Part Three Chapter II

IIWha dyou wan?Terri Weedons shrunken body was dwarfed by her own doorway. She gear up claw- resembling hands on either jamb, trying to study herself much imposing, barring the entrance. It was eight in the morning Krystal had just left with Robbie.Wanna talk ter yeh, plead her sister. Broad and mannish in her white vest and tracksuit bottoms, Cheryl sucked on a cigarette and squinted at Terri through the smoke. Nana Caths died, she said.Wha?Nana Caths died, repeated Cheryl loudly. the like you fuckin care. how incessantly Terri had exposed the first time. The password had hit her so hard in the guts that she had asked to hear it over over again out of confusion.Are you b dyinged? demanded Cheryl, glaring into the taut and release face. jockey take out. No, I aint.It was the truth. Terri had non used that morning she had not used for trio weeks. She took no pride in it there was no star chart pinned up in the kitchen she had managed giganticer than this before, months , even. Obbo had been away for the past fortnight, so it had been easier. But her works were still in the old biscuit tin, and the craving burned like an eternal flame inside her frail body.She died yesterday. Danielle ony fuckin b otherwiseed to lemme survive this mornin, said Cheryl. An I were gonna go up the ospital an see er again right away. Danielles after the ouse. Nana Caths ouse. Greedy bitch.Terri had not been inside the fiddling terraced manse on Hope Street for a long time, alone when Cheryl spoke she saw, very(prenominal) vividly, the knick-knacks on the sideboard and the net curtains. She imagined Danielle there, pocketing things, ferreting in cupboards.Funerals Tuesday at nine, up the crematorium.Right, said Terri.Its our ouse as much as Danielles, said Cheryl. Ill tell er we wan our share. Shall I?Yeah, said Terri.She watched until Cheryls canary hair and tattoos had vanished around the corner, then retreated inside.Nana Cath dead. They had not spoken for a lo ng time. Im washin my ands of yeh. Ive ad enough, Terri, Ive ad it. She had never s carousel seeing Krystal, though. Krystal had become her blue-eyed girl. She had been to watch Krystal row in her goosey boat races. She had said Krystals name on her death make do, not Terris.Fine, then, you old bitch. Like I care. Too late now.Tight-chested and trembling, Terri moved through her stinking kitchen in search of cigarettes, but really craving the spoon, the flame and the needle.Too late, now, to say to the old lady what she ought to have said. Too late, now, to become again her Terri-Baby. thumping girls dont cry big girls dont cry It had been years before she had realized that the form Nana Cath had sung her, in her rasping smokers voice, was really Sherry Baby.Terris hands scuttled like varmint through the debris on the work tops, searching for fag packets, rive them apart, finding them all empty. Krystal had probably had the last of them she was a greedy illuminatetle cow, ju st like Danielle, riffling through Nana Caths possessions, trying to keep her death dull from the rest of them.There was a long stub lying on a greasy plate Terri wiped it off on her T-shirt and lit it on the gas cooker. Inside her head, she heard her own eleven-year-old voice.I tender you was my mummy.She did not want to remember. She leaned up against the sink, smoking, trying to look forward, to imagine the jar that was coming between her two older sisters. Nobody messed with Cheryl and Shane they were both skilled with their fists, and Shane had put burning rags through some poor bastards letter buffet not so long ago it was why hed done his last stretch, and he would still be inside if the house had not been empty at the time. But Danielle had weapons Cheryl did not money and her own kinsfolk, and a landline. She knew ordained people and how to talk to them. She was the kind that had spare keys, and mysterious bits of paperwork.Yet Terri doubted that Danielle would nail the house, even with her secret weapons. There were more than just the threesome of them Nana Cath had had haemorrhoid of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. After Terri had been taken into care, her father had had more kids. Nine in total, Cheryl reckoned, to cardinal different returns. Terri had never met her half-siblings, but Krystal had told her that Nana Cath saw them.Yeah? she had retorted. I anticipate they rob her blind, the stupid old bitch.So she saw the rest of the family, but they werent exactly angels, from all that Terri had heard. It was only she, who had once been Terri-Baby, whom Nana Cath had cut adrift for ever.When you were straight, roughshod thoughts and memories came pouring up out of the darkness inside you buzzing abusive flies clinging to the insides of your skull.I wish you was my mummy.In the vest top that Terri was wearable today, her scarred arm, neck and upper prat were fully exposed, swirled into unnatural folds and creases like melted i ce cream. She had spent six weeks in the burns social unit of South West General when she was eleven.(How did it happen, love? asked the acquire of the child in the next fork out.Her father had thrown a pan of burning micro chip fat at her. Her Human League T-shirt had caught fire.Naccident, Terri muttered. It was what she had told eitherone, including the social actor and the nurses. She would no sooner have shopped her father than chosen to burn alive. Her mother had walked out shortly after Terris eleventh birthday, leaving all three daughters behind. Danielle and Cheryl had moved in with their boyfriends families within days. Terri had been the only one left, trying to make chips for her father, clinging to the hope that her mother would come suffer. Even through the agony and the little terror of those first days and nights in the hospital, she had been glad it had happened, because she was sure that her mum would hear about it and come and get her. Every time there was crusade at the end of the ward, Terris heart would leap.But in six long weeks of pain and loneliness, the only vi beator had been Nana Cath. Through quiet afternoons and evenings, Nana Cath had come to sit beside her granddaughter, reminding her to say thank you to the nurses, grim-faced and strict, yet leaking unexpected tenderness.She brought Terri a cheap tractile doll in a shiny dark-skinned mac, but when Terri discase her, she had nothing on underneath.Shes got no knickers, Nana.And Nana Cath had giggled. Nana Cath never giggled.I wish you was my mummy.She had cherished Nana Cath to take her home. She had asked her to, and Nana Cath had agreed. Sometimes Terri thought that those weeks in hospital had been the happiest of her life, even with the pain. It had been so safe, and people had been kind to her and looked after her. She had thought that she was going home with Nana Cath, to the house with the pretty net curtains, and not back to her father not back to the bedroom d oor flying open in the night, banging off the David Essex poster Cheryl had left behind, and her father with his hand on his fly, approaching the bed where she begged him not to )The adult Terri threw the smoking filter of the cigarette stub slew onto the kitchen floor and strode to her front door. She needed more than nicotine. Down the path and along the street she marched, walking in the same direction as Cheryl. expose of the corner of her eye she saw them, two of her neighbours chatting on the pavement, watching her go by. Like a fucking picture? Itll last longer. Terri knew that she was a ever-living subject of gossip she knew what they said about her they shouted it after her sometimes. The snotty bitch next door was forever whining to the council about the state of Terris garden. bed them, fuck them, fuck them She was jogging along, trying to outrun the memories.You dont even admit who the father is, do yeh, yer whore? Im washin my ands of yeh, Terri, Ive ad enough.Th at had been the last time they had ever spoken, and Nana Cath had called her what everyone else called her, and Terri had responded in kind.Fuck you, then, you miserable old cow, fuck you.She had never said, You let me down, Nana Cath. She had never said, Why didnt you keep me? She had never said, I loved you more than anyone, Nana Cath.She hoped to God Obbo was back. He was supposed to be back today today or tomorrow. She had to have some. She had to.All righ, Terri?Seen Obbo? she asked the boy who was smoking and drinking on the wall outside the off licence. The scars on her back felt as though they were burning again.He shook his head, chewing, leering at her. She locomote on. Nagging thoughts of the social worker, of Krystal, of Robbie more buzzing flies, but they were like the agaze neighbours, judges all they did not understand the terrible urgency of her need.(Nana Cath had sedate her from the hospital and taken her home to the spare room. It had been the cleanest, prettie st room Terri had ever slept in. On each of the three evenings she had spent there, she had sat up in bed after Nana Cath had kissed her goodnight, and rearranged the ornaments beside her on the windowsill. There had been a tinkling bunch of scratch flowers in a glass vase, a plastic pink paperweight with a shell in it and Terris favourite, a rearing pottery horse with a silly smile on its face.I like horses, she had told Nana Cath.There had been a school trip to the agricultural show, in the days before Terris mother had left. The class had met a gigantic black Shire covered in horse brasses. She was the only one brave enough to stroke it. The purport had intoxicated her. She had hugged its column of a leg, ending in the massive feathery white hoof, and felt the living flesh beneath the hair, while her instructor said, Careful, Terri, careful and the old man with the horse had smiled at her and told her it was quite safe, bullshit wouldnt hurt a nice little girl like her.The p ottery horse was a different colour yellow with a black mane and tail.You can ave it, Nana Cath told her, and Terri had known true ecstasy.But on the quaternary morning her father had arrived.Youre comin home, he had said, and the look on his face had scare her. Youre not stayin with that fuckin grassin old cow. No, you aint. No, you aint, you little bitch.Nana Cath was as frightened as Terri.Mikey, no, she unploughed bleating. Some of the neighbours were peering through the windows. Nana Cath had Terri by one arm, and her father had the other.Youre coming home with meHe blacked Nana Caths eye. He dragged Terri into his car. When he got her back to the house, he beat and kicked every bit of her he could reach.)Seen Obbo? Terri shouted at Obbos neighbour, from fifty yards away. Is e back?I dunno, said the woman, turning away.(When Michael was not beating Terri, he was doing the other things to her, the things she could not talk about. Nana Cath did not come any more. Terri ran awa y at thirteen, but not to Nana Caths she did not want her father to find her. They caught her anyway, and put her into care.)Terri thumped on Obbos door and waited. She tried again, but nobody came. She sank onto the doorstep, shaking and began to cry. devil truanting Winterdown girls glanced at her as they passed.Thas Krystal Weedons mum, one of them said loudly.The prozzie? the other replied at the top of her voice.Terri could not muster the strength to swear at them, because she was crying so hard. Snorting and giggling, the girls strode out of sight.Whore one of them called back from the end of the street.