NB. Sorry this took so long. I'm kind of continuing with the storyline as it was, with no reference to the new series. I hope it isn't too confusing. Also, and sorry to be needy, but if you're reading do let me know. I know it is a bit of a mess so wouldn't blame you for not bothering but it is nice to know if people are out there and want me to continue etc...

CHAPTER 5

She shivered and wrapped the duvet around her. A summer duvet, a winter's morning. She should go over and turn the light on. She should go over and turn the heating up. She should get dressed, wash her hair, put some clothes on. Leaving the house clothes.

She wasn't tired but she closed her eyes anyway. Her body was sick of bed but she couldn't move.

"Kellay," shouted her mum. "Kellayyyy. What yuh doeen een thur? Ged ooop!"

"I aaam," Kelly said, burying herself further.

She liked her mum's accent. She liked the sounds. lt was like their own language. Noone else understood anything she said around here. Sometimes her and her mum just talked like that in the house because they could. It was like a reminder of home, her real home, in this nobhead, nasal, southern English town, with its nobhead, insular, concrete blocks.

She had to get up sometime, it was just that today looked like it might be harder than others.

Nathan was still incarcerated. He was still a dickhead. She rang the police station. His bail still remained unpaid.

##

The sky. White.

Ground icy. Black Ugg boots on, hair up, out of her face, out of the wind.

Does she think she looks good like that? asked a stranger's thoughts somewhere in the vicinity.

She swiped her hand across her bottom lip aggressively, face hardening, looking around.

No, she answered, jaw clenching. She didn't think she looked good. She didn't think she looked anything. She didn't care how she looked. Why was that so fucking hard to understand?

She made eye contact with a man coming towards her. She couldn't stand people who thought they could make eye contact with her. Look her up and down. Sum her up in a nice catch-all word. Scally. Pikey. Chav.

It unnerved her.

She would have asked him what he was looking at but she didn't. She was being good now. She was keeping her head down. She was on a mission.

She raised her eyes to the sky and counted to herself until the anger went away.

It was still grey up there.

A building loomed ahead. Stop 1, this was: the hole in the wall.

She put her cash card in. She stabbed in the PIN and read the not very surprising numbers on the screen. She pushed 'return card' but it was no good, the card apparently liked it in there. No good seeing if the bank would get it out for her. There might be one or two questions asked, since last time's fray with the cashier. She hadn't managed to get any money out that time either but she had walked away with a fistful of the branch manager's hair extensions in her hands.

This time she was coming away with fuck all.

Great.

##

Stop 2. An unusually glassy and spacious abode on the edge of the estate.

She walked through the overgrown front garden and knocked on the door. It was open a bit so she walked in, through a lovely arrangement of houseplants, into the kitchen where a friendly-faced man was simmering something curious while watching Nigella Lawson on a flat screen tv. All in all a very cosy scene and, greeting the proprietor, an old acquaintance, she was reluctant to decline his kind offer of a puff of whatever he was partaking of. However, important matters had to be seen to.

She put it to him straight:

"Have you got owt doing on the business end of things, lahk?"

The man winced and asked her repeat herself. She sighed, appalled once again at these people's inability to understand plain English. She was accustomed to humouring them however so she just went on.

"Biiiznees," she intoned patiently, speaking nice and slowly. "Would you liiiiike me to seeeeell some of your weeed to me friends laaaahk?"

It turned out he was quite receptive to that offer. So that was good. Only thing was, the amount of money came up short of what the magistrates were demanding and he said he couldn't really part with more.

That posed something of a problem.

##

Stop 3. A less cosy set-up. Even further out of town, half a mile or so down the side of the dual carriageway, left under the national speed limit sign, into the caravan park.

Approaching the caravan in question, she proceeded with some trepidation this time.

Not least because of the weird screams, explosions and crackling emanating from inside, this place smelled just a little of evil. That or crack. She didn't like it either way.

She had been there before: when she was younger her older sister Maria had been a frequent visitor to this place, the caravan where the boyfriend of her best friend Shell had lived, worked, conducted business.

She had never really been in herself. Maria had usually been slumped outside the times she'd been here, which made it easier for Kelly when she'd had to heave her along on her side back home after a particularly eventful evening, shoving her into a taxi and then tucking her into bed before their stepdad at the time came in and realised they'd been gone.

Believe it or not, Kelly had always actually been the good one…

She knocked on the door.

A deadened ghoulish face peered out.

"Oh alll right Kelley my love," smiled the ghoul, genuinely happy to see her, but fucking 'ell, she might have thought about sorting herself out with some false teeth by now. Kelly looked down.

"Oh. Shell?" Kelly said, in nervous surprise. "Arr right? Didn't know you were still around." I.e. not in prison, or dead, Kelly added to herself, brainwardly, stopping short of saying that aloud, of course, as that could probably be construed as rude.

She didn't really want to engage with this girl. She could hear the beginnings of guilty questions in her mind as she recalled their last encounter. She could see that in her drug-addled brain the memory of some past event was stirring… Kelly Bailey. Maria Bailey. People having heroin overdoses. A funeral she hadn't been invited to.

Kelly put a stop to all that right there and then. She didn't care to talk about any of that, presently.

She had on-off love interest annoyingly lovable Irish people to bail out.

So again, this required succinctness of expression, the direct approach.

"Gear," she stated. "Have you got any? I'll get it back to you at a good price. No I don't usually do this," Kelly assured her, replying to the other girl's thoughts directly to save a bit of time.

And yes, Kelly added in her own head, my sister is still dead partly because of her friendship with you. Yes, she did still hate the girl for playing a part in fucking up her and her family's lives, ripping out her emotional core, robbing her of her own best friend and confidante. Etcetera etcera. But the crunch was that Kelly was a charitable soul so she didn't really like bearing grudges. Apparently her uncle growing up had been a paedophile. So you couldn't really blame the poor girl for that. Well you could, but she wasn't going to.

Suddenly a man's voice could be heard from behind her inside the caravan. The whole place rocked as footsteps approached the door.

"'Ere is that little Kelly?" a similarly ghoulish male face appearing around the door. "Oh int you grown up all lovely looking."

"Yeah mate," Kelly mumbled. She was getting a bit nervous now really.

"'Ee yarr, did I hear right that you's after some cash, babe?"

Yes, she nodded.

"Well, don't you worry about selling for us, not very dignified that. I've got one or two other jobs lined up actually, " he smirked. "Might take your fancy. Cash up front."

Kelly knew straight away what job that might be, what with being psychic and all.

This was a slight dilemma in a way. To put it bluntly she effectively had a choice between giving someone a blowjob for cash, or Nathan having to spend another night in the slammer, possibly equally having to perform oral pleasure to people of unknown quantities, most likely for no monetary reward.

It wasn't that part of her didn't think that might do him some good, but she guessed she must just be a soft touch, because the thought of him suffering did make her ill. She wasn't sure quite what spell he had on her but she was the type of girl who went off gut instinct. Gut instinct was telling her that this needed to be done.

Kelly felt her skin crawl and her teeth chatter nervously.

Nathan, she whispered to herself. She stepped inside.

##

Kelly waited in the police station waiting room. It was like everywhere else in this town. Same bricks, same lino, same grey.

Nathan wasn't grey. He was orange and green. Green eyes. His hair was black. Shiny black.

He wasn't better than any of the others in any real way: he lied, he definitely stole, and it wasn't just that he was a dickhead, he was actively a bad person nearly all of the time.

She loved his guts though.

Shivering a little, and not from cold this time, she put her face in her hands and inhaled deeply, shakily. What a fucked up thing love was that it allowed these things to happen. And yet here she was again.

He sauntered through the door and caught her eye. Eye contact.

From him, she needed it. It reinforced for her that the things she caught him thinking were real.

His voice was nervously making some kind of weak oddball remark about some bullshit or other.

His eyes were eating her up for dinner.

His thoughts, though, his thoughts were always the best part with him. Thank you, they said.

Sorry for being a dick, they said.

It had only been 24 hours, but it was the nicest thing she'd heard in so long. She had been parted from him for long enough already. Any more was just not allowed at this point.

She wrapped her arms around him, tightly. He was surprised but he relaxed into it, happy, relieved.

"I do owe you one, you know," he said weakly into her hair. "Several ones."

"Yep, you most certainly fucking do," she replied, muffled, into his jumper.

"What's up?" he asked, looking uncharacteristically like he actually might care.

"Nothing," she asked looking up at the underside of his chin, too knackered to form a sentence. "Chicken nuggets?"

"Chicken nuggets," he replied.