by Helen Black
They’re off to the Peckham Project for a shower and some toast. To be honest, Luke can’t be arsed going over there.
‘It’s part of my routine,’ says Caz, as if her life runs on an orderly timetable.
Luke tells her that he likes the seamlessness of their days.
‘Well, it’s a bleeding holiday for you, soft lad,’ she says. ‘When your whole life’s been nothing but a fuck-up, you start to fancy a bit of order.’
She’s probably right.
On the wall outside the Project two men are playing cards. With their dark hair and leather jackets Luke can see at a glance they’re Eastern European. They look up at Caz and stare.
‘Problem?’ asks Luke.
‘Nah,’ says Caz, but the breeziness has gone out of her voice.
‘Caroline,’ says one of the men, his words sing-song, his accent rolling the ‘r’.
She ignores him and pushes the buzzer.
‘Don’t be like that,’ he says. ‘We just want to be friends.’
The other man laughs and shuffles the pack.
Caz keeps her finger on the buzzer. ‘I know exactly what you want.’
At last Jean opens the door and Caz pushes past her to get inside.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ she says, her usual fag dangling from the corner of her mouth.
Luke shrugs his shoulders but Jean’s seen the men outside.
‘Get out of here right now,’ she shouts.
‘Sorry,’ says one. ‘I don’t speak English.’
Jean comes outside, her hands on her hips. ‘Make yourself scarce or I’ll call the police.’
The men speak in their own language and laugh.
‘You’ve got five seconds,’ she says.
One walks towards them and there’s something in his manner, the way he holds his shoulders, that scares Luke.
‘We don’t break any laws,’ says the man.
Jean stands firm. ‘Go inside, Luke, and dial 999.’
Luke’s heart is pounding in his chest and he can’t move.
The man takes a step closer so he’s almost touching Jean. A plume of smoke separates them.
‘Tell them to send squad cars,’ she says, ‘and the immigration unit.’
The man kisses his teeth in Jean’s face but she doesn’t flinch. At last he turns back to his friend and once again they laugh. They collect up their cards and head back towards the high street. Luke realises he’s been holding his breath.
‘Are you okay love?’ says Jean.
Luke nods. ‘Are you?’
She laughs and ruffles his hair. ‘It’d take more than that pair to bother me.’
Later that night, Lilly was chasing the last crumbs of a freshly baked muffin around a plate.
Sam sidled into the kitchen. ‘Any left for me?’
Lilly said nothing, but opened the cake tin and poured her son a glass of milk.
‘Sorry about earlier,’ Sam said.
Lilly kissed his cheek.
Sam took a bite. ‘I just worry, that’s all.’
‘About what?’
‘You.’
Lilly was astonished. ‘Me! But I’m fine.’
Sam wiped the crumbs from his chin. ‘Bad stuff always happens to you, Mum.’
‘I can’t imagine what you mean,’ she said.
‘Dad left, for a start.’
Lilly exhaled. This was big stuff. ‘Your dad and I couldn’t live together, Sam—and you’re right, it was pretty bad for a while.’
‘You mean totally crap,’ said Sam.
‘Okay, it was indeed totally crap, but things are fine now. We haven’t argued for a long time.’
Sam licked the muffin case. ‘But what about Jack?’
‘We can’t see much of him at the moment.’
‘And that’s because Anna’s staying here,’ he said.
‘It’s not for long,’ said Lilly.
‘But why does she have to be here at all?’ he asked.
Lilly enveloped her son in her arms. ‘I know it’s hard, but she’ll be gone soon and then things can go back to normal.’
‘Oh, Mum, when are things in this house ever normal?’
‘Lilly kissed the top of his head and breathed him in. Anna isn’t as lucky as we are, Sam, and that’s something we should never forget.’
He nodded and tucked his forehead into the crook of her neck.
She rocked him in her arms, humming gently, until the peace was shattered along with the window as a stone came flying through.
Chapter Ten
‘That so needs fixing before the rain gets in,’ said Sam.
Lilly hoisted up her skirt and climbed onto the kitchen worktop. ‘Thanks, Einstein. I see my school fees aren’t wasted.’
‘I thought Dad paid them,’ said Sam.
Lilly shot him a warning glance.
‘Is there any chance you could help?’ she asked, tottering precariously on the window sill.
‘Don’t get cross with me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t break the bloody window.’
‘Swearing is neither big nor clever, Sam.’
She ripped off a strip of tin foil and tried to stick it across the hole with masking tape. A gust of wind blew it back at her.
‘Fuck a duck,’ she shouted.
Sam went to find his school bag, whistling.
Anna floated into the room, her eyes as dark as her skin was white. ‘You need to have this fixed, yes?’
‘Lilly tore off a second piece of foil and tried to push it into place. Another genius.’
‘You are very grumpy this morning,’ said Anna.
‘In the face of this sort of mayhem I think I’m showing the patience of a saint.’
As the foil once again drifted back into the kitchen, Lilly gritted her teeth and pushed hard. Too hard. She felt the sharp, hot sting as a shard of glass cut into her hand.
‘Problem?’ asked Anna.
Lilly sucked the blood that was spilling down her wrist and prayed she wouldn’t need a stitch. Frankly, she didn’t have the time.
‘Everything okay?’
Penny had arrived to take Sam to school.
‘Oh, you know, smashed windows, lacerated fingers,’ said Lilly. ‘Another day in paradise.’
‘You’ll need to get it fixed as soon as,’ said Penny.
Lilly closed her eyes and counted to ten.
‘Mum,’ Sam called from another room. ‘That bloke from the hostel’s here.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Lilly. ‘Can a woman not bleed to death in peace?’
Milo walked into the kitchen, a green scarf perfectly picking out the colour of his eyes. Penny’s own opened wide. ‘And this is…?’
‘Milo,’ said Lilly. ‘He works at the hostel.’
Penny held out her hand. ‘I’m Penny.’
Milo shook her hand and offered his most winning smile. ‘So nice to meet you, Penny.’
‘And you,’ Penny breathed.
Lilly, still crouching on the work surface, wrapped her thumb in a tea towel printed with a map of the UK. ‘Aren’t you going to be late?’
Penny checked her watch and let out a girly squeal. ‘Got to run.’
‘I hope to see you again,’ said Milo, still smiling at Penny.
Lilly sighed as the tinkle of the other woman’s laughter followed her out to the car.
Lilly’s thumb was throbbing, a red patch seeping across Birmingham. ‘So what brings you here? Aside from ogling middle-class do-gooders.’
It was an unfair description of her friend, but Lilly was in no mood to be even-handed.
Milo ignored her and surveyed the window. ‘This needs to be fixed.’
‘I know,’ Lilly roared, and thumped the work surface, causing another round of blood-letting that seeped down past Wolverhampton. ‘What do you imagine I’m doing up here? A little light cleaning before breakfast?’
Milo looked bewildered and turned to leave.
‘That’s right, you bugger off and leav
e all this to me.’ She swept her hand round, sending the stained tea towel flying across the room. ‘When you need me to represent your residents, give me a call and I’m sure I’ll jump to attention. But when I need a little help, don’t worry yourself about it.’
Milo gingerly picked up the makeshift bandage between his thumb and forefinger and handed it back to Lilly. ‘I was just going to the car to fetch my tools.’
Lilly held her mobile against her ear with her shoulder, her arms full of files. ‘It was just kids.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked David.
Lilly motioned with her elbow for Anna to hurry up as she stalked towards the office. Her hand was still wrapped in the tea towel and it flapped like a flag.
‘Why would they do it?’ he asked.
‘Who knows, David? It’s Hallowe’en soon so maybe it was a prank.’
‘A prank?’
‘They were probably just messing about.’
She wished Sam hadn’t told his dad.
‘Smashing people’s windows?’ he said.
‘They probably didn’t mean to. Don’t you remember what it was like being young?’ She laughed. David had been born middle aged. ‘Don’t answer that.’
‘I want to know if it was anything more sinister. The school service has made all the front pages.’
‘That’s to be expected.’
‘The Three Counties Observer said there was a showdown between some of the parents.’
‘What?’
How the hell had they found out about that?
‘They say one mother slapped another in the face,’ David continued.
‘Do they mention any names?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘There you go then,’ Lilly sighed with relief. ‘Nothing to do with me.’
‘Cara said someone attacked you.’
‘Cara exaggerates.’ Lilly would kill Botox Belle one of these days. ‘Look, I need to get to work.’
Lilly pocketed her mobile and stuck out her chin. A story in the local rag was nothing. Who read that rubbish anyway? And as for the window, it was just like she said. Kids. God, the middle classes had never got up to anything. She remembered her own childhood on St George’s Estate. Long evenings spent smoking and flirting, punctuated by setting old tyres alight and rolling them across the waste ground. On one December night when they’d managed to get three, they’d split into teams and had a competition to see whose tyre would get to the disused tracks the quickest. Lilly’s team would have won if a boy called Buggy, who’d sniffed far too much glue, hadn’t run in front of their tyre thinking it was Santa’s sleigh.
She laughed at the thought till she caught sight of Rupes outside in the street. She was looking up, above the door, and Lilly followed her eye-line. In red paint someone had daubed ‘Rights for Whites’.
‘So what are you gonna do about it?’
Sheila’s eyes were wide. She reminded Lilly of Luella and she instinctively took a step back, not keen for another slap.
‘I should think the best thing to do is ignore it,’ said Lilly, and moved across the reception towards her office.
Sheila barred her way. ‘We can’t stick our heads in the sand. Things are getting serious.’
‘Don’t be so bloody melodramatic, Sheila,’ said Lilly. She was tired and her hand stung. She knew this was unpleasant for Rupinder but she could well do without Sheila overreacting. ‘It’s just paint,’ she said.
Sheila turned to Rupinder. ‘Will you explain to her what’s happening here?’
‘We don’t know for sure,’ said Rupinder.
‘Don’t we?’ Sheila replied.
‘Know what?’ asked Lilly.
Rupinder sighed, the circles round her eyes clearly showing her tiredness.
‘We’re worried, Lilly.’
‘Who is?’
‘The other partners,’ she said.
‘And me, I’m bloody worried,’ said Sheila.
Lilly ignored her and looked straight at Rupes. ‘And you?’
Rupinder sank into a chair and put her face in her hands. ‘I’m worried too.’
Lilly sat next to her boss and put an arm around her shoulder. If Rupinder thought the tea-towel bandage odd, she didn’t say so.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rupes. ‘I know you’ll say I should treat it with the contempt it deserves.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Lilly.
‘And I would if it were an isolated incident,’ said Rupinder. ‘But first there was the letter, and now this. The other partners are saying…’
‘Saying what?’ said Lilly.
Sheila felt no compunction to sugar the pill. ‘That we shouldn’t be representing her.’
‘Nobody tells me who I can and cannot help,’ said Lilly.
‘It’s not your bleeding firm,’ said Sheila.
‘Well, it’s certainly not yours,’ said Lilly.
Sheila pointed her finger. ‘It’s all right for you, you’re never here, but what about the rest of us? What happens when they start pushing dog shit through the letterbox? Or putting the windows through?’
‘What did you say?’ shouted Lilly.
The phone rang and Rupinder answered it.
Sheila lowered her voice to a stage whisper. ‘I said, we’ll be in real trouble if they start smashing the windows.’
Lilly thought of her own home, glass strewn across the kitchen. ‘Do you know anything about all this?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sheila.
‘She’ll be there,’ said Rupinder, and put down the phone.
Sheila turned to their boss. ‘Lilly’s accusing me of having something to do with this.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Lilly. ‘But, come to mention it, you’ve made your feelings on the matter very clear.’
‘Shut up, both of you,’ said Rupinder.
‘You see,’ said Sheila. ‘She’s trying to blame me.’
‘What I actually said was…’
Rupinder jumped to her feet. ‘And what I said was shut up. So which part were you lost on? The shut or the up?’
Sheila and Lilly fell silent. Rupinder almost never raised her voice.
‘Thank you,’ said Rupinder. ‘I need to think very carefully about how to handle this. And to think I need some quiet, not a scene from EastEnders.’ She picked up the post and handed it to Sheila. ‘You deal with this little lot, and you,’ she turned to Lilly, ‘get yourself to court.’
‘Where?’
‘Luton Crown Court. That was them on the phone. Anna’s case is listed at eleven-thirty for directions.’
Lilly flapped her arms around her. ‘What sort of notice is that? I’ll ring them and tell them we need more time.’
Rupinder put up her hand. ‘I told them you’d be there.’
‘But I haven’t briefed a barrister,’ said Lilly.
‘You passed your exam, remember? You don’t need one.’
Lilly was about to argue but Rupinder’s raised eyebrow stopped her.
‘It will help matters greatly if I can tell my fellow partners that you are at least making some money out of this unholy mess.’
Lilly swallowed her list of complaints. ‘I’ll get my robes.’
Row after row of cheap shoes. They looked bad and smelled worse.
Alexia read the label with disgust. ‘Manmade sole and upper.’ She sighed. There were no decent shops outside of London. There was the grubby Arndale Centre full of cheap chain stores where fat teenagers could buy glittery crop tops and plastic belts. Then there was the precinct, which seemed to act as a race track for the thousands of mobility scooters that infested Bedfordshire.
It was just as well there was nothing to buy. She had a mountain of debt since she’d cut herself free from the shackles of Daddy’s obscene wealth. She sometimes wondered if the price she was paying for freedom wasn’t too high.
Maybe Steve would give her a bonus this month. He damn well ought to. But he was just like her father, always moving the goal
posts. No sooner had you met his last demand than he raised the bar of expectation.
She left the shoe shop and wandered up to work. Every window was decorated with plastic pumpkins. Cheap tat from China that would end up as landfill.
‘You’re late,’ Steve growled.
She gave him the finger and collected her emails. Half a dozen from the nationals asking for information on the Stanton case, two from the radio and even one from the producers of Richard and Judy.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Steve leered over her shoulder.
She batted him away. ‘Do you really think I’m that stupid?’
‘Stupid, no,’ said Steve. ‘Ambitious, yeah.’
‘You make it sound like a dirty word.’
He leaned back in so she could smell last night’s pork balls on his unbrushed teeth.
‘If you tell these people what you know and how you know it, they’ll suck you dry then spit you out.’
Alexia logged on to The Spear of Truth. Steve was right. She’d managed two exclusives but she was still small change. Big names were not made on the back of a small hole in a fence. She needed more to prove what she was capable of.
She scrolled through the forums. There was no sign of Snow White, but Alexia’s piece about the service had been uploaded on to the site. There were a lot of comments posted underneath. Most praised her brave journalism and surmised that the fight was about the fact that the defendant was an asylum seeker.
She’d been so excited about the fracas that she hadn’t paid enough attention to what had actually sparked things off. She pulled out the tape she’d recorded at the school and plugged in her earphones. She’d had to move forward to make sure her machine could pick it all up. Some of the parents had mumbled about her lack of manners, but there was no way she was going to miss the action. The house master’s speech was even more boring second time round. She fast-forwarded to the fight.
‘Is it true? I just want to know if what they are saying is true.’
‘That depends on what they’re saying, Luella.’
‘That you’re representing the girl who murdered Charlie.’