Solace of the Road (6 page)

Was I really going to go?

Yep
.

Last time I ran away, I ended up in the secure unit.

This time, I’m off to a whole new life in a whole new country
.

Then I put on the wig. There was a mirror over the carriage clock, gold round the edges. I put my head
down and my own hair disappeared into the rim. I pulled the tabs down in front of my ears and scrunched them into my temples. I looked up. I was a Shetland pony. The fringe was too low. So I pulled it back and brushed it out and put my doll-pink lipstick on. Enter a glamour girl, a girl on the move. Enter Solace.

I pouted. I blew myself a kiss. Solace was a case. She didn’t care what other people thought. She had a lorry-load of friends littered over half Ireland. She had a place to go. Cool as a breeze I wrote a note:

Dear Fiona and Ray
,

I’ve gone to Tenereef to work in a club with my mate Drew ho sent me tickets and all so don’t bother coming after me, see you and ta for everything
,

Holly

I looked at the note and added an X by the ‘Holly’. Then I put my key tidy on the note. Then I left the house. The lizard was on my back, a pretend cigarette in my right hand and a crown of floating blonde upon my head. And the road ahead of me was all mine.

Eleven
The Tube

I went down the seven steps and down the street and my nose faced the way I was going. I walked with lean long limbs and my hair was smooth and neat as a trick, straight from the hairdresser’s.

In Mercutia Road there was a rule that your door had to be different from the ones either side. Red. Blue. Black. Sludge-grey. Blue again. Never two the same together.
If it were down to me
, I thought,
I’d paint the lot hot pink
. The sash windows stared as I went by. My hand itched to pick up a stone and hurl it but I remembered I was on the run so I just turned for the high street and made for the tube. My plan was to head as far west as I could. Every fool knows you can’t hitch a ride from a city. I remembered Miko saying how in France he didn’t thumb in the cities because city people think everyone else is an axe murderer so they won’t stop. I had to get to the edge of London.

Hot stale air hit me as I went in the station. It reminded me of Sunday afternoons cruising with
Grace and Trim. But today it was the smell of freedom, the first leg.

Except that my Oyster card was still in my school trousers, back in Snooting Heck. Good start – now I’d have to buy a ticket.

‘Child travelcard,’ I told the kiosk man.

‘You don’t look like no child to me.’

I stared. This hadn’t happened before. Then I remembered the wig. It put three years on me.

‘I’m fourteen, mister,’ I said. ‘Honest.’

‘Tell that to the marines,’ he said. He winked so quick I nearly missed it. Then he tapped his machine and the travelcard flew out and I handed over the money. He scooped out the coins and motioned me on.

I took the escalator down, grinning like I’d won top prize at a beauty gala.
Tell THAT to the marines, honey
. Then a wind rushed up and I nearly lost the wig. I clamped it down with my spare hand just in time and laughed, a head-case on the loose.
Imagine freedom, girl
, the tube wind said.

I got a train right away. Balham. Clapham South. The tube hurtled north, snaking on the turns, screeching like fingernails on a blackboard. It smelled of oil and sweat. Newspapers were littered about after the rush hour. Ray would have gone this way earlier. I pictured him hanging onto the bars, his face blank and tired like it is most evenings. His newly ironed shirt would get creased again. An interview for the northern office? I realized then that it didn’t mean north as in north London, like it did for Miko going up Finchley way, because Ray
already
worked north of
the river. It meant north of the country. Which meant that if he got the job he’d be moving off with Fiona, and where would that leave me? Nowhere. I bit my lip. Just as well I’d scooted. Then I heard Ray’s voice like he was sitting next to me.
Your name’s made out of cloud, Holly
. I shook myself and looked around. Nobody. Only a man with cuts in his jeans and tattoos on his arms, staring at me. All he needed was an axe. He had a bald head and fat cheeks and grey stubble. I stared at my feet. He did some creepy cursing and I was eyeing the emergency cord when the train pulled in at the next stop.

Clapham Common. Loads of people got on. Was I glad.

Clapham North. I’d been this way with Fiona the time we went shopping for clothes up town, and before, from Templeton House, when I rode the tubes with Trim and Grace. We’d buy drinks and fags and swagger about the platforms. Trim would act being a corporal in the army and stand to attention. He’d get a stick and bash the overhead lights like they were privates under his command. Grace would slump over the benches like a drug addict on the point of death. I’d read the small print on the adverts that said things like you could lose all your money as well as double it. In other words, ignore the big print if you’ve got a brain, typical mogit crap. We were bored as hell. Maybe we’d get off somewhere we’d never been before, like Dagenham Heathway. I’d picture daggers and commons and robbers and brambles but it would be roads and lorries. The daylight would make your
head hurt so we’d go down and ride another tube.

Waterloo. After Waterloo you go under the river. The thought of the heavy dirty water swirling overhead made my throat tighten. What if it burst through and blew the fuse and the train exploded, and everyone drowned or fried or both? I shut my eyes. I made believe I had bubblegum. But however hard I chewed, it didn’t work. I thought I’d pass out. I opened my eyes. The tattoo man was staring again. I
had
to get out. Now. I grabbed the lizard-skin bag and pushed to the door.

The tattoo guy was still cursing to himself.

I had arms and bodies and people breathing on me all around.

Embankment. The doors opened and I sprang out onto the platform. I wriggled through the crowds and rode the escalators. I got outside and breathed the air.

I was right by a flower stall.

‘You all right?’ the flower man said.

I jumped. ‘Yeah, ta. Never better.’ I pointed at some tall purple flowers with yellow centres. ‘How much?’

‘The irises? For you, love, two quid.’

‘Another time maybe.’ I waved my hand like I was a member of the royal family and walked away. I made it look like I knew where I was going, but I didn’t. I felt the flower man’s eyes needling my back, so I scurried down a path to the right, out of sight.

Which is how I found myself in this fancy garden I’d never even known existed. It was like going from the pits to paradise in ten metres. And isn’t that London for you.

Twelve
London on a Plate

The garden was a secret. There were deckchairs with nobody sitting in them, beds of yellow, blue and red flowers and a sprinkler on the lawn and nobody out strolling, just me.

Maybe I’d dropped out of the real world. Maybe this was a dream garden. But then I found a café with white plastic seats and people scattered. Raspberry ice tea, I thought. I went in and bought it, and a millionaire bar as well. They’re chocolate caramel shortcakes, the kind of thing Grace would throw up after eating on account of her supermodel dream.

Outside, I chose a table far away from any mogits. I slugged half the drink down and gobbled the bar. I sat back, eyes shut. A ball of sun floated behind my eyelids. A bird chirped. The cars zoomed along the riverbank. London churned with a million funny things. I smiled.

What next?

Maybe I could cruise back over the river on a bus to see Grace. Maybe she’d have bunked off and want
to make up. Then we could check out the shops around Oxford Circus together or the action in Covent Garden. A day like this, the buskers would clean up. Maybe we could bottle for them, Grace and I. We’d collect so much money, they’d give us a fat percentage. The folks on the balcony would make paper planes from five-pound notes and fly them down at us with hoots and cat-calls. Grace the Gorgeous and Solace the Unstoppable. The buskers would adopt us as lucky mascots and soon we’d be trooping round the capitals of Europe with them and next thing I’d be wiggling my hips at the Eiffel Tower.

Then Big Ben started up and I was back in London.
Dong, dong, dong. One, two, three
.

Sometimes, when the wind was right, Mam and I could hear Big Ben strike from the sky house. Together we’d count the hour. Mam would be out on the balcony, sipping her drink.
Four, five
. Mam’s dressing gown fluttered like a bride’s veil, only black, not white, and under it you could see her salmon-pink slip. ‘All I ever wanted,’ she’d say, ‘is London on a plate.’ She laughed like she’d just made up the first line of a song. ‘London on a bloody plate.’

Six, seven, eight
. From the sky-house balcony, London was a faraway hum, a million and one other lives. Mam pointed to where the sun went down. ‘That’s the way to Ireland, Holl. Imagine it. The air. The greenness. The laughs. There’s room to breathe there, Holl. Some day we’ll go back. You and me together. Maybe we’ll look up some old friends and start a whole new life. We’ll have a dog. And a
bungalow, all our own. And a view to die for. Not like this desolation. Some day, Holl. It’s a promise.’

Nine, ten, eleven
. Big Ben stopped donging. Eleven o’clock. I opened my eyes. I was in the park, the sun beating down, my raspberry tea half drunk, and I was no further west than I’d been to start with.

What next?
I thought.

I took out the road map and saw how I was in the middle of a giant, whole-page blob, packed with red, yellow, black and brown roads you couldn’t tell apart.

Was this for real?

If they caught me they’d take me away and put me back in the secure unit. Where the walls stare and nobody answers and the rooms are bare and it smells bad. Where there’s nobody to say goodnight to and you dream of falling and drawers with scary things inside open in your brain. And you hear nothing – just the voice of the guy who locked you in going, ‘You ain’t going nowhere, sunshine, cry all you like.’

So
, I decided,
this is for real and no way will they catch me
. I had the wig and I had my travelcard and I was leaving.

On the map, I found the A40 and traced it back towards London. It went through Oxford, then it turned into a thick line of blue, a motorway. And that went all the way into a place called Shepherd’s Bush. Shepherd’s Bush, I knew from my travels with Grace and Trim, was on the tube. It wouldn’t be green and lush with sheep and shepherds, it would be roads and fumes. In my head, I was already standing at the start of the motorway and sticking out my thumb.

I didn’t fancy another tube ride, but it was the only way.

I tore out all the pages of the map with the A40 on it. I folded them into the lizard and got to my feet. Next I threw the rest of Ray’s map in a litterbin. I felt like somebody shedding a murder weapon. I left the park fast, went down the tube and got on a Circle Line going west. I didn’t think of axe murderers or flood disasters, I just spaced out to Storm Alert on full blast. At Notting Hill Gate I had to get the Central Line for Shepherd’s Bush, but I needed a fag badly. The shop at the top was a mad crush so I went outside to find a newsagent’s.

The sun had gone and it was spitting rain.

I put the lizard over my head to keep the wig dry. I watched the cars zoom past, and I thought of Mercutia Road and my apricot bedroom and my TV, blank, waiting to be turned on. In one more minute I’d have been down that tube riding back to Tooting Bec, end of story. But something amazing happened. A miracle. A tall, long red two-decker bus pulled up at a bus stop, with
OXFORD TUBE
written along the side.

‘Does this bus really go to Oxford?’ I asked a mogit woman at the end of the queue.

‘I certainly hope so,’ she said. ‘That’s where I’m going.’ She spoke like she had grape pips up her nose.

I got in after her.

‘One to Oxford,’ I said to the driver. I didn’t ask for ‘a child ticket’. I didn’t want to get caught for being unaccompanied.

He didn’t even look. ‘Single or return?’

Would my money cover it? ‘Single.’

‘Thirteen pounds,’ he said.

Was I glad I hadn’t bought any fags. I paid and he gave me a ticket. I climbed up to the top deck and found some empty seats at the back. I patted the wig dry and wiggled my slim-slam hips.
Solace, you are one mad, bad girl
, I thought. Rain bucketed outside. Ireland was one step closer. The engine started and the bus took off down a tree-lined avenue, leaving London behind us.

Thirteen
The Girl on the Bus

The bus lurched off the road and drew up near a tube station called Hillingdon. We’d come to the edge of the city. The streets had broken down to flyways and factories. It was a wilderness out there. It reminded me of how when I was little I’d stare out of the sky-house window and see the black old towers like ugly markers and I’d put my hand on the windowpane and think how I was on one side of the glass and the world on the other and what would it be like if I swapped over? The bus stopped and a moment later, a girl came up the stairs with a neat backpack and short brown curls. She walked towards me. I looked out the window hard on account of I didn’t want anyone sitting by me, but the girl stopped right beside me.

‘Is anyone sitting here?’ she said. Another one with a snooty accent.

‘Nah.’

‘Do you mind?’

‘Nah.’

‘Thanks.’

She peeled off her bag and sat down. Rain dripped off her curls and her feet were the smallest things I ever saw, laced up in black loafers, the sort a nun would wear.