by Alex Marwood
Fatboy goes ‘oof’, and goes down flat on his face. Change and keys and fountain pens jingle out of his pockets and the wallet flies from his fingers, lands on the tarmac four feet away.
She’s leapt over the top of him and snatched it up before he’s even drawn a breath. She is fifteen feet away before she hears his bellow of rage. Cher runs for her life.
No lights show in windows as she flies down Roupell Street, hammers her bare feet along the flagstones and hopes to God she will encounter no broken glass. Thudding footsteps, thumping heart; the wig is starting to slip on her head and she clamps a hand to hold it on. Lets go again, for running one-armed slows her up. If it comes off, it comes off, as long as she’s out of sight before it does. Cher has always been fast on her feet. If she’d been given the chance, she would have run for the county. She’s almost reached the alley that opens to her right before she hears the scrape of his pursuing footsteps, the howling voice. ‘You… fucking… bitch!’
She reaches the mouth of the alleyway, skids into it without looking. Hits the dumpster belonging to the Thai restaurant and recovers herself before she can feel the pain. Slaps her way round it and barrels forwards into the dark. Steps in something that squelches, collects something sticky on the sole of her foot. No time to shed it; she can hear him coming towards the mouth of the alley. He’s seen her go up here. She must get out the other end before he sees her go.
The path narrows towards its top end; she has to pull her arms and shoulders in to navigate it, loses the skin on her elbow anyway.
He cannons into the dumpster, as she did. Another ‘oof’, a swear word. He’s puffing like a walrus already. He’ll run out of breath altogether long before she does.
Then she’s out, at the four-way junction on Whittesley Street. Cher turns right again. It’s less than a hundred yards to Theed Street, and if she makes it there, gets round the corner and out of sight, he will have no idea which direction she has taken. He is still sliding about at the foot of the alley. She takes the opportunity to snatch the wig from her head and runs on, dangling it like a designer handbag.
A diet of Chipsticks and Haribo, and still she makes the corner in under fifteen seconds. Rounds it to her right and lets her pace drop slightly. She can hear the train announcer in Waterloo East station as her pulse begins to slow. She turns right again and trots back to Roupell Street, retraces her steps to the foot of the alley. There’s no sign of him now, though she can hear him, cursing and casting about under the Dickensian streetlights, peering through the gloom and realising he’s lost. She hangs a left and returns to Brad Street.
The house is as she left it, the gate still on the latch. Cher glances up and down the road and steps inside. Bends double and lets herself breathe. Drops to her knees, then collapses back against the wall, chest heaving, and holds her hurty elbow. She is dizzy from adrenalin, her night vision impaired by lack of oxygen. She drops the wig on to the top of her bag and closes her eyes, holds the wallet against her stomach like a talisman.
This is shit, she thinks. It’s crazy. I can’t keep on like this. One day someone’ll catch me. I’ll get beaten up for the sake of an iPod. Chucked in YOI because I needed the price of a tin of beans and a pot noodle. Or I’ll start thinking it’s easier just to give them the blowies, and then I’ll want crack or something to block it out, and before I know it I’ll be my mum. Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe I should just give up and hand myself back.
For a moment she stops breathing altogether. Remembers why she can’t. Remembers Kyra, two years out of care, on a street corner for real, her eyes as dead as dolls’ and track marks on her ankles. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, really, she thinks. But if I’m going to end up a red-veined junkie whore, at least I’m going to do it on my own terms.
She opens her eyes and opens the wallet. Counts the notes: another fifty quid. He’s got six cards. Six. Cher can’t even get a bank account. She leafs through them. They’re not top of the range. There’s no blacks or platinums among them. But they’re cash, they’re credit, they’re all the things she’s not allowed. And tucked into the stamp pocket, a folded piece of paper, a four-figure number scrawled on it. A PIN. Just the one, but it’s a PIN. If she makes it back to Waterloo before midnight and uses the cards one by one she can straddle the witching hour and get herself a few hundred before they get cancelled.
She gets back to her feet. Unpacks the bag, pulls on the dress and a pair of leggings, replaces the Uggs. Unties her hair and frizzes it back into its messy Afro, ties a scarf round the roots. Adds thick-framed specs – one pound fifty from Primark, if she’d paid for them – and a chunky metal cross on a leather thong. Shrugs the jacket back on over the top. By the time she steps back on to Roupell Street, she’s just another office cleaner, coming off her shift.
Chapter Nineteen
Alice lies on the floor, face-up and grinning. The Lover kneels beside her and surveys his tool collection. Lidl and its special offers are a godsend. Disposing of Jecca and Katrina was a long, sweaty business, filled with noise and the fear of discovery, but thanks to Polish tradesmen and the European retailers who supply them, he feels, for the first time, fully equipped. Lined up in a row on the groundsheet he has a circular saw (£29.99), an electric carving knife (£8.99), a mini-tool kit for hobbyists (good for getting into inconvenient corners) (£19.99) amd a set of hacksaws (£6.99) – and a sledgehammer (£13.99) tucked in behind the shed in the garden, for later. God bless the Common Market, and God bless China, he thinks. All your DIY needs catered for, on the cheap.
Sic transit gloria mundi: nothing lasts for ever. The Lover knows that now. He’d hoped his ladies would carry him through to his life’s end, but it seems that, in the British climate, even the best of preservation is not foolproof. That’s why they keep the mummies in airtight boxes in the British Museum, of course. It wasn’t only the skill of the embalmers that ensured the longevity of the ancient world’s kings and queens, but the aridity of the desert winds.
Alice has become unbearable to be around. She splits and flakes, and her teeth drop from her mouth when he moves her, and he can’t ignore the fact that she smells any more. Her nails are coming away from their beds and slide about beneath the brush when he paints them. Superglue seemed to do the trick for a while, but with each passing week the dry flesh beneath deteriorates at a faster pace and they loosen again. He finds himself resenting her slightly more each day when he wakes and sees the wisps of faded hair that cling to the leathery scalp, the shrunken ears whose lobes seem to have slipped downwards until they are nearly touching her jawline, the razor-edged scapulae poking through her once-smooth shoulders. He knows that the state of her is mostly his fault, that he should have done his research more thoroughly, but still he resents her.
It’s the disappointment, he thinks. You go to all that trouble, you lavish such love and attention on someone, and they leave you anyway. No wonder I’ve started to resent her. It’s always best to end it first. But I’m tired of it, so tired of it: of picking up the pieces and carrying on, of getting fond and getting hopeful and still ending up alone.
Her eyes are closed. They have been since he held her in his arms and felt her heart stop beating. It’s another thing he holds against her: that she cannot gaze at him the way Marianne does. Discovering that you really can buy anything you like on eBay has been a huge boon, too. Marianne has beautiful green eyes; Jenaer glass dating back to the Spanish Civil war. They cost nearly fifty pounds each, but they were worth every penny. When Nikki comes out from her hiding place, blue eyes just like the ones that made him want her in the first place will be waiting to grace her face.
But, meantime, he must make space for her. There’s no room for freeloaders in his life, or in this room. And yet, he’s not without nostalgia. She had soft, soft skin. He remembers noticing it first of all about her. Lovely English skin, touched with roses, flawless. He loved to touch it, to stroke it, to feel it smooth beneath his fingertips. Hard to believe that this s
addle leather is the same substance.
She grins at him, toothlessly, appealing for mercy. But he’s over her now. It’s strange, he thinks, how quickly love can be replaced by indifference. I adored her, once, but now she’s an inconvenience, a chore that must be done to make room for better times.
‘I’m sorry, Alice,’ he says. ‘It was never going to be for ever. You knew that, surely?’
He picks up the circular saw.
Chapter Twenty
And here he is, as she knew he would be. Standing at the foot of her bed, come in, no doubt, through the open window, toying with his BlackBerry and smiling at her in the half-light. His thinning hair is swept back with gel and he wears a slick Armani suit, like the last time she saw him. His eyes catch the shaft of light that comes in through the crack in the curtains, and gleam. His smile widens, and she sees that his teeth are sharpened into daggers.
Collette is instantly awake, but is slowing herself down by the time her feet hit the floor. Tony, or Malik or Burim, turns up almost every night, at some point; always the same, always smiling. Some nights he holds a knife, or a length of electric flex. Some nights he just stands over the bed and grins. She hasn’t slept straight through since the night she ran. Sleep is a luxury whose price is security. Those who can shut the world out and leave it at will are usually blessed by a world that doesn’t want to shut them up.
She collapses back beneath her sheet, the pillow hard and lumpy beneath her head despite its newness, and stares round the room in the light that filters through the curtains, checks the corners as though he might just have stepped back into the shadows, to toy with her. He was always the sort of man who loved to toy. The sort of man who would tell a joke so his business rival would throw his head back in hearty laughter and expose his throat.
There are noises, despite the hour. The tinkle of a piano sonata, turned down but still audible through the wall. From the basement window with its safe, strong bars, American voices arguing on the TV. Cher, talking to her cat in a baby voice, and the drone of Thomas’s voice, intermittently, seemingly unanswered, the way it sounds when someone’s on the phone. In the street, quiet footsteps pass the house, surprisingly many for a road that leads nowhere. A couple walk past, laughing. In the distance, the shrieks of a fox and a tomcat disputing territory.
He will find me, she thinks. It’s only a matter of time. For all I know, he’s found me already. For all I know, he’s right outside the window.
The thought makes her cold, despite the clammy night. She throws herself from the bed and slams the window down. Slips a hand between the curtains to secure the catch, afraid, suddenly, to show herself to the world outside.
The sounds are cut off and the night goes still. I should have bought a fan. I know I can’t sleep with the window open. I’ll buy a fan tomorrow. Oh, God, I mustn’t keep spending money. I know it seems like a lot, but it’s not, when it’s all you have left, when you’ve nursing home fees to pay, when you never know when you’re going to have to run again. This air’s so still. It’s like it’s pressing down on my head. Can I live like this? Can I live like this for ever?
She sits back down on the bed, her foot brushing against the bag as she does so. I need to find a place to hide that lot, she thinks. Can’t just have it lying about. I don’t really know anything about these people, and someone has to have burgled that old lady downstairs. You’re nuts, Collette. You need to get it out of sight. Split it up and get it out of sight.
She checks the street through the chink in the curtains before she turns on the light. The pavements are empty and, apart from a pool of light falling against the street wall from Vesta’s basement window, show no signs of life. Closing the window hasn’t made her feel safer. If anything, with his presence still permeating her subconscious, it’s made her feel hemmed in. The clock on her phone tells her it’s nearly two. She won’t sleep again until dawn, at least.
She upends the bag across the bed. So little, for so much: nineteen bundles, less than a couple of centimetres thick, and one broken one, doubled over in a rubber band. Twice as much, three years ago, but even then it was little enough that it fitted into a sports bag. She takes one bundle in each hand and starts to work her way round the room, searching for hiding places.
Three years ago: red blood on white skin, and stupid Lisa frozen to the spot. Tony laughing by the bar with his whisky glass, the man on the floor coughing up a tooth, a middle molar. It bounces on the carpet, tittups up against his shoe.
Their heads, turning…
All rooms are full of hiding places, if you’re looking. She’s become a past master at finding them. She kept half her money taped in plastic bags to the back of a heavy old commode, in Paris; five thousand pounds in a Tampax box in Berlin. The trick is to remember where you’ve put it, not to lose ten grand when you move on, as she did in Naples. The armchair has a loose cover, to hide the holes and stains beneath. She tucks half a dozen bundles round the edge of the cushion, tweaks the cover to hide the bulge. Goes back to the bed, picks up two more, moves on, thoughts churning.
Should I have run?
She asks herself that every day. Maybe I could have brazened it out, stepped round the curtain and played the hard-face, one of them.
You saw what they were doing to that man. That wasn’t execution. No clean dispatch, no merciful bullet to the head, like a dog. That was torture. That was getting their kicks from watching a man choke to death on his own blood. You saw how they were enjoying it. You think they would have hesitated to use you up for afters?
And what if they didn’t? What if they took you in and made you one of their own? You know you would never have got away, right? No four weeks’ notice and bringing in doughnuts for your colleagues on your last day. Just: life as a possession, always thinking of the consequences for not doing as you’re told. You put yourself in this position the day you accepted that job, she tells herself, even if you did lie to yourself about it. No bar manager gets paid that sort of money. Not unless someone’s buying their silence.
Maybe I should have taken that policewoman up on her offer. Gone in and handed myself over. Surely a life in witness protection would be better, more stable, than this?
The man next door turns off his music and the silence is so sudden that she finds herself checking once again to ensure that she is alone. Upstairs, Cher paces, paces, paces. Collette looks in the cupboard under the sink, finds a butter dish, of all things, covered in greasy dust, and stuffs it full with money. I should get some tape tomorrow. I can stick a bundle to the back of both those drawers; that’ll take care of two of them.
And she knows the answer about the police. Has known it since she started noticing the cash pass through. He owns the police. No one operates that casually, throws his presence about, keeps his profile above the parapet, unless he feels safe. And no one who basically runs a knocking-shop feels safe from raids unless the raiders have been paid off. Someone’s in his pocket, at least one someone. And she doesn’t know who. Never will, even when the knock in the night lets her know she’s been found.
Scarlet blood on white skin, fingers crushed and bent like Twiglets. That won’t be me. I won’t let it be me.
She’s sweating like a mule in the airless room. Stops to run a glass of water, leans against the sink to drink it, runs her eye over her hiding place, looking, looking, for more.
Chapter Twenty-One
Vesta rifles through the post on the hall table, divides it into neat piles for its recipients – whole armfuls each week – gathers the junk for departed tenants into a bundle to put in the bin. It’s not a task that takes long. Half a dozen windowed envelopes for Thomas, a couple – brown paper, official stamps – for Hossein. Something from the council for her – her tax rebate, she hopes. Old ladies, she’s noticed, get less and less mail as pensionable age recedes behind them. Even the Reader’s Digest doesn’t want to give her fifty thousand pounds tax free any more.
Gerard Bright has a postcard, addres
sed in a childish hand. She mostly notices it because it’s the first piece of handwritten mail to come through the door in a month. She has a cousin in Melbourne who sends cards with clockwork reliability on birthdays and Christmas, though it’s over twenty years since they last saw each other at her auntie’s funeral in Ilfracombe. She sends them back with the same dedication: the last of her family, a single precious jewel among the seven billion. He includes a Xeroxed round robin yarn of children and grandchildren, a second wife and a land cruiser. Vesta just sends good wishes. She has little to boast of. No one wants news of friends they have never met. It’s one of the reasons people have children, that blood relations lend legitimacy to boasting to strangers.
She puts the card on top of his bank statement. Something to brighten his face up, she thinks. He always looks so grey and mournful when she sees him, the only person in London not to sport a suntan this summer, as though he spends his life in a cave, like a fungus.
There’s nothing, as usual, for Cher – she’s not had a single letter since she came here – and nothing, she notices, for the new girl, either. If you pay your power on a meter key, it’s still possible not to exist at all in the modern world, whatever the government says.
Seeing Gerard Bright’s card reminds her that she’s not had a single card herself this summer. She used to get them from time to time, from former neighbours, old colleagues from the primary school kitchen in their static caravans down on the coast, even the odd friend from school. She would prop them in pride of place on the mantelpiece, to look at and make her feel remembered, to give her dreams of a seaside escape of her own. One day, she thinks. If he ups his offer to twenty grand – God knows, that would still only be ten per cent of what the flat is worth – I could just about do it. A little static near a pebble beach, just a patch of patio to see out my days… but eight? Once I’d paid the movers, I’d barely have enough for a deposit.
