Hetty: An Angel Avenue Spin-Off

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  When I get back to the homeless dude, the journalist appears to have given up. Maybe Warrick came outside and warned him off, told him I’d rung in sick.

  “Fucker’s gone, thankfully,” I tell the guy who looks shocked when I hand him an extra large bag of designer doggy food.

  In silence he opens it up, grabs a handful and holds it out to the dog who wolves it like she’s never wolfed down anything before in her life.

  I rest on my heels beside him, pulling out a bacon sandwich and the tea. He takes those in silence, too.

  I’ll eat mine indoors in a moment.

  “God, a bit of thanks wouldn’t go amiss.”

  He’s still silent.

  When I look sideways I see he’s got tears in his eyes but they haven’t fallen yet.

  “What’s her name?” I ask, trying not to look at his eyes.

  The dog’s sniffing in the plastic bag for more food but he seals it up, cutting her off from the smell. He’s wise to ration it. That stuff costs a bomb.

  “Kyla,” he says, in a broken voice, “she’s… Kyla.”

  The dog pokes her nose in the air at the sound of her name, then lays back down, grunting. Somebody’s not happy their new food supply got quickly cut off.

  “You should eat before it gets cold,” I warn him.

  He opens the sandwich wrapper, takes in a deep breath of it, then begins scoffing like the famished she-wolf beside him. He’s got butter dripping down his chin as he chews, his eyes closed, his throat swallowing mouthfuls too big. Then it’s straight onto the tea, which whether hot or not, he’s guzzling too.

  “How’d you know it’s a bitch?” he asks, wiping his chin with his sleeve. I see a few layers beneath the all-in-one suit he wears, something like a ski outfit I’m presuming. It’s not that cold outdoors right now but I bet being on the streets all day does you in.

  “Her nipples,” I explain, “I’m no vet but they’re rather enlarged. Do you know if she’s pregnant?”

  He looks at me as if he’s not sure what I’m talking about. His hazel eyes narrow and he looks around, as if searching the archives of his mind for something.

  “Ain’t been near no dogs recently, have you girl?”

  She harrumphs him.

  “I should get her to the RSPCA, they’ll help you find out.”

  “I don’t… can’t… they’ll turn me away or take her away.”

  I stand up from where I’ve been kneeling back against the window of a closed-down shop. Then I spot a copper walking towards us. He spots him, too.

  The man is straight to his feet, collecting his backpack and his bags, then his dog.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” I demand of him, tugging on his arm so he can’t just do a bunk.

  He eyes me warily. “People call me Mars.”

  I watch his back disappear down the street. He doesn’t throw away the empty polystyrene cup, he pockets it for whatever later use he might have for it.

  I’m still watching his back as the copper comes closer, catching my eye. I see humility there, but I also see a warning look in his eyes.

  And his warning makes me feel cold inside.

  Quickly, I cross the road and head into the safe confines of the community centre.

  I pass Warrick’s office in a hurry, finding him on the phone as per usual.

  I’m safely stowed in my office with the door shut when I notice all the post-its on my desk with questions on them:

  Do you know the artist? — Daily Mail

  Shit. Is this the Hull DM, or the actual Daily Mail??

  Did you sit for this picture? — Metro

  How long have you known the artist? — HuffPost

  Do you want to talk to us for an exclusive? — The Times, Culture

  Warrick knocks on my door and I shout, “Come in.”

  He makes himself welcome in the chair opposite.

  “Are these real?”

  “Yep.” He sounds apprehensive. He ought to try being me!

  “What is… why? What is going on?”

  He cracks his knuckles, which I hate. Doesn’t he know, as I’ve told him and Joe a million times, he’s going to get arthritis, the silly boy.

  “It’s the nature of it, Hetty. Appeared as if overnight. Throws up questions, doesn’t it?”

  I’m frowning as I read one note after another. There are more beneath the main ones.

  “This is simply ludicrous. I want nothing whatsoever to do with this. Nothing.”

  “Hetty… come on. It’s not that bad.”

  I give him a stern stare. “It’s got nothing to do with me! It’s just my face. That is all. I didn’t sit for the damn thing, I didn’t approve of it, I don’t condone it. It’s vandalism, right? Blatant vandalism…”

  “Yeah, of a building rigged for demolition very soon.”

  I shake my head, ignoring his sarcasm. “They’re making it out to be more than it is.”

  “Well Jules and I took the boys to see it at the weekend. We liked it. And the twins even knew who it was. They kept saying your name.”

  I leap up from my desk. I can’t stay here and listen to this. “I don’t want any of this. I didn’t ask for it. This is beyond dumb… beyond… god, I…”

  “You’re overreacting.”

  “Yeah well nobody will be erecting a shrine of you anytime soon, will they? So you have no idea–”

  He bursts out laughing. “It’s the story behind the picture they want. Why don’t you help them tell it?”

  I’m shaking my head. “You told me you might know who did this, do you?”

  He’s shaken by my direct demand. Putting his hands in his pockets, he looks guilty. Oh, he definitely does.

  “Come on, just tell me, so I can go and twat the idiot.”

  Warrick can tell when I’m in a rage because he folds his arms, getting ready to defend himself.

  “The truth is, I don’t know for sure. I don’t know anything. I’d be making a very big guess, that’s all I’d be doing.”

  “A guess based upon what information?”

  He sighs. “Well your picture was done much in the same manner and style as an artist I know who has been leaving graffiti around this neighbourhood for years.”

  “That’s fucking helpful.”

  He growls. “There’s no helping or pleasing you sometimes is there?”

  “Nope. I thought you’d be used to that by now.”

  “Anyway. Calls himself Mars.”

  I think I’m having a delayed reaction because as his words sink in, I don’t react. I think back to earlier. This cannot be true. Warrick’s got this all wrong.

  “You know April Fool’s has been and gone, right?”

  He forces a smile. “I’m deadly serious.”

  “That homeless dude?” I’m pointing to the street, to outside, but Warrick doesn’t have a clue to whom or what I’m pointing at. I’m madly pointing at a fixed point where I found a ghost this morning, existing, not living. It’s hard to believe this is all real.

  “Ah… you met.”

  I’m shaking my head. I cannot believe this.

  “When he comes back tonight, I want to be here to have a word with that little twerp, have you got me?”

  Warrick purses his lips. “Since it all kicked off, he hasn’t been back here. He’s probably scared. He’s probably more scared than you–”

  “But I saw him this morning?”

  “He probably slept rough last night, Hetty.”

  I shake my head at Warrick, who should’ve hunted down the man and forced him to sleep indoors last night. As far as I’m concerned right now, everything is Warrick’s fault. Everything. His philanthropy is the cause of all my pain right now.

  “I need a few minutes before I blow a gasket and kill you.” I turn my back on him and look out of the window.

  Behind me I hear him quietly leave the room, shutting the door so I have the space to myself once more.

  There’s no view from my window. There’s a con
crete wall 12 feet away which forms the big brick wall around a school next door. But the view is better than looking at Warrick’s all-seeing, all-knowing, ugly mug.

  Fuck, I hate that guy sometimes.

  Why am I working here? I’ve forgotten. I can’t actually remember. But I know that in this moment, right now, I don’t want to be here. For me, as for Mars, this place is no longer safe. It’s no longer my haven of solitude, where I wile my days away on the computer or putting my handywoman skills to use. I always said that whether I got into the police or not, this job at the community centre wasn’t my future. And it isn’t. I’ve been cruelly reminded of that today.

  Taking a polythene bag from out of the inside of one of my work bags on the floor, I leave my office and head towards Warrick’s carrying said item. He’s on the phone, surprise, surprise, but he wraps it up quickly when he sees me arrive.

  I remove the item I’m carrying from its bag and once he’s off the phone, he looks at it.

  “Jules asked me to make her something. I couldn’t sleep last night so I made her this.”

  He begins to blurt out words I don’t want to hear so I cut him off, “Shut the hell up for once and listen!”

  He buttons it.

  “I quit, and this time, I mean it. Because if I don’t quit now, I’ll never quit, and if I stay here, I’ll be the girl with the blue hair and I’ll be known for nothing else. So I’m gone, and this time, if I come back begging for my job again, you’re not to let me have it. You’re to kick me to the kerb and send me packing, even if god forbid, I come back with my tail between my legs. In fact, if my whole entire life is on the bones of its arse, you’re still not to let me back in here, do you hear? I have to do this. I have to go.”

  “Okay,” he says, with relief, or calm, or what – I don’t know.

  I’m not sure whether to be glad or sad that he’s not putting up a fight for me.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask him.

  “Well, one less wage… more money.”

  “Oh, I see now.”

  “I’ll have to work more hours.”

  “Warrick, you cannot do that. You said yourself you’re missing so much at home.”

  “Listen,” he says with a half-smile, “our funding from the government is going to get cut again soon anyway. I can’t afford to do a lot of things that I want to be able to.”

  “Like what?”

  “Set up more classes, stuff like that. Help people like Mars get back into society.”

  “But people like that, it takes a lot for them to get back into society. You know that. You need to accept that you can’t save everyone. You’re one man. You need to do what I said and use the hall for big events or else you’ll be closed down here, and you know it. If the homeless are put off, that’s a risk you’ll have to take. At least you gave them a warm winter this one past. At least you gave them that. It’s more than other people have given them.”

  “You’re right, I have to save this place. I have to.”

  “I’m right.”

  I start to leave the room when he reaches for the top I made for Jules, a piece of cheesecloth easily turned into a gypsy top, with some of my favourite red silks embroidered into the sleeves and around the collar and hem. “How much does she owe you?”

  “Thirty.”

  Thirty? he mouths.

  “Problem?”

  He grins. “Nope. No problem. I expected you to undercut yourself, that’s all.”

  Smirking, I remind him, “I can’t afford to let myself go undervalued now I’m living under the grace of God and luck.”

  “You don’t need luck,” he says, inspecting the garment, “you just need a business plan.”

  I’m sniggering as I leave his office, heading back to mine.

  I pull out a box and start filling it with my shit.

  It’s time for the next stage, I feel sure of it.

  JOE is a nightmare tonight. He’s tossing and turning continually. He’s refused me sex because he’s saving himself. He’s closed up and gone quiet, all day, and now he’s tossing and bloody turning.

  “Will you toss and turn on the sofa, or the floor? Or your old bed? For god’s sakes.”

  “I want to sleep so bad, Het. You have no idea. I just can’t get myself to relax.”

  “There’s no point in us lying here then, is there? We may as well go down and get a drink.”

  “Agreed.”

  We both leave the bed together, shuffling down the stairs in our long underwear/scant pyjamas. We both enjoy his t-shirts and boxers for bed.

  I pour some milk into a pan and try to remember why I’m even living with this insomnia-causing knob!

  “Talk to me about your day or tell me a story or tell me something. I just need to take my mind off it all. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  His try-out tomorrow is his obvious cause of stress right now.

  “Well, you know I quit today?”

  “You told me.”

  “Well, before that some weird shit went down.”

  “Oh yeah…?”

  He rubs his eyes. I rub mine. And then I start to wonder if he’ll actually stay awake long enough for me to tell the tale. Now we can see the dark night outside, it’s dawning on his dumb self that he should actually be a-fucking-sleep.

  I stir the pan of warming milk and tell him, “I met the guy who painted me.”

  “WHAT? That’s huge!”

  His animated face tells me he’s not ready for sleep, not quite yet.

  “I was waiting across the street for a journalist to leave the front of the building and I saw this guy with his dog, sat on the pavement. I went and got him and his dog some food. Came back and thought I’d broken him with my kindness. Then he went away when we saw a copper coming. Later on, it turned out the man in question – he calls himself Mars – is the artist in question. After I left the community centre earlier I came home and you weren’t here so I went looking around the borough and sure enough, he’s done some street art round here, too. You can’t exactly tell it’s the same style, it’s slightly different, but they’re all signed Mars. And the guy I met this morning on the street told me that people call him Mars.”

  “Shitting hell, WTAF.”

  “I know! Here, look…” I grab my phone from the living room and show him some of the pictures I took of his work. Joe scrutinises it all closely.

  “All these were done properly, it’s like he knew he only had a few hours to do the picture of you. And it wasn’t a great surface to work on, either.”

  “I have to tell you something now and you’re maybe not gonna like it…”

  He squints. “Oh god, what’s my dad done now?”

  “He’s been letting homeless people stay in the community centre hall overnight.”

  He’s shaking his head. “Jules is going to hang, draw and quarter him. And then burn his entrails.”

  “Tell me about it. I had to lend him some money for bills because they’re using loads of electricity and gas during the winter months. He’s been feeding them breakfast too, I reckon. Maybe dinner. I don’t know how far he’s gone, you know what he’s like.”

  Joe’s still shaking his head, trying to accept that this is what has happened, even when we know that this could get the building shut down.

  “I told him he needs to start hiring out that hall to save the business. His funding is going to be virtually zilch soon. He needs to bring in money. If I hadn’t quit today, I know that eventually he’d have had to let me go anyway. It’s getting that bad.”

  I pour the milk into two mugs and we carry them upstairs to bed. After we take a few sips, Joe holds me tight and kisses my cheek.

  “It puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?”

  “His poor little dog looked pregnant. He looked like he was a bit dim about these things, you know?”

  “That’s so sad,” Joe murmurs, his body falling more and more heavily into the mattress by the minute.

  I
snuggle into his side and feel my eyes fall instantly.

  HE’S ALL READY to go, his kit slung over his shoulder, his body freshly showered and his belly full of some protein shake and who knows what else. I swing my arms around him in the entrance hall and kiss his lips.

  “Go kill ’em, baby.”

  “Hmm,” he hums, his hands on my naked backside beneath my robe, “I want to take you out tonight, spoil you. Romance you. Feed you. Love you.”

  His kisses are hungry and so are mine. He gives me one last squeeze before I watch his perfectly formed arse approach the door, his hands fiddling with the keys. Eventually he gets the door open and I spot Warrick waiting outside in his car, waiting to take his son to one, last practice as man and boy.

  I shut the door quickly, should a gust of wind blow open my robe and Warrick get an eyeful.

  As I take a shower, I try to decide upon a course of action.

  Freedom.

  Bloody freedom.

  God, this is shit.

  I actually have to make my own life now. Nobody’s going to do it for me.

  As I’m contemplating my next move, my phone tinkles with an incoming text from Liza.

  Hey you, want to meet for coffee today?

  Can we do it in town? I want to see IT.

  YES! YES! YES!

  Keep your knickers on, I reply.

  Spoilsport.

  How’s things anyway, love?

  Much better. He’s been… so different. I think I’ll take the kids to Mum’s so we can go into town as two girls, again. It’s so much easier now I’m not a milk machine.

  A memory shunts into my mind from nowhere. It was the night we’d all got drunk and Joe told me at some point that Warrick had spoken with Gage. I decide not to tell her that the angel of the Avenues has struck again.

  I’ll pick you up. Name the time and place. I’m unemployed again… so up to you.

  Uh-oh…

  Not like that. I made a decision. Will talk in person anyway…

  Pick me up from my house at 11am. I’ll have dropped off the kids by then.

  Done.x

  See u.

  SHE’S pretty in pink when I watch her leave her pretty house and walk her pretty self to my passenger side. We hug and kiss as is customary and once she’s belted up, I tear off down the road. I’m not sure if I’m going to like what I see in town but here goes nothing…