It all starts off as a bit of a laugh, right. Get our hands on some cash, have a good time. Bit of a giggle not a friggin' horror show. I can't believe it. Keeps going round in my mind like some advert off the telly, the sort that makes you mental cos it's on twice in every break. Doin' my head in, I tell you.

Kelly comes round earlier, acting all natural.
"What you doin' here?" I says.
"You comin' round Becca's?"
Daft cow. "No," I shut the door.
"Linda," she starts whining at me through the door. I whip it open quick.
"No," I say it again so it'll filter through.
Girl of little brain, our Kelly. She blinks about a million times then says. "You're not going to grass us up, are yer?"
Oh, yeah. And find a knife in my back. Yeah, love to, shop the both of yer. I don't actually say this, right, cos Kelly can't cope with sarcasm. She'll take it for gospel and go running to Becca.
"No," I says. I'm not. And I'm no fuckin' grass. Right? Doesn't mean I have to hang round with youse lot anymore."
She looks at me a moment. Opens her mouth. Starts to blabber, a rush of words, trying to say it all before I twig. "Cos it weren't us, really, it were Becca. We were just there, innit?"
Just like school, I'm thinking, it was always Becca, we were always just there. Like the time Ryan Curtis calls her a slapper and she leans close to him, arm round his back, asks him to say it again, burning her fag through his Nike top and into his back till he howls with pain and surprise. Or smacking Nicole Smith up in the toilets, banging her head against the sink. Becca. We were always just there, thinking how the fuck did this happen?
"Can't blame us, innnit? Wasn't as if..."
"Shut up Kelly," I make my voice very small and tight and pointed, "we don't talk about it. Not now, not never..."
"But..."
"Never."
She swallows.
I shut the door.
I feel like shit. I want to cry. I want to tell Mam, like some big kid with a knot in her belly. Let her soothe it away with gentle words and cuddles. Make it all alright. But I can't. Not this. Not ever.
Some things she can take. Like our Angie falling pregnant at fourteen and then the baby dying and Angie getting all fucked up and sleeping around, trying to get caught again, starving herself, cutting at herself with little scissors. Mam went to hell and back with Angie - and what for? Oh, granted she's married now, to smarmy Trevor and he's got her all set up in a canal-side apartment off Oxford Street, right in the heart of the city. She can't work. Barely makes it out of bed most days. He takes her out, round those new places by the canal. Bars and restaurants, dresses her up and drags her round, showing her off. Good looks our Angie has. Like a model when she's all tarted up. They took me once. Bar in one of them old railway arches. Freezin'. Loads of glass and crumbly old bricks, with the pipes all showing and wavy doors in the toilets. Everyone's drinking little, fat bottles of Spanish beer. I order a double gin and tonic, then a Pimms - let him flash the cash.
But she's not there, Angie. You talk to her and it's like she's gone out. Back in five minutes. Nothing touches her anymore. She never even asks about Mam or me. There's Mam killing herself, up at six every morning, walking to work, serving dinners at the hospital for a poxy few quid and going to the money lender when the video packs up and all the time our Angie's got money to burn. He's got a four-wheel drive. They even went skiing last year. Skiing. Mam thinks three nights in Dublin is the break of a life time. And it never occurs to Angie to slip us a few bob. I hate her.

He smiles. He thinks we're joking. A wind-up. He doesn't clock Becca - most people can tell, that look in her eyes, fearless, so they don't push it. But he starts to argue. Reasonable, not nasty, like he can talk us out of it. Becca's already wound up cos the whole enterprise isn't going exactly as planned. Friggin' nightmare, truth be told.
We all think it's a brilliant idea first off. Round at Becca's, well sorted. Her brother's dealing so we can always get hold of something tasty. Spend half my life round here. Her Dad has the front room, sleeps all day, lives on strong cider and pills; jellies to calm him down. He looks like he died sometime last year, smells that way too. Hasn't left the house in months. Becca's Mam ran off with a guy had a burger bar in Marbella, years back. People ask, Becca says she's dead.
Becca's going on about wanting a good time, about crap jobs and signing on and no money and living in the dead-end of north Manchester and wanting to get a few bob, have a night out, a real good one. New clothes, some good stuff off of Becca's brother, have a make- over, hit the clubs. A night to remember. Planning what we'd buy with fifty quid, a hundred, a grand, a million. Fly to Ibiza, get a trunk full of designer gear, a different pair of trainers for every day of the week. Kelly wants a boob job. I tell her she'd be better off with a brain job. She nearly asks, mouth open walking into it, stops herself just in time, snaps her gob shut. I nudge Becca and we both get the giggles, rolling about, I can hardly breathe. Mad.
Becca says she'd get a band together, with shit hot PR, someone to push them to number one like they did with the Spice Girls. Sings like an angel, Becca does. I want all the usual things, lots of money in the bank so Mam never has to go short, no more queuing up at the Post Office for telly stamps and phone stamps and all that. I'll get her a bungalow, somewhere dead nice, all new stuff. And a stables for me, full of horses, out in the country. People working for me.
Becca rolls another, good and strong. Kelly says her uncle used to do students cos they always had a bit of cash or you could take them to the hole in the wall and most of them are soft as shit.
"Oh, yes," says I, "there's a lot of students round here aren't there? Millions of them. Not." And Kelly looks miffed.
Becca says "We don't do it here, we do it over the other side of town."
"Didsbury," says Kelly, "Richard and Judy live round there."
"Where they filmed Cracker," says me. "Mansions."
"We're not doing a house," says Becca.
"There's a lot of rich bastards there though," says Kelly.
"They're not out walking around though, are they? Yer stupid cow. They've all got cars," says Becca and then she's going on about which areas students live in and how we'll do it.
I can feel the stuff rushing its way right round to my fingertips, blood singing.
"We might be famous," I says, "Girl Gang Terror."
"Yeah," Becca laughs, "get a name for ourselves like the Gooch Close Gang."
"If we did cashpoints," trying to keep my face straight, "we could be the hole-in-the- wall gang." I crease up. Hysterical. Becca's pissing herself. Kelly doesn't get it. Sad.
We talk some more about what to say and pretty soon we're acting it all out like bleedin' highway robbers and putting on student voices and cracking up.

...He has a nice voice. Not posh at all. Geordie, like Byker Grove, and his trainers are fuckin' shocking...

I think about confessing to Father Ambrose. He's not bad for a priest, better than old MacIver who looked at you like you were a piece of shit. But he'd make me tell, I just know. I don't go to church now, anyway, not for the last couple of years. I liked Midnight Mass but they had to stop it, too much bother. Lads all tanked up, people puking up in the aisles. Course there was Angie's wedding. Mam bawling her head off. All the relations over from Killarney. Angie looking like a doll and Trev's all puffed up. Grinning like a dog. Itching to get her away from the mad Irish crowd and lock her up safe where he can play with her all by himself.

We get the bus in. Down the Oldham Road, through Miles Platting. They've ripped off the top of the maisonettes to make them into houses but they're still crap. Some of it looks like Bosnia round here, places trashed, abandoned buildings with weeds growing in the windows, glass glittering bright in the sun. Mam gets mad when I say stuff like that, goes on about community and respect and people doing their best. But it's always the same ones I tell her. Sian's Mam and the Nolan's, Betty Clarke, the Conroys. Running the playscheme, doing a petition, bothering to vote, blockading the road when Anthony Sherwood got run over. The rest don't give a fuck.
It's not true, Mam says, of course people care, they're human beings, Linda, just like me and you. Sometimes people feel there's nothing they can do but there's always something, some small thing.
Union talk. Shop steward for years my Mam, still banging on about it. Goes off to her local history evening class and comes home all excited about things that happened centuries ago. Peterloo, Suffragettes, the Chartists. Half the time it's about people standing up for themselves and getting killed. Brilliant.
I keep trying to tell her - it's over, right. There ain't any unity anymore. Alright, Nelson Mandela, but he's in bleedin' Africa isn't he. Why can't she see it's all dead now, all that. History.

We change buses at Piccadilly Gardens. Claim we're half-fare. Driver doesn't give a toss. But it's the wrong bus. We get off somewhere in Whalley Range big houses, trees like a forest but the mansions are all split up in flats and there's weeds in the garden and the shops are just like ours - half of them closed down. There's a couple of girls working the corner. Loads of black people.
"Where's the students?" Becca says. "This is no fuckin' good."
Kelly's getting nervous, talking too much. Becca's gone quiet. I notice straightaway. I always do. She's wild and hard and she can make you feel like the only person who matters in the whole friggin' universe and she can make you feel like a pile of shit. You never know what's coming. One time I tell her to fuck off cos she's winding me up. She walks straight into the middle of the road, stands there, cars swerving round her, horns blaring, brakes shrieking, she never moves. I run out and drag her back, I'm screaming at her, shaking her and her eyes are shining. She's flying, high as they go and it ain't the drugs.
Now she's not talking and I feel sick.

So we're waiting bleedin' ages for a bus. I'm the only one with any fags left and they're all tapping off me and I'm dying for a drink but we haven't even got enough for a can of Coke. I'll have to lend off Kelly for the bus-fare back anyway, unless we get lucky. The bus says West Didsbury. Kelly says it's okay, next to Didsbury and she's sure there's loads of students there. I think maybe it'll change. Next half hour. All come right. One or two hits and we'll be sorted. Money in us pockets, grinning wide, ready to roll. Into town for a long cold drink and a Big Mac and on to some serious shopping. Made up.

We get off the bus and we're going down this side-street, quiet, lots of trees again. Massive they are, dead old. Hiding the houses. Makes the sun look softer. How come there's no trees like this round our way? Just a couple near the church. The rest are all weedy little ones that the kids bend over, snap them off. Mam would know with all her history talk.
No-one about. I don't know where the fuck we are any more. It's that hot. This is no fun. This is not my idea of easy money. I just want to go home and get a bleedin' drink.
I tell Becca. "Let's go home. This is stupid."

He comes out of one of the driveways. Smallish guy, black hair, white T-shirt, black jeans, crap trainers.
"'Scuse me," Becca says and it sounds like a threat.
”Yes, how can I help you girls?" Perky like. Not posh. Ferrety face. Gold cross in one ear. Gay? Catholic? Both?
"Empty your pockets," Becca says. He shakes his head grinning. "Aw, come on now..."
"Just do it, fuckin' do it," Becca is totally still.
Do it, I'm thinking, do what she says, please.
"C'mon, look," he lifts his hands up like it's a western and he's surrendering. He has spatula fingers, flat and wide at the end. They look babyish on him. "I've no more money than you, ya know-" Becca doesn't even enter the argument...

I keep filling up. I've got to pack it in. If Mam cottons on, if she ever finds out why, she'll end up in Prestwich. First Angie, now this... so I'll not tell, see. Even if I wanted to. I swear on my Mam's grave.
They couldn't tie it to us, anyway, could they? No-one saw us. He was just a stranger. Don't even know his name. If he'd only waited a few minutes before he went out. If he hadn't bleedin' argued. It'll be all over the paper tomorrow, on the telly. He probably wasn't even a friggin' student.

"I've no more money than you, ya know-" Becca doesn't even give him chance to reconsider. She pulls a blade from her pocket, flicks it open and slices it across his throat. That quick. Smooth as silk.
His hands flutter and a crease of red splits across his neck. He's still smiling and he looks at me. Straight at me. Soft, puzzled. Like Mam did when the baby died. Why doesn't he close his eyes. Stop staring at me. I didn't friggin' cut him. He falls to his knees. I move to catch him and Becca pulls me back.
"Frigginell," says Kelly.
"Oh, Becca, jesusmaryan- what have you done. Shit. Aw shit."
Becca snaps the knife shut and pockets it. I turn to her. One of us is shaking. She pulls me close, pushes her mouth against mine. I can feel her teeth through the skin of her lips. I push her away. Wipe my mouth. Kelly's gawping.
He falls onto the pavement now, bum in the air like a baby. Like Angie's baby. Still. A shadow spreading below him.
"Home," says Becca. "The money," says Kelly.
"Fuck you," tears stinging my eyes, my throat hurts.
"Leave it," snaps Becca.

Getting home takes ages. We don't talk. Becca is spacey and Kelly is doing something weird with her fingers, probably saying the bleedin' rosary. The bus takes us up through Ancoats. It all looks sharper, like I've had my eyes cleaned. Everything is shabby, seedy. Even the pavements look worn out. This is it, I think, this is all there is. I want to weep.
I get off at the corner.
"See yer after," says Becca.

Mam comes in from work. I tell her I've got the runs. I can't eat. "Are you alright?" her face goes all concerned. “I do worry about you, you know. Come here." She holds out those strong skinny arms and I can't go near. I cover my mouth to hide the lie. "Feel sick." Rush out.
Kelly calls while Mam is out, round at her friend Carmen's. Carmen's dying, right. She keeps having chemo and Father Ambrose goes once a week but Mam says she can only get worse and isn't it an awful shame that the good ones have to suffer. When Mam comes back she puts the news on. I can't watch it. I go to bed. She lets me rest. Later she calls up. "Night night, darlin'." She breaks my heart. I can't ever be her darling again.

I won't look in the mirror. He may be there, over my shoulder or in my place. Looking at me. With Mam's eyes, with his cheery lad's voice, his pale spoon fingers. Looking at me. Why? What can he see?
STOP FUCKIN' LOOKING AT ME.
I just wish it was yesterday.
Forever.