by Daniel Hurst
‘Money, obviously,’ I reply. ‘Just get on with it, and I’ll do my best to get it for you.’
But to my surprise, Jimmy frowns.
‘That’s not what I want at all,’ he tells me with a shake of the head. ‘Why would I want money? I have enough of that already.’
Judging by his shabby appearance, I sincerely doubt that.
‘What then?’ I ask, afraid that it might be something even harder to get for him than that. I don’t have much money, but I was prepared to give it all up to keep my secret safe. But maybe it won’t be that easy.
‘You, Heather,’ Jimmy says, flashing me his yellowish teeth. ‘I want you.’
I try to figure out what he means by that. I have an idea, but I need clarification.
‘Me?’ I repeat back to him. ‘What do you mean, me?’
Jimmy glances around us as if to check that nobody will be able to eavesdrop on what he is about to say. Then he takes a couple of steps closer to me until he is only a few inches away from my face. With his eyes on my lips, I watch him as I wait for his answer.
‘I want a night with you,’ he tells me, his own lips curling into a smile. ‘My choice of venue. My choice of outfit. My choice of how long you have to spend with me. How does that sound?’
I step back away from him and shake my head, clearly displaying that it sounds how it came out. Disgusting.
‘No way,’ I tell him, glaring at his smarmy face. ‘Not a chance.’
‘You might want to take a moment to reconsider,’ he suggests, now grinning even more, if that was at all possible.
I really wish he had just asked for money. That would have been better than this.
‘Here’s my number,’ he tells me, handing me a small bit of paper. ‘If you’re game, text me tonight and I’ll tell you the place to meet tomorrow. If not, then you’ll be receiving a visit from the police.’
Then he turns and walks away as if he hasn’t just given me a ridiculous choice.
‘Wait!’ I call after him, attracting the glances of the father and child who are playing on the grass nearby. But Jimmy doesn’t turn around. He just keeps walking away.
As I watch him leave, I realise that no matter how much I think about it tonight and how much I want things to be different, I ultimately don’t have much of a choice.
I’m going to have to agree to his seedy demand.
24
CHLOE
I heard the front door open a moment ago, and now I’m on my way downstairs to find out how Mum’s meeting went.
I doubt I’m going to hear good news, but maybe it’s not going to be as bad as we feared. But then I see her face, and she doesn’t just look sad.
She looks drained.
‘What happened? Was he there?’
I know I’m bombarding her with questions before she has barely got through the door, but I need to know it all.
‘Slow down,’ Mum tells me as she heads past me into the kitchen, but I follow her in and watch as she takes a wine glass from the cupboard.
That can’t be a good sign.
‘Did he really see us?’ I ask as Mum takes out a bottle of white wine from the fridge and unscrews the cap. She doesn’t usually drink in front of me, presumably because she doesn’t want to set a bad example, but it’s a little late for setting examples now.
‘Oh yeah, he saw us alright,’ she replies, pouring herself a hearty measure and not bothering to screw the lid back on, suggesting this won’t be her only drink of the evening.
‘So what did he ask for? Money?’
I join Mum in taking a seat at the kitchen table and study her for any signs of an answer because she is slow in verbally giving them right now. But her body language portrays nothing other than what I suspected, which is that it is bad.
She takes a long gulp of her wine before letting out a deep sigh.
‘Mum, tell me!’ I plead, reaching out for her hand to let her know that I’m here for her no matter what it is.
She looks into my eyes, and I can see now how much she is struggling with all of this. She looks broken, like one of the many dolls I used to take to her as a child after I played with them too vigorously.
Right now, she looks as lifeless as them too.
‘It’s money,’ she replies, nodding her head. ‘He wants money.’
I let out a deep breath and think that it probably could have been worse, although I don’t bother saying that because it’s not really the right time for it.
‘Okay. How much does he want?’ I ask.
‘A few thousand,’ Mum replies before taking another large glug from her glass.
‘Do you have it?’
Mum shrugs. ‘Yeah, I got it.’
‘So we just pay him then he’ll leave us alone?’
‘I guess so.’
Mum finishes her drink and pours herself another.
‘Mum, it’s going to be okay,’ I tell her, reaching out again and taking her hand before she can have another gulp. ‘He’s given us a way out.’
Mum raises her eyebrows, and I decide that it might be best not to say any more in case I make her feel worse. Just because Jimmy has asked for something Mum can give him, that doesn’t mean that she wants to give it.
‘How much is it that he wants, exactly?’ I ask, my curiosity getting the better of me.
Mum takes a moment to answer me, instead swilling her wine around in her glass and causing it to ripple and sway.
‘Mum?’
‘Ten grand,’ she replies, her eyes on her alcohol and not me.
That’s a lot more than I thought, and I’m surprised Mum has that money to hand. Unless she doesn’t, and she is just trying to stop me from worrying.
‘You can take it from my uni fund,’ I suggest, nodding my head. ‘You know, the money you’ve saved for my accommodation. I’ll just get a part-time job when I go there. It’ll be fine.’
I was hoping not to have to work when I first started university so I could focus on learning a new place and making friends, but I feel like I have to at least offer.
‘No, that money is saved for you, and I’m not using it for anything else other than uni,’ Mum replies, shaking her head.
‘But do you have ten grand?’ I ask, doubting that paying this mortgage on her own for so many years has left her with a load of spare cash in the bank.
‘I’ve got it. It’s fine,’ Mum says, before quickly draining her second glass.
I wonder if she is going to dare go for a third one, but she doesn’t, at least not in my company anyway.
‘I’m going for a shower,’ she tells me, standing up from the table and leaving the bottle of wine open on top of it.
‘When does he want the money?’ I ask, swivelling around in my chair and looking at her as she leaves the room. But she doesn’t answer me. Instead, she just walks out and leaves me alone with almost as many questions as I had when she first arrived home a few minutes ago.
I sigh in frustration, annoyed that she won’t give me all the facts and let me try and help her with this problem. After all, we’re in this together, so we might as well work as a team to try and get through it. That’s what we did that night in the park, and I feel like that’s the only way we can get through this now.
I decide that I’ll go and speak to her again after her shower when hopefully she seems more willing to open up to me. Maybe the warm water will do her good. Or maybe the alcohol she just consumed will have kicked in by then, and she’ll be more at ease, even if it’s only false confidence.
Speaking of which, the sight of the wine in the bottle in front of me gives me the idea that I could take the edge off all this stress by following my mum’s lead and pouring myself a hearty glass. I decide to do just that, going into the kitchen cupboard for my own glass before picking up the bottle and helping myself to a much-needed drink.
The chilled liquid is instantly refreshing as it slips down my throat, and I don’t regret having it, even though I know Mum wouldn�
�t be impressed if she came down here now and caught me glugging wine on a weekday evening before six. But then again, I’m going to uni soon, and she must know that I’ll be consuming alcohol at all hours of the day there.
I hear the shower go on upstairs as I stand in the kitchen and enjoy the wine, listening as Mum’s footsteps trot across the floorboards of the bathroom above me before the door to the shower clicks shut.
Sometimes a good shower can make things seem a little better, as if the water can wash away some of your problems and leave you renewed for the challenges ahead. But it’s not a miracle cure, and all Mum’s problems are still going to be waiting for her when she gets out and dries herself off.
Rupert. Jimmy. The money.
Me.
25
HEATHER
I’ve never been one to take my time in the shower, usually just doing what I need to do and getting out quickly so I can get my clothes back on and get on with my day. But this time, I find myself lingering under the water for a lot longer than normal.
My head is directly underneath the jets of warm water, and the sensation of it on my scalp is soothing, if a little hot. I haven’t applied any soap, shampoo or conditioner yet, happy to let the clean water do all the work for me for the time being because that way, I don’t have to move. Instead, I can just think about what I am going to have to do with Jimmy.
I really wish he had just asked for money. That’s because money can be replaced. All it would have taken would have been some extra shifts at the station and a few months of tightening my belt until I recouped the costs. But he asked for something else. Something much harder to give than cash.
He wants my body.
I guess that’s why I’m staying so long in the shower right now. Maybe I subconsciously believe that getting myself as clean as possible today will somehow make up for the unclean act I am going to put myself through tomorrow. But I know that water is only so good. There are limits to the things it can do, and cleansing myself of sins, whether it’s ones in the past, present or future, is not one of them.
No matter how long I stay in here tonight, I’m still going to feel dirty tomorrow.
That’s why I couldn’t be honest with Chloe and tell her what Jimmy has really asked for. It was so much easier to just say money and leave it at that. It’s the most obvious thing he could have demanded, and it was certainly what I was expecting him to request when I met him earlier. My daughter seemed to buy my latest lie, as she has so often done in our relationship, which doesn’t make me feel any better about myself as a mother or a human being, but at least she doesn’t know the truth.
She doesn’t know that I’m going to sleep with a man just to keep our secret safe.
There’s no doubt that she would have reacted in disgust if I had told her what was really going on between Jimmy and me. She would have begged me not to go through with it after her initial shock had worn off, of course. She would have told me that it was too much for me to do, and she would be right, and she would also have wondered how I could put myself through it. But if it’s bad enough to live with the memory of what I am going to do with Jimmy in some seedy hotel room tomorrow, at least I don’t have to live with the fact that my daughter will know it too. Just like what happened with Tim ten years ago, I am shielding her from the truth, hoping that by doing so, it will stop her thinking any less of me than I’m sure she already does.
She thinks I’m a callous person who can just bury a teenage boy in the woods and get on with things. I’d like to just leave it at that if I can.
I’m thinking of staying underneath this soothing water for at least another five minutes when I’m disturbed by the loud knock on the bathroom door.
‘Mum? Are you okay?’
It’s Chloe. She’s probably worried because the shower has been running so long, and she’s checking that I haven’t slipped over and broken my neck. But I haven’t. I’m still very much alive and very much drowning in my sea of worry.
‘I’m fine!’ I call back, although I do decide it’s time to get out now before a high water bill is added to the list of problems I have to deal with.
Turning off the shower, I reach for my towel and use it to quickly dry off, before stepping out onto the tiled floor and catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. With my wet hair and my makeup-free face, I almost find it laughable that Jimmy finds me appealing enough to want to sleep with me. Obviously, I look much more presentable when I have styled my hair and applied copious amounts of products to my face, but still, I’d hardly call myself a babe. It’s been a long time since any man wanted me, let alone one who was blackmailing me about a corpse, and I wonder if part of the reason I feel so uncomfortable about what I am going to have to do tomorrow is because I’m so out of practise with the opposite sex.
Never mind physical intimacy; I haven’t even been on a date or sent a few flirty text messages to a guy in over a year. I always told myself that it was because I was busy with work and keeping a teenage daughter out of trouble, but I know the truth. It’s because I’m so untrusting of every man I meet that it’s not worth the paranoia that always accompanies any feelings of lust or love. Chloe’s dad was a waste of space, and Tim was the boyfriend from hell who I ended up sending back there so I can be forgiven for not having the utmost faith in the male species. The problem is, I allowed those two men to represent every other man in this town, and before I knew it, my thirties have whizzed by, and here I am, almost forty and terrified of even making eye contact with any guy in case he pounces and makes my life a nightmare again.
Yet even when I’m not looking for a man to make me feel worse about myself, I seem to find one anyway. Enter Jimmy, the blackmailing witness to my crime against poor Rupert, who now wants to sleep with me as if he is doing me the favour, which annoyingly he is. If I lie down on a bed with him, then I get to keep myself and my daughter out of prison. I don’t know if that’s a fair trade to make, but it’s one I have no choice but to accept.
If only Jimmy could see me now, all pale, wet and scruffy from my shower. He might have second thoughts about what he wants then.
Maybe I should send him a picture.
He’d probably drop his phone in fright.
The self-deprecating thought cheers me up for the shortest of seconds as I finish drying off and wrap my towel around my torso before unlocking the bathroom door and stepping out into the hallway. I’m almost expecting to see Chloe waiting out here for me based on her knocking on the bathroom door a few minutes ago, but she isn’t. The sound from behind her bedroom door lets me know where she is now, and I walk past it on the way to my bedroom, hoping that she will just stay in there for the rest of the evening so I can sit downstairs and get drunk by myself.
Walking into my bedroom, I throw off my towel and pull on an old pair of pyjamas, aware that tonight is not a night that requires me to look sexy. That’s a job for twenty-four hours’ time, which reminds me, I need to send a message.
Going into the back pocket of my jeans on the bed, I take out the bit of paper that Jimmy gave me in the park and unfold it to see the line of digits scrawled across it. Then I take out my phone and go into my texts, my fingers moving slowly across the screen as I type out a message to my blackmailer.
Reading it through several times, more because I can’t believe what I am saying rather than because I’m checking for any spelling mistakes, I decide that it is time to press send and I do it quickly before I have a chance to change my mind.
I wonder how long it will take Jimmy to come back with a response. I imagine he will be feeling very pleased with himself when he sees my message. I just hope he treats this like the business transaction that it is, which would be professional, with no room for gloating or exploiting. But I’m also aware that he is much younger than me, so maybe there will be some childish element to his reply. It turns out I don’t have to wait too long to find out.
Good call. Meet me in the lobby of the Royal Tree Hotel at four o’clock
tomorrow afternoon. Wear a red mini dress and black heels. Have your hair down. And I prefer blondes, so you’re going to have to do something about that. See you there.
I throw my phone onto my bed, angry and frustrated at the response. While it was fairly professional and business-like, that isn’t much consolation. There’s treating me like a transaction, and then there’s that.
It’s as if I’m some product he has just ordered in a magazine.
Trying to keep calm, I walk over to my dressing table and prepare to start going through my usual skincare routine that I conduct after every shower. But I pause when I catch sight of myself in the mirror and what I see is a reminder of the torment that awaits me tomorrow.
My long black hair. Wet. Scraggly.
And soon to be blonde.
26
CHLOE
‘What the hell have you done to your hair?’
I pause in the doorway of the bathroom when I see what is waiting for me on the inside. Mum is standing in front of the mirror, an empty bottle of hair dye sitting in the stain-covered sink in front of her, looking like an intruder in our home.
I recognise her, but only just.
‘I fancied a change,’ she replies, glancing at me a little self-consciously before turning back to the mirror and getting another good look at what she has done to herself.
‘Since when did you want to be blonde?’ I ask, walking in and scooping out the bottle of peroxide from the sink as if I needed that to confirm what I already know.
She looks like a bloody Barbie doll.
‘What do you think?’ she asks me, although judging by the expression on her face, that could also be a question for herself too. She doesn’t seem too sure about it.
‘It’s just a bit of a shock,’ I say, putting it mildly. ‘You’ve never dyed your hair before.’
‘Yeah, well, I figured it was now or never. Last year of my thirties and all that.’
I frown because while that might make sense to some people in some weird way, it doesn’t sound like anything my mother would think of doing.
