Page 14 of The Island of Lost Girls

7

Hindsight is 20/20, of course. When she looks back, it seems obvious that everything started to fall apart the day she bought a scratchie with her lunch money and won five thousand pounds.

Gemma Hanson stands on the pavement outside Costcutter and stares at the card. And she checks and double-checks, and yes, the three cross-fingers symbols are there, all in a row, and the magic number. Five thousand pounds.

She goes back into the shop. Waits until things quieten down at the till and there’s no one lurking by the beer fridge, then goes and presents it to the man behind the counter.

She somehow expects to get the cash there and then, in a plastic bag or something. But he just looks bored. ‘Yeah, no,’ he says. ‘We don’t pay out those sorts of prizes. You need to send it and they’ll pay it into your bank account.’

Oh.

‘I don’t have a bank account.’

His eyebrows rise. ‘Everybody has a bank account.’

Gemma gives him the not-me hand spread.

‘How d’you pay your bills?’

Blank. Bills? Her mum gives her cash on Saturdays – lunch money and allowance to last the week – and pays her phone on her own contract. She says it’s easier and cheaper that way, but Gemma knows it’s really a form of surveillance.

The man’s eyes darken as she thinks.

‘How old are you, anyway?’ he asks.

‘Maybe you should’ve asked that when you sold it to me,’ she snaps. Then she hurries off, because she’s only fifteen.

‘Ask your mum,’ says Harriet. ‘She can pay it into hers.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Hattie. She’ll kill me!’

‘Why?’

Harriet can be painfully naïve. She doesn’t have difficult parents, of course. Naz gets it straight away. She’s had a double life for years, with her big bag of clothes she can change into in the bogs so she won’t get laughed at.

‘Let’s see,’ she says. ‘I’ll go with buying an illegal lottery ticket with my lunch money, for starters.’

Harriet does an ‘oh’ face. ‘It’s illegal?’

Naz does a ‘doh’ face. ‘Yeah. You have to be sixteen. And then, yeah, there’ll be “What else have you been doing that I don’t know about? I told you those girls were bad news. What do you get up to on those sleepovers, eh? I s’pose you’re all drinking and getting off with boys.” That too.’

Harriet giggles, for that is, actually, true. They’ve been covering for each other since they were fourteen. No, Mrs Khan, she can’t come to the phone. She’s in the loo. I think she’s having a poo. I’ll get her to call you when she comes out. Yeah, no, I think she’s a bit bunged up, to be honest. Yes, the project’s coming on great. We’re totally going to ace it.

‘I know she’ll be pissed off,’ says Harriet, ‘but five grand’s five grand. A lecture’s worth that, isn’t it?’

‘You don’t know my mum,’ says Gemma.

‘Oh, come on,’ says Harriet. ‘She’s not that bad. What’s she going to do?’

‘Call my father,’ says Gemma, gloomily.

‘That’s it,’ says Robin. ‘I’m going to have to call your father.’

Gemma’s in tears already. ‘No, Mum! You don’t! What’s it got to do with him?’

‘He’s your father, Gemma.’ And Robin heaves her martyred sigh. The one that’s been making Gemma feel like shit for years. Look at me, it says, dumped with you. Look at poor, burdened me. I never get to go out to dinner or take minibreaks to Amsterdam, because I’m stuck with you. I wish I’d never had kids. I wish I’d never had you.

All in a single exhalation.