by Roberta Kray
‘I’ve just told you,’ Stella said. ‘What’s your problem? The room at the top’s empty, no one’s used it for ages, and she has nowhere to go so… It ain’t doing no harm, is it? What difference does it make?’
Jackie’s cold gaze flicked from Stella to Lita and back again. ‘It’s not a bloody hotel. She can’t stay here for nothin’.’
‘I don’t mind paying,’ Lita said. The last thing she’d wanted was to start a row. ‘I really don’t. Whatever you think is fair.’
Stella shook her head. ‘You don’t have to, love. It’s not as though you’ll be taking up a space someone else could be using. It’s a shitty little room but you’re welcome to it for as long as you need.’
‘Terry won’t like that,’ Jackie said.
‘I’ll sort it with Terry.’
‘You do that.’ Jackie stood up, threw Lita a filthy look and then walked out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.
‘Don’t take any notice,’ Stella said. ‘She’s always got the hump about something. It ain’t personal.’
Except Lita was pretty sure it was. Jackie had never liked her. As a kid, she hadn’t thought too much about her hostility but now she was starting to wonder if there was more to it. While the other women had always welcomed her, fussed over her, Jackie had done the very opposite. But why? She thought about it for a moment and then pushed the question to the back of her mind. She had more important things to worry about.
58
Over the next few days, Lita kept busy. She bought the Evening Standard, the Evening News and a couple of local papers, scouring the columns at the back for any suitable job vacancies. But every number she rang drew a blank. She was either too young and didn’t have enough experience or the position was already taken. Her spirits dropped after every rejection. At this rate she’d never find anything.
A call to Considine’s office established that Mal had been remanded to Wandsworth. She found the address in the phone book and wrote him a letter asking how he was and saying she was fine and staying with a friend in London for a while. She didn’t mention that Esther had thrown her out. He had enough to deal with. She hoped he wasn’t familiar with Kellston and wouldn’t recognise Albert Road as being right in the middle of the red-light district.
Grateful for her free room in the house, Lita did her best to make herself useful. In the mornings she got up and cleaned the main reception area where the punters waited, emptying the ashtrays and the bins, clearing away the rubbish left behind. She cleaned the kitchen too, although no amount of air freshener could eliminate that pervading smell of dope.
She had quickly worked out how the house operated. There were rooms on the ground and first floors for ‘business’ and other private bedrooms on the second floor for the girls who lived in. At the moment this was only Stella, Maureen and Jackie. Other girls came and went, depending on how busy they were. Lita tried not to think too much about what went on behind closed doors. She had learned long ago that for some sex was only a commodity, something to be bought and sold, a business deal that had nothing to do with love or affection.
Lita kept out of the way when the punters were around, retreating to the kitchen or her room under the eaves. She had scrubbed the latter from top to bottom, straightened out the curtains and covered the bare bulb with a cheap lampshade bought from the market. It was spartan but serviceable, somewhere to sleep until she found a place of her own. But of course this couldn’t happen until she got a job.
Although she’d originally intended to search out Terry Street and ask him if he knew of anything, she’d been put off by Jackie’s comments. Perhaps it wouldn’t be wise to draw attention to herself while she was living for free in the house. What if Terry got the hump and threw her out? They’d been friendly once but that was years ago. He probably wouldn’t even remember her.
Lita didn’t dwell on this, determined to stay optimistic. As she walked up the high street she studied the shop windows in the hope she might come across one advertising a vacancy. She wasn’t fussy; anything would do: she could work on a till, sell shoes, make sandwiches. On passing Connolly’s she glanced inside and saw that it was full of teenagers. It took her back to her youth. For a second she almost expected to see a younger version of Jude, to see Amy Wiltshire flicking back her long fair hair, but the only familiar face was Maeve Riley’s.
Lita moved on. When she drew close to the pawnbroker’s she crossed over to the other side of the road. It was unlikely that Brenda would spot her but she wasn’t taking any chances. There was no point looking for trouble. She gave a single glance over her shoulder, her gaze lifting towards the window of the bedroom on the top floor – FJ’s room, although it had been hers for a while. She recalled the five one-pound notes she had hidden in the mattress – money earmarked for her mother’s headstone – and later taken to West Henby. She never had spent it. The notes were still wrapped up in a sock at the back of a drawer. She gave a soft curse, wishing she’d remembered earlier and brought them with her.
By the time she reached the end of the high street she wasn’t any better off than when she’d started. Not even the sniff of a job. She crossed back over and stood on the corner of Mansfield Road. Straight ahead were the three tall towers of the estate. She felt simultaneously drawn and repulsed by them. It was where Jude might be at this very moment, but it was also where her mum had died.
Lita screwed up her face as she rolled the word over her tongue. Mum. She wondered if Angela would have ever come clean. And now that she was dead, maybe the truth had died with her. She wasn’t sure if this mattered or not. Did she want to know who her real mother was – someone who had given her up, given her away – or was she better off remaining in ignorance? Sometimes the truth wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Now that she was so close to the estate, she thought she may as well see if Jude was in. There was a phone box near the gate to the main entrance but she walked straight past. If she called first it would give him the opportunity to make an excuse as to why he couldn’t see her. Maybe he’d say he was ill or busy working. She still harboured doubts about his motives for turning up in West Henby. The visit had, she suspected, been more to do with promoting his screenplay than any real desire to renew their friendship.
And if that was the case, then why was she bothering?
Lita didn’t have an answer. All she knew was that she wasn’t prepared to give up on him, not until she had to. She’d already lost her mum, Mal, her home, her future; surely she deserved a break. God couldn’t begrudge her one small bit of happiness in her life.
She strode along the main path to Haslow House, trying not to think too much about the past. She didn’t look up at Carlton, didn’t even glance in that direction. The lobby hadn’t changed since the last time she was there. There was still litter strewn across the floor – fag ends, tin cans, empty crisp packets – and it had the same smell of dope as the kitchen in Albert Road.
She took the lift up to the twelfth floor and hurried along the corridor before she lost her nerve. She raised her hand and rapped on the door with her knuckles, three hard knocks with nothing tentative about them.
Jude answered almost immediately. He opened the door and stared at her. ‘Lolly! What are you doing here?’
No smile, she noticed. No light of pleasant surprise in his eyes. ‘Hi,’ she said, as casually as she could manage. ‘I’m in London for a while, staying with a friend. I thought I’d drop by, just on the off chance.’
He hesitated, long enough for her to notice, before standing aside to let her in. ‘You should have called.’
‘Sorry. I tried the box on the corner but it’s out of order. Am I interrupting? I won’t stay long.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said, although not with any enthusiasm. ‘I can take a break for five minutes. Do you want a coke?’
‘Thanks.’
While Jude went to the kitchen, Lita glanced round the living room she had once known so well. Changes had been
made. The old corduroy sofa was gone, replaced by one in mock brown leather. The room had never been cluttered but now it was bordering on the minimalist, the only other furniture being a table and chair by the window. There was a typewriter on the table and a heap of paper. All that had remained the same was the films stacked up on the shelves – although there were many more of them now, as though they had bred and multiplied in her absence.
Jude came back with two bottles of Coke and passed one over to her. ‘Here.’
‘Thanks,’ she said again. ‘So are you feeling better now?’
‘What?’
‘You said you were ill. Flu was it?’
Jude sat down on the chair by the table. He was wearing shorts and a grey T-shirt, and his feet were bare. He shrugged. ‘It was just some kind of bug, a twenty-four-hour thing.’
‘Oh, right.’ She sat on the sofa, feeling that awkwardness that comes when you sense you’re not welcome, that someone is simply putting up with you. ‘So how’s your dad?’
‘He doesn’t live here any more. He’s shacked up with some tart on the Isle of Dogs.’
Lita had never liked the way he talked about girls, about women. She took a swig from the bottle and stared at him. For once she decided to challenge his views. ‘What makes her a tart, exactly?’
‘Same thing that makes any woman a tart,’ he said dismissively. ‘Anyway, good luck to him. He’ll need it.’ Jude turned slightly, his gaze straying towards the heap of paper on the table as if he couldn’t wait to get back to work. ‘I heard what happened with the Furys. Is that why you’ve left?’
Her suspicions about him and Esther jumped back into her head. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘It was in the papers,’ he said. ‘You’ll be taking his side, I suppose.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘Which part of it? Throwing Esther down the steps or killing Teddy Heath?’
Lita frowned. ‘She fell down the steps; she wasn’t pushed. And Mal didn’t kill him, not deliberately. The guy had a heart attack.’
‘A heart attack brought on by Mal having his hands around his throat. How can you defend him after everything he’s done?’
‘All he’s ever done is try to find his daughter. That’s not a crime, is it?’
Jude shook his head, his mouth growing sulky. ‘I knew you’d be like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Making excuses for him. I saw the way he treated her. He can’t stand anyone else being around. I mean, shit, if he had his way, he’d lock all the doors and put a bloody moat around the house.’
Lita felt the blood rise into her face. ‘You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. The place is always full of people. And you’ve only been there twice.’
‘Often enough to see what’s he like.’
‘That’s crap and you know it! You’ve only heard her side of things. You’re just believing what you want to believe.’
‘And you’re not?’
Lita felt like he was deliberately goading her, trying to create a row from which there could be no going back. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Doing what?’
‘This. Everything. Getting involved. It’s got nothing to do with you.’
‘Sometimes you have to take a stand, to decide where your loyalties lie. I can’t support Mal Fury so…’
‘So you don’t want anything to do with me either.’
Jude pulled a face but didn’t deny it. ‘It could be awkward.’
Lita was stung to the core. That his loyalties didn’t lie with her shouldn’t have come as any great surprise – it was hardly the first time he’d pushed her aside for something better – but the fact he was so blatant about it showed him in his true colours. The retort sprang to her lips before she had time to think about it. ‘Is that damn screenplay really so important to you? Or is this just about Esther? She doesn’t care about you. Jude. She’s only using you.’
‘Maybe she is. Why should I care?’
Lita shook her head, put the coke bottle down on the floor and stood up. ‘No, you don’t care about anyone but yourself.’
Jude rose to his feet and accompanied her to the narrow hall. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘That I should be grateful to you, right? For what you did all those years ago. And I am, really I am. But it doesn’t mean I have to be beholden to you for the rest of my life. You made a choice to do what you did. No one forced you. It doesn’t mean we have to be best buddies until the end of time.’
Lita stopped and stared at him. ‘Did I ever ask for that? You were the one who came to West Henby, remember? You sought me out, not the other way round.’ She waited for an answer but all she got was a nonchalant shrug. Reaching out, she opened the front door and stepped into the corridor. She was angry and upset, as much at herself as at him. Would she never learn? She just kept making the same mistake. ‘You’re a sad person, Jude Rule.’
‘Don’t be mad at me,’ he said.
Lita didn’t reply. She wasn’t going to waste her breath on him. She pushed back her shoulders and walked off towards the lifts without a backward glance. She heard the door close behind her and knew that it had closed for ever.
59
Lita was too impatient to wait for the lift. She wanted to get away from Jude and from the estate. She jogged down the steps with her jaw clenched and her pride in tatters. ‘Bloody fool,’ she muttered. ‘Moron, idiot, ass.’ Sunlight streamed through the windows striping the grey stone. She passed from light to shade, from light to shade, as she descended the twelve floors. When she finally reached ground level her lungs were pumping and she slowed to a trot to get her breath back.
Leaving the lobby, her intention was to head straight back to Albert Road and up to the room under the eaves. She needed a quiet place to hide, somewhere she could lick her wounds in private. Jude had plunged a knife into her heart and this time there would be no second chances. So far as she was concerned, he was out of her life for good.
Lita still wasn’t sure what was going on between him and Esther. Was he motivated by business or pleasure? Maybe it was both. Anyway, it was of no concern to her. From now on, Jude Rule no longer existed. It was over, finished – whatever ‘it’ had been – and all that remained was a bad taste in her mouth.
She was almost at the gate when she saw the black guy sitting on the wall with his face raised to the sun. He was wearing big aviator sunglasses but she knew him instantly. Joseph. She gave a start, in two minds whether to talk to him or not. It would be cowardly not to – she still felt guilty over what had happened – but she was tempted to walk on past. It would be easier that way, and she’d had enough of hard this morning.
Lita had already walked through the gate when she stopped in her tracks and glanced over her shoulder. Joseph hadn’t moved or shown any sign of recognition. She was free to keep going, but something stopped her. A little voice whispered in her ear: Do the right thing. It was time, perhaps, to stop running away from the past.
She turned and walked back to him. ‘Joseph?’
Slowly he lowered his face and stared at her. It was a long scrutinising look, taking her in, feature by feature. Eventually his mouth slid into a smile. He laughed, showing a gold tooth at the front of his mouth. ‘Lollipop,’ he said. ‘Ain’t seen you around in a while.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d know me.’
‘What, my favourite delivery girl? I’d never forget you, babe.’
Lita sat down beside him on the wall and squinted into the sun. ‘So how have you been?’
‘Been better, been worse. No point complaining. Ain’t gonna change nothin’. Just got to keep going, right?’
‘I guess.’
