Josephine

I first met Josephine when I was eleven years old. She was my first and only imaginary friend.

I lived on an estate that bordered a larger one, with a broad muddy path that ran between the two. The path was no longer accessible from the road and had for several years been abandoned to the brambles and weeds, as well as anyone so disposed to secrecy that they might go to the trouble of climbing under the rotting wooden fence at the back of D Block. In the evenings it was populated by groups of kids a couple of years older than me - they smoked and shouted and left behind bottles and the strange smell of sex and Lynx. A couple of times mum’s boyfriend claimed he had to sleep there when she got angry about his drinking and locked him out.

But in the daytime it was mine. Contained but free, I’d roam the half-mile stretch picking out treasures left by older girls who had been lain down in the browning grass the night before - glittering hair clips and earrings and once a little bottle of nail polish – and add them to a collection I kept in the hollow of a tree stump covered over with twigs. I never went to school, and no one ever seemed to notice. Every day I hid my school blazer in an old Tescos bag at the back of the cardboard, blanket and milk-crate shelter I’d built last autumn for the days when it rained. On those days I would feel a kind of warm ecstasy at the smell of wet earth and the freedom and the feeling of rain running down my legs, which had suddenly become too long to keep sheltered.

It was the third Monday in September when I arrived at my spot to find her already sitting there, like a cuckoo in my nest, sifting through the tree stump treasures and trying out the best hairclips.

‘That stuff’s mine!’ I growled.

‘I’m just playing.’ She didn’t even look up.

‘They’re not yours, get out,’

‘They smell like Lynx,’ she wrinkled her nose and pulled a few out of her slightly grubby red hair.

‘You need to get out. This is my place.’

She shrugged. ‘Ok, I was on my way to the roof anyway.’

I wanted to ignore her and just let her leave so I could forget the invasion, but part of me couldn’t help myself. ‘Which roof?’

She looked at me with faint disapproval and then motioned towards the end of the path, where a series of crumbling bricks provided ascending foot and hand holds up a high wall.

The roof was like a second, contrasting sanctuary; not hidden but daringly exposed and high enough to provide a panoramic view of both estates. I was pleased to spot several diamante hair grips hidden amongst the cans and faded garden furniture.

‘So is this where you come?’ I asked, taking in her slightly-too-short jeans and oversized sweatshirt. She looked younger than me, perhaps nine or ten, but wild and hard.

She nodded. ‘It’s great for spying, plus no one ever looks up so they don’t see you. It’s at least as good as yours. We’ll share spots.’

And so we spent the whole autumn either on the roof or in the lane, sometimes exploiting the local shops or venturing home when unsuccessful or tired. Josephine urged me to get better things too, and soon the tree stump was full to the top with nail varnish and necklaces and tester bottles of perfume, all carefully hidden under layers of moss and twigs. We played games and wrote stories and sometimes sat hidden in the cardboard den in the evenings and listened, giggling and intrigued, to the older children’s fun.

She was a fierce friend: screaming at me to go to hell one minute, peppering my face with kisses the next. I was never lonely when I was with her, and it was hard to be apart. Once or twice I tried going in to school and she spent the whole day standing defiantly in the playground, scuffing her shoes against the tarmac and swearing loudly.

I had to move to my nan’s house in December when someone found out about me not going to school and my mum got in trouble. I never had the chance to say goodbye. I saw her slight outline sitting up on the side of the roof, watching as our car pulled away; a smudge of red hair with clips that sparkled as they caught the light. Inside the car my nan hugged me into her itchy blue coat and talked about all the things that would be different. I leant to wave out the window as the car turned a bend, but she had already gone.