Lola Rose (9 page)

Our new home was the middle flat of a small, damp Edwardian house with a tarpaulin over the roof and nettles rioting in the garden. The front door was warped so we had to put our shoulders against it before it would budge. The hallway was littered with freebie papers and advertising circulars so we had to kick our way through them.

Our flat was up one flight of stairs. We had a living room with a kitchen area in one corner, a tiny bedroom and a toilet with a shower and basin. The walls were a dirty cream like sour milk, with black mould in the corners. The windowsills were wet with condensation, the wood soft and rotten. The curtains hung limply against the damp glass. There was a stained carpet covering most of the living-room floor and a greasy cooker and a fridge – but no proper furniture.

Mum and Kendall and I walked round the flat. We walked round it again.

‘Where
is
everything?' Kendall asked.

‘You may well ask,' said Mum. She looked like she was going to start crying any minute.

‘Where
is
everything?' I said quickly, copying Kendall.

She frowned at me – and then cottoned on. ‘You may well ask,' she said.

‘Where
is
everything?' Kendall and I chorused.

‘You may well ask,' said Mum.

We went through this crazy routine over and over again, rushing round the room, gabbling it faster and faster until the words became gobbledegook. We ended up in a giggly heap on the carpet.

‘Oh, quick, get up, kids, it's so dirty!' said Mum, pulling a face. ‘We'll have to get carpet shampoo and lots of Flash. And three scrubbing brushes. And we'll buy some paint, brighten the place up. What colour, Lola Rose?'

‘Purple!'

‘Purple?
OK, blow it, purple it is. We can have a purple bedroom, bed, carpet, rug, curtains. We can even paint
you
purple and all, if that's what you want.'

‘And a purple living room?'

‘No, it's my turn. I rather fancy a black and white theme, dead stylish, white walls, black leather furniture – with a zebra-striped rug on the floor. And I'll recline on it in a black negligée, yeah?'

‘Eating black and white humbugs! Kendall, are you going to choose the bathroom colours? You could have turquoise like your horrible aquarium. We'll have a big glass tank for a bath and you can swim around inside it with George.'

‘Don't start him off!' said Mum. ‘She's just joking, Kendall.'

‘What about my purple bedroom, Mum? Is that a joke too?'

‘No, we're going to do a total
Changing Rooms
on this old dump, I promise you, darling. Money no object. Well, within reason.'

We were told about this special charity stores place where you got given all kinds of furniture if you were in need. Mum still had wads and wads of lottery money left but she'd started to worry about it now. We did go into town to look at furniture but one big squashy leather three-piece suite was three thousand pounds!

‘Blow that for a lark. We'll see what these stores have got. If it's all a lot of flea-infested old rubbish then we'll just say no thanks, right?' said Mum.

But we said yes please, yes please. We even got a black leather sofa! It was old and cracked, but it still looked lovely. We found two black velvet chairs that almost matched and a fluffy rug that came up white after a good scrubbing. We got a double bed too, though Mum bought a brand-new mattress because she said she felt funny about sleeping in someone else's bedding. She bought a deep purple duvet cover just to please me, and spent a whole day painting the walls lilac.

I made her a special card with some of my best Victorian scraps, a big bright heart and bunches of lilies and roses and a host of angels swooping up and down like bungee jumpers. I wrote inside, ‘You are an angel, Mum. XXX from Lola Rose', and I stuck a big red rose beside my name. Kendall added a wobbly K and his own kisses.

I put it in a proper envelope and then pretended it had been delivered by the postman. We didn't get any real post because no one knew where we were. No one knew us at all. This wasn't like a holiday any more. This was our new life.

I kept thinking about my old life and my old friends. They'd think it so weird that I'd vanished into thin air.
Thick
air. Mum was smoking more and more to steady her nerves. Our flat was grey with smoke haze. It made me cough but Mum said I was putting it on. Maybe I was, just a little bit.

Kendall coughed a lot too, but that was because he cried a lot. I suppose he was missing Dad. He often called out for him when he woke up in the night. Sometimes he didn't wake up quite quick enough and wet the bed. Mum threatened to put Kendall back in nappies if he did it again. He did, so Mum tucked a towel into his pants. Kendall howled with humiliation.

‘You shouldn't get so cross with him, Mum. He can't help it. He's just upset.'

‘Yeah, well,
I
shall be upset if he ruins that brand-new mattress. And you can stop being so mealy-mouthed, Miss Goody-Goody Two-Shoes,' said Mum. ‘You don't half get on my nerves sometimes, Jayni.'

‘Lola Rose.'

‘OK, Lola Flipping Fancy-Pants Rose, just you remember I'm your
mum
. Stop acting like you're my big sister, for God's sake. You're not meant to tell me what to do. I'll do what I like, see.'

Mum looked in her handbag for her cigarettes. The packet was empty. ‘Oh, bum. Run down the road to the corner shop, Jay—Lola Rose.'

‘It's gone ten, Mum. It'll be shut.'

It had taken hours to settle Kendall. He'd had one of his crying fits. He was still snuffling in his sleep.

Mum bit her thumbnail agitatedly. ‘For God's sake, I'm not going all night without a fag, I'm gasping. Look, there must be a pub somewhere. I'll nip out and buy myself some cigarettes from the machine. You go to bed, OK?'

‘OK,' I said uncertainly. I didn't want her to go out in the dark by herself just in case something happened to her.

‘You'll be fine, silly,' Mum said, not understanding. ‘If there's any emergency then go and get someone in the house to help. Maybe not the old lady, she's a bit gone in the head, but the lads up above seem fine.'

We'd got to the stage of nodding at our new neighbours. Miss Parker, the old lady, proved a real nosy parker and asked all kinds of questions. We got worried, but she asked the exact same questions the next day and the next. It was obvious she didn't remember a word we told her.

Steve and Andy, the two men who lived in the flat above us, looked a bit peeved the first time we met them. We were coming up the stairs loaded with shopping bags from Tesco. Kendall was howling because he'd fallen over, Mum was shouting at him for being a big baby, I was moaning because there had been a special offer on Sara Lee chocolate cake and she wouldn't buy it. We were probably making quite a lot of noise.

Mum stopped shouting and smiled at Steve, the tall handsome one. Andy, the smaller guy with glasses, said hi to Kendall and me and helped us haul the shopping bags through to our kitchen. He told us their names. I said I was Lola Rose. Steve raised his eyebrows but Andy said he thought it was a beautiful name.

Steve acted like he was too grand to talk to us. He
did
seem too grand for this dump of a house. Andy was much more matey and told us how their old flat had been repossessed and so they'd had to come here.

‘On a temporary basis,' said Steve.

‘But we've still made it into our little home,' said Andy. ‘And I love the way you've done up your flat, Lola Rose. It looks really great, especially the purple bedroom. Very artistic.'

I liked Andy
much
more than Steve. I still didn't think I could rush to him in an emergency though.

I hated that word. The moment Mum left our flat
EMERGENCY
flashed in my mind like neon lighting. Phantom alarms clanged in my head. My heart went thud thud thud inside my chest.

It was very quiet in the flat. We didn't have a television yet so I couldn't switch it on to make things sound normal. Miss Parker's telly buzzed down below, as if people were whispering bad things about me beneath my feet. Steve and Andy walked round upstairs and every time their floorboards creaked I jumped.

I kept going to check the door to make sure it was locked. I imagined someone was outside, listening, ready to shove his shoulder to the door and come bursting in. I peered out into the garden to make sure no one was creeping up on us. I could only see my own face reflected in the glass. It reminded me of the aquarium. I shut the curtains quick.

I wanted to huddle into a ball on the old leather sofa. No, I wanted to hide behind it like a really little kid. But Kendall was in the bedroom and I had to keep an eye on him. I considered climbing into bed beside him but I didn't want to take my clothes off and lie down in the dark. I needed to be fully dressed and on my toes.

I patrolled the flat. It still seemed horribly empty even now we had the stuff from the stores. It only took a few seconds to check each room. It didn't really help.

When I was in the bedroom I was sure someone was lurking in the living room, slyly cracking open a can of beer, sitting there on the sofa,
waiting
. When I was in the living room I felt someone might have got behind the door in the bathroom, ready to pounce. When I dared go into the bathroom, pushing the door inch by inch, I was sure someone had climbed through the bedroom window and was pulling Kendall out of bed, hand over his mouth to stop him screaming.

I knew Dad didn't know where we were. How could he possibly track us down? But I was still so scared I had to put on my new furry denim jacket to stop myself shivering. ‘Come
back
, Mum!' I whispered, over and over.

She wasn't back by half past ten. Maybe she'd had to walk a long way to find a pub with a cigarette machine – though she was wearing her strappy sandals with high stiletto heels so she couldn't walk
that
far.

I waited and waited, staring at the clock. I started nodding my head in time to the tick and tock until I went dizzy. I tried to read one of Mum's magazines but the words jiggled about on the page and wouldn't make sense.

I got my scrapbook out and started cutting out a lovely picture of a girl rock star with long blonde hair and a jewelled navel and shiny brown legs in white leather boots. The floorboards gave a sudden creak and I cut off one of the boots by mistake. I tried to sellotape it back but it made her leg look wonky.

My own legs felt wonky as I paced the flat. It was gone eleven now. The pubs closed then. So where was Mum?

Something's happened to her
, said the Voice of Doom.

Quarter past eleven.

Half past eleven.

I didn't know what to do. Maybe Dad had stalked her. I imagined him laying into her and she went as limp as my paper scrap. I wanted to rush out and find her but I couldn't leave Kendall on his own.

I started to cry, knuckling my eyes. I pressed harder until it hurt. I told myself to stop the silly snivelling. I wasn't a baby. I mustn't panic. Of course Dad hadn't found her. Maybe she'd simply got lost coming back from the pub? Mum had a hopeless sense of direction at the best of times, and now it was way after dark in a strange neighbourhood. Knowing Mum, she'd maybe even forgotten our address. She'd be stumbling round and round in her strappy sandals, cursing herself for being such a fool. She'd find us eventually, she'd be knocking at the door any minute, she'd rush in laughing . . .

But she didn't rush in.

I listened for her footsteps. I opened the curtains and stared out at the street. I even left the door on the latch and rushed down to the corner just to see if there was any sign of her.

Then I worried that someone might have slipped in and be after Kendall. I ran back and slammed the door shut and rushed into the bedroom. Kendall was still sleeping soundly in the middle of the bed, his arms and legs splayed out so he took up nearly all the space. There was no one hovering over him. I checked behind the door, the wardrobe, even under the bed. I knew I was acting crazy. I couldn't help it.

I went back into the kitchen and tried to make a cup of tea to calm myself. I was so jumpy I splashed cold water all down my front as I filled the kettle.

It was midnight.

Something
must
have happened to Mum.

So what would happen to Kendall and me?

I started crying again as the kettle boiled. I was making such a noise that I didn't hear the door. I didn't hear footsteps. Then Mum was in the kitchen, right in front of me.

‘Mum!' I gasped, pouring water everywhere.

‘Watch out, you'll scald yourself, you silly girl,' said Mum. ‘Here, let me. I could do with a cuppa too.'