‘I’ve never met your mum, but do you know what I think about her from things you tell me?’
I didn’t want to hear this, so sure she was going to say something negative. Erin always had something negative to say about my mum. ‘I’d rather have my teeth drilled without anaesthetic than have a mum like yours,’ she had once told me. I should have known better with Lauren.
She went on, ‘Your mum seems to be somebody who’s always trying to better herself. You’re always telling us she’s going to classes for this and that. Spanish, and painting, and aerobics.’
‘Trying to make up for not having friends probably.’ I regretted saying that right away. Just as bad as my mum, I thought.
Lauren obviously thought the same thing. ‘That’s a really rotten thing to say. You told me your mum always looks for the worst in people. Well, so do you. You’ve just done it with your mum.’
She was so right about that. I felt guilty. ‘I wish I knew how to make her happy, Lauren. I could never understand why she did what she did.’
Lauren knew about my mum. Didn’t everybody in the town know? I didn’t have to explain what I meant.
‘They say it’s a cry for help.’
A cry for help. ‘I understand that now.’ I didn’t tell Lauren why I understood that. And Lauren didn’t ask. I could talk to her about everything, except that. That would always be my secret, a secret never to be told. There are some secrets you should never share. Perhaps that had been Erin’s mistake, sharing her secret with anyone.
‘Anyway, when am I going to meet her?’ Lauren asked.
None of them had ever been to my house. I’d never had the nerve to invite them. And though she couldn’t keep me in, and didn’t really try, she still moaned constantly at me for going around with the Hell Cats. I knew it worried her.
‘Are you ashamed of us or something?’ Lauren asked.
I giggled. ‘Maybe a bit.’
‘Your mum still not trust us, eh? But she must see you’ve never been in any trouble since you’ve gone about with us, have you? We haven’t even been in any fights.’ She giggled. ‘Mind you, the only ones we ever had real fights with were you lot … the Lip Gloss Girls.’
That made me laugh. ‘We were the same,’ I said. ‘We’d do all the things you do, march along the waterfront, daring the other girls to break us up. They never did. We had a reputation because we were always in fights with you.’ I began to laugh. ‘How crazy is that!’
‘See, the Hell Cats are just a nice bunch of girls really.’ She pouted and fluttered her eyelashes.
I laughed too, until I remembered the cloud hanging over the Hell Cats, and the old woman.
‘There’s something I have to ask you.’ Now, I decided, was as good a time as any. Now, when it was just me and Lauren. I wouldn’t have had the nerve if Wizzie had been there. ‘What about the old woman?’
‘You don’t really think we had anything to do with that?’
‘The police questioned you. They came to the school.’
‘There’s lots of girl gangs on this estate,’ Lauren said. ‘You’ve seen some of them. The police never seriously thought it was us. They questioned lots of girls.’
‘It was because of the knife, wasn’t it?’
Lauren looked genuinely puzzled. ‘What knife?’
‘Everybody knows Wizzie carries a knife.’
She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. ‘Have you ever seen Wizzie with a knife?’
‘But the scars …’
Lauren didn’t say anything for a moment. ‘Wizzie lives in the worst part of this estate. Even I’m not allowed to go to her house. Her family have got a really bad reputation and there are some really bad gangs round her way. You’ve seen the worst of them, the Black Widows. I think that’s where she gets the scars. She’s in fights with other gangs. But she won’t tell us about it. There’s a lot of things Wizzie doesn’t tell us.’
‘Now that I’ve met you, I wonder why you’re so friendly with Wizzie,’ I said. ‘You’re so different.’
‘Wizzie and I have been mates since primary school. Wizzie was always trying to be tough. But my mum likes Wizzie. She worries about her – so do I. If she didn’t have me …’ Lauren thought about that. ‘If she didn’t have us … I’m scared she would end up in one of those other gangs.’
‘Do you think that could happen?’
Lauren nodded. ‘I think she tries to impress them, show she’s every bit as tough as they are. But she’s not really. She’s a softie.’