Flying High. Литагент HarperCollins USD

and it was so boring I wanted to shiv the lot. But did my zombies bat an eyelid?

      When I turns the set off they all got up, still being the Living Bloody Dead and Dix and her brood goes back home and Mum goes upstairs.

      I says to Foreman about it when I went back. But he grabs me and starts to do it again and I forgets about them being crazy because you can’t think about nothing else when Foreman’s doing it.

      He goes out every now and again does Foreman to get rat-arsed and he don’t let me tag along. So I goes over to Langley when he does and I tarts about down round the town centre. He don’t care. He knows I’ll bring him some cans back anyway.

      I got a bank account now.

      End of March Mum got pinched. She’d been thieving from the till and the fuzz arrive and haul her off down the nick for a couple of days. My Uncle Mick come over from Fosshampton and bailed her out. He said he thought she’d get off with a fine because she ain’t got no record and what the hell was the matter with her? I says I reckons she’s sick but she won’t see a doctor. He wanted to know who Foreman was and when I says he’s my bloke he cut up nasty. Starts bad-mouthing him. I give Mick a well-lethal shiv and he shut his mouth and pissed off sharpish. Good riddance to bad rubbish I told Foreman but he just grunted and rolled over.

      I near on gived up school. Who needs it? Sometimes I goes in for Community Studies now and again so’s I can sound off and listen to them all agreeing with me like a load of sheep. It’s a bit of a giggle and I just does it for fun, see? I might go in for politics perhaps. I’d be good at that.

      When April come I got this bad turn. It wouldn’t have happened if Foreman had stayed home like he was supposed to. But no, the bastard’s got a big thirst and he’s off down town. So I done my eyes over and nips across to Langley on the train. I done a few tricks and I thought I’d swank around the Town Hall bars and pick up some more trade but halfway along up the High I gets ill. Real ill. And while I’m trying to spew up and wondering what the hell it was I ate I hears this ripping sound and me best bloody dress starts splitting away at the seams. I got the sodding biggest bun in the oven you ever see. All at once. One minute a size twelve – the next I’m practically ten months gone! With my dress hanging around like I been in a hurricane. And Christ, did it sting! I starts bawling out and screaming and it being Saturday I gets a decent crowd. Some old classy bint comes out from one of the posh side streets and starts bossing my audience about. They get me an ambulance and about time too I says when I gets in because I’m wet all down my legs. Waters broken says one of the ambulance creeps and so I gets rushed into St Cath’s with all the deedoos going.

      Didn’t take long to push the nipper out but it really bloody hurt. I ain’t going through that, never again. I looks down at my belly after and I got these bastard scars just above my hips. Stretch marks says the nurse. And my breasts are all hard and big and they’re leaking for God’s sake! They wants me to breast feed but I ain’t having none of that. Sodding disgusting. The kid’ll make do with powdered milk, I tells the sister and I gives her the mean eye. Stopped her mid-lecture, that did.

      Mum come in to see me the next day and she just sits there beside the bed staring at the kiddie as though it was something amazing. When the bell goes, end of visiting, she gets up and stomps off without a word to me like ‘How are you?’ or ‘What can I get you?’ Charming.

      Next day I gets up and nicks some clothes out of a side ward while the woman’s in the bog and I gets dressed and takes the babe and discharges myself. I’m going straight off to give the old girl a piece of my mind. What did she think she was doing playing a trick on me like that, hey?

       ‘Ah, you had the kiddie, did you, Nipper? Let’s have a look at her.’

       ‘Yeah, no thanks to you. I thought you was going to take care of me?’

       ‘Well, I did, didn’t I? Best to have the baby in a nice clean hospital with lots of doctors and nurses to keep an eye on you.’

       ‘I thought you was going to do it for me?’

       ‘What, you mean you thought it’d be nice having the kiddie out here by my insanitary little stream? I ain’t no midwife, sweetie, I never said I was. Or did you think I was going to have it for you? I ain’t no bloody conjuror neither.’

       ‘Ain’t you?’

       ‘Not so’s you’d notice. A harmless eccentric, that’s me.’

       ‘Where’s Foreman then? I stopped off home and he’s gone.’

       ‘Ah, yes. Well, Foreman got tired.’

       ‘What you mean, Foreman got tired?’

       ‘They all have to have their sleep, dear. You’re a demanding girl, see? You exhaust them after a while.’

       ‘But what am I going to do now? What about me?’

       ‘Oh, I got a treat lined up for you, sweetheart, but you has to wait.’

       ‘What treat? Why do I have to wait for it?’

       ‘You heard me talk about Littleman, ain’t you?’

       ‘Yeah. But Littleman’s invisible, you says.’

       ‘True. But on a certain night in the year he ain’t. He’s good solid flesh just the same as the rest of us.’

       ‘So what?’

       ‘He wants you. He wants you bad. He wants you so bad that he thinks he might spend the whole of his one night with you.’

       ‘Listen, Missis, why the shit should I get worked up about that?’

       ‘Language. Because, Nipper, Littleman’s better than Ringman and Longman and Foreman all rolled into one. He’s the best there is. The tops. And the things he can teach you. The power he can give you. Makes me feel faint just to think about it.’

       ‘What sort of power?’

       ‘Ooh, real power. The power to get what you want just like that. You can have money, clothes, servants, fast cars, villas in the South of France, men, anything you bleeding like.’

       ‘But I got that now.’

       ‘No, love, what you got now’s just a shadow of what you could have if you let Littleman spend the night with you.’

       ‘If it’s so good why don’t you go with him instead of me?’

       ‘It’s you he wants, sweetie. He only wants you, see? And as for me I get my thrills by seeing you enjoy yourself. I like your appetite, Gemma. It feeds me.’

       ‘What d’you mean?’

       ‘Forget it. Just you nip up to Yalderton Ridge the last day of the month and I promise, you’ll have the night of your life.’

       ‘I don’t know. I’ll think about it.’

       ‘Don’t think about it, girl, do it. I ever let you down before?’

       ‘No. Well, I dunno. I might. OK? I might. ’Bye. See you.’

       ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

       ‘What?’

       ‘Your baby, Nipper. Your little baby what you’re going to give me to look after like you said you would.’

       ‘What you want her for, Missis?’

       ‘I got a kind