Fighting Back

  For Emma

  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

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Also by Cathy MacPhail

  Chapter One

  ‘Look what they’re doing with my china cabinet!’ my mother yelled. As we drove up I could see the removal men trying to manoeuvre a piece of furniture out of the van.

  ‘Hurry!’ she screamed at the taxi driver. ‘Before they pull it to bits.’

  I could tell by the taxi driver’s expression that he wished he had an ejector seat for my mother. She had done nothing but shout at him since he’d picked us up at our old house.

  Our old, beloved house.

  I knew Mum was shouting to keep from crying. But he wasn’t to understand that.

  She was out of the car even before he had pulled to a halt, changing the direction of her yells to include the removal men.

  ‘Here, Mrs Graham,’ the driver called after her. ‘Am I going to get paid?’

  She turned back to him and glared and pushed some money into my hand. ‘Pay the man, Kerry,’ she ordered me. ‘But I wouldn’t bother with a tip.’

  Then she was off, running into the tower block after her china cabinet, still yelling abuse. I gave the driver a tip anyway.

  ‘You just moving in?’

  I thought that was a kind of stupid question considering he had been following a van with all our worldly possessions for the past twenty minutes.

  ‘You didn’t exactly pick a nice place to move to. You know, taxis won’t even come into this estate at night time – it’s too dangerous.’

  Another stupid remark. Didn’t he think we knew that too? And we hadn’t exactly picked it. This had been the final offer the Council were prepared to make. Mum had turned down everything else. I looked up the fifteen floors of the high tower block and shuddered. It looked threatening, frightening, and at that moment I would have done anything to be going back to my old house, my old bedroom – home.

  A small, curious crowd had gathered round the van, mostly young people like me.

  ‘If I was you,’ the taxi driver whispered, ‘I’d stick right beside that van of yours. This lot would steal the eyes out of your head … and then come back for the eyebrows.’

  I watched him drive off as if I was losing an old friend, then looked around at the faces all watching me. None of them looked friendly.

  Where was Mum? Why had she left me here?

  I hated to admit it but I was scared.

  We had heard so much about this estate, none of it good. The gangs, the fighting, the drugs. I imagined at any minute the crowd going for me with knives.

  I edged my way towards the van, staring inside as if I was really interested in the contents. Then, when I began to imagine they were going to jump me from behind, I whirled round to face them.

  They were still staring with interest. There was a boy heading a ball. He had hair so much like Velcro I wondered why the ball didn’t stick to his head. He glanced my way, but didn’t stop his game. Showing off, I decided.

  There were women too. Fat women, all watching me intently. Suddenly one of them smiled, and I was so grateful I beamed back at her.

  ‘You moving into the thirteenth floor?’ she asked.

  I nodded.

  She nodded too and turned to the women around her. ‘Old Billy’s flat.’

  ‘They would have had to have it fumigated, mind you,’ another equally fat woman pointed out, ‘after – you know … ’

  They all nodded agreement.

  After what? I wanted to ask. And fumigated? What had happened in our flat?

  There was a movement beside me, and I turned quickly to find a girl at my back. She had long dark hair tied in a ponytail, and she was wearing a very expensive designer jacket.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked me. She was smiling and I smiled back at her.

  ‘Kerry Graham.’ This girl was just about my age. Thirteen. Maybe, I thought hopefully, she would be a friend. It would be nice to think that by the time we’d moved in I’d made my first friend here.

  ‘I’m Tess Lafferty,’ she said, and another couple of girls appeared from behind the van. ‘These are my mates.’

  She lifted a fragile glass vase from one of the boxes. ‘Nice,’ she said.

  I caught my breath. ‘Could you be careful with that … it’s Italian.’

  ‘Ooooh, ever so posh,’ Tess Lafferty laughed, but there was nothing funny in the sound. ‘Italian, is it?’ I gasped as she threw the vase in the air, then caught it deftly. She laughed again and so did her friends.

  ‘Put that back!’ I looked around for someone, one of the older women, to tell her to stop. But it seemed as if they were already moving off. Almost as if they were afraid to watch.

  But that was silly. What would they be afraid of?

  I grabbed the vase and pulled it from Tess Lafferty’s clutches. Caught unawares, she wasn’t pleased.

  ‘Gimme that back!’ she said, as if it was hers, as if it belonged to her.

  ‘I think you’d better get away from this van.’

  She snarled. She really did, baring her teeth, moving close to my face.

  ‘Don’t you give me orders, Graham.’

  I glanced at the women who were left. Why were none of them telling her off?

  Tess moved in closer, grabbed the front of my coat, spat the words at me. ‘Nobody gives Tess Lafferty orders.’ Then she threw me away from her and Mum’s favourite Italian vase slipped through my fingers. It crashed to the ground and splintered into a thousand pieces.

  Tess Lafferty began to laugh, and on cue so did her friends. They ran off still laughing, and by the time Mum came out of the flats she had gone and so had my audience. All she found was her daughter trying to pick up the pieces of her favourite vase.

  She let out a yell and started shouting at me. ‘Oh, Kerry! Why couldn’t you be more careful?’

  She didn’t give me a chance to explain, although I hardly tried. All I could think of was how much I wasn’t going to like it here.

  Chapter Two

  ‘What a dump!’ My mother looked around the flat and I could see she was ready to burst into tears. I knew what was coming next.

  ‘This is all your father’s fault!’

  I sighed. Dad leaving us had hurt me too, though it seemed a long time ago now. I blinked back tears. No use crying, I told myself. Anyway, Mum did enough of that for both of us.

  Mum tore at a loose edge of peeling wallpaper and the whole strip fell down. She wailed. ‘And we’re stuck with this!’

  ‘It’ll look better once it’s been decorated.’ I tried to soothe her. ‘And we’ve got a balcony.’

  We had thrown open the balcony doors to let some air into the place, and I pointed to the magnificent view. The river like glass, and beyond, the purple Argyll hills with the Sleeping Warrior, the mountain that looked like a soldier at res
t, clearly outlined against the sky.

  ‘We could sit out there and have breakfast.’ I smiled. ‘Very continental.’

  ‘Where are we going to sit? On top of the satellite dish? And what’s it doing there? Or hadn’t you noticed it?’

  It would have been hard not to notice it. Lying askew out there, taking up most of the room. It looked as if a flying saucer had crash-landed on our balcony.

  I sighed. I hated it when she was like this, and had only been trying to change her mood. It wasn’t working. Mum was getting angrier by the minute.

  ‘To think I’ve come to this,’ she yelled. ‘Men! Forget them, Kerry. They’re not worth the paper they’re printed on.’

  To reinforce her point, she aimed her handbag against the wall. Unfortunately, it missed the wall. It did hit the removal man though. Caught him full on the mouth just as he was coming in carrying the television set. He let out a yelp and dropped the TV.

  This sent my mother off again. ‘Look! Look what you’ve done!’

  The man went red in the face. ‘Hey, wait a minute, missis. It was your fault. You swiped me with your handbag.’

  Another man appeared, so big he almost filled the doorway. ‘Is there a problem here, Mrs Graham?’

  ‘He’s just broken my television!’ Mum said at once. ‘I demand compensation!’

  The removal man was almost shocked into silence. ‘Hey … it was your fault, missis!’ he finally managed to stammer out.

  ‘It was not!’

  ‘It was so!’

  They stood confronting each other like angry children. It might have been funny if it hadn’t been my mum! If I didn’t know that in a few moments she’d be crying, and would spend the rest of the night crying too, feeling sorry for herself. Why couldn’t she, just once, get something done without making a major drama out of it?

  Suddenly, I wanted out of here.

  ‘There’s a chip shop across the way,’ I blurted out. ‘Can I go and get something to eat?’ Mum didn’t even look at me. A wave towards her purse was my answer.

  I stood at the door for ten minutes trying to pluck up the courage to leave the flat. I was suddenly afraid. I didn’t like this place. I thought of that girl at the van, Tess Lafferty. Were they all like her, unfriendly, threatening? I had been afraid moving here, and I was afraid now. We had always lived in a quiet part of town with tree-lined streets and little houses with gardens. How would I ever survive out there?

  Out there … it seemed somehow like another world.

  But I was silly to be afraid, I told myself. I would be back in ten minutes. The men would have gone. Mum would have calmed down. And I would have chips. All I had to do was go down in the lift and walk to the chip shop. Nothing to be nervous about.

  I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Chapter Three

  The lift was covered with graffiti advertising the local gangs. Each one sounded worse than the last.

  THE DEVILS ANGELS WERE HERE

  THE TERRIBLE TONGS

  THE MACHETE MOB RULE. OK

  Every time the doors slid open I expected the lift to be invaded by a gang of wild men, who would overpower me and steal my chip money.

  At the fifth floor it was invaded, but by a crowd of old ladies going to bingo. They were more terrifying than the Machete Mob.

  They were all so big.

  And there were nine of us crammed in the tiny space, including little me.

  I closed my eyes, expecting us to plummet at any minute to the ground. I could hardly breathe as they closed in around me.

  ‘Aagh!’ One of them suddenly let out a blood-curdling scream. ‘A redhead!’

  The redhead was me.

  ‘Get her out of this blinkin’ lift quick! Redheads are nothin’ but bad luck.’

  ‘Trust us to get into a lift with one of them.’

  ‘And this is the night of the snowball,’ one of them said, almost in tears.

  Snowball? What was the woman talking about? Christmas was months away.

  They were all glaring at me now.

  ‘Could you no’ have walked?’

  I will next time, I thought. I would have said it. Shouted it. But my throat was too dry.

  As they squeezed out of the lift, I had to struggle to free myself.

  ‘We’ll never win that snowball now,’ one of them complained.

  ‘Och well, nothin’ changes!’ And they all wobbled with laughter as they boarded a bus that looked far too small to hold them.

  I made my way towards ‘The Wee Chippy’. The name was emblazoned in black above the shop, except the C was missing so it actually read: ‘The Wee Hippy’.

  I couldn’t help smiling as I walked inside.

  ‘What are you grinnin’ for?’

  I jumped at the sound of the gruff voice. A weird-looking bunch of boys were lolling across the counter. It was the weirdest-looking of them who had spoken to me. The boy with the Velcro hair who had been heading the ball beside the van. He looked about the same age as I was, but there the resemblance ended. He had a face that looked as if someone had flattened it with an iron, and he wore a fierce expression. I had a feeling he always looked like that.

  ‘Hey … you’re movin’ in next door to me.’

  My legs went weak. This was my neighbour?

  ‘That your maw that’s doin’ all the shoutin’?’

  ‘Yes, that’s my mother,’ I admitted reluctantly.

  ‘She always go on like that?’

  ‘She’s just having a small disagreement with the removal men,’ I assured him.

  ‘Better keep her quiet. We don’t like noisy neighbours up here.’ He sneered. ‘Do we, boys?’

  His weird friends all joined him in a cackle of inane laughter.

  What a cheek! I would have thought they would be used to fighting and screaming neighbours up here. From all I’d heard, the Terminator would need police protection on this estate. However, since I was outnumbered six to one at the moment, I didn’t actually point that out.

  ‘What’s your name anyway?’ he asked.

  Maybe, I thought, this was him trying to be friendly. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘It’s Kerry actually – Kerry Graham.’

  He looked at me as if I’d spoken in a foreign language. ‘Oooh, Kerry Graham, is it actually?’ He mimicked an ever-so-posh voice. Did I really sound like that? Then he added with another inane giggle to his friends, ‘Stupid name for a lassie.’

  All his friends hee-hawed at his wit.

  ‘I’m called Ming, by the way.’ He drew himself up as if I was supposed to be impressed by this. Ming? And he thought Kerry was a stupid name? The boy was a half-wit.

  ‘It’s short for Menzies, in case you don’t know. A good Scottish name.’

  ‘Whattya want, hen?’ The tubby Italian behind the counter leaned towards me, smiling. The first friendly face I’d seen since I came here. I felt like kissing him.

  ‘Could I have some haddock and chips, please?’

  This was greeted with more hoots of laughter from Ming and his friends.

  ‘Haddock and chips, please,’ Ming mimicked in that idiotic voice. I definitely didn’t talk like that! ‘Oooh, ever so posh. You think you are somethin’, don’t you?’

  What was the point of being friendly? They weren’t being friendly to me. ‘I do, actually,’ I said.

  This shocked them even more.

  ‘Snooty wee so and so!’ Ming snapped.

  Suddenly the Italian walloped him across the head with a rolled-up paper. ‘You leava the wee lassie be. Get outta my shop!’

  They went, still laughing, pulling faces, making a fool of me.

  ‘Don’t you bother with them, hen,’ the Wee Hippy assured me. ‘You talka nice. Them? No use. Come in here, buy one chips and gravy between the lotta them. Stay in my shop all night. You keepa talking nice.’

  His friendliness cheered me. So did the smell of the fish and chips. Delicious. I was tempted to eat them there and th
en. I held the parcel tight against me as I headed back to the flats.

  There was no sign of Ming and company as I waited at the lift. Thank goodness. I didn’t like him at all. All I wanted now was home.

  Home? How could I call this place home? How could I ever? I hated it here!

  The lift doors slid open. And there stood my worst nightmare! Ming, and his delightful friends.

  ‘Going up?’ he asked, with a wicked grin.

  I took a step back. Too late. Six pairs of hands grabbed me and dragged me inside.

  Chapter Four

  ‘They stole your WHAT!’

  ‘It’s all right, Mum.’ I tried to calm her. ‘At least it was only my fish and chips.’

  ‘I’m not standing for it,’ she shouted. ‘What kind of people are they, I’d like to know? Animals! No, I wouldn’t insult the animal kingdom by calling them animals. They’re worse than animals.’

  I wanted her just to forget it. I wanted to push the memory of being trapped in the lift with Ming the Merciless out of my mind. Yet, I kept reminding myself, they did only take my fish and chips. They had pushed me, jostled me, pulled my hair and called me childish names. But in the end all they had done was push me out of the lift at the thirteenth floor, without my fish and chips … or my dignity. That was the worst part. I had been humiliated. I was ashamed because I had almost cried. I hated them. I hated here. I hated my dad. But now, I just wanted Mum to calm down.

  ‘Do they seriously think I’m going to let my daughter be pushed around?’ I didn’t like Mum’s tone. Suddenly, she barged down the hall, grabbing me by the shoulders as she passed. ‘Right. You’re coming with me.’

  I tried to stop but she had me sliding down the linoleum on my heels. ‘Mum … where are we going?’

  She yanked open the front door. ‘To get your fish supper back.’

  Mum kept her fingers on the bell till the door was opened by an enormously fat woman who looked as if she was staring at us over a pile of pancakes.

  She was eating something that looked suspiciously like a chip.

  ‘Want somethin’?’ she asked.

  Mum lifted her single chin defiantly. ‘Yes. My daughter’s fish and chips.’ She pulled me into plain sight so there would be no doubt who her daughter was. ‘Your son stole them.’