No one to make her go to school, clean her room, or stop her from going out. On the other hand, she was getting a little tired of eating cereal all the time and the milk being off and having to go through Clare’s pockets for cash when she was snoring off the excesses of a hard night’s partying. The TV was blaring loudly in the sitting room. Freya walked in to find Clare with dyed pink and orange hair sprawled on the sofa in her filthy hobnail boots watching the Shopping Channel, eating crisps, fiddling with her nose ring and listening to music on her headphones. ‘You still here?’ said Clare, rolling her eyes. She looked absolutely ridiculous in laddered black tights, a silver sequin micro mini skirt and tight red T-shirt with a picture of a man sticking out his studded tongue. ‘I live here,’ said Freya. She looked at Clare’s arm. ‘Mum!’ wailed Freya. ‘You haven’t gone and got a … tattoo. Ick.’ ‘So what if I have?’ said Clare. ‘And stop calling me Mum.’ ‘It’s horrible,’ said Freya, looking with distaste at the hissing snake wrapped round a wolf’s skull writhing all over her mother’s freckly wrist.
