had a list of questions for the doctors, like whether they knew Mum was bereaved and not overweight, and if she ever actually said a word to them because she was pretty much silent at home. I wanted to ask them what happened next, but they couldn’t talk to me because I was a minor and it was all a big secret.
They didn’t know that I came with Mum every time because without me she wouldn’t even get there. It flew under their radar that I was the one making sure she arrived in one piece and behaved herself, not the other way round.
The waiting room was jammed with bored kids and posters about sexually transmitted diseases. There were polite notices everywhere that said if you punched any of the receptionists you were in big trouble. Mum was sitting next to me with her eyes closed and her nose and mouth buried in a scarf. It wasn’t even cold. Stroma was doing her best to play with three bits of Lego and a coverless book.
When they called Mum’s name over the loudspeakers, she ignored it. I watched her trying to disappear inside her own clothes.
Stroma said, “Mummy, that’s you,” and started pulling at her. The receptionists were watching.
The doctor’s voice came on again: “Jane Clark to Room 5.”
Stroma managed to pull Mum’s sleeve right over her hand, so her arm stayed somewhere inside her coat, lolling against her body, inert like the rest of her, hiding.
“Come on, Mum,” I said, pulling her towards her feet by her other hand. “You have to get up and see the doctor.”
We looked ridiculous, we must have done. Two kids trying to force a grown woman to move. In the end, somebody muttered into a phone and a doctor came down to take Mum upstairs.
“It’s not working,” I said to him. “Whatever you’re doing isn’t working!” And my voice got louder and angrier in the hush of the room. I sat back down and waited for people to stop staring. Stroma climbed on to my lap and put one arm round my neck. Part of me wanted to push her off and walk out. The other part kissed the top of her head and looked around.
And that’s when I saw him, the boy. He was sitting on a bench opposite and to my left, in the corner, and he was watching us.
Stroma must have felt me tense every muscle because she looked up at me and said, “What?”
I shook my head and said, “Nothing,” but I didn’t take my eyes from him because I couldn’t. He was wearing a black top with the hood up. He didn’t move when I saw him. He didn’t flinch or even blink. He didn’t look surprised. He smiled and I remembered the chip in his tooth. My face felt tight and clumsy, like someone else’s, so I didn’t smile back. I just rested my chin on Stroma’s head and carried on looking.
I knew I had to ask him about Jack’s picture. I knew this was my chance. I was working out what to say when the woman at the desk called out, “Harper Greene? Harper Greene? Can you fill in this form, please?” And the boy stood up.
At the same time, Mum came out, empty-faced, eyes dead ahead, and Stroma jumped off my lap. They headed for the door. I couldn’t let either of them cross the road without me.
“It’s just your address,” the woman with the clipboard was saying to the boy. “You haven’t put one down.”
He had an accent, American maybe. I hadn’t remembered that. “Market Road,” he said. “Number 71.”
And he looked straight at me when he said it.
Market Road is not the sort of road you stroll down lightly if you’re a girl. I said that to Bee as soon as she started her go-and-meet-this-Harper-Greene campaign on me. I reminded her that most of the girls walking down there were working pretty hard to pay off their drug debts.
She said, “Don’t walk then. Go on your bike if it makes you feel better.”
We were sitting under a tree in Regent’s Park, watching Sonny and Stroma fill a bin bag with conkers. Stroma liked being the oldest for once. She was ordering Sonny about like her life depended on it, doing quality control on his offerings, and he didn’t seem to mind one bit.
I’d been talking about the photo. I’d been telling Bee some stuff about Jack. I said, “I just don’t get how it could show up like that out of nowhere. It’s like he’s trying to tell me something. And I never thought I’d hear myself talk crap like that.”
“Maybe the boy knows, maybe he doesn’t. I just think you need to ask him.”
“I’m not going,” I said. Bee shrugged and stared up through the leaves. “I mean it,” I said. “I’m not going.”
“You’re chicken,” she said quietly, almost like she didn’t want me to hear. “You’re being a coward.”
I said she was right. I said I was a coward, a sensible one. Isn’t that what you’re told to be when you’re growing up and you’re a girl? Don’t go to chat rooms, don’t go out alone, don’t trust anyone, don’t talk to strangers and don’t meet them, ever. I’d had it drummed into me so hard, safety, safety, super safety, and I’d soaked it all up like a sponge. I hardly ever crossed a road unless the green man told me to. I didn’t sleep right if the door was unlocked or I knew there was a window open somewhere. I carried my keys, stuck out sharp between my knuckles, if I was out after dark; even if it was still daytime, even if it was just the walk home from school in winter. So why the hell would I send myself to that part of town to look for some strange boy I had no reason to trust?
I told Bee about the time me and Stroma were walking down the canal. We came round the corner on an empty path and ahead of us was a man, fishing. He was dressed like he’d seen too many war films, combats and dog tags and mirrored shades. He had a bare, bright white, too-bony chest and instantly I didn’t trust him. I got this picture of him in my head, slicing open a fish with a big glinting knife. I grabbed Stroma’s hand and ran back the way we’d come, looking behind me to see if he was chasing us, dragging my poor sister through nettles and dog shit. And he wasn’t, poor guy; he didn’t do anything.
“He was just fishing,” I said. “But I didn’t think so because I’m paranoid. That’s my point.”
Bee listened and she said she got it, the whole stranger-danger thing. She said it was good to be careful. She also said there was a big difference between being careful and being shit-scared of everything. She said, “Being afraid all the time is no way to live. What’s it going to be? A bomb? A dark alley? Some boy who picked up a photo off the floor? Do you think you can stop bad things happening to you just by fearing them?”
“No,” I said.
“Then why are you bothering?” she said. We were quiet for a minute, then she said, “He’s not some fifty-year-old bloke pretending to be a teenage girl on the Internet, Rowan.”
“I know that,” I said. “But he still might be an axe-wielding maniac.”
“Whatever,” Bee said. “He might also be a cool person. If you insist on never trusting all the people you haven’t met before, just because you’ve never met them, your world’s going to be a very lonely place.”
“I’ve got enough friends,” I said. “I’ve got loads.”
Bee laughed and said that was the saddest thing she’d ever heard. She changed the way she was sitting
