by Ruth Jacobs
“Where did you meet her, in heaven?” Tara sniggered.
“I just said I met her on a job. The Dorchester isn’t exactly heaven, Tara.”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion.” Tara sipped her coffee. “You’ve got an obsession with angels.”
“It’s her working name. We went—”
“You’ve got your own version of angel lust.”
“Shut up, Tara. Let her speak.” Nicole glared at Tara.
Shelley tried to keep focused. Now was not the time to be concerned with what Tara and Nicole might know about her dead client at The Lanesborough. “We went to that place on the Edgware Road. You know, where we go sometimes?” Shelley looked at Nicole, who nodded back in her direction. “We were in there talking for hours. No one on that list is better, and it won’t be the first time she’s done something like this.”
“Is she an avenging angel, Shelley?”
“Give it a rest, Tara. This is serious.” Nicole pulled a Rizla from the blue packet. “Has she really done this before?”
“Not exactly the same thing... She poured boiling water over her pimp.”
“What did he do to deserve that?” Nicole asked, stripping the paper from a cigarette.
“I can’t tell you. That’s her business, but believe me, he had that coming to him and a lot worse.”
Angel was brave doing what she did. She’d had a hard life. She was only fifteen years old when she started working the streets in her hometown – Bristol. Her mother kicked her out because her new boyfriend didn’t like her daughter. Angel’s pimp was supposed to protect her from abusive punters, but instead he’d taken over where they’d left off – raping her, beating her and stealing her money. At seventeen years old, she fought back and fled to London. She’d been working there ever since, leaving streetwalking for the higher fees paid by the clients of agencies and madams. She didn’t work regularly now. Most likely, she’d saved her earnings over the years and didn’t need to.
“I’ll call her. I’ll sound her out first. If it sounds like she’s not gonna help then I won’t tell her anything. There’s nothing to lose.” Shelley took out her brick of a mobile phone and brought up her contact list. Angel wasn’t stored. She knew she had her number. She remembered writing it down. Angel had asked if she could contact Shelley for other double bookings, so they’d exchanged numbers. Angel had never called though. And although Shelley said she’d call her too, she’d never again had that request from a client – for a pre-operative transsexual.
***
In her bedroom, Shelley rummaged through the discarded scraps of paper she’d abandoned inside more than a dozen handbags. Angel’s number had to be on one of them. As she searched, she considered whether to tell her friends about Angel’s gender. She decided she couldn’t. It wasn’t their business. Moreover, it didn’t have any impact on the plan. Angel passed for a woman and that was all that was required.
Twenty minutes or so later, Shelley returned to the lounge, exhibiting a serviette with Angel’s phone number. “I’ll call her now.”
“Well done, most precious.” Nicole stood up and passed Shelley a joint. “I’m dying for a cuppa. Let me put the kettle on first.”
“If you’re being mother, I’ll have a coffee,” Tara said.
Once Nicole had disappeared into the kitchen, Shelley spoke to Tara. “Are you sure Marianne doesn’t know you heard her?”
“She doesn’t. Why are we whispering?”
“I don’t want to worry Nicole,” Shelley lied. She didn’t want Nicole to think she was paranoid. “Are you sure? You were there when she took the call.”
“She doesn’t know. She was on the phone in the hall and I was in the lounge.”
“What about when she saw you? She must’ve said something?” Shelley passed the joint to Tara and redirected her fingers to untwisting a knot in her hair.
“She didn’t. I had my headphones on. When she came in, I jumped up like she’d given me a fright. You are worried, aren’t you?”
Shelley tried not to look worried. What did it matter if Marianne knew anyway? They only needed to keep her onside until the rapist had been dealt with. After that, it didn’t matter.
“Shell, honestly, there’s nothing for you to worry about.” Tara took a pull on the joint. “I’m the only one whose real name she knows, and she knows where I live. If it was going to come back on anyone, it would be me.”
“We’ll have to keep working for her or she’ll know something’s up,” Shelley said, though she didn’t know how she’d be able to speak to her when she was seething with loathing.
“She’ll damn fucking know about it when she gets her comeuppance.” Nicole came back in with three steaming mugs. “The sooner we deal with that cunt, the sooner we can move on to the sick bitch.”
11. Art, Lying and Riding
In the newsagent’s, Shelley scoured the papers for a story reporting on the dead man at The Lanesborough. Nearly three weeks had passed and still there was nothing. The cantankerous man behind the counter looked even more vexed than usual. This new daily ritual – on the days she left her flat – looked like it was going to be a long-term project. As such, she decided it would need to be spread more widely than among the three newsagents she currently used.
When Shelley had called Angel on Friday, she was at the airport on her way to Ibiza for a weeklong job. There was nothing they could do until she returned. After seeing her mother on Friday afternoon, Shelley held a solitary party in her flat. Inconveniently, she’d had to break it up twice over the weekend to see clients at her working flat in Belsize Park. Monday was the first time she’d had more than three hours’ unbroken sleep and now, on Tuesday, she was going with her friends to see Tara’s son.
Outside on Hampstead High Street, Shelley heard a car horn beeping in time to blasting music – Public Enemy: Bring the Noise. Shading her eyes from the bright sun with her hand, she saw Hugo driving down the hill in his white Range Rover. He pulled up to the curb beside her and she climbed in.
“Where’s the Porsche?” she moaned, turning down the volume.
“Sorry darling, it’s a long drive.” Hugo tilted the rear view mirror, examining his reflection like a woman checking her lipstick. “Couldn’t make the ladies suffer in the back just for you, could I?” He removed his navy blazer, turned the volume back up high, and nodded his head to the music as he sped off down the hill.
“Where’s Tara?” she eventually asked, readjusting the volume again.
“She went back to hers on the weekend. Ozzie showed up at mine, brought a few of the old Bullingdon chaps with him – she didn’t want to be around.”
They drove to Hendon to collect Nicole, then to Earl’s Court to pick up Tara. At midday, they finally set off on the long drive to Dorset. Shelley was pleased she’d managed to keep her seat in the front. She was never a good passenger, and even worse in the back.
“You sure it’s all right for us to be coming, love?” Nicole asked Tara.
“It’s fine, really. Just remember you’re my friends from art college and whatever you do, don’t slip up.”
Shelley hoped she wouldn’t be asked questions about art and artists. The names of a few famous artists, and the fact that Van Gogh chopped off his ear, was the extent of her knowledge. At least she had Tara and Hugo on hand. Tara would know enough to keep up the lie, and Hugo’s father was an art dealer, so he ought to know quite a bit. They would be able to get Nicole and Shelley out of any sticky moments.
***
Hugo turned off a country lane and stopped the car at a pair of black wrought iron gates. Tara jumped out, pressed the buzzer on the brick wall, then jumped back in again. The tall gates opened and the Range Rover rolled up the long driveway towards the house.
Shelley was amazed. The Barnes family lived in a mansion. A huge, red-bricked, sprawling house. How had Tara fallen from there to how she lived now? Surely, her parents could have given her an allowance.
Mr and Mr
s Barnes stood outside the front door, between the two pillars that towered either side. They looked as regal as their house. Mr Barnes, Tom, welcomed them in to an extravagant hall, then through to a massive drawing room that overlooked the back garden. Looking out the sash window, Shelley wondered where the garden ended. It seemed to go on forever, in all directions.
Shelley took a seat next to Nicole and Hugo on the enormous tapestry sofa. With her and Nicole’s flowery blouses – their attempt to look like art students – their half was overloaded with a mismatch of patterns.
Tara and her mother, Agnes, had disappeared on their arrival. After a short while, Agnes returned, carrying a teapot and a plate of biscuits on a gold tray. She set it down on the coffee table next to a china tea set. Tom poured the tea and passed round floral teacups on matching saucers.
“Do you ride, Shelley?” Agnes asked. She looked like Princess Margaret, with her hair big and loose in a bun.
“I have but only a couple of times,” Shelley replied.
“For a living,” Hugo mouthed at her.
“What about you, chaps? Do you fancy going for a ride later, while Tara’s with Maxwell?”
“Spiffing.” Hugo clapped his hands together.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been on a horse,” Nicole said.
“Tom will show you how. Won’t you, dear?” Barely moving her head, Agnes peered up at her husband who stood beside her armchair.
“Of course, dear.” Tom picked up the porcelain ribbon plate from the coffee table and passed round the biscuits. “Finish up here, then we’ll set off.”
Tara entered the room with Maxwell, who didn’t even come up to her waist. The long sleeves of his white and blue checked shirt draped over his hands, past his knuckles. He shook his arms, perhaps trying to free his little fingers. He looked particularly small, but then Shelley didn’t know much about children’s heights and ages; she was rarely around them.
A few feet away, he stopped walking. He seemed reluctant to come any closer or for his mother to move farther into the room. He knelt on the carpet with his arms wrapped around one of Tara’s legs, clinging on tightly like a trap.
“Come on, sweetie-pie. I want you to meet my lovely friends.” Tara bent down and scooped up her son. She rested him on her hip and walked over.
“They’re going out riding with Daddy,” Agnes said. “Take Max and totter off upstairs.”
After the shortest of hellos, Tara followed her mother’s instruction and carried Maxwell out of the room.
***
Shelley, Nicole and Hugo followed Tara’s father into the garden. At the stables, he handed them each a riding hat. Shelley and Nicole also received tartan body protectors. Tom and Hugo went inside the stables, and came out leading four horses.
Shelley took the reins, gripped the saddle and pulled herself up on the grey speckled horse. Hugo mounted his horse with ease as well, but Nicole struggled to get off the ground. Tom dropped the stirrup a couple of notches. Then he guided her foot in place and pushed her up and onto the horse. Fortunately, this was one of those rare days that Nicole was wearing jeans.
Galloping though the open field, Shelley relished the feeling of the wind in her face and hair. The intrusive memories that dwelled in her head, and charged her in pain for their keep, had been evicted. Only a visit from the bailiff – heroin – had ever been able to do that. This could be better than heroin. There was no guilt in riding a horse. She wasn’t hurting anyone, or herself, in the process.
Hugo caught up to ride alongside Shelley. Looking back over her shoulder, she realised they’d covered quite a distance. She couldn’t see Nicole and Tom, and expected they hadn’t got far. Suddenly, she remembered their charade of being art students. Worried Nicole might be asked awkward questions, she turned around and galloped back to find them.
***
When they arrived back at the house, they returned to the drawing room, where sandwiches and cakes awaited on a three-tier china stand.
“What did you read at Oxford, Hugo?” Agnes asked, sitting down in her armchair.
“PPE.”
Shelley looked quizzically at Hugo.
“Philosophy, Politics and Economics.” He took a bite of Battenberg.
“And you’re an art dealer, Tara tells us. How interesting.” Agnes straightened the neckline of her high-collared dress while staring intently at Shelley. “What about you, Shelley? What are you studying at art college?”
Shelley paused, waiting for Hugo – who was a trustafarian and not an art dealer – to come in and help her. But he didn’t. “It’s very broad, everything really,” she said.
“Our wonderful Shelley is an expert in expressionism.” Having thrown the grenade, Hugo reclined on the tapestry sofa. To savour the fallout, Shelley expected.
“So you like emotive art.” Agnes poked a finger into her colossal hair. “Who are your favourite artists?”
Shelley looked at the ceiling, then at Nicole. “I like Van Gogh... um...”
“She likes all the great ones. You know, Rembrandt, Picasso, Matisse.” Nicole smiled sweetly at Tara’s mother.
“Shelley doesn’t concentrate in class.” Hugo leant forward and put his empty plate on the coffee table. “She has a crush on one of the teachers. She’s a big distraction for her.”
“That’s not true.” Shelley felt the blood rush to her cheeks.
“He’s joking.” Nicole smiled at Agnes. “You’re not funny.” She glared at Hugo.
Later, when they drove back through the giant gates, Shelley felt disappointed. Tara had never come back downstairs with Maxwell. She’d hardly spent any time with him. Although Shelley wasn’t keen on being around children, Maxwell was her friend’s son and she’d wanted to get to know him. It probably wasn’t her first and only opportunity, but with what they had planned for the rapist, and with the issues Tara had with Maxwell’s father, it might have been.
12. Pain That Feeds On the Soul
Late afternoon on Wednesday, Shelley was trying to leave her flat to go to Aunt Elsie’s house. But she couldn’t get out. Her checking had become worse. She knew it was due to increased anxiety. The more paranoid directors on the board were spinning ‘what ifs’ in her head.
“What if you get caught?”
“What if you go to prison?”
“What if he hurts you?”
“What if he rapes another girl?” she shouted, hoping it would stop them. That was all that mattered. However much fear they instilled in her, there was no going back. She couldn’t live with the guilt of more girls being raped, knowing that she could have stopped it. Didn’t they know that about her? They were her board. They were in her head.
They didn’t stop. And with their constant scaremongering, the fives were constantly interrupted. She had to keep starting over and over and over again. It had been like this ever since last week. Every time she’d tried to leave the flat, it had taken nearly half an hour. It couldn’t go on. The situation was untenable; clients often expected her to arrive within thirty to sixty minutes of making a booking.
Unable to quieten the board, she gave up the checking and smoked a cigarette. Still jittery, she took out her foil and had a small chase. She told herself it didn’t really count. After all, she didn’t shoot it.
The board sedated, she was able to complete the checks. Within five minutes, she was in her 350SL, revving the engine.
***
When she arrived at Aunt Elsie’s, she was relieved to smell only the old house mustiness and not her aunt’s cooking. She couldn’t eat so close to using gear. She’d be sick. Aunt Elsie called from the kitchen and Shelley sauntered down the hall to the back of the house.
Her aunt hugged her then held her back by her shoulders. “You look exhausted. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, I’m fine.” Shelley pulled her hair slightly over her face.
“Did you get that allergy test done?”
“I’ve been too busy with work... I’ll get
round to it soon.”
“They’re working you too hard. I can tell.”
Shelley scratched her nose. “They’re not. They’ve been very good to me, really.”
Aunt Elsie made tea and they sat on their usual white stools at the white, plastic table in the kitchen. Elsie, as always, sat facing the back door and Shelley, facing the hall. From her chair, she could see the picture frames that stood on the hall table. Although she couldn’t see the pictures, she knew each one from memory. The pictures were of happier times: baby pictures of her and William, a school picture of William when he was about ten, a school picture of Shelley taken around the same time, putting her at seven or eight, and a picture of them both with their mother before she became ill. That last picture, taken in Brighton in the summer of 1983, was from the last holiday they’d had with just the three of them. Until that year, Rita had taken her and William to Brighton every summer. Neither she nor her mother had been back since, but William had, once.
Shelley gulped her tea and apologised to her aunt for the short visit. On her way to the front door, she stopped at the hall table. It was the missing pictures she noticed. There was no record from that last holiday until she was fifteen years old and William was seventeen. As if those years in between had never existed. Of course, they had. They all wanted to forget them. But how could she erase them when she’d endured them? However much she tried, those years wouldn’t stop replaying in her head. That’s what caused the rage, the despair, and the excruciating pain that fed on her soul.
At the front door, Elsie put her hands on Shelley’s shoulders. “You’re a wonderful daughter. If I’d had a child I’d want her to be just like you.”
Shelley hugged her aunt. She needed the hug and she needed to hide the tears of guilt she felt forming in her eyes. She was not a wonderful daughter.
***
In her car, the salty tears trickled into her mouth as she sang to Steely Dan - Fire in the Hole. Smoking a cigarette had worked to stop the sobbing, but the tears still leaked.