Free Dangerous by Jessie Keane

’ said Hatton.
    ‘Well?’ snapped Clara.
    Hatton pushed the door open further. ‘Come in,’ he said.
    Frank Hatton led the way into a disorderly kitchen, thick with dirt. Clara looked around in disgust. The Dolans might be poor, but they were never dirty. This place hadn’t seen a duster or a broom in months. There were soiled boots on the table on a sheet of newspaper beside bike parts and a container of oil; there was a stained washing-up bowl on top of the stove. The linoleum was sticky with food spills and grubby with ingrained mud and paw prints. You could see at a glance that no woman lived here.
    Sick misgiving clenched at her stomach as she looked at Hatton. Oh Christ, and he was no oil painting either, was he? Anything that had once been muscle had long since turned to fat, his skin was yellow, his eyes bloodshot, and he hadn’t even bothered to wash or shave. What a state!
    There was silence in the room. Henry had stopped his sobbing and Attila had given up barking. Clara slumped down at the table, and Bernie sat too, shivering and hugging herself. Hatton stood propped against the sink, looking at the younger kids. His eyes fell on Henry.
    ‘Go out and play in the yard,’ he said to the boy. ‘Don’t you touch that bloody dog though, he’ll eat ya.’
    Henry wandered off outside. Clara looked at Hatton.
    ‘So what’s going on?’ he asked.
    Clara told him.
    ‘Shit,’ said Frank when she’d finished.
    ‘So can we stay? For now?’ asked Clara.
    On the way over, she had formulated a plan. The flat was history, and so was the Singer sewing machine that could have earned them a small crust. So she had made up her mind that something else would have to do. At least this way, the family could stay together. Bernie and Henry had been through far too much to endure any more upheaval.
    Hatton was silent for a while, thinking it over.
    ‘Yeah,’ he said at last. ‘Why not?’
    He showed Clara and Bernie upstairs to a bedroom. It was dusty, the windows grimed from years of dirt. But there was a big metal-framed double bed for them to sleep on, big enough for all three of them, just about.
    While Bernie sat down on the bed, Clara went over to the grimy window and looked bleakly out onto the street. There were people down there, going about their everyday business, nothing exciting happening, but for the once-wealthy Dolans, everything had imploded; everything had changed.
    Clara’s mind wouldn’t stop replaying it all: first Dad’s business going, then Dad deserting them when it had all got too much for him to cope with, leaving his pregnant wife and young children to scratch a living in the slums. And how were
they
supposed to cope? A visceral anger gripped Clara so hard that she shivered. They’d not only lost the roof over their head, they’d lost Mum – a loss that was too terrible, too fresh, to even think about. So Clara decided she was going to shut her mind to it and just get on with it. Do what must be done. You either sank in shit in this world or you came up and gasped in air. Clara Dolan had no intention of sinking.
    ‘Clara?’ It was Bernie, breaking into her reverie.
    Clara turned, looked at her. Bernie looked very small, very pale, sitting there.
    ‘Can we go back to the flat now?’ she pleaded.
    Clara stared at Bernie, long and hard. She could understand how her sister felt. It was awful back there at the flat, really horrible, but it was their last link with Mum and at least it was familiar. All this was new, and frightening. ‘We can’t,’ she said at last.
    Bernie’s eyes were desperate with panic. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Just that. We can’t go back there, not unless you want to be taken into care and Henry with you. Maybe even me too. We’ll get separated. Don’t you see that?’
    ‘But Clar . . . Mum . . . ’
    ‘Mum’s gone.’
    ‘Won’t there be a funeral?’
    ‘No. We couldn’t have afforded one anyway. God’s sake, Bernie, show a bit of sense. All