by Sarah Hilary
May smiled at me, sitting very straight in her chair, her hair brushed neat, all of her covered with the school uniform. The tights made her legs itch, like mine. Neither one of us dared to scratch, though, not at the table. Ashleigh took her place, pulling a napkin into her lap, hiding all trace of the bitch she was upstairs.
At the stove, Harm was serving brown food on to grey plates. He was moving more slowly than usual, as if he needed to remind us how this worked – marking our places. My fingers twitched, until I stopped them. Anything different, any change to the rhythm made me nervous.
Everything must always, always be the same.
That’s what he’d taught us, what he kept teaching us. I hated how slowly he was moving. The candles sucked at his shadow, pulling it on to the table. I moved my hands out of its reach.
Christie was helping Harm, holding two plates in each hand like a waitress. She was tall and solid, more real than the rest of us. Blonde hair down her back, the way he liked it. A cotton dress that stopped at her knees, showing off her calves. She had some serious muscles. Next to Harm, though, she was nothing. She glanced at me, nodding her approval. I’d been allowed downstairs and I’d come without a fuss. Good girl. Good dog. I pulled out a chair and sat next to May, who sneaked her hand into mine under the table. Her hand was warm, or mine was cold. My room never got warm, not properly. That underfloor heating was a lie, like everything else.
Ashleigh scuffed her feet on the floor, then stopped, sitting quietly.
Three of us in our white blouses, black skirts and tights, faces washed with soap and water, hair brushed neat. Mouths like butter wouldn’t melt, not that butter was on offer.
Christie brought the plates to the table. Harm was a good cook, she said. As if you needed a Michelin star to cook the crap we lived off, food so full of preservatives it could serve itself. May tried to plant vegetables once, but he wouldn’t let her. Everything had to be long-life. Slimy slices of reconstituted aubergine like the tongue from someone’s boot died on the side of my plate.
We ate in silence, the only sound the squawking of forks on tin plates. We drank water from tin cups. Nothing at our table was breakable, unless you counted the high-strung silence of teenage girls in the thrall of a handsome and bountiful middle-aged man. I really, really wanted to puke.
‘We are what we are,’ Christie always said.
I’d seen a horror film with that title, but I kept it to myself.
We are what we are.
If you’d looked through the window, what would you have seen? A father and his youngish wife sitting with their family of photo-booth-ready dolls, smooth hair down to their waists, new tits under neat shirts. And me – the odd-looking one at the end, with a flat chest and short black hair that was wasted on his fat silver hairbrush.
It was all lies. Christie wasn’t his wife. We weren’t his daughters, not even sisters. Of course you couldn’t have seen through the window. There were blackout blinds for one thing.
Harm refilled my cup with water, a pinch of concern on his face. ‘Don’t dehydrate.’
Ashleigh risked an eye roll, turning it into a blink before Harm could catch her.
The water tasted of coins, the way my hands used to smell at the end of a good day’s begging on the streets. ‘Thank you.’ My voice cracked on the last word.
Ashleigh was the first to clear her plate. ‘That was yummy.’ She licked her lips, shooting a white smile across at Harm, eyes as shiny bright as her teeth. She’d put something on her lids.
Fuck …
She’d smeared Vaseline on her eyelids, and her mouth. No make-up in the house. One of his rules. The Vaseline made her mouth wet. She didn’t look like a schoolgirl. She looked grown-up, and slutty. Stupid, stupid cow …
Harm hated grown-up. He hated slutty more than anything. We were meant to be his perfect dolls, sexless, chaste. She knew this. Ashleigh knew. She was sitting too far forward, her hands pulling at the hem of her shirt, skin-tight at the front. He was going to notice. She’d been trying to get his attention for weeks. Fuck. How could he not notice her tits when she sat like that?
Christie put back her chair. ‘Ashleigh, it’s your turn to help clear the table.’
Ashleigh stood, hips rolling like a slinky toy coming down the stairs. I felt the slap in Christie’s stare as hard as if she’d hit me.
The air got tight, the way it does in a storm. I could taste the buzz of static on my tongue. At my side, May was taut with waiting, to see what he’d do. We were dressed right, sitting where we were told, eating his crappy food, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough.
‘Ashleigh.’ His voice was soft, like it’d been chalked, the way a weightlifter chalks his hands before a big lift. ‘Ashleigh.’
She turned, not smiling now. She’d tried to lick the Vaseline off her lips, but it was still there at the edges of her mouth, winking at him.
‘Come here.’
Under the table, May squeezed my fingers.
Don’t don’t don’t …
‘Come here,’ Harm repeated.
Ashleigh walked back to the table, not slinking now, jerking like she was on a leash. He looked into her face. He was so close she must’ve felt his breath. He was the only one breathing; the rest of us didn’t dare. Even Christie was holding her breath. The candles burned straight up to the ceiling in the sudden scooped-out silence.
‘Did you hurt your mouth?’ His voice stayed chalky soft.
Ashleigh jerked her head from side to side. Her tits swelled under her shirt and she tried to stop them, tried to hold it together, but she couldn’t. He wouldn’t let her.
‘Did you hurt your eyes?’
She jerked her head.
‘Are they dry? Cracked?’
And again.
‘Then why is there petroleum jelly on your face?’
‘I … no. Yes. P-please. Sorry.’ She hit each word in turn, hoping to land on the safe one.
Harm wasn’t listening. He held out a hand to Christie, who picked up her paper napkin and passed it across the table, making the candles crouch and shudder.
He spat on to the napkin. Straightened to his full height.
The whole room tilted away, dragging our shadows towards him like he was swallowing us up.
Ashleigh hadn’t moved. She was very little now, with him standing over her.
He rubbed at her mouth with the napkin. Spat again. Rubbed at her eyelids. Like he was trying to scrub her out. She let him do it. She had that much sense, at least. She was hunching to make her tits look smaller. Good. Spat. And rubbed.
When he was done, Harm dropped the balled-up napkin on the table.
Then he picked up a candle.
My fingers twitched under the table. May stroked her thumb across my knuckles, trying to keep me quiet. It should’ve been the other way around, me looking out for her. I was the only one he wouldn’t touch, the only one with any power, but I was scared, I was always too scared.
Ashleigh was standing stone-still, her shadow squirming at her feet like she’d wet herself.
Harm held the candle so close, the whole side of her face was yellow.
I took a pinch of air through my nose because I couldn’t not-breathe any longer but I didn’t want to pull the flame into her hair.
He looked at her. ‘Better.’ His voice hadn’t stopped being soft. He never shouted. He never had to. ‘Now, what do you say?’
‘Th-thank you.’
‘No, not that.’ Each word made the flame flap closer to her face. ‘What do you say?’
‘S-sorry.’
‘Say it to everyone.’
She had to turn towards the table to do as he said, putting her face into the flame. He held the candle steady and I could smell her skin scalding like milk, his spit drying on her face …
I could smell his spit on her.
‘Sorry. I’m s-sorry.’
‘For what?’ Harm said.
‘Spoiling this.’ She was crying. T
he flame licked at her face, finding her tears, making them sizzle. ‘I’m sorry for spoiling this.’
‘That’s better.’ Harm put the candle down. He opened his arms and she fell into them, landing on his chest with a howl. ‘Good girl.’ He stroked her hair, petting her. ‘Good girl.’
He was looking right at me.
After a bit, he eased Ashleigh to arm’s length and let her go.
Don’t, don’t let him turn his back …
He’d turned his back on Grace, last night.
Christie started to clear the plates from the table, breaking the silence, jerking sound back into the room. Harm smiled at Ashleigh and pointed her towards the sink. Her face had sunk in on itself, still shiny with his spit. All because she wanted to be his special one. I could’ve told her …
You don’t want to be his special one, you really don’t.
All she saw was the gifts, the giving. She didn’t see the taking away.
Harm was back at the head of the table. ‘Aimee, finish your food.’ He moved his eyes to May. ‘You too.’ Like nothing had happened.
Everything must always, always be the same.
Food was a privilege. I shovelled it in as if I was filling a ditch, edgy with adrenalin. It made me brave, and stupid. I hated it when he looked at May. Hated it. ‘Where’s Grace?’ I reached for my cup, listening to the new silence. Different to before, because he was fixed on me, but better than him fixing on May. Through a mouthful, I repeated the dangerous question. ‘Where’s Grace?’
I had his attention. All of it. Like we were the only two in the room. His stare made me dance, but I wanted to hear him say it. I wanted proof.
Grace was gone.
I could feel the hole. I knew all the spaces in there, wide open or otherwise. One of them was empty. Dead space. She was gone, and I wanted him to admit there was a way out. Away from his gifts and the hard leash of his attention, the fear of what’d happen when his patience ran out, or the food did. His family was fake, and toxic. We were toxic. He’d made us safe, and he’d made us sick. Living by his rules, wanting his attention and not wanting it. Hating each other, hating him because we needed him, because there was nothing else and we were scared. Living like whipped dogs.
Grace was gone. She’d got away.
I wanted to hear him say it.
My hand was cold, and empty.
May was on her feet.
Not like the others. She didn’t need Harm’s attention, but she got it. She got everyone’s attention when she said, ‘I’m pregnant.’
6
Marnie stood at the scarred side of the road under the fixed stare of a CCTV camera. London was littered with these cameras. Her team had hours of footage to search for the girl who might be May Beswick. House-to-house was quicker but had its own complications, chiefly that not-noticing was most Londoners’ superpower.
Joe Eaton’s description had been vivid enough for Marnie to see the girl in her mind’s eye. Dyed red hair wild around her face, black scratches on her skin. Bare feet. Walking out into the traffic like a wind-up toy. Who wound her up? And from where?
She turned to where the housing estate was sprouting still more CCTV cameras. One for every six people in the city. Tim Welland, her boss, was fond of quoting the figures. The average Londoner was filmed four hundred times a day, yet only three per cent of crimes were solved using surveillance footage. Perhaps she was wrong about not-noticing. Perhaps the city’s superpower was paranoia. She walked in the direction of the estate, away from the tyre burns, thinking of the girl’s bare feet. She was running, injured, searching for a safe place. So why didn’t she stop?
Twelve weeks ago, May Beswick had been a bright, quiet teenager. No mood swings, no anxiety, or none that her friends and family had witnessed. Joe Eaton’s girl had been screaming.
Noah was waiting at the corner. ‘Ron’s on house-to-house.’ He nodded across his shoulder to the Garrett estate. ‘He says he was due here this morning in any case.’
‘Emma Tarvin,’ Marnie remembered. ‘She was complaining about kids setting fires.’
‘And making threats.’ Noah nodded. ‘Ron says she’s an old battleaxe, not the kind to take fright easily. Any word from Ed?’
‘He’s still making phone calls, but he spoke with the nearest refuge and no girls were admitted last night. She couldn’t have walked in off the street in any case. She’d have needed to call ahead, and to know which number to ring. If she had access to a phone, she could have called the police. We’re checking emergency calls either side of the time of the crash. Nothing so far.’
They walked on to the Garrett. ‘Joe Eaton said bare feet.’ Noah eyed the pavement. ‘I wouldn’t take my chances on these streets.’
‘Or any London street. It’s getting cold, too. She’ll have wanted to find somewhere warm.’
‘Assuming she’s on her own. That whoever she was running from didn’t catch up with her.’
‘Assuming that,’ Marnie conceded.
The Garrett had been built as four tower blocks joined by a system of shared walkways. Deck access was the architect’s term. The towers were brutal concrete pyres housing London’s poor in squat boxes with savagely sparkling views across the river. Communal living, but it reeked of anonymity at best, isolation at worst. Boarded doors and windows said paranoia was thriving here, just about the only thing that was; the flower beds were cement troughs flooded with litter and worse. The grass growing between the flagstones was starved, more grey than green. Even the graffiti was dead, sandblasted to pastel pockmarks on the walls.
The mobile unit was setting up outside the first of the towers, Ron Carling briefing the house-to-house team on their likely reception on the estate. ‘We’re about as popular as Ebola round here, so keep it pally. We want scores on the doors, as Larry Grayson liked to say. Oh, hello.’ He cracked a grin at Noah. ‘Speak of the devil.’
‘Emma Tarvin,’ Marnie said. ‘Which flat is hers?’
‘Seven four six. She stays up all night sometimes, keeping an eye out for what’s coming. It’s got so she’s scared of her own shadow, poor cow.’
‘I thought she was a battleaxe,’ Noah said.
‘Doesn’t mean she doesn’t get scared.’
‘She keeps an eye out,’ Marnie said. ‘From which window?’
‘Was she watching when our girl came past last night?’ Ron pointed towards a row of windows halfway up the first tower block. ‘Bird’s-eye view, and she’s a nosy old bird. Needs to be, to survive round here. Welcome to what’s left of Lambeth. Gotham’s got nothing on this shithole.’
‘Cheer up, Bruce. You’ve got this covered.’
‘Bruce?’ Ron peered at Noah. ‘Oh, right. Bruce Wayne.’
‘Or Forsyth. I was going for Forsyth. It’s the moustache.’
Ron snorted, but he was grinning. ‘Let’s sort the scores on the doors, then.’
On the south side of the estate, two kids were kicking a fire-damaged wheelie bin. Seeing the police, they kicked harder until one of the uniforms moved in their direction, then they disappeared fast between the blocks, soaked up by the long shadow of the towers.
‘Terror is a normal reaction to social living.’ Noah fell into step at Marnie’s side. ‘Isn’t that what they say?’
‘They didn’t look very terrified to me. Bored, maybe.’
‘My dad would call it Thatcher’s legacy. No such thing as society, just families and individuals. Competitive individuals. Everyone’s a competitor, so everyone’s a threat. We’re pretending to be social, but really we’re scared out of our wits.’ Noah scratched at his cheek. ‘My dad’s actually a lot cooler than I just made him sound. But he likes to bang on about the old days, circa 1987.’
‘You were born in 1987, weren’t you?’
‘In a place like this.’ He craned his neck at the walkway above them. ‘My dad called it the gulag. Among other things.’
A hundred feet away, a black boy of about ten was circling on a bike, beanie
pulled down to the bridge of his nose. The bike was too small for him, and pink nylon ribbons were trailing from the handlebars. He was a caricature of boredom, circling aimlessly, but Noah said, ‘He’s the lookout. That means someone’s dealing drugs here, or selling stolen goods. Or both.’
He knew what he was talking about. Marnie heard it in his tone, saw it in the watchful way he moved. ‘Do you think he might’ve seen anything useful last night?’
‘Maybe, but would he share it with us?’ The boy peeled away, cycling between two of the towers. ‘Unlikely.’ Noah didn’t turn his head after the boy, keeping his shoulders and spine loose, eyes in the back of his skull. ‘If we asked him, he’d get his social worker on our case. Kids like that know every trick in the book.’
Ron looked at everyone on the estate in the same way, but Noah was smarter. He wouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that familiarity was the only thing breeding contempt around here. Marnie was glad to have him on her team.
They’d reached the entrance to the block where Emma Tarvin lived.
‘Come on, love.’ Ron was waiting with his finger on the buzzer, his mouth close to the intercom panel. ‘You know me by now. Open up.’
An elderly voice, snippy with static: ‘There’s a whole crowd of you out there. Where were you when those girls were sneaking all sorts through my letter box? No bloody where.’
‘Well we’re here now. Buzz us in, I’ll make you a cuppa. We need your help with something.’
‘Like what? Figuring out your arses from your elbows?’ But she pressed the buzzer, letting them into the lobby of the building.
Ron nodded towards the stairs. ‘Or there’s the lift if you like the stink of piss.’ He led the way up the stairs, tramping heavily.
Marnie and Noah followed, seeing signs of fire damage everywhere, black on the walls, melted plastic on the railings. Marnie had been inside burnt buildings before; she knew this was nothing – kids playing with matches. Which didn’t mean they wouldn’t graduate to lighter fuel or petrol. It might not matter that people were living here. Not so long ago, and not far from here, a teenager had burned down a dogs’ home, killing dozens of animals. Arsonists had hard hearts. And fire was quick. Too quick for second thoughts.