Jix, looking beautifully summer-hippie, April felt, in patchwork flared jeans and a tie-dye vest, stretched out on the grass with languid elegance. ‘Of course, if my mum could get over her agoraphobia, it would definitely be the answer.’
In the five scorching weeks since Cair Paravel had left Hugh Gaitskell House and taken up illegal residence in number 51, he and April had fallen deeply in love. He also adored Beatrice-Eugenie and Jix, and had been known to scrabble up the three flights of stairs to be pampered by Joel and Rusty. Sadly, he absolutely detested Daff.
April giggled, picturing Daff, her skirt tucked up into her knickers, sprinting across the grimy wasteland with Cair Paravel in hot pursuit. ‘I think her psychotherapist might have something to say about that. Anyway, she’s very hurt that her affection is unreciprocated.’
Poor Daff. Bursting with love for everyone, delighted to have another unlawful occupant at number 51 to entertain her in her incarceration, she’d been heartbroken when, on introduction, the greyhound had sniffed her, whimpered, and backed away growling.
‘Maybe she reminds him of something nasty in his past.’ Jix was staring at the sky. ‘Maybe Mr Reynolds was into cross-dressing. ’
‘Possibly. Very probably, in fact. In which case I don’t blame Cairey.’ April wrinkled her nose at the memory of the dirty vest and the bad perm. Given a pinny and a headscarf, Mr Reynolds could have walked straight out of The League of Gentlemen. Reaching out a lazy hand, she fondled Cair Paravel’s velvet muzzle. The discarded teddy bear, now washed to within an inch of its life, was drying stiffly in the sun. ‘So, are we going to give up on trying to train him, or what?’
‘Or what.’ Jix rolled over onto his stomach, his hair falling across his face. ‘We’ll just need to find him a proper circuit. Perhaps that’s all he needs – a track, and other dogs. At least then he’d have to run in the right direction.’
‘Would he? I wouldn’t bank on it. Anyway, I was never intending to enter him for the Derby or anything. I just thought that he might be O K in some of the smaller races at tracks outside London. Reckoned I might make some money from him, you know. At least enough to earn his keep.’
They surveyed Cair Paravel with grave disappointment. April was pretty sure that Jix was right. If only they could try him out at the Gillespie Stadium, introduce him to a real track, he might improve. Might actually realise what he was supposed to do. If he could race alongside other dogs, he may just grasp that there was a purpose to running like the wind on the trail of his quarry. But the Gillespie Stadium, handy though it was, was a definite no-go area. Even if they sneaked in at midnight and bribed the security patrol, there was still the awful risk that Sebastian, Oliver, or – worst of all – Martina would get wind of their sessions.
Then there’d be a dawn raid on number 51 and they’d discover not only Cair Paravel but Bee as well, and April could see herself turfed out onto the streets with her waifs and strays in tow. No, she shook her head, if Cair Paravel was going to earn his keep it would have to be somewhere miles away from Bixford.
Still, even that would probably bring all sorts of complications. To be able to race legally, even at an anonymous small stadium out in the sticks, Cair Paravel would have to be registered – and if Mr Reynolds had come by him duplicitously, then he probably already was. Which would mean the Greyhound Racing Association asking all sorts of probing questions about his ownership.
‘Come on.’ April glanced at her watch and scrambled to her feet. ‘It’s nearly five o’clock! I’m going to be late and so are you. Martina will have us on toast.’
Clipping the lead to Cair Paravel’s collar, and stuffing the saliva-rigid teddy bear into her handbag, she waited while Jix picked up the bike, then, skirting the dust-encrusted lavatera, they hightailed it towards the constant swoosh of traffic on Bixford High Street.
‘Sit!’ April commanded as they reached the pelican crossing. Cair Paravel sat. Jix looked like he wanted to. April grinned. ‘Late night?’
‘Early morning, actually.’
‘Not the stunning Brittany Frobisher?’
‘Nah. As you well know.’
April smirked as the little green man appeared and the signal beeped listlessly. Jix had failed miserably with the delectable Brittany. Despite her alleged promises to meet him in the Copacabana on the day she’d arrived to discuss the Platinum Trophy with the Gillespie clan, she’d stood him up. Since then, she and Seb Gillespie had been publicly inseparable. It had taken Jix weeks to recover from the humiliation.
Darting across the road, dragging Cair Paravel behind her and hoping that Jix and the mountain bike made it in one piece, April calculated that she’d just have her hour with Bee before she had to don the French maid’s outfit and sweat it out in the cocktail bar. They’d agreed not to take Bee on any of Cair Paravel’s abortive training sessions in case she said something to someone. Her conversation was just reaching the charmingly indiscreet stage.
The tailback of halted traffic snaked along the High Street, engulfing the Pasta Place and the boarded-up shops in a wreath of carbon monoxide. The restaurant’s doors were shuttered and the blinds drawn as they passed. April knew that Sofia and Tonio would be upstairs in the flat, grabbing the last moments of their siesta, sprawled, exhausted by the heat and the lunch-time rush, on their vast canopied bed, building their strength for the next onslaught.
By taking off-cuts of chicken and steak instead of her waitressing tips, April had so far managed to feed Cair Paravel without verging further on bankruptcy. Antonio had offered to give her the meat for free but she’d declined, because it simply wasn’t in the game plan. She would never accept handouts of any sort. Everything that funded the roses-round-the-door dream had to be earned by honest toil. Well, almost honest. April could never quite square the debt-collecting with gainful employment.
However, the lack of Pasta Place tips in the chocolate tin now meant that Cair Paravel would soon have to start earning his keep in one way or another. If becoming a champion racer was going to be out of the question, April decided she might have to try and get him a paper round.
They’d just reached number 51, and Jix was reaching for his keys, when the traffic rumble was splintered by a piercing blast of car horn. Cair Paravel leaped into the air and on landing, immediately wound himself wimpishly round April’s legs. Glaring into the string of vehicles for the offender, April groaned.
Everything had ground to a halt again by the pelican crossing. Lounging behind the wheel of his navy-blue Mercedes sports car, smiling quizzically, and with Brittany Frobisher beside him, was Sebastian Gillespie.
To be honest, April thought, rapidly trying to thrust the still-quivering Cair Paravel out of sight behind the mountain bike and failing, if Sebastian hadn’t been the spawn of Oliver and Martina, and hadn’t been her killer landlord, she would have allowed herself to find him very attractive. Tall, blue-eyed, with brown hair the colour of a peat stream, and a lopsided smile, he was certainly a high-scorer on the lustometer. However, as Daff was so fond of saying, handsome is as handsome does, and if he found out that she was breaking her tenancy rules, Sebastian could – and definitely would – see her homeless and jobless.
Still trying to disguise Cair Paravel as a bicycle spoke, April raised her hand in acknowledgement, forcing what she hoped was a cheerful employee smile. Jix, she noticed from the corner of her eye, was jabbing the key into the lock and not even trying.
‘Nice-looking dog!’ Sebastian called. ‘Not yours, I hope?’
‘What?’ April glanced down at Cair Paravel in theatrical amazement as if he’d just metamorphosed on the end of the lead. ‘God, no! Just – er – exercising him for a friend!’
‘Right . . .’ Sebastian nodded. ‘One of our owners?’
April shook her head, tugging the reluctant greyhound away from galloping through the now-open door of number 51. ‘Um – no – well, not exactly. He’s – er – not a racer . . . more a family pet . . . That is, of course, his owner�
��s family pet. Not mine – ha-ha!’
Brittany, who was wearing sunglasses and very little else, lifted them, glanced at April, and looked bored. The little green man had stopped flashing. The traffic was starting to move. Sebastian nodded again in a sort of detached way and released the handbrake. April allowed herself to exhale.
‘Mummeee! Caireee!!!’
Bee, wearing only knickers and the battered sunhat, dashed through the open door, darted through Jix’s legs and hurled herself at April. Cair Paravel did a neat circular turn, and with his ears at full prick, leaped on Beatrice-Eugenie and licked her exultantly.
Ignoring both dog and daughter, April fixed a rictus smile in Sebastian’s direction and was wildly disturbed to notice that he was still watching the scenario in his rearview mirror as the Mercedes purred away.
‘Do you think he twigged?’ Jix lugged the bike into the hall as April disentangled Bee and the greyhound on the dusty pavement.
Twigged? Full branch, trunk, and bloody rooted!’ April snorted. ‘Gorgeous and spoiled rotten he maybe, but sadly Sebby is nobody’s himbo. Oh, bugger . . .’
By ten o’clock, the Copacabana was in the middle of its nightly heave. April, shaking and pouring Purple Rains, Pink Squirrels and Yellow Fevers until she was almost colour blind, had earlier rehearsed and re-rehearsed her explanations, should she require them, with Jix and Daff. Cair Paravel would belong, as she’d said, to a friend. Bee, they’d decided, would be Jix’s progeny, visiting her paternal grandmother for the afternoon. Should Sebastian by any chance have heard the giveaway M word, they’d decided – may God forgive them – to credit Bee with a pronounced speech impediment.
The tenth race of the evening had just taken place in the glitter-ball stadium; drinkers who had picked the winner were surging away from the bar towards the Tote, while those who hadn’t were making inebriated selections for race eleven.
Martina, in a white lacy sprayed-on frock and with diamanté dust in her crew cut, spiked her way on vertiginous stilettos behind the bar. ‘April! I’ll take over here for a sec. Table forty-seven wants another bottle of shampoo.’
‘OK.’ April gave Martina a wild-eyed stare. ‘Don’t you want to serve them?’
Table forty-seven were celebrating a wedding anniversary. Loudly. They’d already had half a dozen bottles of the Stadium’s overpriced Moët. None of them seemed to have the slightest interest in greyhound racing. Most of them were singing football anthems.
Clattering the champagne from the fridge, swooshing the bucket under the ice-maker, then ramming the bottle into the blue-white crackles, April was sure Martina must have an ulterior motive. On the rare occasions that she worked in the Copacabana, she always preferred to serve the high spenders herself. High spenders were frequently high tippers, and many a twenty-pound note had found its way into Martina’s crepey cleavage. Was this just a ploy to get April to drop her guard? Was she to serve champagne to the partygoers and then collect her cards on the way out for keeping a dog and child in a Gillespie flat?
Swamped with guilt and fear, April ventured the question again.
Martina’s heavily creased turquoise eyelids flickered rapidly. ‘No, I don’t want to bloody serve them. They’re mouthy scum. Anyway, that’s what I pay you for. And while you’re doing it, I’ll check the till – so there better not have been any freebies tonight, or else.’
‘There haven’t been.’ April almost kissed the scrawny pancaked cheek in delight. It was merely her light fingers that were causing the Gillespies concern – not the existence of her family. ‘I’ve learned my lesson . . .’
She winced. Maybe that was a Uriah Heep too far. Martina obviously didn’t think so. The oil-slick lips oozed into a death’s-head smile.
‘Good. That’s what I like to hear. Now, get that poo out to the punters. Cheap trouncers they may be, but they’re pouring money into our pockets. Go on! Shift!’
Ramming the cap on to her curls, making sure that her knickers weren’t showing, April wrapped the ice bucket in a cloth, placed it on a tray, and shimmied her way out into the throng.
‘Ouch!’
Two bottom pinches before she’d even reached the plastic palm tree. This was certainly no job for Shere Hite.
Table forty-seven snatched at the champagne in delight, not even breaking off in the chorus of ‘Football’s Coming Home’. The cork exploded into the multitude of twinkling ceiling lights and several people cheered. Down below them, in a blaze of floodlit glory, the blue-jacketed greyhound had just sped to victory in the eleventh race of the evening. No one on table forty-seven took the slightest notice. The wedding anniversary couple, April noticed, both had black eyes.
‘Here you are, darling.’ A fat man in bri-nylon waved a flabby hand towards her. ‘Come and get your tip!’
April smiled her sweetest fuck-off smile and shook her head. ‘We’re not allowed to accept tips, I’m afraid. All gratuities have to be placed in the communal jar on the bar and – Oh!’
The fat man, shaking his head and laughing gummily, had grabbed hold of the frilly skirt and tugged her towards him. Dropping the tray with a clatter, April found herself anchored firmly on to his lap.
‘Couldn’t put that in a jar, eh, darling?’
Struggling to escape, April almost gagged with disgust. The fat man clung on, digging podgy fingers through the crisscross gaps in her fishnet tights.
‘I like a babe with a bit of spirit.’
‘If it’s spirit you want,’ April muttered, ‘try this.’ And balling her fist, she punched him neatly on the nose. ‘Bugger me!’
The fat hands stopped gripping her thighs and rushed to his face. The football anthems faltered to a halt. The wedding anniversary wife clapped rather half-heartedly. April stood up, straightened her cap, and staggered shakily away from the table – straight into the T-shirted chest of Sebastian Gillespie.
‘You just punched a customer!’
Oh God. ‘Yes, I know. He mauled me.’
‘He’s supposed to maul you. That’s why you’re dressed like a tart.’
‘He’s not and I’m not!’
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Get back to the bar. I’ll deal with this. We’ll talk later.’
‘But he – ’
‘April – leave it!’
Remembering that Sebastian almost definitely knew about Beatrice-Eugenie and Cair Paravel, April left it. Slinking back towards the bar, burning with outraged indignation, she wondered where she’d get another job. God, no tips from the Pasta Place and no wage from here – she’d be fighting Cair Paravel for a share in his paper-round.
Martina, just closing the till, cocked her shorn sparkly head towards the window seats. ‘Bit of a disturbance, was there?’
‘Something like that,’ April muttered, still squirming inside from the intimacy with the fat mauler. ‘Sebby’s sorting it.’
‘Sebastian to you,’ Martina corrected with a disapproving sniff. ‘Sebby is what he’s called at home – oh, and by his girlfriend, of course . . .’ She waggled bony claws along the bar.
April whimpered. Brittany Frobisher, in tiny crushed-velvet shorts and a beaded bikini top, was perched on a stool at the counter, stirring something opaque with a twizzle stick and looking pretty cheesed off.
Martina edged her way out from behind the bar. ‘Sebastian said it looked as though they were getting a bit rowdy. Not our usual class of punter at all, but you can’t turn ’em away on the grounds of being common, that’s what I say. Did they give you a tip?’
April shook her head. Should she tell Martina she’d punched a customer or leave that little gem of information for Seb? ‘Nothing, I’m afraid. Oh, it looks as though Sebby – um – Sebastian has got it all organised.’
Martina frowned as Sebastian, gripping the fat man by his bri-nylon neck, parted the Copacabana faithful like a floppy-haired Moses. She blinked blue Eylure lashes as her son and fifteen stones of perspiring flab disappeared through the gold-plated doors.
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br /> ‘Gets it from his gramp,’ she said admiringly. ‘He could still chuck out an entire pub on the Old Kent Road when he was well into his eighties.’
Sebastian returned within minutes, running his fingers through his hair. The layers immediately fell into place, April noticed, indicating that the cut had probably cost more than she earned in a month.
‘Barred for life,’ he informed his mother. ‘None of his party seemed at all sorry to see him go.’ He raised his eyebrows towards April. ‘You’re not hurt?’
‘No. Furious and insulted, that’s all. Thanks.’
‘No problem.’ Sebastian smiled along the bar at Brittany. ‘Pour us a couple of Godfathers then, and we’ll say no more about it.’
April’s hands shook as she heaped ice into two squat crystal-cut glasses. Martina, having had a quick whispered conversation in Brittany’s perfect peachy ear, had tottered off to spread more sunshine and happiness throughout her empire. Pouring two measures of bourbon and one of amaretto over the heaps of ice, April wondered what Sebastian was going to say no more about: her thumping the fat man – or the flouting of the tenancy agreement? She had a pretty awful feeling it wasn’t going to be the latter.
‘Thank you.’ Brittany accepted her glass with a smile – a genuine smile that made her, April realised with irritation, even more beautiful. ‘Seb told me about the trouble with that customer. How awful for you.’
‘It wasn’t pleasant,’ April admitted, warming towards Brittany for this show of female solidarity, and pushing the second Godfather across the bar to Sebastian. ‘But as your boyfriend so kindly pointed out, dressed like this, it’s all I can expect.’
Brittany frowned at Sebastian. ‘I hope you didn’t say that at all. That’s like saying every woman who wears a short skirt is asking to be assaulted. If I thought – ’
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