And when I got to this bit Peppa was asleep and I kissed her ear and made a spoon behind her and listened to the wind and crackle of the fire with my eyes closed.
Chapter Three
Hooks
When I woke up I started to worry straight away that it was four days since we ran and this was the fourth day here and they would definitely be looking for us all over. I think it was our fourth day here. I think they would’ve found Maw in the room by now and she had a phone so she could phone out. But the room was locked from the outside and the key was on the carpet and there was no way she could’ve killed Robert and then locked herself in there from the outside so that proved she didn’t do it.
And they would’ve found Robert on my bed and all the blood from his throat where I stabbed him three times. And blood up the wall too, on the wallpaper with monkeys on it. And Peppa gone too and her room just normal. They didn’t know about the school uniforms we wore or the rucksack or the backpack Peppa carried or the hockey stick case with the gun and the rod in it, so if they looked for things missing they wouldn’t know what was and wasn’t there. I knew what was there and what we’d taken but the polis and social workers wouldn’t know that. They’d find my T-shirt and jeans and knickers with Robert’s blood all over them in the washing in the bathroom so they’d know it was me. They’d find the lock on Peppa’s unlocked door and the key on the floor so they’d know I locked her in and it wasn’t her.
I wondered if Maw had gone on telly asking us to come back and saying we weren’t in any trouble. Or if they thought I had kidnapped Peppa. And they wouldn’t find the knife because I had it with me. I got rid of all the phones I used to look stuff up and I dumped the laptop in a skip the day before I did it. I threw the phones off the wall into the sea where it is deep even at low tide and you go spinning for Mackerel.
They would also find the phones Robert got and brought back and the cards he had and they knew him anyway because he had been in the jail once and he had a court appearance coming up in November for theft. They’d find bits of weed and speed and mandy all over the place and they’d know it was Robert’s. And they had been to our flat twice two years ago, once when Robert was hitting Maw and me and once when Maw nicked two bottles of vodka from the Spar and got seen with them walking up to the flats and somebody shopped her.
If the polis were clever they’d trace the things I bought on the stolen cards over the eight months when I was planning it, but I’d put all those cards back in Robert’s drawer or chucked them and most of them had been cancelled by the time I tried to use them. But if one copper was clever enough to look at purchases on stolen cards from Robert he’d see all the stuff I bought on Amazon like a tarp and a compass and the knife and mess tins and Peppa’s trainers and the rucksack. And if he thought about it he might’ve had an idea what I was going to do. But coppers are not that clever and most of them I have met or seen on the telly are really thick and they don’t arrest the people they should and they do arrest the people they shouldn’t.
When they came round when Robert was hitting Maw the woman copper asked Maw if she was alright and Maw said aye and it was all just a rammy and shouting and no hitting. And the woman copper said to her ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ and Maw said ‘Aye.’ The man copper had taken Robert in the other room when she said this to Maw. And she didn’t ask me anything but I wouldn’t have told her anyway because they’d bring the social in and we’d get split up. Peppa was watching telly.
You could hear everything in our flats. A guy called Big Chris lived above us. He sometimes bought weed and mandy off Robert. At night you could hear him banging and screaming and crying. I don’t know why. We nicked his broadband most of the time because Robert got his wifi code. Robert got phones and SIMs too, some of them could get 4G. I mostly went to McDonald’s to get online when I was buying stuff with the cards. I used to get a McFlurry and sit facing the door so I could see who was coming in.
I got the school uniforms from a charity shop in August. They were two blazers and skirts and ties and blouses and mine was a bit tight but Peppa’s fitted her and I paid ten pounds for them and told the wifey in the shop they were for a school play. They were from a posh school in Glasgow and had gold and red badges with ‘Ad Vitam’ embroidered on them and that means ‘for life’ in Latin.
We both wore our walking trainers with them and they looked alright and I carried the rucksack and the hockey stick case and Peppa carried the backpack. And we left the flat at 6.00 a.m. and nobody saw us, and we went through the close the back way and up the alley and climbed over the fence onto the path by the park that led along to the train station, so we didn’t even walk on any roads or places where people would be and we got the 6.15 to Glasgow and I bought the tickets in the machine with the cash from Robert’s wallet. I worried on the train and in Glasgow that we’d see kids who went to the posh school in real life and they’d know we didn’t go to their school and they’d remember us. But we didn’t.
In Glasgow where we changed trains it was crowded and there were hundreds of people all over rushing and walking and talking on phones and nobody even looked at us. When we got on the train to Girvan there was only one old wifey in the carriage and she smiled at Peppa and it was like she was going ‘She looks so sweet’. I just wanted people to see two nice posh little girls going on a train to a posh school and they did.
Peppa asked if we had to talk posh if we talked, and I said no, don’t talk till we get to the forest. Or if the police issued descriptions Maw would tell them what we would be wearing and then people would look for two girls wearing those things and not school uniforms like we were. If they saw us on CCTV we’d be two posh girls in school uniforms not two schemies from our flats and I told Peppa to look down all the time at the station so they didn’t see our faces.
With the sleeping bag and the blankets and lures and spinners and the kettle stand and kettle the rucksack was heavy, but it was properly packed and had a waist strap so once it was on it was easy to walk with. Peppa carried most of the food in her backpack and also the first aid kit and spare paracord and the slingshot and some fishing stuff and airgun pellets.
At Girvan we went in a café by the station and Peppa had a big Scottish breakfast and I had bacon and egg and sausage and toast. The man in the café just said ‘There you go girls’ when he brought the food and that was all he said and we paid and went and then got the X22 to Newton Stewart which goes all along the edge of the Galloway forest park. I had to get the map and keep checking for our stop and I rang the bell when we were near it by a village called Glentrool.And the bus stopped and we got off and the driver didn’t even look at us.
Then we walked up a little road towards the village and when we came to a green wooden sign that said ‘Galloway Forest Park’ we went into the car park and then walked along a path through some pine woods. We went into the woods and changed our clothes and buried the school uniforms and the two phones we had. I took the batteries and the SIMs out and put them in a bin in the car park because phone batteries have lithium in them which could leak out and cause pollution in the soil.
Then we climbed a bit and the path came round and out and we were looking down a valley towards Loch Trool and there were mountains with forest going up on either side and far away at the end on the other side was a bit that stuck out into the loch called the Bruce’s Stone where Robert the Bruce lived and fought the English with a gang of men in 1307. He had lived wild in the hills and slept in caves and shelters.
It was all lit up with sunshine, and from the height of the sun