All This Could End Read Free Page B

terrifying for her than for most children, considering who her mother is. ‘Are you going to tell me about her?’
    ‘She’s really nice,’ he says. ‘I was patting this dog—a German Shepherd—tied up out the front of a shop. It was her dog, and she came out of the shop for it. So I just chatted to her for a bit, about the dog.’
    ‘What’s her name?’ asks Nina. She resists the urge (her mother would act on it) to tell him off for speaking to strangers—surely talking to a kid his own age can’t hurt?
    He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. The dog’s name is Chance. She had this whole story about how the dog was going to get put down by the vet but then her family decided to take it home. She wanted to call it Lucky. Her mum said that was overused and suggested Chance.’
    ‘How old was she?’
    ‘The dog or the girl?’
    ‘Both.’
    ‘The dog was six, and I don’t know how old she was…maybe my age. A bit older. She was wearing that uniform, so I knew what school she was from.’ He turns and looks at Nina again. ‘Do you reckon I’m being ridiculous? Going to a school just because of her?’
    ‘It’s only four months,’ Nina says. ‘You could have flipped a coin if you wanted. It’s the same for me wherever I go.’
    She feels bad being so negative. She shouldn’t be bitter and jaded this young. She really shouldn’t be. But even if she is, she should make an effort with her brother. Be positive. Not make him resent his parents and then have to live with them for years.
    ‘It might be different this time,’ he says. ‘You never know.’
    He has hope. He wants to make friends, do the things twelve-year-olds do. She wants him to keep that. She kind of resents him for what he has—such unawareness, such innocence. She must have once had that herself. She wishes she could have it again, but she’s also glad that she is aware, that she knows robbing banks is wrong. She doesn’t want her brother growing up without a conscience, but neither does she want him hating their parents. No matter what happens, he’ll lose either way.
    Soon Tom is snoring softly, and the murmuring of her parents in the next room stops. It’s late, but she doesn’t fall asleep easily, and hasn’t for years. Too nervous. Too worried.
    She looks out the open window. Bats are rustling in the trees and the wind is howling. She can smell the sea, and she wants to go there, go swimming, right now. The streetlights glow beneath her, and a hill dotted with houses rises behind the apartment building. She can see into living rooms where lights have been left on, flashing images on TVs. What would it be like if she were one of those people, if she had another life? Would she be happy?
    There are four hundred and fifty-two days until she’s eighteen and can escape. Grinning and bearing it—‘it’ being bank-robbing, constant fear and half-crazy parents—for the next four hundred and fifty-two days.
    What she expects is four uneventful months at a school with a Cadbury-purple uniform. Boring classes and lunchtimes in the library. She expects to remain friendless, to be as disconnected from everyone else as she can possibly be—to protect them, to protect her. For the greater good.

Nina
    Two days later, Nina sits on the fourth-floor balcony of the apartment, a book in her hands, her legs poking through the railings, dangling below, her face tipped up to the sun. Cars whistle past, the growl of their wheels and engines intensifying as they approach, then fading as they disappear. Nina listens to magpies warble, a cacophony of crow calls, and the rustle of the leaves on the potted palm her mother bought as a balcony decoration.
    There are butcher birds sitting on the power-lines, glancing around. She knows they’re butcher birds because she got a book on birds from the library last night. Occasionally one or two swoop over and Nina flinches. One digs through the dirt of the potted palm, making a mess of the balcony. Its