Moth Girls (10 page)

On the way home from school Petra bought some things from the supermarket. When she got back to the flat it felt boiling hot, as if the heating had been on all day. She walked through to the living room and found her dad lying on the sofa. His eyes were closed and he looked unconscious. She could see that he was drunk. On the carpet beside him was a line of seven empty beer cans. She went into the kitchen and saw, with dismay, a bottle of vodka that was half full.

He’d probably been drinking all afternoon.

She leant against the fridge, disheartened. Things had been better for the last week and a half. Ever since the night he’d got upset about her wearing the nail varnish he seemed to have made an effort. He’d been up early every morning getting off to work and looking smart, being cheerful. He’d done a few extra jobs for Mr Constantine and he’d bought some new clothes. He’d been out with Zofia a few times and seemed happy when Petra spoke about her.

Now he was drunk again. And the social worker was due to visit the next day.

Wearily, she went back into the living room, picked up the cans and began to tidy up, sidestepping her dad and the sofa. She opened the window and straightened the footstool and the coffee table. In the kitchen she tightened the lid on the vodka bottle and put it into the cupboard. Then she put her bag in her bedroom and went into the bathroom. There, on the glass shelf above the sink, was a make-up bag. It was neon pink with black squiggles on it. It belonged to Zofia and inside was a mascara wand and a lipstick, the only make-up she wore. She had obviously been in the flat earlier. She must have left it behind. Possibly she had left
before
her dad had got drunk.

Petra made herself a grilled cheese sandwich which she ate in her bedroom. She got changed and sorted out her school clothes for the next day. Then, just before six, she left the flat to go to Tina’s and rehearse The Red Roses. They’d made the arrangement earlier at school while Mandy had been doing something else. Petra was glad to have somewhere to go. Maybe, when she got home, her dad would have stumbled off into bed.

At Tina’s they rehearsed The Red Roses in her bedroom. They dressed up in their outfits: black leggings, oversized red T-shirts and hair held back with bands with red silk roses on them. There had been a debate about shoes: high heels or pumps? Petra had decided on black pumps because it made it easier to move around.

They were in front of a long mirror in Tina’s bedroom.

‘Ta dah!’ Tina said.

‘Stand back to back,’ Petra said.

Tina turned and they stood sandwiched together. Petra could see their reflection. They were the same height. She smiled at this. It was a good look; as if they were two sides of a mirror image.

‘Side by side,’ Petra said.

Tina’s hair was big. They’d have to use straighteners. The rest was fine though. They were the same height, the same weight. They both had pale skin and dark hair. They looked like sisters. Or twins. Petra liked that idea. If Tina had been her sister she would have been very happy. Petra counted, ‘One … two … three …’ and they began to sing.

Ever since primary school Tina had been a fixture of Petra’s life. They’d sat together in year four and found that they’d both read the same books and comics and liked the same games. When they were first friends they’d played a make-believe game that lasted for weeks. ‘Imagine there’d been a plane crash,’ Petra said, ‘and almost everyone drowned. You and me managed to swim to the shore of an island.’ There was a lot to do in this game: draw the island, name it, build shelter, find food, deal with hostile animals and other shipwrecked people. They had to nurse each other through injuries using imaginary bandages and crutches. They had to write letters and put them in bottles and launch them into the sea. The local park had a pond which had a small island in the middle. No one was allowed on it but the sight of it fuelled their game and they played on, day after day. There was hope of rescue but it never came because then the game would end. It gave Petra an amazing world to think about: her and Tina living together twenty-four hours a day, Tina’s parents and her dad
all gone
. No school, no one telling them what to do, just two kids surviving, helping themselves. It made Petra feel strong, in charge of herself and the things that happened to her. Tina was happy to play. Tina was happy with Petra. Petra
loved
Tina.

As they grew older there were other games but in time these lessened their hold and the talk changed to computer games, magazines, bands and clothes. Tina had been around a lot when Petra’s gran died and had helped her with the move from her gran’s house to the flat. When they went to secondary school they had to grow up quickly. There was no make-believe there, just getting from place to place, turning up at the right classrooms, not looking stupid. The best thing to do, Petra decided, was to look at what the older kids were doing and emulate them. See how they carried themselves round the building, where they sat, how they behaved. Petra and Tina could copy them, become mature, divide themselves off from the year sevens who were still tearing around the playground yearning for their old primary school classrooms and teachers.

This was how The Red Roses were born.

Petra and Tina practised their best song over and over. At the end of an hour or so they both collapsed on Tina’s bed, breathless and laughing.

‘I’ll be in school late tomorrow,’ Petra said.

‘How come?’

‘Social worker visit.’

‘Shall I save you a seat in history?’

‘No. I don’t know how long it’ll take. I’ll text you when I’m on my way.’

‘How’s your thumb?’ Tina asked.

Petra frowned as she looked down at the top of her thumb. The red line of the cut was still there.

‘I think it’ll leave a scar,’ Tina said dramatically.

She offered her thumb to Petra who placed her own on top of it.

‘You didn’t tell Mandy?’

Tina shook her head. Petra believed her.

It was just gone eight when Petra left Tina’s. She slipped out of the front door without saying goodbye to Tina’s mum because she knew that she’d be anxious about her walking home in the dark on her own. She would offer to walk with her or give her a lift and Petra would say, ‘But it’s only a few streets away,’ and Tina’s mum would
tsk
and fuss.

She walked along Princess Street and paused when she got alongside fifty-three. She hadn’t looked at the house for a while. Mandy’s presence on the walk home from school had kept her away from it. She stopped and leant on the wall. The light was on in the downstairs room but the rest was pitch-black. Her eyes settled on the upstairs rooms. Mr Merchant had lived in this house for many years, her dad had told her. He’d had a wife but they’d got divorced years ago. He also had two sons but they both lived abroad. Tina’s mum knew bits about him because she worked in the doctor’s surgery he used. Once the house must have been full of light as Mr Merchant’s family busied themselves in every room. Even the back garden would have been lit up by the light from boys’ bedrooms.

Now it was like a dark ship, with a single light on the bridge.

A car shot past behind her, music coming from inside. She turned and saw it turn the corner out of the street. Across the road, at the newsagent’s, a few kids from school were hanging around. One of them called out to her but she didn’t answer.

She looked back to the old house. There were roses poking above the wall that she hadn’t noticed before. The curtain moved at the window of the room that was lit up. Light spilt into the garden. Petra peered through the bushes. She went on her tiptoes to get a better view. The curtain moved further back and she saw a person there staring out.

Was it Mr Merchant?

It was the face of an old man. He might have had glasses on, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure. One of his hands was stretched up, holding the curtain back. She moved along the wall until she was under the street lamp. Now she had an unrestricted view. Mr Merchant was wearing a shirt and tie. She frowned at this. A disabled old man wearing formal clothes? In her head she’d pictured him as very frail, wearing a chunky cardigan. She’d certainly imagined him in an armchair or a wheelchair and possibly with a plastic tube in his nose and an oxygen tank within arm’s reach. She hadn’t thought, from what her dad had said, that he would have the strength to stand up and go over to the window or that he would be wearing normal clothes.

She stared at him. And she found herself doing an odd thing.

She lifted her hand and waved at him. She did it two or three times, not sure if he would see her at all. But he was gazing in her direction and after a moment he raised his other arm and waved back at her.

Then the curtain dropped and he was gone.

Huh!
she thought. She’d
seen
Mr Merchant, the recluse.

She remembered the cigarettes her dad had bought for him. It was a charitable act of sorts but it gave her an uneasy feeling.
Something
wasn’t quite right but she wasn’t sure what it was. She began to walk in the direction of home. She went slowly, taking tiny steps and stopping at shop fronts to look in, even though there was nothing of interest to her inside. Nathan Ball came into her mind. She pictured him on the balcony outside their front door. She didn’t like him, she decided. She didn’t like what he’d said:
He’ll have to pay the consequences …
and the way he’d said
Merchant.
Not
Mr
Merchant, which was only polite when talking about an old, ill pensioner.

When she got to the flats she rummaged in her bag for her key. Her fingers hit something soft, unusual. She pulled it out and smiled. It was Zofia’s make-up bag.

Tomorrow she would go to the nail bar and give it back to her.

Pam Fellows, the social worker, was due at ten.

Her dad was tidying up while Petra had her breakfast. She was standing up in the kitchen eating toast and listening to him humming a song in-between bouts of vacuuming in the living room. He didn’t appear to have any kind of hangover. He was cheerful. He’d brought a cup of tea into her bedroom as he woke her up and left her a five pound note next to it.

‘Sorry about yesterday. I was a bit stressed and had a bit too much to drink,’ he’d said, making a
click-click
noise with his tongue. He wasn’t the same man that she’d seen almost comatose on the sofa the previous evening.

Pam Fellows arrived at ten past ten. Petra’s dad let her in and Petra could hear her apologising for being late and her dad downplaying it as they came into the living room. He gestured towards the sofa for her to sit down, saying he was just going to put the kettle on.

Pam was wearing a beige trouser suit. Round her neck she had an identity tag and hanging alongside it a pen. She was carrying a striped bag with shoulder straps which looked big enough to hold a change of clothes. Petra had seen it before and knew it held her laptop and files and an assortment of different little notepads. ‘I can’t resist buying stationery,’ she’d said in the past.

‘Hi, Petra. How are you? You’re looking well.’

Petra nodded. She was wearing her school uniform. She wondered if she should say something about the way Pam looked. Pam had a very round face. She had a round body too, her middle straining over the top of her trousers. She wore lots of jewellery: beads round her neck, earrings, bracelets, rings. ‘I can’t walk past anything that glitters,’ Pam had said. ‘I’m always buying earrings.’

‘I like your necklace,’ Petra said.

Pam picked it up and smiled down at it. ‘This was a present from my sister.’

The door opened.

‘I can’t remember, Pam. Sugar? Milk?’ her dad said.

‘One sugar, a dash of milk, thank you, Jason.’

Then she rifled about in her bag and pulled out a file.

‘Right,’ she said, sorting through some papers, ‘it’s been ages since I saw you. Must be three months or more. Certainly before you went to Cromarty High. How are you settling into school?’

‘It’s OK. I like it there. I’m getting high grades.’

‘That’s good news.’

Her dad appeared with a tray on which sat three mugs and a plate of biscuits.

‘Here we are,’ he said.

While they drank their tea Pam talked to her dad about his job and the flat. Then she spoke to him about his health and his counselling sessions. Petra sipped her drink. She held her knees tight together and her elbows close to her ribs. She smiled every now and then to show that she wasn’t tense. She looked at Pam’s shoes sticking out from under her trousers. They had pointed toes and high heels. No doubt when she took them off her trouser bottoms dragged along the carpet.

‘Don’t you think so, Petra?’

She nodded, not sure of what her dad had said.

He was looking smart. He’d shaved that morning and was wearing a shirt underneath a V-neck jumper. He had chinos on and he’d polished his shoes.

‘… that we’d love a house and garden. Somewhere to grow our own vegetables. But we’re low down on the housing list.’

To grow our own vegetables
. Had her dad really said that? It sounded like something that Zofia might say. It sounded like the very thing Zofia might do. She pictured her in jeans and wellies (with heels), walking across a garden with a handful of carrots that she’d just pulled out of the ground. Her dad was talking on about Petra’s good work at school and how her teachers had said she was very promising.

Pam put her hand into her stripy bag and picked out a small spiral-bound notebook. On the front of it was a diamanté butterfly.

‘I think it would be good if I could have some time on my own with Petra?’ Pam said.

‘Of course,’ her dad said, standing up and patting his pockets. ‘I’ve got a number of jobs to do this morning. So, Petra, I’ll see you about quarter to six? Will you put the shepherd’s pie in the oven?’

Petra nodded. Her dad picked up some papers from the coffee table.

‘I’ll see you soon, Pam. Remember what I said: give me a bell if you ever want to talk.’

‘I will. Thank you, Jason.’

He went out and Pam smiled while she waited for the front door to close.

‘Right. There are just a couple of things I want to ask you about. First one is your attendance. How’s it been at Cromarty?’

‘I’ve just missed a couple of days,’ Petra said. ‘That’s all.’

‘You’ve only been there a month.’

‘I had a bad headache.’

‘For two days?’ Pam said, screwing her face up.

‘I felt ill,’ Petra said.

‘Did you go to the doctor’s?’

‘I took some pills.’

‘So you didn’t go to the doctor’s?’

Petra shook her head.

‘We’ve talked about this, Petra. One day off can lead to another and another and this year you were going to try to have one hundred per cent attendance.’

‘I know. I won’t take any more time off.’

Pam made notes in the diamanté book. She looked at her watch. Then she turned a clean page.

‘And have there been any issues with your father?’

Petra shook her head.

‘Has he continued to have problems with alcohol?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He still drinks a bit but not like he did last year …’

She managed to keep eye contact with Pam. She didn’t want to sound anything other than completely honest about this. Her dad’s lifestyle worried the social workers and she didn’t want to hear them talking about foster placements again.

‘Because,’ Petra carried on, looking straight at the social worker, ‘he drives a cab so he’s not allowed to drink the night before he drives. He only has some beers at the weekend.’

‘And has he been able to control his temper?’

‘Yes, most definitely,’ she said firmly, even though it seemed like her tongue was quivering.

‘And you’ve not felt threatened in any way?’

‘No,’ Petra said.

‘It’s very important that things don’t slide back to the way they were.’

‘They’re not sliding back.’

‘You’ve got my numbers on your mobile? You know you can call me during the day or you can contact the twenty-four-hour helpline. If you’re worried at all …’

‘I’m not. We’re fine. We’re happy. You don’t need to come and see us any more. My dad’s got a really nice girlfriend and if he gets married again I’ll have a stepmother. Maybe we’ll get a house with a garden like Dad said.’

Pam stared at her for a few seconds. Petra wondered if there was a battle going on inside the social worker’s head. Could she believe Petra? Could she be sure that Petra’s dad wasn’t going to get blind drunk and injure her again?

Pam exhaled and seemed to come to a conclusion. She looked away and put her book and her pen into her bag. She hadn’t used the pen round her neck. Petra wondered if she ever used it or if it’d just been something she had to buy. ‘I can’t resist buying unusual pens,’ she might have said if Petra had mentioned it.

‘So I’ll be in touch and I’ll see you before Christmas.’

‘OK.’

‘You’re off to school now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Take care, my dear. Let me know immediately if anything bothers you. Promise me?’

‘I will.’

‘Meanwhile I’ll speak to your head of year at Cromarty and check that all is well there.’

Something occurred to Petra.

‘The teachers at school, do they know about what happened last year?’

‘The head of year does. He has to know, Petra. He has to be on the lookout for any signs …’

Bruises.

Petra held her elbows tight to her chest. The unspoken word sounded between them.

‘We cannot have you hurt, Petra.’

She’d only seen the head of year at assemblies. She was sure he didn’t know who she was. She hoped he hadn’t said anything to anyone. She didn’t like to think about teachers in the staffroom talking about her dad.

‘It just happened once. Never again. Dad was very low. Nan had just died. He …’

‘I understand what you’re saying, but in order for us to allow your dad to look after you we have to be sure he’s dealing with those problems he had then.’

‘He is. He’s seeing the counsellor.’

‘Good! Let’s leave it there.’

Petra showed Pam to the front door. Pam talked on for a bit and Petra nodded and smiled. Eventually she left and Petra felt herself slump against the wall with relief. She went into the living room and put the mugs back onto the tray by the side of the uneaten biscuits. She carried them into the kitchen and returned the biscuits to the tin and put the mugs in the sink with some water in them.

Then she grabbed her schoolbag and left.

She didn’t go straight to school. She headed for the nail shop where Zofia worked. She knew this wasn’t the right thing to do. If Pam knew she would be put out, but Pam’s visits always made Petra feel like doing a ten kilometre walk. There were things Petra had to get out of her system, stuff that had been talked about that she had to put back in place. Like what happened last summer. That was something she didn’t want to think about.

Petra turned onto Holloway Road and walked purposefully along. Her hand was in her bag, touching the soft make-up case that Zofia had left behind. She wondered if Zofia might suggest they go shopping again, then she could go back to her pink bedroom and curl up beside her on the bed and watch
Friends
over and over.

She stopped outside the shop and looked through the window. She couldn’t see Zofia, just the man in charge who Zofia called the ‘Big Boss’. He was talking to a young girl standing by the reception counter. She had a bag hanging over her shoulder that was covered in fringes. Further inside the shop were a couple of other women sitting at small tables opposite customers.

She walked into the shop.

Just then a door behind the Big Boss opened and Zofia came out backwards. She was carrying some boxes and she turned to place them on the counter. Petra was just about to say hello to her when she saw Zofia’s face. One of her eyes was bruised. It was a deep purple colour. The white of her eye was blood red. She’d been hit.

Petra was shocked and yet at the very same moment she wasn’t a bit surprised. Not a bit. Zofia looked shamefaced, as if
she’d
done something wrong. She put one hand over her injured eye.

‘What happened?’

Even as Petra asked she knew the answer. She pictured her dad lying drunk on the sofa the previous day, surrounded by empty beer cans. There’d been other girlfriends, years before when they’d lived with her gran. One of them had come to the house with a split lip and swollen jaw. Her sister had been in a small red car waiting for her. Gran had said her dad wasn’t in but the girl had screamed down the hall about going to the police. When her dad appeared he’d swivelled his finger at the side of his head, implying that the girl was a bit mad.