Lily Alone Read online

  Baxter squealed and I shook him and then dropped him carefully on the bed.

  ‘Me now, me now!’ Pixie squealed.

  ‘Don’t do me, please don’t!’ said Bliss.

  ‘Yeah, but where will we go?’ Baxter persisted, his voice muffled by the pillow.

  ‘Well, we’ll go to the adventure playground,’ I said.

  Baxter cheered, but Bliss looked worried.

  ‘What about the big boys?’

  The last time we’d gone there after school there were seven or eight boys hanging out there, drinking and smoking and swearing as they mucked about in the kids’ den. Baxter had run up the ramp fearlessly to join them, but they’d thrown a lager can at him and pushed him over. I’d gone to rescue him and they’d thrown cans at me too, and said all sorts of horrid stuff. When I got all the kids home I’d sworn we’d never go there again – though Baxter moaned and complained, saying he wanted to go and play with the big boys.

  ‘The big boys won’t be there just now,’ I said.

  ‘Will they be at school?’ Bliss asked.

  I nodded, though I was pretty sure they weren’t the sort of boys who went to school. Still, I knew they stayed up half the night, so they’d likely be fast asleep till lunchtime.

  ‘And we’re really really really not going to school?’ said Bliss. ‘Won’t we get into trouble?’

  ‘No, I told you, we’re on holiday. Now all go and get dressed. Pixie, I’d better dunk you in the bath.’

  I served them cereal for breakfast and I let them put extra sugar on their Frosties. While they were all happily crunching away in the kitchen I went into the living room and picked up the phone. I dialled Mum’s mobile. I wasn’t going to tell her about Mikey. I just wanted to tell her we were all OK – and I needed to check she was fine too. But dialling didn’t get me anywhere. I just heard a recorded message: I’m sorry, it has not been possible to connect your call.

  I tried again, just to check, and got the same message. Mum must have her mobile switched off. Too busy with Gordon, I thought, clenching my fists.

  ‘Lily?’ Bliss was standing at the door.

  I slammed the phone down quickly.

  ‘Were you ringing Mum?’ Bliss whispered.

  ‘She’s having a lovely time on holiday and says she hopes we’re having a happy holiday too,’ I said quickly. ‘Bliss, you’ve got bright purple lips.’

  ‘Baxter poured us some Ribena.’

  ‘You’re meant to dilute it. Haven’t you lot had enough sugar? Your teeth will be black by the time Mum comes back.’

  ‘Lily, is mum coming back?’

  ‘Of course she is,’ I said, and I made myself laugh. ‘Honestly, Bliss, you’re hopeless. You always have to get in such a state over things. You’re such a baby!’

  I was being horrible to her simply because she’d said aloud the thing that was starting to worry me dreadfully. It made me feel momentarily better to pour scorn on her. It was as if I was mocking my own worries and it might help make them go away. But then I saw Bliss’s poor little face, her eyes watery with tears, and I felt terrible.

  I flew across the room and put my arms round her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t cry. I don’t know how I could have been so horrid. Here, Bliss, you get your own back. Say something really mean and spiteful to me.

  Go on, say it.’

  Bliss fidgeted. ‘Come on, Bliss.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything,’ she said. ‘But don’t be cross again, Lily, please.’

  ‘It’s OK. I promise I won’t be cross again.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘Well. I can’t really promise that.’

  ‘All right, promise you won’t be cross again this week,’ said Bliss.

  ‘I promise,’ I said, and we stood quietly together, still hugging hard.

  Then I heard a great swooshing sound from the kitchen. It sounded horribly like someone tipping the whole jumbo packet of Frosties onto a plate.

  ‘I will get cross with Baxter though,’ I said, running into the kitchen. ‘Baxter, for goodness’ sake. Tip them back in the packet.’

  ‘I wanted to see how many bowlfuls there were,’ he said. ‘I’m still hungry.’

  ‘No, you’re not, you’re greedy. Come on, help me clear up, you lot, then we’ll go to the adventure playground.’

  Baxter made himself scarce at once, and I had to stop Pixie helping after she dropped a plate, but Bliss was very obliging.

  ‘Good girl, Bliss. You can take Headless to the playground.’

  Headless was Bliss’s favourite cuddly teddy. She slept with him in her arms but Mum never let her take him out because he looked so awful. He used to be called Whitey because he was a polar bear, but now he was a sickly yellow-grey. He really was headless. Baxter had tried to tug him out of Bliss’s grasp and his head had come right off. Mum had tried to sew it back on but she couldn’t stitch it tight enough. His head wobbled alarmingly and fell off again when we were crossing a road – and a car ran over it. Mum wanted to put the rest of Headless in the bin but Bliss wouldn’t hear of it. She loved him more than ever now he was mangled.

  ‘I want my teddy,’ said Pixie.

  ‘Yes, we can take all the teddies – we can have a teddy bears’ picnic!’

  I wrapped all the battered animals in Pixie’s old cot blanket and took the rest of the Frosties, a packet of Jammy Dodgers and a bottle of Coke from the kitchen. Pixie ran along beside me, wanting to add all sorts of weird stuff.

  ‘Let’s take a chair for all the teddies to sit on! Let’s take the teapot so the mummy teddy can have tea! Let’s take the washing-up bowl so we can do the washing up! Oh, let’s take the washing-up squirty thing so we can make bubbles!’

  Bliss and Baxter could barely talk when they were Pixie’s age, they just mumbled together in their own twin language. I started to wish Pixie was a twin too – she was like a little woodpecker drilling into my brain. Still, it stopped me thinking too much. I was learning that the trick to stop feeling scared was to keep busy busy busy.

  So I carted the teddies and their picnic to the door and sent the kids off to the toilet to do a wee because I didn’t want to get all the way to the playground and then have to trail back almost immediately because of an urgent call of nature. I was actually pulling the front door shut behind us when I suddenly stiffened. The door key! I felt sick. The flats seemed to slip sideways, as if there was a sudden earthquake in south-west London.

  Mum had gone off with her handbag – and the keys were in a little pouch inside. Had she taken them with her? I rushed back inside, leaving Baxter and Bliss playing with the fork-lift truck, while Pixie started setting up a preliminary picnic on the doorstep. I looked on the coffee table, on the kitchen worktop, in all Mum’s drawers in the bedroom. I couldn’t find a spare key anywhere.

  Mikey still had a set of keys, I knew that, and hated the way he could burst in on us any time he wanted. But he was in Glasgow now, so couldn’t help out.

  What were we going to do? We couldn’t stay stuck inside the flat till the weekend. And what if Mum didn’t come back then?

  I knew you could get new keys made, but you had to have another set to copy. You could get a whole new lock with a set of new keys – folk were doing it all the time on our estate to keep people out – but that cost a lot of money. We didn’t have any money, apart from a few pennies to rattle in an old piggy bank.

  ‘Come on, Lily, we want to go to the playground!’ Baxter shouted.

  ‘The bears are hungry, They’re growling, grrr, grrr, grrr,’ said Pixie.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I said.

  I couldn’t keep them in. They’d be like wild bears themselves by lunchtime.

  I put the door on the latch and pulled it closed. I looked up and down the balcony to see if anyone was watching. If any kids saw they could get in they’d steal stuff and trash the flat. I stood biting my thumbnail. Still, we didn’t really have any stuff worth stealing. And the thre