by S. J. Morgan
I’d never imagined being so relieved to find myself at home. Perhaps I hadn’t appreciated what it meant before. The move in Swansea was still to come, but the joy I’d initially felt about the new place seemed to be slipping further from my grasp. Ashton Crescent was still within easy reach of Minto and I had no idea why I hadn’t broadened my sights. Maybe Daniella had been right when she’d suggested the only thing keeping me trapped in Swansea was me.
My spirits faltered as soon as Daniella flashed into my mind. The showdown with her brother throbbed like a fresh bruise and although I’d explained it all to Daniella, there was still the problem of the rest of her family.
‘Alexander? Alexander?’ My door opened a fraction. ‘Are you awake?’ Mum’s voice whispered into the darkness and a bobbly outline of her head peered around the door.
‘What’s up?’
‘Are you decent? Can I come in?’
She switched on the main light, half-blinding me.
‘It’s that girl, that friend of yours,’ she said.
‘Eh?’ I sat up, my eyes watering from the thousand-watt bulb. ‘Daniella?’
‘No, the one from the flat,’ Mum said. ‘The young one.’ She glanced back out into the hall.
‘Sindy?’
‘Yes, Sindy!’
I shook my head, trying to piece together what she was on about. Why were we discussing Sindy in the middle of the night?
‘She’s downstairs.’ Mum pulled an old dressing gown off the peg behind the door and chucked it at me. ‘You’d better come, love.’
Just as I’d been enjoying some distance between me and Swansea, it had followed me down the motorway and ended up at my door. I went with Mum downstairs, tightening the belt on this musty tartan monstrosity she’d given me. ‘What time is it?’ I whispered.
Mum took a hand from the banister and looked at her watch. ‘Just gone four-thirty.’
‘I’m really sorry, Alec,’ Sindy said, shooting out of her chair the minute I walked in. ‘I’m sorry for getting everyone up.’
‘Oh, now don’t you worry about that,’ Mum said behind me. ‘I’ll go and make you both some hot chocolate. Alexander, turn the heating up – you’ll get cold in here.’ She went out to the kitchen, leaving the door ajar.
I pushed it shut.
‘What the hell’s going on now, Sindy?’ I didn’t need to add the ‘now’ – I didn’t need to make it sound like she was always bothering me with something – but as far as I was concerned, it was the middle of the sodding night.
She pulled up her sleeves and held out her skinny wrists. Scratches and cuts criss-crossed all the way up, like she’d been marking herself with a compass point. ‘I got really upset and scared,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’
I wasn’t sure if she was explaining how her arms had got into that state or how she came to be on our doorstep.
I went over to open the curtains, just for something to do. Sindy always seemed to come out with these announcements that I had no answer for; statements I was at a loss how to respond to. The shallow ridges on her wrists hardly looked like someone determined to do any serious bloodletting, but the pitch of her voice was pretty desperate.
‘Have you done this before?’ I asked her.
She wiped her face with the edge of her cardigan. ‘Only when things have got really bad.’
I didn’t want to ask so I returned to practicalities. ‘How did you get here?’
‘I…hitched. It was freezing and it took me ages. But some people are nice.’
There was the bump on the living room door. I opened it to find Mum there with a tray of three mugs. I took two of them, thanked her then waited by the door for her to leave so I could close it.
Hard as I tried to focus on Sindy’s issues, there was something on my mind more pressing than her latest drama.
‘How did you find me?’ I said. ‘I’ve never given you my address.’
‘Minto had it, remember?’
‘He had the phone number but...’
Sindy shrugged. ‘You were in his address book. And Daniella. I was going to go there if you weren’t home.’
‘But how did he get my address?’
‘Aren’t you in the phone book?’ she said.
The simple logic left me speechless.
‘Would it be okay if I stay here?’ she said. ‘Just till you go back to the flat. Minto’ll be okay once he calms down.’
I took her jacket from the sofa to put on the radiator.
‘It’s okay, it’s not wet,’ she said. ‘The lady who drove gave me a lift all the way to the door.’
‘Right,’ I said, nodding. ‘But why didn’t you go to your dad’s house? You didn’t have to come all the way here.’
She had no argument for that: I figured it was simply that she didn’t want to.
‘Look, it’s not a good idea for you to stay here,’ I said. ‘If Minto has my address, how do I know he won’t come to find you? I think you should have some breakfast, freshen up then...go back.’
Her body seemed to flinch. ‘Go back? Today?’
I passed her the hot chocolate from the table. ‘Minto will have calmed down.’
‘He won’t. Please, let me stay tonight, that’s all,’ Sindy said. ‘One night, then I’ll be gone.’
I could feel my resolve weakening the closer she got to tears.
However, even if the prospect of Minto turning up wasn’t enough to persuade me, the current state of the spare room was.
‘Tell you what I’ll do,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring Daniella – see if she fancies taking a couple of stowaways on an outing with her. All right?’
She wouldn’t look at me.
‘Sindy?’ I said.
She sighed and kept her eyes on the carpet. ‘Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘If you need to be rid of me, you can ditch me today.’
Chapter 28
Sindy did us a favour, really. After the Kev Mitchell incident, things could’ve remained raw between me and Daniella for a while. But Sindy forced us back to normality again; she gave us a reason to move on and to get stuck into the practicalities of the present.
If I was honest, I was relieved that the Jill story had come out. Less publicly would have been nice, but I was glad Daniella knew. It had been like a festering wound that finally got some air. We’d been able to examine it; clean it out, leave it to heal naturally whereas my knee-jerk reaction had always been to tuck it away, like a guilty secret, because it was just too messy to unwrap. There was no short version of the story, that was the problem; no throwaway line that would explain it. And really, I only ever dealt in throwaway lines.
I think Daniella was glad too – she’d been granted exclusive rights to the dark and dusty corners of my mind, and not many people had ever got that far. It meant that, when I called her to ask for a favour with Sindy, she sounded warmer towards me than she had in a while.
Despite the wind and the driving rain, we’d given in to Sindy’s request to make a quick stop in the motorway services on the way to Swansea. The injection of sherbet lemons and rainbow drops certainly perked up her mood and she became a lot more chatty on the backseat than when we’d first set out.
I’d been hoping to catch up on a bit of shut-eye while Daniella drove, but there was no chance of that with Sindy around.
‘What does C H stand for?’ she said. ‘There isn’t a country beginning with C H.’ She’d started playing some sort of spot-the-car-sticker game since we’d left the services, and as with most things involving Sindy, she’d managed to rope us all in.
‘It’s Switzerland,’ Daniella said. ‘Can’t remember why.’
‘F – France! And look, AUS – Australia!’ Sindy shrieked, drowning out Daniella.
‘How d’you know it’s not Austria?’ I said, turning around to her.
‘I don’t.’ She popped a sweet in her mouth and looked out the window again. ‘I’ve got an uncle and a cousin who live in Australia,’ she announced. ‘As well as
Mum. They live in Queenstown.’
‘You mean Queensland, do you?’ I said. ‘Queenstown is in New Zealand.’
Sindy threw a few chocolates into her mouth. ‘I dunno,’ she said, chewing. ‘It’s somewhere hot.’
‘That covers most of Australia then.’ I spotted more stickers. ‘F – France. M – Malta.’
After a few minutes of silence, I realised Sindy had stopped looking at car stickers and moved on.
‘How much would it cost to go to Australia?’ she said, leaning over my headrest.
‘A ton. Thousand quid at least.’
‘I could save up. Minto gives me about forty a week. How long would it take to save?’
Daniella looked at me sidelong.
‘That’d be two hundred every five weeks,’ I said to Sindy. ‘So, six months, I reckon, as long as you didn’t spend money on anything else.’
‘They don’t have snakes, do they?’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want to go if they have snakes.’
‘Nah,’ I lied. ‘It’s only the scorpions and spiders that’ll get you.’
She had another chocolate. ‘I could never save a whole thousand anyway. Half my money has to go on bus fares.’
‘So, Minto gives you money, does he?’ Daniella said, looking at Sindy in the mirror. ‘What’s that for?’
‘Just to spend. Chocolate, bus fares, records, that sort of thing.’
‘But...why?’
‘Because he’s nice, I suppose.’
Daniella didn’t say anything else; just seemed to concentrate on the road. Part of me wanted her to leave it; just keep her nose out. The less we knew the better. But another part of me was itching to know, dying to get my face pressed against the window for a better view.
‘The money must be as payment for something,’ Daniella said, at last. ‘I mean, people don’t give money for nothing, do they?’
‘Parents give pocket money to their kids,’ Sindy said. ‘That’s for nothing.’
‘Mine wasn’t,’ I told her. ‘I had to do the washing up. If I didn’t – I got no pocket money.’
‘Same here,’ said Daniella. She glanced again in the rear-view mirror. ‘What do you think you’ve done to earn Minto’s pocket money?’
She certainly had the bit between her teeth.
I glanced around. Sindy had poured all the sweets into her lap. She kept her head down as she answered. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ she said. ‘But you know I’m not allowed to say. I told Alec I wasn’t allowed to say.’
‘Is that because it’s something wrong?’ Daniella said.
‘No!’ A sliver of defensiveness had crept into Sindy’s tone. I reckoned she was a breath away from folding those arms of hers and shutting down any more questions.
‘Some people might think it’s wrong,’ she said, at last. ‘But that doesn’t mean it really is.’
‘Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?’ Daniella said to me. ‘I reckon it’s... handling stolen goods: that’s what the money’s for.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
Daniella pretended not to hear. ‘Sindy probably finds out where people leave back doors open or have equipment in their cars, and she passes the info on and Minto nicks the goods.’
‘Minto doesn’t take anything,’ Sindy said. ‘He’s a businessman.’
‘Businessman, eh?’ I said. ‘Flashy.’
‘He doesn’t sell anything to anyone who doesn’t ask him,’ she said. ‘It’s a rule. All his business comes through people asking him. He just helps them out.’
‘Helps them out with what?’ Daniella said. ‘Stolen goods? Camera equipment, sports gear, electricals.’ She flashed a smile at me. If she was trying to wind Sindy up, she was doing a cracking job of it.
‘I told you he doesn’t deal with that stuff!’
‘What is it then?’ I said, joining in. ‘Guns? Knives? Weapons?’
Her voice was quiet. ‘Sometimes.’ The sound of sweets sliding into their bags came from the back. ‘But if people ask for pills or something like that, Minto tries to help them out.’
‘Pills?’ said Daniella.
‘Mm.’
‘So, these people just come up to him in the street, out of the blue, in case he happens to have something.’
Daniella was proving an ace at acting dumb – I didn’t need to join in. Sindy was tutting and sighing in the back like she couldn’t believe the stupidity of her travelling companions.
‘No! People know where to find him. But Minto’s got friends all over the place. And not just in Wales. I mean in lots of countries. They all help each other.’
‘He’s like his own personal global charity, eh?’ I said.
Daniella looked out of her window and paused a few moments. ‘I still don’t see why you get any payment though, Sindy.’
‘I know some local kids, teenagers. That helps.’
‘Do you?’
‘It doesn’t look so odd if I talk to them,’ she said. ‘They might think Minto’s some creepy guy if he started talking to them.’
‘He wouldn’t want to give them that impression, would he?’ said Daniella.
Sindy mightn’t have understood the point, but I could tell the tone had put her on her guard.
Daniella was quick to make amends though. ‘I suppose you get a percentage of whatever’s sold,’ she said, like she was talking to herself. ‘A bit like at those house parties where you get commission on cosmetics and stuff.’
‘It’s not that...organised,’ Sindy said. ‘Minto just gives me some money whenever he has some.’ She shrugged. The novelty of being centre of attention seemed to be wearing thin.
To be honest, I was relieved. I didn’t like Daniella trying to wheedle information from Sindy; twisting the emphasis here and there to catch her out. And I certainly didn’t want Daniella delving into Sindy’s night-time activities.
‘CZ – Czechoslovakia!’ I said. ‘Who can spell Czechoslovakia?’
Sindy was kept so busy with that conundrum, I reckoned the whole conversation would be safely forgotten by the time she got back to Minto.
Once we arrived in Swansea. I warned Daniella to drop us at the end of the street rather than risk going up to the house, but as soon as we peeled around the corner, we realised our mistake.
With a steep set of steps up to the house, Minto and Black had the perfect view of us from where the two of them were sitting, beer bottles in hand.
My instinct was to throw Sindy out of the car and have Daniella drive off, but given it was a no-through road, negotiating a three-point turn would have hardly made for a quick getaway.
‘He’s there!’ Sindy said, throwing open her door. It was like nothing had happened between them. ‘Come and say hello,’ she said to us both. ‘He’ll want to see you before you go.’
Daniella and I looked at one another, probably both formulating the same flimsy excuse, but I saw Daniella’s gaze shift over my shoulder, and I knew Minto was already on the pavement, peering in at us.
‘Not even going to get your young lady to turn off the engine?’ he said as I wound down the window. ‘Not being anti-social again, are you, Mr Johnston?’
‘We’re in a bit of a rush,’ I said. ‘We just wanted to quickly drop Sindy off.’
I heard his fat fingers drum against the roof as he remained stooped at the side of us. ‘Sounds like you all had quite the awayday, Sinds,’ he said. ‘Down by the seaside, beside the sea.’
‘It was quite a surprise,’ Daniella said, leaning across me. ‘Amazing how Sindy managed to get hold of Alec’s address like that.’
The comment did nothing to break the deadlock. Minto looked back at her, unsmiling.
‘That’s the beauty of a phone book, I guess,’ I said. Why I was tripping over myself to smooth things over for Minto, I had no idea.
‘No phone book required,’ he said. ‘I’ve got both your home addresses safe in my possession. Just in case. You know how it is.’ And he kept his eyes on us, waiting for a reaction that didn�
��t come.
‘They were both really nice to me,’ Sindy said, nudging up against him. ‘They let me buy some sweets and a Smash Hits on the way home.’
‘All cashed-up and kindness, aren’t they?’ Minto said. ‘Anyway, there’ll be a few people glad to see you; what with us not knowing where you’d gone an’ all. It doesn’t do to just fuck off like that, Sindy.’ He caught her arm as she was about to leave. ‘I need to know where you are.’ His eyes switched to me again. ‘I was afraid I’d have to track you down and bother these good folks’ families.’
‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘Sorry. I just thought you might need some time to calm –’
‘If I need some time to cool off, gal, you’ll know about. All right?’
She nodded.
‘Now go inside. See Gazza – he’s been asking for you.’
Sindy looked at us and smiled. ‘See you,’ she said. And she ran up the road in that gawky way of hers and disappeared into the house.
Minto remained where he was. ‘I think it’s time you and I had a little chat, Alec,’ he said. His eyes swept across to Daniella. ‘Would you excuse us, darlin’?’
She kept her hands on the wheel. ‘I’m sorry?’ she said, leaning across me again as if she couldn’t quite hear.
He went around to her side of the car and spoke slowly and loudly at her through the open window. ‘I need to have a private word with y’man, here.’ He looked at me. ‘We’ll go for a quick spin together.’
‘Sorry,’ Daniella said. ‘I have to get back to Bristol.’
The mistake I made was looking across at her instead of keeping a check on Minto. In that split second, he’d reached in and snatched the keys out of the ignition. ‘I really must insist,’ he said.
Daniella’s hand shot down to the handle, but Minto was already opening the door.
‘It’s okay,’ I told her, quickly. ‘We’ll be ten minutes at the most. Walk down to the Tenby: I’ll bring the car back to you there, okay?’
‘That’s the way, love,’ Minto said, taking her place in the driver’s seat as soon as Daniella stepped out.
She didn’t look at him but came straight around to my side. ‘If you’re not back in ten,’ she said, leaning in. ‘I’m calling someone.’
