Heaven Eyes Read Free

Such an innocent. I’d told him lots of times: Don’t tell her the truth. Make something up. Anything. Tell them a pack of lies, Mouse. But he fell for it every time, and there he was again, trembling andsobbing and showing the tattooed words on his arm again while Maureen cooed and pulled the tale out of him and Fat Kev stood behind him scratching his big belly.
    “Leave him alone,” I said.
    “Pardon?” said Maureen.
    “She said leave him alone,” said Skinny Stu from behind me.
    Maureen tilted her head and gently clicked her tongue. She composed a smile for me.
    “You’re angry today, aren’t you, Erin?” she said.
    “No, I’m not. Just leave him alone.”
    I looked through the wide window at the buildings outside. The sun was pouring down. I could just see the river sparkling beyond the redbrick houses and the blocks of apartments. I felt the varnished raft beneath my fingers. I tasted sour river water on my tongue. Maureen was watching me.
    “You have such a faraway look, Erin,” she said. “Tell us where you are.”
    “Nowhere.”
    She clicked her tongue.
    “I do wish you’d cooperate,” she said.
    “Do you?”
    “We’re only trying to help you all.”
    I shrugged. I smelled the sea on the icy breeze. I closed my eyes. Freedom. Freedom.
    “You have to understand,” I heard her say. “Children like yourselves …”
    “What do you mean?” I said. “Children like ourselves?”
    I opened my eyes. She looked sadly at me. She sighed.
    “You know what I mean, Erin. Children who have difficulties in their lives. Children without the benefits and advantages that others take for granted. Children who will have to struggle always to keep up. Children who through no fault of their own …”
    She dabbed her lips with her handkerchief.
    “It gives me no pleasure to say so,” she murmured. “But you are children who will never be the world’s favorites.”
    I felt my body rocking on the raft. I stared at all the faces.
    “Look at us,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with us. We can do anything we want to do. Anything.”
    Maureen smiled. You could see what she was thinking: Damaged child, wild mind, thinks she can do anything but she’ll come to nothing. Nothing. Just like that useless mother of hers.
    “We’re thinking of your happiness,” she said. I felt the river spray on my face.
    “But I
am
happy,” I murmured.
    “Pardon?”
    “She says she’s happy,” said Skinny Stu.
    Maureen pursed her lips. She glared. I saw it in her eyes: How can you be happy? How can you be?
    Then she waved her hand bitterly in the air.
    “Session over,” she said. “We’ll try again tomorrow when we’re all in a better frame of mind.”
    We filed out of the room. As I left, Maureen took my arm.
    “Erin,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Why do you oppose me so much? What’s wrong with you?”
    I clicked my tongue.
    “What’s wrong with
you
, you mean.”
    She pursed her lips.
    “You seem so hard sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know how to talk to you.”
    “Hard!”
    “You can cause a lot of pain.”
    “Pain!”
    She watched me. Tears shone in her eyes.
    “Yes, pain. And you’re such a strong bright girl. I used to think that, of all the children here, you’d be the one …”
    “The one that what?”
    She shook her head. She lowered her eyes.
    “The one that could help me, I suppose. The one that could help me to help the others …”
    It was hopeless. Ever since I’d come to Whitegates there’d been something between us, something that filled us both with anger. I turned away from her.
    “I always thought…,” she whispered.
    “What?”
    “That if I’d had a daughter …”
    I waited.
    “What?” I said.
    “That if I’d had a daughter … she would be like you, Erin.”
    I turned and glared at her.
    “That’s it, isn’t it?” I said. “If you’d had a daughter, you’d have looked after her better than my mum did! If you’d had a daughter, she wouldn’t have