I badly wanted to see Jodie’s home and so did Zoe. Kerry just wanted to do what we were doing. Also, Zoe had done this amazing manga drawing that looked just like Jodie, only with big eyes and a mane of hair. In fact, it made her look like some kind of beautiful cartoon superhero, which she didn’t in real life.
The high rises were even worse than we’d expected, because so many people had moved out and most of the doors and windows were covered in metal panels and graffiti. The stench on the staircase was really bad: stale fag smoke and damp and pee. We had to take the lift because Jodie’s flat was on the ninth floor. I don’t like heights, so I tried not to think about how far up we were going and the way the lift made a grinding noise, like it might break down at any minute. Zoe told us we’d see the place littered with needles, because the high rises had a bad reputation for drugs. We didn’t actually see any needles – that was one of Zoe’s exaggerations – but it did stink.
Jodie opened the door and the thick smell of Fryin’ Chicken wafted out. ‘Brilliant,’ said Kerry. Inside, as well as the smell of the food, there was a kind of a mustiness in the air that reminded me of my nan’s outhouse.
Zoe handed Jodie the drawing. ‘I can’t pay you for the food,’ she told her. ‘I’m an impoverished artist.’
Jodie’s lips twitched at the sides. ‘Right. Whatever that means.’
‘So I did this sketch of you. You never know, it might be worth money when I’m famous.’
Jodie unrolled the paper. She shook her head and said it was amazing. She even went a bit teary-eyed and I could tell Zoe loved having that effect on her. ‘My Dave’s got a tattoo on his back that looks a bit like that,’ Jodie told us.
The room didn’t have much furniture, but there was a little low table that was covered with the bright yellow boxes that the chicken came in, a pile of paper napkins and three big cartons of drinks. We ate the food in our hands, sitting on the floor. It made our fingers slippery with grease. Kerry sucked her fingers so hard that I told her she’d soon have no fingerprints left. Zoe glared as if she’d like to smack Kerry’s hands.
From Jodie’s window, you could see all across the whole of Shieldsgate: our own streets and then right across the motorway, the steeple of the cathedral and some of the taller buildings, like the council offices and the university. I felt dizzy standing next to the window and it even made my nerves tingle when Kerry pressed her nose to the glass. Zoe, though, could hardly tear herself away from it. She said one day she was going to live in a penthouse flat with a view like this one. She said it would have her artist’s studio in it and she would paint the scene from the window.
Jodie snorted at the word ‘penthouse’. When the door opened and her boyfriend Dave came in, she said: ‘Welcome to the penthouse,’ and sniggered.
He said: ‘What are you on about?’
Then he looked at us. ‘Hello, ladies.’ His voice went into a drawl.
Kerry giggled.
‘Some men wouldn’t be happy about coming home and finding the room full of schoolgirls,’ Dave said, more to Jodie than to us, and I thought there was a bit of a knife-edge in his voice. Then he laughed. ‘But I’m not complaining.’
Zoe and I caught each other’s glance. Dave coming in made the whole room feel a bit different. Also, I’d noticed Zoe usually got weird around boys. She always went really quiet, like she was closing the doors on herself. She just went over to the window again and gazed out as if she was looking at the New York skyline or something, not our cruddy east end.
Dave wasn’t as tall as Jodie, but he was thin and muscly. When we pestered him, he took off his shirt and showed us the tattoo across his back, but it wasn’t much like Zoe’s drawing after all. Then he sat without a top on for the rest of the time, which made me feel like I shouldn’t even be looking at him.
I wished I hadn’t gone to the bathroom because I saw things like boxes of tampons and packets of condoms. I didn’t want to think about all that stuff between Jodie and Dave. It made me twist inside, as if I had something to be ashamed of.
When I came back into the living room, Kerry was babbling about how she should have changed out of her school uniform. ‘I’m not complaining,’ Dave said, again. Zoe looked at me and twisted her lip.
It was getting dusky outside. Dave asked us if we wanted some beer. That was when Zoe said we had to get Kerry back home. Kerry said she was fine, and Dave pulled four cans out of a plastic bag, but Zoe glared at her until she said, ‘Oh, well, maybe we’d better go.’
We pressed and pressed the button for the lift, but it didn’t come, so we clattered our way down nine flights of chilly concrete steps. ‘I came here once before, a couple of years ago,’ Zoe said. ‘Someone at school asked me round. It was bad then, but it’s worse now.’
‘Probably because they want to pull the flats down anyway,’ I said.
‘I think they should knock them down,’ Kerry said, shivering. ‘They feel horrible.’
Zoe sighed. ‘You’re a philistine,’ she said.
‘A what?’
‘What they should do,’ Zoe said, ‘is fix them all up properly and rent them out as artists’ studios. I’d live in one
