crafty fag outside, despite Allen’s ban on smoking in the house. The idea of Mum working in a pub filled Sadie with a sudden fear that she would slide back into her old ways.
‘But he doesn’t do anything,’ Sadie complained, ‘apart from watch the telly.’ She kept her voice low so that Allen wouldn’t hear her in the next room. ‘Why can’t he be the one to go out to work? Why does it have to be you?’
Still Jackie refused to look directly at her daughter, and she avoided her questions. ‘You’ll just have to get used to it, Sadie. Lots of mums go out to work.’
‘But—’
‘No buts, Sadie.’ Allen spoke quietly from the doorway to the sitting room. Sadie and Jackie both turned their heads to look at him at the same time, and waited for him to speak again. ‘Have you thought that your mam might actually want to go out to work, Sadie? You shouldn’t be so selfish.’
Sadie jutted her chin out forcefully, but she didn’t reply.
‘Tell her, Jackie,’ Allen instructed.
Jackie hesitated, but kept her eyes on him. ‘It’ll be nice for me,’ she said in a slightly monotone voice, ‘to get out of the house and all.’
‘Just as long as you keep off the sauce,’ Allen said rather contemptuously. ‘Putting you in a boozer is like putting a cat in a mousehole.’ As he went back into the sitting room, Jackie’s face flushed with embarrassment and she turned back to her cleaning.
‘So when do you start, Mum?’ Sadie asked in a small voice.
‘This afternoon. Late shift. Three till twelve. You can get your own dinner, can’t you?’
Sadie nodded, but her mum didn’t see her, so she slung her satchel sullenly over her head and left.
School was uneventful and passed quickly. It always did when she didn’t want to get home. As she sat daydreaming in her lessons, she thought about what had happened that morning. It made no sense. She loved her mum, but she knew her well enough to doubt that she really wanted to go out to work. And yet she had heard her say so herself. Maybe her mum wanted to go to work so that she could get away from Sadie. She wouldn’t have thought that before Allen had arrived, but in the last few weeks she had been different. Distant. Not the mum she knew or wanted to remember.
What was more, Sadie didn’t relish the idea of being in the house alone with Allen. She couldn’t work him out – sometimes he was nice to her, sometimes mean, and she almost didn’t know which Allen she liked the least. He was always walking up quietly behind her, appearing out of nowhere, getting in the way. Even when she hid herself away in the bedroom, he was always coming in to check on her, knocking gently – three measured raps that she had grown to dread – and entering without waiting for a reply.
The weather had turned. It was still warm, but the dry summer had become wet and the day was punctuated with thunderous showers. The rain started as soon as the school bell went for home time and was torrential on the way home, so Sadie, Anna and Carly barely spoke and concentrated on running back to the estate and its rain-stained concrete as quickly as possible.
Soaked to the skin, Sadie sprinted up the pathway to the front door. Her key was already in her hand– it had been in readiness ever since she entered the boundaries of the estate – and almost on autopilot she tried to open the front door with it. The key slid easily into the lock, but when she tried to turn it, it wouldn’t budge. She tried again, wiggling the key gently at first and then with more force, but it was no good. She rang the bell instead.
The door opened almost immediately. Allen stood in the doorway and observed Sadie as though she was a stranger or a cold caller. After an awkward few moments, during which he did not step aside to let her in, Sadie was forced to speak.
‘Can I come in?’
Suddenly Allen looked as though his attention had been snapped into focus. His lips flickered into a smile, and he stepped aside slightly, though not quite enough for Sadie to be able to enter without her sopping clothes brushing against him.
‘My key wouldn’t work,’ she mumbled as she entered.
‘No,’ said Allen. ‘It wouldn’t.’
‘Why not? It’s always worked.’
‘I’ve changed the lock,’ Allen said as he walked back into the kitchen. Sadie stayed in the hallway, watching him.
‘What for?’ she asked, but Allen didn’t reply, instead walking into the sitting room. Sadie followed him, water dripping off her coat on to the kitchen floor. ‘What did you change the lock for?’ she asked again. She knew she sounded insolent, but she couldn’t help it.
By now Allen was sitting on the settee again, his legs stretched out in his usual position. ‘You’re too young to have your own door key. I’ve discussed it with your mam and she agrees with me.’
Sadie could hardly believe what she was hearing and found herself unable to speak. She’d had her own key for years – Mum and Dad had trusted her, and she’d never done anything to betray that trust. Tears started to brim in her eyes.
‘No use crying about it. It’s about time we knew where you are and when you’re coming back. I know for a fact that you get up to no good when you’re out on your own. I haven’t told your mother what I suspect yet, but if it carries on, I will – don’t you worry about that.’
Sadie was shivering now, half from the wet clothes, half from the way he was speaking to her. Unable to trust herself to open her mouth, she spun round and ran, not for the first time since Allen had arrived, up to her bedroom. Outside the rain continued to hammer on her window and the sky was a deep, felt-tip grey. She slammed the door shut and started to peel off her sopping school uniform. She felt her long wet hair cold against her face.
As the clothes fell to the floor, she froze. She could hear Allen moving around downstairs, his footsteps sounding heavy and impatient. And then she heard a sound she recognized – a click. It was the front door being locked.
A sudden panic arose in her. She held her breath and remained deathly still as she listened with all her concentration. At first there was silence; then there was an unmistakable sound.
It was the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
Feeling an irrational burst of terror, Sadie jumped on to her bed. Goosebumps arose on her skin as she crouched in the corner, hugging her knees, wanting to remove her wet underwear and yet somehow not wanting to. As she did so, she counted the footsteps up the stairs.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
And then they stopped – about halfway up, Sadie calculated. For a few moments there was silence and then, more quietly this time, the footsteps disappeared back down the stairs.
Sadie did not move until she was sure that Allen had finished walking around. Instead, she remained on her bed, her skin clammy and her limbs shaking, the sickness of fear suddenly replaced with the hot flush of relief.
After a few minutes, she dared to creep on to the landing. Standing at the top of the stairs, she strained her ears and could make out the low hubbub of the television. By now she knew his habits. She knew that once he was installed in front of the box, he would not move from it willingly, so she crept back to her room, removed the rest of her clothes and put on the blue dressing gown that hung on the back of her door. Then she crept back on to the bed.
How she wished her mum were there. How she wished she could wordlessly snuggle up to her, feel her arms around her shoulders and put her head in her lap. She wished now she hadn’t been so mean before she left for school. When she saw her, she would be really nice. She would make things better between them. Jackie might have been different these past few weeks, but she was still her mum, and Sadie wanted her. It all seemed wrong, being stuck in the house with this man she hardly