She said, “These’ll all be too short for me, Ding,” and gestured to the skirts.
“Short is the style and what difference does it make?”
It made plenty of difference to Missa, but all she said was, “I won’t be able to ride my bike.”
“No one’s riding a bike in this weather.” This was said by Rabiah Lomax, who came through the door to Missa’s bedroom, a purple tracksuit hanging on her lithe frame and nothing at all on her feet save polish on her toenails, appropriately red and green for the season with the big toe additionally decorated with a golden tree-ornament painted upon it. She went on to say, “You’ll be taking a taxi. I’m paying both ways.”
“But Ding’s come here on her bike, Gran,” Missa pointed out. “She won’t be able to—”
“Completely foolhardy, Dena Donaldson,” Missa’s grandmother countered. “You can take the taxi and fetch your bike at another time, can’t you?”
Ding looked relieved. She said, “Thanks, Mrs. Lomax. We’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rabiah said. “‘Paying me back’ will be your going out and having a good time.” To Missa she went on with, “Enough of studying for at least one evening. Life’s about more than schoolbooks and keeping your parents happy.” At that, Missa glanced at Rabiah but said nothing. Her grandmother continued briskly. “Now. What have we here?” She walked over to the bed. She took in the clothing with a single glance and chose the black skirt. Ding, Missa saw, beamed with pleasure.
“Put this on,” Rabiah ordered. “Let’s see how it fits. I’d lend you something of mine, but as I’ve reduced my wardrobe mostly to my dancing kit and my running kit, I’ve nothing suitable. Except, perhaps, for shoes. You’re going to need shoes.” She fluttered her fingers and went off in the direction of her bedroom as Missa stepped out of her trainers and her blue jeans and Ding rustled round in the chest of drawers for, she said, “a pair of tights that don’t look like something from Oxfam.”
Missa eased herself into Ding’s skirt. The fact that it stretched made it wearable, although it still bit into her stomach like a ligature. She said, “Ooof, I don’t know, Ding.”
Ding turned from the chest of drawers, having scored a pair of black tights. “Fabbo!” she cried. “It’s just the thing. Lads’ll melt when they see you in that.”
“I don’t especially want lads melting.”
“Yes you do. It doesn’t mean you have to do anything with them. Here, take these. I’ve got something special to show you.” She handed over the tights and went for her rucksack, from which she brought forth a lacy bra.
Missa said, “There’s no way that’ll fit me.”
“It’s not mine,” Ding told her. “It’s an early Christmas gift from me to you. Here. Take it. It’s not going to bite.”
Missa never wore lacy bits of anything. But clearly Ding wasn’t having it as far as refusals went.
“Now that thing’s gorgeous,” was Rabiah’s comment when she saw what was dangling from Ding’s fingers. “Where did it come from?”
“My gift to Missa,” Ding told her. “She’s going to graduate from vests.”
“I don’t wear vests,” Missa said. “I just don’t like . . . Lace is itchy.”
Rabiah said, “Small price to pay for . . . Dena Donaldson, is that a push-up bra?”
Ding giggled. Missa felt her face going hot. But she took the bra, turned her back modestly, and tried it on. She looked in the mirror and what she saw of the mounds of her breasts made her face hotter.
“Here, here, here!” Ding scooped up the icicle pullover, whose neckline showed off the products of the push-up bra to best advantage when Missa cooperatively donned it. “Fabbo-licious,” she declared. “Check it out. And, oh Mrs. Lomax! Gorgeous! Are those for Missa as well?”
She was referring, Missa saw, to the shoes. She gave them a look herself and wondered when her grandmother had last worn them. The Rabiah she knew generally wore running shoes or cross-trainers when she wasn’t barefoot or dressed for square dancing. She’d given up anything remotely fashionable when she’d retired from her teaching job at the comprehensive. But this pair of shoes looked older than any that would have come from the days of Rabiah’s teaching career. These had to have come from her earlier dancing life.
“I don’t know,” Missa said doubtfully.
“Horse manure,” was Rabiah’s reply. “You can walk in these as easy as anything. Put them on. Let’s check the fit.”
They fit, just. Rabiah declared that Missa would wear them and “no nonsense about it. It’s not as if you’re hiking all over town in this weather anyway. Now, Dena Donaldson, I suspect you’ve brought makeup in that rucksack of yours, so see to Missa’s beautification while I ring for a taxi.”
“Should I tweeze her eyebrows as well?” Ding enquired.
“We’re requiring everything,” Rabiah told her.
QUALITY SQUARE
LUDLOW
SHROPSHIRE
It wasn’t a taxi, as things turned out, but rather a minicab. Missa’s gran made an extremely big deal out of paying for it all in advance—going into the town centre and coming back—so, as she put it, everyone would be absolutely clear on what was owed at the end of the evening: nothing.
“I hope you see that, my man,” Rabiah said pointedly to the minicab driver.
The man barely spoke English, which didn’t give Ding much faith that he’d get them to Quality Square in the first place, let alone back to St. Julian’s Well. But he nodded at Rabiah, and he created a supremely serious show of seeing that both Ding and Missa were belted into the backseat of his Audi.
An Audi, Ding reckoned, suggested that business wasn’t half bad. On the other hand, the fact that it slid around the corner on the icy road suggested that it needed better tyres. Still, she settled back, gave a squeeze to Missa’s hand, and said, “We’re going to have a wicked good time. We both totally deserve it.”
Of course, the truth was that it was Missa who totally deserved it since Ding made certain she herself had a good time as often as possible. But things were rather different for Missa.
It had long been Ding’s habit to Google every person with whom she thought she might want to strike up a friendship, and just three lectures into their mutual maths course, she’d decided that the attractive mixed-race girl with the perfect skin and the charming little gap between her front teeth might be someone she’d want to know. So she’d checked her out via the Internet, she’d followed a link or two, and that was how she’d discovered that Melissa Lomax was one of three daughters and that the middle daughter had passed away ten months previously. She also knew where Missa was from: Ironbridge. Her dad was a pharmacist, her mum was a paediatrician, and her gran Rabiah was a former Rockette, a retired teacher, and a current champion London Marathon runner in her age group.
Ding liked to know things about people. She assumed everyone else was the same way. It was always a surprise to her when she learned that others didn’t gumshoe round the Internet upon considering someone girlfriend or boyfriend material. To Ding, doing the gumshoe bit saved a lot of time. It was always good to know if someone had previously displayed a tendency towards psychopathy.
The ride from St. Julian’s Well to Quality Square wasn’t a long one, although the falling snow made it longer than usual. Because of the weather, virtually no one was out and about—which was unusual at the end of term—but Corve Street and then the Bull Ring were brightly lit, and the seasonal fairy lights outlining shop windows created a cheerful atmosphere in which one half expected to see Dickensian carolers on every street corner.
Ding wasn’t looking forward to Christmas. She hadn’t looked forward to any holiday in years. But she was willing to put on a face of merriment if she had to, so she said enthusiastically, “Gorgeosity in the extreme. It’s like being in a fairyland, isn’t it.”
&nbs
p; Missa gazed out of the window, and Ding could see on her face the doubts she had: not about the beauty of the scene through which they were driving but rather about the partying that Ding intended them to experience. “D’you think anyone else’s even going out tonight?” she asked.
“End of term? Exams all finished? There’ll be plenty of people, especially where we’re going.”
Ding had a good idea of the best spot since she lived not particularly far from any of the faculties of West Mercia College, and she’d spent a significant number of evenings having a booze-up with her other mates at the same pub: the Hart and Hind in Quality Square.
The minicab was taking them as close to this spot as it could reasonably get. They were in the oldest part of Ludlow, working their way past mediaeval buildings and through narrowing streets towards Castle Square, where the twelfth-century castle ruins looked out upon a lengthy rectangle of cobbles and gravel. Here open-air stalls had, for hundreds of years, offered everything from pork pies to porringers at daily markets. Here also was a tangle of lanes overhung with shambling buildings that represented shops, accommodation, cafés, and restaurants.
By using King Street, the minicab was able to deposit them at the only access to Quality Square. This was a short and narrow passage through which braver drivers could pilot their cars should they wish to do so. However, once they were inside the square, there was no exit other than through the passage again, so the only souls who took on the challenge of getting inside the place by vehicle were the residents who lived above the shops, boutiques, and galleries that formed three of the quadrangle’s sides.
A cobbled lane formed the fourth side. It led to a large terrace, and it was towards this that Ding intended to lead Missa once the minicab driver handed over his mobile number, which they were to ring when it came time to fetch them. Ding said, “Come on, girl,” as Missa took the card with a grateful smile and tucked it into her shoulder bag. “We have some serious partying to do.”
They ducked into the passage and took care with the cobbles since walking in this area in anything but flat-soled shoes was to risk turning an ankle. Beyond lay the square, where the snow made the stones slippery and the pavements difficult to negotiate. They manoeuvred between two residents’ cars and passed a gallery outside of which a lacy-dressed metal sculpture of a woman wore a mantle of snow. The branches of the evergreen shrubbery surrounding it were beginning to droop with white weight.
They weren’t alone in their choice of destination, as Ding had reckoned they wouldn’t be. When they turned into the lane that formed the square’s fourth side, they saw on the terrace ahead of them that despite the snow, a large group of smokers were balancing their drinks on the window ledges of a pub, while others sat on blankets at tables above which outdoor heaters were warding off the chill.
This, Ding informed her friend, was the Hart and Hind, a sixteenth-century coaching inn and the favourite gathering spot for boozers attending West Mercia College. While there were, she admitted, plenty of other pubs in the town, this one had long been everyone’s pub of choice not only because one could stop there directly one’s lecture or tutorial ended so as to become pissed in a pinch, but also because the proprietor was willing to turn a blind eye to the occasional exchange of money changing hands for “mind-altering substances of the illegal kind.”
Missa said, “Ding, I’m not taking any drugs.”
“’Course you’re not,” Ding agreed. “Not when you’ve never even had a drink.” She went on to confide, “There’s some bedrooms upstairs ’s well. Course, there would be as it’s an old inn. But he doesn’t let them out.”
“Who?”
“Jack. Bloke who owns the place. There’s two of them—bedrooms, I mean—and if you’ve got the cash, you c’n use them for a bit if you want to.”
Missa frowned. “But if he doesn’t let the rooms out . . . ? What’re they for?”
Ding nearly said, “You know, for God’s sake,” but the truth was that Missa wouldn’t understand unless you spelled it out for her.
Ding had learned early on that Missa made a Very Big Deal about her virginity. She was like someone from another century, saving herself so that when her prince came along, bearing a ruby slipper and looking for a virgin, she’d be the only one within one thousand miles and two continents.
Ding herself had lost her virginity when she was thirteen. She’d tried for it earlier, but no one was interested till she got decent breasts. When it happened, the act was a meganormous relief: just to get the deflowering of herself over and done with in order to have one less thing to worry about. She didn’t know what Missa was saving it for anyway. Her memory of the Big Moment began with her horrified albeit drunken “You’re going to put that in me?,” continued with the uncomfortable positioning of her body on the seat of a wooden pew near the back of St. James Church not far from Much Wenlock, and ended with her suitor thrusting nine times and grunting with completion on the tenth.
The pub door opened as they approached it through the crowd. A blast of music assaulted them. Bee Gees, Ding thought. Good Lord. ABBA wouldn’t be far behind. She grabbed Missa’s hand and pulled her inside, where a long corridor panelled in ancient black oak was packed with bare shoulders, bare legs, spangles, sequins, glitter, tight trousers, and the heave-ho of dancers taking advantage of “Stayin’ Alive.”
The corridor opened into the public bar. Music was shaking the floorboards. This was meant to promote dancing, which was meant to promote thirst, which was meant to promote the purchase of lager, ale, cider, cocktails, and the like. Ding had to struggle to get through the great glomerations of kids who were gyrating to the music, texting, or taking selfies and the equally great glomerations of kids who were crowding the bar where the publican and his nephew were doing their best to keep up with orders.
Ding could pick up only snippets of shouted conversations:
“He didn’t ever.”
“He bloody well did!”
“. . . and he missed the loo by a mile. Blokes are so . . .”
“. . . over hols and I’ll let you know if . . .”
“. . . bloody coast of France for New Year’s and don’t ask me why . . .”
“. . . actually thinks if I fuck him, he can . . .”
Ding almost lost hold of Missa’s hand in the middle of the crowd, but she managed to hang on to it long enough to see one of her two male housemates sitting at a table beneath a slew of old pictures of Ludlow in Bygone Days. This was Bruce Castle, Ding’s frequent bedmate. Eternally called Brutus in humorous contradiction to his diminutive size, he was, she saw, swilling cider. If the two empty pint glasses in front of him were anything to go by, she knew what he was up to: he wanted to become drunk enough to have an excuse if some girl tried to slap him into next week for sticking one of his hands up her skirt.
Brutus was dressed to the nines, as usual, and when Ding and Missa joined him at the table, the first thing the boy said was “Very hot,” to Missa, in obvious reference to her figure-hugging clothing. “Sit here so I can feel the flesh.”
Ding sat down next to him and pulled Missa onto one of the other chairs. She said to Brutus, “Shut your gob. D’you think women actually like to be talked to that way?”
Brutus wasn’t embarrassed. He merely went on with, “I dunno where to grab her first: arse or tit,” which earned him a punch on the arm, delivered accurately, where it would hurt. It prompted a “Jesus, Ding! What’s crawled up your arse?”
Ding said, “Go get us a drink.”
Missa said, “Oh, I don’t—”
Ding waved her off. “It’s not a drink like in a drink. It’s just cider. You’ll like it.” She gave Brutus a look. He heaved himself upwards and lurched through the crowd to the bar. She watched him, frowning. She didn’t like it when he got drunk. Tipsy was fine. High was okay. But Brutus was never the real Brutus when he was drunk, and she couldn�
��t understand why he’d got himself soused so soon into the evening, as that had not been part of the plan at all.
Missa, she saw, was gazing round the pub, taking everything in: the jostling, laughing mass of scantily dressed females and the boys standing as close as they could, trying to chat them up. She wondered if her friend was catching the action near the bar. There, the publican Jack Korhonen was tossing a room key to a boy who had his arm round a somewhat staggering girl in a sequined tube of a dress. The boy caught the key in one hand. He turned the girl towards the stairs.
Brutus returned. He had three pints. When he set one down in front of Missa, Ding watched carefully as her friend took a sip. She waited to see if Missa would note the alcoholic nature of the drink. She did not. It was carbonated and very tasty, a pleasant way to get happy that didn’t take long.
Brutus scooted his chair closer to Ding. He said into her ear, “You smell like a goddess tonight.” He slid his hand onto her thigh. It began to travel upwards. She caught his fingers and sharply bent them backwards. He cried, “Hey! What the hell is wrong with you tonight?”
Ding didn’t have to answer because they were joined just then by the third member of their little household, who said, “Fuck, Brutus. Try romance next time.”
Brutus said, “But that’s what I want. Someone to fuck Brutus.”
“I’m howling at that one, lad.” Finn Freeman yanked a chair away from a nearby table, ignoring a girl who cried, “Hey! We’re using that.”
He plopped onto it, grabbed Brutus’s cider, and took an excessively large swig. He grimaced, saying, “Fuck’s sake. How c’n you stand that shit?”
Missa, Ding saw, had lowered her gaze in reaction to Finn’s coarse language. That was another thing about Missa that Ding found endearing. She didn’t ever swear, and she made no effort to hide her embarrassment when someone swore in her presence.
The Punishment She Deserves Page 2