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“Don’t give me that, you’ve always got some stashed somewhere!” Ash’s mum said, grabbing the girl by her jumper and pulling her close. She did a quick body-search and only when she was satisfied the girl had no money on her did she let her go.

“You’re a selfish little brat at times,” Ash’s mother snarled as she returned to the task of finding some discarded or forgotten money.

“Do you think there’s any chance of you letting me have some of that you’ve borrowed from me, mum?” Ash said, keeping close to the door so she had at least a chance of escaping should her mum turn on her again.

“Money I’ve borrowed from you?” she said in a tone that spoke of disbelief. “How about all the money I’ve spent on you? How about you pay some of that back?”

She turned to Ash and, placing her fists on her hips, started walking towards her daughter with menacing intent.

“That new mattress for a start, that’s me out of pocket for twenty-five quid. The clothes you’ve got on your back, not to mention the food, electricity and everything else you waste.”

Ash backed out of the kitchen as her mother approached. She knew she’d pushed too far but now she had a safe place to hide her money, she wanted to put it all there if she could.

“Oh yeah, that’s all my fault, isn’t it? I tricked you into giving birth, otherwise you’d only have Stacey. Yeah, it’s all my fault. Well you owe me a hundred and five pounds and ninety five pence and if I added up all the interest on that, you’ve got to be looking at one-twenty at least.”

Ash didn’t really know what ‘interest’ meant and she certainly had no idea how to calculate it, but she’d heard the phrase somewhere and threw it into the mix for good measure.

“Let’s call it a hundred and ten, shall we?”

“You cheeky little fucker!” her mum screeched at her and launched herself at Ash.

Ash was ready to run and leaped onto the stairs and went up them two at a time, like a ‘rat up a drainpipe’ as her grandad would have said.

Running up the stairs usually meant she was safe for a while, her mother couldn’t be bothered chasing her. This time, though, she was beyond angry and wanting to teach a lesson.

“I’ll thrash your hide, you cheeky little madam!” she yelled as she ran up the stairs after Ash.

Rather than slamming herself in her bedroom where there was no lock on the door, or locking herself in the bathroom and risking further fury when her mother battered her way in and broke the flimsy lock, Ash dodged the other way at the top of the stairs, thinking on her feet.

She ran into the spare room and knocked over a suitcase full of junk so it blocked the door for a few moments.

Just under the window, part-hidden by a magazine, Ash glimpsed something that made her grin with the irony of the moment.

A crumpled fiver lay on the floor.

Ha! If the lazy bitch had cleaned up in here once in a while, she’d have found this! Ash thought.

Then she went to the window, opened it and scrambled out onto the little extension to the back. It was an ungainly manoeuvre but she managed it before her mother barged past the temporary blockade she’d set up.

With her mother screaming the place down, Ash dropped from the extension roof and leaped the fence and was away.

The only place she knew she’d be safe was at Justin’s and so she went there.

Coming down from the adrenalin of the argument and the chase, Ash felt more ill than she had before.

She called at the shop and bought a box of cold remedy.

“Who’s this for, Ash?” the shop assistant said.

“For me mum, she’s a bit off it,” Ash said.

“I’m not supposed to sell this to minors, but… oh go on. I don’t want you getting in trouble,” she said, handing Ash the change from her lucky find.

As Ash ran towards Justin’s, she remembered the junkie and slowed down. She took the back way to his house – over other people’s gardens and hedges and she watched for a while.

Someone was in the outside toilet, the door was closed when it was usually open.

Ash waited, the toilet flushed and someone appeared.

It was the bloke from before, that Mike-guy.

“Nigel, where the fuck are you?” he whisper-snarled.

“I’m here and don’t call me Nigel. I hate that name. Look, have you got anything for me? Christ, this is hurting me so bad…”

“Shut your whining hole, Nigel,” Mike said. “Is there any way in or not? And has that fucking dog gone? I nearly shit myself when that bloody great bark came out of nowhere.”

“I think the dog has gone. I’ve not heard it the last few times I’ve been. But I don’t think I’ll be getting in here, not without breaking something. He’s had all new windows in. Last time, before we got the key, he had rotten window frames and they were a doddle to prise open.”

“Fuck, well, we’ll just have to wait until Brenda can get us a copy then, won’t we?” Mike said, turning away. “Come on, Nigel, let’s find you somewhere cosy where you can shoot up to your little heart’s content.”

Ash waited a good while to allow Mike and Nigel time to clear the area, then she let herself in. Justin was asleep on the sofa. Robin had already settled him down.

He didn’t wake as Ash made one of the cold remedies and took it upstairs.