Oh why not....
Chapter One
Maybe it's because my life was, by most people's standards, fairly shit that I still have it. I say my life rather than our life because I think and hope that Mikey's life wasn't shit before it all happened. When you're two, you're easily satisfied if you're fed, warm, entertained and loved. You don't understand or care about things like career progression or the property ladder or what the rest of society has to say about a single mother in a cramped chilly flat, topping up what benefits she gets by discreetly working on a sex chat phone line, sometimes so skint that she has to decide between eating more than once a day and putting her last few quid on the electricity card so the power doesn't go off completely. Though the very last time I had to make that choice I took the third option and paid to top up the credit on my mobile. For all the good that ultimately did I might as well have spent it on a couple of litres of cider or a big box of chocolates or some or other decadent treat. There was plenty in the papers and on most of the popular internet chat forums about how all us single mothers on benefits spent the lot on fags and booze and make up, leaving our kids in shitty nappies in front of the telly all day while we updated our Facebook profiles and fiddled about with online dating. There was talk of new laws and changes to the benefit system to penalise us even more and make us suffer, and constantly more and more and more about how it was all our fault because we wouldn't or couldn't be sufficiently pleasing to Our Men.
Mikey never had a shitty nappy on for more than a few minutes, unless he shat hugely in the night and didn't wake up to complain, and while I used the internet intermittently to chat to all those friends I never saw any more, I spent the bulk of my time playing with him, taking him to playgroups and the park and trying my best to cook us reasonable meals. As to pleasing My Man, Roy never had any complaints about me ? or Mikey. He wasn't around enough to find fault with anything.
It was the Friday morning when we woke up to find the electricity meter had run out overnight. Because the bill for the broadband, TV channels and landline was overdue, they'd cut that off nearly a fortnight ago, miserable gouging bastards. This week had been rent week and, as usual, it had taken nearly every penny I had, Mikey had just outgrown his shoes and had needed a new pair the week before, and Aphrodite, the phone sex company, wouldn't pay till the end of the month. I kept dreading that sooner or later the benefits department would do some kind of official investigation of me and look at my bank statements, but it hadn't happened yet.
I'd plugged the mobile into the charger before going to bed, and when I picked it up I was glad to see that the battery was full, it had charged up completely before the power went. The landline was still taking incoming calls, so I could log in to the Aphrodite service via the mobile and carry on working when Mikey was asleep, and with it being April and warmer, with lighter evenings, there wouldn't be quite so much time huddling under a quilt on the sofa in the daytime, and waking up every other hour in the night to check that Mikey hadn't kicked his blankets off. We'd be OK for a few days with no electricity, we'd done it before, though not that often. I'd get my next lot of benefits on Tuesday, top everything up and we'd be fine again for a while.
If we'd had electricity, had lights on those last few nights, I think it might have been the death of us. I think we'd have been spotted. As it was, they would have seen the flat in darkness, the whole of Riley Court in darkness, and simply decided not to bother, even though I'm not sure that level of decision-making was even operating with them. Not at night, anyway.
North Woods Road is where the edge of Twilsdon sort of fizzles out, which is probably partly why we could afford to live there in the first place, most people didn't want to. It's uphill, the road disappearing into the woods themselves once you get over the other side. On the opposite side of the road it's mostly a big sweep of uninteresting green space, with three big tower blocks of Midwell Heights set in a rough triangle about fifty yards back from the kerb. Our side has the disused small industrial units at the top of the hill, then Kingsland Court, which is just like Riley Court: four flats set two on two and looking at first glance like two passable mid-century semis: white pebbledashed top halves, brick lower down, grey tiled roof, metal-framed windows. On either side, there are steep steps with solid brick walls leading up to the front doors of the upper flats; ours is on the left-hand, uphill side. Next down from us is Hightham Court, which was boarded up and empty when we first moved here and hasn't changed its status in the last eighteen months, and the road continues down with a couple of mean, half-occupied terraces, a stretch of nicer semis, another terrace, this one matched by the first one on the other side, until it hits the parade of shops at the bottom. About half the housing, probably less than half of it, is in reasonable repair; owner-occupied by people trying to fix the places up and make them nice, the rest of it is assorted shitholes that are rented on the cheap if they are rentable at all.
It was the shops we headed to on Friday morning, once I'd made up my mind that the last fiver I had would be best spent on phone credit, both for work purposes and so I had the wherewithal to phone for help or at least a cheering chat if I could think of anyone able to supply me with either thing. I decided not to bother with the buggy: walking down the hill and back would take a long time at Mikey's pace but time wasn't exactly something we were short of. Because quite a few of the houses and flats along North Woods Road are vacant, it's usually fairly quiet during the day, but I remember it did seem unnaturally quiet that Friday. There was no real unease in me, not yet, though I do remember noticing a broken window in one house that otherwise bore all the signs of being happily occupied: a well-tended front garden, bright curtains and a relatively new car parked in the drive.
The little off-licence and late shop I had meant to go into was closed, which raised my eyebrows, but I continued on to the Sainsburys Local with a silent curse or two. This meant passing the plant and tool hire shop, which involved what at the time seemed something only a silly skittish mare would worry about. Mikey was doing his usual 'Manhole cover! Manhole cover' at every one of those metal plates we encountered, whether it was an actual manhole cover or a plate for BT or the Water Board or somesuch thing, and I stopped for a moment to agree with him about the large square one outside Robsons Tools. It was only when I straightened up to coax him onwards that I looked, without really meaning to, into the big plate glass window and met the eyes of a mechanic standing right next to the glass and staring at me. It's a look most women experience now and again, a look which tells you as clearly as if he'd said so that the man looking at you wants to fuck you, and if it hurts you when he does it, so much the better. I turned my head and hurried Mikey on, not looking back, not even once. Bloody pig. But it wasn't like he would actually hurl himself through the glass and grab me, and surely any minute his boss would be behind him telling him to get on with his work, anyway.
Sainsburys was unusually quiet, with only two till operators instead of the half a dozen I would have expected on a Friday morning, and the shelves looked a bit on the picked-over side, what I could see of them. I didn't go round the store though, no point as there was no cash to buy anything. I just made for the kiosk and bought a top up voucher from the auburn-haired cashier who usually had a flow of campy, daft chatter for anyone who shopped there regularly. That day he didn't even crack a smile, and I almost asked him if anything was wrong, but then decided against it. I'd picked up a paper off a park bench a couple of days ago that had carried a few reports about a nasty new virus laying people out and suggesting that everyone should stock up on bottled water and not go out of the house more than they had to. I reckoned that this sort of rubbish might have been the reason for the shortage of staff, the closed offy and the rest of it, and therefore probably the reason why he wasn't his normal merry self: overwork or maybe even coming down with the bug, whatever it was.
On the way back up the hill, we saw a couple of old ladies plodding along with bags of cat food, deep in conversation, which briefly made me feel normal again. A car passed by at quite some speed, with a woman driving and a couple of kids bouncing about in the back, and the boot was clearly so rammed with bags and boxes that she'd had to tie it shut with rope.
As we drew near Riley Court, I noticed that the front door of 23a, my downstairs neighbour on the opposite side, was wide open, and when we got to the gate he came out, with a couple of suits draped over one arm and a laptop bag over his shoulder. I'd never actually known his name, though we were at least on nodding terms, but when he saw us he stopped in his tracks. He was a tall, lanky, light-skinned Afro-Carribbean man, with a closely-cropped head of black hair, and glasses, always rather more smartly dressed than seemed to fit in with this area.
'Hiya,' I said politely. 'Going away?'
'Getting out of here,' he said, a bit abruptly. He came past us, went to the blue Honda that I had never been sure was his, and opened the back door to deposit the bag and the clothes on the back seat, which already held quite a lot of luggage. He paused, one hand on the car roof, and looked at Mikey and me. 'Going to my mum's, in Folkestone. I don't know exactly what's going down, but what I always say is families should stick together, so I'm going back home. Maybe you two should get away, as well.'
'Fly away!' Mikey chirped, encouragingly. 'Get away fly away.' It surprised a bit of a smile out of the neighbour, but then he shrugged and got into the car. I made for the steps, with a nod to him. I sometimes wonder if he got to Folkestone, and what he found when he got there. I also wonder, or I did, quite a bit once I realised what was happening all around us, whether he might have taken Mikey and me with him, at least to the railway station or something, if I'd asked him to. If I'd known, if I'd not been so disengaged from the rest of the world, would I have asked him? I think I would have been more likely to dither, and cross my fingers, and maybe in the last extremity phone my dad to come and pick us up. But I've always been inclined to look on the bright side.
That Friday I still wasn't all that worried about anything more than being skint, and about having no electricity, and whether the gas would run out as well before I got any more cash in my bank account.
I knew there was some ham in the fridge, and though I had been keeping the fridge door shut to keep the inside cool as long as possible, I decided that the ham might as well be eaten before it went off, so I made Mikey a sandwich, and one for myself, and gave him a banana to follow, and when we'd had our lunch he was sleepy, so I popped him into his cot for a nap. He pulled a corner of his fleecy red blanket up to cover his nose and dropped off almost immediately. I stood watching him for a few minutes, thinking how much I loved him, my perfect, unexpected little son. He was looking less of a baby now that he was two and a bit. Over the last few weeks, he'd seemed to lengthen, and his vocabulary was increasing all the time. Olive-skinned like his half-Jamaican dad, with curly russet-brown hair and big melting brown eyes, he was genuinely beautiful. I ran a hand through my own hair, more of a muddy brown and kept short and spiky by chopping at it with the kitchen scissors when it started getting annoying, and went back into the living room.
It was a good opportunity to log on to Aphrodite and earn myself a few pennies. I did that, not without a wince of distaste. I'd been working for them since Mikey was a couple of months old, starting shortly after I'd sold my studio flat when I realised that Roy was never going to stop being an amiable loser, that there was no job I could get that would pay the mortgage on it and cover childcare, even if I'd wanted to leave my tiny, tiny baby with someone else so soon. I'd sold at a small profit, enough to keep us for a few months, but even though I was entitled to a few benefits for having given birth, there would have to be something else I could do that would bring some more money in. And that it would have to be something that was easy and also not bothered about what I did or said about the little bit of money they paid me. Because for all the general advice about only getting pregnant off rich men when you were in settled relationships, that wasn't what had happened.
Prior to getting pregnant, I'd been doing a mixed bag of fun jobs, bits of PR, a little film extra work and temping to fill in the gaps; I'd simply never been very career-minded despite my degree, and only managed to make the move into home ownership due to a legacy. I hadn't been bothered about talking dirty for a living at the beginning, but whether it was the endless news coverage of the massive increase in domestic violence and how it was down to women not knowing their proper roles any more, making me hyper-aware and miserable, or whether there really were a lot more genuinely woman-hating men out there, the job was getting less and less bearable. Still, it was something I could do from home when Mikey was asleep, didn't require any outlay other than keeping the phone bill paid or at least paying it before they got so narky they cut off incoming calls as well, and Aphrodite never kept me waiting for my wages.
While I was waiting for the first caller, I made a quick inventory of the cupboards. I did always try to have a bit of stuff stockpiled against skint weeks like this one, though I bought fresh food as much as possible. I'd filled up the fruit bowl at the start of the week, and I had spuds and onions in the vegetable rack as well, and there were eggs in the fridge that would be OK for a day or two even with the power off. There were a few tins: soup, beans, tomatoes, spaghetti hoops, one small can of tuna, some of those mini tins of fruit; there was half a bag of rice left, and four or five jars of stage 3 baby food, that I kept as a backup for Mikey if he was offcolour, or if we were going out somewhere it would be difficult to get food for him when he was hungry. There was some pasta, and most of a loaf of bread as well.
It wasn't the first time we'd been that broke ? I never was the world's greatest budgeter, and though Roy did send a few quid from time to time we could never exactly depend on him. I made a bit of a face at myself in the mirror that hung over the mantlepiece. It was probably just penniless underclass blues, compounded by the fact that more and more people seemed to be moving out of North Woods Road every day these days, and almost every newspaper I saw seemed to have another headline about the poor, especially feckless single mothers, and what a drain they were on everyone else, and how Things Were Going To Change.
The phone rang, and I hurried to grab it, crossing my fingers to hear the familiar dry hiss and recorded voice announcing 'Caller incoming' which would mean an Aphrodite customer rather than some coldcalling salesprat or a debt collector or whatever. It was a customer, at least I suppose you could call him that, because when I did my usual husky murmer to inform the caller that I was right here, lovely Linda, ready and waiting and sooo glad to hear from him, a wierdly thickened voice informed me that 'All you bitches will get yours, soon. You've got it coming.' Then he hung up. I stood there with the phone in my hand and my mouth open, telling myself aloud not to be silly.
It wasn't the first time I'd had a nutter, of course: I was well used to the ones who hadn't read the small print explaining that Aprhodite's various lines were for fun and entertainment only rather than a way to contact a professional sex worker who would actually come round and jerk them off, or were so fucked up that the only kind of conversation they could have with a woman was one they were paying for, but there was something seriously creepy about those few grunted words. I knew it wasn't me he was really talking to ? Lovely Linda wasn't me, she was a non-person I'd constructed, a fantasy wet dream who consisted only of my voice, or at least a version of my voice. The real me, Keziah Smith ? most people call me Kizzy ? is a chunky, scruffy brunette while Linda described herself as a redhead with huge boobs and a love of high heels and black silk lingerie.
I paced about a bit, and hoped the next caller would either be a regular or your average Big Dick who wanted a generic few minutes about stockings and blowjobs. There were no more calls for quite a while, and I was almost beginning to wonder if there was something up with the whole network when the phone did ring again, and it was a Big Dick, who I managed to get to shoot his load about three minutes before I heard Mikey stirring in the bedroom and quickly logged out.
As far as Mikey and I were concerned, nothing much happened for the next couple of days. It was the weekend, but that wasn;t a big deal to us, at least not when there was no spare cash. What I didn't know at the time was that weekend was the tipping point, the stage at which nothing could be done to put things back to normal. I can't get my head round how many people died in the course of that 48 hours, whether they killed themselves or someone else killed them, or whether they just got sick and died of it, of the weird side effects of Rapilust and the other supplements that were still being described as some kind of virus in the last few news reports that went out. I try not to think about it too much. I know a lot of people were simply upping and fleeing over the week and a half before the government stopped ignoring the problem and started taling about evacuations officially, those in households that were clear of Rapilust users, and probably one or two where the symptoms hadn't shown yet even though they had copped a dose of the really bad version. Of course some of those who tried to flee got caught up and quarantined, and a lot more actually tried to obey the instructions to report for quarantine and treatment and all that jazz, for all the good it did them. Because there were the fires and the rampages, and the fact that most people didn't know who was dangerous and who wasn't, and of course a lot of those with official status were every bit as dangerous as the rest.
.
Because it rained almost without stopping, or at least keeping up a thin continuous drizzle, we didn't go out. I'd kept the spare laptop battery fully charged, so I was able to make use of Disney DVDs to keep Mikey amused some of the time, and we built elaborate brick towers and knocked them down, and sang songs, and Mikey was developing a degree of self-sufficiency with regard to playing, even then, so I piddled about with bits of housework, made notes to myself about updating my cv and read a book or two. Also, with the downstairs neighbour gone, I felt less worried about shushing Mikey when he wanted to charge round the room being a fire engine: the old dear who lived on the top floor on the other side was stone deaf, and the couple in the ground floor flat were away. Thinking about it, they'd probably done the same as the other bloke, spotted the way things were going and decided to get the hell out of town, though that didn't occur to me then.
By Monday, we were getting a bit stir crazy. There was still no money, so toddler group was out of the question. The last few weeks we'd been, there had been hardly anyone there, anyway. And last time, there had been a bit of an atmosphere: two of the other mothers looked like they'd been in the wars: one had a black eye, and the other one had a bandaged wrist; they both seemed miserable, and I didn't like to ask them what had happened, though the play leader did have a hushed conversation with the black-eyed one. I'd thought at the time that one or both of them might have taken a bashing off their partners, and felt both sorry for them and angry at the same time: there had been talk everywhere for months about how much it was on the increase these days. The papers seemed to alternate between women columnists saying that men were all scum and something had to be done about it, and rather more male ones blaming it all on feminism and only just not saying that battered women generally deserved it.
It had never happened to me: violent was the last thing you'd say about Roy. Flaky was the word I generally used, to myself and others, but I didn't hate or despise him, he just was what he was, and I had no more wish to tie myself to a couple-relationship with him, than he did with me. I would have preferred it if he'd at least stayed in the same country as us, but I wasn't prepared to waste energy on making demands to that effect.
He left the UK when Mikey was eight months old and I can't say I wasn't disappointed and a bit miserable. Because there had been some good times before that; times when Roy actually felt like socialising with the pair of us. I mustn't be harsh on him though, it was never a case of me loving him and him doing me wrong. The two of us just happened to get a little careless one pissed up night and Mikey was the result.
On Monday morning Mikey was clearly fed up. We were out of longlife milk, so his breakfast had been bread and butter ? and after several days the bread was less than fabulous, and the last of the biscuits I'd bought the week before hadn't proved that much of an appealing alternative. He'd eaten a chopped up apple, so I didn't feel I was starving him, but he was sulky and cross. By late morning I'd tried everything I could think of to cheer him up; singing, scribbling with crayons on the inside of a torn up cereal packet, offering to be a horsey and let him ride round the living room on my back, but nothing seemed to work. Looking out of the window, I noticed the sky had cleared and the rain had stopped, so I thought we would head over to the little playground at Midwell Heights inbetween the tower blocks across the road. While I think it was mainly intended for whatever kids lived in those blocks, we'd been there before and no one had actually chased us away. I'd even had a conversation or two with other mothers there from time to time, the usual something and nothing, how old is yours, isn't he or she cute, have you got any older ones, potty training, night waking...
'Come on, big boy,' I said, getting his jacket off the coat rack. 'Let's hit the swings!' He scrambled to his feet, instantly galvanised. 'Wings! Wings!' he yelled, clapping his hands. I glanced at the buggy, and decided against it, we were only going over the road and up the hill a bit, really.
I'd never been thrilled with this particular playground , which was small and as rundown as most of the rest of North Woods Road. In a normal week, ie when I had a little cash, we preferred to get the bus from the bottom of the hill to the park in West Twilsdon, which had a duckpond as well as a much better range of swings, slides and roundabouts. But I was surprised by how grim Midwell Heights seemed that day, even though the sun was at least trying to shine. There was no sign of anyone else: usually we'd encounter at least a couple of people going in or out of the flats, and if there were no small kids in the playground, often as not there would be some teenagers sitting on the benches or the bigger swing. Mikey, who'd been chattering away as we crossed the road and headed up the winding path that led between the blocks to the central court where the playground was, fell quiet as we passed into the shadow of the nearest tower. Looking up, I noticed quite a few broken windows dotting its sides, and wondered if more people had been moved out recently. I thought back to Saturday night, when my sleep had been disturbed once or twice by noises that I couldn't quite identify, and tried not to shiver. It was a passably nice spring day, and even if there was some kind of nasty bug around that was keeping a lot of people to their beds, neither of us two had any symptoms of anything. And to think that the tower blocks were kind of looming over us was just daft, projecting my fears in a random fashion. They were set round the playground in a way that did mean it was always slightly in the shadow of at least one of them, but that had never bothered me in the past. Mikey needed some air and some fun, I shouldn't let a fit of irrational vapours spoil his chances at having those things.
Once we reached the little square of pressed rubber flooring with its collection of stuff to swing on, climb up and slide down, I took Mikey's reins off and let him choose what he wanted to play on first. Normally this would be his cue to run round and round a few times before settling on either the swing or the small blue roundabout: this time he stood still, looking around him uneasily.
'Go on lovie, let's play,' I said encouragingly, and after a moment or two he made for the luridly purple elephant that rocked back and forth on a spring. I helped him up onto it and he began lurching to and fro with a creaking noise that sounded horribly loud. I realised my arms were covered in goosebumps and wondered what on earth was the matter with me. I just couldn't rid myself of the idea that we were being watched by hostile eyes, which was something I had honestly never felt before.
Suddenly there was a grating squeal of metal from somewhere high up behind me, and a woman's voice shouted angrily, 'Hi, you! You mad cow, get out of here! Get out now!'
'Whatsat, Mummy?' Mikey said, turning his head from side to side and trying to see where the sound had come from.
'Just a cross lady,' I managed to say. I was genuinely scared, just like that, not simply uneasy but about two millimetres away from outright terror, and though there were times in the past when I might have given whoever it was a mouthful about public rights of way and all that, today all my instincts were screaming at me to do exactly what she said. I lifted him off the elephant, and was about to slip his reins back on when I heard a creak and a bang, and as I turned round with Mikey in my arms, I saw that the door at the bottom of the furthest tower block was open, and someone was coming out. A man, quite a big man, and I almost called out to ask him what his problem was, and then my panic was up and big and raging within me. There were three steps down from the door to the ground, and he stomped down them in a way that was somehow horribly alien, the rhythm of his steps all wrong. His face was a dark shade of red, a wrong shade of red. For a split second I wondered if I was dreaming.
'Cunt!' he said in a kind of slobbering growl. 'Cunt. Come here, cunt. Got something for you.' Mikey's reins fell from my hand, and above came a crash of splintering glass and the sound of a woman screaming. Infected by my fear, Mikey started to scream as well, and I hugged him to me and just ran. I remember thinking that there must be more of them, whoever they were, and if they came out of the next tower block as well they would be between me and the road and we'd never get out.
Adrenaline gives you extra strength, but it's still no joke trying to run and carry a two year old when you weren't exactly at the peak of fitness beforehand. It flashed through my head that I'd run faster alone but that thought almost made me throw up with horror ? nothing could make me leave Mikey or put my safety ahead of his. I could feel his coat pulling up his back as I clutched him, thrashing and shrieking in fright, and another awful thought shot into my mind ? that he'd slip right out of his coat and I'd drop him by mistake. My chest and shoulders were starting to hurt as we reached the main path, but reaching it somehow helped me find the energy to put on more of a spurt, surely we couldn't be attacked on the open road, surely someone else would come along and do something to help.
We got to the pavement and I risked a glance behind me. No pursuit. I staggered to a halt, still hanging on to Mikey: much as my arms were starting to ache I didn't dare put him down. I took a longer look back and saw that the man had fallen or lain down on the grass and was kicking his legs in a horribly jerky, slow motion way, head down, but there was nobody else in sight. I adjusted my grip on Mikey, whose screams had faded to frightened soft sobbing, and crossed the road at a kind of stumbling trot. When we got back to Riley Court, I stopped again before actually going through the front gate. There was no sign of anyone or anything stirring among the tower blocks, and the angles they were built at meant that it wasn't really possible to see the playground from our place ? or to see us from the playground. I cuddled Mikey tightly to me, kissing his head, rubbing his back and trying to sooth him, it's all right, it's all over, Mummy's here, Mummy loves you. Slowly, he settled down, snuggling against me, his little hands patting my cheeks.
Whatever it was, it was done with. I carried him up to the flat and sat for a while on the sofa with him on my lap, singing quietly to him until he fell asleep and my own trembling slowly stopped.
I wondered if I ought to phone the police or something, but I wasn't going to be able to show them any actual evidence of what the man had done. And after all, what had he done that could be considered a crime? Shouted at us? Scared us? I couldn't even genuinely claim that he'd chased us, let alone committed any kind of assault. And anyway, if the police sent some junior Community Officer out to take a statement, I might end up with Social Services on my back, demanding to know why there was no money on the electricity meter but a bottle of white wine in the back of the fridge, and tutting over the general untidiness of the flat.
I laid Mikey carefully on the sofa and tiptoed into the bedroom to get his blanket and cover him with it. He normally had his nap after lunch, not before, but I might as well leave him to sleep for the moment. I didn't feel like dealing with any Aphrodite callers though, so I went and got a book and read for the next hour. I'd pretty much convinced myself that I'd got into a panic about nothing ? just some drunk arsehole having a tantrum ? by the time Mikey woke up again. All that stuff about the man's body shape and red distorted face, I must have imagined it, surely.
We spent the afternoon doing some washing, which Mikey found quite entertaining as it involved putting the dirty clothes into a bath full of cold water with the last gasp of a little tube of travel detergent, and I let him throw the clothes into the water one by one; this was mixed with a few experiments relating to the appropriate use of a potty, partly motivated by the fact that nappies were another thing we were running low on. It took quite a while but eventually the bulk of our clothing was wrung out and dripping over the folding rack in the bath, and I was able to shepherd Mikey back into the living room which is what I call the main area of the flat, no barrier between it and the kitchen, where he could watch me cooking rice with a couple of spoonfuls of pesto and a chopped onion, food supplies being seriously low by now.
I put him to bed at his usual time, but it took a couple more stories and songs than previous nights to get him settled to sleep, by which time the light had gone and even sitting right by the living room window I couldn't see to read, so I got the wine out of the fridge and poured a glassful. . In the dark, I thought back to the man at the flats again and shivered. Cunt. Come here cunt. It's not that I'm bothered by bad language ? I was a phone sex operator. I'd had a client who wanted to call me cunt for several minutes, but he used to apologise afterwards and say he was sure I was a nice girl. There were weird quirks out there, sure, but over the past few months there had been more and more who were outright vile to deal with. No work meant no pay, but at the same time the idea of sitting in the dark waiting to see if the phone would ring, and if it would be another nutter shouting and threatening, was just not something I could face. Moving carefully so as not to bash into anything, I made my way into the bedroom, peeled off my jeans, socks and knickers, yanked off my t-shirt and got out of my bra. I had to find my nightwear, or at least the big baggy t-shirt I'd been using for the purpose, which was tangled up with the bedding, by touch alone, but it wasn't too much of a problem, and I was soon in bed, flat on my back, starfishing and staring up at nothing. It was only about half past eight, but I found myself feeling quite ready to sleep, thinking comforting thoughts about the fact that tomorrow there would be some money, and I could buy fresh food, top up the electricity, maybe even pay off the bill for the phone and internet so those would be put back on.
I was woken up at some point, not that long after I'd dropped off, by Mikey whimpering in his cot. Groggy and a bit disorientated, I floundered out of bed, dropped on my knees beside his cot and slid my hand in through the bars to pet and stroke him. He hushed for a few minutes but then started moaning again. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now so I could see him as he sat upright and yelped in a way that suggested he was seconds short of indulging in a full blown howl.
Again, though I didn't know it at the time, what I did next was something that improved our chances of survival no end: I got up, lifted him out of the cot and took him into bed with me. I was generally fairly strict about keeping him to his own cot at night, but somehow tonight I just didn't want to, I actually felt I needed the warmth of his little sleepsuited body in my arms, cuddled up close.
We both fell asleep again, at least for a little while, but then I remember rousing up, confused and instantly terrified. I could hear screams, agonised screams, not loud as they weren't that close, but piercing enough to wake me, and once I was awake I heard a crash and a hoarse roaring of several voices. Mikey stirred, and I held him close and rubbed his back, murmuring to him soothingly despite my own nervousness. Further crashes came, and then Mikey did wake up and started wriggling violently.
'Shh, love, shh Mikey,' I told him, trying to keep my own voice low and level. 'It's all right, we're all right, be quiet as mice, we're safe in bed.' Part of me wanted to get up, go and look out of the living room window, maybe jump out of the bedroom window and run away, another part of me , the more sensible part, wanted to stay right where I was, holding my son, shutting my eyes and hoping that whatever it was would all go away. There were a couple of sharp popping bangs that sounded more than a little like gunshots, and more screams, and the rumble of engines: I clung to Mikey, whispering over and over again to shhh, stay quiet, it would all be fine. Amazingly, he went back to sleep in my arms after a while, but I lay there rigid, listening, straning my ears for any indication that whatever was happening out there might be moving closer. I don't know how long it went on or how much of that awful night I did spend sleeping and reliving the terror in my dreams. But I do remember thinking how glad I was that the washing we'd done was on the rack in the bath rather than draped over the balcony, that there was nothing about Riley Court to suggest that it was occupied.
I must have slept some of the time, must have drifted into unconsciousness, because so much of that night now seems like a curious fragmented blur of terror and boredom. At some point I fancied I heard someone stomping around in the front garden, but to this day I'm not sure if there was ever anyone there. I know I inched the duvet up so that Mikey and I were completely covered by it, and lay there with my teeth locked tight together, holding my breath till I couldn't hold it any longer, but I'm pretty sure that even when I did sleep, no one actually tried to mount the steps. Then I remember the light starting to fill the bedroom, chilly and grey but definitely dawn, and silence, and then finally sinking into proper sleep.