The Wicked Girls

by Alex Marwood

  I can’t go back there. It would kill me.

  The train lets go. Her heart bounces off her spine and the woman next door lets out a howl of joy and terror. The drizzle hanging in the air is a million pinpricks. She realises that she has bared her teeth in fear. The track disappears in front of her; all she sees is emptiness and, impossibly far away but looming at ever-increasing velocity, the million stones of Whitmouth beach.

  Amber screams.

  She’s green and weak by the time they trundle into the station. Every limb turned to jelly. Her companions are laughing, savouring the endorphins, shouting brilliant-amazing-fuck-let’sgo-again at each other. And all she feels is sick and feeble. If anyone were to tell her that she had to go round once more, she would die, there on the spot, she knows it.

  She wonders once again what Jade is doing. She had a deadline to meet, she knows that, but it’s approaching dusk now, so she must have filed, if she managed it. Is she thinking about me? Or has she just forgotten? Written it off as one of those things, and gone back to her ordered life? Her hands are shaking. Gradually, her hearing lets in more than the sound of the blood pumping in her ears, and she registers the opening strains of ‘Could It Be Magic’. It must be half-eight already.

  If I sit down and have a coffee, she thinks, maybe I can find someone I know to chat to; reassure myself with the familiar. At least I won’t feel like this, trying to stay upright on legs that don’t want to hold me.

  The crowd has cleared from the platform now, and she’s the only person left. She feels her way along the wall until she finds the stairs and staggers down, gripping tightly on to the rail.

  Her route to the café takes her past the shooting arcade, the ghost train, the kids’ merry-go-round – still occupied, despite the hour – and the dodgems. She half expects to see Vic there, then remembers that he and Dave have swapped on to the waltzer tonight, for a change. Instead she runs into Suzanne Oddie, frowning as best she can through her botox as she peers around in search of someone. Standing a pace behind her are three police constables and another whose uniform places him higher up the food chain.

  ‘Ah!’ says Suzanne, spotting Amber. ‘You’ll know.’

  Amber recognises the senior policeman. He was the one who came with her and Jackie – accompanied them, she thinks in police-speak, and smiles for the first time today – down to the station the night she found Hannah Hardy. He smiles and greets her by name. Suzanne looks surprised, then suspicious, then ploughs on.

  ‘Ms Gordon knows everyone,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ he replies, ‘I’d noticed.’

  ‘Is there anyone in particular you were looking for?’ asks Amber.

  ‘Yes,’ says Suzanne. ‘Victor Cantrell. He’s meant to work on the dodgems. Would you recognise him?’

  Amber feels once more as though she is falling.

  3.30 p.m.

  Jade crawls through the hole in the hedge and lands up in a patch of stinging nettles. Swears loudly, because she knows that Chloe will find a way to roll in them, however much she tries to beat them out of the way. She’s beginning to really, really hate this kid. She’s a walking damage magnet. And every time she falls over, that squealing wail starts up: a noise as annoying and invasive as a police siren, reverberating in her skull like a dentist’s drill. And now it’s going to be stinging nettles.

  ‘I told you we should’ve gone along the road,’ she snarls.

  ‘No you didn’t,’ snaps Bel. ‘It was you that said it was quicker this way. I asked if there was a footpath!’

  It’s the dog days of summer and the ground is hard. All three of them are bruised and scratched from falls and climbs and brambles, and now Jade’s hands and knees are coming up in a white, leaky rash where she’s crawled on the nettles. Her mouth is parched; she can feel the dryness creeping down her throat, feels like her eyelids are lined with sandpaper. Her temper is rising to match Bel’s. Their brains boil with heat and resentment.

  ‘Come on,’ she snaps back. ‘Mind. There’s nettles.’

  Bel pushes Chloe forward. They’ve learned, over the last hour, that she has to go in the middle everywhere. She’s too young and stupid to lead the way, and if they both go first she hangs back until someone has to crawl or climb or push their way back to get her. I’m never having children, Bel thinks. Not if there’s a chance they’ll turn out like this one. She looks at the purple face – the cheeks streaked, the chin a spongy mass of tears – and feels a surge of contempt. The kid reminds her of Miranda – spoiled, useless, favoured Miranda – and the contempt turns to rage. They always blame me. Every time anything goes wrong, they blame me. It’s not fair.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody pathetic,’ she says. ‘Go on.’

  Chloe lost a shoe somewhere back in the mud at Proctor’s Pond, and her white socks are filthy. She squats and looks at the hole in the hedge, and starts to whimper again. Then she gets down on hands and knees and begins, slowly, to crawl. God, thinks Bel, she’s got a bum the size of an elephant. How can someone that small have such a big bum?

  Experimentally, she gives the bum a shove with her foot. Chloe pops through the hole like a champagne cork; lands flat out, face down, in the nettle bed. There’s silence for a moment, as she takes in her situation, then the howling starts up. ‘Waaah. Waaaaaaaah. Wah-ooooooow!’

  Jade puts her hands over her ears. I can’t stand this, she thinks. How come nobody ever puts a gag on her?

  ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’

  Chloe’s face, hands and thighs are covered in welts. She stares down at her palms and starts to scream. They must be able to hear this all the way over at Banbury. Jade feels her eardrums begin to rattle. Grabs the child by the arm and hauls her upright. ‘Shut up,’ she shrieks, ‘or I’ll give you something to cry about!’

  Jade’s the youngest in her family. Has spent many happy hours in the charge of resentful elder siblings, has never had to take charge of a younger one. She does what Tamara and Steph and Gary have all done to her many times to deal with tantrums: she whacks her across the cheek.

  Chloe shuts up, double quick.

  ‘I’ll put a bloody gag on you if you start that again,’ Jade threatens. She doesn’t really understand why she’s in such a temper. Doesn’t know about dehydration and overheating and blood sugar; just knows that Chloe is a burden she never asked for and doesn’t want. ‘We’ll find some dock leaves,’ she tells her. ‘They’ll sort it out.’

  ‘I want to go home!’ wails Chloe. ‘I want my mum!’

  Bel crawls through the hole and stands up. This afternoon seems to be going on for ever.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Kirsty learned years ago that work is the great solace. In fact it was Chris, her counsellor at Exmouth, who introduced her to the concept. For a year she had felt as though her head was full of wasps: repetitive thoughts blocking everything else out. They found out quickly that she was barely literate, that what time she had spent at school had been wasted by the expectations of her teachers. At eleven, she had never learned to concentrate. Now, whenever she tried, pictures of Chloe would burst into her head: pictures of her mum, her brothers, the crowd outside the crown court; and she would be angry, tearful, hopeless.

  Then one day she’d spent a whole hour with Chris, reading slowly through, of all the mad unteacherly choices, a chapter of James Herbert’s The Rats. For an hour, someone else’s peril was at the forefront of her mind. She wanted to read on and find out what would happen next. So, through graphic descriptions of people being chewed alive, she learned the solace of reading, and from that she slowly learned the solace of learning, and then of writing, and then of asking questions and hearing answers and making something of those answers. And one day she discovered that she had become a success story – the child who was rescued. And she’s never forgotten.

  After she left Bel in the café, she had two hours to turn her copy round and, as ever, the rush of delivery, the fix that keeps her coming back, was fierce. Every
day it’s the same: the eleven o’clock post-conference call, the moment of panic as she realises the extent of the task ahead, the scramble to find out as much as humanly possible and translate it into a thought-through, shaped and crafted story, the rush of damn-I’m-good that catches her by surprise every time she presses Send and her words fly through the ether to end up on strangers’ breakfast tables. There is no time to think of anything else.

  And tonight she hits her deadline just as she always does. She’s filing for the home-news pages of the daily paper today; tomorrow and the next day it’s more of the same; and another feature for the Sunday. People love salacious detail, says the editor, and the Trib’s sales figures bear it out.

  Within three minutes of sending, and calling in to say she’s sent, and cracking open the quarter-bottle of Soave she’s found in her mini-bar, she is in tears. She sits heavily on the orange candlewick bedspread and lets the tears flow, mouth open as if to catch them as they pour down her cheeks. She wishes she hadn’t agreed to meet Amber, has always coped with the past by simply not allowing it in. Kirsty can go for days – weeks, sometimes, even – without thinking about it. By living in the present, by planning for the future, she had thought that she had come to terms with history.

  She wishes she’d had more time to prepare. A million questions circulate in her mind now that she is no longer in the presence of the person she can fire them at. In some ways, that day feels more like a film she once saw than a drama in which she took an active part. It seems so distant, so unrelated to the person she feels herself to be, that, though it plays out in her mind often, it has the glossy Technicolor unreality of events once seen on a cinema screen.

  She wonders if Amber feels the same, or if those awful events still hit her with the sick, giddy panic that still occasionally rips Kirsty from her sleep, when her guard is down. She wants to know how Amber copes with lying, day by day, to the people she loves the most. Most of all she wants to know if Amber is afraid, as she is afraid. And if she is, which fear assails her the most: the violence of strangers or the destruction of those she loves.

  The thought of Jim, and of the children, wrenches out more tears. Jim’s kindness, his confusion when he encounters deceit or malice, is both his great strength and his great weakness. The thought of his hurt, of the loss to the children, if they ever found out that they had been loving someone who didn’t exist, leaves her gasping for breath. He thinks she’s a good person damaged by life. She knows, deep down, that she is – must be – rotten to the core, and that the one thing she must do is protect them all from the ugly truth.

  She cries until she is weary, her shoulders aching, the skin beneath her eyes red-raw. And when she’s calmer, when she thinks the danger that she might simply spill the truth in a destructive attempt at shriving has passed, she calls her husband.

  ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Where do we keep the spare batteries?’

  ‘Top left drawer in the garage,’ she says. ‘What’s run out?’

  ‘Someone forgot to switch his Duelling Monster Truck off again.’

  She feels tired and distant, but comforted by the commonplaces of life going on without her. ‘He’s got to stop doing that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Jim. ‘He’s not going to, though, is he, while he’s got no incentive.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Make him pay for his own?’

  ‘Out of his pocket money?’

  ‘It’s what it’s meant to be for.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She thinks. ‘He doesn’t really get enough pocket money for battery-buying.’

  ‘Tough,’ says Jim. ‘Sorry. How else is he going to learn?’

  It feels good to talk about something so mundane. Even the fact that they’re avoiding the elephant in the corner – the endless, terrifying outward trickle of their savings – is somehow comforting.

  Her nose is blocked and she’s breathing through her mouth. She doesn’t want to give the game away by blowing her nose, but her experimental sniff alerts him anyway. ‘Are you OK?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Just tired. And missing you.’

  ‘Oh, darl.’ She can picture him, lying out on their big corner sofa, heels up on the backrest now she’s not there to protest. He’s probably got his specs off by this time of night, his eyes big and vulnerable without them. ‘I hate it when you go away.’

  Now he knows about them, she sees no point in hiding her tears any more. Indulges in a huge honking blow into a wodge of bog paper.

  ‘Eww,’ she hears him say, ‘thanks for sharing,’ and she giggles despite herself. How can one person be so able to make you feel better? What a responsibility to heap on someone else’s shoulders.

  ‘What’s your room like?’ he asks. ‘I want to imagine you there.’

  ‘Bit early for that, isn’t it?’ she teases.

  She hears the smile across the ether. ‘Give me an image to take into the bath with me.’

  ‘Well,’ she looks around, tries to find something to describe. She stays in enough of these salesmen’s hotels to know that they all look alike.

  ‘I’ve got a four-poster tonight,’ she informs him – an old, old game they’ve played since they met – ‘with naked ladies on the posts.’

  ‘My favourite type,’ he says solemnly. ‘Does it have curtains?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Red velvet ones with gold fringing.’

  ‘Sophisticated,’ says Jim.

  ‘Sexxy,’ she says, emphasising the ‘x’. ‘The floor is gold as well. Real gold, I think.’

  ‘Must be cold.’

  ‘Underfloor heating. Ooh. And I’ve got a platinum ice bucket.’

  ‘Classy,’ he says. ‘Is there room service?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘But there’s a bistro.’

  ‘A bistro?’ She hears him sit up. ‘Baby, I’m dumping the kids and coming straight there. Why didn’t you say you had a bistro?’

  ‘It’s open from twelve a.m. to nine a.m.,’ she reads from the information card. ‘And serves a variety of mouthwatering mains and light snacks. Lasagne is their speciality, apparently.’

  ‘Bugger,’ says Jim. ‘I wish you’d said …’

  ‘I didn’t know, Jim,’ she says. ‘You know the Trib. Always springing surprises on you.’

  ‘So did you file?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah, I filed,’ she says.

  ‘And what’s the latest?’

  ‘Nothing you won’t see on the news tonight. A poor old bat of a clapped-out prozzy, and the poor girl’s still not got a name. No bag, no phone, no wallet, no friends who’ve noticed she’s gone yet.’

  He pauses as he thinks about this. ‘Ah, I see,’ he says, gently. The fear of dying unnoticed has always plagued her. ‘Awful,’ he says. ‘Sorry, Kirst. You must hate this job sometimes.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says, mournfully. ‘It goes with the territory, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I guess. I miss you, you know.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘You still home the day after tomorrow?’

  ‘Please God,’ she says. ‘How are you all doing? Kids eaten yet?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What did they have?’

  ‘Bread and gruel. Why don’t you just jump in the car and come home?’

  Kirsty sighs. The thought of home, of a warm bath and a back-rub, is almost unbearably attractive. ‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, darling. It’d be nearly midnight by the time I got there, and there’s a press conference at eight tomorrow morning.’

  Press conference. A couple of Plod standing on the station steps, mechanically reading out a statement and then replying, ‘I’m afraid we can’t comment on that for the time being’ in response to every question. ‘And if I don’t make myself go out digging tonight, I’ll just have to add it on to the end of the trip. I’ll make it up to you,’ she says. ‘At the weekend.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘Shall I send the brats on a sleepover?’

  ‘Why n
ot? Either that or we can just lock ‘em in the cellar till we’re done.’

  The Soave seems to have gone already, though she doesn’t remember it going down. Weak, watery stuff, made for girls, not pros. She rolls off the bed and checks the fridge. A half-bottle of chilled Beaujolais and some vodka miniatures. She checks the card, and sees that the wine is £11.25. Holy cow. She’d have picked something up at Londis when she was in there, but she’d promised herself that tonight was going to be a dry night, after the other day. Hadn’t been planning on spending the afternoon with someone she once committed a murder with, of course. She shrugs and cracks the screw-top, pours half the bottle into her toothmug. I’ll think about my drinking tomorrow. No one’s going to begrudge me a glass or two tonight.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘I was wondering …’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ The wine is sour and thin. She’s never liked Beaujolais. Really has to want a drink to want to drink it. Takes another gulp and screws her face up as she swallows. I know what he’d say if he was here in the room. Sometimes, this staying-away thing’s a blessing.

  ‘I was wondering maybe if I oughtn’t to be retraining. I don’t know how much longer I can fool myself that I’m going to get back into what I used to do. And we can’t carry on like this for ever.’

  She thinks. ‘It’s a thought, I guess. No luck today then?’

  ‘No. Nothing.’

  They’re silent for a moment, then, ‘I hate this,’ he says. ‘I hate being a useless appendage. I never thought I’d be on the scrapheap at forty-two. It wasn’t the plan.’

  ‘Oh, Jim. You’re not. You’re not either of those things. I wouldn’t know what to do without you. You know that, don’t you?’

  She hears him sigh.

  ‘We’ll get through this,’ she assures him, and refills her glass. ‘It’s not for ever. There’s more to come, I promise you.’

  She’s got beeps. Takes the phone away from her head and sees that it’s a withheld number. ‘I think that’s work,’ she tells him. ‘I’d better go.’