Chapter 39

Belle was up first the next morning, she was cooking waffles for everyone, including Helen, who hadn’t made it home after a late night with Jenny. I slept, just slept, with Poppy and Belle.

I arrived as she was mixing batter, she refused my offer of help, instead giving me a quick kiss on the cheek and poured me a mug of fresh coffee.

“It was fun having you in bed again, even just sleeping. I like snuggling up to your chest, like a big teddy bear.”

“And I enjoyed having you snuggling up to me.”

“Was it weird knowing Jenny was sleeping with Helen?”

“Kind of, but Helen was very upset earlier, thinking about the awful things she did, stuff she’s only just remembering., and she just wanted female company for the night, and didn’t want to go home and explain it all to Nita.”

“That makes sense, was it the room?”

“Yes, it was the room that brought back the memories.”

“But the room has gone now, hasn’t it?”

“The room, the computers, the videos, they’re all gone.”

“So Poppy is safe, all the bad stuff is gone.”

“Well, the videos are gone, but the memories, they’ll keep coming back.”

“I’ll be able to help her with those, I can make her think happy thoughts.”

“Keep that up, but be prepared for more tears, Poppy’s problems run deep.”

“I think I’m ready, I give very good hugs.”

“You do give very good hugs.”

“Now scoot, because I have work to do.”

I refilled my mug and took it to the table, where I watched Belle pressing fresh blueberries and cooking them in sugar syrup to make a compote for the waffles.

Poppy arrived next, stumbling into the kitchen still wrapping her hair in buns. She poured orange juice into four glasses, “something smells amazing, Belle.”

“I’ve a new body spray, do you like it?”

Poppy put her nose close to her sister, “it’s nice, but it’s not what I’m smelling.”

“Then it’s probably the blueberry compote for the waffles, sit down, I’m just about to make some.”

“I can help.”

“You can, but I’m not going to let you.”

“Come sit down,” I told Poppy, “she won’t let me help either. This is her penance for being suspended.”

Lia and Katie were next, they grabbed a glass of juice each and joined us at the table, just in time for Belle to bring over a plate stacked with waffles, a jug of warm compote and a can of squirty cream.

Lia grabbed a couple of waffles, “oh wow, this is amazing. I like living here.”

“It’s only like this when Belle’s suspended,” Katie laughed, “otherwise we get Frosties and cold milk.”

“I can do this at weekends though,” Belle called over as she poured more batter into the waffle iron, “I don’t mind.”

“We mind though,” Poppy replied, “it’s not fair that you’re cooking all the time.”

“It’s OK, I love cooking.”

“And I love having you snuggled up with me in bed while someone else cooks.”

“Oh sweetie, I didn’t think of it like that. Maybe we could snuggle then eat later, because I want to make French toast and honey this weekend.”

Poppy put her fork down and held her arms out for Belle, who came running, “you just love cooking don’t you.”

“I do, it’s all the flavours we dreamt about, I can taste them now, it’s amazing.”

“I’ll cook on Saturday,” Lia said softly, “we might all die, but you can get your snuggle time.”

Poppy looked over at Lia, “I think Belle might fight you for it,” she smiled.

Jenny and Helen emerged as Poppy and Katie were putting their coats on ready to leave for school.

Jenny hugged both girls, “it’s a good job I’ve no early meetings today, I completely slept through the alarm this morning.”

“Good sex is tiring,” Poppy replied with a smile.

“It is, but we just talked.”

“And kissed,” Helen teased as she hugged Katie.

“OK, we kissed a bit as well, but we mostly talked. Did you have fun with Alex?”

“We just slept,” Poppy replied.

“And cuddled,” Belle added.

“Well, obviously, but no sex, not on a school night,” Poppy turned back to the kitchen, “be good today, Belle, Lia needs to concentrate on charity work.”

“We won’t even be in the room with Lia, so I won’t be tempted to interrupt them”

“I’ll try to speak to someone in Pastoral today, to find out how Jade is.”

“Oh, please phone me as soon as you know, even if she’s a cow I feel really bad for decking her like that.”

Jenny looked over at Belle, “by the way, how did you knock her out so quickly?”

“Oh, that was easy, she swung to slap me, I swept her arm away, punched her hard, then kicked her legs out from under her as she wobbled from the punch, she’ll have a lovely black eye.”

Jenny nodded with approval, “very impressive, but please, promise me you will never start a fight.”

“Why would I want to start one? I only learnt those moves to stop fights. I want to be friends with people, not enemies. It’s not my fault Jade is so insecure. And she shouldn’t be, she’s really pretty.”

“Well, not so much at the moment,” Katie laughed.

“Ahh, no. And I’m so sorry about that, but she started it.”

Jenny pulled Belle close and hugged her, “we can’t control how other people react to us, there’s all kinds of weirdos out there. Look at Poppy, she’s the most wonderful, gorgeous creature alive, and some people don’t like her.”

“That’s because they’re jealous,” Belle replied into Jenny’s chest.

“Exactly, and they’re jealous of you, because they don’t realise that underneath your beautiful body is the sweetest person in the world. I’m not asking you to be friends with everyone, because Jade and her friends will probably never like you...”

“Especially after I knocked her out.”

“Yes, especially now. Just try to pretend nothing happened, if she comes after you, speak to a teacher or your pastoral leader rather than fighting with her again.”

“I’ll try mum, I really will.”

“That’s all I ask.”

Poppy looked at her watch, “we really need to go, have fun with dad and Lia today.”

“I will, but not too much fun, because I’m not supposed to have fun when I’m suspended.”

“That’s exactly right,” Poppy laughed as she ran for the door.

Helen and Jenny helped themselves to waffles from the fresh stack Belle delivered to the table.

“This sauce is amazing Belle, did you make it?”

“I did, there’s a bottle of blueberry sauce in the fridge, but I thought I’d make my own, it’s really easy, just blueberries, caster sugar and a bit of lemon juice. Is Nita going to be angry about you staying over?”

“Well,” Helen started as she took another bite of her waffle, “luckily she was working all night, she texted me last night that there was an emergency, and she would be in surgery overnight.

“My little drama was after I had a small breakdown on Alex, some more shit I did long ago bubbled to the surface, I couldn’t face telling Nita, not then. Luckily Jenny is very understanding, she listened to my traumas and helped me put some pieces of memory in the right context.”

Belle brought a plate to the table and helped herself to a waffle and some compote, “mmm, these are nice, I’m going to boss Food Tech if they ever let me back in school.”

We ate in silence for a while, as she finished her breakfast Helen looked at Belle, “did you ever do drugs on the streets?”

Belle looked up in surprise, “me?” she replied, shaking her head, “I never even smoked. We had some cider or cheap wine some nights, but I never took drugs. Poppy would have killed me if I did, but even if she wouldn’t I never saw the point. You’d see people down alleys or under bridges, totally fucked out of their skulls. I guess if their lives were so empty, they needed crack or meth to take it all away. We had a decent life, relatively, we had each other, we had a roof most of the time, and we always had food because I was the master shoplifter of old London Town.”

“I had all those things, I had friends, or at least people who pretended to be friends while I had money, I had a roof over my head and so much food; I also took industrial quantities of drugs; E, coke, ketamine, even heroin. I didn’t take them because my life was empty Belle, I took them to forget the horrific shit I did to earn money.”

Belle stopped eating, her fork hanging in mid-air, “oh fuck Helen, really. But you’re clean now?”

“Oh yes, everything about that life ended around the same time. Once I stopped doing shit I was ashamed of I didn’t feel the need to take drugs to forget what I’d done. Also, the friends I thought I had, they all disappeared once the supply of drugs dried up, so the bad influences were out of my life.”

“You quit just like that?”

“Well, not quite, I did 6 months of narcotics anonymous meetings which helped me understand the cravings and find ways to distract my mind. That’s where I first found an interest in psychology, so a proper case of every cloud having a silver lining.”

Belle stared at Helen for a few moments while she finished chewing her waffle, finally she put her fork down, “wow ... just ... wow. I never expected that, you seem so, I don’t know, sensible I guess...”

“Hahaha,” Helen laughed without humour, “sensible, that’s not a word I’d use about myself. I was wild for a while, Belle, and in a way, it’s just as much a miracle I’m still around as Poppy.”

Jenny put her arm around Helen and pulled her into a hug, “do you want me to be there when you tell Nita?”

“I don’t know, if I tell her tonight it’ll be kind of like I’m ambushing her with terrible news, so it would be good to have some backup. But also, this is private stuff, so how do I bring you all in to help?”

Belle put her hand up like she was in class, “I know what you can do!”

“What honey?”

“You can bring her here for dinner tonight, I’ll cook something vegan for you all, say it’s because I’ve been off all day because I was bad or something. Then after dinner, while you’re relaxing, someone could bring up the fire and the conversation can run from there.”

“That’s not a bad idea actually, yes, if that’s OK with you Alex I think we’ll run with that.”

“It’s fine by me, you’re both welcome round here any time.”

Jenny stepped away from the table, “OK, I’ll have to love you and leave you, I really need to get to the station. All being well I’ll be finished by 6, is that OK timing for everyone?”

“Fine by me,” Belle replied, “I have a plan for dinner that won’t take long to cook, I’ll need to do some shopping though.”

“Will you let me help,” Lia asked, “I’d like to learn how to cook.”

“Of course you can help me, Katie and Poppy will have homework to do, so they can’t help.”

Helen rose from the table and fetched her coat from the hall cupboard.

“Thank you everyone, for being so understanding, especially you last night Alex, I’m afraid you got the full force of my breakdown. I need to tell Nita, so I’m going to spend the day thinking positive thoughts to build up my mental strength.”

Belle ran to Helen and jumped into her arms, wrapping her own arms and legs around her auntie, “I’m giving you positive vibes,” Belle said as she kissed Helen’s neck.

“That’s worked already,” Helen laughed as Belle climbed down, “I can feel positive energy running through me. I’m not kidding either, I feel better already, thank you.”

Once Helen and Jenny left, Lia helped Belle clear up the breakfast things whilst I phoned the office to check when Esther was available.

With the kitchen clean we headed for the station, first stop would be Carnaby Street, where Belle had found an army surplus store.

The store was down an alley, in a basement chock full of ex-army clothing and equipment.

As Belle took Lia down to the collection of coats from various nations I had a look through the camping equipment, not that I needed anything, except perhaps this very powerful LED torch, and some enamel mugs. I didn’t need them at all, but I still added them to the wool lined coat Lia put on the counter, and the t-shirts, and the small shirt Belle had found, and the small canvas boots.

“Look dad, these are waterproof, and they’re camouflaged, so no-one will see me coming.”

“Well, they might if you’re also wearing that pink t-shirt,” Lia replied.

“Duh, when I go on secret missions, I don’t wear pink. Unless the secret mission is raiding a Hello Kitty store, then I do wear pink.”

The guy behind the counter moved his head side to side as the girls chattered.

“Are they always like this,” he asked as I slipped my credit card into the card reader.

“No, they’re usually worse,” I replied as I handed a bag each to the girls.

It’s not too far to walk from the army surplus shop to my publishers in Russell Square, and we had over an hour to kill before Lia could meet with Esther, so we walked slowly down Poland Street, onto Oxford Street then along Tottenham Court Road, were Belle stopped at a camera store.

“Poppy spoke about buying some digital cameras for the street kids to use, to take photos for our book.”

“That’s a really cool idea,” Lia replied, “I know nothing about cameras though.”

“Neither do I, shall we ask the man?”

“There’s no harm in asking,” I replied.

Belle dropped her bag at my feet and entered the store, we filed in behind her.

She approached the counter and politely asked, “err, excuse me, I have an odd request and I’m wondering if you could help me.”

The man behind the counter looked at Belle and couldn’t help but smile at the earnest girl standing before him.

“I’m sure I can try, what do you need?”

“Well, my sister and I, we’re writing a book, oh, not this sister by the way, my other sister, Poppy, she’s at school, where I should be really, but I got suspended for fighting, and none of this is in any way important, I’m so sorry.

“Anyway, Poppy and I, we were homeless for a long time, and Alex here rescued us, so we’re writing a book about our time on the streets, and also about homelessness in general. So, Poppy had this idea that we’d buy some digital cameras to give to homeless kids to take photos of their life and surroundings, you know, squats, railway arches, back alleys and stuff. Then we’d take the memory cards and let them keep the cameras to sell.”

The guy, whose badge proclaimed him to be Eric the duty manager, was quiet for a while, processing the barrage he’d just heard.

“Ok, I think I get what you’re asking. You want documentary type shots of street life, and there’s two schools of thought here. Some people want street photographs to be pin sharp, so they reveal the whole picture in the finest detail. Others feel that a more grainy, lo-fi image tells the story better.”

Belle nodded at this as Eric continued, “so, you have two options, a good camera with a sharp lens that would take the best pictures, or a budget camera that would take decent photos that you could turn black and white to give a good documentary feel to the images.”

“And I’m guessing one would be much more expensive than the other.”

“Indeed, the sky’s the limit for the good camera, personally I’d choose a Fuji X100, which for me is the perfect street camera...”

“And it costs?”

“Over a grand, so really not the answer you were looking for.”

“Not really, and I also like the idea of lo-fi images. I’m guessing we could use software to tidy them up to look professional.”

“Oh yes, but what I’d suggest is to get a good camera for one person to use, maybe yourself, to get some really good shots, then to give the street kids something like this...”

Eric opened a drawer and pulled out a yellow camera that he unceremoniously tossed to Belle, “these things are tough as nails, they’re waterproof, they run on regular AA batteries, and they take surprisingly good photos.”

“Oh, I like this, how much are they?”

“Well, that one is brand new, so it’s about £250, but I’ve got a load of ex-display and refurbished ones back in the warehouse that I’m going to be listing in eBay, how many would you need?”

“I’ve no idea,” she looked at me, I shrugged, “err, how much would 10 cost me?”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll do you a deal, and you can think about it and give me a call tomorrow. I’ll sell you an X100, brand new, and a box of a dozen of the tough cameras for £2k. The X100 alone is £1250. So that’s about 60 quid a piece for the tough cameras.”

Belle looked at me again, “what do you think?”

“That’s OK with me, and I’m sure we’d find a use for the good camera afterwards.”

“Err, we’re a bit overloaded right now, and we’ve got a meeting in a bit, can you deliver them?”

“The cameras aren’t here anyway, I’d have to bring them in from the warehouse, so delivery is no problem.”

Belle insisted on paying for the cameras, she found her card case somewhere in the depths of her coat and handed it over while I filled out the details for delivery.

“I hope Poppy isn’t angry about me buying the cameras,” Belle said after we’d left the shop, “it was her idea and everything.”

“I’m sure she’ll be pleased you took the initiative,” Lia replied, “and more to the point, you paid for them, so she can’t complain.”

“Ha, there is that I suppose, ahh, I’d better text her and tell her what I’ve done. Can you remember what make the cheaper cameras were?”

“All I remember was it was called an Olympus Tough something or other,” Lia offered.

“That’ll do,” Belle muttered as she laboriously composed a text message on her old Nokia phone.

We stopped for coffee and cake close to the office, Lia had a big slice of Black Forest gateaux with her coffee, Belle just had a fully loaded hot chocolate.

“I love how much you’re enjoying that cake,” Belle laughed, “I was so hungry for a while after Poppy rescued me, I ate like a horse, I thought I was going to pop.”

“I love cakes though.”

“I saw the way you looked at them in shop windows, I used to try to figure out ways I could steal you some, but they’re always in fridges behind the counter, I could never work out how to grab some cakes without getting caught.”

Lia pulled Belle close and kissed her, “that’s so sweet of you, I’d hate for you to get into trouble for me, so I’m glad you didn’t manage to get any.”

I finished my coffee and checked the time, “we’d better be going.”

As Lia swallowed the last of her cake, Belle picked up her napkin and wiped around Lia’s mouth, “there you go, you’re presentable now.”

“Thank you, nobody ever did that for me before.”

“You’re our family now, we look out for each other.”

“Family, I’ve not really had family before, at least not one that looked after me.”

Belle stood and held out her hand, helping Lia to her feet, “we take such good care of each other, you’ll soon get used to it.”

I now had both bags as Belle led Lia to the office, telling her about the meeting in the bar of the posh hotel as we walked past. They rounded the corner and walked down the block until they reached the office.

“These are pretty fancy buildings, is it a big publisher?” Lia asked.

“It’s one of the bigger publishers, this office just covers part of the operation,” I replied, “they have other offices for non-fiction, biographies, teen fiction, stuff like that. They keep talking about moving everything into the same building as the parent company.”

“Where’s that building, is it nearby?” Lia asked, looking around.

“Unfortunately not, it’s in New York.”

“Ahh, that’s no good, I don’t have a passport,” Belle sighed.

“If it happens, I’ll make sure you’ve all got passports, which will be easy now you’ve all got birth certificates and legal names.”

“Yayyy, then we can go to New York, it looks great there, all those skyscrapers and yellow cabs, have you ever been?”

“I’ve not been to New York, Belle, but I’ve been to Boston and Washington, and I went to LA a couple of times to meet film people.”

“Have you been in a film?” Belle asked, suddenly very excited.

“Ahh, no, I thought you knew. I got most of my money from writing films and selling my books to film and TV.”

“Ahh, yes, you did mention that, boo, I thought you’d been in a film.”

“Helen’s been in a film,” I replied.

“Well duh! We know, that’s what last night’s drama was about.”

“No, she’s been in a proper film, only a small part, but she does say a few lines. And she’s been in a couple of TV programs. Depending on what happens tonight, maybe we can watch the film.”

“That would be amazing,” Belle replied as she climbed the three steps up to the door and entered the offices.

“Hey Belle, you’re back!” Paige cried as she ran from her desk to greet us, “oh wow, Lia! Oh my god, you look great!”

“You know Lia?” Belle asked.

“Oh wow, Paige, so good to see you again, you look gorgeous.”

“I used to live up Camden way and I spoke to Lia a lot. Have you moved in with Belle?”

“Yeah, they came looking for me at the weekend. And now I’m here to meet Esther, I think?”

“Oh really, let me look at the room bookings,” Paige dashed back to her desk and checked her computer, “yep, you’re in 204, and Alex, I can see you’ve got 206 booked, you asked for a computer and printer, there’s one set up in there.”

We set off towards the stairs, Lia waved to Paige, “thank you, we’ll see you in a bit.”

“You know, London is such a big city with so many people, then you find out Lia and Paige have met before, it’s amazing.”

“It’s that 6 degrees of separation thing, Belle,” Lia replied, “where everyone in the world is linked by 6 jumps or something, like I know Paige, Paige knows someone else, who knows someone else who once met Barak Obama.”

“Amazing! I’ve never heard of that, is it true do you think, there’s only 6 people between me and Taylor Swift? I want to meet those people.”

On the second floor Belle stopped thinking about Taylor Swift for long enough to walk Lia down to room 204, she knocked and pushed the door open when Esther answered.

“Hello again Belle! So good to see you, and you must be Lia.”

They shook hands as Esther showed Lia to a table where she’d laid out several piles of papers.

“I’ve ordered sandwiches and drinks for all of us for 12:30,” Esther told us, “If you come back then we can chat about where we’re up to. I’m happy to spend a couple of days with Lia, if you’re up to it of course,” she added, looked at Lia whose eyes were wide with shock.

“Err, I’m fine with it, I think. Let’s see how fried my brain gets today.”

‘Of course,” Esther laughed., “this is my passion you see, working with non-profits, and I get a little over-enthusiastic sometimes. Please, tell me if I’m going too fast or too deep.”

“Ok, we’ll leave you to it,” I told them, “we’re in 206 typing up Belle’s apology, then we might pop out for a walk. Ring us if your brain explodes.”

“Will do,” Lia replied, smiling nervously as we left.

“Will she be OK,” Belle asked as I sat her in front of the keyboard in room 206.

“She’ll be fine, you said yourself, she’s really bright, and Esther is lovely. We’ll go back in an hour, assuming you’ve finished your letter by then.”

“Ahh yes,” she sighed, digging through her many pockets until she found a folded sheet of paper in her jeans pocket.

She unfolded the sheet and flattened it out on the desk, “Lia helped me write this last night, it’s quite short, but she said it was best to keep it that way.”

“She’s right, if you waffle on you’ll just start saying stuff you really don’t want to say. So, this is the same computer system as your laptop, and the same as my computer at home. You’ll need to use my login,” I leant over and typed my username and password into the computer. “Here we go, the desktop background is different, but the icon menu at the bottom should be similar.”

Belle wiggled the mouse around the desktop, getting used to it, “err, what do I press? I watched Katie the other day, but I got distracted by a video Poppy was watching, it had kittens in it.”

“Easily done, computers do so much that they are simultaneously our most powerful tool and the biggest distraction. Sometimes I get more work done by turning the computer off and writing in a notepad.”

“Ok, what do I do?”

“Right, so you’re writing a letter, you need to use a program called a word processor, the one we have here is called Word, you’ll see the same program on almost every business computer. Click the mouse on the icon with a W,” I pointed to the icons at the bottom of the screen.

With a bit of trial and error as Belle had never used a computer of any kind before, we got Word opened and a fresh document started.

The first task was showing her how to type, because she’d also not used a typewriter before, and her phone was an old Nokia with just a number pad.

Thirty minutes later, Belle was comfortable with the concept of how everything worked, now we had to start the letter.

I first rewrote her letter on paper, but formatted properly, with her address at the top, we didn’t have an address for Jade, so just our address on the letter.

“Actually,” Belle interrupted me as I wrote, “do we want her to know where we live? I’m not sure I do.”

“That’s a good point, and one of the reasons why we write drafts out first, so we can correct ourselves. I think we’ll just put the address down as care of the school.”

With the letter correctly formatted on paper, I showed Belle how to use Tabs and Justification to format text correctly, and how to use the text and paragraph formatting tools to give the letter a style she liked, which may have been a mistake, as she wasted about 20 minutes choosing a font.

I upset her by rejecting three fancy but totally inappropriate choices, before we settled on a nice simple sans serif font, then we got onto colours.

“We cannot type the letter in pink, this is a formal apology, we’re using black text.”

“Can we try it in pink, just to see what it looks like?”

“Ok,” I sighed, she’d not even started typing it yet.

Belle typed the first part of the letter in pink, then sent it to the printer, I walked across the room and retrieved the sheet, sliding it across the desk so she could read it.

“Ahh, I can barely read it, maybe pink isn’t the right choice.”

I sat down next and watched her select all the text and change the colour, “maybe purple, would purple be OK?”

“Err, no, black, it has to be black.”

As she typed, in black this time, I pointed out the red and blue underlining, “these are spelling and grammar mistakes. The red is showing that you’ve spelt apologise incorrectly...”

“But that’s right, isn’t it?”

“It would be if you were in the USA, they spell it with a Z, we use an S. Don’t ask me why English isn’t consistent everywhere.”

“Ok, so what’s the blue line telling me.”

“You’ve used ‘where’ when you should use ‘were’.”

“Now I’m confused, what’s the difference?”

“Were, without the H, is a verb, a doing word, so you use it to describe when more than one person was doing something in the past, for example ‘Poppy and Katie were doing their homework.’ If it was just Poppy, you’d say ‘Poppy was doing her homework.’

“Where, with an H, describes a place, ‘Where did Poppy do her homework?’ uses where with an H.”

“Ahh, I see. So, if I take the h out, ha ahh, the line’s gone. This is very clever.”

A few minutes later Belle had her letter written, she read it through twice and was about to print it when I asked her to stop.

“You can’t always trust the spell checker, because sometimes you spell a word incorrectly, but the spell checker doesn’t know because you accidentally made a real word.”

“What do you mean?”

“Read it again, pay extra attention to the third line.”

Belle leant in close to the screen, concentrating hard on the letter before she rocked back in her chair and slapped her forehead, “duh! I’ve called her Jude! How did I do that, U is miles away from A on the keyboard.”

“You might have hit U at the same time as J, then Word automatically corrected Juade to Jude instead of Jade.”

“It does that? Maybe next time I’ll just talk to the computer and let it type itself.”

“You can do that on the iPad, I’ve tried it but I spent longer correcting all its mistakes.”

“Oh really, I can talk to my iPad and it will type for me?”

“Yes, but it’s not very natural, you have to read out all punctation marks, I hated it.”

“But you miss my point, I can talk to my iPad and it’ll type for me, that’s amazing. I’ve never heard of anything that clever. I’m definitely trying it tonight.”

Once Belle got over her iPad’s cleverness, she corrected the errors Word hadn’t noticed and printed the letter.

“OK, now read it again before you sign it, there may still be mistakes.”

“Why is writing a letter so hard?”

“Normally it wouldn’t be so important, if you’re just sending a letter to a friend then correcting every little mistake isn’t vital, but sometimes you need to make a very positive impression, to show you have put a lot of effort into the letter. This is one of those occasions.”