“Yeah,” he laughed. “And I think they thought you was a boy. Need their eyes tested.”
“Spider, do you think they knew who we were?”
“Nah, she wouldn’t have picked us up if she did, would she?”
With the traffic streaming past us, I was starting to feel more exposed than when we’d been walking across the fields. We’d been cut off from civilization for two days. What had everyone been hearing about us? What had they seen on the TV or read in the papers? In one of those cars going past, was someone reaching for their phone right now, calling the police? I felt edgy, really edgy.
“We should find a shop and then disappear, Spider. We can’t hang about.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He grabbed the bags and set off down the road, long legs striding along. I had to jog to keep up. We’d got to the first few shops, keeping an eye out for a corner shop or a little food shop or something, when we saw a signboard on one side of the street: RITA’S CAFÉ - ALL-DAY BREAKFASTS COOKED TO ORDER.
Spider had stopped. He was staring at the board, licking his lips. I could read his mind – I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“I know we shouldn’t hang around, but, Christ, Jem, I’m hungry. What do you think?”
We both knew we should stick to Plan A – go into a corner shop, buy some sandwiches, water, cereal bars, all that stuff, and then find a shed or a garage or somewhere and have another picnic – but there was no way either of us could walk past that place.
“Sod it,” I said. “Even a condemned man has a last meal, don’t he?”
That big grin broke out again, and I swear a bit of drool trickled down his chin.
“That’s my girl,” he said, and he picked up our stuff and headed into Rita’s.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’ve never been to Africa and seen a hyena ripping into the carcass of an antelope, but I bet it would be pretty similar to the sight of Spider devouring a cooked breakfast. He used his fork like a shovel, didn’t stop to breathe or anything like that, just continuously scooped it up and in, up and in. He looked up at me. I hadn’t even touched mine.
“What’s up with you? You’re not telling me you’re not hungry.” A bubble of egg yolk oozed out of the corner of his mouth.
“No, I’m just enjoying the sight of it – it’s awesome.” And it was. After all that time out in the wild, eating chips, cookies, and chocolate, it was almost too good to look at: a couple of plump sausages glistening with grease; the perfect fried egg, pure white and pure yellow; strips of bacon fried into crispy waves; a pool of beans, the juice slowly spreading across the plate.
He snorted, and his egg bubble grew and turned into a drip. “You’re mental. Dig in.” He waved a fork in the direction of the woman behind the counter, who I guess was Rita, and called out, “Hey, could we get some French toast with this?”
“Coming up!” she replied cheerily, clearly a woman who liked to see people enjoying her food.
I cut the end off one of the sausages, let out an involuntary groan of satisfaction as the first mouthful hit home, and then steadily worked my way through the plateful. Rita waddled out from behind the counter, bringing a plate of French toast. She was one of those people who almost look wider than they are tall, her enormous chest – barely contained by a man’s checkered shirt – bulging out from behind her apron. Her legs were bare under a square-shaped denim skirt, and she had on fluffy slippers, the pink fake fur globbed together in places where the bacon fat had spattered.
“Shall I top those off?” she asked, nodding at our mugs of tea.
“Cheers,” said Spider, moving his mug nearer the edge of the table. She shuffled over to the counter and fetched the big silver-colored teapot. The brown liquid steamed as it arced into our mugs. The café was empty apart from us, and she didn’t seem in any hurry to get back behind the counter.
“Been sleeping rough?” she asked. It wasn’t an accusation, just a friendly question, the way she said it.
“Yeah,” we both said together.
She eased herself down into a chair at the table opposite ours.
“Do you need to phone anyone, kids? You can use the phone here, free of charge.”
Spider rested his fork on the edge of the plate. “It’s OK. We’ve got mobiles.”
I couldn’t help thinking of Val, perched on her stool in the kitchen, her ashtray piling up with cigarette butts, and the look in her eyes as we drove away.
“If there’s someone, somewhere, waiting for news about you, you should give them a ring. Just let them know you’re OK. Take it from me, lovey. I know what it’s like to sit looking at that phone, willing it to ring. Breaks your heart, it does.” She wasn’t looking at Spider and me anymore; her eyes were directed at one of the pictures on the wall, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing it. She was somewhere else, somewhere painful.
I kept quiet, pretended to be reading the newspaper that was lying on the table next to me. I didn’t want to hear anyone else’s sob story. Spider was too busy wiping a piece of French toast across his plate and posting it into his big gob to ask, but she took our silence as encouragement to go on.
“Happened to me, you see. My Shaunie. We used to have spats – everyone does, don’t they? He used to go off for a few hours, come home when he’d cooled down. I never thought he’d leave for good.” Her face was shining damply, from the heat of the kitchen, maybe, or the effort of telling us about her son. She wiped her forehead with the bottom of her apron. “Anyway, that’s just what he did. We fell out one day, can’t even remember what it was about, and off he went. I wasn’t too bothered, thought he’d turn up later. I got his dinner ready and put it in the oven to keep it warm. It was still there the next morning, dried up and stuck to the plate. Shepherd’s pie and veggies. That’s what I’d cooked him. Always liked a bit of shepherd’s pie. I rang the police. They weren’t really concerned. Seventeen, you see. You can do what you like at seventeen. I rang his mates, all the places he might go. Nothing. He just disappeared. Never seen him again. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.” Her voice wobbled, and she stopped talking and sat there taking deep breaths in and out.
Embarrassed for her, I kept my eyes on the table, on that newspaper, and for the first time the words in the headline came into focus.
LONDON BOMBING – WHY DID THEY RUN?
And underneath, a grainy security camera picture of people standing in line in a shop. The camera must have been near the ceiling, because you were looking at them from above, couldn’t see their faces, except for one person who was glancing up, looking straight at the camera. It was me, of course. In that service station. On the front page of the paper.
Spider had put the last piece of French toast down on his plate.
“That’s terrible,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
Rita nodded, acknowledging his sympathy.
“Here.” He held a grubby tissue out to her.
“S’alright, I’ve got a hankie somewhere.” She dug in her apron pocket, fished out a big, white, man’s hankie, and blew her nose noisily.
“Changes your life, something like that,” she said quietly. “You don’t like to go out, just in case the phone rings. You stop sleeping properly, always listening for that key in the lock. Think you’re going mad sometimes, when you see someone that looks just like him from the back, or hear someone behind you laughing just like he used to, and you turn ’round and it isn’t him.” Sweat was beading on her forehead again, and she lifted up her apron, completely covering her face for a second, and mopped it away. “You got someone, somewhere, going through what I’m going through – you give them a ring.”