by Alice Feeney
I point the gun at the lowest tin can in the tree. I close one eye and hold the gun still, just like Maggie showed me. Then I pull the part she calls a Tigger, like in Winnie-the-Pooh, and the tin can falls to the ground.
Maggie smiles, and her happy face looks at me for the first time all day. She picks me up, as though the bad stuff she just did to me didn’t happen, so I pretend that it didn’t happen too and put my arms around her neck. She smells so nice. When I grow up, I’m going to wear number five just like her. I don’t even care what the other numbers smell like. When Maggie wears her happy face, I like to pretend she doesn’t have another one.
“I knew you could do it, Baby Girl.” She looks at John, even though she is speaking to me.
I do it again, and this time John takes a photo of me on his Polaroid camera. I don’t get to see what I look like holding a gun though, because Maggie snatches the photo from his hand before the picture even appears, then uses John’s lighter to burn it away into nothing.
“Idiot,” she says, and he stares at his feet as though they are something interesting.
I hit the tin cans ten more times, and when Maggie says I have learned enough for one day, John drives us home. Maggie sits in the back with me, instead of next to him. She holds my hand and smiles, and I’m glad that she loves me again. When we get back to the shop, Maggie shows me where the gun is hidden and tells me that I must never, ever, touch it unless she tells me to. She says now that I’m a big girl, we need a code, and the code is “Say your prayers.” I think this is funny because we never pray, but she tells me off for giggling. I can see she is wearing her most serious face, so I stop. She gives me the best present ever for being a good girl—a Wonder Woman costume, and I am allowed to wear it all day.
In the evening, after the shop is closed, the three of us watch Cagney & Lacey together in their bed, eating cheese on toast. I like this program, it’s my favorite TV show ever. Both of the women are pretty and clever and they shoot guns. In my head, I pretend that Maggie and me are Cagney and Lacey, chasing all the bad men.
When the program ends, Maggie switches off the TV with the remote control and looks at me.
“If I said, ‘Say your prayers,’ right now, what would you do, Baby Girl?”
I think real hard because I know that I must not get this wrong. I know it’s important.
“I would go and get the gun from the hiding place real quick.”
She nods. “Then what would you do?”
“Shoot it.”
“Shoot it and what?”
“Shoot it and keep shooting until nobody moves.”
“Clever girl, that’s the right answer.”
Forty-four
London, 2017
I see it out of the corner of my eye as I take another sip of champagne.
A flash. I’m sure I didn’t imagine it this time.
For as long as I can remember, I have hated having my photo taken. I’m not sure why. I didn’t even want a photographer at my wedding, not that Ben seemed to mind. There was just one little photo of our big day, taken by a stranger on the street outside the registry office. In some places in the world people believe that having your photo taken steals a part of your soul. My fears don’t stretch quite that far, but I do worry that a camera can capture something in me that I would rather remained hidden.
I try to listen to the conversation I am pretending to take part in, and I see it again, the flash of a camera phone. If I was in any doubt before, the sight of the person holding it confirms my suspicions. Jennifer Jones stares in my direction; she has the audacity to smile. I don’t know what to do. I look around wildly in search of some form of assistance.
Just like Alicia, she should not be here.
I don’t just despise Jennifer Jones, I hate her, and everyone like her; disgorging all my secrets, one by one, forming a tower of truths I would rather nobody else could see. My secrets are my own, and I don’t like them being shared. I look around again, and then, perhaps because of everything that is happening in my private life, or perhaps because I’ve consumed far more alcohol than was wise this evening, I decide to deal with the matter myself and march across the courtyard.
“How dare you come here tonight,” I spit at her.
She laughs in my face. “I’m just doing my job. If you’re looking for someone to blame, try the woman who tipped me off about you. You were set up by someone you know and it’s the easiest money I’ve ever made!”
Her words wind me. “Who?”
“What’s it worth?”
“It’s worth me not smashing my glass in your face.” For a moment I think I might mean it, but she doesn’t look worried at all. If anything, the whole exchange seems to delight her.
“I thought I saw her here earlier,” she says, looking over my shoulder.
Her.
“Who?” I look around the room, expecting to see Alicia in her line of vision.
“She wouldn’t tell me her name. She looked a bit like you, dressed like you too. Same hair, trench coat, dark glasses, red lipstick. A little older than you are. Ringing any bells?” She’s describing the stalker. This proves it, that everything that has happened is all connected. The woman pretending to be me was having an affair with my husband, it was her red lipstick I found under the bed, and she used my laptop to send emails calling herself Maggie to frame me.
“Of course, a journalist needs more than one source, and I needed photographic evidence, but luckily Jack was only too happy to help, taking selfies of the two of you together in your dressing room and sending them to me.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“Are you quite all right? You’ve turned very pale. You’re not going to throw up, are you? That would ruin the video…”
I look and see her phone still tilted up in my direction. “You’re filming this?”
“I’m afraid so, honey. They’re making redundancies at TBN again, and a journo’s gotta do what a journo’s gotta do to survive in this business nowadays. It’s not personal.”
It is personal.
I grab the phone out of her clawlike hand and throw it onto the stone floor, then I smash the face of it with the heel of my red shoe. Quite an audience gathers around us, including the director, who has summoned security.
“I guess you won’t be filing a story about me tonight after all.”
As she is led towards the exit, she turns to look over her shoulder, still smiling. “Oh, I already filed a piece about you tonight. I had a tip-off to visit your home address this afternoon, and I got it all. It will go live in an hour or so. I’d say it’s the showbiz scoop of the month, but I might be biased. Either way, it’s a killer of a story.”
She disappears into the crowd of faces all staring in my direction.
Forty-five
Essex, 1988
I do not like people staring at me.
Maggie and John have hired someone to help today. She is called Susan. Susan keeps staring at me and I wish that she wouldn’t.
Today is something called the Grand National. John says it is the busiest day of the year. He keeps saying that, as though he is worried I might forget. He doesn’t need to worry, my memory works just fine, and the only time I forget things is when I do it on purpose. Even then, I don’t really forget. I can remember my old name, the one I’m not allowed to use. Sometimes I still say it inside my head when I’m in bed at night. Sometimes it feels like something I maybe ought to remember.
Ciara. Ciara. Ciara.
I don’t like the idea of people forgetting me, it scares me a little bit. Sometimes it scares me a lot. As though if I am forgotten, then maybe I didn’t exist in the first place. John said the little girl who used to live here disappeared. I don’t ever want to disappear. I want people to remember who I am, even if the me they remember isn’t the real me. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet, but I’m sure if I think about it long enough, then I will. Maggie says that I am smart, and she says that I can
be whoever I want to be when I grow up, and I like the sound of that.
John says that this is the busiest day of the year for the hundredth time, then tells me to be kind to Susan. They hired her to help answer the phones, I don’t know why, I could have done it but Maggie says I sound too young. I’m going to start practicing sounding older, as well as sounding English, so we don’t have to hire strange people to help out again.
I do not like Susan.
I think it’s better when it is just the three of us.
Susan brought in a tin of Quality Street for us all to share, pretending to be kind, but she’d already taken out all the toffee pennies, which are the best ones. So she clearly can’t be trusted. Maggie says that Susan is an old friend, so to be nice to her, but I don’t know about that. She is definitely old. She has gray hair and lots of little lines around her eyes, and her teeth are yellow. I think it might have been all the toffee pennies she ate that did that. She’s short and round, a bit like a toffee penny. I’m going to keep an eye on Susan, maybe both eyes, I think she’s sneaky.
Today is so busy that I am helping too. We have to go to the bank three times instead of once today, I’m not sure why. John says it’s important for the safe not to be too full. I think maybe he is worried he won’t be able to close it if too much money is in there. We drive to the bank nowadays, even though it isn’t far. The third time we go, I ask if we can get a McDonald’s, but John says no. He gives the woman the bundles of cash out of the HEAD bag and gets cross when she takes too long to give him the bags of change he asked for. I’m cross too, because I’m hungry, and because he isn’t being nice. Nobody is being nice to me today. It’s just a bunch of horses jumping over fences and I don’t understand it, I’d rather read a book.
John kicks the car outside the bank because it has a flat tire, but I’m not sure kicking it will help. We walk super fast all the way back to the shop, with no talking allowed. John tells me to lock the gates, then he makes sure the back door is locked twice, before disappearing behind the stripy curtain to serve all the customers that are waiting. It’s very noisy today, even more than normal, and I can see them pushing each other to get to the till. The smoke from their cigarettes has turned into an indoor cloud, and it stings my eyes.
I turn back towards my little room and see Susan sitting by the phones, eating. She’s always eating. I’d forgotten she was here and I give her my best evil stare, because I don’t care whether she knows I don’t like her.
She stops chewing her lunch and smiles. “Would you like some of my sandwich?”
I am hungry, but I don’t know whether I do.
“What’s in it?”
“Just Flora and corned beef.”
I do like corned beef, so I say yes. Her sandwich is cut into triangles, she gives me one from her plate, and I dislike her a little less than I did before.
“I know today isn’t much fun for a little girl like you. You should be outside playing in the fresh air.”
I ignore her and go sit in the little back room, then I watch TV without watching it. Susan appears in the doorway, and I wish one of the phones would ring so that she would just go away. They haven’t rung for ages, which is strange.
“I don’t think you locked the gate properly,” she says, looking out the window.
“Yes, I did,” I say with my mouth full.
“No, I don’t think so, and I think your dad is going to be real mad when he finds out.”
I’m sure I locked it.
“Do you want me to go check? It can be our little secret?” I notice a little bit of corned beef stuck between her yellow teeth.
“We’re not allowed to open the back door,” I say, remembering the bad man with the knife.
“It will only take me a minute. Otherwise, when they find out you didn’t lock it, you’ll get in such big trouble. I’m only thinking of you.”
I don’t want to get in trouble. “Okay.”
I watch as she takes the keys, unlocks the back door, then walks down to the gate. I can’t see what she is doing, but when she comes back, she says that I had locked it properly after all. I knew I had. I do not like Susan.
She starts to lock the door. I see her put the key in the hole, but then she stops. “Do you like Dairy Milk chocolate?”
“Only if it doesn’t have nuts or raisins in it.”
She smiles, and I stare at the corned beef in her teeth again. Maggie says that it is wrong to stare at people’s imperfections, but I can’t stop my eyeballs from looking at what they want.
“See, I brought a big bar of Dairy Milk with me today, one of those giant ones, but then I realized I couldn’t possibly eat it all by myself. Do you think you could help me?”
I love Dairy Milk. I like putting the little squares on my tongue and sucking on them until all the chocolate melts away inside my mouth. I nod, hoping she won’t change her mind because I’ve been so unfriendly all day long.
“Thank you, you are a good girl. It’s no wonder your mum loves you so much. The bar is in my bag. Why don’t you go on through and open it for me, while I make sure this door is properly locked.”
I walk into the phone room and find the chocolate straightaway. I open it, careful not to tear the purple paper or foil, then snap off a little bit and pop it in my mouth. I think about what Susan just said, about Maggie loving me, and I realize that I love her, too, and that makes me feel happy.
It’s late when the shop finally closes, and I am tired and hungry. Maggie has promised we’ll get fish and chips for dinner, as soon as all the money has been counted and put away.
“Cod and chips, my favorite,” says John. I look over at him and he pulls a codfish face, so I do too. Both our mouths are open, our lips like the letter O, and then we smile at our silent Mary Poppins joke. Maggie doesn’t smile because she doesn’t think it’s funny, even though it is. She says we’ve made so much money today that I don’t have to sweep up tonight, we’ll do it all tomorrow.
Susan leaves through the front door, she says that it is quicker to get to her bus stop that way, and Maggie locks it behind her. Susan was invited to stay for supper but said no, and I’m glad. I still don’t like her, despite all the chocolate she let me eat, and fish and chips is what the three of us do. As John always says, we don’t need nobody else.
Maggie helps John count the money behind the counter. I can hear the adding machine going clickety-click. I decide to build a fort in the shop while I wait, dragging some of the leather stools together, and laying the newspaper pages that have come down from the walls over the top.
It all happens so fast and the sound is so loud.
The car crashes through the front of the shop, almost smashing straight into my fort. Time stops for a tiny moment. I look at Maggie and John behind the counter, both their mouths are wide open, staring at the blue car, and I realize that my mouth is open too. I think we must all look like codfish now. Maggie’s eyes are awful wide, and she is shouting something at me, but I can’t hear her; the sound of glass smashing and car doors opening is all too loud. My eyes are staring at the two men with masks on their faces getting out of the car, but then my ears remember how to work and I hear Maggie.
“Run, Aimee!”
So I do.
I run behind the counter, and John locks the door that separates us from the shop. Maggie grabs me with one hand and picks up the phone in the other, holding it to her ear with her shoulder. She keeps stabbing the 9 button with her red nails, but then slams it down, saying that it’s dead.
“Fuckers,” says John, but Maggie ignores him and looks down at me.
“Say your prayers,” she says, and I know what that means.
I always remember everything Maggie teaches me.
I run towards the little back room, but before I even reach the stripy curtains, I hear the men smash through the counter. One of them is swinging a giant hammer, it’s bigger than me.
“Open the fuckin’ safe,” says the other one, and I see him
point a gun at Maggie’s head. John bends down to the safe and I run. I crawl under the desk, and my fingers find the pistol that is taped underneath it. Even though my hands are shaking, my fingers seem to know what to do. The back door bursts open, and another bad man comes inside. He doesn’t see me under the desk. I don’t understand how he got in because I know I locked the door when we got back from the bank. But then I remember Susan, and the gate, and the Dairy Milk, and the silent phones. I know she tricked me, and I am so confused and cross all at once.
I am not afraid anymore, I am just angry. More angry than I have ever been about anything. I stand behind the stripy curtain, trying to hold the gun steady, not sure who to point it at first—there are three of them now. One of the bad men is holding Maggie, another is pointing his gun at John, who starts to open the safe, just like they told him to. Then everyone is shouting again and I hear a loud bang.
I see all the red on Maggie’s white jumper before she falls to the shop floor.
John runs to her, and they shoot him, too, twice in the back.
I stand perfectly still while they kick my mum and my dad with their dirty boots, and I hear them say that they are dead. Nobody has seen me, as though I have already disappeared. Two of the bad men bend down next to the safe, laughing and filling their bags with our money. I look back at Maggie and can see that her eyes are open again, looking at me.
I fire my gun.
I’m so close behind them, I cannot miss.
I do what she taught me to do and shoot until nobody moves. Then I carry on shooting anyway, until I don’t have any bullets left.
“Come here, Baby Girl.” Maggie sounds croaky and far away. I cuddle up next to her on the floor and try to stop the blood from coming out of her tummy with my hands, the way I’ve seen people do on TV. But it won’t stop. There’s a great big red puddle of it now, and my fingers are all red.
“Give me the gun,” she whispers, so I do. She wipes it on her trousers, then takes a white hankie from her sleeve and wraps it around the pistol. “Don’t touch it again, don’t touch anything. Now go and put this in John’s hand, go on, hurry up now, careful not to touch it.” I’m crying and shaking, but I do what Maggie tells me to do, because I’ve learned that bad things happen to me when I don’t. John doesn’t move when I put the gun in his hand. I don’t like touching him, and I run back to Maggie as soon as I’ve done it. She puts her arm around me and I lay my head on her chest, the way I do when we cuddle in bed. Then I close my eyes and listen to the sound of her breathing, and her voice in my ears.
