Free Lola Rose by Nick Sharratt Page B

dump, I promise you, darling. Money no object. Well, within reason.’
    We were told about this special charity stores place where you got given all kinds of furniture if you were in need. Mum still had wads and wads of lottery money left but she’d started to worry about it now. We did go into town to look at furniture but one big squashy leather three-piece suite was three thousand pounds!
    â€˜Blow that for a lark. We’ll see what these stores have got. If it’s all a lot of flea-infested old rubbish then we’ll just say no thanks, right?’ said Mum.
    But we said yes please, yes please. We even got a black leather sofa! It was old and cracked, but it still looked lovely. We found two black velvet chairs that almost matched and a fluffy rug that came up white after a good scrubbing. We got a double bed too, though Mum bought a brand-new mattress because she said she felt funny about sleeping in someone else’s bedding. She bought a deep purple duvet cover just to please me, and spent a whole day painting the walls lilac.
    I made her a special card with some of my best Victorian scraps, a big bright heart and bunches of lilies and roses and a host of angels swooping up and down like bungee jumpers. I wrote inside, ‘You are an angel, Mum. XXX from Lola Rose’, and I stuck a big red rose beside my name. Kendall added a wobbly K and his own kisses.
    I put it in a proper envelope and then pretended it had been delivered by the postman. We didn’t get any real post because no one knew where we were. No one knew us at all. This wasn’t like a holiday any more. This was our new life.
    I kept thinking about my old life and my old friends. They’d think it so weird that I’d vanished into thin air. Thick air. Mum was smoking more and more to steady her nerves. Our flat was grey with smoke haze. It made me cough but Mum said I was putting it on. Maybe I was, just a little bit.
    Kendall coughed a lot too, but that was because he cried a lot. I suppose he was missing Dad. He often called out for him when he woke up in the night. Sometimes he didn’t wake up quite quick enough and wet the bed. Mum threatened to put Kendall back in nappies if he did it again. He did, so Mum tucked a towel into his pants. Kendall howled with humiliation.
    â€˜You shouldn’t get so cross with him, Mum. He can’t help it. He’s just upset.’
    â€˜Yeah, well, I shall be upset if he ruins that brand-new mattress. And you can stop being so mealy-mouthed, Miss Goody-Goody Two-Shoes,’ said Mum. ‘You don’t half get on my nerves sometimes, Jayni.’
    â€˜Lola Rose.’
    â€˜OK, Lola Flipping Fancy-Pants Rose, just you remember I’m your mum . Stop acting like you’re my big sister, for God’s sake. You’re not meant to tell me what to do. I’ll do what I like, see.’
    Mum looked in her handbag for her cigarettes. The packet was empty. ‘Oh, bum. Run down the road to the corner shop, Jay—Lola Rose.’
    â€˜It’s gone ten, Mum. It’ll be shut.’
    It had taken hours to settle Kendall. He’d had one of his crying fits. He was still snuffling in his sleep.
    Mum bit her thumbnail agitatedly. ‘For God’s sake, I’m not going all night without a fag, I’m gasping. Look, there must be a pub somewhere. I’ll nip out and buy myself some cigarettes from the machine. You go to bed, OK?’
    â€˜OK,’ I said uncertainly. I didn’t want her to go out in the dark by herself just in case something happened to her.
    â€˜You’ll be fine, silly,’ Mum said, not understanding. ‘If there’s any emergency then go and get someone in the house to help. Maybe not the old lady, she’s a bit gone in the head, but the lads up above seem fine.’
    We’d got to the stage of nodding at our new neighbours. Miss Parker, the old lady, proved a real nosy parker and asked all kinds of