‘Lauren, why didn’t you tell us?’ Angus asks.
‘I was worried for your safety,’ she says.
‘My safety?’ he repeats, confused.
‘Yes, with all your problems. He has loads of problems,’ Lauren alerts Ian. ‘So does Holly.’
‘Yes, but—’ I object.
‘Her husband’s dead,’ she interrupts me. ‘And Angus nearly killed his son.’ Lauren makes us sound like murderers. Ian assesses us with new eyes. I think he’s almost impressed. ‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ Lauren continues. ‘I thought it might upset you, with everything you’re going through.’
Lauren hadn’t said a word to us that day in the café, after I’d confessed how lonely I was, and Angus had told us about Benjie’s near-death experience. She’d sat so quietly, listening, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she might feel anxious for us.
‘If you’re ever worried about Angus and me—’
‘Or the black cloud gets in your way,’ Angus cuts in.
‘You tell us,’ Angus and I finish off at the same time.
She nods, tapping her foot up and down, up and down. ‘I wanted to help but I didn’t know how. Then I worried that if I spoke to you, you might want to talk to me about my stuff, you know.’
‘You can talk to us, anytime,’ Angus says.
‘If you want to. When you’re ready,’ I add.
‘Listen to you lot, too scared to upset one another,’ Ian says, with a thin smile. ‘My dad died of cancer when I was eight. Watched him die in pain. I loved that man. He was a decent bloke.’
‘Oh Ian, I’m sorry,’ I say, anticipating this isn’t the half of it.
‘Mum lost it. Couldn’t cope, you know. Got home from school to find her on the couch, passed out. She didn’t give a shit about me, what I got up to. She didn’t notice, too high on drugs. As I got older, I got in with the wrong crowd, you know, and then I messed up the best relationship I’d ever had. She loved me, she did. I know it sounds weird. We all need love, but when it comes along it’s as scary as hell, and you push it away ’cos you don’t deserve it, or you’re goin’ to lose it anyway, so I chose heroin and prison over the love of my life.’
Lauren turns to him. ‘You never told me that.’
He shrugs. ‘You didn’t ask. Do you know what I go round thinking, pretty much all the time?’
We wait.
‘That it’s all going to get fucked up again.’ Ian’s face clouds over. ‘I still walk down the street sussing out a place to squat.’
‘Don’t do that,’ insists Lauren.
‘But then I tell myself I’ve got a roof over my head, a chance, that I’ve got you, Lozza, keeping me on the straight ’n’ narrow. I don’t want to be on the streets again, stealing for drugs.’
‘Don’t even think about it, mate. I never begged,’ Lauren adds. ‘Never took drugs.’
‘You’re wiser than me,’ Ian says.
‘How did you survive, Laurie?’ I dare to ask. ‘I mean Lauren.’
‘You can call me Laurie, or Lozza, I don’t mind,’ she says. ‘I prefer Laurie. Lozza sounds like a throat lozenge or something.’
‘I like Lozza,’ Ian protests.
‘My nan used to call me Laurie, she was nice. She’s dead now but when I’m called Laurie it reminds me of her.’
‘What happened after your step-mum kicked you out?’ Angus asks.
‘Me and Teddy walked to the train station, I took my Harry Potter cushion with us, bought a ticket to the first place we saw on the screen. Yeovil. Somerset. Didn’t have a clue where it was, but bought my ticket with all my babysitting and paper-round money.’ She stops, looks out of the window.
