‘Harry.’
‘Oh yeah. Why?’ Angus asks, careful not to touch her hand or lean in too close, but at the same time, making Lauren feel like there is no one else more important in the room than her.
‘He doesn’t have a mum or dad, and he lives with his aunt and uncle and cousin, and they treat him bad,’ Lauren replies, deadpan.
I catch Nina’s eye, thinking this is good, that she’s said more around this table than she has since she arrived. Yet when I think about what she said I’m now wondering if Lauren escaped home, like Harry.
‘I like Harry too,’ agrees Angus. ‘He’s gone through a lot, but he’s brave, loyal, and he’ll do anything for his friends, even risk his own life.’
Lauren nods.
‘What else do you read, Lauren?’ I ask, not wanting to break the spell of her feeling confident enough to talk to us. I sense books are a comfort to her, as they used to be for me. After Jamie died, I stopped reading. I couldn’t concentrate. I still haven’t picked up a book.
‘Anything,’ she replies, talking to the floor.
Angus’s mobile rings. I watch him grab his pack of cigarettes off the table. ‘Won’t be long,’ he says, taking the call outside.
When he returns, we’re clearing the tables and finishing the washing up. Angus begins to fold up the tables and stack the chairs at the back of the room. Noticing he’s agitated, Craig rushes to help, encouraging Lauren to give them a hand too.
After the table and chairs are cleared, Craig grabs from the leftover trolley a loaf of bread and some packets of orange juice. ‘Is this veggie?’ He holds up a pasty, donated to Nina by a local bakery in Hammersmith.
‘Take it,’ Nina says.
‘They think ’cos I’m homeless, Holly, I can’t be picky about my food, but I don’t like meat, don’t like cruelty to animals.’
‘Itisveggie,’ I reassure him. ‘Sweet potato.’
‘You’re a doll.’ He winks at me. ‘You married? Got a fella and kids?’
That inevitable question that sometimes goes over my head, sometimes does my ego the world of good, and at other times breaks my heart. Right now, I let it go over my head, because no one here knows about Jamie, not even Angus and Nina. Though something in me wants to tell them now. ‘I’m widowed,’ I say.
‘Oh mate, I’m sorry.’ Craig looks it too.
‘Thanks.’
When he doesn’t know what else to add, he says, ‘Stay safe,’ with a wave goodbye, which feels ironic when he’s the one who’s going to be sleeping rough tonight.
‘Craig, couldn’t you stay in a night-shelter too?’ I call out, thinking of him alone in the darkness, sleeping on an old piece of cardboard with only one threadbare blanket, if that.
He stops. Turns round to me. ‘Nah, why would I want to do that?’
‘Won’t you get hungry?’ is all I can come up with. One pasty, a loaf of bread and some orange juice isn’t going to last him until next Saturday.
‘Nah, incredible the food you can find in bins, Holly,’ he says. ‘People chuck out stuff that’s only a day old. The trick is to know what time to go through ’em.’
‘But isn’t it lonely?’
‘Living on the streets isn’t all bad, Holly. No bills, no greedy landlords, no responsibility. I once had a house with four walls but it made me miserable, might as well have been behind bars. The only thing I miss is having a decent shower every day. Anyway love, I’ll see you next Saturday. Have a good one,’ he says, blowing me a kiss, before scarpering off, back into the wild.
Nina approaches me with a bunch of pink roses, the stems wrapped in foil. ‘They’re too good to throw away,’ she says, handing them to me, but I remain lost in thought. ‘If you can believe it, I see so many people, Holly, who get lumped together in social housing situations that are often even worse than sleeping on the streets.’
I can’t, or perhaps I don’t want to.
Nina turns to me. ‘I hate it, as much as you do, and I wish I could do more. But Craig is right. To be housed isn’t just four walls and a roof. He’s survived the streets for years and he’ll survive it for another night.’ She squeezes my hand. ‘I know it’s hard.’
‘It’s not hard for me,’ I say. Everyone, surely, deserves a bed and roof over their head at night? It’s a basic human right, isn’t it?
Nina nods, though understands there’s not much more she can say to reassure me.
