Writing in the Sand Read Online Free PDF Page B

gown with a grubby bunny on the pocket. I take a quick look over my shoulder. Wouldn’t she rather passers-by didn’t see her like this? I say, “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
    She stands back and I step into the hallway. When she shuts the door it’s almost pitch-black – until a door opens on the right-hand side of the narrow passage. A deeply wrinkled old woman comes out, pulling a wheeled basket. She eyes Lisa.
    â€œWhat was that all about last night?” she says. “I need my beauty sleep, you know.”
    I open the front door for her, and she winks at me.
    After the woman has bumped her basket over the front step, I close the door behind her.
    Lisa’s already climbing the stairs. “You’d best come up.”
    I follow her. Someone’s painted 24a , badly, on the door to the flat, which is really only a bedsit with an unmade bed taking up most of the room. The greasy-looking green velvet headboard is disgusting, rubbed bald in two patches – I suppose by the different pairs of heads over the years. Behind the bed, just on that one wall, there’s peeling wallpaper picturing exotic birds perched on twisted branches. In a corner of the room, half-hidden by a sagging orange and brown curtain, there’s a teetering pile of old pizza boxes, ready to slide off the mini draining board. Do they call that the kitchen?
    I need the loo, though I only went just before I left home. “Where’s your toilet?”
    She says, “You passed it on the half-landing.”
    â€œWon’t be a minute.”
    The door has BATHROOM written on it. Inside, the bolt doesn’t work properly. If you sat on the loo, next to the bath, you’d be too far away to stick your foot out and stop someone coming in. I’ll be hovering, not sitting. There’s a notice over the bath: CLEAN THE BATH AFTER USE . How many people use this bath? However many there are, there’s no sign of anyone cleaning it. I pull the old-fashioned lavatory chain, holding it high above the handle everyone else probably uses. After a quick glance at the wash basin, I reckon there’s less risk of catching anything if I don’t wash my hands.
    Back in the room, I tell Lisa she’s practically out of bog roll. Then I ask, “What did the old woman mean?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œAbout last night,” I say. “What were you up to?”
    She slumps onto the bed. “Just a fight. No big deal.”
    â€œYou and Darren?”
    Her lips narrow to a thin line. “That low life is yesterday’s news. I don’t ever want to hear his name again.”
    When she gets up and starts rummaging in her make-up bag on the window sill, I spot four pound coins on a bedside table. She finds a cleansing pad and sits on the bed again. Pulling at the skin round her eyes, she attacks the leftover mascara. I tell her she’ll dig an eye out if she’s not careful.
    She looks at me like she’s a little girl, and I’m the big sister. “I’m thinking of coming home,” she says, and screws up her left eye. “Mum won’t mind, will she?”
    I don’t let on this’ll make Mum deliriously happy. I don’t let on this’ll make me happy. “You’ll have to pay your way. Mum’s not too good, there’s extras she needs.”
    â€œLike what?”
    I look at the coins. “Food and stuff.”
    She falls back onto the rumpled sheets, snorting a false laugh. “Yeah, well, we’ve all got to eat.” This is so typical – her never taking anything seriously – that I want to retaliate: tell her the real extra that Mum would benefit from would be seeing Lisa do her fair share of chores round the house. Without moaning all the time. But I hold back because my eye is on those coins.
    So all I say is, “Food’s expensive, you know.”
    â€œWhatever,” she says, and I can see she’s so