Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine Page A

centimeters of space and a chance to watch the dawn.
    Jack used to sleep badly. When we were younger, he’d shake me awake and say, “It’s OK, Rowan, you had a bad dream. I’ll look after you.”
    I always knew it wasn’t me who’d been dreaming. I also knew he didn’t want to lose face, so I never said anything. I used to lie awake with him snoring in my bed too.
    The sky changed from dark to light so slowly I didn’t notice it happening and suddenly it was morning. Stroma stretched her little body out and openedher eyes, and that was it; she was wide awake and moving at the speed of sound, filling the place with her questions and her chitchat and her singing. I moved over into the warm space she’d left behind and closed my eyes, feeling that thing sleep does around the edges when you’re ready to fall back into it. I could hear Sonny burbling away to someone upstairs, the toilet flushing at the end of the hall, Stroma opening the sock drawer in the kitchen. Then I forced myself out of my sleeping bag and into my clothes and the making of breakfast.
    Carl said he could take Sonny to the babysitter’s and Stroma to school on his way to work, so I got to go with Bee, on time for once.
    â€œGod, Carl’s cool,” I said while we were waiting for the bus.
    â€œYou can say that again.” Bee smiled at me. “He’s very rare.”
    â€œWhat’s he do?”
    â€œHe works in a school in Hackney, two or three days a week. He hangs out with all the kids the teachers can’t deal with anymore. He’s their friend. He says he doesn’t like teachers either. The rest of the time he’s with Sonny.”
    We stood there for a bit, looking down the road at where the bus should be. “Where’s your mum?” I said, and I hoped she didn’t mind.
    Bee said, “Oh, she’s not part of it, really. She was young, like my age, when she had me. She’s been back a few times, but never for long. She gave Dad a lot of grief.”
    â€œWhat about Sonny?” I said. “He must miss her.”
    She shrugged. “No. He’s better off, I reckon.”
    I felt like I was prying. I said I was sorry.
    â€œI see my mum now and then,” Bee said. “She’s pretty wild. She’s like an artist’s model and a professional hippie, and right now she’s in Madrid, cooking macrobiotic food for this insane writer. She’s been there two years. I don’t mind.”
    She smiled at me, like she’d said this stuff a thousand times and she was bored of hearing it. “Don’t be sorry, because I’m not. Carl took me to India when I was nine. We lived in this community in Wales for a while. He taught me how to take pictures and grow vegetables, and he’s into homeopathy and he can speak Italian and…”
    â€œOK,” I said. “Sorry was so the wrong word. I’m not sorry.”
    Except I was, because I felt like never going home again.

Nine
    Stroma and I were on our way to the little playground after school the next time I saw Harper. We had fish and chips and about forty-five packets of ketchup in a bag. It was a thing we did sometimes on a Friday to celebrate the end of the week. I wanted to invite Bee, but she was off somewhere with Sonny and Carl. And besides, I noticed Bee mainly ate tofu and salads and bean sprouts. I didn’t think supper out of greasy paper in a chill wind would be her thing.
    I saw the ambulance parked and I said, “Come on, Stroma, let’s go and see a friend of mine.”
    Harper wasn’t there. I picked Stroma up and we looked through the windows at the way he lived. The cupboards had doors that stayed shut and there were little lips on all the shelves so the cups didn’t fall out when you went around a corner. There was a book box with a clear front on it so you could read the spineswithout finding them strewn across the floor. There was a