Chapter FIVE
A MONTH AFTER THE MOVE, WE WERE IN THE MIDST OF A SUMMER that brought almost as much rain as it did sunshine. Although my father had managed to complete several makeshift repairs, there was still a bucket on the stairway and a leak from the bathroom ceiling into the bathtub. He seemed to have lost all enthusiasm for his planned renovations, probably because my mother, contrary to his hopes, had failed to find an interest that would propel her back to life. Almost every night he muttered about how he’d soon get round to fixing something, but instead he spent most of his time hidden behind the Hull Daily Mail or yelling at the BBC News. He even yelled about the epidemic of Dutch elm disease, the blight that was killing off millions of elm trees all over Britain and, I realized, explained the dead or dying trees I had noticed patterning the landscape around Midham.
If my mother happened to be in the room, she nodded vigorously at my father’s outbursts. But most of the time she was off somewhere else, pacing the bare boards of the upstairs bedrooms or wandering the back garden in the rain. I tried to keep track of her movements, but it wasn’t always easy. Often, I’d simply sit on the settee in the living room, anxious and afraid, knowing that I really had no idea how to stop her trying to kill herself or being taken off to Delapole again. Finally, tired of worrying, I decided to focus on something I could control.
“Mum, we’ve got to start unpacking,” I announced one weekday afternoon. After searching the house, I’d finally found her in the bathroom, peering into the mirror above the sink as she plucked her eyebrows and ate a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
“I don’t see why,” she said, her breath clouding the mirror as she leaned toward it, tweezers in one hand, sandwich in the other. As I watched her, I wondered if it was possible to inflict any significant self-injury with a pair of eyebrow tweezers. “What do we need to unpack for?”
We were hardly more moved in than on the day we’d arrived. There were boxes everywhere, in leaning piles against the walls or stacked haphazardly in the middle of almost every room. Nothing had been labeled, and it was impossible to find anything. I felt too overwhelmed to try to unpack while also trying to take care of my mother, but if I got her to help me I could do both things at once, and perhaps forcing her into some activity would improve her mood.
“We’ve been here long enough,” I said, trying not to wince as she yanked out another hair. “It’s time we settled in.”
“Well, I never wanted to move here in the first place. It was all your father’s idea.” She turned around and took a huge bite of her sandwich. Brown chunks of Branston Pickle dropped onto the floor.
“Come on, Mum. If we do it together, it’ll be much quicker. What do you think?”
“Oh, all right.”
I was delighted. I hadn’t expected her to be so amenable. Unfortunately, my excitement didn’t last very long, since I soon realized that my mother’s idea of unpacking involved carrying each item—a book, a cup, or one of the menagerie of glass animals she had made a shortlived but nevertheless exhaustive hobby of collecting—singly to its designated place. I had never seen anyone move so slowly. By the end of the day, when I had managed to empty more than half a dozen boxes, my mother had unpacked one. “Make us a cup of tea, could you, love?” she said, dropping into one of the armchairs shortly before my father was due to return home from work. “I’m jiggered.”
The following day, she refused to help at all, saying that all the work she did the previous day had strained her back. She lay on the settee watching television, and when I started to unpack another box, pulling plates and cups from scrunched-up newspaper, she protested that I was giving her a headache by making so much noise.
“I don’t think my nerves can take all that clattering about,” she said, pressing her hands against her temples. “I’ll end up in bloody Delapole if you carry on doing that.”
I had no choice other than to stop.
Now, in addition to worrying about my mother, I began to worry that we would spend the rest of our lives living out of boxes, scrambling every night to find the colander to drain the water from my overboiled potatoes (I was the only one doing the cooking) or eating with plastic knives and forks because we still couldn’t locate the cutlery. I imagined never finding my Scrabble or books or felt-tip pens ever again, never having enough underwear because most of it was still packed, and having to watch over my mother until I finally became old enough to legally leave home.
That evening, I tried to talk with my father about it when he sat down in front of the television after work. But when I broached the matter he wasn’t concerned. “Children are starving in Africa,” he said, pointing to the pictures on the news of emaciated babies, their stomachs bloated like overinflated balloons. “At least you’ve got three square meals and a roof over your head.”
“That’s right,” said my mother, appearing in the doorway so suddenly that she made both me and my father jump. “We had to live on rations when we were kids. The first time I saw chocolate, I was ten years old. You should think yourself fortunate, shouldn’t she, Mike?”
“Yes, she should,” my father muttered.
“You kids don’t know how lucky you are these days.” She was standing in the middle of the room now, wagging her finger at me and looking far more animated than she had in ages. I wasn’t sure whether to take this as a good sign. “Bloody spoiled, you are,” she said, moving toward me, stabbing her index finger into my chest.
I stepped backward and tried to shrug her off. “Stop it,” I said. “I wasn’t even talking to you in the first place; I was talking to Dad.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that, you little bugger!” she yelled, outraged.
“Why the hell not?” I was surprised at my response, the words spilling out like untamed thoughts. “I’m the one who’s trying to keep some bloody order around here. I’m the one who’s trying to get us moved in. While you”—I pointed at her—“all you do is sit around and complain.”
“I’ve told you!” my mother shrieked, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “Don’t use that bloody tone with me! I am still your mother, you know! Tell her, Mike, tell her I’m still her mother.”
He was still watching the news, where Princess Anne, looking crisp and concerned in a nicely pressed safari suit, moved between crowds of big-eyed starving mothers and babies. He seemed so absorbed in these images that it was as if he were simultaneously inhabiting a place far away, a place where people talked in hushed BBC tones and even dying was reported on stiffly, without emotion.
“Mike!” My mother yelled so loud that it made the windows shudder. “Can you sodding well tell her!”
“Bloody bitch,” my father said. For a moment, it wasn’t clear whom this comment was directed at. My mother’s lips tightened and she eyed him nervously. But then he added, “Bloody stuck-up bitch,” and we realized he meant Princess Anne. Then he turned toward us. “Yes, she’s still your mother,” he muttered. My mother, her mouth pushed into a tight little bud, gave me a satisfied nod.
I found myself wondering if there had been some doubt about this matter, as if recent events should have been reason to question this biological fact that I had so often wished myself able to undo. “Of course she’s still my bloody mother,” I said.
“Now, you watch your language, young lady,” my father warned.
“Yes, you bloody well watch your language,” my mother echoed, apparently triumphant that she had got my father so easily on her side.
I could feel the heat of tears behind my eyes, the wetness in my throat, the mad thrumming of my heart in my chest. “I don’t care,” I said. And then, to emphasize my point, “I don’t sodding well care. I’m sick of it. Sick of everything. And you,” I said, pointing at my mother again. “If you want me to treat you like my mother, maybe you should start acting like one. If not, maybe you should go back to the loony bin, where you belong.”
For several seconds, neither of my parents said anything, and all of us were hurled into a taut silence. I looked at their faces, which were utterly still, as if they had been slammed against thick panes of glass. No one moved. No one said anything. I felt an icy dread spread from my stomach throughout my body. Then the newsreader said chirpily, “And now on to news at home,” and the spell was broken. My father blinked, my mother’s lips started to twist and tighten. I tried to imagine myself shrinking.
“Did you hear that?” she screamed. “Did you bloody well hear that?”
My father sighed and pushed himself out of his armchair. He walked toward me.
“You’d better teach her a bloody lesson!” my mother yelled.
“Don’t you ever talk to your mother like that,” he said, his tone so dull and flat that I could barely hear him above the sounds of the television. And then he hit me. A single, hard slap across my cheek that sent me reeling backward into the wall. I saw light and crimson. I tasted the stickiness of my own saliva. I felt the sting of skin hitting skin, the slam of my backbone against the wall. “Now get upstairs, before I give you a damn good hiding,” he said, already making his way back to his chair.
“I’M GOING OUT.” It was early the next morning and I’d been standing in the hallway, waiting for my father to come out of the bathroom. He’d emerged in a cloud of thick white steam. “I’m not looking after her all the time.” I gave a disdainful nod toward the door of my parents’ bedroom, where my mother was still sleeping. “It’s just not fair,” I concluded, folding my arms and pressing them hard against my chest.
“I know, love. I know.” He put a hand up to his damp, flushed cheek—the same gesture I had made after he had hit me the previous evening. The movement made my fury at him burn all over again.
“I don’t care if she ends up in the hospital. I don’t care if she goes away for the rest of her life. Why couldn’t they just have kept her there?” If she’d stayed in Delapole, the doctors and nurses would have to watch her. I could get on with my life without having to worry all the time. I could have kept on imagining for myself a breezy world-cruising mother.
“Now, love, don’t go talking that way.” He looked nervously toward the bedroom door. “I know you don’t mean it.”
Perhaps I didn’t, but I was no longer sure. Right then, I would have done anything to live alone with my father, with his quiet predictability. The few times he’d hit me, it had been only at my mother’s prompting. “That child needs to be taught a lesson,” she’d say, and then my father would dutifully deliver the blow.
“Look,” he said, “why don’t you let me get dressed and I’ll come downstairs in a minute. We can have a little chat before I leave.”
“All right,” I said, determined not to be talked out of my decision. I couldn’t bear even one more day confined there with my mother. Besides, ever since I’d met up with Amanda, I’d been itching to get out and see if I could bump into her again.
“That’s better,” he said. “Be a good girl and go and make a pot of tea, can you?”
He opened the bathroom door again, and I found myself immersed in steam, the lathery smells of soap and shaving lotion. I stood for a moment, my eyes closed, breathing them in, caught in a sudden stream of memory, remembering how, when I was small, I loved to watch my father shave. It was like witnessing a special, one-person ceremony, and I’d try every morning to wake up early enough so that I could follow him into the bathroom, sit down on the closed lid of the toilet, and take the whole thing in. I couldn’t wake early enough every day, but when I did I’d feel an elated, nervous excitement as I tugged on my father’s paisley-patterned pajamas. “Can I watch, Daddy?” I’d say.
“‘Course you can, pet,” he’d reply, closing the door behind me, sealing us together in those scents.
There was something about the measured precision it took, his moving the razor through the soapy white foam, skin held taut and still as he cut the shadow of bristly whiskers from his face. On weekends, when he had more time in the morning, he’d let me stand beside him on a stool that he took from my mother’s dressing table. He’d lift me there, and I’d stare at my own reflection as he soaped up my face with his soft-bristled shaving brush. He’d give me an old razor, with the blade removed, and together we’d watch ourselves in the mirror and shave. “There you go,” he’d say, after I’d rinsed my face in warm water and patted my cheeks with his Old Spice aftershave. “Nice and smooth and ready to kiss your mummy.” And then we’d rub our cheeks together, soft skin against soft skin.
THE NEWSREADER ANNOUNCED that a bomb in Belfast had killed two British soldiers, another thousand steelworkers were to be laid off, and the miners were threatening to go on strike again.
“What’s the world coming to, eh?” my father asked, shaking his head, pressing the rim of his teacup to his lips.
I nodded and sighed, as if I felt equally world-weary. I wanted to care more about industrial strife and the war in Northern Ireland, but all I really cared about was what was happening in our house. “I’m going out today, Dad,” I said.
“I know, love. I know you can’t watch your mother all the time. It’s not right, not for a girl your age. But, Jesse …”
“What?”
“Just try not to aggravate her.”
“I never try to aggravate her. She just gets aggravated.”
“You know how easily she gets upset. Just try not to bother her, okay?”
“Okay,” I said flatly. “I’ll try.”
“Thanks, love.”
“Dad,” I said, looking at him timidly.
“What?” He glanced at his watch. I could tell he was ready to leave, already eager to be out the door and have done with our conversation. “Are you going to repair the house?”
He grimaced. “I already told you I’m going to fix it. Who do you think I am, bloody Superman?”
“No, it’s just that—”
“I know, I know. The place is a bloody pigsty.” He checked his watch again, put his teacup on the counter, and began adjusting the knot of his tie. “Look, if you promise to be good, not to bother your mother and not cause any trouble, I’ll start work on the house again. How’s that sound?”
“All right,” I said, smiling.
“Good. Well, I’m glad we can at least agree on something. So no talking back, none of your cleverness. You understand me?”
“Yes, Dad. I understand.”
FOR ONCE, IT WAS sunny, the sky a pale blue, patterned by smudges of white cloud, their shadows shifting across the ground, changing the colors of the fields as they moved. Everything tasted clear and damp, and the air was filled with a ripe, earthy smell. It made me want to breathe deep, as if I could take the freshness of the morning inside me and push out all the stale air I’d inhaled inside the house.
It was a fifteen-minute walk into the village. When I got there, I walked purposefully past the short string of shops—the Co-op, the launderette, and the newsagent’s on the corner—and past a series of little streets—Buttercup Close, Daffodil Gardens, and, finally, Marigold Court—that made up the Primrose Housing Estate. Each of them was lined with neat semidetached houses, almost exactly like the house I had fantasized for my own family, with orange bricks and tidy squares of lawn in the front. Some of them even had pansies in the borders; others had evenly spaced rosebushes drooping with the weight of redolent blooms. Marigold Court was a cul-de-sac at the edge of the estate, and the houses at the end of the street backed onto a grassy field.
It was just after ten o’clock, and the street was completely quiet. As I walked slowly along the pavement, I examined each house to see if it might hold a clue that would tell me if Amanda lived there. But each of them was essentially identical, the only differences being the color of the front doors, the pattern of the net curtains, and the length of the grass on the front lawns.
I began to feel foolish for having come here. What had I been expecting, that Amanda would see me and spring gleefully through her front door to greet me? She probably wouldn’t recognize me, anyway. She was too old and too pretty to be interested in making friends with someone like me. Besides, she lived here, in this neat little haven, while I occupied a ridiculous shambles that would never be repaired.
“You looking for something?”
I almost bumped into the girl before I noticed her. She stood, arms crossed over her chest, bony hip stuck out at an angle, eyebrows raised in truculent expectation of an answer.
“I, er, I just moved here. I’m just looking around.”
“Hmmph,” she snorted, eyebrows still raised. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She had big cheeks, a small mouth, a perky little nose, and long-lashed brown eyes—a combination of features that left her in the uncertain territory between plain and pretty. “I was exploring.”
“What, like Christopher Columbus?” Her tone was sharp.
“No.” I shook my head. “I was just trying to get the lay of the land.”
“Lay of the land?”
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant. I’m not stupid, you know.”
“I know. I didn’t mean to—”
“You moved into Johnson’s house, didn’t you?”
“Johnson’s house?”
“Yeah, Johnson’s house—the one that’s falling down, on the main road out of the village. Geoffrey Johnson used to live there.”
“He did?” My curiosity about the previous occupant of our house overcame my nervousness. “Did he die there?” I asked, imagining him an old man expiring in one of our bedrooms, leaving behind the disheveled chaos.
“No. He used to own the fish-and-chip shop in Reatton. But then he bought a villa in Marbella. Been living there the last five years.”
“Oh.” Somehow the idea that the previous owner of our house had escaped to the heat and sunshine of Spain seemed particularly unfair.
“That place has been empty since he left. Nobody wanted to buy it. Until you moved in, that is.”
“Oh,” I said again. It was no wonder the house was in such disrepair. And if no one else wanted it, everyone in the village must have thought my father was a fool for buying it. We’d been here just a month and already we were probably a local laughingstock. So much for making a new start.
“Want a piece of chewy?” she asked after digging about in one of the appliquéd pockets of her wide-flared trousers and pulling out a packet of Wrigley’s spearmint gum.
“Thanks,” I said. I watched her take a piece, rip open the foil and paper packaging, toss it onto the ground, and pop the sliver of gum into her mouth. I did the same.
“So, what’s your name?” she asked, chewing open-mouthed so that I could see the gum rolling over her teeth as she spoke.
“Jesse. Jesse Bennett.”
“My name’s Tracey Grasby. But my friends call me Trace.” She said this in a tone that conveyed that I was definitely not to consider myself in this category. She snapped her gum a couple of times, then walked a few steps over to the fence in front of the nearest house and perched herself there. “Where did you move from, anyway?” she asked, resting her feet, in shiny black sandals with thick platform soles, on the lowest rail of the fence. Her feet were bare under the sandals, and her toenails were painted pink. I looked down at my own feet, housed in a pair of ragged white plimsolls, my ankle socks sagging listlessly, as if wilted by the sudden summer heat.
“We moved from Hull,” I said.
“Really? We lived in Goole before we moved here. I didn’t like it there much. But it’s worse here. It’s really boring.” She gave me a derisive look that suggested that, despite the fact that I was new to the village, I should still be considered part of its unrelenting tedium. “We moved here three years ago, when my dad got a job in Bleakwick. Want to watch out for my dad. Says we’ve got to keep up the area, don’t want strangers lurking about. He’s liable to call the coppers on you. Either that or he’ll knock you for six.”
“I wasn’t lurking about, I was—”
“Getting the lay of the land. I heard you the first time.”
I felt myself blush again. As soon as I could reasonably extract myself from this conversation, I decided, I would go straight back home. I didn’t care if I had to spend every day of the summer with my mother; it would certainly be preferable to being under the scrutiny of this girl.
“Anyway, how old are you?” she asked.
“Thirteen.”
“Big for thirteen, aren’t you?”
“I’m tall for my age,” I said. Everyone commented on it. My mother, especially, was always complaining about how I just kept on growing. “Got the same big bones as our Mabel,” she’d say as she searched fruitlessly in the sale racks for something that would fit me. Then, gesturing toward my slightly mounded chest, she’d add, “At least we can thank God you’re not taking after her in the bust department. You don’t want to be stuck carrying those things around with you for the rest of your life,” as if Mabel’s breasts were two overladen shopping bags that she’d surely choose to put down if only she had enough sense.
Tracey was remarkably thin, but, unlike me, her body curved from waist to hip, and her breasts strained against the tight fabric of her T-shirt.
“When’s your birthday?” she asked. “March.”
“I’m going to be fourteen in September, so I’m older than you, but we’ll still be in the same year. It’s not fair, but it works out that way. We’ll be third years. That means we’ll get to go first for school dinner twice a week. When I was a second year, we only went in first once.”
She seemed to think this was an important distinction, and it made me wonder what I should expect of the school dinners at my new school. At my old school, Knox Vale, where Spam fritters, liver and onions, and spotted dick were considered the menu’s delicacies, I’d never been in a hurry to get to the dining hall.
“I can’t wait to leave school,” Tracey continued. “I want to be a secretary. I’m going to take shorthand and typing. You can earn good money being a secretary, you know.”
I nodded in hearty agreement, though I’d always thought that typing and answering phones all day would be downright boring. I could think of a hundred jobs I’d rather do.
“Of course, that’ll only be until I get married. Then I’m going to have three kids. A girl and two boys. What do you want to do when you leave school?”
“I want to go to university.”
“Oh. A brainbox, then, are you?” She fixed me with a narrow-eyed stare.
“No,” I said, immediately regretting this confession. “Why do you want to go to university, then?”
“I want to go to London.” For a long time now, I’d known that I wanted to live in London. It was where all the famous people lived, where anything important happened. All the headline events on the news took place in London—Princess Anne’s wedding, peace demonstrations, Wimbledon, IRA bombs. And London was always on the television, on programs about history and current affairs, and in films where red double-decker buses rode by landmarks like Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square. I’d never been to London, but I was sure I’d be happy if I lived there, pulled into that vortex of busyness and bustle, no longer someone who sat in our living room to watch the world’s critical happenings.
“I went to London once,” said Tracey.
“You did?”
“Yeah,” she said, spitting out her gum. It landed in a tight gray ball, barely missing my right shoe. I wondered if she had been trying to hit it. “My mum is president of the Bleakwick Young Wives Club. She organized the trip. We all went shopping down Oxford Street.”
“What was it like?”
“I didn’t like it. We got lost on the tube, ended up getting off at the wrong stop and walking for miles. My feet were killing me. But we did see Big Ben.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, and heard it as well. Doing. Doing. Doing.” She imitated a loud clock chime. “Just like on the News at Ten. Didn’t see the Queen, though.”
“I did,” I chirped. “I saw the Queen.”
“No, you never.”
“I did. When she came to open Hull Royal Infirmary.”
“What, you really saw her?” Tracey’s tone softened and her eyes grew wide. Finally, I’d found something that seemed to impress her.
“Yes, I saw her. About as close as you are to me now.”
It was almost true. I’d been six at the time, and the whole city was abuzz with the excitement of the Queen’s visit. There were Union Jack streamers hung from all the lampposts, and the neighbors had put pictures of the Queen in their windows. (Mrs. Brockett had put up five.) My mother had been too preoccupied with installing a new water heater to pay much attention to anything beyond our front door, and I’d begged my father to take me to see the parade. But my entreaties were useless and seemed only to increase his fury at the event. The way he slammed about the house, kicking chairs and clattering crockery, anyone would have thought the whole thing had been planned not as a public celebration but as a carefully orchestrated personal insult.
Finally, Auntie Mabel appeared, a little paper Union Jack flag in her hand. “What, you can’t take your own daughter to see Her Royal Highness on the one day she comes to Hull?” she’d said, looking at my father with utter contempt.
“It’s against my principles,” my father answered, puffing out his chest. “I’m an ardent socialist.”
“More like an armchair socialist,” Mabel replied. Then she turned to me. “Come on, darling, let’s you and me go and enjoy our national heritage, shall we?”
When we arrived, the crowd that lined the parade route was at least ten deep, and even when Mabel lifted me onto her shoulders I still couldn’t see over the rows of excited, bobbing heads. “I tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you squeeze your little self to the front. I’ll wait for you here. Go on. Then you’ll get the best view.”
I eased my way to the steel barriers to push my face into the cold metal, the weight of the crowd swaying against my back. It seemed to take forever for the Queen to arrive, and I felt my heart racing with the anticipation around me. Then suddenly the crowd surged with excitement as her massive Rolls-Royce came into view. I pushed my hand through the metal barrier, waving the little paper Union Jack flag that Mabel had given me. The car pulled alongside us and then, just as quickly, it was gone. All I saw of the Queen was a white gloved hand waving genteelly and a flash of frosted hair. “What did she look like?” Tracey asked.
“Very …” I searched for the right word. “Regal. She looked very regal.”
“What’s that?”
“Royal,” I answered.
“Well, yeah, she would, wouldn’t she, her being the Queen?” Tracey shook her head slowly, as if I were the stupidest person she’d had the misfortune of laying eyes on. I could feel any hope of making her like me slip away. I could already envision her taunting me in the corridors of my new school, egged on by a gang of sneering kids. “Anyway,” she continued, “I don’t know why you’d want to live in London. It wasn’t up to much, far as I’m concerned. This year the Young Wives did a trip to Whitby, and that was a lot better. I won two pounds on the amusements.”
“You did?” It wasn’t as much as some of my mother’s bingo wins, but two pounds was still a lot of money.
“Yeah, on one of them one-arm bandits. But then I lost it all on one of those Penny Falls machines. They’re a bloody rip-off, if you ask me.” She let out a weary sigh. “Listen, I’m going to get some goodies. They’ve got a sale on sweets at the Co-op.” She eased herself off the fence. “You coming?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, who else do you think I’m talking to?” I was astonished at the invitation. I felt a sudden, hopeful thrill. Then the thrill abruptly abated. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
My cheeks began to burn. “I’m banned. They banned me from the Co-op.” Surely now she’d think me far worse than an interloper who lurked around her neat little housing estate. I was a teenage vandal. A newcomer who was already the scourge of the village.
“They banned you?” she asked. I was surprised when the flat tone of her voice brightened and she looked at me with undisguised delight.
“Yes. This big ugly woman with black hair told me I wasn’t allowed in anymore.”
“Oh, you mean Mrs. Franklin. I call her Frankenstein ’cause she’s such a bloody monster.” Tracey laughed. “So, what happened?”
I gazed into her excitement and felt overpowered by its draw, giddy with the possibilities it promised. “She tried to overcharge me,” I said, folding my arms across my chest as if still outraged by the idea. “So I got into an argument with her, but she wouldn’t listen. Then I got so mad I kicked over this display they had of Mr. Kipling’s cakes. And then I just stormed out of the shop.”
Tracey’s mouth gaped. “That was you?”
I nodded.
“Bloody hell. My mum heard about that. Her friend Doris was in there when it happened. Said there was boxes of chocolate cakes all over the floor. Said Frankenstein was bloody livid. So you’re not one of those boring brainboxes, then?”
I shrugged, trying to look casual, but I couldn’t help smiling. If only I could extend this moment, make Tracey want to be my friend, I knew I could leave the past behind. The taunting in the cloakroom, the hiding in the caretaker’s cupboard, the school dinners spent alone—they’d be experiences I could look back on the way a traveler would regard a difficult journey in a foreign land.
“Well, then,” Tracey announced, “I say bugger Frankenstein. Let’s go get our goodies over at the newsagent’s instead.” She began clunking unsteadily in her platform sandals toward the entrance of Marigold Court.
“But I haven’t got any money.”
Tracey turned back toward me. “That’s all right, I’ll buy you something. I’ve got loads.” She stuck a hand into one of her pockets to jangle what sounded like a handful of coins.
“Thanks, Tracey.”
“Oh,” she said with a shrug, “you can call me Trace.”