Indigo Blue (4 page)

I crawl out from under the covers and huddle on the floorboards, shivering. I look around for yesterday’s clothes and realize I’m still wearing them, only damper and more crumpled.

A weak spring sun is shining through the curtainless window and I don’t have to check my watch to know it’s way past half seven. Way past nine, in fact. I am late for school.

I don’t even care.

My face feels stiff and grimy because I didn’t wash last night – we only had cold water and Mum forgot to pack the soap. My hair feels stringy and tangled and I’m so tired I could sleep for a week.

Mum is asleep in the living room, curled up on my old beanbag with her jacket pulled round her for warmth. She didn’t bring her duvet, because it was Max’s too, she said, and that wouldn’t have been fair.

Last night we rolled out the big stripy rug, but it looks lost on the vast expanse of creaky floorboards. Bin bags line the sides of the room, and I start rustling through them as quietly as I can in search of clean clothes. Mum’s clothes, Misti’s clothes, a bag full of shoes and wellies, another stuffed with paperbacks, another with Misti’s toys. I find a bag with my stuff in and dredge up knickers, socks, jeans and a jumper. No point looking for school clothes, because I’m not going. Not today.

Not ever again if I have my way.

At least not until I’ve had a chance to think up some story to explain all this, some way to turn it into a great adventure, a mad, daring thing to do instead of an awful, scary nightmare.

Only, deep down, I know I’d rather be in school doing long division and getting
see me
scrawled at the bottom of my spelling test. I’d rather be anywhere than here.

The bathroom is like a walk-in freezer, and there are patches of blue-grey mould scattered across the walls. Lovely.

I peel off my clothes and run the hot tap, in case something magical has happened and the water heated up all on its own in the night. It hasn’t. It couldn’t, because our electricity isn’t on yet – we need something called a powercard and we haven’t bought one yet.

So the water is cold, the heaters don’t work, the lights don’t go on and the cooker sits coldly in the grubby, poky kitchen. Last night we scrabbled around in the dark with candles, eating lukewarm chips straight out of the paper with no ketchup, no salt, no vinegar.

Cold washes are meant to be good for you, though. Mum said so last night. I splash the icy water all over me, squealing with the shock of it, then dry off using my fleece as a towel because I haven’t tracked down the bin bag with the bathroom stuff yet.

I don’t know if I’m clean exactly, but I’m definitely awake and I’m starving.

I dress quickly and pad back to the living room. There’s a brush in my school bag and I drag it through my hair, tugging out the knots. I dig out clean clothes for Misti and spread them on the rug. I root around till I find her nappies at the bottom of one bin bag, and I set one of those out too, along with the wet wipes and the talc.

‘You’re a good girl, Indie.’

Mum’s awake, just, stretching her skinny arms up and yawning. She stands up, squints around, looking as lost as I feel.

‘Breakfast?’ I suggest. ‘We’ve got cornflakes and I saw the bowls and spoons a minute ago – they’re in here.’

Mum looks hopeless. ‘No milk,’ she says.

‘I’ll get some,’ I offer, even though I’ve no idea where I can buy milk because I don’t know this part of town and, what’s more, I don’t want to.

‘Will you? There’s a corner shop down at the other end of the street. I’ll get Misti dressed and have a wash and set the table…’

‘She’s wet,’ I say.

‘Poor love.’

Mum gives me a pound coin and a shaky smile. ‘Yesterday was awful, Indie, but we’ll be OK,’ she says. ‘We’ll get this place sorted, see if we don’t. It’s better this way.’

‘What about Max?’ I make myself ask.

‘Max won’t find us here,’ Mum says firmly. ‘We’ll be safe. We’ll be OK.’

She gives me a quick hug and I see close up how the bruises are mellowing to a rich, mottled purple, and how her face is streaked with dried tears.

Things might be better, but they don’t feel that way. Not yet.

The corner shop is a bit like Singhs, the kind of place that stays open all hours and sells everything you can think of, but for a price. I buy two litres of milk, full cream, and a plump lady with a Scottish accent hands it over and counts out my change. I buy a tube of Smarties for Misti, to cheer her up. In case she feels as bad as I do. I’d get something for me and Mum too, but there’s not enough money unless I break into Miss McDougall’s emergency bus fare cash, and I’m not about to do that.

‘No school today?’ asks the Scottish lady as I turn to go.

‘No. I – I’ve hurt my ankle.’

I limp out of the shop and halfway down Hartington Drive, just in case she’s watching.

Things get better. We eat two bowls of cornflakes each and write lists, planning what we have to buy to make this dump into a home.

‘It’s got potential,’ Mum says.

‘It’s got mould in the bathroom,’ I remind her.

‘It’s got fashionable, stripped-pine floorboards…’

‘With built-in creaks and woodworm!’

All three of us collapse in fits of giggles. OK, so it’s not like we have much to laugh about, but it makes us feel better.

Our gloomy basement flat has two small, damp bedrooms, a large damp living room, an ice-cold, mouldy bathroom and a long, narrow kitchen with mustard-coloured walls and brown lino full of ciggy burns. It’s dark, even in the daylight, because the windows are high up and on a level with the ground outside. If we watch out for long enough, we’d probably see Mrs Green’s feet in tartan slippers with pom-pom trim, shuffling past up there on the gravel. We’re like hobbits, moles, rabbits.

We’ve gone underground.

We are the proud new owners (renters?) of two brown easy chairs, a three-bar electric fire with fake coal and dirty chrome trimmings, one soggy double bed (Misti and me), one dry single bed (Mum), a wardrobe with no door and a rickety table with four wooden chairs that don’t match. In the kitchen there’s a greasy old cooker, a stained enamel sink with a tap that drips and a swirly Formica worktop with four built-in cupboards underneath.

We have a beanbag, a pushchair and a dozen bin bags full of clothes, shoes, books, toys, CDs, saucepans, dishes and assorted junk. It’s going to take more than that to make the transformation.

‘Today,’ Mum says, ‘is a rainy day. Quite possibly the rainiest day we’ve ever been up against.’

I frown. It was dry half an hour ago, when I skulked down the road for milk and Smarties. Cold, but dry.

‘Luckily,’ Mum pushes on, ‘I’ve been saving. Saving for a rainy day.’

So we pull on our coats and hats, we strap Misti into her pushchair, stuff in a few soft toys to keep her happy and head off for town.

I feed Misti Smarties, one by one, making her name the colours while Mum queues up in the bank and makes a cash withdrawal.

‘One hundred quid, cash,’ she whispers when we get outside. I whistle under my breath, impressed, and Misti scoffs another Smartie.

‘It sounds like a lot, but we have to be careful… it won’t go far. It took me months to save this, stashing odd pounds and pennies away. Once it’s gone, that’s that – we have to spend it wisely.’

Mum takes us to a carpet warehouse and buys a vast offcut of speckly blue carpet for £25. It’s thin and nylon and scratchy, but it’s also big, cheap and blue. Blue is Mum’s lucky colour, so there’s no way we’re about to complain.

The carpet is too big to carry, but the bloke in the shop winks at Mum and says he’s got a delivery later near Hartington Drive, and he’ll drop it off, no problem, no extra charge.

In a side street, just behind the sports centre, Mum discovers a junk shop selling a chest of drawers and a wide, wobbly bookcase for £10 apiece. For an extra £2, the lady will arrange to get them delivered.

They’re seriously grim, but Mum promises she can make them cool and gorgeous.

We go to a shop that sells wallpaper, and Mum finds loads of little tins of paint in a big basket, reduced to 50p each. We pick every colour we can stand the sight of, then Mum splashes out on a huge tin of emulsion in cornflower blue.

‘Kitchen,’ she says, grinning. ‘Bathroom too, if there’s enough left over. Ooh, we’ll need a roller…’

We grab a packet of cheap brushes, because the rollers are too pricey, and Mum hands over £16 for the lot.

Next we go food shopping. We trudge to a funny supermarket just out of the town centre where the tins and packets are stacked up on the floor instead of on shelves. You can buy twelve tins of baked beans for a quid.

We stock up on beans, pasta, peanut butter and cereal like we’re expecting some kind of siege. Then we add washing powder, soap, shampoo, Marmite, cheese, milk, bread, bananas.

Misti’s asleep by the time we’re on to the cleaning gear, cruising the aisles of a cut-price hardware store, grabbing bleach, washing-up liquid, candles, scourers.

I’ve glazed over, bored, tired. I think about what I’m missing at school. Games this afternoon, maybe netball, loping about the playground trying to avoid the ball and Miss McDougall’s sharp tongue at the same time.

I wonder if Jo’s missing me. Is she sorry she was so moody yesterday? Does she believe me now? Or is she hanging out with Aisha Patel, slagging me off and asking Aisha over to play after school?

I scowl horribly to stop myself from getting sniffly.

Mum remembers the powercards and sprints off to stock up on a few so we’ll have light, heat and a hot meal later. My arms are aching from the heavy bags and I’m sick to death of shopping, walking and trying to get excited about a damp, greasy cellar in a tatty, crumbling old wreck of a house.

I push Misti over to a bench and sit down wearily, avoiding the chewing gum. It’s starting to drizzle, so it looks like Mum has her rainy day after all.

She comes up behind me and we’re huddled together before I know it, snuggled up like ragamuffin gypsies in the rain.

‘You must be tired, Indie. I know I am. Starving too. And poor old Misti – she’s been an angel. God, you don’t deserve this.’

I frown hard and wipe my face. It’s just the rain, honest. Mum doesn’t deserve this either. Not the bruises, not any of it.

‘Hey!’

Mum’s on her feet, waving a £20 note in the air and ploughing through the crowd with the pushchair. ‘Look at us – faces like a wet weekend! We’re hungry, we need cheering up – how about Pizzaland, one last blowout? What d’you say?’

‘Yes! Yes, please… oh, yes!’

It’s not finished exactly, but it’s a whole lot better.

We have scrubbed the floors, washed the walls, wiped the grime and mould off doors, windows and skirting boards. We have scoured the grease from the kitchen tiles and doused the cooker, the bath and the loo in bleach cleaner. For days, all I could smell was bleach.

Now all I can smell is paint. We painted the kitchen walls cornflower blue – Misti did the low-down bits, I did the middle bits, and Mum stood on chairs and worktops to reach the high bits. We worked on a different wall each and moved round, so as not to drip paint all over each other. We still got speckled with blue. Blue fingers, blue splattered clothes, blue freckled faces, blue streaks in our hair.

Misti had stiff blue palms, cornflower-coloured face-paint and a solid blue fringe. We decided the blue footprints she’d made across the ratty old lino could stay.

When we’d finished we had bubble baths to soak off all the stains and streaks and blobs, then flopped down in the brown easy chairs and toasted our toes with the three-bar electric fire going full blast.

Misti and I fell asleep curled up, and when we woke Mum was painting the bathroom blue too. It was three in the morning. The fire was still blazing, the lights were still on and Mum’s favourite Oasis CD was playing quietly on my totsy CD player. It felt safe and warm, so I wriggled around a bit and went back to sleep.

We’ve been here five days now, and the flat is no longer brown and dark and cold.

The new carpet, not as scratchy as I thought, almost fits the room, and the floorboards that still show have been painted cornflower blue. The wet mattress is scrubbed and dry, and carefully disguised with a rumpled duvet and a scattering of soft toys.