by K. L. Jessop
“Job search,” I say softly, this time choosing to close my laptop. “Only getting a job is harder than I thought it would be.”
“How come?”
My eyes drift to the window and I watch the small raindrops trickle down the glass. “I’ve no experience in anything. I went straight into university after college but only managed the first two years before I dropped out two years ago.”
“To much pressure?”
“My sister died.” That ache presses against my chest once again. “We were studying journalism together. Same class.”
“She was your twin?”
I nod with a sad smile. “So, as you can imagine, not only have I lost my sister, I feel like I’ve lost a big part of who I am. Life after Persie died got a little raw, so I pulled out of uni and I’ve been the typical little rich girl everyone despises ever since, living off Daddy’s bank balance until I find my feet.”
Emmet sits forward, curiosity in his eyes. “And you dislike that?”
“I hate being someone’s charity case. I like my independence. I like having a purpose. Going back to university isn’t an option right now, and quite frankly, I don’t know what I even want to do with my life at all.”
This is where I miss Persie: she’d always been the reasonable one out of the two of us.
Being identical in looks and mannerisms, she used to say that we shared a brain, too: from music to favourite colours, to food we liked and things we didn’t, we were exactly the same. However, my anxieties would spiral far quicker than hers ever would.
“I want to start doing something because the longer I sit at home, the faster I fall into this gloomy self-pity, and that’s not how Persie and I were. I want to try to work past this emptiness, but I’m confused by which direction to go in.”
He studies me in a way that puts me on edge and, unsure what else to do, I find myself apologising. “God, listen to me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go on.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s fine. It’s good to get things off your chest. These past few years clearly haven’t been easy on you or your family.” His eyes soften that little bit more and he replies with such tranquillity my anxieties slowly slip away. “What’s your name?”
“Pepper.”
“How old are you, Pepper?”
“Twenty-two, almost twenty-three.”
“And you’re considering any sort of work at the moment?”
“As long as it’s legal,” I joke.
“You good with computers?”
I raise an eyebrow stating the obvious. “Journalism.”
“Right. Yeah, sorry.” He looks down at the coffee cup he’s holding and taps his fingers on the side in thought for a moment before he meets my gaze again with a smile. “I may have something for you if you’re interested. A friend of mine is an artist. He’s recently branched out and gone public with his work and won’t admit to the fact he needs help in terms of sales, commission bookings and building a bigger profile. It’s nothing too heavy and won’t be as formal or stressful as the usual work that comes with this sort of job, but I think Dex could do with the help.”
“As in be his PA?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is he based?”
“Camden Town. He’s in the process of refurbishing an old warehouse down near the lock.”
Interesting.
I sit up in my chair, suddenly intrigued by this job opportunity that is right on my doorstep. However, at the same time, something niggles me. “Has he had many applicants?”
“Not one.”
“Is it even advertised?”
“Not officially, no. As I said, it’s nothing formal but there’s plenty of work.”
I study him for a second, my journalism mind flowing with uncertainty yet intrigue as to why an officer is finding work for an established artist in London.
I fold my arms together and raise a brow, already knowing the response that’s going to come from him. “He doesn’t know you’re finding him a PA, does he?”
Emmet laughs. “Oh, you’re good. No, he doesn’t.”
“So, you’re going behind his back?”
“Maybe a little, but I’ve had his back for years so it’s nothing to worry yourself about.”
“So why me?” I ask, wondering why this random man with kind eyes has suddenly popped into my life and offered me a chance to start learning to breathe again.
“Why not you?”
“Well, you know nothing about me. Don’t you need to put my name through the system to see if I’m on the law’s hit list or something?”
He laughs again. “I’m sure you’ve got a clean profile.”
“So, again, why me?”
A soft smile tugs at his lips. “Because sometimes in life, you have to give someone a chance regardless of whether or not you know them or their history. Life is about making changes, helping others and restoring humanity—that seems to have gone to shit of late.” He pauses. “And not only that, something tells me that behind the sad smile you’re wearing, you’re a breath of fresh air and perfect for what my friend is looking for.”
Seriously, who is this guy?
“Wow,” I say, a little taken aback. “How can I say no to that?”
“You don’t. You say yes…”
“What if this Dex guy says no?”
“He won’t.”
I have nothing to lose, I guess. Besides, it’s a step in the right direction to getting sorted. It can’t be that difficult organising bookings and taking sale payments.
Go for it, Pep.
My sister’s voice rings around my mind, and a little unexpected glow of excitement hits me. “And you’re serious about this? You’re not messing with me?”
“Pepper, it may have escaped your attention, but I’m a police officer. Yes, I’m serious.”
“Well, it’s so random. How many police officers give strangers a job?”
“This one does.” He thumbs his chest. “Say, yes.” The sheer look of pleading and determination in his eyes is enough to have me cave.
“Okay, fine.” I sigh with a smile. “But for the record, behind this sad smile, I’m really a firecracker.”
The widest grin grows across Emmet's lips, making his warm, green-blue eyes sparkle.
God, he’s a charmer. The ladies must love him. In the few minutes that he’s been sitting at this table, it’s like I’ve known him a lifetime, and other than being a police officer, I know nothing about him at all.
As he takes a clean napkin from the small pile on the table, he reaches for a pen in his pocket, writing down a name and handing the napkin to me. The words ‘Dexter Wilson - Street Artist’ are scribbled in black, and suddenly, apprehension pools in my stomach pushing my excitement aside.
“Erm, I know nothing about street art? Is this going to be a problem?”
“Not essentially as you’d be there to help build his profile and take control of sales. Dexter is more than a street artist, which I’m sure you will find out in good time. Do your research along the way to get up to speed and everything will fall into place—” He stops and presses his finger to his earpiece, listening as his radio cuts in with what I can only assume is details of a response. “Shit. I’ve got to go.” Taking the napkin from me again, he scribbles down a number before standing, his partner that was at the counter now at our table. “This is my number. Text or call and I’ll forward on his address to you. I’ll let Dexter know you’re due to start. Give me a few days so I can smooth it over with him.”
My eyes widen and uncertainty makes me rise to my feet. “Smooth it over?”
“Trust me, he’ll be fine. I have to go.”
I retake the napkin from Emmet before he heads for the door.
“Oh and, Pepper? It was lovely to meet you.”
“Yes. Likewise.” I smile, but he disappears before I can say anything else, running down the road to the patrol car.
Standing, I look down at the napkin in astonishment, brush
ing my fingers over the inked letters and numbers.
Did that really happen?
I squeal inwardly with excitement that I’ve found something and can slowly get my head sorted. Nodding to the waitress and holding up my coffee cup to signal I’ll have another, I open my laptop for the second time today and start my research on street art, pleased that I’ve finally got a smile on my face for good reason and hoping that it stays.
Chapter Two
Dexter
I lay on the cold, wet concrete of my rooftop apartment and wonder when it will all end or more to the point, why the fuck I’m still here.
My feet are bare, my saturated clothes clinging to me like a second skin as heavy rain pours from thick black clouds that have been threatening this shithole of a city.
To the human-eye, London is nothing but vivid colours: a tourist attraction coated in black and gold paint. But I am not them, and I’m certainly no fucking human. I was conceived by a bitch, raised by the devil and left among the dead. This urban environment is not vivid: it’s nothing more than a shadowed wasteland with death, darkness and screams. Every time my eyes flutter closed, it identifies that I am alive yet every bead of rain that runs off my wet fingers as I stare at my hand tells me that I’m not.
I feel nothing, not anymore, and I welcome the friendly chill that has wrapped itself around my bones, numbing my muscles and any part of existence I have inside.
A walking corpse that should be forgotten.
A lifeless soul with a tainted heartbeat.
A fucked-up mess in a web of destruction.
It’s just a bad day.
Knowing that doesn’t ease the tight vice that’s closing around my organs with every second that goes by. It never does—nothing eases the pressure no matter what day I’m having.
“Dex!”
I hear Emmet shout as thunder rumbles through the sky. I let out a heavy sigh and close my eyes at the interruption, hoping he’ll turn away and leave. But it’s Emmet, and like a boomerang, the fucker just keeps coming back.
“Dexter! What the fuck are you doing?”
Being close to her.
“Get inside. Now!” he orders.
My knuckles burn as I clench my fists with frustration but know it’s no use: he’ll never give up.
Sitting up, I scrub my hands over my wet face and feel every bone in my back crack and clunk into place as I unwillingly raise to my feet, overlooking the tedious city.
My clothes now heavy.
I only come out here to find freedom, and like always, I fail to ever find it.
As I head inside my battered, barely furnished rooftop apartment, I’m greeted by my only friend leaning against the kitchen counter, his arms folded as he wears a scowl on his face.
I smirk inwardly, knowing the verbal beating I’m about to get.
“You told me you stopped that shit.”
“I lied,” I grunt, taking the towel from the back of the kitchen door and drying my face as water runs off my long, unruly hair, my body now adjusting to the heat and making me break out in chills: chills I tolerate more than others ever would; chills that seem to be my only warmth these days.
Emmet is silent; the third-degree that he usually bring seems to have simmered before it’s even fallen from his tongue—either that or he’s used to this shit now.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“No.” I walk over to the kitchen table and take hold of the bottle of Jack Daniels that is calling to my thirst. On opening it, I take a large gulp and let the burn filter into my bloodstream before taking another. Days like this, Jack D is my only friend: he calms the storm inside me. Days like this where it’s twice the battle. It’s twice the exhaustion. Twice the reality. Twice the guilt. Everything is fucking doubled and it messes with my head that’s already confused.
“How long were you out there this time?”
“Most of the night.”
“Jesus, Dex.” He sighs.
“Don’t, Emmet,” I warn, taking another mouthful of whiskey. “I don’t need your concern shit because I’ve heard it all before.”
“But you said you stopped—”
“No. I said I’d stopped doing it as often as I had. I never said I stopped doing it altogether. I can’t!” I glare before pointing at him. “You know I can’t.”
He knows my reasons for the shit that I do, and yes, most people would think that I’m fucking irrational. But I have nothing and no one, and the only form of comfort I can get is from attempting to be close to her by doing what I do. So I do it. Sometimes it’s all I have; other times it’s the only thing I need.
“Are you still taking your meds?”
“Fuck sake,” I growl, slamming the JD bottle down on the table. “How many more times? Yes, I’m taking my meds.” I glare at him and he holds his stare back as my jaw muscles tighten. In defeat, I sit down on the kitchen chair, drinking more from the bottle. I hate fighting with Emmet. He is the only person I have in my life, the only one willing to help and the only one who has stayed around after all the shit I have put him through. I know he means well, but sometimes he still doesn’t get it.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I admit, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Every time I closed my eyes, she was all I saw.”
There had been a time when my words had caused sympathy to cloud his eyes. Now, there’s just understanding. This isn’t the first time he’s seen me this way, and it won’t be the last. But fuck if I’m going to change for anyone.
I glance over at him. “It’s just a bad day.”
He nods, relaxing his position and taking my word for it. He’s ditched the boys in blue uniform for a pair of blue jeans and grey T-shirt. His phone and car keys are on the side, which means he’s sticking around for a few hours.
He wanders around my poor excuse for a kitchen finding food like he’s some celebrity chef. “I take it you haven’t eaten?”
I shake my head. “I’m not hungry.”
“Go get in the shower and grab some dry clothes. I’ll fix you up something.” Ignoring my refusal to eat is also something he does.
“I don’t need babysitting, you know. Like I said, it’s just a bad day.”
He turns to look at me, a hint of humour in his tone. “So you said, motherfucker, but I’m starving.”
An unexpected grin creeps across my face. Regardless of the space I crave on days like this, I’m glad he’s here to take my mind off things. “So that’s why you’re really here. I thought you’d come to check up on me.”
“Finished a late shift and couldn’t wait till I got home,” he says with his head in my fridge, looking for his requirements.
“Alright,” I say, taking another swig from the bottle and standing from the chair before heading to the shower. “Make yourself at home, Cinders. I’ll have two eggs.”
As the hot spray of the shower glides over my skin and releases the tension in my aching muscles, I rest my head against the tiled wall, watching the water swirl around the plughole and hoping it will take away the murky depths of my soul that defines who I am.
Defeated. That’s all I ever seem to feel when a bad day strikes. Emmet has always had the ability to ease off the darkness, but the depth of my history goes beyond everything. The dark is my home. It’s all I know, all I’ve lived with and all I deserve. It’s both my freedom and my abduction.
Drying off, I scrub my hair with the towel and run my fingers through it before twisting it up into a bun. Stepping into grey jogging bottoms and a black T-shirt, I head out of the bathroom as the smell of food wafts though the studio apartment. I smirk when I see my friend swinging his hips to the music that now comes through my radio, moving the bacon around in the frying pan as he goes. My little moment of being amused is soon wiped when I find a hot cup of coffee on the kitchen table in replace of the alcohol.
A growl of frustration rumbles through my chest as I sit down, taking the damn cup and looking at the coffee as if it’s toxic. My eyes are now heavy, m
y body warmer, but the battle in my mind is still a full-blown war. “You dance like that in front of your co-workers?”
“Fuck no,” he chuckles. “I’d have my arse teased for the rest of my life.”
“How was the shift?” I ask, scrunching my face up in distaste at the coffee.
“Okay. Quiet actually.”
“No bad guys to catch this time?”
“No, but seeing your grumpy arse made up for it.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughs, placing a plate of food in front of me. A full English that I would usually devour but that looks less appetising today.
“Eat, Dex,” Emmet says, knowing what I’m thinking.
Taking the fork, I start to eat. I’ve known Emmet for six years. I first met him when he approached me outside an abandoned shop. I’d been sitting in the doorway drawing pictures on the concrete to try to earn money for food. His six-foot frame had stood over me, his police uniform making him look all hard and professional, even though I could tell he was a puppy dog under it all. He’d said he was visiting the homeless on the back of a complaint from the city council and asking the unfortunate to move on, but the next thing I’d known, he’d been sitting beside me, giving me the time of day—something no one else ever had.
That’s what happens when you’re on the streets: people look at you with disgust and carry on. You’re kicked, spat at, mugged, beaten… You name it, it comes with the territory. But it had only taken one person to make me forget who I was for a moment—taken me out of hell. Emmet had been that guy weeks later when I’d found myself being arrested one night because the monster in me come out to play, leaving me breaching the peace of this shitty London town. All I’d been able to think about while I was read my rights was how fucking good it would be to have shelter for the night and food in my stomach.
After that night, my life changed as Emmet gave me so much more than an official warning and a hot meal.
“Oh, don’t freak out, but I’ve found you a personal assistant,” he says casually with a mouthful of food.
