Etta shoved the bag hard off the table onto the floor. Out spilled receipts, mints, a lipstick, a guilty corner of purse.
‘It’s just …’ she said, standing straight and looking right at him, ‘there’s no money!’
The shaking got harder as she cried. The man took a step back from the door, palms raised. The thud-thud of Ola coming down the stairs.
‘What is this, eh? Are you unwell?’ He took in the bucket in the man’s hand, the ladder on the path, and reached for his wallet, tucked under some papers on the side.
‘I’m so sorry, Ola.’
‘Sorry o? Wah?’ he laughed without joy and handed £30 to the window cleaner. ‘Come now, Etta, all done.’
He closed the front door, but not before Etta caught a look of understanding pass between the two men, as if to say ‘funny creatures’.
Etta spoke first:
‘I’m sorry, Ola, I don’t feel right.’
‘I can see, poor-poor thing. Come here.’ He opened his arms wide and she leaned in. ‘Are you ill?’
‘I don’t know. Yes.’
‘You couldn’t pay him?’
‘No money!’
He tipped her head back and gave her a look.
‘I have been pressuring you too much, Teetee. What is a man if he cannot ease the purse strings from time to time, eh?’
‘But Ola, we haven’t got enough—’
‘We’re fine. Are you telling me that your man cannot take care of you?’
‘No. It’s me, I’m sick.’
‘Go upstairs, I’ll bring you tea.’
Etta went up and got into bed without taking off her work clothes. Her head was pounding with an unholy trinity of thoughts:
Chris Wise
£10,000
blackmail
She drifted off, breathing shallow, dreaming of ruin. By the time she woke up the light had a different quality to it; Ola was standing by the bed, shrugging on his shirt.
‘Morning!’ he said.
‘Morning?’
‘You needed to sleep.’
‘Oh. It’s Friday?’
‘Yes. Listen, I have an idea. But I have to go to work now, OK? Tell them you’re sick, go back to bed.’
‘OK. Oh, no.’
‘What?’
‘They won’t believe me. I’m already on thin ice. Could you phone them please?’
‘If you want me to.’
‘Tell them you’re Doctor Abayomi, that should work.’
‘OK, I will do.’
Etta spent the day lying where she had awoken. The tremors had persisted, on a lower frequency throughout her long sleep, but had subsided altogether by lunchtime. To celebrate, she opened a bottle of red. At some point, it went dark. She awoke to the sound of the front door shutting.
‘Ola?’
It came out muffled, crushed by the weight of worry and the duvet. Clearer words sat, useless, in her chest. Even, upward steps that did not sound like him, steps coming to the door. It opened to dark skin, a brilliant smile.
‘Oh! Thank God.’
Tears that shamed her – too easy, too few – started once more. Ola sat on the bed.
‘This is my fault,’ he said.
‘No, Ola. I’m just not right.’
‘I’ve stressed you out too much, but don’t worry. I’ve got the answer, let me show you.’
On the side of the bed, he powered up his laptop. The hard metal sat between them, blocking off any true closeness and comfort.
‘This. Here, look.’ He turned the screen towards her.
A turquoise credit card sat large on the screen. Words featured above and below the image, but all Etta noted was ‘Up to £5,000 limit’ and ‘Apply HERE’.
‘You’re letting me have a credit card?’
‘Letting you, heh? When have I ever stopped you doing what you want?’
He smiled, and she smiled back rather than pull instances from the well-catalogued library of their relationship. All in the timing.
‘Thank you, Ola.’
‘Take your time, Teetee. Relax and do the application. I’ll go and make us a drink.’
He rose to leave but paused at the door.
‘Etta, another thing. Have you been drinking wine?’
Etta said, ‘A little, with lunch. It helped me sleep, my darling.’
She did not say: ‘It was lunch; my lunch knocked me unconscious.’
Ola nodded and left; she tapped at his laptop. This was it, the big break, the credit ladder up which she could clamber from the hole. She heard the kettle boiling downstairs within moments of hitting ‘submit’. By the time Ola came back in, bearing two steaming mugs, she was crying once more.
‘Very poor,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Very poor. My credit rating is “very poor” and I’ve been refused. They won’t give me a credit card.’
Ola passed her a mug and sat back down on the bed.
‘How can this be?’ He turned the laptop towards him, shaking his head. ‘What nonsense! It must be a mistake. We’ve been so careful. Why?’
Rather than respond, Etta cried louder, in part weeping at the blow to their joint-mortgage future, in part salting her distress to make it more palatable to him. If she stopped, he might probe further.
‘There is no sense in this decision. Eh? Why?’
‘I don’t know, Ola.’ The ache behind her ribs spread. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Ah! Don’t cry about this silly-silly card.’ He pushed the laptop aside and pulled her towards him. ‘The interest rate was not that good, anyway.’
She gave a little caw of amusement, deep into his shoulder so that he would not hear it ring false. But, all the time, her eyes kept soaking his shirt, salting his collarbone, salting the truth.
They spent an evening saying little of value, avoided all friction, then got an early night.
Etta rose to brush her teeth at 10 p.m., then again, around midnight, to get wine from downstairs which she brought back to sip next to the sleeping Ola. She woke up staring into the dark, an empty glass pressing into her side. It was 3.12 a.m.
There was another WhatsApp waiting:
Isn’t it great that u can message anyone on Facebook, even if their not ur friend? Beats all other social media hands down for REAL communication, right?
Typing …
Although, u may have noticed that my grammar is not great. Maybe u could read this message over for me? It’s a goodun.
Typing …
Dear Dr Abayomi u don’t know me yet but u will …
Typing …
I really should write ‘you’ shouldn’t I, for a doctor? And do I need a comma? Sloppy. What should I say next, any thoughts?
Etta wanted to slap him down as if she were a woman who feared nothing.
No. Cheque’s in the post you fucker.
She hit send and started to weep. What had she done? She was not strong or brave; Wise was not just a blackmailer, he was clearly crazy and knew where to find her. He could come and kill her in the night, kill them both.
She waited for five minutes, tears drying. Nothing. Maybe she had called his bluff after all, seen him off. Or had he fallen asleep? It was the heart of the night, but to full-blooded spinners that meant little, and insomnia frequently ate up all hope of rest. But no bleep or buzz came in these darkest hours. Not a murmur from her phone, even after the granite sky had warmed to pale gold; nothing as Ola ate his Saturday morning breakfast, insisting that she should not trouble herself by making him egg moin-moin, that he would just eat bread and milk; nothing after Ola left to go for a run … Until there was.
A beep. She knew it was Chris Wise before she saw the words:
You don’t rate the good doctor, then.
£10,000 or I’m coming for you.
Wet-faced, wiped out, Etta leaned up on her elbows and breathed something flimsy and distracting to her partner about hormones and nausea and troublesome aches. His usual reflex would kick in at
the mention of the biological and yet strangely unscientific problem of her femininity.
‘I’ll go and make you some tea.’
She muttered thanks as he left.
Unwitnessed, the tears kept coming. She writhed and wrung her hands and heaved her shoulders. Bent double under the duvet, wracked, she hit at the mattress, stuffed inches of pillow into her mouth to strangle the sound, or choke herself.
He could tell Ola everything in a Facebook message. He might even go to the police. He would blow it all up, every last hidden thing – the spinning, the theft from Ola, the credit card fraud, the party – showering everyone she cared about in the gore of her life.
They always said you should never pay them off, that that was the worst thing you could do. But it was starting to look like the least worst option. Ten thousand pounds was not so much. While so much money had the sheen of myth or folklore, a unicorn’s horn in the middle distance, what was it really, within the realm of fantasy finances? She could win enough in one day – one spin! – to pay him off and to save her relationship, her sanity and her arse.
She would have to pay him off.
A gentle pushing open of the door.
‘Here’s your tea, my love.’
‘Thank you, Ola.’
She wiped the last of her tears with a tissue. She could do this. One good spin.
Time to bag a unicorn.
The only problem was, she needed more funds; she needed another payday loan. This time it was no joke: Wise was here, around, waiting. Was he hiding in the garden now? She edged up to the spare room window, pushed her cheek flat against the curtain and looked out sideways. Grey sky and sun, slow-moving air and cloud. The flowerbeds appeared to be fertile with secrets, the lawn seeded with intent. The bushes that hugged the fence, keeping the back fields out, what did they hide?
focus
Etta slipped back into her office chair, away from the window, and searched for a lender, floundering, flailing and falling at hurdles. Her stomach ached, but she dismissed a trip downstairs for a quick fry-up. Ola would be lost in the papers, and she would like him to stay lost a while longer. Loan, a loan; who would accept her now? Her stomach complained as the screen replied:
We’re sorry but we are unable to offer you a loan at this time …
Some unorthodox borrowing and a few late repayments and the rumour must have run like bacon grease across a burning hotplate: Etta Oladipo was hungry for money, but she must not be fed.
All the bigger lenders had already coughed up. After that, she had fallen prey to the broker portals which masqueraded as lenders. Their trick – and it was a goodie – was to disguise their filthy warehouse as a stush boutique. You paid and paid, and when you emerged you felt dirty, and you felt had. But the money was yours.
Etta googled, scrolled and checked reviews; she could barely credit the credit on offer. She might falter in her own morals from time to time, but this was another level of exploitation. One camouflaged cesspit offered to charge her £25 for a ‘Recommended Loan’ with another company altogether which would lend her £100 (repay just £350) when she needed at least £700. Cartels of chancers, skyrocketing interest. It was a carnival of crap.
She knew these to be the daily trials of the skint and unconnected. She knew she ought to swerve the lot. But Wise was after her and without £10,000 she was dead.
The phone went.
‘Hi!’
‘Hi.’
‘Hi! It’s Roxy from AVS Bank. How are you today?’
‘Fine. AVS Bank?’
‘We’re calling as there’s been a security breach on your account. We need you to—’
‘I’m not with AVS Bank. This is a con. Goodbye.’
Etta hung up. She pushed the laptop aside and, for the first time that morning, got out of bed. She edged along the mattress, moving limbs that felt disinclined. If she did not succeed, Wise would finish her off. She had to have a loan. The T&Cs and the APR did not matter, in the end: she needed to borrow a stake, any stake, to win back her life.
Etta went back to the window and pushed it open; breathed in the air from her scheming yard, then got back into bed. She needed access to more than £100. She had to enter the furnace that powered all of gambling Hades: No Credit Checks! loans.
The excitable punctuation was compulsory. The terms were appalling.
Her new financial home.
No Credit Checks! loans tended to find you. They were always just passing by as a friendly text or email, no pressure. They found everybody, in the end. These, the hard nuts of all loans, albeit suited, booted and under their Sunday manners, lobbed you a few pennies at monstrous interest … but what the effing hell were you going to do about it?
Of course, she borrowed. The maximum: £750 from Flying Pig Loans. She did not try to calculate the interest because there was no choice. Wise had taken all her choices from her.
Funds secured, on to unicorn hunting. Etta tried Diana’s Diner, Meteor Shower and Merlin’s Miracles, for old times’ sake. Within forty-five minutes she had won £7,300, forty minutes after that she was down to £2,800. She blamed it on her lack of focus; she kept checking the window, checking her phone, checking her state of mind. Neither she nor her luck could settle.
In the spare room, where she had offered to sleep as Ola had an early Monday morning start, she gambled through the night with red wine and undiluted gin for company.
Come the dawn, she had £1,270 in the kitty and chronic indigestion.
She resolved both issues with a capful of milk of magnesia and a 6 a.m. spinning spree that promised much – a bonus on the first spin! – but stripped her of every penny.
No unicorn. Just £0.00, a still-cramping stomach and a chalky taste in her mouth.
As she walked to work, numb with losses, she retained enough feeling to twitch at the sudden movements of pedestrians; blaring radios buzzed her nerves, car horns jarred. Yet at every step she was cogitating an abominable new plan: could she do it? She couldn’t. Could she? She might be able to, but she shouldn’t. Should she?
By the final few streets she was in a near trance, a good one. Her meditation had brought a clarity: she knew what she had to do next.
Anxiety pumped through every limb as she made her way across the car park. She had to commit this terrible act.
At her desk, she deteriorated fast. Winston looked weird, Dana was watching her, Jean was full of dark thoughts, the temps could not be trusted. She spied danger in each corridor. She could not function, she could barely simulate normal, she could never face the mission she had set herself.
Verbal warning or not, she needed to get out.
‘Just popping to the doctor, OK?’ she said to Winston.
‘No problem,’ he replied, intent on a document. His face definitely looked a bit puffy, or twisted. ‘See you in a bit.’
Robert was off. Jean was going into a meeting. She might just get away with it.
She rose and walked out of the office. She kept walking, right and left and a long way down, all the way to the least popular supermarket. The drinks aisle. She took bad red wine and she took overpriced gin, putting them on the household card. After a moment’s thought, she picked up a packet of sausages that looked under-refrigerated and unsure in their plastic wrapping, four potatoes and some frozen peas. Et voilà: dinner.
She walked on to the park, deciding that her defrosting veg would cool the meat products. No sign of the puzzle seller, yet again, and she was glad of it; she needed solitude, just there, 200 metres away from his patch. She needed to slump against a tree trunk, legs outstretched, and drink.
First, she checked her phone. Nothing. Chris Wise’s moves were becoming easier to read: he wanted her to wonder and to stress and, above all, to get the money together. She might have been tricked into this fresh torture by his cunning, but she knew enough of their world to smell out another spinner’s desperation.
drink up
She took her time: a Malbec starter, followed b
y a main and pudding of gin. Sure, why not call this lunchtime at the doctor’s? The alcohol made a sweet and strong anaesthetic. You had to take the sting out of the savagery of the world. Friends turned nasty; stood you up or disappeared; they stabbed you in the back; others lied, or died; the unmourned haunted you. All too heinous to handle sober.
Growing lighter now though, brighter, a cheese course of Malbec dregs gave her the strength to rise and start back towards work. She dumped the wine bottle in the recycling and stopped to lean against a wall while she hunted for a mint in her handbag.
‘I know you.’
Etta straightened, her vision smarting.
‘You!’
‘I knew you would be here.’
The puzzle seller was watching her, too close, too earnest. Shame surged like nausea. Had he seen the bottle go into the bin?
‘I want to thank you.’
‘Thank me?’
‘The First Welcome Project. But I do not see you there.’
‘I only work there on the odd day. Not very often.’
‘Ah. The people there have helped me. God is good o.’
‘Great,’ said Etta. The surging was in fact nausea, not shame. She had to go, now, or vomit at his feet.
‘I am not economic migrant. I am asylum seeker!’
‘Good for you,’ she said. ‘Nice one.’
‘The bad men at home. Ah!’ He ran a finger down the scar on his chin.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I get it.’
‘I can never leave England. Not even to go to my cousin’s wedding in Paris. She has found a good man. I will never get back into this country. You understand?’
‘I understand,’ she said.
‘This help from your people is therefore a blessing. It is making my life.’
‘I understand,’ she repeated, knowing she would never fully understand what he had suffered while trying to get here.
‘You think I am beggar? I had a job in Nigeria, my father had a good life, I had a good life. These men … they try to destroy me.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Etta.
‘No, no sorry o. You have helped me. I have job interviews. They are sending me for meh-dee-cal. Medical! You have been good to me. I cannot believe you came to talk to me that day. I must be so lucky!’
Lucky Page 17