was more unwilling than usual to concentrate, and when the bell rang for morning break she found herself in the unfamiliar position of being by herself in the playground – clearly Carly and Anna were giving her a wide berth after this morning’s little outburst. On this occasion, she didn’t really mind. She kicked her heels around for a few minutes before she became aware of someone following her. Looking round, she saw little Jamie Brown. He was pretending not to notice Sadie, but she could tell that he knew she was there. ‘All right, Jamie?’ she called.
Jamie looked up and nodded at her; then he walked a little more quickly in her direction. As he approached, the unmistakable odour he carried with him assaulted Sadie’s senses.
It was hot. Most of the other children in the playground – Sadie included – were wearing T-shirts, but not Jamie. He had on his usual tatty corduroy trousers and thick, stained sweatshirt that was several sizes too small, and he looked stifled. As he fell in beside Sadie, he said nothing, and the two of them carried on walking in silence. As they walked, however, Sadie threw the occasional glance down at the younger boy.
‘Aren’t you hot in that top?’ she asked him finally.
Jamie shook his head, and clumsily pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt down further towards his wrists. As he did so, Sadie noticed something: just below where the cuff of his sweatshirt finished was what looked like a purple stain. For a moment she couldn’t work out what it was; then it struck her that it was a bruise. She stopped, and turned to take hold of his hand, but the sudden movement made her companion flinch and draw away.
‘Let us see your hand,’ she urged gently.
Jamie shook his head, and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment; but when Sadie made a second attempt to look at his wrist, he relented. She peeled back the dirty sleeve of his sweatshirt and he winced as she did so. She was horrified by what it concealed. The bruising continued all the way up his arm, and it was mottled and ugly. In places it was a deep almost-black; elsewhere it was yellow and faded. Sadie had no idea if it continued beneath the rest of his sweatshirt, and she couldn’t bear to ask. But she had to say something.
‘Who did it?’ she asked.
Jamie said nothing: his lips were pursed and he was shaking his head stiffly.
Sadie looked around her. She could see little groups of people looking in her direction and talking, so she put her hand round Jamie’s shoulders and moved him to a further corner of the playground.
‘Was it your mum?’ she asked the boy.
Jamie looked away. He hadn’t said yes, but it was acknowledgement enough for Sadie.
‘Why don’t you tell someone?’
Jamie shook his head.
‘I can tell someone for you, if you like. There’s that social worker who comes in sometimes. Or what about Miss Venables? She’s nice – ’
‘No!’ Jamie spoke forcefully. ‘I wish I never showed you now.’
He stomped off, but Sadie followed him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I won’t tell no one.’
Jamie stopped and looked at her with an anger that seemed almost comical on his tiny frame. But he couldn’t keep it up for long, and soon his gaze dropped back down to the ground again. ‘She’d only say it weren’t her,’ he muttered. ‘Any case,’ – his eyes flickered up to Sadie then back down again – ‘I don’t want her to get into trouble. And they’d only get me kicked out, wouldn’t they?’
Sadie felt a sudden pang of pity. The little boy’s plight made her own problems seem inconsequential; and without knowing quite how, she understood his desire to keep things to himself. Ever so gently, more out of a wish not to frighten him than not to hurt him, she rolled his sleeve back down so that the bruise was covered once more.
‘And anyway,’ Jamie continued with a weak smile, ‘I have told someone, ain’t I?’
Sadie looked at him in confusion. ‘Who?’
‘You,’ the little boy said, and he wandered away into the heart of the playground, ignoring the unkind comments from the children he passed.
‘Why?’ Sadie watched her mum wiping down the kitchen surfaces, and wondered why she wouldn’t catch her eye.
‘Because we need the money, Sadie,’ Jackie replied irritably. ‘Stop asking so many stupid questions.’
It was three weeks since Allen had moved in, and apart from that first night he appeared barely to have left the house. The sitting room had become his domain, where he would sit on the settee, his legs stretched out in front of him, the TV remote never far away. And since his arrival, the room had become immaculate – not just the room, in fact, but the whole house. Sadie found it weird: for as long as she could remember she had lived in a chaotic house, and her mother was not one for tidying up and cleaning. But one look from Allen seemed to be enough for her to clear up a dirty coffee cup or wipe crumbs from the now perpetually empty kitchen table. Sadie herself had always kept her room tidy, but since Allen’s reprimand about the dirty plate on his first morning, she had been extra fastidious. There was no way she was going to give him an excuse to tell her off again.
‘But you’re always saying there’s no point you getting a job. What about your benefits?’
Sadie heard her mum start to swear under her breath. ‘For fuck’s—’ But then she checked herself, and turned to her daughter. ‘It’s more complicated than that, Sadie. Grown-up stuff, OK? I’ve got a job in a pub up the road, and that’s that.’
At the word ‘pub’, Sadie’s stomach gave a little lurch. Whatever else she thought of Allen, she had to be thankful that he seemed to have got her mum off the booze. The ciggies too, although she knew from the smell on her mum’s clothes and skin that she still had the occasional crafty fag outside, despite Allen’s ban on smoking in the house. The idea of Mum working in a pub filled Sadie with a sudden fear that she would slide back into her old ways.
‘But he doesn’t do anything,’ Sadie complained, ‘apart from watch the telly.’ She kept her voice low so that Allen wouldn’t hear her in the next room. ‘Why can’t he be the one to go out to work? Why does it have to be you?’
Still Jackie refused to look directly at her daughter, and she avoided her questions. ‘You’ll just have to get used to it, Sadie. Lots of mums go out to work.’
‘But—’
‘No buts, Sadie.’ Allen spoke quietly from the doorway to the sitting room. Sadie and Jackie both turned their heads to look at him at the same time, and waited for him to speak again. ‘Have you thought that your mam might actually want to go out to work, Sadie? You shouldn’t be so selfish.’
Sadie jutted her chin out forcefully, but she didn’t reply.
‘Tell her, Jackie,’ Allen instructed.
Jackie hesitated, but kept her eyes on him. ‘It’ll be nice for me,’ she said in a slightly monotone voice, ‘to get out of the house and all.’
‘Just
