‘Pass it here, please, I think it—’
‘Freedom Loans,’ read Ola. ‘You owe £11,900. What the bloody hell is this, Etta?’
‘I …’ She had nothing.
He shook a page at her. ‘Etta?’
‘I’m sorry. It was this … stupid mistake. I took out a loan but—’
‘Hold on. They say it was £7,000 and now it is £11,900. Are they serious?’
‘I think so.’
He leapt up, arms raised. ‘What have you done?’
He had never hit her. He would not. She shot a look at the door. He was rigid and vibrating with anger; she wanted to vanish. They were somewhere entirely new.
‘You took it out … only a few weeks ago. And now, nearly £12,000! Eh? You lied and you hid it from me. Why, Etta? What else are you hiding? What are you doing with this money? Are you giving it away to some man?’
Etta’s right eyelid pulsed; it was a twisted truth. But all the loans – £8,300 here, £6,000 there and the host of £1,000 top-ups – had been taken out with good heart, in good faith, to fund their escape from the hole. Tell him, now, confess all? Was there any way he would understand?
‘Answer me, Etta.’
‘I will. I am.’ She groped for a lie that lived somewhere within the truth. ‘I borrowed money from Dana, ages ago. I was hoping to surprise us with a holiday.’
‘A holiday?’
‘Yes.’
‘We don’t need a holiday.’
‘We do, Ola, badly.’
‘So why did you not ask me?’
‘I know, stupid, but I wanted to surprise you. I also blew too much on presents – I’ve been planning your birthday for weeks – and then Dana needed the money back faster, so I took out this stupid, stupid, loan. I didn’t tell you because I know how much you hate chaotic money business—’
‘Yes! This is chaos. This is terrible. Terrible!’
‘I’m sorry, Ola. I love you. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t give me all your loving-loving now. Bloody hell!’
He stomped out, banging the door, and thundered upstairs. Etta stood, staring at where he had been, in the kitchen. She could not go to him with cold comfort and lies, she would stay put with the dishwasher and the broken pieces of plate and his leftover inch of champagne. She would have it, too, that tepid inch.
She swept the floor and stacked the intact crockery in the dishwasher. What else might he say, once he had considered?
Footsteps, movement. Ola was coming downstairs holding an overnight bag.
‘What, Ola? Olala, no, don’t be ridiculous!’
‘Ridiculous, am I? Me?’ His stare was dark. ‘All this time, we have been so careful. We saved, even when I was studying—’
‘Yes! I saved for you. Made sacrifices. For you!’
‘I know, eh? In case I am in danger of forgetting that I owe you, so much, you never let me forget it. Not for one second.’
‘I hardly ever mention it!’
‘What? With your marry-me, marry-me guilt. With your eyes when we row.’
‘That’s a bloody lie!’
‘No. You are the liar, Etta Gabrielle Oladipo.’
He walked towards the door, out the door and out of sight before Etta could tell him she was all kinds of terrified.
She was in debt, beyond anything he could imagine, forget the statements; she was being blackmailed and had stolen and had broken the law.
Above all, as she had been going to tell him, she was five weeks late and had taken a test that morning. She was pregnant.
Risk V
ZAGREB – FEBRUARY 2016
She sits, unmoving, as the doctor looks over the onscreen notes.
Ten seconds on, she shifts, twitches a finger against the desk.
Look at me, she wants to shout. See me.
‘It is early stage, so we could go in with a simple hysterectomy. It’s not in your lymph nodes, as we know, which is great news, so—’
‘You’d take my womb?’
The doctor turns to meet her stare at last.
‘The cervix and uterus, yes. There’s a small chance we’ll need to remove the ovaries and fallopian tubes, we can’t yet say.’
‘No children, then.’
‘No, not naturally. But there are other ways.’
‘I know.’
‘Nothing’s certain. We’ll need to investigate further.’
She does not feel fear, or the sadness spreading through her, numbing that fear much as would the anaesthetic; she feels an incision of hatred: for the disease, for the months spent ignoring her aching abdomen, for this drab grey-beige room, for the sharp understanding of this doctor, for her dealt cards turning out to be something else entirely.
The doctor is saying something about ‘next steps’; the words are going in, but her own thoughts win. Who would marry her, incomplete like that? She would become a chicken who cannot lay; a barren bird fit only for the pot … stop. Bird? She is not livestock. She is woman enough for any man: that means everything. Go through with this horror?
‘What if I say no?’
The doctor scrolls through the notes on the screen for a second, then at last fixes her in the eye.
‘You will greatly reduce your chance of surviving this cancer.’
‘I know.’
She is not mad. No choice, in reality. Here, in the capital, far away from Josip but no nearer England (those thieving dogs, she should have smashed their heads). Here she could fix herself up, choose her path.
There will never be a man she could trust enough with this truth, in the years to come. It would turn her from a beauty into that sad eggless hen and she would be left alone. No man has left her yet.
No, if she goes ahead and does this, it will stay a secret inside her: as raw and cavernous and unshared as her eviscerated core.
A wet trail bisects her cheekbone; although she is make-up free she rubs it hard away once, twice, like a black mark.
The doctor rises from the desk, gives her a smile that crushes the wind from her chest; a breath escapes as the older woman indicates the examination bed.
‘Lie down please, miss.’
Chapter Thirteen
SUNDAY, 12 AUGUST 2018
How many ways was it possible for a woman to feel heavy?
Etta felt weighed down and swollen with portent. She felt ponderous, overburdened and gross with guilt. She felt pulled down by the gravity of her situation, leaden-hearted and, apart from all that, she felt pregnant.
She also felt profoundly alone. She had been on the cusp of talking to her mother about the baby but could not face telling her that Ola had left. It would blow over and then she could share the news in the right way, without giving her mum a breakdown. She had hidden her true self from her mother for months and was working up to restoring that closeness. In fact, since Cozee, all her key relationships seemed to have fallen off a cliff: not just Mum, but Ola and Joyce … she would make it up to them, regain all her best people. In the meantime, as a poor but informed substitute, she had the internet. Google the previous week had told her to avoid runny cheeses; that, sadly, there was no need to eat for two; to take B-vitamins, to restrict alcohol intake, of course, and to indulge in the right forms of exercise. What googling could not tell her was the stuff she really needed to know: how she, her, Etta, would feel when this tiny life-changing life – meant to be the first of four-plus – finally arrived and how they would cope, let alone thrive. She could not countenance coping alone. The signs were not hopeful, she knew this. However, if she lingered on it, or rehearsed sad words to share with her mum, the shadows descended, the dark thoughts danced.
To counteract these effects, she gambled. It was a novel experience, sober. Now, she noodled around with modest £100 deposits, banging out £5 spins which, she recognised, did more to scratch her itch than achieve monetary gain. The gambling lightened the load; it also worsened the guilt, but she would write that off as collateral damage.
Thought
s of Chris Wise still coursed through her, heating her blood, singeing her nerves. She was not planning to pay him off with a further £10,000; he was showing all the signs of being insatiable, a one-man money-pit. But the more money she won, the more options she had.
And so, she spun on.
The key turned in the lock as Etta was standing in the hall, looking in the mirror to see if pregnancy showed in her expression.
As soon as Ola came in, she could only see herself through his eyes.
‘I need to get my things,’ he said.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Coffee first? We can talk.’
‘No.’
He went upstairs and she was tempted to follow him but knew that would end in shouting. She waited at the foot of the stairs. The sounds from above, the opening and shutting of doors and drawers, sounded like a man selecting shirts and jackets for a new life. She wanted to cry out but kept her lips pressed tight.
Ola had left the front door ajar, apparently intent on a quick exit. Etta glanced out and saw Jean’s mother being helped into the back of a car by a young woman in carer’s scrubs. Jean followed behind them with a suitcase and a bulging carrier bag; she looked directly at Etta as if she could see her through the crack in the door. A hard, bitter look. Etta caught a breath of rotten flowers, a glint of smashed glass, and pushed it to.
She felt a tsunami of panic rising in her lungs; if it broke it would wash them away.
‘Ola!’ she called up the stairs. ‘Let’s talk!’
‘Etta!’ he shouted back. ‘Do not come up here …’
Etta withdrew her foot from the bottom step and stood, looking up the stairs, willing him to slow down, calm down, come down.
He did, after a while, holding two cases.
She stood between him and the front door.
‘It’s just money, Ola, I can pay it off. Please.’
‘It’s not the money,’ he said still edging forward. ‘It’s the lie. I have to go.’
‘Ola, please! I only did this for us.’
‘It’s all lies. All of it is lies.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It was only a bad loan. Why leave me?’
He looked down at the two suitcases in his hands as if someone else had packed them.
‘I don’t know what is true and what is lies any more. I just know it is none of my business. Not now!’
He tilted the cases onto their wheels and nodded at her to step aside. She took a step to the left and started to weep as he walked out of the door, down the path.
‘Ola!’
He did not look at her; he unlocked his car. He swung the cases into the boot, swung himself into the driving seat and reversed, muttering as Etta stood frozen. She lip-read ‘mad liar’ as he drove off. It could have been ‘bad liar’.
Etta spun on the slots early that evening. The worst had happened, at last. Ola had gone. There was an air of stillness, but not of calm – the hall table was pushed against the door and the back door double-locked and rammed shut with a chair.
She did not want to talk to family or friends. What to say? She did not even feel the need to drink. For what?
The reels rolled, doing nothing of note; the blip, flash and chime of taking her money.
A phone message buzzed. Wise.
She tapped with no discernible increase of heart rate; she was now as good as dead. She read:
See you soon.
Etta typed swearwords, and deleted them, typed them again, re-deleted. He could not now blackmail her, Ola was gone. And she knew how to defend herself.
She went down to check the front door was double-locked, and checked the back one again, then closed a missed inch of loo window and put her phone on charge.
Downstairs made more sense to her than the spare room, for once. More exits, downstairs. She needed to stay alert, awake and distracted, so she sat in front of the TV, flicking channels. She stopped as an item came on the local news; an upcoming art exhibition had been inspired by the Windrush Scandal. One installation featured African-Caribbean residents, captured in black and white, giving one-liners to the camera with both sound and subtitles.
One man, eyes like washed pebbles in a pool that broke into ripples as he laughed:
‘Some of the people like us, some of the time.’
A large woman, unsmiling:
‘We do not know what to expect as we arrive; will we get a royal welcome?’
Then Cynthia Jackson, looking so untroubled tears rose in Etta’s eyes:
‘We take our chance at a better life; we are all gamblers.’
Had she misheard? She rewound and played it again. And again. And once more as the tears tracked over her collarbones.
There it was, at last: absolution. One last act of generosity from this old woman she had failed, whose daughter she had failed. Etta counted the wrongs that had accumulated since joining Cozee, gathering still faster since she had failed to see Cynthia off from the world. Her friend’s mother had years of understanding; she had gambled on men and babies and countries; she had wrung out truths, drop by drop, from the twisted skeins of life, much as she would have once handled her daughter’s braids after a swim.
‘I’m sorry, Cynthia.’
We are all gamblers.
An hour later, she knew what to do.
She had to take the ultimate risk, or this would never end.
She was alone, now, and unprotected. Until he was out of her life, she would not be able to rest, or sleep. And sleep was vital for those who were expecting …
She would stop him now, tonight.
It was time to be super-smart and play dumb as. Time to finish this.
She sent the text:
One last payment. Cash. Harder to lose.
The reply was immediate:
OK.
Where do you want the money? I can drive there.
You know High Desford?
Etta’s first job after leaving school had been there. It was not too far away in the car. Easy getaway.
OK. The big Leigh Road Car Park, the end near the boarded-up Barkers bingo hall.
After a minute, he came back at her:
Poetic
She fired straight back:
Convenient. One chance only. Repeat, last time. Be there at 9pm.
Wise replied:
I will. Don’t want to talk. Don’t come near. Just leave the money.
OK.
Where EXACTLY will cash be?
Etta, fizzing with adrenaline, barked a short laugh.
You like doorsteps, right? On the doorstep of the dead bingo hall.
He came straight back:
Whatever. Just no police.
Etta wanted to swear as she typed:
No police. You know I can’t do that.
She waited and waited more. No reply. Game on.
Her plan was simple: she would go to meet him with the parcel of cash and wait in her car, watching as he collected it. Then, as it was 9 p.m., he would probably go home. But wherever he went – home, pub, club – she would follow him. Then she would do whatever it took to make sure he never troubled her again.
For now, she grabbed the printer paper.
She also grabbed her bag and the sharp, red-handled knife. To take it with her had to be tempting fate. But she could not go into the unknown without her … no, not weapon, ridiculous, she was no gangbanger. But it was protection, her lucky talisman.
She placed the knife in the bag.
By 8.30 p.m., she was in High Desford, dressed in black and sitting in her car, the tightly wrapped package beside her on the passenger seat. She was parked between a hatchback and a 4x4; many more cars were parked further away for easy entry into the nearby supermarket, still open. At this scuffed-up end of the huge car park she was neither obvious, nor dangerously isolated. The boarded-up doors and windows of the old bingo hall faced her: a dozen blank, beige, blinded eyes. They had seen nothing as she had placed the package on the wide doorstep before the graffi
tied double doors. No one had yet gone near it, but Etta was looking out for the slightest movement.
Light was fading, it was overcast, but she could still see every last thing. Minutes passed. At 8.35 p.m. she stopped playing with her phone in case she missed him. At 8.40 p.m., chest already tightening, she put the radio on to a dance music station, very low, to build her energy, steady her nerves, and keep her mind alert.
Movement at 8.47: an older man, at the right of her vision. He was walking a young German Shepherd. Etta sat straighter, not breathing … No, he turned left up an alley leading away from the car park. She took a breath.
At 8.58, her eyes were still trained on the package. Movement: to her left, someone was coming! Overcoat on and blue hoodie up, this had to be him. He was hurrying, head down, straight to the bingo hall doors. Etta weighed the risk: not that tall or stacked, she could probably take him. The rage that was brewing inside her at every step he took would give her the strength. She could make him see reason, if she kept her cool. She was smarter; he was slight. Yes, she could take him.
He was bending now, back still to her. There, he had picked up the package and was hurrying away, towards the alley. Etta started the engine and turned away from him, left. She had to hurry, but she knew exactly where the alley came out. She turned left out of the car park, left again, and accelerated up the road. She could see him fifty metres ahead: he was not hanging about. Etta set about following him. She would get Chris Wise in his own home.
She drove closer to him, not too close, determined to keep him in her sights. He was going head down past a parade of shops, past the laundrette and the bookies, moving fast in that heavy winter coat, getting closer to the dodgier end of town. Wise turned right at last into a residential road, Felcham, one of the worst. Etta followed at 5 mph, heart hammering. Cars were parked along the road, but she was the only one moving; he could notice her at any minute. But he did not turn, he stopped outside a small terraced house and, barely pausing, key ready, he went inside.
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