Soup and Feathers

I can’t go in to college until I know what’s happened to Danny. I decided to spend another day in town and if he didn’t appear I’d ring that place and ask if they had any news of him. That was when the big idea hit me. If Danny turns up he’ll be looking for me, and with nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat where would he go? Not to the police station that’s for sure, but maybe to the Day Centre for the homeless. He’s been homeless before so he knows about those places. So I asked a Big Issue seller where it was and in less time than it takes Mar to knock back a tenner’s worth of vodka I was talking to this guy serving some sort of soup from a cauldron.
‘Get in the frigging queue, sister,’ this slapper hisses at me. She’s all got up in someone’s old curtains with Doc Marten’s and a red feather boa that waves about and sticks to her lipstick so she has to keep picking at her mouth.
‘Keep your pants on,’ I tell her, I’m not here to eat.
‘Are you sure?’ she says all sly like. ‘You don’t look as tho you’ve had a decent meal in your whole bloody life.’
‘Here love,’ says this bloke ahead of her, ‘squeeze in front of me before you disappear.’
Bloody nerve. But I did anyway as there didn’t seem much chance of asking about Danny unless I got in that shitty queue. Big mistake. Nearly caused a fight that did. They say women are the worst and they’re not wrong. Everyone was yelling and the guy with the cauldron couldn’t make himself heard and then a girl came out of a door and took me off and asked what all the row was about. So I told her I was looking for someone and asked if I could leave a message on the notice board and she said OK. I had to be careful not to say too much cos Danny’s wanted but she seemed nice and said she’d point anyone asking about me to my message. And now I had a problem as I wanted to leave my mobile number and there’s nothing left on my card and I’ve no money for another. So I told this girl but she said she couldn’t really help as then she’d have to do the same for everyone but to sit down for moment and she’d be back. And then the bloke in the queue brought me over some soup and that almost started another fight with the woman in the feathers but the soup guy told her she’d have to go if she caused any more trouble so she shut up then. The soup was good – meat and potatoes and carrots and stuff and I ate it all with the bloke chatting me up but I told him I had a boyfriend and wasn’t interested and then he looked funny and got up and walked back to the slapper and I saw them talking and looking over at me. But I didn’t care because by that time the girl had come back with a Pay as You Go card from her old mobile that she’d found in her office and I was out of there. Nothing to do now but wait.