Dead Tomorrow

Somewhere in a confused haze that was her past, she remembered bells. Bells hanging from a coat, or perhaps a jacket, worn by a tall man with a big stick. She had to approach this man and remove his wallet without making the bells ring. If just one bell tinkled, he whacked her on the back with the stick. Not just one whack, but five, sometimes ten; sometimes she lost count. Usually she passed out before he had finished.

But now she was good. She and Romeo made a good team. She and Romeo and the dog. The brown dog that had become their friend and lived under a collapsed fence on the edge of the street above them. Herself in her blue sleeveless puffa over a ragged, multicoloured jogging suit, woollen hat and trainers, Romeo in his hooded top, jeans and trainers too, and the dog, which they had named Artur.

Romeo had taught her what kind of tourists were best. Elderly couples. They would approach them as a trio, she, Romeo and the dog on a length of rope. Romeo would hold out his withered hand. If the tourists recoiled in revulsion and waved them away, by the time they were gone, she would have the man’s wallet in her puffa pocket. If the man dug in his pockets to find them some change, by the time Romeo accepted it, she would have the woman’s purse safely out her handbag and in her own pocket. Or if the people were sitting in a café, they might just grab their phone or camera from the table and run.

The music changed. Riha

She liked Riha

The baby fell silent.

Today had been a bad day. No tourists. No money. Just a small amount of bread to share around.

Simona curled her lips around the neck of the plastic bag, exhaled, then inhaled, hard.

Relief. The relief always came.

But never any hope.

12

A quarter to six, and for the third time today, Ly

Then Caitlin stood up suddenly and began staggering around, as if she had been drinking, scratching her hands furiously. Ly

‘Sit down, darling,’ she said, alarmed.

‘I’m kind of tired,’ Caitlin said. ‘Do we have to wait?’

‘It’s very important that we see the specialist today.’

‘Yeah, well, look, right, I’m quite important too, OK?’ She gave a wry smile.

Ly

Caitlin stopped and looked down at one of the magazines on the table, Sussex Life. She breathed deeply in silence for some moments, then she said, ‘I’m scared, Mummy.’

Ly

Caitlin had grown several inches in the last year and Ly

She was dressed in the careless style she always favoured, a grungy grey and rust-coloured knitted top over a T-shirt, with a necklace of small stones on a thin leather loop, jeans with frayed bottoms and old trainers, unlaced. Additionally, in deference to the cold, and perhaps to conceal her swollen, pregnant-looking belly, Ly

Caitlin’s short, spiky, jet-black hair protruded above the Aztec patterned band that covered much of her head and her piercings gave her a vaguely Gothic look. She had a stud in the centre of her chin, a tongue stud and one ring through her left eyebrow. Out of sight at the moment, but which the specialist would no doubt expose when he examined her, were the ring on her right nipple, the one through her belly button and the one in the front of her vagina, the insertion of which she had coyly confessed to her mother, in one of their rare moments of closeness, had been rather embarrassing.

This truly had turned into the day from hell, Ly

And now her phone was ringing. She pulled it out of her handbag and looked at the display. It was Mal.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Just coming through the lock at Shoreham. We’ve had a shitty day – dredged up a corpse. But tell me about Caitlin.’

She filled him in on her consultations with Dr Hunter, all the time eyeing Caitlin, who was still pacing around the waiting room, which was about a third of the size of Dr Hunter’s. She was now picking up and putting down one magazine after the other with great urgency, as if she needed to read all of them but could not decide where to begin.

‘I’ll actually know more in about an hour. We’ve just come from Dr Hunter straight to the specialist. Are you going to be in range for a while?’

‘At least four hours,’ he said. ‘Might be longer.’

‘OK.’

Dr Granger’s secretary appeared. A matronly woman in her fifties, with her hair in a tight bun, she had a distancing smile on her face. ‘Dr Granger will see you both now.’

‘I’ll call you back,’ Ly

Unlike Ross Hunter’s spacious surgery, Dr Granger’s consulting room was a cramped space, on the first floor, with barely enough room for the two chairs in front of his small desk. Angled so that they could be clearly seen by all his patients were framed photographs of a perfect, smiling consultant’s wife and three equally perfect, smiling children.

Dr Granger was a tall man in his forties, with a big nose and a thi

‘Please sit down,’ he said, opening a brown folder, inside which Ly

Ly

Having finished reading, he leaned forward with the faintest thaw in his expression. ‘How are you feeling, Caitlin?’

She shrugged, then was silent for some moments. Ly

‘I itch,’ she said. ‘I itch everywhere. Even my lips itch.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I’m tired.’ She looked sulky suddenly. Her normal look. ‘I want to feel better,’ she said.

‘Do you feel a little unsteady?’

She bit her lip, then nodded.

‘I think Dr Hunter has told you the results of the tests.’