No Way Back

  M. J. Arlidge

  * * *

  NO WAY BACK

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Follow Penguin

  Chapter One

  ‘My name is Jodie Haines.’

  They know who I am, but they make me say it. I drop my head and mumble the words, my face flushing. I’ve changed everything about myself – my hair, my look, even the way I speak – but that’s the one thing I can’t change.

  They fill out the forms, never once taking their eyes off me. This is the third children’s home I’ve been placed in and I’m always greeted as a kind of interesting freak. My sister murdered our parents two years back and our family is pretty famous as a result. She was sixteen when she did it and is now serving two life sentences in Holloway. My situation isn’t much better – I was thirteen then, fifteen now – and though my name was kept out of the papers, the social workers and care home staff know my history. You can see it in their eyes, hear it in their whispered comments. You can bet your life the news of my arrival is doing the rounds now – every messed up kid in this place deciding whether they want to befriend me, avoid me or pummel me.

  I grew up in South London, but because my dad’s associates still live round there, they decided to move me. Surrey, Sussex and now Hampshire. The Grove Street Care Home in Basingstoke. I’ve never been to Basingstoke before. If I’m honest, I’m not really sure where it is.

  The Care Home Manager – Carole – picks up my bag and puts an arm around my shoulder. It might look like she’s comforting me, but actually she’s ‘helping’ me through the doorway. Every kid has this moment when they arrive at a new home – their feet refuse to move, they struggle to breathe – and I find myself being propelled down the corridor. I look straight ahead, trying to hold back the tears, but I don’t do a very good job. It’s always the sounds that get me – the faceless, unknown kids shouting, arguing, laughing. I’ve no idea who they are. Or what they have in store for me.

  ‘Everybody pipe down. We don’t want our new arrival thinking we’re uncivilized, do we?’ Carole shouts hoarsely as we enter my dormitory, snapping off the lights as she does so.

  The girls grumble, putting their copies of Just Seventeen and Smash Hits on the floor. Through the gloom I can see six beds, four walls and a radiator. No bedside tables, no chairs, nothing that isn’t nailed down. I immediately think of Marianne – is her prison cell better than this? – then find myself being nudged towards the empty bed to my left. This is it then. My new home.

  I strip down to my underwear and crawl into bed. Carole lingers for a moment, then departs. Nobody speaks to me or shows any interest in my arrival, though I catch the girl in the bed opposite staring at me. I turn away, pulling the blankets up around my head, pretending to sleep. But my senses are in riot – breathing in the fumes of fresh paint, the odour of cheap deodorant – and my eyes remain wide open.

  Eventually I fall asleep, but I wake shortly afterwards with a start to feel my bed moving. I sit up to find a girl going through my bag.

  ‘Oy!’

  The girl doesn’t look up, so I make a grab for the bag. She shoves me back hard and now I see how big she is. Five foot ten, five eleven maybe, and wide with it. I think about going at her again – everything of value is long gone, but there are some pictures of Marianne in my bag that I don’t want anyone else to have.

  ‘Is this her then?’

  The girl is smirking now, placing a dirty finger on

  ­Marianne’s face. She is holding the photo of us that Sparky took outside Merriman’s arcade.

  ‘Well?’

  She gives me a kick in the ribs, flapping the photo in my face. Then suddenly the photo flips out of her hand. The girl from the bed opposite has taken it, hiding it behind her back for safekeeping. The bigger girl advances on her, but then stops in her tracks. My neighbour has an iron bar in her hand. Her adversary looks like she’s going to go for her anyway, but the bar is heavy with a jagged edge. So she thinks better of it, satisfying herself with flobbing on my bed as she marches from the room in the direction of her dormitory.

  ‘That’s Jaz,’ my protector says, seating herself on my bed and handing me back the photo. ‘Thinks she owns the place. If you don’t stand up to her, your life’s pretty much over here.’

  I nod, but say nothing.

  ‘I’m Gemma.’

  ‘Jodie –’

  ‘I know who you are,’ she continues, holding out a hand. I let her take mine – it feels warm. ‘And I’m guessing you’re pretty much shitting yourself. But don’t worry – it’s not so bad here. Everything’s going to be fine.’

  I drop my hand and manage a smile. I really want to believe her.

  Chapter Two

  Gemma saves my bacon numerous times over the next few days. Every home has its own character, its own set of rules, and you have to look sharp to work out which members of staff to avoid, which kids to sidestep and how to gain even the tiniest advantage when it comes to chores, sleeping arrangements and feeding time. If the cooks like you then life is bearable – there’s never enough food to go round and some poor sod always ends up going without. But Gemma slips the cooks cigarettes and is looked after as a result. As her new friend, I benefit too.

  Jaz avoids me now, the duties and skills sessions aren’t too bad and I soon discover that Gemma has special status here. She’s been in care all her life – her junkie mum dumped her on a hospital doorstep when she was two – and she seems to have sussed the system. Other kids steer clear and Carole lets her get away with murder, as long as she doesn’t flaunt it in front of the other kids.

  Third day in, we sneak down to the basement. It’s all metal pipes, sad sofas and a battered tape deck, but it becomes our common room. Gemma puts her music on and rolls up a spliff, bold as brass. We sit there smoking it, as if we didn’t have a care in the world, listening to her favourite acid house anthems – Adonis, Jesse Saunders, Sleezy D on an endless loop. Later, we stumble to our beds, chatting and giggling like idiots. The other girls in the dorm shout at us to shut up, but we can’t stop. For the first time in years, I go to sleep laughing into my pillow.

  I wake with ‘No Way Back’ still spinning round my brain and though I feel thirsty and a bit foggy, I’m still smiling. So is Gemma – the whole day we can’t stop. We barely say a word to each other – we don’t need to.

  The basement soon becomes our special place. We get down there as often as we can – even after lights out – and revel in our freedom. I can’t understand how Gemma gets away with it, but on our fourth or fifth visit, I find out. Passing the vodka bottle to me, Gemma asks if I’ve ever had a friend before. I tell her to fuck off, reeling off a list of names, though in reality they were more Marianne’s mates than mine. Gemma seems sad tonight, despite the booze and fags we’ve smuggled down and I realize that she has never had no one to care for her. She asks me about my life – I think she wants to hear nice things tonight – so I tell her about granny Helen who used to slip us sweets, chocolates and money when her bastard of a husband wasn’t looking. And I talk about Marianne, who even in her darkest hour was trying to protect me. Gemma cries at that point and I reach out to comfort her, but
she shrugs me away. Tells me she’s got something better than that. She pulls a baggie of pills from her pockets, offers me one. I hesitate, then take two. The taste of them is sweet on my tongue.

  Chapter Three

  At first, I don’t know where I am. I’ve been tripping – seeing angels and sunsets and a man trying to move a massive rock – and I must have passed out. When I come to it’s dark and smells grim – stale smoke, old sofas and sweat. Now I realize that I’m still in our den, but Gemma has gone. Carole is standing by the wall and at first I think she’s going to tell me off, but then I realize she’s watching.

  A man is on top of me. I don’t know him. He’s old, unshaven and stinks of cheap aftershave. He’s tugging at my clothes, shoving his hand up my top. I feel him squeeze my breasts, then he’s clawing at my skirt. I can’t move at first – I don’t know if it’s the drugs or fear – then I feel his hot hands on my thighs and suddenly I’m kicking, twisting, screaming. He slaps me – my head arrows back but bounces up back off the sofa towards him. I go for him – opening my mouth like I’m going to bite his face – and he jerks back. Unbalanced, we both crash onto the hard floor. I’m onto my feet before him. Carole makes a grab for me, but I duck under her grasp and sprint for the door. There’s another guy standing there, but he doesn’t try to stop me, just smiles to himself at the chaos. I push through the door and sprint upstairs.

  It’s well after hours and the night staff soon find me, as I scream and cry my way along the dark corridor. They grab me by the arms, try to talk to me. But their words drift past. I can’t focus. I feel groggy and sick. Now Carole joins us, I try to get away, but she slaps me twice, hard, knocking the fight out of me. My legs go and one of the staff catches me. Carole tells them to put me in the punishment room. I can tell they don’t want to obey, but they do as they’re told and I’m marched to a cupboard at the end of the corridor. I’m pushed down onto the bare boards and the door is locked firmly behind me. Suddenly I’m alone.

  Chapter Four

  They leave me there for forty-eight hours. The days are bearable – I can hear life going on outside and try to match faces to voices – but the nights are awful. I’ve only got a t-shirt and knickers on and though I beg for a blanket, for food, for a bucket, nothing is provided. So I sit and shiver, burying my nose in my t-shirt to block out the smell of urine.

  I think of Gemma. The friend who betrayed me. And I think of Marianne. The sister I betrayed. Everyone tells me I did the right thing calling the police after she killed Mum and Dad, but she never saw it that way. She hates me and probably thinks I feel the same. But I don’t, I never did. The truth is that I miss my big sister. And when I’m alone and scared, I often think of her.

  She’s eighteen years old now. A woman, not a kid. What’s it like being her? Is she safe? Is she scared? Is she in pain? After she was convicted, I wanted to visit her in Holloway. To see if she was ok, to ask for her forgiveness. But the social workers didn’t think it was a good idea and, besides, Marianne wouldn’t send me a visiting order. So all I can do is imagine her life, hoping the best for her.

  I wish she was here with me. There’s nothing she wouldn’t have done to look out for me, to see me right. But that part of my life’s gone now and I’m without a friend in the world. They said I would be safe here, but I’ve never been so scared in my life.

  Chapter Five

  I was feverish by the time they let me out, but that didn’t make any difference. My time in captivity was just my punishment, now I had to do my penance. Carole was waiting for me with the mop and bucket, a thin smile on her lips. For my ‘disobedience’, she’d decided to assign me all the shitty jobs that no one else wanted to do. For the foreseeable future, I will be Grove House’s Cinderella.

  No mention is made of the basement. Instead I am taken to task for being out of bed after hours, for being noisy, disobedient, aggressive. I look to the other staff members for signs of resistance, for someone I can talk to, but nobody meets my eye. Is it possible that last night is just going to be … forgotten? They take pains to minister to the rest of the kids – who range from the psychotic to catatonic – but they avoid me like the plague.

  The girls are no better. And now I realize why Gemma had no friends. Did the other girls know what she was like? Had they experienced it themselves? I curse myself for my naivety and stupidity. How many times do I have to be hurt before I learn to see straight? You can only rely on yourself. Marianne taught me that.

  Gemma and I exist in the same world, passing each other in the dining room and the bedroom, but we don’t talk. In fact, every time I catch her eye, she turns away. Does she feel any remorse? Or is she angry that I made things difficult for her? I see the bruises on her neck and upper arms. I wonder when she sustained those injuries. And I wonder how.

  Jaz revels in my misfortune. I am her slave to be provoked now, so she treads dog shit over my freshly mopped floors and leaves her used tampons lying around for me to find. And when no one’s looking, she comes for me. She’s an old hand so never aims for the visible parts. She punches you hard in the stomach, in the groin and once even in the kidneys. I didn’t hear her coming that time and suddenly found myself on my hands and knees, breathless and gasping. I was convinced the killer blow was about to come, but of course it didn’t. She wants me to suffer.

  The worst part of my new detail is the toilets. I seem to spend days in there, never quite finishing the job before the next teenager with high anxiety and low standards arrives. Somehow they all seem to have joined in, the whole house appears to be enjoying my misery, even mousy little Alexis. The only one who doesn’t torment me in fact is Gemma.

  I find her in the toilets one day. Or to be more accurate I hear her. She’s puking her guts out, spends half the morning in there. She avoids my eye when she’s at the sink, splashing water on her grey face, but in the end I can’t hold myself back. I walk over to her and grab her by the arm. I don’t know whether I want to tear her head off or ask her what’s wrong, but I don’t get to choose. Because before I can open my mouth she looks up at me and says:

  ‘I’m pregnant, Jodie.’

  Chapter Six

  If there is one thing that life has taught me, it’s this – there is always someone in a worse place than you. In my fear and anger, I had tried to dismiss Gemma as evil, but now I feel foolish for thinking like that. Who knows what pressures have been brought to bear on her? What threats were made? I now see that her breezy self-confidence and the liberty she enjoyed in this horrible place was just an act. She’s deeper in it than I am. Pregnant by a man who raped her.

  ‘You’ve got to go to the police, Gemma. You’re only fifteen, for God’s sake.’

  ‘They won’t believe me.’

  ‘Course they will.’

  ‘I’ve got form, ok? For lying, stealing, running away. I’m a bad girl –’

  ‘But you’re pregnant. They can’t ignore that, can they?’ ‘Just drop it will you?’

  Later, she tells me she plans to keep it, to pass it off as a one-night stand, see if she can use the baby to help get her out of here to somewhere better. I cry for her when she says that. What a deal to have to make.

  I can tell we’re freaking the other girls out. First we’re bosom buddies. Then we’re sworn enemies. Now I climb into her bed late at night when I hear her crying, sometimes staying with her until sun up. The other girls take the piss, but I don’t care. She needs me and besides I’ve been called worse than a dyke before.

  One night, she wriggles out to go to the loo. I let her go, drifting back to sleep, but I wake up later to find she hasn’t returned. It’s freezing, dark and strictly forbidden to be out of bed after nine, but I’m on my feet fast and heading for the door. I think I hear voices down at the end of the corridor, but by the time I make it there, all is quiet. I stand stock still for a few minutes, not knowing what to do next, then suddenly I hear a loud bang from outside.

  I hurry to the window just in time to see Carole t
alking to an old man. The same man that attacked me. My first instinct is to run away, in case they should look up and see me, but I stay where I am. They part company and he climbs into a white van. Starting the engine, he drives slowly away from the house, eventually disappearing into the dark night.

  When I get back to the dorm, Gemma’s bed is still empty. I climb into my mine, pulling the blanket up over my head to conceal the fact that I’m crying. For reasons I can’t explain I have the strong feeling that I will never see Gemma again.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘She probably met a boy. You know what she was like.’

  Carole is putting it about that Gemma upped and left during the night. The other girls seem to believe it, conspiring in the lie that Gemma was a slut, who couldn’t wait to run off with the first pair of trousers that showed an interest in her. Do they actually believe it or are they just doing it to save their own skins? I’m not sure I care either way – there’s no one here that I like or respect.

  I can’t get the image of that white van out of my head, but still I rack my brains for other ways to explain her disappearance. Is it possible she just ran away from her problems? Would she do that without saying goodbye to me? I’m not pretending we were sisters or anything, but I think she was learning to trust me. She left her trusty iron bar under her mattress, but all her possessions are gone. She didn’t have much anyway and knew her way in and out of this place. Perhaps she thought I would try and stop her. Or maybe she just hated goodbyes.

  ‘Did any of you see or hear anything?’

  The girls looked shocked that I’m talking to them, breaking our unspoken pact.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Dead to the world.’

  ‘Why’re you asking anyway?’

  The responses are predictable and disheartening. Doesn’t anybody care in this place? They may have dismissed Gemma as trouble – and maybe they were right to do so – but I saw the other side of her too. She never knew her mum, never even knew who her dad was. She spent every birthday, every Christmas alone. She sought affection wherever she could find it, but the world is a dangerous place for ‘bad girls’ like her. My lot wasn’t much better but there were women like my grandmother and sister to lend me a helping hand, to show me that there was goodness in the world. I’m not sure Gemma ever saw that and I wonder now if I was her only friend.