‘Leave it out, Kev. What the fuck you doing, man?’
Kevin laughed.
‘What does it look like? I’m going to shoot you.’
Petey finally realised that this man was over the edge. Completely over the edge. His face crumpled and he started crying. Petey heard the loud click as Kevin cocked the gun and put his hands to his face instinctively.
Then a voice came from nearby.
‘What’s going on?’
It was an old voice, querulous, and Kevin swore under his breath, turned and walked away quickly. Petey collapsed on to the pavement. His legs felt as if they had completely turned to jelly.
He was still crying when his mother-in-law found him outside the house an hour later. She took him inside. She had his stuff packed and was ready to say her goodbyes. When she’d finally got the full story from her son-in-law Rita sat smoking in her favourite chair and cursed her own daughter over and over again. Bethany’s daughter Tamara cried, convinced she was going to get hurt as well because it was her mother’s death that had started off this chain of events.
‘I hate Karen, Nana, I really hate her! I just want to be here quietly with you. I hated living with Mum and her men and the drugs. I hated it when men sat me on their laps and petted me and told me what a lovely little girl I was. I hated her for letting them do it. Marie Carter done me a fucking favour!’
Even her nana couldn’t answer that one.
Sally Potter knocked gently on Marie’s door then opened it and walked inside. Marie was lying on her bed in a towelling dressing gown.
‘How are you?’ Sally asked.
She shrugged.
‘OK, I suppose, considering.’
Sally sat on the bed and smiled, her round face over made-up as usual even though she was about to go to bed.
‘I’m still working, you know. On the streets. Can’t seem to keep away from it, can I?’
Marie felt sad for her but didn’t show it.
‘If they find out, you’re straight back inside, you know that.’
‘Maybe I want that deep down and just won’t admit it. I felt I belonged in nick. I was there so long I had a good network of friends and companions. I feel lost out here. I think I went back on the game to feel I was in a familiar environment, with people who accept me for who and what I am.’
‘Want a cup of tea?’
‘You stay there, I’ll get it.’
While Marie waited she wondered why Sally had picked tonight of all nights to open up to her. They knew each other’s past form so she assumed it was because she had been a prostitute that Sally felt she could talk to her. People out of the game never understood the power it had over the women involved. For most it was a form of self-hatred. For others it was a substitute family. For the majority a means to an end.
Ten minutes later they were sitting side by side on the bed and talking as if they had known each other all their lives.
‘Where are you working?’
Sally sipped her tea and swallowed deeply before she answered.
‘I worked the Cross for a while but now I advertise meself in the local paper and visit people’s houses. Sad bastards most of them with scruffy furniture and smelly bathrooms but the money is good.’
She sighed and then continued.
‘I work for a woman over North London. She basically provides the mobile and the initial contacts. She puts in the adverts and we pay her a percentage as scrum money. So none of it can come back to me, see. I can only get caught if the police come to the actual house I’m working in. But I still do a stint with the girls on the street too because I enjoy the camaraderie. Trouble is, I have to be back here by ten-thirty!’
They both laughed.
The door opened and Amanda popped her head round.
‘All right, girls?’
They nodded, feeling like school kids on a sleepover.
‘I’m late-passing you, Marie. From tomorrow you can have the ten-thirty curfew.’
She waited for Marie to thank her. It was a beat before she answered, ‘Thanks.’
Amanda felt awkward. Smiling, she left the room, closing the door behind her.
‘They act like they’re doing us such a big fucking favour. Ten-fucking-thirty at our age!’ Sally’s voice was angrier than ever. ‘Big fucking deal.’
Marie didn’t answer her. Then she said seriously, ‘Where the fuck will I go till ten-thirty at night?’
Sally laughed loudly.
‘Come up the Cross with me!’
Marie grinned and shook her head.
‘Been there, done that!’
‘Nothing like flashing the old clout to give you a boost!’
‘Old being the operative word where we are concerned!’
Sally screamed with laughter and Marie felt a spark of affection for this woman who was obviously desperate for human contact. She wondered if that would ever happen to her. She hoped so. She was still dead inside. Wary of people. The only ones she wanted were her children and they were so far away from her mentally they might as well be on the moon.
‘Be careful, Sally. Don’t get yourself banged up again or you’ll regret it, mate.’
‘I suppose so, Marie. But it gets lonely out here, you know. Some of the girls you meet these days are so young! Honestly it’s heartbreaking. Their stories . . . The world has changed all right since we were banged up, and not for the better from what I hear.’
‘Life is what you make it, Sally. And there’s another old saying I heard in nick: people only do to you what you let them. It’s true, you know.’
Sally’s full lips were quivering.
‘I still think about him, you know. My old man. Bastard he was but I loved him. I was out selling me fanny and he was shagging anything with a pulse under the age of sixty. He was sex mad, him. All he talked about, thought about.’
She shook her head in reluctant admiration.
‘He’d shag a table leg on a Monday if the time was right and we were skint.’
‘Why did you do it then?’
Sally stared at the wall opposite as if she was picturing him in her mind.
‘He got a real bird, didn’t he? Fell in love. I could accept all the one-night stands and the slagging around but I couldn’t handle him loving someone else. You know what I mean? I couldn’t take that. It was the ultimate rejection. I had lost me kids over him. Lost me family. Me self-respect. Then he went and fell in love, didn’t he? I couldn’t live with that, Marie. I would see him dead before I saw him with someone else. I had told him that many times. He was like a disease, ate at me like a cancer. I killed him and nearly killed her. The worst of it all is, I’d do it again. Without a second’s thought. I still love him. I expect I always will.’
Marie had a hand over her mouth. She wanted to cry for Sally and for the love that had destroyed everything in her life. Was still destroying her even after all these years.
‘Oh, Sally. I’m so sorry.’
She shrugged.
‘I miss him. That’s the worst part of it all, I still miss him. His smell. His voice. The way he ate. The way he laughed. If I close me eyes I can see him smiling at me.’
The tears were flowing from her eyes and Marie put an arm around her shoulders and pulled Sally’s head on to her breast to comfort her. Just then Amanda put her head around the door once more and with an exclamation left the room as fast as she had entered it.
Sally wiped a hand across her face and said loudly, ‘That’s all we need. Now she thinks we’re a pair of carpet munchers!’
They both started laughing, high raucous laughter that reverberated all over the halfway house.
Tiffany walked around Patrick’s flat. She felt ill with worry over her child and terrified of being arrested by the police. Guilt was eating at her. She was up for neglecting Anastasia, her worst fear had been realised, and she wasn’t mentally strong enough to cope with it.
The phone rang, making her jump in the quietness. She heard reggae music
and Patrick doing a rap on his answerphone. This annoyed her for some reason. Then a girl’s voice came on the line, low and deep; she was obviously black.
‘I am back, baby, and looking for you. Ring me.’
Tiffany sat on the white leather sofa and stared at the machine.
The voice was lovely, like softest velvet. But it was the confidence in it that struck her most. This girl, whoever she was, knew that he would ring her back. She wasn’t a working girl, they didn’t have this number. Tiffany had his child and even she didn’t have this number. No, this girl was a real bird. A serious contender. The knowledge depressed her even more.
What had happened to her? Where was the girl who had sworn she would make something of her life? Who’d lain night after night in a children’s home planning her future? She caught a glimpse of herself in the ornate mirror over the fireplace. She looked dreadful and this exacerbated the feelings welling up inside her. Self-disgust and shame were threatening to swamp her.
In a moment of stunning clarity she knew she had lost her child and that it would be an uphill struggle to get her back. She was a drug addict and a whore, like her mother before her.
Picking up the phone she dialled a number. Tears blurred her vision as she said into the receiver: ‘Jason? Is that you, Jason?’
Verbena Melrose heard the girl’s voice and the distress in it and said gently, ‘Is that Tiffany?’
She listened to a torrent of words so confusing it was impossible to understand a thing. She passed the phone to her husband.
‘I don’t know what she’s on about. She’s crying.’
Oswald Melrose took the phone from his wife.
‘Calm down, Tiffany, and tell me what’s wrong. No, listen, Jason is in bed and I’m not getting him up at this time of night. He has school in the morning. Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll help you, child.’
Gradually he calmed her down with his quiet firm voice and his common-sense approach.
‘Where are you?’ He shook his head in despair. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know where you are? And who took the baby?’
Verbena’s eyes opened wide.
‘They’ve taken her baby - why?’
Her husband waved his hand at her to keep quiet. Eventually he put the phone down.
‘What’s happened?’
He sighed. A six foot five Trinidadian with soft brown eyes and the shoulders of a giant, he was a consultant haematologist at St Thomas’s Hospital. Well respected for his work with blood disorders, he was a kind man who loved his wife and family with a passion.
‘The bubble has burst, Verby, the girl is back to square one,’ he said sadly. ‘The baby has been taken and she is in a flat somewhere, she’s not sure where, and she’s on drugs or my name is Elton John.’
Verbena closed her lovely green eyes in distress.
‘As you heard I told her to get a cab over here. Whether she will or not I can’t say. The girl is in pieces. Patrick Connor! If I had him here, I’d . . .’
Oswald was lost for words.
His wife slid into his arms and cuddled him close, or at least as close as her five foot two inches would allow. He kissed the top of her blonde head.
‘All we can do is wait and see if she arrives. But I don’t hold out much hope. She’s gone, I’m afraid. The drugs have got her now.’
Chapter Fourteen
Oswald and Verbena watched as Jason ate his breakfast. Neither of them knew how to tell him that his sister had been on the phone last night unable to say where she was or even who she was with. As he ate his bacon, eggs and plantain banana he was unaware of the tension between his parents.
Never a morning person Jason was quiet as he ate and drank his grape juice. He looked tired, but he had been studying hard the night before. Since starting sixth-form college he had really thrown himself into his academic studies and his parents were pleased to see him trying so hard. Never an A student, he had to try harder than others to keep on top. They were proud of him and it showed.
Verbena started to load the dishwasher. She saw the sun streaming through the window and felt a small lift in her spirits. Nothing bad could happen on a day like this, surely? Her white German kitchen looked clean and cared for; their whole home was bright, and she liked to think beautiful.
Jason completed their life and, as much as she liked Tiffany, Verbena was jealous of the closeness he shared with her. She knew it was silly, that he loved her as much as he would have loved his biological mother. Probably more, considering the home he had come from. But she still felt a chill whenever Tiffany became involved with them. Oswald, however, thought the world of the girl. But then, he was a nicer person than she was. Always would be, always had been.
Tiffany wandered in and out of their lives and Verbena found it unsettling. Felt that she let Jason down when she didn’t get in touch for months and that it upset him. The girl was so unstable. But, like Oswald, Jason kept up his haphazard relationship with her whenever she felt she needed it. Verbena felt guilty for her own thoughts but that didn’t change anything. She was annoyed.
She wished she was more like her husband. He was a good man, a decent man, and she loved him with a vengeance. Loved him so much it hurt her sometimes just to look at him. Since the first day she had seen him she had been in love with him and it had lasted twenty years. She adored him and he adored her. Now Tiffany was in trouble and she knew she would have to grit her teeth and help her because that was what Oswald would want from her. She would wait for Tiffany’s next call and then see what she could do.
But the girl was part of her son’s past and that was what hurt Verbena the most. She didn’t want him to have a past. She wanted his past to consist of her and her husband. The years before he had come to them she wanted forgotten, only that wasn’t going to happen and she would have to accept it. But why should he remember squalor, and drugs, and a mother who’d killed when he could remember laughter and brightness and parents who loved him to distraction? Holidays and Christmases full of laughter and joy instead of violence and drugs, hunger and distress?
Oswald would say he needed to remember because that was a part of his life too, whether she liked it or not. But Verbena didn’t agree.
She wanted a picturebook upbringing for Jason but no matter how hard she tried to give him one, his past life would always mar that.
‘All right, Mum?’
She had been in a world of her own. Now she turned to her son and hugged him. He was a handsome boy with a good physique and great bone structure, a kind nature and an electric smile.
‘Sorry, Jason. I was miles away. I’ll get my car keys.’
‘That’s OK. I’m walking in with Kelly and Tamsin from down the road.’
Oswald laughed.
‘That’s it, son, get the girls while you can. Only don’t get caught like I did.’
He looked at his wife lovingly. This was a family joke.
When Jason had left, the house felt so empty to Verbena she longed for the days of his childhood when he would always be up to some mischief and their home constantly rang with childish laughter. Oswald guessed his wife’s thoughts and pulled her roughly into his arms.
‘Let him grow up, girl. He will be a man soon, you know.’
His voice still had a trace of the West Indian accent which had always turned her on.
‘I wish we could have had children of our own as well, Ossie.’
He hugged her tight to his chest so she could smell his own particular smell: Paco Rabanne and fresh sweat. She loved the scent of him, always had. He kissed her gently on the lips. Even this early in the morning her make-up was perfect, he noticed.
‘His sister is obviously in need of help. If she was our daughter we’d do what we could, right? Well, she’s our son’s blood and so we have to help if we can. She didn’t have the advantages he’s had, remember that.’
Verbena nodded.
‘But she’s so like her mother it worries me.’
Oswald just
stopped his eyes from rolling upwards in annoyance. Her silly jealousy irritated him at times. As much as he loved Verbena she could be such a snob. Consequently his voice was short as he answered her.
‘Listen, Verby, that boy is half his mother and half his father, yet all ours. Stop this stupid talk and thinking. Let me get to my work without worrying about you too.’
He was sorry he’d spoken immediately. Verbena looked so hurt he kissed her again, hugging her close.
‘OK. If she gets in touch I’ll do what I can,’ she promised.
‘Ring me as soon as you hear anything, OK?’
He picked up his briefcase and left her then in her bright kitchen, her beautiful home that was feeling emptier and emptier by the day.
She made herself a cafetière of coffee and pulled the Daily Mail towards her to scan it. She took out one of her secret cigarettes and lit it, trying to concentrate on the news. But her ears were constantly alert for the phone which she knew was going to ring any moment and bring her family grief. Drag them into that girl’s petty dramas and make Ossie feel he had to take on the cares of the world.
Kevin Carter turned off the radio as he pulled into Alan Jarvis’s scrapyard. It was a beautiful day. He looked at his daughter’s face as she walked towards him and remembered how lovely she had been as a child. Even as a grown woman with all the troubles she had endured Marie was still lovely.
Only now she tried to hide it. Her clothes, hair, everything was toned down so you had to take a second glance to make sure you were seeing a good-looking woman and that it wasn’t just an illusion. He felt heart sore for her. None of her problems had really been her fault and he knew that, had always known that.
‘Hello, Dad.’
Her voice was happy yet subdued. He guessed, rightly, that it was because of her mother. The fire would be another thing to lay at her door as far as Lou was concerned, but it was his fault it had happened; he was the one who’d gone after the Blacks, not poor Marie.
‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’
He followed her to the Portakabin, made small talk until he had his cuppa then said seriously, ‘Your mother is on the mend. No one can believe how strong she is, but then they never had to fucking live with her, did they?’
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