Read The Runaway for Free Online Page B

next day. He’d eat and sleep here, but he wouldn’t forego Madge’s and Cathy’s attention. In this house he’d be starved of it. That old bitch would launch him out like a rocket given half a chance.
    But he’d play the pair of them at their own game, and bide his time. He wasn’t the son of Eamonn Docherty for nothing. As he had said to his father earlier, he’d had a very good teacher.
     
    Betty, in a bid to cheer up her friend, had rustled up two men of indeterminate age and occupation. Both wore suspenders on their socks and both had brightly coloured braces, National Health false teeth and thinning hair. Their names were Charlie and Bill. Charlie was obviously a regular customer of Betty’s, and as such felt he was in charge. As he topped up her mother’s glass, he winked jovially at Cathy.
    ‘What did you get for Christmas, love?’
    Cathy looked into his cold eyes and said quietly, ‘What I get every year. Sweet fuck all.’
    Charlie grinned and gave his exaggerated wink once more. Grabbing the front of his trousers, he said loudly: ‘I’ve got something here for you, if you think you can handle it.’
    Cathy rolled her eyes at the ceiling. ‘Leave it where it is, little boy. I want nourishment not punishment!’
    Madge and Betty roared with laughter.
    Bill, realising what the girl had said, put in, ‘She’s a bit knowing, ain’t she?’
    ‘Oh, leave her alone, you two. She’s only twelve.’
    ‘Big girl for twelve, if you ask me.’
    Betty turned on the man beside her and cried, ‘Well, no one is asking you, are they? Cut her a bit of slack, for Christ’s sake.’
    But there was an underlying note of jealousy in the woman’s voice and Cathy got up and walked out. Pulling a dresser against her bedroom door, she began to tidy up her room. Hearing the radio and the laughter in the background, she sighed heavily. Another man and her mother was the old Madge once more. Tomorrow she’d be crying and threatening suicide again, but for the moment all was well with her.
    Looking out of the window Cathy saw all the neighbours’ Christmas trees and the warm glow from the fairy lights around them and wondered what it must be like to live in a normal household, with a normal mother and father and a normal life.
    Closing her eyes, she bit back tears. She was missing Eamonn badly. For the last seven Christmases they had been together, the two of them against the world - or against their parents anyway. She could put up with anything if he was there beside her. Now they were parted and she wasn’t sure she could cope. He was her ally, her brother, her friend. Eamonn was everything to her.
    In the front room she heard a glass break, and a man swearing, then loud laughter once more. This would be her life from now on - she had to accept that or go mad.
    It would be back to the bad old days of errant men, haphazard money, and the phantom pregnancies her mother suffered every few months. Back to prying money from Madge to provide food and warmth. Back to listening to the groans and snores of men she would never see again, if God were good. Listening to bedsprings and fights or bedsprings and laughter.
    She glanced around the room which was about to become her nightly prison, and sighed heavily. Living with her mother, a lunatic alcoholic, was one thing - she could cope with that - but living without Eamonn was a different kettle of fish altogether.
    From now on she’d be living without love.
    The love he’d given her was what had kept her going this long. Madge’s love didn’t count in the equation, because her mother’s love was transient, only really apparent when there was no man on the scene. Betty’s petty jealousy had struck a warning note in Cathy’s mind and she knew, deep inside, that she had to sort herself out now. In a year or two it would be all too easy to go the way of her mother and Betty, and that was something she was determined wasn’t going to happen to her. Not in a million years.