Well, she’s not dancing for an audience at Covent Garden any more, but Dad’s rigged her up a barre in our flat in the huge basement room which was once the servants’ kitchen and is now a storage area for council files, folders and furniture. He clears a big space by the wall and drills holes into...
Her sleeves are pulled down over her skinny wrists and her black eyeliner is more pronounced than ever. ‘It’s you,’ I say. Stupid. Of course it’s her. It couldn’t really be anyone else, not with that foul mouth, blonde hair and grumpy expression. Caro gets up. She sits on the edge of my bed and l...
It is Mama who sees it as we trudge back through the snow and ice from our workshop on the other side of town. “No, no,” she says, her voice rising up in panic. Then she lowers her head. Anybody causing a noise in the work columns is likely to be beaten by the Latvian sold...
I rub at the sore area on my chest where you can just see the outline of my portacath beneath the skin. The portacath was put in over a year ago. It lives under my skin on my chest and it makes it easier for the nurses to get treatments into a tube and pumped fast into my body.I’m at the special ...
The headmistress told me that if I get one more, I’ll be expelled. I felt kind of excited when she said that ‘cos I hate school. Then I felt guilty thinking about Mum and Dad, and how they save and budget so that they can afford to send me there. Then the guilt and the excitement just got drowned...
‘You little cow!’ Dad is shouting. ‘You vile, evil child!’ I snap out of slow motion and get myself positioned between Caro and the spade. ‘No, Dad!’ I say. ‘You can’t hit her!’ I never told my dad much about Caro’s past. About the father who used to hit and abuse her up in her bedroom when she w...