The whisper that King was protecting Arven Road had been quietly respected. Many of the superstitious European girls decided a cut of their own, attached it to a rock and tossed it deep within the shattered flats. She was not superstitious, she had laughed at the idea, but Candy was pregnant now, and things were different. She needed to feel safe and this magical rite was an act of desperation rather than one of faith. It didn’t stop the rock and its attached roll of notes from becoming damp in her clammy hand. Candy walked hesitantly down the alley.
Selling herself had come easily to her and it hadn’t messed with her head. She had never been ashamed of what she did, although she didn’t like seeing other young girls coming into it. She had been called out of order for her harsh treatment of the new girls, but in her opinion the harder she could make it for them the bigger the favour she was doing them as selling yourself took a special way of thinking and not many people had that. However, she was a different person now and although in her mind the game had been fine as a student and the way she had led her life, it was irreconcilable with being a mother.
She was going to be a mother.
It felt weird to think it, but the realisation had changed everything. She wouldn’t be Candy then, she would be Candace again and crazily she found herself longing to be that person. It would be like being reborn and starting over.
She had lied and told Brendan that she didn’t know who the father was. She knew that would drive him away. Having a funny, cute and attractive drugged up loser for a boyfriend had been okay when it was just her living her life day to day, but she was planning for a future now, maybe the next twenty years of her life, and he couldn’t stick to anything for twenty minutes. He wasn’t fit to be a dad. If he had known it was his he would have tried to be a dad out of some kind of duty to do the right thing, but she didn’t want to wait for him to fuck it up. Best to avoid kidding herself with ‘he will be different when the baby comes’ like so many girls did and be let down. It would also save the kid the grief of losing a dad. Unfortunately he had left with her stash of money, so as uncomfortable as she felt about it she would carry on selling herself until she had enough money for a deposit on a flat and to take a course in something. She had already started seeing Evelyn, a counsellor involved in an outreach scheme in the area, and she was getting her head sorted.
Her baby was the size of a pea at the moment, and that somehow made it easier to let other men get their pleasure from her body. She usually only took a few punters and gave herself a couple of nights off as it was all she needed to make a pretty good living, but she had decided to work every night and go with any man that came along if the money was right. She gave herself the deadline of one month to make another stash because the baby would be bigger by then and that seemed wrong. It was a lot of work to take on, but it would be worth it if she could give herself the new beginning and the start her child would need. That would mean a month at risk. A month of being exposed to punters who could refuse payment, could try and get out of using a rubber, could get rough. She needed the protection of a pimp that Arven no longer had.
The boarding that had been nailed across the doorway had been pried off and Candy stepped through and stood in the blackened hall of the building. The carpet that had been soaked by the fire fighters was now mouldering and had the feel of moss underfoot. The stink of burnt wood was still strong in the cool night air. It was so dark it was hard to tell what was soot and what was shadow as she climbed the remains of the staircase that had led up into King’s flat. The stairs ended abruptly half-way up and became a tumble of shattered timber framework with scorched, withered and broken steps, but even at this height she was at the right level for the first floor as it had partly collapsed into the flat below. It had created a chaotic and seemingly unstable network of corridors, crawlspaces and clearings out of the fallen floorboards and joist timbers, places only for the most fearless and dextrous trespasser. It was an uninviting death trap and the perfect place for stories to fester and for things to hide.
She came this far into the building and put herself at risk as her own contribution to the ritual. She had never been content with talking to King on the doorstep and had always blagged her way in for a free drink or a chance to warm up, if she acted as she always had with King maybe it would bring extra magic to the moment. She tossed the stone and it tumbled down the sloping floor of the first floor and clattered to a rest in the doorway to one of the rooms of the ground floor. She waited, she didn’t know what for, but holding her ground in that nightmarish place showed her balls to King and that had always earned his respect in life, no reason it wouldn’t in death.
She stood in the dark. Her eyes adjusting to the gloom as her fear adjusted to her composure. She could feel the fine hairs of her neck tingle, the perspiration under her arms and breasts chilling as the building revealed more of its blackened self to her; the grain of the broken grey timbers, the scab like wounds of the black scorched wood, all with their silhouettes and shadows of splinters and jutting nails like vicious brambles, the orange streetlights filtered through with a volcanic Hellish presence. The empty doorway of the hall where her offering lay, in the mouth of a passage that lead to rooms and ruins out of sight, spaces where there could be someone obscured by shadow watching her in the lava light of the streets.
Candy placed a hand on her tummy, suddenly feeling protective of her pea. She spun on her heels for the doorway. Her escape faltered as the edge of her field of vision registered a lightning quick movement. She turned sharply, but saw nothing in the doorway. She was sure there had been a slender arm as white as moonlight. She laughed at her nerves but made a hurried exit from the building. Whatever it was it had gone. Candy made it to the door to the alley, beyond the point where she could have overruled her ragged nerves and turned back to see for sure, but her laughter died in her throat as she realised that her offering was also gone from the doorway.
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Table of Contents
Chapter Four
Ivory Page 21