Cracks by Caroline Green

Author:Caroline Green [Green, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781848121683
Google: GScBywAACAAJ
Publisher: Piccadilly Press, Limited
Published: 2012-04-14T23:00:00+00:00

I curl up, arms around my knees and head tucked in, as though I can make myself disappear completely. Guilt, loneliness and fear chug inside, mingling together in a toxic cocktail that burns my stomach like acid. Rain falls softly and runs down my face, mixing with tears.

Should I have trusted them? I don’t honestly know. All I know is that they’re dead and that going with them before would have been better than having no options at all.

I have nowhere to go. I have no home. No family or friends. I don’t even have my own memories. Des’s ugly face floats vividly into my mind saying, ‘You’re nobody.’

Looks as though he was right.

I sit there for ages, getting colder, stiffer and more miserable by the second. Then I hear a door opening down the alley. Looking carefully around the side of the bins I see a man coming down the alley carrying a bulging black sack, a dirty apron straining around his middle. He’s unshaven and a cigarette bounces on his bottom lip as he sings tunelessly along to music drifting from the open door. I pull myself back into the shadows and he slings the bin bag into the industrial bin so I feel the metal vibrate against me. He goes back inside and the music cuts off.

I can’t just sit here like a stray dog. I’ve got to do something.

Got to make a plan.

Think, Cal, think . . .

Amil’s house pops into my mind again. It’s so vivid and seems to tug something inside me. It’s not just pictures. It’s a feeling too. A warm feeling. Safe.

Like . . . home? But that doesn’t make sense. The donor boy lived with Des and Tina and Pigface. I can’t explain it.

But then something hits me and I go fizzy all over and have to get up.

What if I also come from Brinkley Cross? What if it was my home as well as his?

I’ve got to find a way to get there.

I glance around me. I don’t even know where it is and I’m wanted by Cavendish and his people. But I’ve got to find a way . . . I can’t start living this horrible new life until I know who I am.

I’m shaky and my arms and legs feel like they won’t hold me. I need food. I rummage through the bag I was given back at the farmhouse. There are pants and socks, plus a few T-shirts and a pair of jeans. The clothes look normal but the material seems to pool into almost nothing in the bottom of the bag. I can’t help feeling just a bit impressed, despite everything. At least there’s something cool about 2024. That’s when I realise the hoodie I’m wearing still feels dry inside, despite the miserable steady downpour that drums onto my scalp and shoulders.

The antibiotics and the painkillers are also in the bag and I look down at the now filthy bandage around my hand. I think about what Helen said, about the antibiotics being precious.

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