Hollow Bastion looks a lot like its name suggests. According to the billboards I pass on the way into town, official reconstruction efforts are currently underway, but I see no evidence of this until I climb off the bus in the high street to the sight of an enormous old castle covered in scaffolding and cranes. I can't help it catching my breath.
"Would you look at that," I say to Larxene, who isn't interested in the slightest. I assume that this is the eponymous Bastion. It's certainly hollow: in several places, I can see right through it to the fields and forests beyond. "We could live there. I bet they wouldn't even notice." But I don't want to share my home with pigeons and rats again. So I force myself to look away, glancing over the shop fronts before setting off down the road, occasionally glancing at my map for directions to my new flat. It's quite a bit more expensive than the bedsit in Traverse Town, but all of the jobs I have interviews for pay more money too, so I'm halfway certain at least that I can cover the costs. Unless, of course, childcare turns out to be more expensive here. But I try not to think about that.
Actually, I don't want to get a job at all. The month I spent at home with Larxene was the best once since I ran away. Larxene and I played for hours every day, and I got some books out of the library and read them while she slept on my belly. I almost became nocturnal, because the block was always quieter during the day. Nobody could hurt me; I was blissfully alone. But now it is almost December and I hardly have enough money for Larxene's baby milk, let alone rent and food.
I pull my coat more tightly around us. Larxene chews on my scarf. There are a lot of boarded up shops, but the place still seems to be alive, people bustling from one store to another, chatting in the street as they pass each other by. But I don't have to go far before I start noticing homeless people huddled in blankets, puffing steam into the cold air. This town looks like it's been through hell.
Eventually I get to my new flat. I have my own toilet now, but the showers are still at the end of the corridor; other than that it's more or less the same as my own place.
I drop my rucksack on the bed, wheezing, and heave my suitcases up beside it. Then I get myself a drink, take a bit of a rest, tidy up Larxene, and get back onto the bus. Hollow Bastion is two hours away from Traverse Town, and anything I can't get from one town to the other today, I have to throw away. Eventually, at eleven o'clock, I catch the very last bus, yawning hugely as I settle down into the uncomfortable seat with two cardboard boxes on my lap and one on the floor. The only other people on the bus are two half-drunk teenagers chatting about their girlfriends, and the bus driver is the same one who conducted my first journey this morning.
"Moving?" he asked as I climbed on, struggling to balance three boxes and a baby in my arms. I nodded and asked for a single. He just smiled and let me climb on without paying again. "If a ticket inspector comes on, I'll vouch for you," he said, sipping coffee. "But I seriously doubt that's gonna happen."
It's funny how when you've hit rock bottom the spontaneous benevolence of complete strangers can make your day.
Three days later I am being trained to unpack stock in the storeroom of a supermarket. How difficult can it be, I hear you ask? But when you didn't finish school, everyone assumes that you are so stupid that speaking to you at anything faster than a snail's pace will genuinely confuse you. So I'm trained without being paid for two days before they let me sort deliveries on my own. It's dull work, but not as dull as packing biscuits in a factory. It's also within walking distance of my new room, so I don't need to worry about bus fares.
Wearing my proper clothes again and not bothering to hide my deep voice, I discover something very interesting: people, random people who I have never met, start congratulating me when they see me out and about with my baby. Because I only work half days on Wednesdays (although I also do Saturday mornings to make up for it), I get into the habit of taking Larxene out for walks around the town, as beautiful and scarred as it is, often circling the Bastion in all its broken glory. One week, it snows, and the castle is topped with a sprinkle of white that settles where it shouldn't, blowing into windows and covering floors. I don't know why I like it so much, but I do. I start dreaming of owning one of the flats above the shops facing the Bastion, so I could open my curtains in the morning and there it would be. I think, perhaps, that it captivates me because it is so broken and yet still so beautiful and majestic.
I also dip my feet a little deeper into the fiction side of the library. This is where I meet the first person who considers teenage fatherhood an achievement. She is a librarian, I don't know her name, and she coos over Larxene as soon as I arrive in from the cold, melting at the sight of her rabbit onesie-jacket with the ears (I found it in a charity shop and the lady gave it to me for ten munny because it had a hole in the sleeve). Apparently I am "so brave" for taking responsibility for my daughter. I wish that the people who called me a slut and a whore when I was dressing like a girl agreed with her. Soon joining her are the baker who asks if I'm her big brother then gasps in surprise and congratulates me when I correct her, and the guy at work, my age, who told me that I was "well alright" for taking up parental responsibilities, before adding something about her mother that involved the word "bitch".
One Wednesday afternoon, when it's too cold to take Larxene out for a walk and Christmas is looming on the horizon, I am inventing games for the pair of us to play while we are wrapped up in a blanket. It is amazing how imaginative I have become since Larxene was born. The game we are currently involved in is called "hide the octopus", where I hide a homemade toy octopus - to Larxene's shock and awe - before dramatically revealing it again, to her great delight. This literally makes her the happiest baby on earth. Sometimes I tuck the octopus under one bit of blanket, only to have it reappear somewhere completely different. This is mind blowing. Larxene's arms wiggle and her fingers grab clumsily for this magical teleporting octopus, oblivious to the fact that my hands are just passing it behind my back. I wish that I could be so easily pleased, that a bottle cap with bits of string stuck to it would amaze me for hours, but then again, with a baby, this is almost possible. Then when I get bored of hide the octopus I bounce her on over to the play blanket, a permament fixture of the floor, and sit her down to wonder at the hanging mobiles and crinkly animals. I sit with her, sometimes feeling her firm grip on my knee or toes, and read aloud more advice from the baby book I forgot to return to Traverse Town library.
"At seven months," I say seriously, "Your baby may be able to support her weight if holding onto you or a table leg. Can you do that, Larxene?" Larxene just gabbles meaninglessly at me. "Your baby will be developing her fine motor skills, such as picking objects up between forefinger and thumb and tasting things with her mouth. These small actions help her to interact with her environment. Well, you're certainly trying to put everything in your mouth." It's true. Larxene's main response to anything new is to attempt to put it into her mouth. I'm beginning to feed her solid foods now - although by "solid" the baby guides mean mashed up anything. Without a blender my options are pretty limited, but I've got Larxene eating milky rice and squashed banana and overripe avocado so far. This guide suggests adding a new food every week or so. This week I am going to poach some pears for us too (I picked up the recipe from one of those fliers they tuck into mumsy magazines - I don't buy the mags, but I do shake the recipes out when the till keeper isn't looking. The guide also talks about two-handled cups a lot, but I don't have the money for those right now. That particular area of Larxene's fine motor skills will have to wait.
Suddenly Larxene starts crying, even though nothing seems to be wrong. She hasn't wet herself or bumped her head and she can't be hungry again. But I pick her up anyway, saying things like "Shush, shush, there's no need to cry" and "Silly baby, silly baby". I say this a lot, because she likes the repetitiveness of my voice. Maybe she just wanted to be held, because she quiets down after a few minutes. Silly baby, silly baby.
I flip the page of my book over. It says, with a diagram of a lady on the telephone, that I mustn't be afraid to ask for help if I feel like I can't cope. This interests me. When I was living in Traverse Town, more or less, I just talked to Mrs Merryweather or took Larxene down to Doctor Kennedy if I was worried about something: now, however, I don't have anyone to talk to. My new childminder is a bitch who charges extra for Saturdays, and I don't even know where Hollow Bastion's local surgery is. Maybe I should find out.
I glance out of the window: it's snowing again, little sludgey flakes that probably won't settle.
"I should probably get you some warmer clothes," I say idly to Larxene. "And pay a bit extra to turn the heating up a few degrees…and my shoes have holes in them now. And I need more pads. And the ingredients to make those poached pears. And another spatula." I melted the last one accidentally.
I sigh. Pads are the most important thing, unless I want blood dribbling down the side of my leg (again). The rest will just have to wait until I've got the money.
Sooner or later, Larxene is crying again. Opening up her drawer I discover that I only have five nappies left. Ah. I leave her naked for a bit, because maybe then the nappies will last longer or something, and also because it'll apparently help to protect her against nappy rash. She's had it a few times already, because it took me a while to realise how thickly you really needed to spread on the cream. But even up on the bed it's too cold to go without a nappy for long (and I'm also worried that she'll pee on everything), so I bag her up again after a few minutes. Then we nap. When I wake up the snow is falling more thickly, and I'm hungry. I fry some sausages and boil some rice with peas mixed in (who needs to cook them separately? Not me. I've only got one saucepan, anyway). Deciding that maybe I can give Larxene pears next week, I pop a few of the peas out of their shells and mash them up with my fork, piling the mashed pea up onto Larxene's baby spoon (another charity shop find, twenty munny). At first she isn't interested, sitting like a tripod in amongst the swathes of bedding, but I convince her to try them in the end. At least, until she spits them out.
"You liked the avocado," I say huffily, scraping them off the bedsheet. I really need to get Larxene one of those bibs too, the ones that have a sort of bucket on the end that catches all that regurgitated baby food. "You like avocado but you don't like peas. What kind of a freak child are you?"
I smile to myself at this remark. I am privately hideously disfigured, blotchy and mismatched and hormonally confused. My lucky daughter likes avocado but she doesn't like peas.