being strangers. The crime of being young.
Spider held his hand up. “We just need a lift. Into town.” He was busking it now – neither of us knew if there was a town nearby, or where it might be.
She looked at us doubtfully, her mouth a thin, tight line.
“Right. I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” The window went up again and the car set off.
“Bitch,” I said. Spider nodded and took another drag.
Ten feet along the road the car stopped again and reversed. This time another car was coming up behind, and its horn blasted as it overtook her. The window came down.
“You’d better get in,” she said briskly. “I’m going into town. Put your bags in the back. One of you will have to go in the back, in the middle.”
Spider and I exchanged glances, then he opened the trunk and slung in the bags. I pulled open the back passenger door. The kids were staring wide-eyed, like their mum had lost her marbles. I tried not to look them in the eye – I can’t stand that, seeing kids’ numbers. Gets to me. They were in posh uniforms – blazers, shirts, and ties, you know the sort of thing – and they were looking at me like I was some sort of alien.
“Um…’scuse me…can I just…?”
The boy, sitting nearest to me, swiveled his legs to the side and leaned back into his seat. I clambered past him and settled in the middle. The little girl, on the other side, shrank away from me.
Spider had closed the trunk and was up front now. “Thanks, thanks, really appreciate it. It’s cool, it’s cool. Nice car. Great. Cool. Cool.” His head was nodding in appreciation. I wanted him to shut up, not to sound too crazy. “This is really good of you. It’s fucking freezing out there.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath from the boy. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him, eyes like saucers, mouth open. The woman spoke very slowly, carefully.
“Listen, I’m happy to give you a lift, but not if you’re going to swear. We don’t do that in this car.”
Spider clapped his hand to his mouth. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. No offense, lady. Alright, kids?” He turned around, flashing them a smile. “It’s not cool to use those words, is it? Not cool.”
I thought I heard a little squeak from the girl. I glanced at her. She was absolutely terrified. Quite possibly wetting herself. She’d probably never even seen a black man, let alone a six-foot-four, foulmouthed black dosser. I guess you could find him intimidating at the best of times, but after a couple of days on the run and sleeping rough, he was a bit of a sight.
Spider’s nerves were getting the better of him. He just couldn’t stop. “It’s very good of you. To stop for us. Very good.”
“That’s all right.” You could tell now she was regretting her reckless impulse, would never do it again. “Where are you heading?”
My stomach flipped as I realized we hadn’t agreed on a story. After two days on our own, we’d suddenly plunged back into the real world. Spider just plowed ahead, ad-libbing. “We’re heading to Bristol, going to stay with my aunt. She’s in Bristol, yeah.”
“How did you end up at Whiteways?”
“Um, we’ve just been hitching. Got dropped by the main road. Been walking for a couple of days.”
As he was talking, I noticed the lady’s half-eaten bit of toast. She’d put it down by the gear stick and forgotten about it. Saliva jetted into my mouth. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Oh. My. God. I couldn’t help myself – I leaned forward, stretched my hand out, and picked it up, then sat back and crammed it straight into my mouth, folding it up so it all went in. It was cold and a bit soggy, and the best thing I’ve ever tasted. The salty butter made more saliva gush out, and some dribble ran down my chin as I chewed.
This was all too much for the boy. “Mummy,” he squealed. “He’s eaten your toast!”
“Oh,” came her reaction. “Never mind, Freddy. I’d finished, really.”
I wiped my chin with my sleeve, reluctantly swallowed; I could have kept it in my mouth forever. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just…hungry.”
“That’s quite all right,” she said evenly. The little girl started crying, quietly whimpering next to me. “It’s all right, children. We’re nearly there. Nearly there.” She didn’t need to say “Thank God” – we all knew she was thinking it.
We were on the outskirts of a town now. I can’t tell you how good it was to see houses, to know there were shops and cafes only a few minutes away.
She pulled up at the side of the road. “School’s off that way. I’ll drop you here. It’s only five minutes’ walk to the town center. And there’s a station, too.”
“Right, thanks, thanks. You’ve been very kind.” I climbed out, past Freddy, who was holding himself so flat against his seat that he was almost two-dimensional. We got the bags out of the back and stood on the pavement as the car moved off into the traffic.
“How lucky was that?” Spider said.
“Mm, think we’ll be the last hitchhikers they ever pick up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing. I don’t think we were their kind of people.”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “And I think they thought you was a boy. Need their eyes tested.”
“Spider, do you think they knew who we were?”
“Nah, she wouldn’t have picked us up if she did, would she?”
With the traffic streaming past us, I was starting to feel more exposed than when we’d been walking across the fields. We’d been cut off from civilization for two days. What had everyone been hearing about us? What had they seen on the TV or read in the papers? In one of those cars going past, was someone reaching for their phone right now, calling the police? I felt edgy, really edgy.
“We should find a shop and then disappear, Spider. We can’t hang about.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He grabbed the bags and set off down the road, long legs striding along. I had to jog to keep up. We’d got to the first few shops, keeping an eye out for a corner shop or a little food shop or something, when we saw a signboard on one side of the street:
Spider had stopped. He was staring at the board, licking his lips. I could read his mind – I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“I know we shouldn’t hang around, but, Christ, Jem, I’m hungry. What do you think?”
We both knew we should stick to Plan A – go into a corner shop, buy some sandwiches, water, cereal bars, all that stuff, and then find a shed or a garage or somewhere and have another picnic – but there was no way either of us could walk past that place.
“Sod it,” I said. “Even a condemned man has a last meal, don’t he?”
That big grin broke out again, and I swear a bit of drool trickled down his chin.
“That’s my girl,” he said, and he picked up our stuff and headed into Rita’s.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’ve never been to Africa and seen a hyena ripping into the carcass of an antelope, but I bet it would be pretty similar to the sight of Spider devouring a cooked breakfast. He used his fork like a shovel, didn’t stop to breathe or anything like that, just continuously scooped it up and in, up and in. He looked up at me. I hadn’t even touched mine.
“What’s up with you? You’re not telling me you’re not hungry.” A bubble of egg yolk oozed out of the corner of his mouth.
“No, I’m just enjoying the sight of it – it’s awesome.” And it was. After all that time out in the wild, eating chips, cookies, and chocolate, it was almost too good to look at: a couple of plump sausages glistening with grease; the perfect fried egg, pure white and pure yellow; strips of bacon fried into crispy waves; a pool of beans, the juice slowly spreading across the plate.
He snorted, and his egg bubble grew and turned into a drip. “You’re mental. Dig in.” He waved a fork in the
