by Alex Marwood
‘I don’t know,’ she is saying, ‘what they are thinking. And their friends … are they animals, these people?’
Amber selects a ham salad sandwich with yesterday’s sell-by. It will be sludgy in the centre, the crusts like cardboard, but there’s not much that’s savoury on offer and she’s not in the mood for sweet.
‘What’s that, Blessed?’ she asks, turning to their table.
Jackie drains her coffee mug. ‘Blessed’s found another turd,’ she announces.
‘What?’ Amber sits down and starts to unwrap her sandwich. ‘On the waltzer?’
Blessed nods, pulls a face. ‘Right in the middle of the seat. I don’t understand how they manage it. I mean, they must have to take their trousers down to squat.’
Jackie’s face goes dreamy. ‘I wonder if they do it when it’s moving?’
‘I’m sorry, Blessed,’ says Amber. ‘Are you OK dealing with it? Do you need me to …?’
‘No,’ says Blessed. ‘Fortunately, Moses has dealt with it already. But thank you. I appreciate the offer.’
‘Thank God for Moses,’ says Jackie. By her elbow, her phone leaps suddenly into life, skitters across the table.
‘Good God,’ says Tadeusz, springing suddenly awake from his small-hours reverie. ‘I don’t believe you. Two-thirty in the morning? Who gets calls at two-thirty in the morning? Woman, you’re insatiable!’
Jackie kisses her teeth. ‘You wish,’ she says. Picks up the handset and frowns. ‘Oh, fuck sake.’
Amber takes a bite of her sandwich. Warm, soggy, somehow comforting. ‘What’s up?’
Jackie slides the phone over to her. Tadeusz reads the text on the display over her shoulder. Where are you? You have no right to do this. call me!
‘Someone’s keen,’ he says.
‘Fucking nuts, more like,’ Jackie says.
Tadeusz stares at her with renewed respect. ‘You’ve got a stalker?’
She looks up from the screen sharply. ‘Does that raise my value in the market, Tad?’
Tadeusz shrugs. His own, lean, slightly lupine appearance has accustomed him to easy attractions, clingy extractions. Blessed looks concerned. ‘Who is this man?’
‘Just … Stupid little arsehole. I went on two dates with him.’
And the rest, thinks Amber uncharitably. But she says nothing, slides the phone back across the table. She learned long ago not to be a judger. Out loud, at least.
‘You don’t reply, do you?’ asks Blessed. ‘You shouldn’t respond, Jackie.’
Jackie shakes her head. ‘Not any more, no. I was stupid and humoured him for a bit at the beginning, but no, not now. Weaselly little wanker. I only went on the second date ’cause I felt sorry for him that he couldn’t get it up the first time.’
‘Jackie!’ Blessed protests. She hates talk like this. And yet it’s always at Jackie’s table that she sits. ‘Because you shouldn’t. Respond. You must be careful. Women get killed, you know. You know that. You need to be careful.’
‘Oh, hardly,’ says Jackie. ‘He’s not a bleeding serial killer. He’s just a sad little wanker.’
‘You shouldn’t joke about this,’ says Blessed. ‘That’s two girls this year already in Whitmouth, just off the strip. And you don’t know anything about this man. Not really.’
‘I wasn’t joking, Blessed. Sorry.’
Blessed shakes her head. ‘Well, don’t. I don’t understand how people can be so casual about it.’
‘’Cause they weren’t from here,’ says Tadeusz. ‘Simple as that.’
‘That’s terrible,’ says Blessed. ‘If you think that.’
‘But it’s true,’ says Tadeusz. ‘No one from around here knew either of those girls, so it doesn’t count.’
‘But they’re still people,’ says Blessed.
‘Yes, they are,’ says Jackie. ‘But they’re not our people. If it was our people we’d be too scared to go out. Thank God it’s outsiders, that’s what I say.’
Blessed shakes her head, sorrowful. ‘How cold you are, Jackie.’
‘Realistic,’ corrects Jackie.
‘How long has this been going on, anyway?’ asks Blessed. ‘This man …’
Jackie sighs and puts the phone down. ‘Christ. For ever. What is it, Amber? About six months?’
‘I have no idea,’ says Amber. ‘Why would I know?’
She could swear she sees Jackie pout. ‘Well, he’s your friend.’
It’s news to her. ‘You what?’
‘Martin. Bagshawe.’
The name’s faintly familiar, but she can’t attach it to a face. Shakes her head and feels herself frown. ‘Who?’
‘Vic’s birthday.’
‘Vic’s birthday? That was months ago.’
‘Yuh-huuh.’
Amber shakes her head again. She doesn’t remember that much about Vic’s birthday. Especially not what other people got up to.
‘I know. Told you,’ says Jackie. ‘Can’t shake the grimy little weasel off. Where the hell did Vic get a nutter like that for a friend?’
Amber casts her mind back. A Saturday night, the Cross Keys. Not so much a party as a telling-your-mates-where-you’ll-be. Vic on fine form, his arm slung round her shoulder all night, drinking Jack and Coke and not saying a word when she got in her third glass of dry white. A good night, a fun night. And vaguely, from the corner of her memory, she remembers Jackie, late in the evening, wrapped round some bloke, a diminutive figure in, as far as she remembers, an anorak. An anorak on a Saturday night. Jackie must’ve had the Heineken goggles on to have copped off with that.
‘Don’t blame Vic, Jacks. You can’t exactly tell someone to go away in the Cross Keys, can you? He’s just some bloke who goes in there.’
‘No,’ says Jackie. ‘He said Vic was …’
Amber can’t quite suppress a smirk. ‘And it didn’t occur to you to ask Vic?’
‘Well, if somebody’d warned me …’
‘If you’d asked, we might’ve been able to. I don’t suppose Vic even knows what his name is. He’s just one of those weird little pub people you can’t shake off.’
‘You see,’ says Blessed, ‘that’s what I mean. You need to be careful. You can’t just … pick people up in pubs.’
Jackie shoots her a look. ‘Yeah. Church isn’t my scene, Blessed. Thanks all the same. It’s the way it is. Christ, I only talked to him in the first place because I felt sorry for him.’
‘You’re all heart, Jackie,’ says Tadeusz.
‘Yeah, well,’ says Jackie, ‘we can’t all be jammy slags like Amber. Not all of us have a lovely warm Vic to come home to.’
‘You should tell the police,’ says Blessed. ‘Seriously. If the man is harassing you.’
Jackie laughs. ‘Yeah. Right.’
‘No, you should. If it worries you, you should ask for help.’ Amber is often amazed that, of all the people she knows, the one who shows unshakeable faith in the authorities should be a woman who spent the first two thirds of her life in Uganda. Blessed has emerged from sub-Saharan hell with a moral framework that puts her neighbours to shame. She remembers her final gift, and reaches into her bag. Leans towards Blessed and lowers her voice as the others carry on talking. ‘I found this in the lost property,’ she says. Holds out the MP3 reverently.
‘What is that?’ asks Blessed. ‘It certainly isn’t something I’ve lost.’
‘It’s an MP3 player,’ says Amber. ‘I thought Benedick might like it. I’m sorry it’s not an iPod, but it does the same thing.’
‘Really?’ Blessed looks gobsmacked. ‘But this must be worth a lot of money, I would think.’
Again Amber finds herself shrugging off her own generosity. She knows how tight Blessed finds life as a single mother, knows that her son lacks a lot of the gadgets his peers take for granted. ‘Probably not. I don’t know. But it’s got some music on it already, look. To start him off, anyway.’
‘I …’ Blessed looks up at her with tear-filled eyes. ‘I don’t know what
to say,’ she says.
‘Then don’t say anything,’ says Amber. ‘Just take it.’
‘Why don’t you just change your phone?’ Tadeusz picks up Jackie’s handset and starts scrolling through the menu.
‘Doh,’ says Jackie. ‘Because I can’t afford to?’
‘Ah,’ says Tadeusz. They all understand about not affording stuff. You don’t work nights cleaning up other people’s leavings if you have a choice about it. He presses Reply, starts keying in letters.
‘What are you doing?’ The alarm in Blessed’s voice is palpable. ‘Tadeusz! Don’t!’
Tadeusz continues to type.
‘I said, don’t reply. If you reply you give him hope that they have a relationship. She must ignore him. It’s the only way.’
‘It’s OK.’ Tadeusz glances up, shoots her a small smile.
‘Give it back, Tadeusz,’ says Jackie.
He hits Send. Hands the phone back.
‘Shit,’ says Jackie. ‘What have you done?’
She stabs at the buttons, scrolls through to her Sent box. Opens the message and starts to laugh.
‘What is it? What does it say?’ asks Blessed.
‘“Your message could not be sent because the number is disconnected.” Genius. You’re a genius.’
Tadeusz pushes back from the table and folds his arms, gratified.
The phone vibrates again. Jackie reads the text out. ‘“Testing”.’ She starts to key.
Amber checks her watch. It’s knocking three. There’s a lot to get through before dawn. ‘Come on, guys,’ she says. Stands up to show she means business. ‘Time’s getting on. We need to get back to work or we’ll be here all night.’
All round them, the staff are taking her cue and beginning to move. By the window, Moses ostentatiously rolls a cigarette to smoke in the open air. They push themselves to their feet. Tadeusz is on café duty tonight. He takes the others’ mugs and ambles off to the kitchen bins.
‘Right,’ says Jackie. ‘No rest for the wicked.’
Chapter Three
The girl is dead. She doesn’t need to go near her to see that. Chinless, sightless, rag-doll dead. Wearing a striped tank top and a tube skirt; both have gathered around her waist, puppy-fat breasts and white thighs reflected in the mirrors, back, back, back to infinity.
Amber is not looking directly at the body. She’s nowhere near, in fact. She’s cleaned the mirror maze so often that she knows its tricks and turns, the way a figure at the far end of the building can seem, when you enter, to be standing right in front of you.
Or – in the case of the dead girl – half lying, her head and shoulders pressed against the wall.
Amber grips the door frame, struggles to breathe. Oh shit, she thinks. Why did I have to find her?
She can’t be more than seventeen. The mottled face – the mouth half open as though she is trying, one more time, to take a breath – still has traces of unformed childhood around the jaw. Blonde hair, blown and flicked up. Giant hoop earrings. Eyes made huge by half a pot of electric-blue eyeshadow, glitter gel spangling the naked décolletage. Platform boots, improbable in the angles they form with the mirrored floor.
She’s been at Stardust, thinks Amber. Saturday. It’s Seventies night at Stardust.
She feels sick. Glances behind her through the open door and sees that the concourse is empty. As though all her colleagues have dropped off the edge of the world.
She steps inside and closes the door to block out the light. Doesn’t want anyone else to see. Not yet. Not while shock has ripped her mask away.
Thank God I’m wearing rubber gloves, she thinks nonsensically. She has cleaned the place every night for the past three years and, however careful she is, her fingerprints will be all over it. Let alone the prints of half the visitors who’ve passed through since this time last night. They try to keep the smudges down by handing out disposable plastic gloves on the door, but you can’t actually force someone to wear them; can’t police the interior 24/7.
Innfinnityland is the only attraction Amber cleans herself, since her promotion. The place makes everyone uneasy, as though they are afraid that they will get lost and never find their way back, or that the mirrors themselves are infected with ghosts. Too many times the work, which needs to be autistically methodical, has been rushed and skimped, and smears have remained; and in a place like this, a single smear becomes an infinite number, the original hard to track down if you’re not working your way through, fingertip by fingertip, glass by glass. She decided long ago that it was easiest simply to do it herself. Wishes fervently now that she hadn’t.
The girl has green eyes, like Amber’s own. Her handbag – mock-croc – has fallen open and scattered poignant remnants of plans made, hopes cherished. A lipstick, a bottle of JLo, a pink phone with a metallic charm shaped like a stiletto court shoe … breezy statements of identity, turned tawdry beneath their owner’s glassy stare.
There is no blood. Just the impression of squeezing fingers livid on her neck. This is the third one this year, Amber thinks. It can’t be a coincidence. Two is coincidence; three is … oh, you poor child.
Amber is cold to the bone, though the night is warm. She edges her way forward slowly, like an old person, one shaking hand supporting her against the mirrors as she moves. As she advances, new reflections cross her sight line: a million corpses strewn across a hall of infinite size.
Then suddenly, herself. Face white, eyes large, mouth a thin line. Standing above the body like Lady Macbeth.
What were you going to do? Touch her?
The thought freezes her to the spot. She’s not been thinking. Shock has turned her into a creature of instinct, an automaton. Has made her forgetful.
What are you doing? You can’t be involved. You can’t. Anonymous. You’re meant to be anonymous. Get involved, they’ll work it out. Who you are. And once they know who you are …
She feels panic start up inside. The edgy tingle, the queasy itch. Familiar, never far from the surface. She needs to decide quickly.
I can’t be the one to find her.
She begins to back away. Feels her way back to the entrance.
The dead girl gazes at infinity. Damn you, Amber thinks, suddenly angry. Why did you have to get yourself killed here? What are you even doing here, anyway? It’s been closed for hours. The park’s been closed for hours.
She catches her own thoughts and lets out a barking, ironic laugh. ‘Shit,’ she says out loud. ‘Oh God, what am I meant to do?’
Go and find help. Do what anyone would do, Amber. Go out there and act the way you feel: shocked and scared. No one’s going to ask questions. There’s someone killing girls in this town, but it doesn’t mean they’ll recognise who you are.
But they’ll take your photo. You know what the press are like. Anything to fill their pages; details to make up for lack of facts. You’ll be all over the papers as the woman who found the body.
I can’t do this.
Someone tries the entrance door, the sudden noise of the handle turning uselessly making her jump. She hears Jackie and Moses: Jackie chattering and flirting, Moses responding in monosyllables, but the smile clear in his voice.
‘She’s always in here,’ says Jackie. ‘After tea break. Amber? You in there? The door’s locked!’
Amber holds her breath, afraid that even the sound of her exhalation will call to them. Oh God, what do I do? I’ve got to get out of here.
‘C’mon,’ says Jackie. ‘Let’s try the back. Maybe she’s taking a break.’
‘Sure,’ says Moses.
That’s it, there’s no escape now. She hears their footsteps recede down the steps as they walk off towards the entrance to the service alley. Two minutes before they get here, maybe. She can’t get away, can’t undo the moment of discovery.
She straightens up, steps over the girl’s marionette legs and hurries to the emergency exit hidden behind the black curtain beyond. Best they find her out on the steps, out in the fresh a
ir, throwing up.
9 a.m.
Her parents’ bedroom door is open, and the cheesy tang of unwashed skin and bedcovers hangs over the landing like marsh gas. Her mother’s not up yet: she can see her formless mass pooled beneath grey blankets. She hovers in the doorway, tries her voice:
‘Mum?’
Her mother doesn’t answer. But she sees slight movement in the ham-hock arm that pins the blankets down, and knows she’s awake.
‘Mum?’
Lorraine Walker takes one of her grunting breaths and turns on her back; stranded, like an upturned turtle. She turns a blank, defeated face and looks at her daughter. ‘What?’
The voice is damp, sweaty, indistinct; she’s not got her teeth in yet. It’s a hot day already, though it’s not yet ten o’clock, and Lorraine’s twenty-five stones will be suffocating her beneath the covers. Jade can see that she’s got her dress-up nightie on: knee-length flower print in brushed nylon, big enough to cover an armchair. Her skin is white against it, her elbows poking out between mounds of blubber.
‘There’s nothing for breakfast.’
‘Chrissake.’ Mrs Walker heaves herself upright. Jade looks at her mother’s molten face. She isn’t involved enough to feel disgust. ‘Ask your dad.’
Yeah, right. That’ll work.
Jade turns away and descends the staircase. Zig zags along the downstairs corridor. Ever since she can remember, her home life has consisted of picking her way from one place to another. Her father fancies himself a scrap-metal merchant, but really he’s a hoarder of crap other people have thrown away; and a lot of it has made it into the house because he’s afraid someone else will covet his collection of hubcaps and hinges, rust and rubber, as much as he does.
In the kitchen she tries, half-heartedly, to find something to kill her hunger. But there’s nothing on the shelves. Six empty cereal boxes, the plastic wrapper that once held a Wonderloaf, a pint and a half of milk that has solidified and separated.
It could be evening before someone notices and does something. He mother, despite her bulk, seems capable of lasting all day without anything passing her lips. Both her parents keep themselves going on a diet of Nescafé and Old Holborn, with the odd rabbit for variety when the snares work. I suppose she can live off her reserves for a while, Jade thinks – the furthest down the road to judgement she ever goes.
