’ Uzma boggled. ‘How?’
‘Punched ’em. They were windin’ me up. I used to have a right temper on me. Didn’t know what to do with all that stress before Hester taught me to sing it out.’
‘Well, school can be quite stressful.’ Mags raised her eyebrows while trying to keep her head still.
‘Nah. Annabel, my social worker, said it was the baby messing with my emotions. By nine months, they’re takin’ over, like an alien, she said.’
‘You punched your teacher when you were nine months pregnant?’ Uzma’s eyes were complete circles.
‘Yeah. So I think they should’ve allowed me to the prom, really. Extenuating circumstances. My nan got me one of those baby slings, in red so it matched my dress and everything. Icould’ve taken her with me. It wasn’t fair.’ She pinned up the last twist of Mags’s hair and sat back to inspect her work.
‘Perhaps you should train properly, if you enjoy it. Go to college, or get an apprenticeship in a salon?’ I said.
‘I could, but paying for the childcare would leave me skint. My mum watches Callie for me enough as it is. And it would only interfere with my music career.’
‘You have a music career?’ Mags stood up to go and look in the mirror.
‘Not yet. But you can’t give up your dream.’
Rowan spent a long time on my hair, taming the copper curls into glossy ringlets, then pinning most of them up so I resembled a heroine from a Jane Austen novel.
‘Rowan, would you come and do my hair for my wedding? I’ll pay you, of course.’
She shrugged. ‘Yeah, s’pose.’ But I saw the gleam of joy in her eyes when she turned to pick up the comb.
‘And my bridesmaids. There’s three.’
‘And what about my work Christmas party?’ Yasmin asked. ‘Will you do my hair for that?’
By the end of the evening, Rowan had four bookings. We had a quick run through of ‘O Holy Night’ as we cleared up, flicking our fancy locks and smiling at our new, more beautiful selves. I walked home through crisp moonlight back to my little terraced house, and made it nearly all the way there before realising with a shock that I hadn’t once looked over my shoulder for Kane.
9
The summer I sat my school exams was a car crash.
How could I concentrate on French verbs and simultaneous equations while struggling to survive? Waking up every morning wondering if my brother would still be alive. Waiting for the police to bash down the door, or social services to come and take me away. How could I find the energy to revise when I worked five nights a week, spending my nights off and weekends cleaning up, washing my clothes in the bath, and trying to stretch pennies into pounds so I could quell the constant hunger?
When all I thought about was avoiding the snake.
My exam results were a disaster. I spent the summer washing pots, trying not to think about my prospects, and sinking deeper and deeper into despair.
At some point during the summer, I caught Snake’s attention. He started offering me drugs or alcohol. I declined. Any flicker of temptation I may have felt at the chance of temporary oblivion was quickly stamped out by the up close and personal knowledge of what that oblivion cost.
He backed off a little, and began making me cups of tea. Or a sandwich. Bringing me a take-away. More than a little weird – cosying up in front of a rom-com and sharing a curry with my spaced-out brother and his dealer.
Sometimes I would come home to find he’d cleaned the kitchen. He paid me compliments – not creepy ones, but crafty ones about my smile, or how clever I was, or how he wished he had a sister like me. He told me time and time again that I wasn’t like the other girls – he admired my choice to stay clean and work hard. He would give me a lift to the pub if the weather was bad, and wait for me at the end of a late shift in his rusty car.
It took weeks, months even, but my life had shrunk to a very small world with few inhabitants. At nearly seventeen, desperate for any kind of meaningful connection, woefully starved of affection, with no idea of what a real man was like, no compass to assess normal behaviour, I slowly let Snake twist his evil lies around me.
I hated myself for it, but I began to enjoy the feel of his arm when he casually draped it around my shoulders, like Sam had once done. I let him hug me, squealing as he spun me around when feeling playful. A couple of times, he stuck a CD on and cajoled me into dancing with him in the living room while Sam beat time on the table. I had never danced with a boy before. He started kissing me goodbye on the cheek before he left, or holding my hand as he pulled me out of the pub door and into his car in a rainstorm, knowing my poor, starving heart would take the fake love of a wicked man if it meant I could for a few moments believe somebody actually cared about me.
As Sam grew worse, Snake shared his concern. My brother barely left his bedroom, rarely ate or changed his clothes. He had lost any remnant of control, and my worry for him was a gnawing beast on my back. Snake suggested he take him to a doctor. I agreed, anxious to do something, anything. I don’tknow what he said, or even whether it was the right decision or not, but Sam got admitted to hospital. I now lived alone with Snake.
