by Nicci Cloke
It was just starting to get busy that time of the evening, lots of people in suits who’d popped in on the way home from work for a flutter or a spot of special karaoke if you catch my drift. There were some students piling into one of the booths and I guessed they probably were actually going to do karaoke and soon enough you’d be able to hear them all bouncing up and down on the sofas and singing the words wrong, even though they had them on the screen for you. I went and sat at an empty spot on one of the tables and changed a couple of quid to chips. I watched the cards being turned over and the chips being raked in and it was nice to just watch and listen and not have to think just for a bit. Looking back now it’s easy to see I was beginning to have the tickly prickly feeling at the bottom of my belly that things weren’t quite how they should be and so maybe that was why I was finding myself in Lucky Chips or on the lappy more and more. I learnt a long time ago that when you’re winning or waiting to win – and you can wait for ages and ages but if you still reckon it will happen one day someday then that’s still all right – any tickly prickly feelings go away. Because everything can change on a gamble, even if it’s made with your feet sticking to the sludgy carpet or with a bloke dribbling on your shoe. Magic’s everywhere if you take a chance on it, and only people who live in the too-late hours in the grimmest of gambling joints know this for sure. Your whole life is waiting for you on the stickiest cards or on the last creaky spin of a wheel. And for me it was like Saffy was too, like a tiny Borrower-size Saffy was peeking out from behind the stacks of chips under the dirty glass in front of the croupier, or just perched on the roulette wheel on black number 7 with her little legs crossed under her, grinning up at me with all her long hair whirling up as the wheel spun round and round. And I knew that one day I’d win and I could bundle up my little beauty in money and love and lovely things and we could stay happy for ever and ever. And that for sure was worth a little flutter on.
Thing was, money wasn’t exactly lying about ready for fluttering. Saffy was studying for her degree so she got a bit of a loan and she still worked at a clothes shop at weekends and on her days off when she could and I kept taking as many extra shifts in the bar as I could, sometimes splits all week. But with the rent and bills and everything, we didn’t have much spare for gambling on dreams. And more and more Saffy was wanting us to use what we had left over to snuffle up our noses. It’s not like I didn’t enjoy a bit of a buzz every now and again, or all the time when we first got together, when it was all highs and woahs and we could just jabber on at each other for hours and hours and float around on happy wonder. And I felt like a bit of a wet, thinking we should give that a rest, but I was starting to think I’d quite like to snuggle up with her every night and drink big buckets of tea and watch the telly and eat our tea and not wake up with mouths that had been PrittSticked up on the insides and runny noses that hurt your head too much to sniff back up. I just wanted me and Saf to have a real life, you know, something that we could still be doing when we were old and grey and didn’t have big enough lungs to snort up a yummy line of gak. But I did want her to have fun and be happy, more than anything ever. And I wanted to have fun with her. Sometimes I just wanted to burst out laughing, right in the middle of us doing the dishes or making the bed, just crack up chuckling, because I was that happy. She just made all the air sing and everyone dance and it was just by being, just by wandering around the world and not even realising how ace she was.
So I guess that’s why when she sent me a text a minute later as a nine of clubs and a five of hearts were turned over, asking if I fancied picking up on my way home, it didn’t take me long to say yes. And to be fair to her, that’s a good hand to twist on.
It only seemed like a bad idea for about five minutes but for those five minutes I sat there all smug and happy with myself, like I was king of the church or head boy. And then I remembered how it felt, just sitting in the same saggy spot of our shit sofa and chatting away to her with all our half-started conversations crashing into each other and carrying on in each other’s directions, and deciding to rack up each line and looking at each other with that naughty face and being the first to say, Shall we … and seeing the sun coming up at the top of the concrete wall through the tiny window and looking at each other with that same naughty face and saying, Oops, but just not caring because we were in a tiny bubble of wonder, where you can talk about everything all at once and still have so much more that there just isn’t time to say. So even before my chips had run out I’d started standing up off my stool and looking for Alice’s number on my phone. Her bloke – who was the same guy she’d sacked me off for on that very first party night, as it goes, so I guess you can’t bear a grudge – had started dabbling in dealing, so I sent her a text asking if I could pick up and I got my stuff and shoved the last couple of sticky-chip-fat Lucky Chips chips in my pocket and I walked towards the door.
It’s always a bit confusing, seeing that little rectangle of daylight through the glass in Lucky Chips’s doors when you feel like it’s been nighttime for about a million years, but that’s just the magic of casinos – they have all sorts of tricks for you, like having no windows and making the carpets all swirly-whirly so that you can’t see your chips if you drop ’em and you can’t see the sick you’re walking in and so on and so forth. But I blinked my mole eyes at the light and then I made it out and I walked slow waiting for Alice to text me so I could have a little diversion round there to pick up a present for the Safster.
Across the road and down a bit from Lucky Chips was a concrete square with a couple of bus stops around the edges and concrete blocks as benches in the middle and a big screen that showed the news to the pigeons and the crisps packets which were scuttling around and to the two people waiting at opposite stops where I’d never seen a bus stop ever. Up on the screen Fate Jones was having a little flick of her hair and the newsreader was telling us that it was three days now and she was still missing. I felt a bit shit actually, looking up at her and wondering what had happened to her. From what they were saying, her parents were proper nice folks, well off but into charity and all of that, nice little sister and a boyfriend who loved her. I stopped and watched for a bit, waiting for the jumpy buzz of my phone in my pocket. They were doing a video-link interview with a police bloke, who was still asking people who’d been around that night to come forward. She’d been at a pub quiz at her local, the same one she went to each week with the same group of mates, only this time round she’d left early, on her tod, because she was feeling a bit dodgy. Nobody had seen her since. It made you think about how it’d feel to be one of the mates, and whether or not you’d have been different and left with her and got her home okay, or whether you’d have just taken a chance because it was the same place you went every week and things that are the same feel safe.
My phone was buzzing in my pocket and it was time to chip off. I looked up at Fate Jones’s fluttery hair and I had a little secret thought, which said, Hope you’re all right, chick, and then I scarpered off to Alice’s.
It got to Friday, with the happy end-of-the-week feeling bursting out of both of us and we decided to have a couple of people round. We went through phases, me and Saffy, where sometimes we just wanted to live under a duvet for as many hours as we could stretch a weekend into, and sometimes we wanted to let everyone we loved into our little bubble, the more the merrier. So Alice and her bloke came round, and Saffy’s friend Delilah and my mate Eddie and his housemate Weird Brian, who wasn’t all that weird turns out but it was quite a catchy nickname so it had stuck. We were all standing around the kitchen even though there was the sofa and the chair and Quin’s duvet to sit on, because that’s always what happens at parties, it’s like there’s a magical magnet in a kitchen. Although it might be a bit to do with being closer to the booze, thinking about it. I’d set my decks up on the bit of the counter nearest the lounge – and furthest away from the sink and the drinks – and kept going over to have a little fiddle. Weird Brian was licking his l
ips and looking at Lilah’s boobs, which if I’m honest we all were a bit because sometimes you just can’t help it when you’re trying to talk about Top Idol or music or the weather and they’re just there all boobylicious. I flicked through some of the plastic wallets of songs I had stacked up and stopped listening to the conversation while I tried to remember what kind of music each person liked best.
Alice came over and started looking through my new records and bopping her head along to the music. She’d tied this spotty scarf round her hair and had big round red earrings in. She was looking really nice and Al always looked nicest when she was happy so I smiled a little smile to myself and gave her a squeeze with one arm. She grinned up at me.
‘How’s it going, love?’
I changed the song with my other hand and took the headphones off my neck. ‘Good, yeah, Al. Everything good with you?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ She winked over at her bloke and I tried for about the millionth time to remember what his name was. I’d met him loads of times and got on fine with him but his name was one of those things that never stuck in my head, which is a bit like a sieve as my mum used to tell me all the time. She looked back at me and it was like she was going to say something then changed her mind and took a sip of her beer instead. ‘Everything all right with Saffy?’ she said, as she swallowed.
I looked over at Saf. She had a big pretend daisy tucked behind her ear, and this floaty pink dress on with tiny flowers dancing about all over it. She looked gorgeous-fantastic and she was laughing at something Eddie had said. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Everything’s great.’
A bit later we were chomping on the big bag of crisps Al had brought round and talking about whether we’d rather be Richard or Judy. It turned out that on balance both had pros and cons and so it was quite a tough choice. Then there was that little break in the chat that you get sometimes when everyone’s just finished laughing and nobody says anything for a minute or two and you all kind of go aaah and look at your feet.
‘So,’ Weird Brian said after a bit, ‘what do we reckon’s going to happen with this Fate Jones thing?’
You see what I mean? He was a bit weird. Not really party chat, is it?
‘Horrible, it is,’ Al said. ‘I feel so bad for her parents.’
‘Rich though, aren’t they?’ Eddie said, like that was okay then, because Eddie was a bit like that, always thinking bad about people. ‘Must be something to it.’
‘Ransom, you mean?’ Saffy said, looking all thoughtful and clever like always.
‘Yeah, yeah, that’s the word,’ Eddie said, getting into it then. ‘I reckon someone’ll send them a note soon, you know, with all the letters cut out of newspapers and magazines and that. And if they pay up, they’ll get her back.’
We all thought about that.
‘It might be like that girl a few years ago, remember?’ Al’s bloke said. ‘You know, the one who was kept prisoner for years and years and fell in love with the bloke in the end?’
‘Stockholm syndrome,’ Weird Brian said, and I thought, I bet he watches all those true-crime programmes in the middle of the night, definitely his thing.
‘Nah,’ Lilah said. ‘Cos they’re always little girls, aren’t they, and then they don’t know any different. She’s grown-up. I reckon it’s just another normal horrible thing, some randomer off the street mugged her or whatever.’
Luckily she didn’t go into what ‘whatever’ meant because, fair enough, news and current affairs and that are party talk if you’re that way inclined but as far as I was concerned rape and murder aren’t all that suitable for a social atmosphere and I was feeling a bit shifty on my feet with the turn of events. I wanted to ask everyone whether they’d rather be Ant or Dec but now it seemed all inappropriate.
‘I mean,’ she said, ‘I don’t really get why it’s on the news all the time. It must happen, like, every day to loads of people. What’s the fuss?’
‘I’m telling you,’ Eddie said, even though he hadn’t, ‘it’s cos they’re posh and important and la-di-da!’
Lilah took another swig of her wine and nodded a bit too hard. ‘AND white.’
There’s not much you can say to that without falling into a big hole of awkward and so Al piped up and changed the subject a bit. ‘You seen those new billboards everywhere? The moving ones? Must have cost a mint.’
I went and turned up the music a bit and Lilah started dancing. The night turned back into little pockets of chat instead of one big circle, and Al started dancing too, a bottle of wine under one arm and her headscarf coming loose and falling in her eyes when she laughed.
I was halfway in the fridge getting beers out of the back and noticing how mouldy the cheese was when I heard her.
‘Dave,’ she said, which was Al’s bloke’s name and Saffy never had a problem remembering it, ‘got any bag?’
There was a bit of a pause and my breath puffed out all frosty.
‘No, mate,’ he said. ‘Meant to say – can we settle up tonight?’
‘Oh, shit, I forgot all about that! So sorry, hun – I get paid next Thursday, can I drop it round then for you?’ Her voice sounded all sweet and singsong, like little birds and bunnies might hop through the door any second and start pouring drinks and emptying ashtrays for her.
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Thanks for reminding me – don’t let me forget again!’
With that she floated off to dance with Lilah and I came back out, bumping my head on the shelf on the way.
A while later I rolled a ciggie and went out to the front step. It was fine to smoke in the house and we did it all the time, but Lilah’s singing was getting a bit much and Weird Brian kept trying to talk to me about the girl who lived across the road from him, but mostly I went out because I thought Saffy was there because she’d disappeared. So I ducked out and found the front door open but out on the concrete no Saffy. I lit my cig and craned my neck to look up at the pavement to see where she’d gone. My heart did a little skippity-skip to the beat, but as my first drag was filling up the last pink bits of my lungs, I heard her tippytoe footsteps along the concrete and then she was at the top of the stairs like a miracle or a dream.
‘Hey, beautiful,’ she said, and her hair was all lit up from behind by the orange streetlight like an angel’s.
‘Hello, lovely,’ I said, and she skipped down the stairs and hopped off the last one to stand next to me. ‘Where you been?’
‘To get us a little something,’ she said, and she waved a baggy between her tiny fingers, catching the same orange light like it was glowing from inside or on fire.
I was about to ask her where she’d got it and how she’d paid for it and to tell her that everyone was going to make a move soon, but just as I looked down at her smiling face and opened my mouth, the door burst open and Weird Brian came strolling out, followed by Dave carrying Alice in his arms and then Lilah with her arm round Eddie’s neck.
‘Sorry, guys,’ Dave said, hitching up Al’s head where it was dangling over his elbow. ‘Ally was sick in your sink. Better get her home.’
‘No worries.’ We both nodded. ‘See you, guys.’
They bobbled off up the steps and their chit-chatter faded into the dark as they walked away.
‘Oh, well,’ Saf said. ‘More for me and you, baby.’
Her nails were painted dark dark inky-pen-blue and they drew beautiful patterns all over my arms and round my cheeks and down my neck. ‘I love you,’ she said, right into the middle of my ear, and the words swirled all round my brain and made everything inside me glowing and bright.
The next day while I was clinking all the empty bottles about in a binbag, I listened to the radio where everyone was still talking about Fate Jones. It had been longer than a week by then and all kinds of characters were sneaking out of the woodwork to talk about her and how sad it was. So far I’d heard from her primary-school teacher, the bloke who drove the bus she got to work, the old girl who lived three doors down from her mum and dad, and
the busker who sang Beatles songs outside her university library. It wasn’t exactly stirring stuff. Simon Cowell had apparently said that all the Top Idol contestants would wear Fate Jones T-shirts on that night’s show. Which was nice. Even though it was really bad that she was gone, it kind of made you feel a bit warm in the heart, seeing how everybody wanted to help. Made you feel a bit happier about people, in a funny way, because even though there were baddies who might or mightn’t have done something to this blonde clever girl who volunteered at an animal shelter in her spare time and taught little kids ballet, there were a million other people in the world who were good and would look out for her. It somehow made the odds seem a bit fairer.
Once all the bottles were picked up, I put the bag outside the front door and wandered back in. I stood in the doorway to the lounge and looked about for a bit with my hands on my hips like I was about to do something important but I didn’t know what it was yet. The radio had started playing music again and it was a bit lonely without all the sad and worried voices chatting out of it, but it was quite dancy music so on the plus side it did make you feel like doing something. Saffy was out at uni in the library and I knew she would be for ages. She was really near the end of her course and so she had loads of work to do that she needed a lot of space for. And that’s what made me think.
I went over to the corner where the telly was, and I stood there for a bit with my hands on my hips again. I pulled the telly over to the middle of the wall and scuffed away the dented square on the dodgy carpet. I rolled Quin’s duvet up a bit and moved it more behind the sofa. I knew he’d understand, he was just that type of bloke. He hadn’t ever complained about having to kip on the floor or about people dancing around him half the time when he was trying to get an early night. He hadn’t been about that much of late and I knew Saffy was probably missing him. He’d been there for her through things I didn’t really understand, things she’d never told me about, about her illness and the place they’d sent her. For ages and ages it had seemed like it was nothing, just something she occasionally accidentally got close to mentioning and then speedily steered off in another direction so I figured it was just all in the past and didn’t matter any more. It had been Quin who sat me down once, when Saf was out at work, and said to me, ‘William,’ cos he always called me William, just him and my mum really, ‘I think you should probably know a bit about Saffy’s illness even though she probably won’t ever tell you,’ and I’d said okay, not sure what to expect, and he’d made me a cup of tea and explained how bad it had got when she was younger and about the place her parents had sent her and how that was why it was really important that we took care of her and kept her out of that dark space she’d been swallowed by before. And I’d nodded and agreed and we never mentioned to her that we’d had the little chat and after a few more months of everything being fine had passed I started forgetting myself because I knew Saffy couldn’t go back there now, not when she had me and this little flat of love and light to live in. Regardless, even though that was all in the past and we didn’t need to talk about it, having Quin around was important. I knew that and I made a note to myself to organise a night in, just the three of us, when Quin wasn’t out at one of his parties or on a date or logged on to Grindr.
