She was sitting on the high brick wall on top of the railway embankment, which blocked the end of her street. The evening had drawn in early with its smell of burning wood smoke and its low dark clouds. Late June. But it seemed like autumn.

The drizzle was soaking through her old school blouse and dripping off the ends of her hair. Her hands, clutching the wall, were wet and cold, but she did not notice. She was rigid with tension, watching the last three boys playing football in the narrow space between the dumped, wheel-less cars. Nassim Khan, Kevin Molloy and Stevie Miller. Cowcross Street had a game of football going on every day, all the year, every year. Only the kids changed. She knew they would go in soon. It was getting late. She had chosen her time carefully. She had only to wait; but the waiting was hard now she had made up her mind.

A chill breeze eddied down the street, rolling the dirt and rubbish against the cars. Like the people in the houses, she thought, swept up into the mean, decaying streets, built in the eighteen-nineties by a builder who had brought a gentleman's house in Epping Forest with his handsome profit. Three small streets, jammed in the triangle of waste ground between the street market, the main line to Liverpool Street Station and the Underground railway, where it came above ground. The houses were falling to pieces. Full of poor people trapped and hating each other. They were never going to get out. The street was a dead end, in all ways. Especially hers. The grim joke pleased her. Her shaking hands tightened on the wall.

Only a little longer to wait, then she would let go and fall backwards on to the live rail in front of the next tube train when it came out of the tunnel.

'There's a kid up the embankment,' said Vi Brown's latest boyfriend, knotting his tie at the window of Number Three. That right? Dangerous, isn't it?'

'So did I. Maybe they don't know about her. It's been going on for years. I should have done something, I suppose. But there's all this lot - all the so-called respectable ones, like him and her next door, and nosey Flo Hickey on the corner. They don't do a thing.'

'She's there again. That's four times this week,' said Mrs. Nicholls, next door, peering out between the heavy net curtains of Number Five. 'She looks ill. Not even a jacket. Reg, you'll have to do something.'

'If I ring the Social Services, they'll take her away and put her in a home. Do you think she wants that? She looks after her mother, doesn't she? What will her mother do then? We'll only make it worse. Just mind your own business. We don't want to get involved with any of these people. They won't thank us for interfering.'

'It isn't right!' said Mr. Hussain, in Urdu, to his wife, looking out of the window of Number Eight. 'The sound of blows. The cries. Where are her relatives? The family should take care of her. Why isn't someone looking after her?'

'That Mel Calder is on the wall again,' said Mrs. Miller, worried, in the end house next to the embankment. 'She'll fall down one day. Right on to those electric rails.'

'What you want me to do about it, woman?' Mr. Miller shook out his Sunday newspaper irritably. 'Is it anything to do with us? She's a white girl. Let her own people do something about it. We got our own troubles.' He went on looking at the newspaper, but his eyes had ceased to move, and he was wondering for the hundredth time if there was any way at all to help the girl. The whole street had heard the mother screaming and swearing. It was getting worse.

Stevie spoke to his friends, collected his football and dribbled it, as slowly as he dared, along the broken pavement. Kevin and Nassim trailed after him disconsolately to their own homes. No ball!

Mrs. Miller looked up at the embankment wall. 'And you, Mel Calder. Just you get down off that wall and get inside. You'll catch cold sitting there like fool in the rain!'

Mel roused herself and stared down at Mrs. Miller bitterly. Anyone would think she was ten years old, like Stevie, instead of seventeen. She had a right to sit on the wall if she wanted to. She hunched a shoulder and turned her head away.

Mel felt a vague regret about upsetting Mrs. Miller who had been kind on more than one occasion, inviting her in for ginger beer and cake when Lucinda had been her friend. But it didn't matter now, anyway. Nothing mattered any more.

She moved her shoulders and felt the wet fabric sticking to her bruised back. No body cared. The PE staff at school had asked about the bruises once or twice, but had accepted her thin explanations without comment. Nobody really wanted to know. She would die and no one would bother. She wouldn't have to feel anything any more. No more fear and pain and disgust. Nothing was ever going to change. Admit it, and let it all go. When the train came she had only to lift her hands off the wall like this...put her legs straight out...balance backwards...tip a bit more and...

Mel caught her breath, hung dizzily for a moment, the rattle and crash of the train in her ears, then, of their own accord, her hands clamped to the top of the wall and propelled her forward, away from the train and its dragging slipstream of wind.

She fell awkwardly, scraping her bruised back on the wall, landing clumsily. Her ankle turned and she continued on down the steep embankment in a slide of mud and weeds.

At the bottom, among the rusty prams and old mattresses, she put her head against her knees, trembling, fighting for breath. It was a moment before the realisation hit her. She was still alive. She had failed. She couldn't do it. Stupid cowardly bitch. All she had to do was let go. Just let go. It would have been over now.

She got up eventually, still trembling, kicking away the old tins and cardboard boxes furiously. Her jeans were covered with mud and leaves. Mechanically she tried to brush them away, but the mess got worse. She eased her wet blouse away from her back and felt a trickle of blood running down. She straightened cautiously and climbed painfully through the bent iron railings. She walked along the little street, trying not to limp on her swelling ankle. She hoped nobody had seen the undignified fall into the heaps of rubbish. Suddenly she wanted to laugh hysterically. So much for the big suicide attempt.

The lights were coming on in the windows, cheerful in the wet dusk. There were six small houses on her side of the road, a terrace, with no front gardens, their narrow doors and windows fronting the pavement. Anybody could look in. The four houses opposite were slightly larger, with bay windows, their doors down the side, and they had small front gardens. Their lights were on too, but Mel walked along, her eyes on the pavement. She did not want to see any scenes of happy family life.

Her own house was in darkness still. As she let herself in with her door key, the smell hit her once again. Damp, drains, stale cooking, pee, dirt. Mouldy sourness.

She went down the little passage to the stairs, and then, hesitating, reluctantly turned and opened the living room door. The room was lit only by the flickering blue of the television, but it was a long time since there had been a picture. Her mother was sitting there, silent, blank. Only her hands were moving, tearing a newspaper very carefully into tiny perfect squares, which fluttered into a cardboard carton at her feet.

She did not look up, even when Mel turned on the dim centre light. She looked dreadful. Her hair was dirty and matted, her frock stained and smelling. She was skeleton-thin, and her skin was pale grey and flaky. She was thirty-five, but Mel thought she looked at least twenty years older. The room was in its usual indescribable state of confusion and dirt. Mel saw, feeling sick fear, that her mother must have been out again last night, gathering a new supply of newspapers and cardboard cartons from the rubbish people put out on their doorsteps for the refuse collection. They stood about the room in heaps and piles, mouldy and stinking. Nearly the whole floor space was covered now.

There was another silence. Mel turned, reluctantly. The huge dark eyes, so like her own, were wide and begging now. Begging for something, but Mel did not know what. Her heart turned over uncomfortably.

Mel closed the door behind her and stood against it, feeling ill. What on earth was she going to do? Surely there was somebody somewhere who would help? She turned and walked up the stairs slowly, her shoulders bent, her feet dragging. She was fooling herself. She knew very well that there was no help anywhere.