Bad Blood. Julie Shaw

she knew she’d lived a bit more than him, which meant she knew that, in real life, it wasn’t always that simple. Thank God that, for him, it was.

      ‘I know, love,’ she said, ‘but perhaps she’ll come round.’

      ‘That mad cow had better not come round here!’ he said, and she could tell from his expression that he was purposely misinterpreting her meaning.

      Josie smiled. ‘She wouldn’t dare.’ And of that she was sure. For all that Lizzie could mouth off, Josie was still a McKellan. No, there was no danger of anything like that. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘it’s only for the ten days while the midwife is calling – and you’ll be at work most of the time anyway, so you’ll hardly see them.’

      Eddie grunted, then put the tea down and picked up his spanner. ‘Well, let’s hope so,’ he said, ‘and I mean it, babe, really. I’m not having you running around like a mad thing looking after that bleeding kid of hers, all right?’

      Josie tried not to grin. For all his big talk – which he liked to try out from time to time – Eddie was actually a teddy bear at heart. And a loyal one; another reason why she’d fallen for him so completely. He’d do anything for her and Paula, and he’d always fought her corner – never been afraid of her family (rare in itself). Even Vinnie. She felt safe with him, secure, and that was a feeling beyond value, her life before she’d met him having been no sort of life – her childhood destroyed by rape and, she’d thought, her future with it. But he’d saved her. Would poor Christine be as lucky?

      She came around the side of the car and nipped his bum through his oily jeans. ‘Thanks, babe,’ she said. ‘Now, how do you feel about a bacon sarnie? Only I’ve got to nip down to Lizzie’s and pick up Christine’s stuff for her, and –’

      ‘And muggins here is expected to hold the baby? Bleeding typical!’

      Josie turned and blew him a kiss as she scooped Paula up and headed back inside. ‘Half an hour, I’ll be, tops, babe,’ she promised, deciding that this would probably not be the time to mention that she was going to have to shell out for another cab to fetch Christine back. No, that could wait and, who knew? He might yet fix the car. Miracles did sometimes happen.

      Josie wasn’t expecting any miracles on Quaker Lane, though. The sarnie made and eaten and the baby put down for her morning nap, she left Eddie to his tinkering and walked the short distance from their house to Lizzie’s. It was a proximity that had, up till recently, been quite a plus.

      Before all the business of Christine’s pregnancy, Lizzie’s home had been a friendly, familiar place, mostly because Josie couldn’t remember a time when Lizzie and her mam hadn’t been friends – that they’d make the trip there from Ringwood Road to catch up on all the gossip, or would have Lizzie, Nicky and Christine in their own kitchen. She’d been one of the constants in a difficult, traumatic childhood.

      But this was trauma of a different kind. One that could drive a wedge between them. As she walked, she pondered the conversation she’d had with Lizzie yesterday, before she’d gone down to the hospital and made such an exhibition of herself. Was she regretting that now? She’d been adamant then that she was washing her hands of her daughter. Would she still be of the same mind this morning? Josie hoped not, but though she hung on to a vestige of optimism in her heart, her head said that Lizzie would have softened not a jot.

      Reaching the house, and trotting down the cracked concrete path, she decided that, today, she’d not simply walk in. Instead, she bent down and lifted the flap on the letter box. There was a low whine, which she recognised as the hum of the vacuum cleaner. It being Saturday, Lizzie would be cleaning the house. She was no clean freak but she always did the housework on Saturday mornings, because Mo’s ‘weekly’ visits – when they happened – always happened on a weekend.

      And he invariably came bearing gifts. Drugs, often – usually just some weed or a bit of Lebanese black – a few cans of cider, and invariably ready cash. And to an extent that since becoming one of his ‘regulars’ five years back, Lizzie had even given up her job on the fruit and veg stall on John Street Market, fancying herself as some sort of pampered ‘kept woman’. It was a point of contention, though Josie wouldn’t ever dream of mentioning it. Just one of those things that made you realise the sort of woman you didn’t ever want to be. Though Eddie brought the wage in while she looked after little Paula, that was a team effort, both of them doing their respective jobs; she would never in her life want to be ‘kept’ by any man. In fact, she couldn’t wait to get back to work at the factory.

      ‘Lizzie! It’s me!’ she yelled through the letterbox. ‘Can I come in, mate?’ But Lizzie clearly couldn’t hear her, because the whine of the hoover carried on. She stood up again, tried the door. But it was locked, which surprised her. No one ever locked their doors on Canterbury. Was that how it was, then? That she was expecting her daughter – less than twenty-four hours after giving birth – to show up on the doorstep, babe in arms?

      She was just bending down again when the sound of the cleaner stopped. ‘It’s me!’ she called. ‘Josie! Can you let us in, mate?’

      She heard a noise on the stairs, then the door was flung open. Lizzie stood there, looking gaunt underneath her usual layer of slap; all in place, of course, despite her only doing the cleaning. Josie wondered if she’d ever feel that same sense of competitiveness with Paula as Lizzie had done since Christine hit her teens. No, she couldn’t. Not at all. It was beyond her imagining.

      But perhaps that was because she’d never seen herself as a looker. Far from it. She’d spent most of her childhood and teens doing everything she could to remove every trace of girlishness. First as a response to all the slap her own mam wore and after Melvin … She shuddered. After what he’d done to her … Well, it was almost a miracle, her and Eddie. She’d never forgotten that. He’d saved her. Made her whole again. She’d never forget that, either.

      Maybe it was different for women like Lizzie. She’d been a looker, no doubt about it. Striking. Always a head turner. And when it seemed she’d given birth to an equally pretty daughter, Josie would have reckoned she’d be pleased. But it was never like that. The more Christine grew and blossomed, the harder Lizzie seemed to take it; dressing younger and younger, as if clinging desperately to a raft. She’d embraced punk like a drowning man might embrace a lifebelt, and though she didn’t know it, there were mutterings from those who liked to mutter that, with Mo’s thing for young flesh well known around the estate, she was looking a bit raddled and desperate these days.

      She certainly looked raddled now. ‘Oh, so it’s been discharged then,’ she said, turning around and stalking off down the hallway. ‘And you’re putting her up, then, are you?’ she added. ‘Like some kind of mug?’ She turned around in the kitchen doorway, her eyes boring into Josie’s reproachfully. ‘I thought you were a fucking mate, Jose.’

      ‘I am, Liz,’ Josie said, shutting the front door and following her. The house smelt of furniture polish. Ordinary. Clean. Funny how easy it was to create an atmosphere of calm and normality. Just that whiff of polish and everything was okay. Was on the surface, at least. There was still all the crud swept under the carpet. ‘And like I tried to tell you yesterday,’ she continued, ‘there’s no point going on one at me. I’m just the bleeding piggy in the middle, me, as per usual.’

      Lizzie had picked up a packet of Regals from the kitchen counter and now lit one, blowing the smoke across the room towards Josie. ‘Your choice,’ she said coldly. ‘What do you want, then? All her worldly goods, I assume?’

      Josie shook her head. ‘No. Look, Lizzie, she’s only stopping at mine till the midwife’s done her visits. She needed a fixed abode, didn’t she? You know that as well as I do. And while she’s with me, she’d going to put in for a council flat –’

      Lizzie sneered. ‘Oh, she is, is she? Just like that, eh?’

      Well, you should know, Josie thought, irritable at Lizzie’s complete lack of insight. Wasn’t the promise of getting a council place precisely why she’d decided not to