The Ice Cream Girls

by Dorothy Koomson

  poppy

  It’s Fate.

  It’s meant to be. I am supposed to clear my name. That’s the only way I can explain the fact that she is living down here, too. The two of us are still linked and we will be until I have made her confess.

  First though, I need to find out everything I can about her so that I can work out how to approach her. What to say that will get her to tell the truth. And when that happens, Dad will be able to look at me, talk to me – I will come back to life and he will love me again; Mum will stop looking so nervous around me, as if she is waiting for the time when she will catch me sneaking into her room to put a pillow over her face. When Serena confesses, I’ll be a free woman. I might even get a special letter from the Queen, apologising for my lost years.

  I’ll get my life back. This part of it, anyway. No probation appointments, no having to tick the previous convictions box. I could even commit a petty crime and not worry about being sent back to prison for the rest of my days. And I can finally, finally stop waiting for my new life to begin.

  ‘Ms Argyle, room five,’ says the voice over the tannoy system. ‘Ms Argyle, room five.’

  I rise from my seat and carefully replace the magazine I have been flicking through back on the low wooden table in front of me. That’s what Penelope Argyle is like: neat and tidy; doesn’t like to make a mess, doesn’t like to cause a fuss.

  I walk along the narrow corridor and check the numbers on the doors until I reach room five. I knock and enter without waiting for an answer.

  The man inside stands and smiles. It’s a warm, friendly smile and I almost falter. Then the picture on the desk catches my eye: husband, wife, two children. All grinning.

  ‘Hello there, I’m Doctor Evan Gillmare. Take a seat and tell me how I can help you.’

  I had to come here, because this is another piece in the jigsaw of the life she stole from me. I could have married a good-looking doctor. I could have had two children. If she hadn’t done what she did, all this could have been mine. And I need to get as close as possible to this life before I speak to her.

  Dr Gillmare is reading the form I filled in so I take the opportunity to scrutinise his room. It is crammed with books on oak shelves, and all around the room are dotted photos of his family. Him and his wife. Him and his children. The wife and the children. My eyes keep coming back to the photo on the desk. For some reason, it is the one that needles me the most. The four of them, the parents with one arm locked around each other, one around the shoulder of a child, are all laughing – laughing not merely smiling – at the camera. Maybe it’s because they look so complete. As if nothing can tear them apart because they are four and they are perfect that way.

  ‘So, Ms Argyle, it says on the form that you’ve just moved to the area.’ Dr Gillmare makes me jump by speaking to me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you from here originally?’ His voice is rich, warm, deep. I could bathe in his voice, float in its beauty and never come out.

  ‘No, I’m from London. I have family living down here, I need to be near them.’

  ‘OK. You know it’s a little unusual for me to see patients without their notes or without them being registered here, but you said it was an emergency and you asked for me by name.’ He is good looking, of course. Of course. Serena wouldn’t go for anyone ordinary or plain. First it was Marcus, now it’s Dr Gillmare, and I’m sure in between there have been a host of men who have all been tall and handsome, if not dark. Dr Gillmare has empathy to top off his looks. If I was a real patient, I would feel comfortable talking to him about virtually anything. He has that kind of face, that kind of manner. No wonder he wears the widest wedding ring I have ever seen on a man and has a picture of his family on every free inch of space – he wants patients to know he is very married because I’m sure they fall in love with him with alarming regularity.

  Even though I know who he is, I could easily see myself joining the Dr Gillmare fan club. And if Serena gets sent down . . .

  ‘Ms Argyle?’ he asks.

  I jump slightly because that’s me, isn’t it? ‘Yes?’ I ask, flushing slightly at the thought that was unwinding in my mind.

  ‘You asked for me by name.’

  ‘Erm, yes. Someone I met a while back said you were the doctor to see.’

  ‘OK. As I said, it’s unusual to see a patient without their notes or them being fully registered here, but as it’s an emergency, I’ve made an exception. What is your emergency?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I . . . um . . . I . . . need the morning-after pill,’ I stutter. That’s the best emergency I can come up with.

  ‘OK,’ he says, swivelling back to his desk and tapping on his computer. ‘When did you have the unprotected sex?’

  Damn it! How long is it before it’s too long? Forty-eight hours? Seventy-two? Ninety-six? I can’t remember. I spent so much time convincing the receptionist to let me see him that I forgot to do the other part of the research.

  ‘Um . . . yesterday? Yesterday morning.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘At about eight o’clock.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, eight till about eight-thirty.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Actually, eight-forty-five.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Actually, you know what? Let’s just call it nine. It was virtually nine. So let’s just call it nine.’

  ‘All right, nine it is. We could even say nine-thirty if it makes you any happier?’

  ‘No, no, nine’s fine.’

  ‘Good. But you do know that you can get it from most chemists now?’

  Really? No one told me. When did all these things change? From what I remember before, you had to practically have a note from your mother saying you were allowed before anyone would even say the words ‘the Pill’ in front of you, let alone give you the morning-after one. Now you can just wander into a chemist and ask for it? Has the world gone mad?

  ‘You didn’t have to wait to see a doctor.’

  ‘Oh, um, right, yeah. It’s just, that I . . . I mean, of course I knew that. I just . . . I just wanted to see a doctor to be sure. You know?’

  ‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right. If you roll up your sleeve, I’ll check your blood pressure before I give you the prescription.’

  He has soft, gentle hands that brush my skin as he slips the armband around my bicep. I watch his hands, with their square nails and fine wrinkles eased into the smooth, dark brown skin.

  ‘Your blood pressure is a little high,’ he says. ‘Nothing to be worried about, though.’

  ‘I get nervous around doctors,’ I explain. Especially ones married to people who had me sent to prison.

  ‘I understand. OK, I’ll prescribe you one dose of emergency contraception. It is only one pill now, so take it as soon as possible. If you are sick or vomit, the pill may not work so you should come back and see us. Your period should arrive as normal, but if you are late do come back as there is a chance – a small one, but still a chance – that you may be pregnant. Is that OK?’ He has been typing away while talking and then printing out the prescription rather than writing it, but he’s managed to make me feel as if I am the most important person in the whole of the surgery.

  ‘Yeah, that all sounds fine,’ I say, feeling mollified. I have taken advantage of the good nature of this man; it’s not his fault he is married to a murderer. He probably doesn’t even know.

  ‘Is there anything else you wanted to discuss, Ms Argyle?’ he asks in a kindly voice.

  ‘No, why should there be?’ I wave the prescription at him to show that I have everything I need.

  ‘I couldn’t help but notice the cuts on your arm,’ he says.

  I’d almost forgotten they were there. They are from such a long time ago and the scars have faded, almost blended in to my skin. Or so I thought. I hadn’t even noticed that he had seen them. He certainly didn’t react to them. And now I
have to dream up some more lies.

  ‘Don’t feel you have to explain. Or talk about it,’ he says before I further add to my list of misdemeanours. ‘But if you do want to talk about it, about anything, you can always come back to us here, or we’ll help you find a counsellor.’

  I say nothing because I do not know what to say. He clearly doesn’t think I am a freak – he is being professional and caring without prying. He is empathy personified.

  ‘We’re here to help,’ he says.

  I nod and stand. ‘Thanks, doctor,’ I say, feeling horrible as I open his door and close it behind me.

  serena

  ‘Mum, is Dad your best friend?’ Conrad asks.

  ‘I suppose he is,’ I say. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘If Dad broke something, would you get cross with him even though he’s your best friend?’

  Ah, I see. My crafty son has come out to join me in the garden. I had been staring up at the stars, waiting patiently for a shooting star to streak across the grey-black night. If I see a shooting star I’ll tell Evan tonight, I’d thought as I tugged my coat around my body and settled down to watch. If I’m meant to tell him tonight, the shooting star will be my inspiration.

  Con had come out about ten minutes ago and had climbed on to my lap and, grateful to have him behaving like a baby for a while, I’d pulled him in towards me so he could be protected from the cold by my coat, too. He’d sat so still for so long I thought he’d nodded off to sleep, when instead he was using this quality time to lay the groundwork for confessing what he had done.

  ‘Yes, I’d be cross but if he was sorry and told me what he had broken, before I found out what it was, I wouldn’t stay that cross for long.’

  ‘OK,’ Con says and slips off my lap to run back inside.

  ‘Hey, hey, what did you break?’

  He shakes his head, confused. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So why were you asking about if Dad broke something?’

  ‘Because Dad dropped your hair straighty thing down the toilet when he was being a famous rapper in the bathroom and he asked me to ask you if you’d be cross with him.’

  ‘He what?!’ I reply, leaping up out of my chair.

  ‘He said to say he was sorry.’

  ‘He will be! You tell him he can sleep in the spare room tonight and buy me a new pair.’

  ‘OK,’ Conrad says happily. He goes towards the house and stops just short of the back double doors, looks up and cups his hands around his mouth. ‘MUM SAID YOU CAN SLEEP IN THE SPARE ROOM TONIGHT AND YOU HAVE TO BUY HER MORE!’ he bellows.

  The bedroom window, which overlooks the garden, immediately opens and Evan leans out, tapping his finger on his lips, trying to hush up our son. Evan taught Con to do the ‘Shhhhhhh’ tapping his finger on his lips thing when he was ten months old.

  ‘AND SHE SAID YOU’RE GOING TO BE SORRY!’ Conrad adds for good measure.

  ‘Right,’ I say to Conrad, putting my hands on his shoulders, ‘now that all our neighbours know our business, let’s go to bed, shall we?’ I guide him towards the house.

  ‘OK, Mum,’ he says happily.

  It’s not until much later, when everyone in the house is asleep and Evan is snoring gently beside me, that I remember the shooting star promise. I did not see one, so I do not have to tell. But, I want to. I shift across the bed, curl up into the shapes left by my husband’s well-built solid form and loop my arms around him.

  ‘I did a really stupid thing once upon a time, Evan,’ I say into warm, soft creases of his neck. ‘And I want you to know about it.’

  poppy

  Glancing at my watch, I realise that I am late for my Tuesday job.

  I have two jobs now: on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I clean for a woman in Hove. I’d got that job through Raymond Balaine, an old friend of Mr Fitch, my probation officer. I’d met Raymond at the end of last week, in his office above a shop in Brighton town centre, and instantly disliked him. It wasn’t simply because he looked very much like a sunburnt, overweight, gout-ridden tomato, nor that when he spoke he sounded only a couple of evolutionary rungs above a grunting animal; it was mainly that he was at pains to tell me that he didn’t like ex-jailbirds, he wouldn’t piss on me and ‘my kind’ if I were on fire, and I’d better not mess up. In an ideal world I would have walked out after telling him what to do with his job, but in that world I wouldn’t also have to explain the twenty-year gap on my CV. Miraculously, he’d found me a three-morning-a-week job almost straight away – ‘I’m desperate, so you’ll do’ – and paid weekly. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I do my other job – I watch Serena. I study her life and learn everything I can about her to learn how to approach her. How to get her to confess in the quickest way possible.

  I am going to be late to see her this morning, though, because the bed was too snugly. Too comfy and cosy. And when the alarm started to buzz away on the bedside table I reached out from under the covers and hit the snooze button before I even thought about what I was doing. I pulled the cream cotton sheet higher above my head and snuggled down, waiting for Mum to come in and remind me that if I was late it’d be my own fault. She’d then be followed five minutes later by Dad, often with a glass of orange juice, telling me the last one to breakfast wouldn’t get any bacon or sausage, depending on which one Mum was burning that morning.

  I’d stayed in my cosy, rosy memory for longer than was decent, clinging on to the sheet and the fuzziness of sleep as I waited and waited for the creak outside the door.

  After a few minutes, feeling slightly embarrassed and surprised that I’d tumbled so willingly into the memory, I’d pushed myself further into the centre of the single bed, curling myself up tighter beneath the covers, allowing the foolishness to dissipate. No one would know that I thought it was twenty years ago. No one would know that I’d gone back in time and had basked in what it was like to be loved and wanted by my parents, instead of having my father ignore me and my mother fear me.

  ‘I’ll know, Poppy,’ Marcus had said in my ear.

  ‘Like I care. And who are you going to tell?’ I said to him.

  He appeared lying beside me, his face pushed right up to mine, so close I jumped a little. ‘You, of course,’ he said simply. ‘And you’d hate that more than anything. Being reminded that you’re not as hard and resilient as you pretend. You’d hate to be reminded that you’re just a bit soft girlie who cried for her daddy every night.’

  ‘Oh, get lost,’ I’d said and threw back the sheet and the covers to leap out of bed to get away from him.

  Glancing at the red LCD numbers of the black clock radio that I’d had since I was fourteen, I realised how late I was. I’d definitely missed the paper grab, I’d miss the school run, I’d miss him leaving for work. I’d probably have to skip straight to work. Watch her go into the offices of the large insurance brokers just behind Brighton Station that she worked for. I hadn’t managed to find out, yet, what she did. Whenever I rang their switchboard and asked for her job title the disconcertingly efficient receptionist would say, ‘Just putting you through’ and before I could say, ‘No, I—’ I was being whisked into the phone system. The Internet hadn’t told me, meaning she was either too lowly to be mentioned or too important to have her details given out to the general public. With her big house and big car, two adorable children and husband, I know which one it will be. I’d hurried down the road, and came round the corner on to Boundary Road just as I saw the bus coming.

  I had to run a few feet to the bus stop, but I caught it. It was quite full, which I wasn’t used to. The bus I usually get is empty, only a few people who need to be somewhere early struggle on to it. I am surrounded, right now, by people in suits, people with bags, people who read with one hand while holding on to the poles with another, schoolchildren whose chatter spills down the stairs and babbles through the bus, punctuated by the tiny tinny sounds of the new versions of Walkmans. It’s like being back in the mess hall, a bit. So many people, all crammed together to do the
same thing, but not really communicating outside of their own little worlds; each spinning in their own orbit in the same solar system.

  As the bus trundles down New Churchington Road towards town, I pretend for a few minutes I’m like each of the adults on the bus: I have somewhere to be, I have a job or a class to attend, I am a valued member of society. No one would ever know any different. Maybe my hair is a bit different, cropped as it is to be easy to care for, maybe my clothes of skin-tight jeans and fringed suede jacket are a little too authentically retro, but that’s the beauty of Brighton – you have to try really hard to stand out or look out of place.

  I bend a little to look out of the window so I can count the beach huts up to mine. I do this every morning: counting up to eleven from the end, right near the exit from the promenade to the street.

  ‘One, two, three, four,’ I count under my breath, moving my lips as the bus moves slowly along. ‘Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, el—’ I almost cry out loud.

  There is someone standing beside my beach hut, doing something. Doing something that looks like scrawling graffiti.

  It takes a few seconds for the rest of my mind to catch up: my beach hut is being vandalised.

  The part of me that’s been paying attention reaches out and rings the bell. Several people look up, frowning – the bus obviously doesn’t usually stop here at this time of the morning. There are no schools near here, nor offices. Just flats and houses on the roads running up off New Churchington Road and on the other side of the road the sea, the beach, and the line of beach huts with their backs turned towards the road.

  ‘’Xcuse me, ’xcuse me,’ I throw at the other passengers as I struggle to get to the front and to the doors. My heart is racing and my mind is galloping beside it, both of them desperate to convince me that I counted wrong. That my beach hut isn’t being defaced, that someone isn’t in the process of doing this to me.