After the best night's sleep she had had for a long time, Katy was woken by Bianca screeching up the stairs that it was time for the kids to get up. Tiffany climbed out of bed, standing on Katy's hair and making her squeak slightly in surprise and pain.
"Sorry, Katy." The small girl mumbled sleepily.
"It's OK." Katy replied gently, massaging her scalp where her hairs had been pulled. She yawned and stretched, staring up at the ceiling. Even when she was at school she hadn't woken up this early most of the time. When her mum, Karen, was ill Katy often didn't get into school before the start of the first lesson. And that was only on a good day. Most days she would arrive partway through the first or second lesson. Sometimes she didn't manage to get to school until after break.
The school knew that her mum was ill, but Katy was too proud to ask for help so, while they generally overlooked her lateness or lack of homework, occasionally she would be called in to see the head over it. The suspensions she was given when the school felt like they needed to make an example of her lateness were a blessing rather than being a deterrent, as they were intended to be, as it gave her more time to do everything she needed to at home. It also made her look good in front of her friends. Not that Katy really cared what they thought.
When she had finished, and scraped through, her GCSE's last summer Katy hoped that she would be able to find a part-time job and care for her mother more easily. Karen had had other ideas, however, and refused to let Katy leave school. She argued that without good qualifications Katy would end up exactly where her mother had been; in a rubbish job with rubbish pay until she couldn't even do that anymore. To placate her mother, Katy had stayed on for Sixth Form which, luckily, involved far less time spent in school.
"Have you got to get to school?" Katy asked Whitney softly. The younger girl sighed and rolled over onto her side so that she was looking at her friend.
"Nah. B wouldn't let me leave until after I did my GCSE's last summer. I didn't pass them, but she wanted me to try." Whitney said. Katy nodded.
"My mum wanted me to stay on and do A Levels. I started, but as soon as mum... well, I dropped out." Katy said.
"Parents." Whitney said, smiling. Both girls winced at Bianca's ear-splitting shriek from downstairs. "We'd better get up and help get the kids sorted." She said and Katy nodded.
When Whitney had gone out to work on her stall and Bianca had taken the kids to school, Katy went downstairs. The house was quiet, except for the sound of the radio in the kitchen, so she went there. Pat was sitting at the table, a mug in one hand and the paper open in front of her. Katy smiled as she noticed Pat mouthing along with the words of the song that was playing.
"Morning." She said, shyly.
"Blimey!" Pat exclaimed, jumping at the teenager's greeting. "You gave me the shock of my life!" She didn't seem cross, however, as she smiled and stood up to make the girl a cup of tea. "Toast?"
"Let me." Katy said, taking the teaspoon and sugar pot out of Pat's hands. She set about making her breakfast while the older woman watched her shrewdly. Katy couldn't deal with people fussing around her. She had never been spoilt or fussed over in her life and she wasn't about to start letting people do it now.
"Sleep well?" Pat asked, taking a bite out of her own slice of toast as Katy sat down with her own food.
"Yes, thanks, better than I have for a long time. And thank you again for letting me stay here. Like I said, I haven't really got much money, but…"
"Don't even think about it." Pat said firmly. "Just help out around here and that's enough. Lord knows we could do with a hand sometimes."
Katy smiled gratefully at the woman, transfixed yet again by her amazing earrings. She was so distracted that she didn't realise the woman was talking to her.
"Hmmm… Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs Evans." She said, blushing slightly. "I was a million miles away."
"Call me Pat." Pat said smiling at the girl's politeness. "Your mother obviously brought you up right."
"Thanks." Katy said quietly. Her sadness about her mum's death had been masked by plenty of other emotions in the couple of months since Karen had died. Mainly a bleak numbness that had descended on her when she had first heard the words, 'she's dead', but there was also an anger that she'd had to deal with so much alone. She'd cared for her mum, single-handed, since Karen had been diagnosed with severe depression when Katy was eight. Apparently her pride was another Mitchell trait and it stopped her admitting that she couldn't do everything on her own. So she'd suffered in silence.
"Anyway, I was saying maybe we should think about getting you a job, if you're serious about staying around?" Pat said, kindly. Evidently she had decided to take the troubled teenager under her wing. Katy was grateful and smiled, saying nothing.
