Every time you make a move

Love Dares You-Pt.4

Notting Hill, around 8:30pm

"Auntie Paula?"

Roshni cautiously pushed the door open into her caregiver's bedroom, and peered inside.

There was no sign of light, nor the sound of snoring.

"You know you shouldn't poke around other people's houses, it's rude!" She heard her mother's voice scold her.

Roshni then looked across corridor behind her. The front door was ajar.

"I better close it, otherwise Auntie Paula and I will get cold in the night" she thought, treading over to it quietly and carefully as cold draft that was blowing in nipped her toes.

But through the crack, the little girl saw none other than Paula McIntyre herself, sitting outside in her red silk night robe on the damp concrete basement under the outdoor light above the door step as she puffed on a cigarette.

The girl made herself known, "Auntie Paula?"

"Ahh, bugger!" Paula flinched, looking around for a plant pot or dish, "You caught me, eh?"

The little girl stepped out the door in nothing but her pyjamas and bare feet, "My teachers at school say smoking is bad for you."

"I know, they're right..." Paula frantically stubbed her cigarette out on the wall beside her, "Can't sleep?"

Roshni shrugged, and went over to sit on the gap beside her.

"I bet I know what it is! You're full of beans because we're going to the zoo tomorrow, aren't you?" Paula excitedly suggested.

Roshni hesitated for a second, and nodded, "It's a shame Johnny can't come tomorrow. He'd love to visit the reptile house."

Paula then asked, "What's Johnny's favourite reptile?"

Roshni pondered for a moment, and replied with a smirk, "Dinosaurs."

"Well, perhaps we should go to the Natural History Museum and see Dippy instead!" Paula joked with a cackle.

"Maybe it's good that Dinosaurs are extinct, otherwise they'd all be locked up in zoos nowadays and the carnivorous ones would eat all the other zoo animals," Roshni trailed off as she imaginatively pondered, "I wouldn't like to be locked up in captivity, would you?"

"I don't think anyone likes being locked up." Paula agreed.

"I bet that's how Johnny feels right now, being trapped in a small dark space where nobody can hear him scream. I know what that feels like."

The woman's brows furrowed, "You do?"

Roshni explained to her, "I got locked in a coal shed by some mean older girls at one of our old schools."

"Holy fuck! Kids are so cruel nowadays..." Paula thought, holding her tongue.

Instead, she said, "If I'd known that then I wouldn't have put you in my living room. It must be like a box in there!"

As ever, Roshni was looking on the bright side, "Not really. At least Max is in there beside me."

"Poor wee girl never complains, even when she is sleeping on a sofa." Paula thought pitifully.

"Max must be a smelly, loud snorer though." She jeered.

"It's no different to sleeping in a dormitory with ten other girls," Roshni told her, "There's a German girl called Irma Grüber in the bunk above me, and she farts in the night because her mum secretly sends her canned Bavarian sausages behind dinner lady O'Malley's back."