Dolly stared at it, thinking it was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. Clutching her bag of cake, she sighed and started homeward, and was passing the recreation ground when she saw the slide there. She ambled over, pulling out cake crumbs from the bag and eating them, and calculated that she had time for a go on the slide before going home.
But what if she didn’t go home?
The thought entered her head and for a moment she felt a lift of the spirits, like those mighty angels’ wings had gently pushed her upward. The thought of that…
Oh, the thought of that was wonderful.
When she thought of home, she thought of Mum sitting slumped and staring into space in a chair at the dirty kitchen table, of Dad roaring about the place the worse for drink. It made her guts crease up in anguish. She would never be able to invite Lucy back to hers for tea, that was for sure. She would be too ashamed. It would be all round the school in no time that she lived in a filthy hovel with cockroaches crawling around the floor and you wouldn’t want to eat your tea there or even touch anything in the bloody place, it was all sticky and grubby with filth.
Dolly tried to help her mum around the house, she really did. But with five kids and two uncaring adults, the place was a tip. And now they’d started giving her homework and saying that soon she’d be off to big school, so she had to be prepared to work harder.
God, angels, are you listening? she wondered as the sky deepened to rose-gold. Streaky charcoal clouds drifted through it, like thick pencil-marks on a page. How the fuck can I work any harder? Don’t I work hard enough now?
She was the one who had to get her younger siblings ready for school in the mornings; she was the one who had to get in from school and cook something for the family. She was the one who did just about everything there was to do, and more besides.
Through it all Mum just sat there, ignoring the housework, barely even touching the food Dolly put in front of her. The doctor had given Mum some pills, but they didn’t seem to be working. Every morning when the kids set off for school, Edie would be slumped at the kitchen table, and when they got home she’d still be there, in the same chair, as if she hadn’t moved an inch all day. And Dolly thought she probably hadn’t.
Dolly finished off the cake, screwed the bag into a ball and threw it down. Then she climbed up the slide, ten steps. It had taken her years to overcome her fear of the slide; it was slippery as polished glass going down, and you shot off the end of it in the most fearsome way. If you weren’t careful, you’d fall awkwardly and break your leg – it had happened last year to one of the younger kids. And Dolly didn’t want to break her leg.
