Orphan of Angel Street by Annie Murray Page B

tears of shame.
    ‘You cold?’
    Susan nodded. Mercy was shivering convulsively now, and when she touched Susan’s arm she, too, was icy cold.
    ‘You’d best come over this way a bit,’ she said abruptly. ‘D’you need to go now?’
    ‘No – she lifted me when she got in.’
    Susan was all skin and bone, quite easy even for Mercy to shift a little way across the bed. The two of them didn’t speak any more.
    Mercy blew out the candle and crawled into her little space at the edge of the bed, careful not to touch Susan who lay silently beside her. The ammonia smell of urine burned in her nostrils. Bugs scurried along the walls. She felt so ill, her head throbbed and she was shivering hard, unable to stop. Finally, in exhaustion, fear and bewilderment, she let the tears come, wretchedly sobbing and shaking. She tried to be quiet but her emotion flooded out.
    It was only after she’d begun to quieten a little, snuffling now and gulping, that she felt a little touch on her shoulder and furiously shook it off. But after a few moments the hand was back, stroking her at first, and then a small, bony arm crept round her body, holding her tight. She felt Susan’s face against her back and finally the two of them slept, their bodies giving each other warmth.

    ‘Mercy – can you give us a hand?’
    The room was still almost dark. A dull light was just attempting to seep through the filthy window. Mercy turned quickly on to her back, completely confused for a moment, thinking it was one of the girls in the home she could hear. Then she took in the sodden coldness of the bed and the crumbling, filthy walls. She was also scratching: there were bugs in the bed.
    Susan was trying to sit up. ‘You’ll ’ave to cop ’olt of me . . .’
    ‘Why should I?’ She was rigid with cold and anger.
    There was a pause. ‘Please ’elp me,’ Susan begged wretchedly. ‘I’ll go in the bed again else.’
    Mercy climbed stiffly from the bed, teeth chattering and slid her arms under Susan’s and round her chest.
    ‘Skinny, aren’t you?’
    ‘Good job, innit?’
    Though slightly smaller than her, Mercy had little difficulty in dragging Susan off the bed and positioning her on the pot.
    ‘Ta,’ Susan whispered, so humbly that Mercy felt ashamed of herself. She stared at Susan’s white legs. She’d never seen such scrawny, wasted limbs before.
    ‘So’ve you ever been able to walk then?’
    ‘For a bit I could – I can remember walking. I was taken sick years ago. They call it infantile paralysis. My legs ’ave got a bit better lately but they don’t think they’ll ever be any good.’
    Susan looked up at her, her face ghostly in the dim light, her eyes coal-black like a snowman’s and a pudding basin of black hair.
    ‘You come to stop with us then?’
    ‘No!’ Mercy snapped, then added helplessly, ‘I dunno.’ She couldn’t even have said at that moment just how much she didn’t want to live here with Mabel and her crippled scrap of a daughter. Nothing was real. It was as if she were trapped in a dream and couldn’t wake up.
    ‘You don’t ’alf bang about in your sleep,’ Susan commented. After a moment she indicated that she’d finished and Mercy hoisted her back on to the bed.
    ‘Mom wants you to ’elp look after me like, so I’m not stuck ’ere on my own. She’s got to go and find a job or she says we can’t pay the rent or eat.’
    ‘Haven’t you got a dad?’ Mercy pulled the remnants of bed clothing up to cover Susan so just her head was visible.
    ‘’E just went. A few months back. Left us.’
    She could hear the desolation in Susan’s voice, but could only say, ‘Oh,’ unable to imagine a real dad or real mom, then added, ‘Why?’
    ‘Dunno. ’E were a good dad really. Didn’t want us any more, I s’pose. And then we had no money so we come to live over ’ere. We ’ad a bit of a nicer ’ouse before but Mom couldn’t keep up with the rent.’
    Mercy sat down on the edge of the bed,