Lottie Project (4 page)

She doesn’t do it to Grandpa because he’s one of those pale men in stripy suits who don’t ever get sticky. I can’t imagine hanging on to his sharply creased trousers or bouncing on his bony knees when I was a baby.

Grandma and Grandpa didn’t want Jo and me around, but we didn’t have any place else to go. Then we got told about the Newborough Estate and asked if we wanted a flat there. Grandma and Grandpa just about died. You’ve probably not heard of the Newborough Estate unless you live around here. You’ll
definitely
have heard of it if you do. The police
get
called out every night. And the fire service, because the kids keep setting fire to the rubbish in the chutes. The ambulances are always there too, because there are so many fights and people getting battered. Sometimes they come to scrape up the bodies because people throw themselves off the balconies because they’re so fed up living in a dump like the Newborough Estate.

But we went to live there, Jo and me. There was this HUGE row and Grandma and Grandpa said they were really washing their hands of us this time. But Jo stood up to them. Funny that. Jo can’t say boo to a goose. She lets everyone walk all over her. Especially me.

She worries terribly about Grandma and Grandpa and she tries so hard to please them. When they come over nowadays and pick faults – Grandma’s the worst, pick pick pick, and Jo winces like she’s scraping at her actual skin – she still stands up to them over me. It’s as if it’s easy-peasy, simple-pimple where I’m concerned.

I asked her how come once.

‘Because you mean more to me than anyone else,’ said Jo.

She does to me too. She’s my mum. You guessed that, didn’t you? You wouldn’t guess it though if you saw us out together. Big sister and little sister, that’s what you’d think. With me the big sister. No, that’s just a joke. Though it won’t be long before I’m taller than her. She’s only little and I’m getting big.

There’s only that much in it now.

There’s not much between us age-wise either. She was still at school when she had me. Shock Horror Disaster!

That’s what Grandma and Grandpa thought. Of course, I wasn’t observing much in those days but I can imagine it all too well. Jo’s told me lots of stuff anyway. They didn’t want her to have me. And then after I got born they wanted Jo to put me in a Home. The sort with a capital H. So that Jo could start a new life all over again.

‘This is my new life,’ said Jo. ‘As if I’d ever give my baby away! I’ll make a proper home for both of us.’

She did too. It wasn’t so bad on the Newborough Estate. Well, it was some of the time. Like when we got our door kicked in and boys wrote stuff all over the walls. Or the day this loony cornered us in the lift. Or the time our telly got nicked the day after it got delivered.

But we made some great friends there too.

It was our home, even though we didn’t have any cash to do it up and make it look pretty. We were on benefit at first, and then Jo got a job once she’d got
me
into nursery, but we didn’t spend much even then. We were saving.

Grandma and Grandpa stopped being so huffy and offered us lots of money to get us out of the Newborough Estate. I thought Jo was mad to say no. But she said we had to do it all by ourselves. To show them. Because they didn’t think we stood a chance.

But we made it! Jo worked hard at her job selling televisions and washing machines and we saved like crazy and then Jo got a promotion and another and then guess what. She was made the manageress of the big branch down in the shopping centre, in charge of a staff of twelve. And so we started hanging out around estate agent windows, looking for anything going really cheap because people keep getting made redundant in our area and so they can’t keep up the payments on their homes and they get taken away from them.

There were a few ex-council flats we could have managed, posher than the Newborough Estate, but Jo wasn’t having that.

‘We want something Private,’ she said. ‘Small but select.’

And that’s what we’ve got. A one-bedroomed flat in a quiet private block with laid-out gardens. No-one tore out the roses or smashed the windows or peed in the lift. The people living there were mostly elderly ladies or young married couples or schoolteachers who don’t usually tear and smash and pee publicly. They looked a bit nervously at Jo and me when we moved in – especially me – but Jo
insisted
we had to be on our Best Behaviour at all times.

‘Well, at least till we get accepted,’ she said. ‘So we’ll keep the CD player turned down
low
, right, and we’ll smile at everyone and say stuff like Good Morning and Good Afternoon ever so polite and we won’t go barging straight past someone to get in the lift first and if we’re having one of our famous dingdong rows we’ll have to do it in a whisper, get it?’

I got it. I stuck to all these rules. Most of the time. And we’ve
got
accepted. Oh, one or two of the truly stuffy old bags have asked me pointed questions about Daddy and then they mumble with raised eyebrows, but even those ones say hello and offer me toffees and tell me how tall I’m getting. We’re friends with just about everyone in the flats.

But we don’t really need all the other people, of course. When we shut our blue front door (I wanted red, but Jo said we had to blend in with the others along the balcony) then we’re home and it’s all ours and we can be our family. Small, but select, like the flats.

We still haven’t got much money to do it all up because most of Jo’s earnings go on the mortgage. We’ve got a good telly and video and CD player and washing machine though (because Jo gets them at a serious discount) and we’ve painted all the flat so that it looks great. Jo wanted white for the living room (boring) but she let me choose this amazing dark red for our bedroom, and we’ve got these truly wonderful crimson curtains we found at a boot fair
and
a deep purply-red lamp and when it’s a treat day like a birthday we draw the curtains and switch on the lamp and have a special red picnic in our beautiful bright bedroom. Cherries, plums, jam tarts, strawberry split ice creams, Ribena for me and red wine for Jo, yum yum.

I was kind of hoping Jo and me might be having a bedroom picnic that evening because she had an appointment with the manager for the whole of our area and she was hoping it might be about further promotion.

It was scary opening the door of our flat and seeing Jo because she doesn’t usually get back from work till six at the earliest. But there she was, sitting in the middle of the living-room floor. Not doing anything, just sitting with her hands clasped round her knees.

‘Jo? What’s up?’ She looked so small sitting there like that. I towered over her as I stood beside her. ‘Jo, why are you home from work? Don’t you feel well? Have you been sick?’ I thought maybe that was it. She looked so white. No,
grey
, and her eyes were all watery.

‘Oh, Charlie,’ she whispered.

‘
What?
’

‘The most terrible thing’s happened,’ she said in such a tiny voice that I had to bend right down close to hear.

All these different possibilities came bubbling up inside my head until I felt as if it was boiling. ‘Tell me,’ I said.

Jo opened her mouth again but her voice was just a wisp now.