Lucky

by Rachel Edwards

‘Oh, Godsake no. Why, Neil? Why do you have to lie to people? Why draw people in?’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m calling to tell you that you have a problem with—’

  ‘I have a problem, Neil, yes. I have many, many problems, but my computer’s fine, so I won’t be sending you my bank details.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Neil, Neil. I have ninety-nine problems, but a glitch ain’t one.’ She laughed, a short sick bark.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Neel sounded almost innocent.

  ‘Oh, Neil. I’m joking! It’s all quite funny, really.’

  The torpor of gravity; her hand felt so heavy that she lowered the receiver for a moment.

  ‘Yes, ma’am … Hello?’

  She raised him back to her cheek.

  ‘Did they teach you to say all this crap, Neil?’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘They could at least have told you. Done a bit of background research in Brixton or Bangalore or wherever you are. I mean, “Windows Technical Department”. Really?’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am. I don’t—’

  ‘They are liars and they’ve made you a liar.’

  ‘Ma’am? I’m calling you from … um …’

  Etta’s free hand reached up to her face. She caressed her small V-shaped scar, the smooth rough-edged dermis, barely perceptible to the touch; that ancient damage.

  ‘How much do they pay you, Neil?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Your pay. How much is it?’

  At last, the long pause. ‘Ninety rupees an hour.’ His voice was now stripped of the smarm.

  ‘What’s that? So, hold on …’ She started googling.

  ‘I’m sorry. I have to go.’

  ‘No! Wait! You’re kidding me. You get 90p an hour for this?’

  ‘Sorry I have to—’

  ‘No, stay. Talk to me.’

  The dense silence of a suppressed sigh. ‘I also get bonuses.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Etta. ‘Bonuses?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you any idea how many rupees I’ve spent gambling?’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘No, nor have I. Probably many millions. Yes, here it is: more than four million.’

  A gasp. ‘Four million?’

  ‘Sick, innit?’ she said taking a sharp breath; an acidic stab in her stomach.

  ‘Crazy world,’ said Neil.

  ‘Yes! Yes, isn’t it? Thank you. Ninety rupees an hour,’ she went on. ‘Cheaper, much easier.’

  ‘Pardon me, please?’

  ‘Easier to cheat others when you yourself are being cheated, right, Neil?’ She closed her eyes, wishing she could see him.

  There was no reply.

  ‘What have I done?’ she asked.

  Silence.

  ‘Win the lottery, suicide, or get myself killed … What, Neil? What have I done? What—’

  Click.

  The call had been cut off. Etta hoped some manner of crooked supervisor had levelled her and Neil’s shared edifice to the ground. But to help insulate against a world where the alternative was probable, a midnight feast of wineless water and the last of the ham could do no harm.

  Ola was never coming back.

  Etta woke and reached for her phone. It was 3.07 a.m. She paused, growing alert within that moment of held breath, wondering what had woken her. She rarely started, scared, in the night. No noise from downstairs. Had a window been smashed, or a knocking broken through her wall of sleep?

  Sleep-stiff limbs, a numb fuzzing in her belly. She should have eaten more than ham. She wandered to their bathroom. The shock of the strip-light jolted her at the door; she turned to the mirror and saw grey-brown skin, with darkness beneath the eyes. She sat back on the loo and pulled down her knickers. Blood.

  Much blood. Everything had gone away.

  Etta tugged off her pants and threw them into the bin. She felt nothing she could name bar a need to get clean. She stripped off Ola’s T-shirt and crammed herself into the bath, turning on the overhead shower and not minding the weakness of its flow as, too slowly, water mingled with blood and no tears.

  After many minutes she stepped out, no longer smelling of Ola. She dried herself, pulled the bag with her underwear in it from the bin, added the T-shirt to it and walked downstairs. She was naked, and didn’t care. She unlocked the door and walked to the bin, lifted the lid and tossed away her future.

  Risk VI

  ZAGREB – MARCH 2016

  His skin is a reminder of every prejudice she once left behind. Dark and surprising, pitted in places with tiny, heart-breaking flaws, not unlike her father’s worn but polished work shoes. She had friends, real friends who would, even as he sat there, call him ‘негър’, but she cannot help thinking, despite these too-bright lights which do not help her own cause, that he glows, he shines. He is all beauty and power. Just like Denzel Washington.

  He will not want to come up to her room, but he will come. He is solace and, more than that, transformation: the night has been flipped over by his presence; she is no longer alone after being stood up by her dead-end date, called back to heel at the eleventh hour by his wife. Now, she is giddy-lipped and laughing; a touch of her drink sloshes onto the bar; she cries out in a bright rising arpeggio as she sloshes herself a touch off her stool. He puts out a hand, as if to catch her.

  ‘Be careful.’

  Yes. She is sure he will not leave her to get to the fourth floor all alone. This thought lights her up from the inside. No, not the thought, they must leave all thoughts to chill; thought is the ice at the bottom of their glasses. This dark man: he is the light.

  He watches her thinking of moth-flame clichés, and rank impossibilities. He cannot. But he feels responsible, having chatted to her at the bar for so long. He has involved her, asking her about her city, her country, as friendly travellers do; he had engaged with her, at first, to mitigate the dullness of his colleague who was known, with the laziness of collective irony, as Dan the Man and spin-offs thereof. Only then had he fully taken in the triple threat of the woman’s hair, the lips, the jutted hip. After an age, Danny Boy, hay-feverish, myopic and missing the point, had bored himself into an early bedtime and left him with nothing to do but buy the woman – Medina – several glasses of wine that turned out to be full of blackberries and spice, not the thin vinegar for which he had braced himself.

  After an hour or more of that hair, that curious hip and pout, their movements playing off each other and working in concert to draw his eye, the small talk has taken on weight and meaning. Earlier, the heart of the evening had blazed with humour as they joked over rakija and dried figs, all set out on a small wooden tray as if they were old family; now their night glows like the last of the embers in the grate. With the ailing Danmeister long gone, there is a shocking lack of hindrances. No witness. No alibi. No excuse.

  Yes, he will help her to her room.

  She is unsteady on her feet; he is stronger than he feels. She is laughing too loud for the time of night. He laughs and shushes, then stops; too conspiratorial. She leans on him now as he leads her, one dense arm resting at her back but not touching the waist above those hips, up the corridor to the lift, then from the lift to the room her date had booked, 428.

  ‘Are we here?’ she asks. She sounds like a child now.

  ‘This is it,’ he says. He takes her key card from her and holds it to the door.

  She does not say goodnight but leaves the door open wide. She rushes in, twirls 180 degrees and flops onto the bed, letting the bounce from the mattress flip her dress high up her thighs. She lies there on her back, eyes closing.

  ‘Sit with me, please.’

  ‘I’ve got to go, Medina.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘OK. Five minutes.’

  He pushes the door to and sits on the edge of the bed while she notes with regret that she is growing ever more clear-headed. The alcohol fuzzing her brain feels as if it is draining into the pillow beneat
h her head, and all her best ideas seeping away with it. He looks ready to stand.

  ‘Tell me about England, please.’

  He does not refuse; he does not move.

  ‘It’s beautiful. It rains. There is way too much traffic. The people are proud and kind and like to laugh. We love our NHS.’

  ‘I …’ She swallows the words. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And, of course, I am best friends with the Queen.’

  ‘The Queen,’ she smiles, her eyes now fully shut, the better to absorb his bedtime stories. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘OK, maybe not. But I did see the Duchess of Cambridge, once.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know. Princess Kate Middleton? From about a hundred metres away. I’d gone out to get a coffee.’

  ‘I am going to England.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I am not sure, but I am going. I look for job.’

  ‘Really? Good for you.’

  ‘They don’t want Bosnians here.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But—’

  ‘I will go.’

  ‘I believe you. Thousands would not.’

  ‘Ah.’ She did not understand. ‘Please, I need help.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I cannot undress alone.’

  He barks a short laugh and then gives a groan that echoes around the painted grey walls. But he does not move off the bed.

  She flips over onto her stomach and makes a big intoxicated show of struggling to unzip the back of her dress while lying down. She can hear the hesitation in his silence; she wriggles more, lifting her hips, banging them down again in mock defeat. When she feels the weight of his hands on her lower back, she knows a decision has been made.

  He turns, kneels on the bed and pulls; the dress falls open across almond milk shoulders.

  One palm lifts away, the other presses on, sliding up onto the expanse of back just below her bra. As it rises, the touch grows firmer; he is holding her beauty, which flows as strong as the Sava river, away, at bay. She knows this. She knows it’s no use. She can feel the wondering in the heat of his hand.

  ‘Lie down please, Ola,’ she says.

  Chapter Fifteen

  TUESDAY, 14 AUGUST – A.M.

  Etta rolled out of bed as soon as it was time. She was thirsty, longing for the right liquids; a bottle she could only buy in another seventeen minutes’ time. She rolled down the stairs, into the car; rolled up the road and padded, too numb to feel ashamed, into the express supermarket to buy its excellent own-brand vodka. A moment of relief when she felt the incontrovertible weight of it in her bag. Whatever she had lost in the night, at least she could now drink without fear.

  Reaching her own home, again, she could not face going in. She was frightened of revisiting the scene of after-dark misery. Home, but it had no heart in it.

  She placed her handbag in the passenger-seat footwell, reached into it for the bottle, cracked the cap and tried to lift the whole handbag, swaddling the bottle to her mouth. The jangling mess was too much; a lipstick slipped out, a tissue fell to the floor without her getting it to the angle where she could taste vodka. She pulled off the handbag camouflage and held the bottle aloft, relieved; she took two, three, five gulps of a clear no-frills spirit that few Russians would recognise. The heat bloomed in her stomach, but she felt no compulsion to get out of the car, no pull towards the house.

  She drank again, looking around at the surrounding area out of the windows, in the rear-view mirror. A slow-passing car or two; Jean chatting on the landline in the half-light of their lounge; a man walking his Labrador. Otherwise, no one. She put the radio on, not too loud, and took a congratulatory swig of vodka as she realised that it was playing Joan Armatrading’s ‘Love and Affection’.

  She surprised herself with a few impassioned croaks from her vodka-warmed throat, then decided to shut up. A dry laugh as she took down more of the spirits and Joan faded out. Many more songs: divas came and went, soulsters gave their thoughts on love, lust and regret. Then started up the wistful piano and chunk-chunk-chunk intro of Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’.

  Life could start again, if she could just force herself to go inside. She went to open the door. Then she saw them.

  A black 4x4 was parking up across the road. Nadia was in the passenger seat, staring at her. The driver had big shoulders; in the back were two men, one white and one black, both in black shirts.

  Etta threw the bottle down hard; it clanked loud against metal under the passenger seat and gushed into the footwell.

  She started the car and rammed the gear into reverse as the pungent alcohol stink burgeoned out, filling the car. She swerved out of the drive and hit the accelerator so hard her bad ankle shot pain up her leg. Jean was at her window, looking straight at her. The bulldog owners were crossing the road with their now-placid pet, coming back from a walk. They got in the way of the 4x4 which was trying to steer around them all. She owed that dog.

  She sped up the road, drunk, dangerous, desperate.

  ‘Oh God. Oh, God …’

  The 4x4 had edged past the neighbour and was coming up the road behind her. Without thinking, she was turning right, speeding away towards Ola’s new house. The motorway lay five minutes beyond that, and her mum would always—

  The petrol light came on the dashboard.

  ‘No. No no no!’

  Ola was her only hope.

  He was across town but she would have enough petrol to get there. They could not catch her, or she was dead.

  She was too scared to feel fully drunk; adrenaline trumping the alcohol. She was flying along on pure fear.

  Etta sped past pedestrians and parked cars, seeing the 4x4 coming closer in the background. Every few seconds her eyes flicked to the petrol gauge. ‘God. Oh dear God.’

  There were traffic lights coming up. No cars ahead. Fast, faster. She sped through on amber and huffed out a breath as she saw the 4x4 slow on red while she raced halfway up the next road. Ola’s new house had a garage. She could hide the car, hide herself. He would help, wouldn’t he? He bloody owed her. Car, heart and mind racing, she had to pull it together. She had to call ahead. She hit the hands-free and shouted, over-enunciating:

  ‘O-la mob-ile.’

  It connected:

  ‘Hello Etta.’

  ‘Ola, I need your help. Please, please, open your garage, get your car out and you have to let me drive straight in, I need to hide, I need to—’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t ask. I’ll explain. I’m minutes away. Just hurry!’

  ‘Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘I told you, I’ll explain later. Got to go!’

  She hung up and was forced to slow the car as a family stepped onto a zebra crossing. The 4x4 was there, far behind her; not speeding, but there. Sure of itself. Determined.

  Etta felt sick.

  The family crossed and she stamped her right foot down on the accelerator.

  Twenty streets away? Fifteen? Speeding used more petrol. The car had to be running on fumes already.

  ‘Please, please, please …’ chanted Etta as she sped.

  She was close, two streets away when she saw it: the police car turning out to follow her.

  She wanted to stop them and beg for help. But she had stabbed, maybe murdered, and stolen and lied. She turned right into Ola’s road, and drove not too fast. The police car also turned right. She cruised, sitting upright, puffing her breath until she was just approaching the house. Then several things happened at once:

  The police car started blue-lighting, siren screaming.

  Etta slammed her numbed bad foot down too hard.

  The vodka in her blood finally swamped the adrenaline.

  The phone rang, making her jump while she was looking at the police car in the rear-view mirror.

  A loud smash. She had driven up onto the pavement and crashed hard into a wall, three houses down from Ola.

  She wailed, the siren wailed, terrifying bl
ue flashes: the police car pulled up. Two white male officers got out and approached Etta.

  One knocked on the glass.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Etta.

  ‘I need you to get out of the car.’

  Etta clambered out, her limbs heavy, her head light, her stomach swimming. She was moving with the grace of a rhino; she wanted to blame her bad foot; she was coming across as drunk. She was drunk.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Etta Oladipo.’

  The officers looked at each other and one wandered away to radio through to the station.

  ‘Etta Oladipo,’ said the remaining officer. ‘Is this your car?’

  ‘No,’ she said, clutching at technicalities. ‘It’s my partner’s.’

  ‘But you were driving it.’

  Etta nodded, as it felt less incriminating.

  ‘We saw everything. A responsible member of the public alerted us to your movements and … activities.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Jean!’ Etta cursed before sense could stop her.

  The policeman reared his head back. ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘No.’ The rush of fear was strong and clear, secreting from her pores like ethanol. ‘Are you going to breathalyse me? There’s no need, is there?’

  As she breathed, the officer lifted his chin, an ominous tell; she turned her head away.

  ‘No need. But we’d better, eh? Maybe down at the station. We need to talk to you about some money that’s gone missing from your work. FrameTech, isn’t it?’

  Etta looked around. The 4x4 had seen the police car blocking the road and was doing a three-point turn. They drove off, back the way they had come.

  Etta shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help. I need to go—’

  ‘We need you to come with us, for a chat.’

  ‘Please, no!’

  ‘OK then. Etta Oladipo, you are under arrest on suspicion of theft. You are further arrested on suspicion of being unfit to drive through drink or drugs. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence …’

  On they went, saying words she could not bear, could barely comprehend. A hand protected her skull as she ducked into the back of the panda car. The time had come. Not ready; her head swirled, a suffocation of bad thoughts and strong breath. The policemen got back into the car and they drove off. There was nothing she could do: she was a criminal.