‘And… there! Sorted. Wicked,’ says Steve, and sweeps his clipboard up from his desk. Comes over and perches on the other end of the bench, one foot on the floor and the other tucked beneath his knee. Props an elbow on the back of the bench, rests his temple on his knuckles, and gives her his understanding smile. Steve likes to meet your eye. All the time. He’s like one of those pictures that follow you round the room. It’s disturbing, really, though he probably thinks it makes him look like he’s down wiv da kidz.
‘So how’s it going, Cheryl?’ he asks.
‘Okay,’ says Cher, and plucks at the foam.
‘Wicked,’ he says. ‘Minted.’
She carries on staring down at her plucking hand, because she’s afraid she’ll laugh. He ticks something off on a box. His eyes stray down to her moving hand, but he refrains from reproving her. Everyone, she’s noticed, refrains from reproving her, these days. The last person to tell her off was Vesta, and she misses it. She’s had enough of boys who’ve not been told off enough, for a start. ‘And school? How are you settling in? Made any friends? Got any homies?’
‘Homies?’ She shoots him her fierce glare. Don’t Homie me, white bhoy. You’re thirty-six and you’ve got a degree in sociology. You’ll be asking me if I dig my crib, next. Who d’you think you are? Quentin Tarantino?
She shrugs. ‘It’s okay,’ she says again, though school is basically a mix of the ones who avoid her because she’s the runaway from the Murder House and the ones who think that such an exotic history lends her promise. Either way, she’s not interested. She was past hanging with a bunch of fifteen-year-olds by the time she was twelve.
‘Sweet,’ he says. ‘And your teachers?’
‘They’re trying to teach me to read better.’
‘Awesome!’ He ticks another tick.
‘Not really. I’m not learning. It makes my head hurt.’
‘Oh.’ The tick is crossed off. He puts the clipboard on his lap and leans forward sincerely. ‘It takes time, Cheryl. It doesn’t happen overnight. Just keep trying and you’ll get there in the end. And it’s really worth it. If nothing else, it’s good to have a goal, isn’t it? You don’t want to spend your life with nothing to aim for, do you, hmm?’
She shrugs again. ‘Whatever.’
‘Have you thought about what you might like to do when you leave?’
‘Not really. It’s not like there’s any jobs around here, is it?’
‘Oh, now,’ he says. ‘Never say die.’
This time, she looks up and meets his eye. ‘I saw a man die three months ago, Steve. You know what he looked like as he slid down that roof? Surprised. That’s what. Just surprised, all the way down to the edge. I guess he never said die, either. But he did, didn’t he?’
A little spot of colour appears in his cheek. Nothing to tick off on your form there, she thinks. Go on. Say ‘sweet’ to that one.
‘Er,’ he says. Then: ‘There’s still counselling, if you want it, Cheryl. The offer’s still open.’
‘No, you’re all right,’ says Cher. ‘I had counselling before.’
He ticks another box, this one to the right hand side of the form. Whatever he was looking for, she’s failed. Oh, well, she thinks. Whatever. It’ll just go in a drawer anyway.
‘And the home? How’s that? How are you doing?’
‘Wicked,’ she says, to encourage him.
He looks pleased. ‘Cool!’
‘I’ve got a new room-mate,’ she says. ‘Sylvia. She’s nearly sixteen. She’s really fat.’
He’s so sunk into his slang that he automatically puts a ph on the front of the word and beams. ‘Great!’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ she tells him, ‘she’s a playah.’
Plays One Direction on her iPod, plays Angry Birds every chance she gets. While eating Mars Bars and crisps sent in by her fat brother, and staring at Cher with red-rimmed eyes when she tries to start a chat. Sylvia wants to be a hairdresser, or a manicurist. Personally, Cher thinks there might be too much standing up involved in hairdressing, and some of those cubicles are mighty small.
The pen moves back to the left-hand side of the page and he does another tick. ‘Wicked,’ he says. Checks his watch. Her allotted five minutes is up. ‘Sweet. Great, well. Good to see you. Monday as usual, then?’
‘Oh, yes,’ says Cher.
‘Maybe,’ he says, adding it as though it were an afterthought, ‘you and Sylvia might like to come to the Youth Centre one night? Down on Chester Street? I’m down there quite a lot, cause I sort of co-run it, so there’d be a friendly face, if you were worried.’
Like a hole in the head, thinks Cher. ‘What goes on there?’ she asks.
‘Oh, it’s cool,’ he says. ‘Lots of young people. There’s a pool table and table tennis. And just, you know, places to sit and chillax. Be with your people. Come tonight. It’s open from seven on a Friday, and there are tunes.’
‘I think it’s too late to get permission for tonight,’ she says, and gives him her innocent eyes. ‘I need my care worker’s permission to be out after seven. And then they’re – you know. Cause I ran away before, they’re…’
Steve looks sympathetic and tips his head to one side. ‘I know, Cheryl. Would you like me to give him a call? I’m sure I could work out a way to keep them happy, if you’d like.’
Cher beams at him. ‘Would you? Oh, would you? That would be wicked! That would be supercool!’
He looks pleased. The first piece of enthusiasm she’s ever shown him, and it works. Three ticks go down the side of his form and he returns her smile with triumph. It was the chillax, he’s thinking. I got her with the chillax.
‘Well, great!’ he says. ‘I’ll do that, then!’
‘Sweet,’ she says, and pulls her bag out from beneath the bench. Her school bag, issued along with her uniform and a selection of modest nightwear when she arrived back in Liverpool and was placed. She’s not put a lot in it. Didn’t want to raise suspicions. ‘See ya Monday! Have a good weekend!’
He looks surprised. She sees him register pleasure at the thought that he might have had a breakthrough, and feels a tiny twinge of guilt. Tiny. ‘Thanks, Cheryl,’ he says. ‘You too.’
She slopes down the stairs with her bag over her shoulder and turns left as she leaves the office block, shrugging up her collar against the cold. It’s half a mile to school, and the bell won’t go for another forty minutes – stacks of time. There’s a nasty estuary drizzle in the air, but the Friday lunchtime street is full of people. Less than a month until Christmas, and holiday panic is already beginning to fill the air. Office workers push their way, harassed, into Boots in search of perfume and bubble bath and hair straighteners. Five men in hi-viz jackets stand outside the Bricklayer’s Arms, with pints and fags clutched in hands that are still swathed in work gloves against the weather. She sees four girls from her year turn, giggling, through the door of Top Shop – the snotty girls, all shiny hair and little heart-shaped studs in their ears, the ones who literally back off when they see her coming, as though her past might be catching. There’s a school disco at the end of the week. Cher’s never been to one of those. Doubts she ever will, now.
She walks on towards the school, passes the steamed-up windows of McDonald’s and sees some more of her peers stuffing down Big Macs and milkshakes, two of the boys throwing handfuls of fries at each other, lining themselves up to be thrown out. After so long away, the voices she hears around her are alien to her ears. Suddenly she knows how she, herself, must have sounded to the people in the south: all Dees for Tees and Ees that sound like the speaker has smelled a bad smell. She hadn’t even noticed that she’d lost the Mersey ‘gh’ till Craig Caffey, a boy who looks a bit like he’s been extruded from a putty machine, turned round and called her Poshgirl just before he tried to pin her against a wall and stick his tongue in her mouth.