Sin City Read Free Page B

it is. I’ll just tell Dr Bates, though. He won’t mind.”
    Of course he’d mind, but I didn’t want Jan’s terrors (or an argument) on top of all the rest. I wasn’t feeling all that bright myself. In fact, when those gates clanged shut behind me, all I could think of was my father’s funeral – that really choking moment when the coffin slides downwards and the trap-doors close over it, and there’s nothing left but floorboards and the flames. I ran up Beechgrove’s steps – ran for Jan’s sake (I could see her watching anxiously from the iron grille of the gate), even whistled. The whistling is a trick. You can’t cry when you whistle. I’ve proved it scores of times.
    I’m whistling now. I can feel that awful pricking in the eyes, my face unstitching, mouth loose on its hinge; that dreadful shameful feeling that if I don’t hold tight, I’ll just dissolve in floods again. It’s stupid to keep snivelling, but I’m so scared of everything. I mean, how long will I be in here? And when I do get out, will Jan accept me back? Or go off me somehow, which she seems to have done already? And will I ever get a job?
    Footsteps on the stairs. I sit bolt upright, snatch up my sheets of paper, pray it’s not Nurse Sanders. She’s the worst.
    It’s not a nurse, it’s male – young good-looking male, with tattooed arms.
    â€œHallo, gorgeous. Lost your way?”
    I grin. I’m not gorgeous, actually, but I suppose compared with what he sees around …
    â€œNo,” I say. “I’m hiding. And you haven’t seen me. Right? They’ll kill me if they find me here.”
    â€œYou’re not a patient, are you? Can’t be. Not a cracker like you.”
    I like him. “No,” I say. “I’m the heating engineer.”
    He laughs, offers me a fag. I’m close to tears again. Just to be treated as a normal person, noticed as a woman. He’s looking at my legs, admiring them. His own are long and thin. We don’t have men in Florence Ward, though there’s a woman with a beard and one who thinks she’s Churchill.
    I wish he’d hold my hand, call me Carole, invite me out for a coffee or a beer. I feel so horribly alone here. I haven’t made a friend yet, hardly talk to anyone. They keep pushing me on Sandy, but we’ve nothing much in common except we’re both eighteen. She frightens me, to tell the truth. She’s been on dope and her eyes have great black holes in them.
    â€œHey, wait!” I shout. He’s checked the boiler and is making for the stairs again.
    He stops. What in God’s name do I say now? Take me with you? Hide me in your van? “Er … have you any change?” I ask. “10p’s for the phone?”
    He fumbles in his pockets, hands me three. I get my purse out, find it full of tens, pray he hasn’t seen them, hold up a lone five.
    â€œI’m sorry, I don’t seem to have …”
    â€œDon’t worry. Have the call on me. Who’s the lucky guy?”
    â€œPete,” I say. I’ve never met a Pete.
    â€œI’m Paul.”
    â€œHi, Paul.” Perhaps he’ll stay now. “I’m Carole. Carole Joseph.”
    â€œTa-ra then, Carole. Don’t burn your bum. Those pipes are bloody hot.” He laughs, takes the stairs in three huge leaps, is gone. I hear the door crash to.
    I tip out all my change. I’ve got thirteen tens, counting mine and his; could hog the phone till lunchtime. Except I’ve nobody to ring. I try to flesh Pete out, turn him into Paul, but with no tattoos and darker hair, snuggle up to him. It doesn’t work. He wouldn’t want me anyway, not a chain-smoking cry-baby grizzling in a nuthouse. I mooch over to the boiler, examine my face in its shiny metal top. Am I really gorgeous? I always feel rather sort of ordinary and when people say I’m pretty, I never