Blood Ties (28 page)

‘Freda looks after things around here.’ The skinny man pauses, staring as if he’s trying to recognise me. ‘And your baby’s quite safe.’

‘Oh,’ I say, thinking that he’s nice and how lucky I am not to have been picked up by the police. They’d have marched me straight home.

‘Freda and me, we run a sort of hostel. A place for pretty young women to stay.’ His mouth forms a point as he speaks, chiselling the other features on his face as if too much bone has been carved away. He’s very thin and tawny.

‘Do you mean homeless women?’ I sit up now, hardly believing my luck but cautioning myself as I remember how my friend Rachel was sent home by the hostel when she ran away. I will pretend I am older, which will also make having a baby more plausible. God knows what’s been on the news about me.

As he thinks, as I wait for his reply, I can smell hope on my hot breath but suddenly I am gripped with pain. My belly feels like it’s burst open and the mess is soaking into my clothes while my left tit is as tight as a brick in my bra.

‘Yeah, for homeless women.’ He grins and comes over to me, crouching down by the chair. He puckers his already distorted lips. ‘You wouldn’t be looking for a roof, would you?’

I nod, not wanting to appear too keen. I’ve really fallen on my feet but shouldn’t let on that I’m desperate or he’ll hike the price sky high. I’m not stupid. I really wish he’d bring me my baby.

‘I dunno about vacancies though, sweetheart.You’ll have to speak nicely to Freda when she gets back. We’re bursting at the seams. All these homeless girls to look after.’

My burning belly chills and sinks. ‘Is it because I’ve got a baby? She’s very good and hardly cries.’

‘It’s not to do with your baby, sweetheart. Several of our girls have ended up with babies and they all help each other out. I can’t promise nothing though. Drink your tea.’

‘But can you get my baby? When I fainted and you found me, I had a baby. She’s called Ruby. My baby. Will you get her?’

He stands and walks away. His words echo in a vapour trail behind him as he looks back over his bony shoulder. ‘What baby, sweetheart? There’s no baby, lover.’ And he locks the door behind him.

In my head I make a cold, precise scream that, although I don’t know it yet, will cut me in two for the rest of my life. I don’t run for the door and beat my fists against the locked panels, not at first. I don’t fall to the floor and thrash and sob and break a window and escape, searching, searching for my baby. I haven’t even asked him what his name is or where exactly I am and suddenly the quest for my baby drops to the same level of importance because who am I, a teenage runaway with a newborn baby, to question anything?

I passed out in the street and he rescued me and brought me to wherever I am now. It seems nice, although shabbier than the semi that my mother kept tidy and sterile. The man seems nice and I bet Freda will be, too. I will do as he says and finish my tea and wait for Freda. I’ll hope that she’ll take me into their hostel and I’ll think a thousand times a minute about my baby, and then maybe I will get her back.

I am so hot. My forehead is tacky and seeping sweat as I stand up, as I stagger to the locked door, but I still manage to rattle the handle and smack my fists against the wood and press my lips to the crazed paint and squeal out for my baby. I do this until my voice dries up and I slide to the floor not knowing if it’s tears or blood or fear dripping down my cheeks. Then, for the second time that day, the world goes black.

I don’t know how long it’s been but there’s a hand on my shoulder gently tapping and nudging me. I open my eyes. There’s a woman beside me and I can’t think where I am and for a moment I think it’s my mother but then I remember the skinny man who rescued me off the street although I can’t see him, just this woman leaning over me. She’s wearing sweet perfume. I remember they’ve got my baby.

‘Hello,’ she says. ‘I’m Freda.’ She bends down lower, giving me a glimpse down her low-cut top. ‘Who are you?’

‘Where’s my baby?’ I whisper, quite tired of hearing the words and wondering if Ruby ever existed.

‘What baby, love?’ And her words echo like the beat of butterfly wings in the sun. ‘You don’t look too well.’ She reaches for a cushion and plumps it behind my head. ‘Go on, tell me your name.’

I’m tired and hot and shivering and hungry although I couldn’t eat. I’m aching and sore and scared but not so stupid that I’d give my real name. I’d thought about this on the train, about how telling everyone who I really am would be a bit silly seeing as I bet my folks have reported to the police that I’ve run away; a fifteen-year-old on the loose, in the papers, on the TV. They’ll be after me for sure.

‘I’m Milly,’ I say as confidently as I can although it sounds strange. I saw the name Milly on the badge of a girl working in McDonald’s. She was pretty and wore rings and had a cross on a chain around her neck. She smiled and was nice to me even though most people usually aren’t.

‘That’s a pretty name.’ Freda pulls up a footstool and sits beside me. ‘Becco tells me he found you passed out in the street. What’s a lass like you doing wandering around in this weather?’ Freda’s voice is like chocolate milk. She takes off her jacket, exposing more of her deep, wrinkled cleavage. She lights a cigarette, the glow from her lighter showing me that she has furrows ploughed around her mouth and eyes. Her hair is short and grey but sleek, not brittle like grey hair can be, and her skin is the colour of smoked fish. Freda’s eyes are dark and hardly have any whites. She could be my fairy godmother.

‘Not sure,’ I say, picking my nails. At least that’s the truth. ‘I think that man’s got my baby somewhere. Can you ask him?’ My heart crashes against the back of my sore tit.

‘Where do you live?’ She sucks on the cigarette and when she blows out, the smoke is drawn towards the chimney.

‘Further north.’ Careful, I think. ‘My baby?’

‘Are you new to London?’

I nod. She’s intuitive. I like that. My mother didn’t know things about me; didn’t notice I was pregnant until I was six months gone. ‘Is she OK, though, my baby?’

‘Do you have anywhere to stay? A job to go to?’

Loads of people run away to London and survive, don’t they? Hundreds come to seek their fortune. I’ll manage just as soon as she gives me my baby back. ‘No, but I’ll find something. I just wasn’t feeling very well and fainted. I’ve got this pain in my stomach.’ Even as I speak, it’s like I’m turning on a spit over a fire with a rusty bar stuck through my insides. ‘I’ll be OK in a while. Will you fetch my baby now?’

‘Baby?’ She draws a lungful of smoke. Then, finally, ‘Your baby’s being looked after, love. It’s best that way for a while, until you’re both better.’

‘Is she sick? Can I see her?’

‘She’ll be fine but it’s best you let her rest. You need rest too, love.’ Her voice smoothes my pain and when my vision goes foggy, as if I’ve washed my eyes in milk, I reckon that she’s right. Ruby and I both need to rest. I trust this woman. She is nice.

We chat for a bit longer but then I need the toilet and when I stand up, the room dips and spins. Eventually, I make it to the hall and down a dark corridor to the loo. It’s a big old house, with tiled floors and not decorated very nicely but at least it’s a roof. I don’t notice much else because I’m in agony and when I pull down my pants, something bloody and sloppy falls out of me like the liver Mother used to buy from the butcher’s. The smell makes me retch and I yell out for Freda.

She takes me upstairs and gets me into a bed. She cleans me up and wipes my face with cold water. She presses her fingers all over my belly, sinking them deep into the empty pocket where a baby lived only a week ago. Each time I yelp she purses her lips and says, ‘Hmm.’ Then she asks if it’s hurting anywhere else and I tell her that my left tit is on fire. When she has a look at it, she gasps because it’s prickly red like a giant strawberry.

‘You’re a right mess, young lady,’ she says and makes me scared because I didn’t think I was. ‘Did the midwife check that the placenta came out properly?’

I stare up at her, my lips slightly apart. I feel like I did at school when I was asked a question and I hadn’t been listening. The teacher’s eyes would bore into me and the others would giggle. I shrug and take a quick glance around the bedroom. There are three other beds, each with white sheets and a yellow counterpane. A single light bulb hangs from the ceiling, too bright in my eyes, and the orange curtains are half closed. It’s cold, too. I remember the hostel that Rachel described when she ran away. Part of me wants to go home.

‘I don’t know,’ I whisper.

‘Did you have your baby in a hospital?’

‘At home,’ I say and then wish I hadn’t.

‘Where’s home?’

‘Further north.’ Not telling her any more.

‘Who helped you have your baby?’ Freda’s sitting on the bed now, her weight pulling me towards her.

‘No one. I gave birth alone.’ I screw up my eyes for a moment because I remember that Uncle Gustaw was there but I don’t want to tell her about him and his creepy hands slithering over my skin while I heaved and split like a wild animal.

‘You’ve got a uterine infection. It’s a bad one judging by the state you’re in. And to top it all, you’ve got mastitis. I’ll have to get you some antibiotics.’

‘The man said you were a nurse and would make me better.’ I’m glad she knows what I’ve got.

‘Becco said that? Nursemaid, more like.’ She grins. ‘To all our girls. I’ll get you some tablets to dry up your milk, too.You won’t need any while your baby’s being taken care of. It’s bed for you for a couple of days. Lucky I had a spare one, eh?’ Freda’s face opens up like a spring flower.

‘Oh yes,’ I say, thankful that she is going to make me well again so I can look after my baby properly. Thankful, too, that I have a bed and there are other girls in the house that I can make friends with. ‘I can really stay for a bit?’

‘I can’t turn you out onto the street, can I? Plus, if you’re a good girl, there’s a job waiting for you as well.You’ll have to earn your keep somehow.’ Freda strokes my forehead and tucks a strand of loose hair behind my ear. ‘Get a bit of sleep. I’ll get your medicine and then introduce you to the other girls later.’ She bends down and kisses my cheek. I don’t remember my mother ever doing that. I sleep for what seems like hours and I dream of trains and strawberries and hotels and jumping out of windows and the stench of smoky old London.

It’s the noise that wakes me. Clattering and swearing and banging and squealing like there’s a cat fight. The house rattles. A strange scent filters up from downstairs where all the fuss is taking place. It’s sugar candy and pink lipstick and high heels and sweat and tobacco and old shirts and Uncle Gustaw and something else that makes the spit in my mouth curdle sour. Could he be here?

My eyes won’t open properly but even so I sit up like a mole emerging from the earth, and feel around the bed for Ruby until I remember that they’re looking after her. Just looking after her, I tell myself over and over, and then Freda creeps into the room carrying a packet of pills. I open my eyes wide in case she’s bringing me my baby.

‘Did you get some sleep?’ She sits on the bed and hands me a glass of water and a tiny white pill. No baby. ‘You’ll need to take one of these four times a day for a week. I know a doctor. He said you’ll be right as rain in no time. In fact, you might meet him one day if you’re a good girl.’ Freda pops one between my lips and guides the water to my mouth. ‘The girls are going to eat. I’d like you to meet them before they go back to work again.’

‘Have you seen Ruby? Is she OK?’

Freda nods and smiles and I feel a little better although I’m still fuzzy from sleep. I get out of bed and the floor falls away from me and I have to lean on Freda as she takes me downstairs to meet her girls. I am back in the room with the fire.

I hadn’t noticed before but there is a table in the bay window with two wooden benches either side. On it, there is a loaf of sliced white bread spilling out of its wrapper and a huge tub of margarine with a knife stuck in the middle. There are no girls yet although I can hear a procession of noise in the corridor. I must look a state in my dirty clothes, my hair all sweaty from sleep and my body folded from pain.

The door opens and they shuffle into the room, each one bumping into the one in front when they stop dead at the sight of me. Everything goes silent and pairs of narrowing eyes focus on me. They flick up and down my broken body, assessing the threat of me, wondering if I am like them or better than them or worse than them. It’s just like at school. Just like the kids outside my window when I was pregnant. I am a car crash and they have all slowed for a look.

Becco is leaning against the mantelpiece, smoking, his slim hips silhouetted by the bank of red-hot coals, his jutting nose a crag in his sunken face. He sneers at me, or it could be a smile – I hope it’s a smile – and I see his dusty grey eyes flash to the line of girls. He jerks his head to the table and they slowly reanimate and drag themselves towards the table.