Mind the Gap by Christopher Golden Page B

more people there were, the less human they seemed to be.
    So she looked in shop windows and studied the reflections of the street behind her. Cadge nattered on, pointing out things in the window displays—CDs here, clothes there, books and shoes and sexy lingerie—but Jazz’s eyes were always searching beyond these things. Was that a man in a black suit staring at her back from across the road? She shifted sideways, and no, it was just the shadow thrown by a slowly closing coffee-shop door. They walked to another shop, and Jazz looked past the display of hats and handbags at the reflection of a man standing motionless behind her. Cadge made some quip about Hattie not being here, and Jazz lowered her head and looked at the reflection. Still not moving, still staring across the road, his immobility in such a bustling street marked him.
    Like picking a scab, the urge to turn was impossible to resist. But the man was only a mannequin placed on the pavement outside a clothes shop. Its arm was raised, finger pointing at her accusingly. In its blank pink face she saw a hundred expressions she did not like.
    Someone nudged into her and passed by without apologizing.
    Windows lined the buildings above her, any one of them home to an enemy.
    “Cadge, let’s get a drink,” she said. “Got half an hour yet.”
    “Sure!” He grabbed her hand and headed for a newsagent’s stall, but she held back and nodded across the street.
    “Coffee,” she said. “Somewhere inside.”
    “Oh.” He looked grave for a second, then smiled and nodded. As they dodged traffic across the street, he held her around the waist and leaned in close. “It was like this for me the first few times back up,” he said.
    “Like what?” Jazz asked. They reached the pavement and negotiated the equally busy streams of human traffic.
    Cadge looked up at the ribbon of gray sky between rooftops. “Too exposed.”
    She felt a rush of affection for Cadge then, and she opened the coffee-shop door and motioned him in first.
    Harry always sent them up with some money. Jazz had a cappuccino and Cadge a milk shake, and they drank them quickly.
    “So what’s your story, Cadge?” she asked. “I feel so selfish. Things are bad for me, but I’ve never asked about you or any of the others, and that’s bad too.”
    “Don’t feel guilty,” he said over the top of his glass, and she sensed a maturity in him then, something that belied his outward image. He suddenly reminded her of herself at that age. “My story ain’t too much fun to tell either.”
    Jazz sipped her coffee and glanced around the busy coffee shop. Everyone in their own world, nobody looking at them, and she no longer felt so out of place. She glanced at her watch. “We’ve got time.”
    “Well…” He sucked up more milk shake through his straw, then licked his lips. “To be honest, it sounds like a really bad soap. ’Cept it ain’t. It was real lives ruined, and no one to watch but me. See…I came home from school one day and found my dad and auntie…you know. Doing it. Thought they hadn’t heard me, but as I was creeping out, Dad ran downstairs an’ caught me. Gave me the beatin’ of me life. Never was one to hold back with his fists, my dad. So he beat me, and my auntie came downstairs without clothes on, tried to stop ’im, and he hit her too. Just smacked her one in the eye and she fell down, all naked and that. Mum came home later—she’d already heard what had ’appened from her sister—and she and Dad had a row. Real screaming, shouting match right in front of me, while I held a cold flannel against my mouth and cheek where he’d hit me. I thought he’d hit her too, but he didn’t, and then she ran away. Just…left.” He shook his head, looking down at the scarred timber table, as though searching for clues to his mother’s whereabouts in the scratched names.
    “What about your dad?”
    “Kicked me out. Said he’d never wanted me, I’d ruined his life, and told