Still in pain, she slept after that; no one came near. She slept all through that day and into the next, and when she woke at last the pain was gone, the enema had finished scraping out her insides and she had nearly stopped bleeding too.
It was over.
Dolly felt huge relief at that, along with massive guilt. She thought of the stained-glass angels in the church windows again, but her mind shied away. She ought not to be thinking of those angels, not her, she was wicked, bad to the bone.
But… was it really over?
The baby was gone, but where did that leave her?
Dad had looked as sickened as she did when the baby came away, she knew he’d seen himself, his own features, in the poor kid’s face. Well, good. He ought to suffer. Christ knew, she had suffered enough and none of it was her fault. Or… was it? Was it something she had done, trying to make herself look pretty maybe, had that somehow forced him to do the man-and-woman thing with her? Was it her fault, really? Had her wickedness infected him, made him do those bad things?
And there was something even worse loitering at the back of her mind. Once she was up and about and well again, would he pick up where he’d left off, start all that again, maybe even – and now she sat up in the bed, horrified – would he make her have another child, take another trip to the Aldgate woman? Would she have to endure another day and night of agony, only to deliver another dead horror?
It could happen. Dolly thought it really could. This awfulness could happen again and again until she went like Mum, totally off her head. And she couldn’t allow that. She wouldn’t.
Dolly’s mind was spinning in small trapped circles. Terrified though the idea made her feel, she knew she had to do it. It was the simplest of plans, really. And she didn’t have a choice in the matter, not any more.
She gave it a couple of weeks, enough to get her strength back, to return to her usual robust state of health. All the while, she was careful to tell Dad how rough she felt, that her insides hurt, just in case he should think of resuming the stuff he liked to do with her upstairs. She told him about the washing powder in the bowl and the enema, and could almost have laughed to see how it turned his stomach. He was revolted by female stuff, the mess and gunk that came with periods and babies and the results of him having his fun.
Then, late one night when Sarah was fast asleep and the whole household too, Dolly dressed, picked up the bag she had already packed, and left home. She was nearly fourteen.
33
It was summer, so life on the streets wasn’t quite so bad as in wintertime.You could sleep in doorways and the coppers didn’t bother you much if you kept out of their way. And Dolly saw there were others doing this too. She bought cakes with what little money she had, and bottles of pop. She washed in the ladies’ loos in the town centre. Kept herself nice, or tried to. But it felt awful, being without a home. It made her sick with anxiety. Still, when she thought of what she’d left behind, she could only be grateful not to be there any more.
When the money ran out, she started to make a living for herself giving hand and blow jobs to strangers down the alleys. All you had to do was keep your mind blank while this went on, and she was good at that. She’d had plenty of practice. She did it, took the money. Fed herself. Then sat on the pavement outside the shops during the day, watching the world go by, watching people, lucky people with homes to go to.
Men brushed past her, women clattered by on stiletto heels; one of them, in a sharp mustard-coloured skirt suit, holding a fancy cigarette holder in her hand, paused in front of her and then, to Dolly’s surprise, tossed a few coins into her lap. Dolly looked up. The woman’s button-black eyes were warm and twinkling; then she moved on.
Dolly had been on the streets for a couple of weeks when she was approached late one evening by a tall skinny man wearing eagle-tipped shoes. She looked up, up, up and saw there was a scar running down the length of his cheek. She’d seen him about before; he was flashily dressed and looked a nasty piece of work, she thought. Dolly had just been thinking of going back to her usual sleeping spot, but now here he was, planted on the pavement in front of her, looking her over.
‘What you doing out here?’ he asked, his voice faintly foreign.
Dolly didn’t answer. She stood up, gathered her things together. He grabbed her arm.
‘You on the game here? This is my patch, my girls work this street.’
‘I’m not on the game,’ said Dolly, who had a pretty good idea what he meant by that now. He meant the man-and-woman thing. So far, she’d avoided that, used her hands and mouth instead. She’d seen his ‘girls’ – most of them middle-aged and shivering the nights away on the streets with short skirts and high heels, poor cows. They’d given her looks – not friendly ones.
‘You better not be,’ he snapped. ‘I’m Gregor White, I own this patch, all right?’ And he walked away.
The woman with the posh fag holder and the twinkling eyes came by again a couple of times in the week after that. She never spoke, but always she tossed a couple of quid in Dolly’s lap and then walked on. Dolly watched her along the road until she turned the corner and was out of sight. Then she sighed and gathered up the notes. Money was getting very tight. Soon, she might have to go the whole hog, do the man-and-woman thing. She hated the thought, but at least while she was being poked she would be getting paid more, there was that to be thankful for.
Once or twice she got the bus and went and stood at the end of the road where the family home was. She stood there, half-hidden behind a garden wall, and watched her dad go to work with his jaunty bow-legged stride; saw formal, upright Nige and pale, skinny little Sand come out, saw mad Dick go barrelling out the gate all dirty and dishevelled with his satchel flying, on his way to school. Once she saw an ambulance pull up, saw Mum being wheeled out in a chair to go and get her brains unscrambled. But she couldn’t feel sorry for Mum any more. She could only hate her.
When the money got really short, she did it; one night a stranger walked by and paused and asked how much for full sex. She thought of a figure, doubled it, and then she went into the alley with him and did the thing. It didn’t hurt, not like when Dad had done it the first time, and the stranger was worried he’d catch something off her so he wore a Johnny, so no worries about pregnancy and little dead bastards.
It was easy, really. She just took her mind off somewhere else while it happened, that was all. Easy. Or at least it was – until Gregor White, the tall man with the scar and the fancy shoes, came back.
‘My girls been watching you, bitch,’ he said, nudging her with his toe. His shoes were clearly expensive, with fancy metal toecaps beaten into the shape of two eagles. He was very flashy in his dress, doing well out of what his girls brought in. Girls! Most of them were old enough to be grandmothers. Dolly felt sorry for them, being at the mercy not only of punters but also this creep. Men? They were all arseholes and she detested them.
‘So?’ asked Dolly.
‘So you shove off now,’ he said, leaning into her.