by Sam Hayes
‘Take care of her, Maggie,’ Freda sings. ‘Remember your first time.’
‘Like it was my last,’ Maggie chants back, clicking the front door shut behind her. I feel like one of the seven dwarves, whistling my way to work.
‘We’re off to a posh hotel first. I’ve had Norris for three years. A real sweetie and he’s going to love you.’ Maggie hails a cab and tells him to take us to some place I’ve never heard of. I like Maggie. She’s so confident and knows just what she wants. She says that when she’s twenty she’ll have enough money saved to go to California and become an actress. Maybe Ruby and I will go with her.
In fifteen minutes we are at the hotel and Maggie pays the driver and asks for a receipt. ‘First rule,’ she says. ‘Always get a receipt because if Becco thinks you’ve diddled him, he’ll get right mad and dock your pay.’ She musses up her hair and lifts her chin high before striding up to the porter and whispering something in his ear. Then the porter has us in the lift and Maggie slips him a ten-pound note and I wonder whether I would need a receipt from him too.
‘Room four eight seven tonight, Mags,’ he says and the doors slide shut, sealing us in anticipation. Then we are walking down the thickly carpeted corridor. Maggie stops and turns to me with a serious expression on her flawless face.
‘He’s quite old and can be fussy but follow me and you won’t go far wrong. Compared to some, he’s a pussycat to please.’ She winks and has me puzzled.
Are we cleaning his hotel room? Are we serving him dinner or taking dictation? Or, worse, perhaps he wants sex. Suddenly, I see Uncle Gustaw hauling his saggy body down the corridor but he turns the corner before I can be sure. Maggie stops outside the room and knocks sharply on the door.
‘He’s a bit deaf.’ She knocks again before we are let in. Norris is about seventy and has dappled skin on his cheeks and head, like the skin on the belly of an old dog.
‘Maggie, Maggie,’ he says, standing aside to let us in. ‘The sight of you is going to kill me one of these days.’ Norris has an Irish accent. His old man smell reminds me of Uncle Gustaw, of pipe tar and oily scalp. ‘Who’s your friend? Introduce me.’ Norris wipes his brittle hand across Maggie’s shoulders. She slips off her coat and sits down on the bed, her long legs aimed at Norris. I stand nervously by the wardrobe, waiting to be introduced and wondering what I will have to do.
‘Norris, this is the lovely young Milly. She’s just started working with us and Freda thought you’d like a special preview. ’ Maggie grins at me. My stomach knots and I think of Ruby.
‘A premiere event,’ Norris says, shuffling up to me. He touches my hair. ‘How old are you?’ His voice isn’t quite as gentle as it was with Maggie. I’m about to say fifteen but think better of it.
‘Nineteen, sir.’ The outfit makes me look older. Norris’s eager expression slouches.
‘But she could be a lot younger, don’t you think?’ Maggie approaches me and takes my hand, guiding me to the bed. ‘Easily fifteen.’ Then, ‘Sit,’ she whispers to me. I remember that Norris is hard of hearing. ‘And smile. He’s paying good money for us.’ She slides my already short skirt higher up my thighs.
‘She looks divine,’ Norris growls. He sits on the bed between Maggie and me and holds each of our hands. ‘Which one of you first?’ he ponders, his frail head clicking back and forth between us. When he stops and stares at me, I get the feeling that Uncle Gustaw used to give me when we were alone together.
Norris moves my hand and puts it at the top of his wool trousers. There doesn’t seem to be much in there, not like Uncle Gustaw. But I know what to do. I remember that sometimes in life you have to do this and again Ruby’s frailty and need flashes through my mind. Determined that my baby will get well again, I do what comes naturally while Maggie offers occasional instructions and Norris buckles under the lightness of my touch.
‘You were superb, honey.’ Maggie treats me to a thick milk-shake before our next appointment. ‘He adored you. You’ll soon be earning more than Freda had imagined.’ Maggie rustles through the wad of notes that Norris gave her and pays for our shakes. ‘Don’t tell Becco.’ She laughs. I suck hard on my straw but hardly any of the shake comes up. It’s very thick. I just need something to get the taste out of my mouth.
We are able to walk to our next appointment, again in a hotel. He’s a businessman and polite and clean and good-looking and afterwards he lets us help ourselves to the minibar. I choose a slab of Bournville and a miniature bottle of Beefeater Gin. He wanted to go inside me but Maggie gently told him no and presented herself instead. He offered an extra two hundred for me which meant that Maggie had to tell him firmly that I’d not long had a baby and wouldn’t be fully available for another couple of weeks. When he discovered I was dribbling milk, he made do with that instead and told me that he loved me. I wiped his chin with a tissue.
Next we had to visit Maggie’s politician. I didn’t recognise his name but she swore me to secrecy anyway. We went to his London flat, which he stays in during the week. He goes home to his wife at weekends. He wanted it with me too and Maggie had to say no again. She laughed afterwards, saying I would put her out of a job. The stash of money Maggie has tucked inside her coat makes me think this is a better job than cleaning or waiting tables, which is all I could have done without Freda and Becco’s help. And I’ve had practice at this before, for many years, so it means that Ruby will be cared for and I’ll be able to buy that pram in no time. I wonder what would happen if we held back a few notes for ourselves.
Our last appointment involves sitting in a hotel bar and talking to a foreign man. Actually, he’s dressed like a woman but I can tell he’s a man. He’s about fifty and wears a purple skirt and white shoes and has an accent that makes me raise my eyebrows and lean nearer to him. He buys Maggie and me tall blue cocktails and we sit, one each side of him, on a squeaky leather sofa while a beautiful lady sings and a man plays the piano.
The dressed-up man wants us to talk dirty. Maggie hasn’t met him before and she pulls funny faces at me when he isn’t looking. He makes us describe our bodies and gets us to tell him about going to the toilet.
Inside, I know Maggie is laughing, like me, but she’s told me several times tonight that we always treat our clients’ needs with respect because they are paying a lot of money. We both still think he’s funny. Then he tells me to go for a pee, which I do, and when I come out of the ladies’ loos, he’s just coming in.
He barges me back inside and I wonder where Maggie is. He grabs my skirt and shreds my new stockings and knickers and folds me over the basin. I can tell that he’s got his purple skirt around his waist and his pants around his knees because I can smell warm chicken and salt. I see the floor shunting beneath me and I hear his foreign grunts and I know the wall should be hurting my head as it bangs against it over and over but I’ve automatically slipped into the safest place I know, where nothing, where no one can ever reach me.
When he’s gone, I pick up my torn knickers and go back to Maggie who is still sipping her blue cocktail. The foreign man isn’t there and Maggie is furtively counting some notes. I stand in front of her, dripping with what he’s done to me, and when she realises she holds her arms open. I sit with my head cradled against her shoulder and think of Ruby as I gradually crawl out of my safe place.
‘At least he paid us,’ she finally says.
Over the coming days, I impress Freda with my dedication and reliability. If she knew that’s how I’ve been my entire life, she’d understand how easy it is for me to knuckle down and do what I have to.
At the end of my first working week, Becco hands me an envelope. He stares at me a beat longer than he should and I swallow, feeling the envelope’s fatness between my fingers. Then I run up to my shared bedroom and rip it open. I have earned fifty pounds. I’ve never seen that much money before. My parents never had a great deal; Father earned little from his job as a clerk and Mother said her job was in the home even though Father used to sit up late a
nd fret about the bills.
I persuade Maggie to take me to Woolworth’s to buy a cash box with a lock. It’s black and shiny and invincible and where I keep the money I’m saving for Ruby’s treatment. Maggie says that she has a bank account but I don’t tell her that I can’t have one because the police would track me down.
By the end of my second week, Becco hands me another envelope. ‘Settling in then?’ he says. A long stem of ash hangs off his cigarette. I nod, ever thankful that he found me passed out in the street although I’m too scared to tell him how grateful I am.
Up in my room, I count another fifty pounds. Then I mentally add up what Maggie and I have brought home to Becco every night that week. Eight hundred, perhaps a thousand pounds each night. From then on, I decide to take a lick of the cream from my clients. For Ruby.
Some days, when I’m not thinking about Ruby – Freda tells me she’s still terribly sick and allowed no visitors – I think about my parents and Aunt Anna and Uncle Gustaw all flying about in a panic looking for me. It’s been six weeks since I ran away and they still haven’t found a hair off my head.
I think about our house and my bedroom and how they kept me locked in there for such a long time when I was pregnant. I think about how safe Ruby was when she was curled in my belly and that since she was born, everyone’s been trying to take her. I think about my friends at school and what will be said about me in the playground, stories that will probably mutate for terms to come as if I’m a disgusting disease. I think of Gustaw and his hairy body and how I fought the heave in my throat whenever he came near. I think about when I dropped from my bedroom window and ran away when I found out about my baby’s adoption. I think of giving birth on my own. I think of going back. I think I won’t.
TWENTY-ONE
Louisa standing on the front doorstep was like having fresh flowers delivered. Robert stepped aside to let her in. Her nose curled and a tiny frown nipped her otherwise creaseless brow.
‘Open some windows, Rob. It stinks in here.’ Louisa left a trail of sweet scent as she marched to the kitchen, not stopping but still noticing the blankets piled on the sofa and the dirty plates left on the floor. ‘You’ve had worse than this before. Don’t lose it.’ She unzipped her laptop bag, took out the slim machine and plugged into the internet. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’
A current of ozone and cut grass wound around the kitchen as they waited for the computer to boot up. Their faces were close as they peered at the monitor.
‘The name on the photograph you gave me from the locket, it’s pretty unusual. It’s Polish and babka means grandmother. Babka Wystrach was someone’s granny.’ Louisa smiled, stroked her finger on the mouse pad and pulled up a bookmarked link.
Someone’s grandmother? Robert thought. Ruby’s perhaps, or Erin’s? Or perhaps no one’s and Erin had simply bought the locket at a flea market as a present for Ruby. He felt a pang of loss as he momentarily pictured Erin hunched over a stall crammed with trinkets and jewellery and collectables – one of her favourite pastimes.
‘The Chronicle and Echo?’ Robert asked, reading from the address bar on the internet browser.
‘Wait,’ Louisa said as the page resolved then, ‘Listen. A sixty-one year old Northampton resident has been arrested on suspicion of child abuse and lewd acts with a fourteen-year-old girl. Police arrested Gustaw Wystrach at his home in the early hours of the morning following a report from the girl’s mother about the abuse. Wystrach, whose family is originally from Poland and has run the Knowle Hill Youth Club for the last seventeen years, will be released on police bail tomorrow pending further inquiries.’
Robert straightened and sighed. ‘It’s dated June two thousand and one. How did you find that?’
‘Easy. I just Googled the name Wystrach.’ Louisa posed briefly with her hands on her hips and pulled a silly face. A runway of sunlight cut across her back and shoulders, skimming the tip of her ponytail. It looked as if it was on fire. ‘There were hundreds of results but this was the best lead by far. The story was top of the list. Most of the other stuff was to do with genealogy. Of course, the information we need to do with the locket may well pre-date the internet or never even have made it into any online resources.’
‘And I’m paying you how much to surf the internet?’ Robert paced the kitchen. ‘Anyway, aren’t we interested in genealogy, Erin’s family history? I can’t see what this man has to do with her. Do you think it’s worth following up?’ Robert opened the back door and stared down the garden. The grass stood about six inches tall and rippled like a meadow in the light breeze.
‘Of course it is. I’m an investigator.’ She came up behind him. ‘I’ll do a full newspaper search on this particular story, follow up on what happened to that dirty sod. I’ll get his address and we can pay him a visit if you like. The woman in the locket photo could well be a relative. It’s such an unusual surname.’ She stepped closer. Robert could feel her body heat between his shoulders. Her breath hadn’t quite cooled when it reached his neck. ‘On the other hand, it could be nothing at all and by eleven o’clock tonight, when Erin has come home, she’ll be curled up against your back whispering apologies.’
Robert turned. ‘You think so?’ he asked dismally, wishing that it was Erin standing behind him now. He hardly dared think how much he missed her and Ruby. He reached out and slipped Louisa’s hands into his. ‘Thanks,’ he said, meaning it. ‘I couldn’t do this without you.’
Louisa smiled and pulled her fingers away. ‘In the meantime, you go and wash, eat, have a game of squash – anything to get you unhooked from this mess while I find out more about this man. It won’t be long.’ She started back to the computer. ‘And Rob, don’t be disappointed if it turns out to be nothing, huh?’
‘I’m rather hoping it will,’ he confessed and went to shower.
After Louisa had driven Robert to recover his car and pick up his mobile phone – she didn’t ask questions – it took them less than two hours to travel to Northampton.
They arrived in the flat, unremarkable town around noon and Robert bought coffee, two sausage rolls and a packet of cigarettes for lunch. Louisa didn’t eat anything and only sipped at her coffee and when Robert offered her a smoke, she refused it with a disgusted puff as if she was smoking anyway.
Robert’s head banged from the previous day’s drinking binge but he didn’t care. It didn’t hurt as much as the layers peeling off his heart. Louisa had brought along a local map and precise directions, which Robert could have printed off the internet himself, but it helped justify her fee – helped keep him sane before he wrecked another marriage.
‘What if he’s in prison?’ Robert sat on the bonnet of his car while Louisa occupied the only bench in the lay-by, as far away from Robert’s cigarette as she could be while still being able to talk. Robert ate the last piece of his sausage roll, brushed the crumbs off his shirt and took the final draw of his cigarette. He dropped the butt on the tarmac and slowly ground it with his heel. ‘Did you consider that?’
‘He’s not in prison.’ Louisa shook her head. ‘Do you have to do that?’ She glanced at the dog-end. Robert ignored her.
‘But you said he got fourteen years.’
‘He did.’
‘If I promise not to smoke any more, will you tell me what happened?’ Robert put on his sunglasses. The glare behind Louisa made him squint.
‘Gustaw Wystrach is dead.’ Louisa stood and hitched up her jeans. Her white T-shirt didn’t quite meet the ornate buckle of her leather belt. ‘He hanged himself in prison.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me this before we left London?’ Robert slid another cigarette from the packet and perched it between his lips.
‘You said—’
‘I haven’t lit it yet. So who the hell are we visiting now then?’
‘Search me. His mother, aunt, wife, daughter? I know not.’ Louisa plucked the cigarette from Robert’s lips, javelined it into a litter bin and opened the car door, br
iefly leaning on the soft roof of the Mercedes. ‘Mind if we go topless?’ She grinned before ducking inside.
As they drove through the town, the gentle summer breeze transformed into a warm wind and if it hadn’t been another day without Erin and Ruby, Robert would have enjoyed the sun wrapping hot fingers around his neck and tanning the ridge of his nose a shade deeper than the rest of his face. They entered an unremarkable suburb on the north side of town where Robert slowed to allow Louisa to study the map.
‘It’s two streets away,’ she said, squinting down the rack of dismal sixties concrete-fronted council houses. They couldn’t have been more conspicuous, thought Robert as he moved the car forward through the grim neighbourhood. ‘Turn left here.’
Number 72 Bell Grove Gardens was the least attractive of all the houses in the street. The concrete and pebble-dashed exterior suggested it was council property and unlike the neighbouring houses, it was most likely still owned by the local authority. Compared to the effort made by the other residents, such as hanging baskets of lurid orange and blue annuals and front gardens decorated with flaking gnomes and stone ornaments, number 72 was shabby and unkempt, perhaps even unoccupied.
‘Nice,’ Louisa commented, peering at the litter-filled front garden. ‘Shall I wait here?’
‘What, don’t want to dirty your shoes?’ Robert pressed a button and the car roof settled back into place. ‘Come on,’ he ordered. ‘You’re my investigator. You’ll know what to say to whoever might be alive in there.’
‘I will?’ Louisa followed Robert, both of them fixing their eyes on the decaying house as they crossed the street.
Robert marched up the front path as if the building were the keeper of all Erin’s secrets. When he knocked on the door and no one came, they ventured through the side gate and into a weed-choked rear garden. Some kids were fighting over a ball in the neighbouring property. They went around the side of a tatty extension to the back door. It was open and music crackled from a radio that sounded as if it was a tweak away from being tuned in. Robert rapped on the open door.
