‘Shall I make you a cup of tea?’ she offered.
‘I don’t want tea,’ Mary muttered, pulling the fridge open and taking out a can of Tennent’s Super. ‘Go back to bed.’
‘I want to stay with you,’ Chantelle insisted. ‘You’re hurt.’
‘For God’s sake, fuck off and leave me alone!’ Mary rounded on her. ‘You’re fourteen, not forty, so stop acting like me bleedin’ mother. Do as you’re told and go … to …
bed
!’
Chilled by the fierceness of her mother’s tone, Chantelle fled back to her room and climbed beneath the quilt, her heart heavy. Minutes earlier, her mum had been screaming that she never wanted to see Jase again, but Chantelle knew that she would now mope about like a lost soul until he showed up again – which, in turn, meant that Chantelle would be expected to look after Leon while Mary tried to drink and smoke herself to death. And Chantelle would have to do it, or her little brother would end up going to school dirty and hungry, and then the nosy teachers would tell the social worker and all sorts of trouble would break out again. And, even though it wasn’t Chantelle’s fault, she’d get the blame – just like she always did.
As Chantelle cried herself to sleep in her room, Mary flopped onto a chair at the kitchen table and ripped the tab off the beer can. Aware that it wouldn’t be anywhere near strong enough to drown her sorrows, she reached into a drawer and rooted through the junk until she found a strip of tramadol tablets. She’d have preferred temazepam, but she’d sold her last script and the next wasn’t due for another week, so the painkillers would have to do.
As the rush of adrenalin subsided and the pain of her injuries began to wash over her, Mary licked at the fresh tears of self-pity and popped two of the little capsules out of the foil strip. Then, thinking
to hell with it
, she pressed out the rest and threw them all into her mouth, quickly washing them down with beer before traipsing miserably back to her bedroom.
She’d never taken so many of the painkillers at one time before, and it crossed her mind as she lay down on the bed that she might overdose and die. But so what if she did? No one would care. They’d probably all be glad to see the back of her. Jase, the kids, her so-called mates … none of them gave a flying fuck about her, so it would serve the bastards right if she didn’t wake up.
As a drowsy sensation began to creep over her, Mary swallowed the last of her beer. Then, carefully arranging her hair so that it fanned out on the pillow around her head, she crossed her hands over her chest and closed her eyes.
Fuck only knew who would be the first to see her body in the morning, but if it was a fit young copper or ambulance man she was determined to look her best.
1
It had just gone eight-thirty and Chantelle was in a rush. She and Leon would usually have left for school by now, but the shirt she’d washed the night before had fallen off the radiator so she’d had to try and dry it with her hairdryer. And now Leon was dragging his feet, so she ordered him to hurry up and brush his teeth while she went into the living room to comb her hair.
Surprised to find her mother in there, she drew her head back and gave her a questioning look. ‘How come you’re up so early?’
‘Not long got in,’ Mary admitted, clamping her lit cigarette between her teeth. ‘Haven’t seen my bank card, have you?’ she asked, her backside rearing up into the air as she knelt on the couch and rooted through the junk piled down the side of it. ‘Can’t find it anywhere.’
‘I hope you haven’t lost it again,’ Chantelle chided, walking over to the fireplace and taking her comb out from behind an ornament on the mantelpiece. ‘That’ll be the third time in a year, and they’ll start charging you if you’re not careful.’
‘All right, little miss know-it-all, I can do without a lecture, thank you very much!’ Mary straightened up and gave her daughter a dirty look as she teased her thick hair into shape. Chantelle had a beautiful face and a great figure, but it was completely wasted on her because she wasn’t interested in anything apart from school. Boring as fuck – just like her father.
Chantelle glanced out of the corner of her eye and frowned when she saw the way her mother was staring at her. ‘What’s up? Have I got dirt on the back of my skirt, or something?’
‘As if!’ Mary sneered, taking a last drag on her fag before stubbing it out in the ashtray.
Chantelle pursed her lips as she tied the scrunchie around her hair. Her mum acted like it was a crime to want to look presentable, and was forever making sniping remarks about OCD. But Chantelle would rather die than go out in public looking dirty – like her brother happily would if she’d let him.
Mary lit another cigarette and resumed her search for the missing bank card. Chantelle could wind her up on the best of days by just breathing, but with her nerves sparking like live wires – thanks to all the speed she’d done last night – anything the girl said or did today was guaranteed to infuriate her.
When Leon walked in just then, holding his mud-caked football boots out in front of him, Mary snapped, ‘Don’t be fetching them in here. They look like they’ve been dipped in shit. Get ’em out in the hall.’
‘They’re knackered,’ Leon told her, as surprised as Chantelle had been to see their mother not only up at this time of the morning but dressed as well. ‘I need some new ones. Can I have thirty quid?’
‘Can you hell! They’re not even a year old yet, them. You wanna start looking after your stuff if you want it to last.’
‘It ain’t my fault. And my teacher said—’
‘Do I look like I give a flying fuck what your teacher says?’ Mary rounded on her son furiously. ‘He can have his say when he’s the one putting food in your greedy gob, but till then he’d better keep his trap shut, or I’ll come down there and put my fist in it!’
‘All right, Mum, there’s no need to jump down his throat.’ Chantelle leapt to her brother’s defence.
‘Oh, I wondered how long it’d take for you to stick your beak in.’ Mary switched the glare onto her daughter. ‘You know what, I’m sick to death of the pair of you. Give me this, buy me that … it’s all I ever fuckin’ hear round here, and it’s doing my head in!’
‘Pardon us for being born,’ said Chantelle, pushing Leon out into the hall.
‘Yeah, well, I wish you hadn’t been,’ Mary yelled after them. ‘The trouble you two have caused me, you’d have been better off leaving me to die that time!’
Chantelle looked back and gave a disapproving shake of her head before following her brother out of the room.
‘’S up with her?’ Leon whined, stuffing his boots into his school bag.
‘The usual,’ Chantelle muttered. She’d already guessed that her mum was on a speed comedown, because she was always vicious after a heavy session and it always culminated in her saying that she wished they had let her die when she’d taken the overdose a year and a half earlier – even though both she and Chantelle knew that it hadn’t been a serious suicide attempt. Given the amount of alcohol she regularly drank, and the cocktail of illegal drugs she’d been feeding into her body for as long as Chantelle could remember, it would have taken a damn sight more than a few poxy painkillers to bring Mary Booth down.
‘What am I supposed to tell my teacher?’ Leon grumbled when Chantelle hustled him out through the front door. ‘He says he’ll kick me off the team if I don’t get me boots sorted.’
‘You’re the best player; there’s no way he’ll get rid of you,’ Chantelle assured him. ‘But if he says it again, tell him I’m going to make sure you get some new ones.’
‘
BITCH!
’ Mary yelled as the front door slammed shut behind them. It pissed her off that Chantelle had gone over her head and promised Leon new boots. But good luck to her if she thought muggins was paying for them, because hell would have to freeze over before Mary dipped her hand in her purse now.
Still fuming, Mary flopped down on the couch and took a deep drag on her cigarette. Almost choking on it when a vibration rattled the back of her head, she grabbed the jacket that was draped behind her and pulled her mobile phone out of its pocket. ‘That you, Trace?’
‘No, it fuckin’ ain’t.’
Mary winced at the sound of her dealer’s angry voice. ‘All right, Ricky. Wasn’t expecting you.’
‘No, I bet you wasn’t,’ spat Ricky. ‘Where’s my money, you thieving bitch?’
‘I meant to come round,’ Mary lied. ‘But things keep cropping up. I’ll get it to you as soon as I can, I promise. But it’s not easy when you’ve got kids, you know.’
‘I don’t give a fuck about your kids,’ Ricky bellowed, forcing her to jerk the phone away from her ear. ‘I just want my bastard money. You’ve got an hour – and if I don’t see you, I’m gonna come looking for you. You’ve been warned!’
Mary bit her lip when the line went dead. Shit! Now what was she supposed to do? There was no way she could get her hands on two hundred quid in an hour. But if she didn’t, he would kill her.
Almost jumping out of her skin when someone knocked at the front door, she crept over to the window – praying with every tiptoed step that it wasn’t Ricky, because she wouldn’t put it past him to have been outside the whole time. A man wearing a jacket bearing the
E.ON
logo was standing on the step. Relieved that it wasn’t Ricky, Mary went back to the couch and stubbed out the burned-down cigarette before lighting a fresh one.
The man knocked again, and then raised the flap of the letter box. ‘Mrs Booth? I need to speak to you about your electricity arrears.’
Mary gritted her teeth and stuck two fingers up at the door. Cheeky bastard, shouting out her business for the whole world to hear.
The man tried one last time before shoving something through the letter box and walking away, his heels thudding dully on the concrete landing. Mary went out into the hall, snatched up the letter, and curled her lip when she read that they intended to take her to court if she didn’t contact them to make arrangements to pay her arrears. She tossed it onto the hall table along with the rest of her unpaid bills and marched into the kitchen in search of alcohol to soothe her nerves.
They were a load of fucking vultures, expecting her to conjure money out of thin air to pay their extortionate charges. They ought to be chasing the benefits people, not her, seeing as
they
were the ones who had messed up her claim and made her get into debt in the first place.
‘
We have strong evidence to suggest that you are living with someone whilst claiming as a single parent
,’ the woman from the benefit fraud squad had said when they called her into the office that day, ‘
and we’ll be suspending your claim pending further investigations
.’
Strong evidence, her arse! More like word of malicious mouth. But that was the trouble with living in a place like this: it was chock-full of nosy bastards who had nothing better to do than stick their beaks into things that didn’t concern them. Mary wouldn’t have minded so much if she and Jimmy had even been serious, but it had only ever been a fling. And, all right, so maybe he
had
more or less moved in – but that was
her
business. She’d kicked him out as soon as it came on top, so that should have been that. But it had taken ages for the stupid bastards to reinstate her benefits, and now, because of their incompetence, everyone wanted a piece of her.
Fuck them
, she thought, slamming the fridge shut when she saw that there were no beers to be had. They could form a queue to peck the flesh off her bones when she was dead and buried, but until then they could all go to hell.
Chantelle was exhausted when she arrived home from school that afternoon. The walk took fifteen minutes on a good day, but when she felt as lousy as she did today it seemed to take hours. And the weather wasn’t helping. It was supposed to be the beginning of summer, but there had been no sign of it yet and the chill air was exacerbating the headache that had started during her last lesson. Her head was pounding, and her neck and shoulders were killing her from the weight of the books she’d been lugging around in her bag all day. All she wanted to do was climb into bed and sleep for a week. But her exams were starting on Monday, and if she were to stand any chance of passing them she was going to have to spend the whole weekend revising.
Inside the flat it was even colder and darker than it was outside, and Chantelle shivered as she dropped her bag on the hall floor. ‘It’s me,’ she called as she slipped out of her blazer and looped it over the peg.
When no answer came, she popped her head around her mum’s bedroom door. Surprised to see that the bed was empty – her mum usually slept for a couple of days after a heavy binge – she wandered into the kitchen to see if Mary had done the shopping before going out.
‘Great!’ she muttered when she saw that the cupboards were still bare. ‘So, that’s me revising on an empty stomach –
again
. Cheers, Mum.’
Chantelle went into the living room and drew the curtains to hide the depressing sight of heavy clouds gathering over the roof of the flats across the way. Then, switching the lamp on, she went back out into the hall to fetch her books.
It was only when she came back that she noticed the note propped on the mantelpiece, and she frowned when she reached for it and a £ note fluttered to the floor at her feet. No wonder her mum hadn’t bothered to do the shopping: she obviously expected her little lackey to do it for her – like Chantelle didn’t have better things to do.
Going to a party with Trace
, the note read,
so you’ll have to get our Leon’s tea. Don’t wait up ’cos I don’t know when I’ll be back. Mum xxx
Furious that her mother had gone out on the lash and dumped Leon on her knowing full well that she needed to revise, Chantelle yanked her mobile phone out of her bag and rang her mum’s number.
‘
Hey there
,’ the answerphone message trilled, in the phony American accent that her mum seemed to think was sexy. ‘
I can’t take your call right now, but if you leave your name, number, and cock size, I’ll get right back to you …
’