the school gates, her arms laden with books. She regarded him with wide, serious eyes.
‘No, thanks.’ She kept going.
Undeterred, he followed. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you home.’ He went to take the books off her and she flinched as though she’d been stung.
‘I said I can manage.’ Her green gaze stared at the ground, too afraid to look at him. But there was a catch to her voice that belied her assurance.
He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. I’m going this way anyway.’
She seemed to hesitate a moment. Then from nowhere a stampede of boys rushed past, knocking into her and sending her armful thumping to the ground. She stooped to gather the books, humiliation burning. The boys’ shouts faded into the distance.
Robbie knelt to help. ‘Jerks,’ he said.
He picked up one of the heavy tomes and flipped it over, scanning the spine. ‘You can’t be reading all these,’ he teased. When he passed them over he pretended not to notice the cut on her lip. Or the mottled grey bruise that wrapped itself round her delicate white wrist, visible when her sleeve pulled back.
The ghost of a smile. ‘I like stories,’ she said, brushing a lock of copper hair from her eyes. Getting to her feet, she gripped the books to her like armour.
They walked together for a while.
‘You don’t talk much,’ he observed.
She opened her mouth to think of an answer and he smoothly lifted the stack from her. Without it she looked defenceless, and folded and unfolded her arms as if she didn’t know what to do with them.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked, meeting his eye for the first time.
‘Doing what? ‘
‘Being nice to me.’ She couldn’t understand it. At seventeen Robbie Lewis was nearly three years older than her, clever and popular and handsome. His friends must have put him up to it–let the poor little orphan imagine for a second that she had a chance.
His expression was difficult to read. ‘What do you mean?’
Laura wasn’t stupid. Boys were only after one thing. She’d learned that from her own brother. Sometimes he brought a girl home after she’d gone to bed: she’d lie down in the darkness, listening to the filthy scrabble of rats and mice, and among them, below them, the weird frantic sounds coming from Lester’s room.
But if he didn’t go out it was worse. It meant he would stay with her, watching her sideways, and if he got drunk enough he would do that terrible thing and make her undress for bed in front of him. Just sitting there, not daring to touch, his lizard eyes soaking up every inch of her body. She, racked with shame, would stand shivering, with each shaky breath fighting the instinct to cover herself. But she knew she could not: one time she had put a hand on that part between her legs and Lester had hit her across the face, so hard she couldn’t hear properly for a week. And recently he had developed a taste for that.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being nice,’ said Robbie.
Tears sprang to Laura’s eyes and she turned her head so he couldn’t see.
Robbie kept pace as she quickened her step. ‘Wait up a second, what’s the big hurry?’
‘Just leave me alone.’
‘Hey, hang on—’
Abruptly she stopped.
‘I’m not interested,’ she said primly, sticking her chin in the air. ‘In what?’
‘You know.’
Robbie frowned. ‘Not really.’
Laura was so unlike all the other girls at school, those catty girls he’d heard gossiping in the corridor, saying mean things about her old clothes and her messy hair. She was a thousand times more lovely than they’d ever be. And yet his urge was to protect her, to look after her. He’d seen her walking with her head bowed; rigid, like with each step she defied collapse. He’d seen the sadness in her eyes.
And he knew why. He knew her brother was a drunk, a bully. A month back his father had returned from a business trip and Lester Fallon had started a brawl in the local bar–Vince had got caught up in it and come home with a black eye and a mouthful of blood. God only knew what he was doing to his little sister.
‘Well, anyway,’ she said. ‘You can forget it.’
Her defiance made him smile. Seeing this, she laughed a little. It was a clean, honest sound, he thought, straight as water.
He kept trying to glimpse her as they walked. Her hair was the colour of autumn, a fire at the corners of his vision. Her eyes were green, but darker in recent months, and there was something resilient about her stare, a belief that refused to be crushed.
When they reached the trailer park she stopped. He didn’t want to let her go, not back to that trailer and whatever was waiting for her there. But he didn’t know what to say to stop her. This was bigger than he was.
‘Thanks,’ she said, lifting the books from him.
He fumbled for words, knowing that whatever came out would be laced in pity. ‘You live here?’ he said at last.
Her gaze hardened. ‘Why? Not everyone can afford to live in a house like yours. ‘
Chastened, he went to apologise. Laura got there first.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean that. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘It’s not.’
A beat. ‘Yes, it is.’
She bent her head to the books and grazed the lip of one with hers. ‘I should go.’
‘Sure.’
There was a moment’s pause, before she gave him a brief, brave smile. It squeezed his heart. ‘See you at school.’
He watched her for a long while, picking her way across the scratched-out land towards her brother’s trailer.
Eventually she disappeared from sight.
‘If he touches her again,’ Robbie Lewis vowed, ‘God help me, I’ll kill him.’
