Chapter One
We had been to the pictures that night and were taking the late train home. We lived at the far end of town. They lived on one of the worst estates in the east end. The only thing we had in common was school, Cameron High.
I spotted them first. Two carriages up from ours, four of them sitting together.
I nudged Erin, and she followed my gaze to where they sat. We would have heard them anyway, with their loud laughing and their swearing. They were always too loud. Mingers, every one of them. Scum. Call them that and they revelled in it, as if it was a compliment. The Hell Cats was what they called themselves. Hell Cats! Just showed how stupid they were that they had to give themselves a name like that.
We didn’t call ourselves anything. Giving your gang a name was for daft boys or idiot girls, not for us.
But the Hell Cats had christened us the Lip Gloss Girls and the name stuck. We didn’t mind. The name meant we were clean and shiny and female, but we were still the best fighters in the school.
‘They get off two stops from here,’ Erin said, and Heather looked up from her movie magazine.
‘Who’s they?’ she asked.
She didn’t need an answer. She knew who we were talking about. She slipped the magazine into her bag. ‘How many?’
I looked down the train. I could see Wizzie. Wizzie! Wherever did she get a name like that? Tossing her black hair streaked with red, red like blood, and waving her long black-nailed fingers about. Tiny and tough, Wizzie was the scariest of them, or tried to be, always in trouble. She had her ears pierced and her nose too. She even had her eyebrow pierced. Her arms and neck were razor scarred. The rumour was she carried a knife around with her. There were three others. Lauren Winters, whose hair looked as if it had been cut by a blind barber, Sonya Taylor, the one with the stutter – and how we loved taking the mickey out of her – and big Grace Morgan, who closely resembled a horse.
We were missing our mate, Rose, that night. It was her dad’s weekend and he had taken her out for a meal.
Four of them, three of us. Still no contest.
Sonya was the first to notice us. She leant across to Wizzie and whispered and they both turned to look at us. A slow smile spread across Wizzie’s face. Did she expect us to be afraid? I felt my heart beat faster and my palms began to sweat. But I wasn’t afraid. I was never afraid with my mates around me. I bet none of the rest were either.
I clocked the other people in the carriage. An elderly woman reading a murder mystery, a couple of housewives laden with shopping bags and looking as if they were desperate for a cigarette, and a man in a pinstriped business suit talking loudly on his mobile.
None of them were bothering with us.
Wizzie came through first – Wizzie always came first – swaggering up the carriage, her eyes never leaving mine. Did she think for a minute I would look away? Think again, Wizzie. I sensed Erin tense beside me. Heather just sat as if she wasn’t even interested. Cool.
Wizzie burst into the carriage and suddenly every one of the other passengers took notice. The old woman, the housewives, even the man on his mobile phone – they all looked up at her.
‘Typical!’ Wizzie’s voice was a common drawl. ‘I thought you’d be hiding in the last carriage.’
I stood up too. ‘Typical,’ I repeated. ‘Trust you not to notice us until it’s your stop.’
Wizzie didn’t waste any more time talking. She sprang at me, grabbing for my hair. I fell back, but I had been ready for her and my hands found her hair first. I yanked, and Wizzie let out a scream of anger. I could see Erin tackling Grace, and Heather already had Lauren and Sonya on top of her.
‘You lot don’t know what a fair fight is, do you?!’ I yelled, and tried to claw at Wizzie’s face. We both toppled to the floor. My back cracked against a seat as we fell.
The old woman was on her feet. ‘Enough!’ she was screaming.
The man and the two housewives didn’t get up. It was the old woman who walloped at Erin with her book. Wizzie was on top of me, her fist raised, ready to smash it against my face. I felt the train begin to shudder as it pulled into the station. Their stop. The old woman dragged Wizzie off me. Wizzie kept hold of my hair, yanking me painfully up with her.
‘This isn’t finished.’ She spoke the words so close to my face I could feel her hot breath.
‘You better believe it,’ I hissed back.
The carriage doors slid open and Wizzie was on her feet and shrugging off the old woman’s hand. Her foot crunched on my arm as she stepped over me. The other three followed behind her, pushing us roughly into our seats.
Once they were out, we jumped to the windows and started making faces and laughing at them. The doors slid closed again and they started shouting their abuse back at us. We pressed our faces against the window. Lauren threw the first stone, hurling it against the window. We jumped back, expecting it to shatter. It didn’t, and Wizzie lifted an even bigger stone and threw it. We danced in delight as the stone glanced off the glass. They ran alongside the train as it moved off slowly, banging on the windows with their fists. If this had been a manned station someone would have stopped them. But there was nobody here. A quiet little station in the middle of a run-down, rat-infested estate.