Drive me up the wall.
These were all things I’d heard Mrs de Vito say to Honey. When she’d had too much to drink she actually used to jeer at her. Make fun of her.
“Look at it! Great lumping thing! Can’t even walk straight.” And then she’d imitate Honey moving across the room, bumping into chairs and knocking stuff over. “What’s the matter with you? You got cerebral palsy, or something?”
She could be really nasty. Sometimes she used to try and rope me in. She’d look at me and roll her eyes, like she was expecting me to agree with her. I hated it when she did that! It made me feel so bad for Honey. I mean, they were cruel, the things she said. She didn’t deserve Honey being so loyal! Maybe, in spite of everything, Honey still loved her; I guess it’s always possible. I just don’t know. But I honestly did feel she had to get away, I really did! I wasn’t only thinking of me. At least, I don’t think I was.
That evening, I sat upstairs in my bedroom laying trails of bread crumbs…all the way to Glasgow! First off, I doodled hearts and flowers all over my school books, with the name DUNCAN in big capitals. (I chose Duncan rather than ferret face. I couldn’t stand the thought of being linked with ferret face!) Then I took our surnames, McAleer and Rutherford, and crossed out all the letters we had in common. Precisely two! I’d have been in despair if he’d really been my boyfriend.
I got a bit carried away with the doodling. I was still at it when Mum and Dad got home from the shop (the Steeple Norton Mini Mart. Oh, please!) and I had to go downstairs and report on school and whether I’d done my homework. It was like the Spanish Inquisition every night. Dad used to say, “This doesn’t please me any more than it pleases you.” He never did it with Kirsty because Kirsty could be trusted. She’d never bunked off school or failed to hand in her homework three weeks running. But all that had been back in the winter term! Back when I was still mates with Darcy. It was very belittling that Dad still kept grilling me.
I told him that I was doing my homework. Dad said, “You’d better be.” I said, “I am!” and went rushing back upstairs to scatter more bread crumbs. I would look up train times! On the computer, Birmingham to Glasgow. I knew the first thing the police would do when they started to investigate would be to take away the computer and examine it. They can find out all sorts of things, from a computer. Just to make sure, I even went to Google and put in the word “Glasgow”, so they’d think I’d been looking at the map. I’d have liked to put in Stonebridge Park, which was where Darcy had gone to live with her sister. I knew that Stonebridge Park was in London, and I knew you could get there on a tube train, cos Darcy had told me. She had said it was totally brilliant.
“You can be in the West End in thirty minutes!”
I wasn’t bothered about trains from Birmingham; I knew there were plenty of those, all times of the day. Money was the real problem. I had some saved up in a piggy bank-an old china pig with a slit in its back, which had belonged to one of my nans when she was a girl-and I thought I probably had enough for a single fare to London, but it wasn’t going to leave very much over. What did other kids do when they ran away? Did they steal off their parents? I couldn’t steal off mine, or only very tiny amounts. Dad didn’t believe in having large sums of money lying around. He’d been robbed twice at the shop and it had made him very grim. But I didn’t think most people would exactly have fortunes waiting to be taken, so what did kids do? I had a sneaking suspicion that maybe they went on the streets and begged, or even worse, they sold themselves. I wouldn’t want to do that! No way!
I decided not to think about it. As I’d said to Honey, you can’t plan everything in advance. Sometimes, you just have to wait and see what happens.
That’s the good thing about fantasies. If there’s a part you can’t work out, you just skate over it and move on to the next bit.
It was still a fantasy. But growing more and more real, every day.
Next morning, at school, Marnie comes up to me and says, “Hey! Wanna know something?” So I’m like, “Yeah, what?” She tells me that this boy, Rory Mansell, that’s in Year 10, has a thing about me. She knows this cos she’s going out with Jason Dobbs that’s also in Year 10. She says Rory told Jason in the hope that he would tell Marnie and Marnie would tell me, and then maybe I would—
Would what? Marnie giggles and says, “Ask him if he’d like to go on a date?”
I think to myself that if Rory Mansell wants to go on a date he could ask me himself, but Marnie says he’s too shy. I say in that case he’s a wimp.
“He’s not a wimp,” says Marnie, “he’s just scared you’ll turn him down.” Then she tells me off for being prejudiced and says, “He’s actually quite nice.”
He’s not bad, I agree, but as I explain to Marnie, I don’t really fancy him. Marnie says, “So who do you fancy? You haven’t been out with anyone for ages! You’ll get out of the habit if you’re not careful. People’ll start thinking you’re a lesbian!”
I say, “Now who’s being prejudiced?” And then, without any warning, I hear myself blurt out, “There is someone I fancy!”
“Oh?” Marnie spins round. All ears. “Who’s that, then?”
“This boy I met. In Birmingham. Me and Honey, we bumped into them, there were two of them, they were down here from Glagow and we all got talking and—”
My voice burbles on. It’s got a will of its own. I can’t control it, it’s gone mad! Now it’s telling Marnie how me and this boy have been speaking on the phone every week. We’ve been texting, we’ve been emailing. We fancy each other like crazy.
Marnie says, “Wow! What’s his name? How old is he? Gimme, gimme, I want to know!”
I say that I can’t give her his name. “It’s a secret!”
Marnie says, “Why? Is he someone famous?”
I struggle with a momentary temptation to say yes, but manage to resist it. I say no, he’s not famous, he’s just an ordinary boy.
“So why’s it a secret?”
“Cos he’s a secret! I shouldn’t ever have mentioned him. I don’t want Dad finding out! You know what my dad’s like. He nearly went ballistic that time I went out with Soper. He did go ballistic!”
Marnie says, “Yeah, well…Soper.” She then agrees with me, however, that my dad is impossible. “I’m surprised he even lets you have a mobile phone.”
I say, “He wouldn’t, if he had his way. It’s only cos of Mum.”
“I bet he checks on your calls!”
I mutter darkly that nothing would surprise me. “It’s like living under a dictator.”
“So what you gonna do?” says Marnie. “About this boy?”
I tell her that I don’t yet know. “But if things get much worse, with my dad—”
“What? What?” She’s all breathless and eager. “What d’you reckon you’ll do?”
I say, “Something desperate!”
I spend the rest of the day trying to decide whether I’ve finally flipped and started to believe my own fantasies, or whether
