LITMIR.BIZ

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I didn’t, why didn’t you tell me?” I shrieked.

      “I just did,” said Honey.

      “But I’ve swallowed them!”

      “Gosh.”

      Honey regarded me, very solemnly. I think she may have been laughing at me, just a little bit. Just because I was the bossy one and she was the meek one, it didn’t mean she was in awe of me, or anything. It’s what people didn’t realise. They only saw her as someone slow, and awkward, and a bit babyish, cos that’s how she came across in situations where she wasn’t sure of herself. But when it was just the two of us, when she felt safe, she could give as good as she got. I wouldn’t have wanted a friend that was all creepy crawly.

      I was still mouthing on-all about Dad, and how I couldn’t put up with much more of it, I would have to get out, I would have to leave home, it was becoming unbearable-when Honey leaned forward to take the sausage rolls away from me and I saw this huge red blister on her arm.

      “God,” I cried, “where did that come from?”

      Her face immediately turned as red as the blister. She had this very pale skin, and she used to blush very easily.

      “I burned myself.”

      “How?”

      She hung her head. “On a saucepan.”

      I didn’t ask her how it happened, but I could guess. Honey was always doing things to herself–tripping over, stubbing her toe, spraining ankles, breaking wrists. She was quite an uncoordinated sort of person, like at school no one ever wanted her on their team because they knew she would mess things up. But she was a thousand times worse when she was around her mum. Her mum used to nag at her all the time. Nag at her, sneer at her, even poke fun at her. It got Honey so nervous, she just used to go to pieces. That was when the accidents occurred.

      “You know what?” I said.

      “What?”

      “We both ought to get out. Not just me! Both of us.”

      Honey hooked her hair back over her ears. I remember her eyes went all big and apprehensive. “You mean—”

      “Leave home!”

      “Like…run away?”

      “Yes. Absolutely! Why not?”

      Honey whispered: “You’re not serious?”

      I told her that I was in deadly earnest. I really meant it! This wasn’t just one of my fantasies.

      two

      “But where would we go?”

      It was the day following my big row with Dad. My latest big row with Dad. Me and Honey were on our way back from school. We were the ones that lived furthest away, so it was just the two of us left on the bus. Kirsty had stayed on for something: the drama club or whatever. Not for a detention! Little Goody Two-Shoes never got detention. I was the one that got those.

      “I mean…” Honey lowered her voice to a whisper. “Where?”

      “We could always go and stay with Darcy,” I said. I’d been fantasising like mad all night. I’d got it all worked out–well, the broad details. “All we’d have to do is just get ourselves down to London, then jump on a tube train. I know how to do it! I’ve been down to London, I’ve been on a tube. ’S easy! They’ve got maps and everything.”

      Honey gazed at me, doubtfully. She had her lower lip all bunched up and was gnawing at it like a rabbit.

      “Stop doing that,” I said. “It makes you look daft!” Honey was really pretty, far prettier than me, but she had this kind of vacant expression she sometimes put on, like her brain had gone to mush.

      “Concentrate,” I said.

      “Sorry.” Honey stopped gnawing her lip and sat up, very straight and stiff and purposeful. “OK,” she said. “I’m concentrating.”

      “We get the train to London, right?”

      She nodded. She still seemed doubtful.

      “We get on a tube, we go to Darcy’s place. Yes?”

      “Y-yes. I—I s’ppose.”

      “Now what’s the matter? Darcy said, if ever I wanted a place to crash—”

      “She meant you,” said Honey. “Not me.”

      “Both of us!”

      “No, you.”

      It was true that Darcy had been my friend rather than Honey’s. She’d always said that Honey was “soft in the head”. I used to tell her it wasn’t true, but maybe, looking back on it, I didn’t stick up for Honey quite as much as I should have done. I’m not easy to impress, I really am not, but I think I was sort of, like, a bit smitten where Darcy was concerned. I mean, this was a truly wild and whacky person! I’d never met anyone quite like her. We hung out together all through Year 8 and part of Year 9. We were thick as thieves! Sometimes we were thieves…Darcy used to nick things off the supermarket shelves, and I used to copy her. Only small things, but it was just so exciting, I used to get prickly all over. It was like being in the SAS, or something. Going off on these dangerous missions.

      Yeah, well, OK, I can see now that it was wrong. I knew at the time that it was wrong. But we never took anything valuable. We just did it for kicks.

      Once when her mum had gone off somewhere she stayed at my place for a couple of days, though I have to say that was a complete disaster owing to Dad and his insane prejudices. He took one look and that was it: that girl has got to go. She couldn’t actually go cos she didn’t have anywhere to go to and not even Dad would throw someone out on the street, but afterwards he said she was a bad influence and I hadn’t got to see her any more. We had some of our worst rows over that. Not that it stopped me seeing her! It hardly could, considering we went to the same school. Course, when Darcy got excluded Dad was like “I told you so! I said that girl was no good.” That was when Darcy’s mum said she couldn’t cope and sent her off to London to live with her sister, and I took up with Marnie, instead.

      “Darcy didn’t like me,” said Honey.

      “She didn’t even know you!” I said.

      “She wouldn’t want me.”

      “Look, we’d only be there a few days, till we found somewhere else. I’m not going without you,” I said. “How could I go off and leave you here, all by yourself? If we do this, we gotta do it together!”

      She was back at her lip munching again. I did wish she wouldn’t!

      “Honey?” I said. “Are you listening?”

      She dipped her head.

      “So are we agreed? We could go and crash with Darcy. Just for a few days, till we get sorted. OK?”

      The bus pulled up at the Green Man, and we both got out. I said, “Yes?”

      “Yes, all right,” said Honey. “But what would we do afterwards?”

      “After we got sorted?”

      “After we’d stopped crashing with Darcy.”

      “We’d go and crash somewhere else!”

      “But where?”

      “How do I know where?” My fantasies hadn’t reached that far. I’d only got as far as the actual running away. “I can’t plan everything at once,” I said. “Some things you just have to…wait for them to happen!”

      “What we have to do,” I said, “we have to cover our tracks.”

      It was Tuesday, and we were on the bus again. Going in to school, this time.

      “It’s very important,”

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