“No you won’t,” I said.
“Is it true?” He was as trusting as a puppy.
“Do you really believe in wicked wizards and good pirates?” I asked.
“Next you’ll be telling him there’s no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy.”
“I know there’s no tooth fairy,” he said. “I caught Mum putting a pound under my pillow and she pretended she’d just found it there, but she’s a rubbish liar.”
“She is, isn’t she? Bet you took the cash anyway. Now let’s go shopping.”
“I’m coming too,” I said, because I didn’t know my own sister and I was afraid she might have inherited Mr Bo’s definition of buying shoes.
“You’ll spoil it,” my loyal son complained. “The only thing she ever takes me shopping for is school uniform.”
“What a bitch... sorry, witch.” Skye dragged us both out of the house with no conscience at all.
A big black car, just a couple of feet short of being a limo, was waiting outside — plus a driver with a leather coat and no discernible neck.
Oddly, Mr Bo was not sent down for anything serious like contributing to the delinquency of minors or his sick relationship with one of them. No, when he was caught it was for stealing booze from the back of the bar where Mum worked. Of course she was done for theft too, thus ensuring that we had no irresponsible adults in our lives, and forcing us to be taken into Care.
By the time I was fifteen and Skye was thirteen we’d been living in Care for two and a half years. Foster parents weren’t keen on me because I didn’t want to split up from Skye, and foster mothers didn’t like Skye at all because she was precocious in so many ways.
Crockerdown House, known for obvious reasons as Crack House by the locals, was a girls’ care home, and judging by the number of non-visits from social workers, doctors or advisors, and the frequency of real visits by the cops, it should’ve been called a No Care Home. No one checked to see if we went to school or if we came back. Self-harm and eating disorders went unnoticed. Drugs were commonplace. There was a 60 per cent pregnancy rate.
I was scared rigid and spent as much time as I could at school. Teachers thought I was keen — most unusual in that part of town — and they cherished me. After a while I became keen.
Skye was the opposite.
It was only when a strange man turned up at the school gates in a car with Skye sitting smug as you please on the back seat that I realized she’d stayed in touch with Mr Bo while he was inside.
I knew that she and some other, older, girls regularly went to the West End to boost gear from shops and I lived with my heart in my mouth, fearing she’d be caught. She was never caught and she always had plenty of money. What I hadn’t been told was that she supplied an old friend of Mr Bo’s with stolen goods which he sold in the market. This friend kept Mr Bo in tobacco and all the other consumables that could be passed between friends on visiting day.
“He’s coming out today,” she told me excitedly. “We’re going to meet him.”
I looked at her in her tight jeans and the trashy silk top which would’ve cost a fortune if she’d actually bought it. I burst into tears.
“We’re not going back to Crack House,” she said. “It’s over.”
“What about school?” I wept. “What about my exams?” I was taking nine subjects and my teachers said I had a good chance in all of them.
“We never have to go to bogging school again. We’re free. He’s taking us abroad.”
“What about Mum?” Mum was still inside. She wasn’t just a thief; she was a thief who drank, and she was a bad mother who drank and thieved. Three strikes against her. Only one against Mr Bo. Classic!
“Oh, she’ll join us later,” Skye said vaguely, breathing mist on to the car window and drawing a heart.
“Is this your car?” Nathan asked the driver, impressed.
“Huh?”
“It’s mine,” Skye said, “for now.”
“Will you have to give it back?” Nathan was sadly familiar with the concept of giving a favoured book or computer game back to the library.
“Where are we going?” The last time she and I were in a car together was a disaster.
“Crystal City. I heard it was the newest.”
“It’s the best,” Nathan breathed. “We don’t go there.”
“Why not?”
I said, “It’s too expensive and too far away.”
“I know, I know,” Skye said, “and you got a mortgage to pay and your tuition fees at the Open University. Studying to be a psychotherapist, aren’t you? And both your lives gonna stay on hold till you qualify and hang out your shingle. When’s that gonna be — 2050?”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“You said hell.”
“You’d be surprised what I know. Some of us use technology for more than looking up difficult words.”
“You’ve been spying on us.”
“Cool,” Nathan said. “I want to be a spy when I grow up.”
“You can be a spy now,” Skye said. “Don’t look back, just use this mirror and if you see a car following us, tell Wayne. Okay?” She handed him what looked like a solid gold compact.
“What sort of car?”
“Black Jeep,” no-neck, leather-clad Wayne said. “Licence plate begins Sierra, Charlie, Delta.”
“That’s SCD to you, kid.”
“Clever,” I said. “Have you got kids of your own?”
“Do I look like a mother?”
“No need to sound insulted. It’s not all bad.”
“Coulda fooled me. Do you do all your shopping from Salvation Army counters?”
“Bollocks,” I muttered, but not quietly enough.
“You said b—”
“Okay, Nathan,” I said. “Haven’t you got an important job to do?”
“Of course I looked you up,” Skye said. “How the hell else would I find you? You’re my big sister — why wouldn’t I want to? I didn’t know about the kid when I started. And I must say I’m surprised you felt ready to start breeding, given the mom we had. But I guess you were always kinda idealistic — always trying to right wrongs.”
“No one’s ready,” I said.
“Hah! Got caught, did ya?”
That was an incident in my life that I didn’t want to share with Skye while Nathan’s ears were out on stalks.
Crystal City is five enormous interlocking domes. It’s a triumph of consumer architecture and weather-proofing. You could spend your entire life — and savings — in there without drawing one breath of fresh air.
Wayne dropped us at the main entrance and Nathan, who can smell sports shoes from a distance of three and a half miles, led the way.
Walking with Skye through a shopping centre was strange and familiar. We both looked around in the same way as we used to. Searching for good opportunities, I suppose — only nowadays all I was looking for were half-price sales.
Skye bought football boots, flashy beyond Nathan’s wildest dreams. They had ten differently coloured inserts for designer stripes, extra studs and a tool kit. She threw in an England strip for nine-year-olds and paid for everything with a credit card in the name of Skye Rosetti. She caught me looking and said, “I had to marry a Rosetti for the Green Card. But I liked the name so I kept it.”
I called on all my nerve and asked, “What happened to Mr Bo?”
“Oh look, shoes,” she cried and flung herself through the door of the fanciest, most minimal shoe shop I’d ever seen.
“Do we have to?” Nathan whined. He wanted to change into his England strip.