The Real Thing Read Online Free Page B

life. This included something bad that Debbie had never talked about, but it was why she had been so good to Julie. Probably, just like Julie, Debbie had stood very late in a railway station, pregnant, her head full of rubbish about how she would get a job, have the baby, bring it up, find a man who would love her and the baby. Or perhaps it had been something else to do with being pregnant and alone. It was not she, Julie, who had earned five months of Debbie’s love and protection, it was pregnant Julie, helpless and alone.
    Oh, yes, Debbie was fond of her.
    Sometimes she spent the night in Debbie’s big bed because Debbie could not bear to sleep alone. She got scared, she said. She could not believe that Julie wasn’t frightened of the dark. Debbie always crashed straight off to sleep, even when she hadn’t been drinking. Then Julie cautiously got up on her elbow and bent over sleeping Debbie, to examine her, try and find out… Debbie was a big handsome girl. Her skin was very white, and she had black shiny straight hair, and she made up her lips to be thin and scarlet and curving, just right for the lashing, slashing tongue behind them. When she was asleep her face was smooth and closed, and her lips were ordinary, quite pathetic Julie thought, and there was wearunder her eyes. That face showed nothing of why Debbie said to people coming into the flat who might notice Julie the wrong way, ‘Lay off, do you hear? Lay off, or I’ll…’ And her scarlet lips and her black eyes were nasty, frightening.
    But if Debbie woke in the night, she might turn to Julie and draw her into an embrace that told Julie how little she knew about love, about tenderness. Then Julie lay awake, astounded at the revelations this big hot smooth body made, and went on making, even though Debbie was off to sleep again. She never actually ‘did anything’. Julie even waited for ‘something’ to happen. Nothing ever did. Just once Debbie put her hand down to touch the mound of Julie’s stomach, but took it quickly away. Julie lay entangled with Debbie, and they were like two cats that have finished washing each other and gone to sleep, and Julie knew how terribly she had been deprived at home, and how empty and sad her parents were. Suppose she said to her mother now. Mum, let me come into your bed tonight, I’m scared, I’ve missed you … She could just see her mother’s embarrassed, timid face. ‘But Julie, you’re a big girl now.’
    Anne and Len slept in twin beds stretched out parallel to each other, the night table between them.
    There were tears in Julie’s eyes, and she did not know it, but then she did and looked quickly at her mother, then her father, for they must not know she would give anything to cry and cry, and be comforted and held … But they weren’t looking at her, only at the television. They had switched it on, without her noticing. Now all three of them sat staring at it.
    On the screen a woman announcer smiled the special smile that goes with royalty, animals, and children and said, ‘At eight o’clock this evening a newly born baby girl was found in a telephone box in Islington. She waswarmly wrapped and healthy. She weighed seven pounds and three ounces. The nurses have called her Rosie.’ Hot waves of jealousy went through Julie when she saw how the nurse smiled down at the little face seen briefly by Julie in torchlight, and then again through the sleet outside the shed. ‘The mother is urged to come forward as she might be in need of urgent medical attention.’
    It was the late news.
    Surely they were going to guess? But why should they? It was hard enough for her to believe that she could sit here in her pretty little dressing gown smelling of bath powder, when she had given birth by herself in a dirty shed with only a dog for company. Four hours ago, that was all!
    ‘Why don’t we have a dog. Mum?’ asked Julie, knowing what she was going to hear.
    ‘But they are such a nuisance, Julie. And