Pirate Cinema

Chapter 3

I looked away, but she turned my head so that I was looking into her bottomless brown eyes. “It's nothing. It's just.” I really wanted to look away, but she wouldn't let me. “Okay, I miss me mam. Happy?”

She tsked. “Boys are such idiots. Of course you miss your family -- how long has it been since you saw them?”

I did the maths in my head. “Ten months,” I said. Then I thought again. “Hey, I'm turning seventeen next month!”

“We'll bake you a cake. Now, how long has it been since you called 'em?”

I shook my head. “I haven't, not really. Once, but only for a few minutes. Didn't work out so well.” I'd told Twenty about how I came to leave Bradford, of course, but I hadn't told her much else about my family. I didn't like to talk about them, because talking about them led to thinking about them and thinking about them led to misery.

She glared. “That's terrible! How could you go that long without even calling? Your mum and dad must be beside themselves with worry! For all they know, you're lying dead in a ditch or being forced to peddle your pretty arse in a dungeon in Soho.” She got up from the sofa and faced me, hands on her hips. “I know you, boyo. You're not a bastard. It can't feel good to be this rotten to your parents. You owe it to yourself to call them up.”

I spread my hands with helplessness. “I know you're right, but how can I do it? It's been so long? What do I say?”

“You say sorry, idiot boy. Then you say I love you and I'm alive and doing fine. Do you think it's going to get any easier if you keep on procrastinating? Call them. Now.”

“But,” I said, and stopped. I was fishing for an excuse -- any excuse. “If I call them from my mobile, they'll have my number and they'll trace me. I'm only sixteen still; one call to the cops and I'll be dragged back home.”

She rolled her eyes with the eloquent mastery of a teenaged girl. “Tell me you can't think of a way of making a call without having it traced back to you.”

I grimaced. She had me there. There were only about twenty free Internet phone services. Most of them were blocked by the Great Firewall of Britain, but I'd been routing around the censorwall since before my testicles dropped. “Fine,” I said. “I'll do it later.”

“What, when all your mates are awake and around and embarrassing you? The hell you will. There's no time like the present, boyo.”

So I found a headset and wiped it clean and screwed it into my ear and paired it up with my lappie and dialed Mum's number. It rang four times and bumped to voice mail, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I disconnected the phone. “No answer,” I said. “I'll try again later.”

“Don't tell me your whole family shares one phone? Are you from the past or some- thing?”

“You're too damn clever for your own good, 26. Fine, fine.” I called Dad's number. Four rings and... voice mail. “No answer,” I said, cheerfully. “Let's get some breakfast --”

“What about your sister, what's her name, Nora?”

“Cora,” I said. “You really paid attention when I told you about my family, didn't you?”

“I always pay attention,” she said. “That way, I can tell when you're lying to me, or yourself. I pay attention to everything. It's my super-power.”

I dialed Cora's number with a heavy heart, then held my breath as the phone rang: once, twice, three times --

“Hello?”

“Cora?”

“Who is this?” Her voice sounded thick, like she'd been sleeping. But it was the middle of the afternoon. I'd figured on her being at school. It was a Wednesday, after all. The school jammed all pupils' phones (though teachers and heads got special handsets that worked through the jammers).