your uncle sells drugs, your cousin is a cutter
your grandma is a fluffer, your granddad's in the gutter
As if it wasn’t enough that Sapphy had been caught in her secret hiding place and accidentally locked inside, it now transpired that she’d been locked inside with a little kid. She rolled her eyes and made a loud tuh! sound when the kid spoke, calling her a ‘meanie’ in his little baby voice.

“Oh my god, shut up.” She told him as he started to babble again, saying he wouldn’t tell her his name. Like she cared.

Sapphy had never been a fan of younger kids. There was her nephew Callum, of course, but that was different. That was family. Most little kids were just annoying and whiny, like this one.

She turned her back on him and grappled with the door handle again, tugging it as forcefully as she could. Sapphy was small for a thirteen year-old, victim of lifelong poverty, and lacked the physical strength to do much more than lug a schoolbag around. If the door could be forced, it wasn’t going to be by her. Annoyingly, it wasn’t going to be by the little brat she was locked in with too. How old was he, three? Four? As if in answer to this thought, he spoke again in a quavering voice, informing her that he wasn’t talking to her. By talking to her. What an idiot.

Sapphy slammed her shoulder against the door but all she got for her efforts was a sore arm. Rubbing it furiously, she spun around again and squinted through the darkness.

“What we need is like, a crowbar or somethin’.” She stretched her hands out blindly and took a couple of uncertain steps forward. “Oi, get looking. That door ain’t opening itself.”

She took a few more steps forward and immediately walked into one of the linen shelves. The neatly folded sheets of linen tumbled down on top of her and knocked her, swearing, to the ground. She shoved and kicked the fabric off herself irritably, calling it a variety of names she shouldn’t have used in front of anyone, let alone a young boy.

“Fuckin’ perfect.” She snarled, finally scrambling back onto her feet. “Can’t fuckin’ see a fuckin’ thing. What did you go and close the door for, you absolute mongol?”


helps to know where you come from
when days are hard and things go wrong