Queen Dolly

by Emmy Ellis

  “Masseuses get a lot of perverts, then?” asked Blue Eyes.

  “Yeah,” said Mam. “They think something else is on offer, don’t they? Try it on all the time, they do.”

  “Right,” said Old Cop. “If you think of anything or anyone who might bear relevance to Mr Lawton, let us know. No, stay there, we’ll show ourselves out. Been here enough times to know the way.”

  “Ain’t you just,” said Mam, her voice low.

  I pressed even farther against the wall, willed myself to become small. The two policemen walked past me, Blue Eyes leaving the house first. Authority bled from them, infected the air. Security too. If I just stepped forward, dropped my blanket, Old Cop might see my neck. Ask what happened. If I just…

  “You’ll get a chill stood there, miss,” said Old Cop before he walked out of the house and closed the door.

  I blinked, squeezed my blanket together more fiercely. Swallowed—still sore. The hallway seemed grey, so bleak.

  “Carmel, get your arse in here, quick.”

  Mam’s urgent call pierced my despondency. I pushed away from the wall and tiptoed, though I don’t know why, into the living room. Mam stood at the window, peering through the nets.

  “Look. Shit a fucking brick.” Mam blew fag smoke out, the grey cloud shifting the nets.

  I walked to the window. A policeman, his hand placed on top of Mr Lawton’s head, pushed the old man into the back of a police car. The door slamming made me jolt away from the window. Tears pricked my eyes. Poor Mr Lawton. What had he done? I sat on the chair by the window, pulled my legs up, crouched into a ball. I flapped my blanket into the air, let it fall and encompass me. I tucked it around myself—I’d soon be too big to hide beneath it in this way—and stared at the pattern of holes.

  Mam stalked from the window over to the coffee table. The telephone rested there, its wiggly wires knotted, and she snatched up the receiver, dialling six digits.

  “It’s me,” she said. “Lawton’s been busted. Yeah, they just left… Yeah… Reckon he needs the same as Hemmings? Me too… Yeah, squeal like a pig…” Mam laughed hoarsely, and shivers raced down my spine. She sat on the sofa. “It was that copper who came here. Yeah. Sure he’ll sort it, but it won’t hurt to give him another nudge. Right… Yeah. Bye for now.”

  Mam dropped the receiver into the cradle and leaned back. My breaths heated the air beneath the blanket; my cheeks grew warm, and I longed for fresh air to cool them.

  “That conversation we had this afternoon, Carmel. Discussed it with Bob. We don’t need you anymore. Do what you like on Thursdays, just stay out of this fucking house, right?”

  I closed my eyes. Relief relaxed my shoulders. “Yes, Mam.”

  “And when you’re sixteen you can fuck off out of it for good.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Fourteen years old, eh?” said Bob. “Who woulda thought it? Like, I’ve known you since you were a baby.” He shifted his position on the sofa and turned to Mam. “Where’s the fucking time gone, Annette?”

  “Dunno,” Mam said, “but I wish the next two years would hurry themselves along. Won’t have her round my fucking ankles, then.” Mam stared at me from beside Bob. I hid the revulsion that surged through me, sitting in the chair by the window as if nothing were amiss. “Eat your chips up then, kid. It’s not like we have them often.”

  Chips from the chippy—birthday treat. Me and Gary often bought a cone of chips, warming our hands from their heat on winter nights, burning our windpipes because we’d eaten them too quickly, forgetting to blow. If our pockets stretched to it, we’d share a portion of battered cod, ripping it down the middle, or a saveloy. No, chips on their own definitely weren’t something I classed as a birthday treat anymore.

  Still, I ate them. Knew better than to waste food. Never knew when more would be forthcoming. I swallowed a gag—Bob stuffed half a fishcake in his mouth, eating noisily.

  “Carmel?” he said, his mouth still full. “Been thinking. D’you wanna start working with me ag—”

  “No, she doesn’t,” snapped Mam. She looked at me, narrowed her eyes. “I’m telling you, this kid’d call the fucking coppers on us. Leave her alone.” She rammed a few chips in her mouth, black teeth chomping them.

  Bob swallowed, ran a nicotine-stained finger beneath his nose. Sniffed. “Was just asking, like. I mean, she’s getting older. Might have wanted to make a bit of money.”

  I continued to eat. Watched them.

  “She gets enough money off me. Doesn’t need to make her own.” Mam nudged Bob in the side, scrunched her chip paper into a jagged ball, and threw it across the room. It bounced off the wall and landed on top of junk that had begun to accumulate beside the doorway leading to the kitchen. “Besides, she could go and get her own job now if she felt the need. Papergirl, shop assistant or something.”

  Bob belched, sniffed again, filled his mouth with the other half of his fishcake. “Yeah. I can see her doing a bloody paper round. ‘Ere, Carmel,” Bob turned from Mam to look at me, “reckon if you got a paper round you could dump the whole lot down by the warehouses. Save you postin’ them. And it’d give the workers down there a free read.” He grinned, showing food stuck between his teeth.

  Mam laughed, reached forward, and picked up her cigarettes and lighter from the coffee table. “Yeah. Get paid for doing fuck all. Sounds good to me.”

  Bob whipped his head back round to glare at Mam. “So, you complainin’ about your job now, eh?”

  “Nope, was just sayin’—”

  “Well, don’t. Plenty more women out there gaggin’ for your job. Younger women, know what I mean?”

  Mam visibly bristled. Red spots snuck onto her cheeks, much like the heavier wrinkles beside her eyes had done of late. Her nostrils flared, and she drew her lips back in a sneer. “But these younger women, they don’t know what I know, do they?”

  Tension filled the air. Bob dispelled it with a hearty bellow, laughing until tears spilled down his cheeks. “But they also wouldn’t use their daughter, sell her from a youngster, would they? And the coppers don’t know what I know. Jeez, Annette. You’re thick as pig’s shit sometimes.”

  Mam’s mouth gaped, and she glanced at me—with a look of worry on her face? No, couldn’t have been.

  “If I remember right, you made me think I had no fucking choice over what went on with Carmel.”

  Bob snorted. “Oh, give over, you silly cow. It was you who suggested it. Remember?”

  Mam’s eyes widened.

  As did mine.

  I stood, walked over to the sofa, and held my hand out for Bob’s chip packet.

  “Got her trained, eh, Annette?”

  Mam didn’t answer, just sucked on her cigarette and stared at the living room door. Her hands shook.

  On my way to the kitchen, I picked up Mam’s paper ball, threw all our rubbish on top of the overflowing bin. Shook my head at the state of the place.

  “Couple of tins of peaches out there for afters, kid. Dish them up, will you?” called Mam.

  I opened the tins, poured the syrup into a glass, and drank it. One of the good things in my life, that. Drinking fruit syrup. Tears stung. How could I once again have expected a birthday cake? Would I ever learn? Ever stop hoping for normality, for Mam to change?

  Peaches in dishes, I swilled three spoons under the running tap, flicked them dry. Taking a deep breath, I picked my way through floor debris and handed Mam and Bob their bowls.

  No thanks. And I didn’t expect any.

  On my way back to the kitchen, Mam said, “Your present. It’s in the bin outside.”

  Butterflies fluttered in my tummy, swiftly ousted by a ball of depression that sat heavily, paining my guts. What the hell I’d find in that bin was anyone’s guess. Tempted not to bother going out there to check, I said, “Thanks,” and stood eating my peaches while leaning against the kitchen worktop.

  “Not eating your pud with us, then?” asked Bob.

  The slurp of him su
cking peach syrup off his spoon made me shiver.

  “Thought you two might want time on your own,” I said and balanced my empty bowl on a pile of unwashed crockery. Sighed, squirted washing-up liquid into the sink, filled it with hot water.

  “Nah, you come in here, kid. We don’t mind,” said Bob.

  I closed my eyes in irritation, grinding my teeth. “It’s okay. I’ve finished. Doing the washing up now.”

  “You sure you want that kid out of here in two years, Annette? You got a built-in skivvy there.” Bob laughed.

  “Shame she don’t clean the whole bloody house, then,” said Mam. “Earn her fucking keep.”

  I tuned them out, thought about how crap my birthday had been. Gary hadn’t known, was only interested in rehashing Belinda’s death, what with it being her anniversary. Also, I thought about the fact that Gary was off out with his dad; they’d gone to watch the footy. With nothing better to do, and to stop myself going out to that dirty metal bin to see what rubbish Mam had given me for a present, I made up my mind to clean Mam’s shit-tip of a house from top to bottom.

  I filled four black refuse sacks with crap picked up from the floor, tables, and worktops that evening, the fifth plump from the rubbish in the kitchen bin. Memories of tidying up with Belinda’s mam came to mind, and I pretended it was her house I cleaned, that she stood beside me as I toiled. I conversed with her in my head while Mam filled her veins and Bob smoked weed. What he was doing there that night, I had no idea, because it wasn’t Thursday. No customers knocked on the front door, either. Maybe the sole purpose of his visit had been to ask me to go back to work. Whatever, I tidied around them.

  A lack of cleaning detergents hampered the urge within me to morph Mam’s house into something resembling a habitable abode. I ran to the shop and used some of my saved stash to purchase bleach, polish (Mr Sheen), yellow cloths, and scouring pads. Armed with my weapons of germ destruction, I returned home to find Mam and Bob in the same place I had left them—slumped on the sofa. Beer cans littered the coffee table, the coffee table I’d cleared of debris. Sighing inwardly, I disposed of them, and knelt on the floor in front of the table, sprayed a liberal amount of Mr Sheen.

  “Watch it,” slurred Mam. “If I wanted to use that for perfume, I would.”

  I ignored her and wiped the table. The yellow cloth snagged on months—years—of grime, fluff attaching itself to the dirt. With a scouring pad soaked in soapy water, I concentrated on the task of lifting the filth from that table. Many minutes passed, minutes where I remembered where some of the stains originated. The times when Mam had knocked over her drink and left it to dry in a sticky puddle. Or when she’d flicked her cigarette ash and missed the ashtray. All of it came off, and underneath revealed a surprisingly nice wooden surface.

  Finished, I stood and surveyed my work.

  Mam lifted her feet and dumped her legs on the table. “Ah, got something to rest my pins on now,” she said. Particles of dirt from her feet dropped onto the table.

  Bob chuckled.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned away from them, walking to the cupboard under the stairs to try to find the vacuum cleaner. I was sure we owned one.

  We did, one with poor suction. Mam watched me struggle to vacuum for quite some time before she said, “The bag’ll need changing, though where the fuck the empty ones are is something you’ll have to work out.” Her eyelids drooped, and a smack-head’s smile touched her lips.

  I managed to dismantle a vacuum. How to improvise and cut the bottom off of the full bag, empty it, and tape the damn thing back up again for re-use. It sucked then, all right.

  Lugging two black bags at a time, I placed them all beside the dustbin outside. The bin lid balanced precariously on top of other rubbish, and I reached out to remove it, to see what lay beneath. A large envelope, previously white and bearing the red postal frank of an electricity provider, sat beneath an empty packet of Walkers crisps and two moist, squashed teabags. The envelope had been folded over and resealed with Sellotape, and my name scrawled in black biro replaced our scribbled-out address.

  I took it out of the bin, peeled back the Sellotape. My fingers slipped against a greasy substance—tuna fish oil?—but I managed to re-open the envelope. I peered into it.

  Inside nestled a thick wad of money.

  With the shaking fingers of one hand, I held the envelope much like I had those bags of sweeties from Mr Hemmings’ shop. The other hand I swiped down my trousers to remove some of the grease. Heart beating wildly, for it wasn’t every day I found an envelope stuffed with cash, I wondered what to do. Was this money really for me? If so, what had possessed Mam to give me so much?

  I walked back into the house via the front door and stood before Mam and Bob. Mam, almost nodding out, stared at me, her glazed eyes reflecting the light from the bulb overhead. Her dirty hair rested against her forehead, and the pores in her cheeks had widened over the past few months.

  Bob leaned forward and prepared his umpteenth joint.

  “Um, Mam?”

  “What?”

  “My present…”

  “In the bin, like I said,” she slurred. “Unless some fucker’s nicked it.” She closed her eyes.

  “The envelope—”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s yours.” Her lower jaw sagged.

  Gone. Out for the count.

  I transferred my attention to Bob. “It’s filled with—”

  “Ah,” said Bob. He licked the gum strip on his Rizla, sticking it down to form a perfectly shaped joint. “She kept to her word, then. Fucking hell. Didn’t think she would.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?” I clutched the envelope tighter. The paper crackled, sounded foghorn loud in the quiet of the room.

  “Lawton sent it.”

  “Mr Lawton?” Incomprehension wended up and down my spine. “He’s been in the nick for ages. Is he out?”

  Bob sniggered, dashing his thumb against the flint of his lighter, and lit his joint. “Oh, yeah. He’s out. Out and praising the fucking Lord. Found God while inside. Wanted to repay you.”

  “Repay me for what?” Snippets of conversations, images from covert glances when no one thought I was looking, filtered into my consciousness. Dredged up along with memories from pre-Phenergan, my mind filled with the sludge of my early childhood. The reason for the thick wad of money highly apparent, a small smile twitched my lips.

  Bob opened his mouth to explain.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”

  I turned from him, took an appreciative glance at how the downstairs of the house looked, sniffed, the smell of bleach and Mr Sheen a pleasing aroma. The walk up to my room took half the usual time. Closing my bedroom door, I dived onto my bed and brought the envelope up to my face, breathing in the scent of money. Heart ticking in anticipation—for those notes could be all fivers and wouldn’t amount to that much—I reached in and pulled out the wad, fanning it on my bed.

  Twenty fifty-pound notes.

  Shame every one of them dirty fuckers doesn’t find God, eh, Carmel?

  I laughed and looked at Nelson.

  “Fancy a new dress?” I asked.

  I spent one hundred pounds—a vast amount—and hid the remainder in the hole in the back of the kitchen cupboard, you know, where the mouse went, checking every day that it was still there. Every day for the next two years.

  The pastime of cleaning house afforded me a new outlet for my frustrations. I visited the world of me and Margo, cleaners supreme. With her in my mind showing me the way, I was able to keep thoughts of hurting Mam out of my head for a while.

  Only a while, mind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A man—he watched me weekday mornings on my way to school. Stood there every day, hands in brown jacket pockets, legs at ease. His boots, cumbersome-looking, poked from his denims like a strangulation victim’s tongue. No idea what colour his hair was, his hood obscured my view. I stared at him, and he leered back at me as if
he had the right to gawp. I couldn’t stop him, really, free country and all that. If I told Mam or Bob about him, they’d have told me to change my route, or not walk alone. Or worse, laugh.

  Rain spattered on my umbrella—one I’d bought with Mr Lawton’s money—and I held it so low some of my hair got caught in the spokes. I liked hiding beneath that umbrella. Keeping my head down, gaze fixed on a pavement slick with nature’s tears. I remember thinking that if I didn’t look at the man again, maybe he’d lose interest, abstain from being there the next day. And anyway, who was to say he was even waiting for me? I must have been so steeped in my own self-importance that I assumed it was me he watched. I’d heard that line on Dr Phil while waiting for Sally to start. He had a programme on dysfunctional families and problem kids. I didn’t watch it all. Hurt too much.

  Jeez. I hated myself between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, you know? Like how I sometimes thought everything was about me when it wasn’t. Or when something happened to someone else, I wished it was me—the meetings at the pizza parlour, Saturdays in town buying new clothes with a gaggle of girlfriends.

  I continued walking to school. Shrugged, blinked. It wasn’t me he waited for. I’d have to learn to deal with it like everything else.

  I didn’t socialise at secondary school, just hung around with Gary at break and lunchtimes. Once, a girl gave me a filthy look. You know the type of stare—narrowed eyes, lips pursed as if she were about to whistle for her supper. A whole crowd of people surrounded me, yet I’d assumed she’d looked at me. Our gazes didn’t meet, and if I’m totally honest, she looked right over my head, but I’d like to think she looked at me, saw me. I told myself to talk to my counsellor—I’d opted to chat to one who visited the school each week. I told myself to tell her about the man and the girl.

  Did those counsellor sessions do me any good? I still don’t know.

  Remember when your mam got the letter about you seeing The Lighthouse? Remember what she said, Carmel.