Gone Missing
Jean Ure

For Sarah Mason and Rachel Woolford

Contents

One

“Eat”

Two

“But where would we go?”

Three

Sunday was looming, with its roast and two veg. Dad…

Four

When we got to New Street, I said to Honey…

Five

It was seven o’clock when we got on the brown…

Six

It was kind of a weird evening. We started off…

Seven

There wasn’t anything! Not even so much as a mention.

Eight

I really couldn’t see what good it was going to…

Also by Jean Ure

Copyright

About the Publisher

one

“Eat.”

“I won’t!”

“You’ll either do as you’re told or you’ll sit there for the rest of the day! Do I make myself clear?”

Crash. Bang. Wallop.

That’s Dad, striking the table. This is me, shrieking at him: “I’d sooner starve!”

Whonk.

Me again, slamming the door as I rush from the room.

“Jade Rutherford, you come back here!”

Dad thunders after me, followed by Mum. (Kirsty just sits there, carrying on eating.)

“I will not have my meal times disrupted by tantrums!”

“Alec, leave her! It’s not worth all this upset!”

Mum pleads, Dad bellows, I shriek.

“You can’t force me!”

“Alec, please.” Now she’s clutching at him. I wish she wouldn’t! It’s so degrading. “Let her be! She’ll eat when she’s hungry.”

I yell that I am hungry. “But I’m not shovelling stinking, rotten flesh into myself! It’s disgusting, it’s unhygienic, it’s repulsive!”

Dad bellows, again, that I will eat what I am given. “We don’t have food fads in this house! We eat what the Lord has provided!”

I’m tempted to be smart and say that I thought it was Mum who’d provided. Instead I shriek, “Some weird kind of Lord, wanting us to eat dead stuff!”

I shouldn’t have said it; I’ve gone too far. Dad’s face turns slowly purple, like a big shiny aubergine. He shouts, “Right! That is enough! You get back in there and you sit yourself down and you eat.”

He can’t force me. Nobody can force me.

We stand there, facing each other, for what seems like minutes. Dad is breathing, very heavily.

“I’m warning you, my girl! You either eat what the rest of us eat, or you eat nothing.”

“So I’ll eat nothing! I’ll get anorexic and I’ll probably die. Then perhaps you’ll be happy!”

Mum bleats, “Alec…”

“Veronica, you stay out of this!”

Dad stands firm. He’s a great believer in standing firm. He will not be dictated to by a fourteen-year-old girl-especially not in his own house.

“If she feels that strongly,” says Mum.

“She doesn’t,” snarls Dad. “It’s all done to rile me!”

There may be a nugget of truth in what he says. Just a tiny little insy winsy nugget. At any rate, that’s all I’m admitting to.

“Jade, please!” begs Mum. “Let’s talk about this later. Come back, now, and eat your dinner.”

“No way!” I turn, and gallop up the stairs three at a time. “He can take his lump of flesh and guzzle it himself!”

“Jade!”

“You’ll have to put me in a straitjacket and use a feeding tube before you get it down me!”

“I wouldn’t joke about it, if I were you!” bawls Dad. “It may yet come to that.”

“In your dreams! I’d kill myself first.”

Etc., etc. Day after day, same old thing. Dad bawling, me yelling, Mum humbling herself. Jade, please! Alec, please! And all to no avail, cos neither of us ever took the least bit of notice.

This is just one example of the rows that I used to have with my dad. Well, stepdad, actually, but Mum married him when I was only four, so you’d have thought by the time I was fourteen we’d have grown used to each other. It was OK when I was little. Fairly OK. He was always a whole lot stricter than anyone else’s dad, but you accept that when you’re a kid. You can’t really do much else, it’s just the way things are. It was when I got to be, like, twelve, thirteen, that the problems started. See, my dad is a very self-opinionated sort of person. Whatever he says is right, and if anyone says different then they are wrong, and that is all there is to it. No room for discussion. They are simply WRONG.

Unfortunately, I am somewhat that way inclined myself. Not that I automatically think everyone else is wrong, I like to believe that I have a reasonably open mind, but I do have these very strong opinions about all kinds of things. I think you have to have opinions, because, I mean, without them you are nothing but a mindless blob. The trouble is when your dad has one lot of opinions and you have another and they are just, like, at opposite ends of the spectrum, and neither of you will budge by so much as a centimetre.

Mum used to fall over backwards to keep Dad happy. Ask your father. Listen to your father. Your father knows best. Anything for a quiet life. My sister Kirsty, she’s two years younger than me, she just used to keep her head down and say nothing. That way, she and Dad got on really well. She didn’t cosy up to him, she wasn’t that much of a creep, but if ever he said anything that I knew for a fact she disagreed with, cos like we’d discussed it together, she’d just go into silent mode. I guess it’s one way of coping. It’s just not my way! I think it’s a bit dishonest, to tell you the truth. Like somebody once said, though I cannot now remember who, we all have to stand up and be counted.

Most of the rows I had with Dad tend to dissolve into a blur, there were so many of them. But I remember the one about the dead flesh cos I wrote it up in my journal. (Which I kept for almost a month, before the effort wore me out.) I was just so angry! Nobody, but nobody, should try to force someone to go against their principles, especially not your own dad. It’s a form of bullying. He’s the one with the power, and you’re just there to do his bidding, no matter how evil. I was in such a rage! I didn’t make a note of the actual date, but it was definitely a Sunday, cos that was the day we all sat down together for the ritual roast, and it was definitely during term time. The summer term, somewhere near the beginning, so it was still light outside and I wasn’t about to spend the rest of the evening skulking in my bedroom while he was fuming in the kitchen, stuffing himself with murdered pig, or whatever it was. I remember that I grabbed my jacket and whizzed back downstairs and out of the front door-closing it really quietly behind me-and went tearing up the road, with a great huffing and puffing, to Honey’s place.

It was what I always did, when I felt the need to let off steam. Honey de Vito was my best, best, very best friend. Best of all time, ever. I know I will have other best friends during the course of my life, but I shan’t ever be as close to one as I was with Honey.

I’m aware there were some people that thought it odd, me and Honey being friends. There was a girl in my class, Marnie Wilkinson, who was, like, my school friend-Honey was my out-of-school friend-who actually asked me once what I saw in her.

She probably wasn’t the only one who wondered this. It’s so unfair, cos I don’t expect anyone ever asked Honey what she saw in me. Honey was a bit of a loner at school. She was a couple of years older than me, so of course we were in different classes, and people from different classes never mix. It’s just not done. Even if it were, me and Honey would never have hung out at school. I was one of those horrible loud, shrieking, show-off types. The sort that always gets invited to parties, always goes round in a gang, always manages to be the centre of attention. I suppose in a way I still am.

I’m still a bit loud and shrieky, and I am quite popular, but the fact is that I have never had a real friend. Not like Honey. Marnie was OK, we used to giggle together about boys and read magazines in the girls’ toilets and swop clothes, and once I went to a sleepover at her place with a couple of others from our class. Everyone thought me and Marnie were bosom buddies, and I suppose on the surface I had far more in common with her than I did with Honey.

But me and Honey had been friends for such ages! Years and years. Ever since we were tiny babies in our prams, banging our little plastic rattles and beaming our toothless beams. Well, I’d have been toothless; Honey was a toddler. But she always simply adored babies. She used to trundle me round the garden in a wheelbarrow. Really sweet! Probably if we’d been brought up in a normal, civilised part of the country like other people we wouldn’t ever have become friends. As it was, Honey was practically the only person my age within a fifty-mile radius. Steeple Norton, where we were doomed to live out our excruciatingly boring existences, is just about the back of beyond. What you might call an armpit. Dead as a duck pond without any ducks. Out of school, me and Honey couldn’t have been closer. We did everything together. We knew each other through and through. We never had to explain ourselves; we didn’t have any secrets.

The thing is, people always had the wrong idea about Honey. If you’d asked anyone at school they’d have told you she was backward, and I know that’s how she came across. She was sixteen, I was fourteen, and sometimes it was like she was even younger than Kirsty. But she wasn’t backward. I mean, not like retarded, or anything. Just a bit immature. A bit…slow. And if you ask me that was mainly cos she was so unsure of herself. Cos she’d spent all her life being humiliated. Kirsty always said I kept up with her cos I could push her around, but that wasn’t true, either. I was always nagging at her, for instance, to tell someone about her mum, about the way she treated her, but she never would. Where her mum was concerned, she wouldn’t budge. I know that I was the one responsible for–well, for what happened. I know I was the one that talked her into it. But in the end she proved she had a mind of her own. Whatever people say, she wasn’t just some sort of helpless glove puppet.

Anyway, that day, when Dad and I had our row about my eating habits, everything still lay in the future-though not so very far distant. Really, just a couple of weeks off. Not that I had any inkling of it, then; not for all my big talk. If someone had told me what I would set in motion, I wouldn’t have believed them. Miss Harriman, our year group tutor when I was in Year 8, used to say that I was “rebellious by nature”. She once warned me that if I wasn’t careful I would come to a sticky end. So maybe Miss Harriman would have believed them. But not me! I’m one of those people, I have this very wild imagination. I tend to go off into realms of fantasy. I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that. You just wait, you just see. And then someone like Marnie will go, “Oh, yeah?” and I’ll go, “Yeah!” and we’ll both know that it’s not really going to happen. Just a load of hot air, as my nan would say.

But being with Honey made me bold-and she was the one, when it came to the crunch, who said go for it.

It was her mum who opened the door to me when I went storming round, that Sunday afternoon. She said, “Oh, hallo, Jade!” with one of her big, bright, sugary smiles, showing all her lipsticky teeth and breathing booze over me.

I said, “Hallo, Mrs de Vito,” but I didn’t smile back. Not a proper smile. I didn’t trust Honey’s mum. She was always sweet as pie to me and mean as maggots to Honey. She treated Honey like dirt, and especially when she’d been “at the bottle”, as they say.

I once remarked to Mum that I thought Mrs de Vito drank too much, and Mum said, “Poor soul! She’s had enough to make her.” She meant because of Mr de Vito going and walking out on her, leaving her to cope as a single mum. But not all single mums get drunk and are horrid to their daughters. I hated Honey’s mum for the way she put Honey down all the time.

I asked her if Honey was there and she gave this little laugh, like she was really amused by the question. She said, “Why wouldn’t she be? She never sets foot outside the house unless it’s with you. Go on, you can go up.” And then, as I headed for the stairs, “It’s beyond me what she does up there.”

I could have told her what Honey did: she hid from her mum. Or at any rate, did her best to keep out of harm’s way. Out of tongue’s way. She really only came down when she had to, like at mealtimes–when there were any mealtimes, which mostly there weren’t. Mostly Honey just took something out of the fridge, or opened a tin.

“Hunneee!” I banged on the door of her room. “It’s Jade, let me in!”

Sometimes she kept her door locked. She’d get home from school and help herself to some food, take it upstairs with her and stay there right round till morning. When she did this, it usually meant her mum had been drinking. The door was locked that afternoon.

“Hey!” I rattled at the handle. “Let me in, I want to talk!”

“Sorry.” She opened the door a crack and pulled me through. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I’ve been practically battering the place down!” Apologetically she said she had been listening to music; this group called the Beany Boys, that she really loved. She used to lie on the bed, with her headphones on, and the volume turned way up. She could stay like that for hours. I’d even rung two or three times in ne evening and got no reply, even though I knew she was there.

“Honestly, I am seething,” I said. I had to talk, or I would burst!

“You’ve had another row with your dad,” said Honey.

“Yes, I have!” I hurled myself on to the bed. “He’s driving me nuts! I can’t take much more of it.”

“What’s he done now?”

It was all the invitation I needed. I was off! Railing on about Dad being a control freak and a bully. A sadist. A monster.

“Always forcing me to do what he thinks is right. Never mind what I think. I’m old enough to make up my own mind! It’s a matter of principle. Like when I told him I didn’t want to go to his stupid church any more? He practically wanted to burn me at the stake!”

“Yes, I remember,” said Honey.

“Like something out of the Dark Ages! Like accusing people of being witches.”

Dad hadn’t talked to me for weeks after I’d dug in my heels and said I wasn’t going to church any more. It’s one of the things he is most fanatical about; I suppose you might almost call him a religious maniac. Well, compared with normal, balanced people. He’s what’s known as an Elder in the Family of God, which is like really really strict and totally against anything which might come under the heading of fun. Mum’s a Family member, too, and so is Kirsty. I used to be, until I rebelled. It just got, like, too much. Every week, the same old thing. Trundling off in the car, miles and miles, for Sunday gathering. Gathering goes on for hours! And everyone so terribly holy.

I told him, “you don’t have to go to church to be a good person. You don’t even have to believe in God to be a good person!”

Dad was just so self-opinionated.

“Now it’s meat,” I said. “Just because he eats it, everyone else has to. And if you don’t, then-God, I’m starving!” I reached out a hand and helped myself from a plate of goodies on the bedside table. “If you don’t, then it’s like some kind of blasphemy. He’d sooner let me die than eat what I want. I told him, he’ll have to put me in a straitjacket before he gets dead muck down my throat! He actually threatened me. He actually—”

“Excuse me,” said Honey, “but did you know you’re eating sausage rolls?”

“No, I didn’t, why didn’t you tell me?” I shrieked.

“I just did,” said Honey.

“But I’ve swallowed them!”

“Gosh.”

Honey regarded me, very solemnly. I think she may have been laughing at me, just a little bit. Just because I was the bossy one and she was the meek one, it didn’t mean she was in awe of me, or anything. It’s what people didn’t realise. They only saw her as someone slow, and awkward, and a bit babyish, cos that’s how she came across in situations where she wasn’t sure of herself. But when it was just the two of us, when she felt safe, she could give as good as she got. I wouldn’t have wanted a friend that was all creepy crawly.

I was still mouthing on-all about Dad, and how I couldn’t put up with much more of it, I would have to get out, I would have to leave home, it was becoming unbearable-when Honey leaned forward to take the sausage rolls away from me and I saw this huge red blister on her arm.

“God,” I cried, “where did that come from?”

Her face immediately turned as red as the blister. She had this very pale skin, and she used to blush very easily.

“I burned myself.”

“How?”

She hung her head. “On a saucepan.”

I didn’t ask her how it happened, but I could guess. Honey was always doing things to herself–tripping over, stubbing her toe, spraining ankles, breaking wrists. She was quite an uncoordinated sort of person, like at school no one ever wanted her on their team because they knew she would mess things up. But she was a thousand times worse when she was around her mum. Her mum used to nag at her all the time. Nag at her, sneer at her, even poke fun at her. It got Honey so nervous, she just used to go to pieces. That was when the accidents occurred.

“You know what?” I said.

“What?”

“We both ought to get out. Not just me! Both of us.”

Honey hooked her hair back over her ears. I remember her eyes went all big and apprehensive. “You mean—”

“Leave home!”

“Like…run away?”

“Yes. Absolutely! Why not?”

Honey whispered: “You’re not serious?”

I told her that I was in deadly earnest. I really meant it! This wasn’t just one of my fantasies.

two

“But where would we go?”

It was the day following my big row with Dad. My latest big row with Dad. Me and Honey were on our way back from school. We were the ones that lived furthest away, so it was just the two of us left on the bus. Kirsty had stayed on for something: the drama club or whatever. Not for a detention! Little Goody Two-Shoes never got detention. I was the one that got those.

“I mean…” Honey lowered her voice to a whisper. “Where?”

“We could always go and stay with Darcy,” I said. I’d been fantasising like mad all night. I’d got it all worked out–well, the broad details. “All we’d have to do is just get ourselves down to London, then jump on a tube train. I know how to do it! I’ve been down to London, I’ve been on a tube. ’S easy! They’ve got maps and everything.”

Honey gazed at me, doubtfully. She had her lower lip all bunched up and was gnawing at it like a rabbit.

“Stop doing that,” I said. “It makes you look daft!” Honey was really pretty, far prettier than me, but she had this kind of vacant expression she sometimes put on, like her brain had gone to mush.

“Concentrate,” I said.

“Sorry.” Honey stopped gnawing her lip and sat up, very straight and stiff and purposeful. “OK,” she said. “I’m concentrating.”

“We get the train to London, right?”

She nodded. She still seemed doubtful.

“We get on a tube, we go to Darcy’s place. Yes?”

“Y-yes. I—I s’ppose.”

“Now what’s the matter? Darcy said, if ever I wanted a place to crash—”

“She meant you,” said Honey. “Not me.”

“Both of us!”

“No, you.”

It was true that Darcy had been my friend rather than Honey’s. She’d always said that Honey was “soft in the head”. I used to tell her it wasn’t true, but maybe, looking back on it, I didn’t stick up for Honey quite as much as I should have done. I’m not easy to impress, I really am not, but I think I was sort of, like, a bit smitten where Darcy was concerned. I mean, this was a truly wild and whacky person! I’d never met anyone quite like her. We hung out together all through Year 8 and part of Year 9. We were thick as thieves! Sometimes we were thieves…Darcy used to nick things off the supermarket shelves, and I used to copy her. Only small things, but it was just so exciting, I used to get prickly all over. It was like being in the SAS, or something. Going off on these dangerous missions.

Yeah, well, OK, I can see now that it was wrong. I knew at the time that it was wrong. But we never took anything valuable. We just did it for kicks.

Once when her mum had gone off somewhere she stayed at my place for a couple of days, though I have to say that was a complete disaster owing to Dad and his insane prejudices. He took one look and that was it: that girl has got to go. She couldn’t actually go cos she didn’t have anywhere to go to and not even Dad would throw someone out on the street, but afterwards he said she was a bad influence and I hadn’t got to see her any more. We had some of our worst rows over that. Not that it stopped me seeing her! It hardly could, considering we went to the same school. Course, when Darcy got excluded Dad was like “I told you so! I said that girl was no good.” That was when Darcy’s mum said she couldn’t cope and sent her off to London to live with her sister, and I took up with Marnie, instead.

“Darcy didn’t like me,” said Honey.

“She didn’t even know you!” I said.

“She wouldn’t want me.”

“Look, we’d only be there a few days, till we found somewhere else. I’m not going without you,” I said. “How could I go off and leave you here, all by yourself? If we do this, we gotta do it together!”

She was back at her lip munching again. I did wish she wouldn’t!

“Honey?” I said. “Are you listening?”

She dipped her head.

“So are we agreed? We could go and crash with Darcy. Just for a few days, till we get sorted. OK?”

The bus pulled up at the Green Man, and we both got out. I said, “Yes?”

“Yes, all right,” said Honey. “But what would we do afterwards?”

“After we got sorted?”

“After we’d stopped crashing with Darcy.”

“We’d go and crash somewhere else!”

“But where?”

“How do I know where?” My fantasies hadn’t reached that far. I’d only got as far as the actual running away. “I can’t plan everything at once,” I said. “Some things you just have to…wait for them to happen!”

“What we have to do,” I said, “we have to cover our tracks.”

It was Tuesday, and we were on the bus again. Going in to school, this time.

“It’s very important,” I said. “We have to lay a trail.”

Honey had been looking faintly worried, like she didn’t quite know what I was talking about. When I said lay a trail, she brightened.

“Bread crumbs!” she said.

I said, “Yeah, right! Bread crumbs! Remember those two boys we met that time? Ian, and—” I waved a hand.

“Duncan.” She blushed. Duncan had been the one she fancied. I think he’d fancied her a bit, too. We’d gone into Birmingham for the day, just me and Honey on our own, and we’d bumped into these two lads in McDonald’s and got talking. We’d really hit it off! Well, to be honest, Honey and Duncan had hit it off. Boys always went for Honey. In spite of her dad being Italian, she had this silvery hair and ivory skin, like her mum, but with her dad’s eyes, deep and dark, like rich chocolate. I guess she was what you’d call striking. Mum always said that with looks like those she would need to be careful. I knew what she meant. It doesn’t do to be too trusting, and Honey had this tendency, she’d trust anyone that was nice to her.

“Duncan McAleer,” said Honey.

Wow! She’d even remembered his surname. It was more than I’d done. I hadn’t even remembered his first name. All I remembered was that they’d lived in Glasgow. They’d given us their addresses and said to call if ever we were up there. I’d chucked the addresses in the bin cos a) I couldn’t see I’d ever be going to Glasgow, not in the foreseeable future, and b) even if I did I wouldn’t particularly want to meet up with them again. Duncan wasn’t actually too bad, but Ian had been a geeky little thing with red hair and a pointy nose and a face like a ferret. Yuck! Not my type at all.

“Is that where we’re going to go?” said Honey. “To Glasgow?”

I said, “No! That’s where the bread crumbs are going to go.” I could see that I’d lost her, but the bus was starting to fill up and I didn’t have time to explain. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Why can’t you tell me now?”

“Because it’s a secret,” I hissed. “Our secret…just between you and me. Right?”

She nodded. “OK.”

“Promise you won’t tell anyone!”

Honey was always very biddable. She ran a finger across her throat. “Slit my throat and hope to die.”

I giggled. “You probably would die, if you slit your throat!”

She meant “cross my heart” but she sometimes got things a bit muddled. It could be quite funny.

On the way home that afternoon, I explained to her what I meant about the bread crumbs. I’d stayed awake half the night hatching elaborate plots, laying false trails, like I was in some kind of spy movie.

“We have to make them think we’ve gone to Glasgow. Not London. We don’t want them to be on to us!”

Honey muched at her lip. “Why can’t we do it the other way round? Make them think we’ve gone to London?”

“Because we are going to London!”

“I’d rather go to Glasgow.”

“We don’t know anyone in Glasgow!”

“Yes, we do. We know Duncan! I’d rather go and stay with Duncan than with Darcy.”

“Well, we can’t, cos I’ve lost his address. And anyway, we don’t actually know him.”

“I don’t actually know Darcy.”

“No, well I do, and that’s where we’re going.”

Honey fell quiet for a bit. I could see she was turning things over in her mind.

“Are we really going to run away?” she said.

“We are if things don’t improve at home! You don’t know what it’s like, living with my dad. And you can’t go on living with your mum. She’ll destroy you! You know that, don’t you? You do know?”

I fixed her with this stern look. Honey just made a vague mumbling sound and let her eyes slide away. Honey’s mum was like a forbidden subject; she wouldn’t ever talk about her. I went on about Dad practically non stop, but Honey never once said anything bad about her mum. I knew she was a bit frightened of her-not physically, I don’t mean, cos I don’t think her mum was ever violent. It might almost have been better if she had been; at least then someone would have had to sit up and take notice. As it was, I think I was probably the only person that knew how hateful she could be to Honey. Honey was just scared, the whole time, of displeasing her. Doing the wrong thing. Saying the wrong thing. Dropping something, breaking something. Being told she was stupid.

Stupid, useless, hopeless. Clumsy, gawky. Nothing but a liability, can’t ever do anything right. Totally moronic! Drive me up the wall.

These were all things I’d heard Mrs de Vito say to Honey. When she’d had too much to drink she actually used to jeer at her. Make fun of her.

“Look at it! Great lumping thing! Can’t even walk straight.” And then she’d imitate Honey moving across the room, bumping into chairs and knocking stuff over. “What’s the matter with you? You got cerebral palsy, or something?”

She could be really nasty. Sometimes she used to try and rope me in. She’d look at me and roll her eyes, like she was expecting me to agree with her. I hated it when she did that! It made me feel so bad for Honey. I mean, they were cruel, the things she said. She didn’t deserve Honey being so loyal! Maybe, in spite of everything, Honey still loved her; I guess it’s always possible. I just don’t know. But I honestly did feel she had to get away, I really did! I wasn’t only thinking of me. At least, I don’t think I was.

That evening, I sat upstairs in my bedroom laying trails of bread crumbs…all the way to Glasgow! First off, I doodled hearts and flowers all over my school books, with the name DUNCAN in big capitals. (I chose Duncan rather than ferret face. I couldn’t stand the thought of being linked with ferret face!) Then I took our surnames, McAleer and Rutherford, and crossed out all the letters we had in common. Precisely two! I’d have been in despair if he’d really been my boyfriend.

I got a bit carried away with the doodling. I was still at it when Mum and Dad got home from the shop (the Steeple Norton Mini Mart. Oh, please!) and I had to go downstairs and report on school and whether I’d done my homework. It was like the Spanish Inquisition every night. Dad used to say, “This doesn’t please me any more than it pleases you.” He never did it with Kirsty because Kirsty could be trusted. She’d never bunked off school or failed to hand in her homework three weeks running. But all that had been back in the winter term! Back when I was still mates with Darcy. It was very belittling that Dad still kept grilling me.

I told him that I was doing my homework. Dad said, “You’d better be.” I said, “I am!” and went rushing back upstairs to scatter more bread crumbs. I would look up train times! On the computer, Birmingham to Glasgow. I knew the first thing the police would do when they started to investigate would be to take away the computer and examine it. They can find out all sorts of things, from a computer. Just to make sure, I even went to Google and put in the word “Glasgow”, so they’d think I’d been looking at the map. I’d have liked to put in Stonebridge Park, which was where Darcy had gone to live with her sister. I knew that Stonebridge Park was in London, and I knew you could get there on a tube train, cos Darcy had told me. She had said it was totally brilliant.

“You can be in the West End in thirty minutes!”

I wasn’t bothered about trains from Birmingham; I knew there were plenty of those, all times of the day. Money was the real problem. I had some saved up in a piggy bank-an old china pig with a slit in its back, which had belonged to one of my nans when she was a girl-and I thought I probably had enough for a single fare to London, but it wasn’t going to leave very much over. What did other kids do when they ran away? Did they steal off their parents? I couldn’t steal off mine, or only very tiny amounts. Dad didn’t believe in having large sums of money lying around. He’d been robbed twice at the shop and it had made him very grim. But I didn’t think most people would exactly have fortunes waiting to be taken, so what did kids do? I had a sneaking suspicion that maybe they went on the streets and begged, or even worse, they sold themselves. I wouldn’t want to do that! No way!

I decided not to think about it. As I’d said to Honey, you can’t plan everything in advance. Sometimes, you just have to wait and see what happens.

That’s the good thing about fantasies. If there’s a part you can’t work out, you just skate over it and move on to the next bit.

It was still a fantasy. But growing more and more real, every day.

Next morning, at school, Marnie comes up to me and says, “Hey! Wanna know something?” So I’m like, “Yeah, what?” She tells me that this boy, Rory Mansell, that’s in Year 10, has a thing about me. She knows this cos she’s going out with Jason Dobbs that’s also in Year 10. She says Rory told Jason in the hope that he would tell Marnie and Marnie would tell me, and then maybe I would—

Would what? Marnie giggles and says, “Ask him if he’d like to go on a date?”

I think to myself that if Rory Mansell wants to go on a date he could ask me himself, but Marnie says he’s too shy. I say in that case he’s a wimp.

“He’s not a wimp,” says Marnie, “he’s just scared you’ll turn him down.” Then she tells me off for being prejudiced and says, “He’s actually quite nice.”

He’s not bad, I agree, but as I explain to Marnie, I don’t really fancy him. Marnie says, “So who do you fancy? You haven’t been out with anyone for ages! You’ll get out of the habit if you’re not careful. People’ll start thinking you’re a lesbian!”

I say, “Now who’s being prejudiced?” And then, without any warning, I hear myself blurt out, “There is someone I fancy!”

“Oh?” Marnie spins round. All ears. “Who’s that, then?”

“This boy I met. In Birmingham. Me and Honey, we bumped into them, there were two of them, they were down here from Glagow and we all got talking and—”

My voice burbles on. It’s got a will of its own. I can’t control it, it’s gone mad! Now it’s telling Marnie how me and this boy have been speaking on the phone every week. We’ve been texting, we’ve been emailing. We fancy each other like crazy.

Marnie says, “Wow! What’s his name? How old is he? Gimme, gimme, I want to know!”

I say that I can’t give her his name. “It’s a secret!”

Marnie says, “Why? Is he someone famous?”

I struggle with a momentary temptation to say yes, but manage to resist it. I say no, he’s not famous, he’s just an ordinary boy.

“So why’s it a secret?”

“Cos he’s a secret! I shouldn’t ever have mentioned him. I don’t want Dad finding out! You know what my dad’s like. He nearly went ballistic that time I went out with Soper. He did go ballistic!”

Marnie says, “Yeah, well…Soper.” She then agrees with me, however, that my dad is impossible. “I’m surprised he even lets you have a mobile phone.”

I say, “He wouldn’t, if he had his way. It’s only cos of Mum.”

“I bet he checks on your calls!”

I mutter darkly that nothing would surprise me. “It’s like living under a dictator.”

“So what you gonna do?” says Marnie. “About this boy?”

I tell her that I don’t yet know. “But if things get much worse, with my dad—”

“What? What?” She’s all breathless and eager. “What d’you reckon you’ll do?”

I say, “Something desperate!”

I spend the rest of the day trying to decide whether I’ve finally flipped and started to believe my own fantasies, or whether I’ve just been laying more bread crumbs. I decide that it’s got to be bread crumbs. It’s part of the trail! If Honey and me do run away–when Honey and me run away–the police will be bound to talk to Marnie. She’ll be one of the first they talk to. And she’ll just be bursting to tell them about “this boy she met that lives in Glasgow”. I begin to feel rather pleased with myself. I’m obviously good at this sort of thing!

I do a bit of thinking about Rory, wondering whether he’s really a wimp or just that mythical creature, a boy that’s sensitive. But no, that’s truly sexist. I’m sure there are boys that are sensitive, they just don’t like to show it. Soper wasn’t, of course. He’d have bashed someone’s head in, if they’d suggested he was sensitive.

I think for a while about Soper. I try to remember what his first name was, but I can’t. He was always just Soper; he was that sort of boy. The sort of boy that Dad thought should be locked up and the key thrown away. I know he was a bit mad and bad, but it was just totally humiliating when Dad actually chucked him out of the house. It was like, “Never darken my door again”. We had the hugest row of all time over Soper.

That was when I finally rebelled and said I wasn’t going to his stupid church any more. I did it to pay Dad out! I knew if there was one thing that would really upset him above all else, it would be having to admit that he’d lost control. That one of his daughters was leaving the Family. That was like heresy! That was like denying God.

The church thing had happened just a month ago; things had been getting steadily worse ever since. Dad was cold and tight-lipped, I was defiant. Sometimes I thought he hated me. Sometimes I thought I hated him. He was convinced I did things for no reason than to annoy him, and I have to admit that he was partly right. But I had to assert myself! I mean, otherwise I would just have been ground down.

Later that day I gaze at Rory across the assembly hall. He catches me at it, and blushes. I think to myself that Dad would probably approve of Rory–well, as much as he’d approve of any boy. But even if he did, we’d still fall out. Dad and I are fated to disagree about pretty well everything. In any case, he’s not my sort. Rory, I mean. He’s too nice! How could I go out with a boy that Dad approved of??? It’s not worth staying on to be oppressed and humiliated just for the sake of going out with any stray male that happens to be available. I have more pride than that!

On the other hand, as Marnie reminded me, I haven’t been out with a boy for simply months. That’s not normal! Leave it too long and people will think I’m not interested. Plus I shall forget how to do it. How to talk to them. How to be with them. Cos being with a boy is definitely not the same as being with a girl.

It’s Dad’s fault. It’s all Dad’s fault! How can I ever hope to grow up sane and well balanced with him thwarting me at every turn? I feel in such a muddle!

When Honey asks me, on the way home, whether we are still going to do it–“That thing that you were talking about?”–I tell her yes, I’m working on it. Honey says, “So when do you think it will be?”

What does she expect me to say? It’s not something you can put in your diary, like a dentist appointment. I tell her that I’m waiting to see what happens. “I’m giving him one more chance.”

“Oh.” Honey nods. “All right.”

I say, “Why? You didn’t want to go right now, did you?”

“I just thought you’d decided.”

“I haven’t decided anything! Have you?”

“No. I thought you had.”

I tell her that I haven’t made up my mind. Yet. “But if he comes on heavy just one more time—”

“That’ll be it?” says Honey.

I say that that will definitely be it. “Cos I have had enough!”

three

Sunday was looming, with its roast and two veg. Dad insists on his roast and two veg, even in the height of summer. He sits there, sweating, and forcing himself to eat, like it’s some kind of holy ritual. Like God has spoken to him. “And on Sunday, thou shalt consume flesh.” Just so long as he didn’t expect me to consume it. Dad, I mean, cos I don’t believe in God. At least, I don’t think I do.

I really didn’t like having rows with Dad. I didn’t go out of my way to have them, which Mum seemed to think I did; they just happened. I wasn’t looking forward to another meat argument. I knew it would end in Dad banging on the table and me shrieking, the same as it had last Sunday, but I was determined to stand my ground.

Sunday morning, when she came back from Gathering, Mum called me into the kitchen. I thought she was going to warn me not to make a fuss, just eat what everyone else was eating in order to keep Dad happy. Mum would do almost anything to keep Dad happy. I was all prepared to put up a fight when she kind of took the wind out of my sails by saying, “Your father and I have been talking. He is still waiting for you to repent, but there is obviously no point in forcing you. It has to come from the heart. In the meantime you must make your peace with the Lord as best you may. I just pray he forgives you.”

I said, “Forgives me for what?”

“Rejecting his bounty. It is not up to us to reject what the Lord has seen fit to provide.”

Whew! Mum doesn’t usually talk like this; she is usually quite normal. I guessed they’d been discussing me at Gathering. It was probably Dad who’d written the script for her.

I said, “Does that mean you’re not going to nag me to eat dead stuff any more?”

Mum suddenly switched back to being Mum. “Not as long as you promise to eat everything else. I don’t want you getting anorexic.”

I assured her that I would glut on vegetable matter as much as she liked. I have no objections to potatoes and cauliflower. I said this to Mum. “Vegetables aren’t pumped full of antibiotics–plus they don’t have their throats cut.”

Kirsty, who was laying the table, at once said, “No, they just get pulled up by the roots! How’d you like to be pulled up by the roots? Vegetables have feelings too, you know.”

“Girls, please don’t start,” said Mum. “We don’t need any smart mouth. Just remember, your dad’s been working hard all week, he deserves a bit of peace and quiet on his day of rest.”

Dad may have agreed there wasn’t any point in forcing me, but he obviously wasn’t pleased about it. He was in a foul mood from the word go. You could always tell when Dad was in a mood. He’d be ominously quiet, and his cheeks would turn a purply pink and his lips purse into this thin line. I guess what it was, he resented me being allowed to get away with something. Cos that’s how he would have seen it. He’d have gone to Gathering all stiff and self-righteous, thinking everyone would be on his side and say how he’d got to tie me to a table leg and force-feed me, or lock me in my room and starve me into submission. He’d have liked to do that. He’d have felt he was carrying out God’s mission. As it was, he sat and simmered all through lunch, seething as he watched me eat my vegetables. When he finally blew, it was like Vesuvius erupting. And over something utterly trivial.

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