Ghost Children by Sue Townsend

Author:Sue Townsend
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1996-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Five

When they eventually left the hospital Tamara was crying. She’d tried to stop. She knew it got on Crackle’s nerves. She could see by the way his cheekbones moved that he was upset himself, but his eyes were dry. She’d tried to take his hand, but he’d slapped her off. His silence terrified her. They went into a telephone box and she rang for a taxi, but snow had started falling again, and the man on the end of the phone said that they would have to wait forty minutes. When she’d told Crackle he had said, “Fuck that,” stomped out of the telephone box and headed towards the city centre. She hadn’t dared to follow him, but had watched his hunched figure until he’d turned the corner at the top of the street.

Earlier on in the café she’d given him all the money she had. She waited, shivering, inside the box until the taxi came over an hour later. She gave the driver an address which wasn’t hers, but which was round the corner from where she lived. As they drew near to the false destination, she stealthily opened the door of the car and leapt out, before it had come to a complete standstill. As she darted across the road and ran up an alley between two rows of houses, she heard the driver’s shout of rage as he watched his fare disappear into the night.

She opened the back garden gate of a house and crouched down in the darkness by the shed wall. She listened to the sound of the taxi as it drove around the block, then hearing the engine accelerate and die away, she crept out of the garden and walked the long way round to the flat. The phone started ringing as she turned the key to the front door. She ran into the living room and snatched it up, expecting it to be somebody from the hospital telling her that Storme was dead. But it was Crackle asking her to find her benefit book, and get a taxi and take it to Rita’s crack house where he’d been refused credit. She could hear music in the background and raucous laughter.

“I can’t, I feel poorly,” she said, and it was true. She felt as though her body was full of poison. All she wanted to do was to lie down and rest. He was incredulous. He screamed at her, causing his voice to rise in pitch like that of a woman.

“Bring it now. I need it! Bring it now!”

“I’ve got to stay here, in case the hospital ring,” she pleaded.

“I’ll kill you,” he screamed. “I’ll fucking mark your face.”

She put the phone down on him, then fetched the red coat, pulled it around her and lay down on the sofa. She dare not go to bed, and it was true that she couldn’t bear to leave the phone. Eventually sleep overcame her.

♦

She heard him stumble in. It was still dark. She braced herself for

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