by Alice Feeney
“See you later, alligator,” he says, his gold tooth shining at me.
“In a while, crocodile,” I reply, because he likes it when I say that. I’ve seen pictures of alligators and crocodiles and they look awfully alike. I don’t understand why people are always pretending that things are different when they are the same. A name doesn’t change what a thing is, it’s just a name.
“I think it’s about time you started earning your keep, Baby Girl, come with me,” says Maggie, locking the door behind John and walking back out to the shop. I’m guessing it’s just me and her tonight. John goes out sometimes and doesn’t come home. I’m not sure where he goes, but it makes Maggie sad and cross at the same time. She calls it his “disappearing act,” and for a while I wondered if John might be a secret magician.
The shop is a mess. The big black leather stools are all over the place, and there are betting slips and cigarette butts and chocolate-bar wrappers all over the floor.
There is also a broom.
“I want you to sweep all this up, put the stools back against the walls, then, when you’re done, come and get me,” Maggie says, and walks through the open metal door that leads upstairs to the flat. I hear the television turn on up there, then the sound of the TV show she likes so much where they all speak like John: EastEnders.
I start with the stools; they are taller than me and very heavy. I push them back against the walls where they are supposed to be, and they make a horrid scraping sound against the tiles. When that’s done, I pick up the broom, pretend to fly around the shop on it like a witch, then start to make little piles of rubbish. I don’t know how to make the piles go inside the black bin bag Maggie left behind, so I use my hands. When I am finished, they are dirty and sticky. I stand at the bottom of the big stairs and call her name several times.
“Maggie!” I yell on the third try, but she still doesn’t reply. I’m tired and hungry. I think we’re having spaghetti hoops on toast tonight; we normally have something on toast for dinner. It can be beans or cheese or eggs, but whatever it is, we eat it on toast. Maggie says toast goes with everything. I think of something and try calling her again. “Mum!”
“Yes, Baby Girl?” She appears at the top of the stairs as if by magic.
“I’ve finished sweeping.”
She comes down and looks around at the shop floor, nodding. “You did good. Are you hungry?” I nod. “Would you like McDonald’s?” I nod again, twice as fast. McDonald’s is what she buys me when her face is happy. McDonald’s is way better than anything on toast. It comes in a box with a toy and I like it a lot.
“Well then, just you wait there.” She walks to the back of the shop, through the door that leads behind the glass counter, and out back behind the phone room where I can’t see. I hear the sound of water, then she comes back with a mop and bucket; it’s steaming and has bubbles like a minibath. “I want you to mop this whole floor, including the customer toilet, and I’m going to go and get you a Happy Meal. You just do it like this.” She drops the mop into the bucket, then lifts and twists it, squeezing out almost all of the water, before sliding it backwards and forwards across the floor. She puts the mop in my hand and walks to the front of the shop. Then she takes out the enormous set of keys that she carries everywhere, unlocks the door, and slams it shut behind her. I have never been through that door, I don’t even know what’s out there. I haven’t been outside at all since I first arrived. I wait for a little while after Maggie has left before looking through the letter box. I can see a row of houses, a road, an old man with white hair walking his dog, and a bus stop. I wonder if I caught a bus from there whether it might take me all the way home.
I start to mop the floor. It’s pretty big and dirty so it takes a long time, and the bucket is too heavy for me to lift, so I have to keep stopping to push it around with both hands. I have never been inside the customer toilet before. It smells bad, so I stay standing in the doorway. The toilet seat is up, there are lots of yellow and brown stains on the inside of the white bowl, and little puddles on the floor. I don’t want to go in there wearing my favorite socks, so I just mop everywhere else instead.
I hear the door at the front of the shop and think Maggie has come back with the McDonald’s. But it isn’t Maggie.
“Hello, little girl, what’s your name then?” says the old man. He’s the one I saw when I peeked out the letter box earlier. He has a white beard like Father Christmas and a dog, so I think he must be nice.
“Ciara.” It sounds strange to hear the sound of my real name inside my ears again. I bend down to stroke the ball of fur next to him. It’s a little brown-and-white thing, with big eyes and a waggy tail. I think he looks like Toto from The Wizard of Oz.
“You’ll have to speak up, child. My ears aren’t what they used to be.”
“My name is Ciara,” I say a little louder, distracted with rubbing the dog’s tummy. I think he likes it.
“That’s a very pretty name.”
“We’re closed,” says Maggie.
I look up and see her standing right behind the old man. She is holding the McDonald’s Happy Meal, but she does not look happy.
“Oh, I’m sorry, my mistake.” He shuffles back out of the shop, as though his feet are very heavy.
Maggie closes the door behind him, locks it, then turns and hits me hard across the face.
“Your. Name. Is. Aimee.” She looks around at the shop floor. It’s all wet, I haven’t missed any. She walks towards the back of the shop, her shoes leaving a line of dirty footprints behind her, then she stops outside the customer toilet, looking inside. I know I’m going to be in even more trouble, I’m just not sure how much. She comes out of there so fast, it’s as though she is flying. With my Happy Meal in one hand, she pinches the top of my arm with her other, then drags me across the wet floor, my socks slipping and sliding all over the place.
“I told you that your name is Aimee, and I told you to mop this floor. Did you mop this floor, Baby Girl?” She points inside the customer toilet.
I look at the sticky yellow puddles. “Yes,” I lie, already wishing that I hadn’t.
“You did? Oh, well, that’s all right then. It really looked like you didn’t, but you wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Not after everything I’ve done for you, putting food in your belly and clothes on your back when your daddy didn’t want you anymore?”
I wish she’d stop saying that about my daddy.
“No,” I whisper, and shake my head, thinking maybe she doesn’t know that I lied and can’t see the puddles and dirt.
She tips my Happy Meal all over the floor of the customer toilet, then mushes it and slides it around with the heel of her shoe, until all the french fries are flat and all the chicken nuggets are broken.
“Eat it.”
I don’t move.
“Eat. It,” she says again, louder this time.
I pick up half a chip, the one farthest from the toilet, and put it in my mouth.
“All of it.” She folds her arms. “There are only three rules we follow under this roof. I keep telling you what they are, but seems to me you keep forgetting. What is rule number one?”
I make myself swallow the chip. “We work hard.”
“Keep eating. Why do we work hard, Aimee?”
I feel scared and sick, but I pick up a tiny corner of a mushed chicken nugget. “Because life doesn’t owe us anything.”
“That’s right. Rule number two?”
“We don’t trust other people.”
“Correct. Because other people can’t be trusted, no matter how nice they might pretend to be. Rule number three?”
“We don’t lie to each other.”
“How many of the three rules did you break tonight?”
“All of them,” I mumble.
“I can’t hear you.”
“All of them.”
“Yes, you did. I need you to learn a lesson, and it has to be a hard one, Baby Girl, because I need you to remember, and I
need you to grow up. So, you’re going to eat all of your dinner off of this floor, no matter how long it takes, and then I hope you’ll never lie to me again.”
Twenty-three
London, 2017
“I really should eat something if we’re going to have another bottle,” I say. Jack appears to have ordered a second while I was in the bathroom.
“Nonsense, that will only make it more difficult for me to get you drunk and have my wicked way with you. It’s what I do with all my leading ladies on the last day of the shoot, haven’t you heard? It’s probably written in your contract somewhere, you really should read those things.” He tops up my glass.
There is a reason why Jack drinks. He hides it well, but I know his divorce earlier this year hurt him far more than he lets on. I never ask about it because I know he’s like me: he’s careful about which version of himself he lets others see. Some people don’t believe they deserve to be happy. We are only and always what we ourselves believe.
I give up resisting temptation and take another sip from my glass, glancing around the bar. It’s even busier now, standing room only, with more and more people coming here to relax and unwind after a long day of filming. Some faces I recognize, most I don’t, and when I see all the eyes staring in our direction, my shyness stings a little.
“You were great today,” Jack says. “The way you just turned on the tears was amazing, no eye drops or anything … how do you do that?”
I just think of something really sad.
I listen to Jack as he moves on to his favorite subject: himself, and continue to scan the bar from time to time while he talks. That’s when I see Alicia White. She glides in like a robotic swan, her long pale neck twisting out of a tight-fitting red dress in search of prey. I watch, transfixed, as she moves back and forth like a powerful Hoover, sucking up all the attention and any crumbs of praise in her path. I remember the lipstick, but dismiss the idea of her being involved with my husband, she’s out of his league. I almost didn’t recognize her; she’s dyed her blond hair dark brown, so that she looks a lot like me, albeit a much prettier version. I look away too late, she’s already spotted us.
“Jack, darling,” she purrs, interrupting him mid-monologue.
He leaps to his feet and embraces her, kissing both her cheeks and staring down at her cleavage briefly before making eye contact. “Alicia, how gorgeous to see you, tu es très jolie ce soir.” He allows himself another virtual drink of her body. My secondary-school French translates the compliment, but she looks a tad confused. “Let me introduce you to Aimee. We’ve been working on a film together, and she’s the next big thing, you heard it here first.”
Her face falters for just a second; she didn’t like hearing that. I wonder if Jack is learning French to try to impress Alicia somehow, and the idea of it hurts me a little.
“We know each other actually,” she says. The words are neatly unpacked, cool and crisp. “Aimee is like my little shadow. She followed me from senior school to drama school, and then a few years later got the same agent. You know Tony, don’t you, Jack?”
“Best agent in town.”
“Exactly, so imagine my surprise when little Aimee Sinclair’s name popped up right next to mine on his client list? Some might say she’s stalking me!”
Alicia throws her head back and they both laugh. I don’t, but I do manage a small smile. It hurts my face.
“What was the part you’ve just finished playing?” she asks me, as though she doesn’t already know. Her hair and makeup are perfect, as usual, and I now regret coming to the bar without any armor. Her bright red lips form a well-practiced pout in anticipation.
“It was the lead in a film called Sometimes I Kill, we finished filming today.” I notice the way her mouth twitches when I say the word lead.
“Sometimes I Kill,” she says, lifting her manicured fingers to her perfect chin in an exaggerated thinking pose.
Did I mention she can’t act for shit?
“Sometimes I Kill,” she repeats. “Oh, yes, I do remember now. Tony sent me that script, he said that I was the director’s first choice, but I turned it down. It wasn’t the right role for me, but I’m sure it was just perfect for you. At this early and uncertain stage in your career, I imagine you can’t be too picky. In fact, I suppose it’s rather lucky for you that I did say no—that meant dearest Tony could send them your headshot instead.”
“I suppose I should be thanking you?”
“I suppose you should!” She beams at me, either not understanding irony or choosing to ignore it. Then her face exchanges the smile for a frown, and she puts her icy-cold hand on mine. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about Tony slimming down his client list?” My eyes must answer for me, because she can tell from my face that I haven’t and looks delighted. “I just hope, for your sake, he doesn’t adopt a ‘last in, first out’ policy. It would be dreadful for your career if he dropped you now.” I zone out for a moment, remembering that Tony said we needed to talk, but hasn’t returned any of my calls since. I keep my concerns to myself.
Alicia joins us and I drink more wine than I should. I listen to the two of them gossip about directors, producers, and fellow actors, while silently worrying that my agent is about to dump me. Jack’s eyes are smiling and wide open, but he can’t seem to see her for who and what she is. Alicia isn’t just two-faced, it’s more complicated than that; she has several sides, all equally self-beneficial. She’s like a loaded dice, but most people don’t know when they’re being played. She spends the whole time constantly looking over Jack’s shoulder, to see if someone more famous is in the room for her to pounce on. Last I heard she was taking a break from acting for a little while, so it seems odd to find her here at Pinewood.
I admire her false eyelashes, which flutter with every false word, and stare in amazement as each tiny synthetic hair transforms into the shape of a letter. A paper chain of miniature black words start to stream from her eyes, her nose, the corners of her mouth, until her whole face is covered in a tattoo of little black lies. I know I am imagining this, and I consider the possibility I might have had too much to drink. She smiles and I notice a tiny bit of red lipstick has made itself at home on her white teeth; the sight of it brings me untold happiness, so I take another big sip of my wine in celebration.
When the bottle is empty, I order another, topping up my glass as soon as it arrives. I look at the way Jack is staring at Alicia and wish she would just go away, I want him to look at me like that. Only me. The thought generates a moment of guilt; I am still married, but then I remember what Ben is doing to me now, and what he has done to me in the past. The lipstick under our bed didn’t get there by itself, and he couldn’t have come up with a plan this elaborate on his own either.
Who is she? Who is helping my husband try to destroy me? When I find out, I’ll destroy them both.
I am most definitely drunk.
Alicia stands to leave and I can smell her perfume as she kisses the air on either side of my cheeks. Her scent is too strong, overpowering and sickly, just like the woman wearing it. I slur my words when I try to say goodbye. It’s just Jack and me now, he’s finally looking back in my direction, and ready or not I know what I want.
Twenty-four
Essex, 1988
“I still don’t know if she’s ready for this,” says Maggie.
“She’s ready,” John replies. “All she’s got to do is walk and hold my hand, it ain’t difficult.”
I think maybe they are going to have a fight. They fight a lot, and it makes me wonder if my real mummy and daddy fought a lot, too, before she died. Maybe that’s just what grown-ups do: shout loud words at each other that have nothing to do with what they are really cross about.
“Would you rather something happened to me?” asks John. “I’m starting to wonder who you care more about? Me, or a child who isn’t even really ours?”
I hear the sound Maggie’s hand makes when it hits a cheek. I know the sound because
sometimes it’s my cheek that it’s hitting. Then I hear the sound of John’s big leather boots coming towards my bedroom and the door bursts open. He grabs my wrist and pulls me into the hall. I only see Maggie for a second as we fly past their bedroom; I’ve never seen her cry before.
I trip on the stairs a couple of times on the way down, but John holds me up by one arm until my feet make contact with the wood again. When we get to the bottom, I think we are going to turn right through the metal door that leads into the betting shop, but we don’t do that. John bends down until his face is right in front of mine. His breath smells strange, and when he speaks, little bits of his spit land on my nose and cheeks.
“You stay with me the whole time. You hold my hand. You don’t do anything or say anything to anyone, or I’ll whip your arse so good you won’t be able to sit down for a week. Anyone says anything to you, you just smile. I’m your dad, and you and me are just going for a walk. You understand?”
I don’t understand most of what he just said, but I forget to answer because I’m watching him chew. He’s been chewing gum instead of smoking cigarettes, and I think maybe he should just smoke because chewing gum makes him cranky.
“Hello, is anybody home?” He knocks on my head as though it were a door. It hurts when he does this, and I wish that he wouldn’t. “Put your shoes on.”
I haven’t worn them since I first arrived, and it takes me a little while to remember what to do. I think my feet must have grown too, because my shoes are awfully tight now. John shakes his head as though I’ve done something else wrong, but then he opens the big front door that I came through the night I arrived, and I realize that we are going outside.
There are houses and trees and grass and sunshine, there is so much to see, but we are walking so fast along the road that everything rushes by in a blur, like a painting. John walks so quickly I have to run to keep up. He’s holding me tight with one hand, and holding a black-and-red bag with the word HEAD written on it in the other.