by Liza Cody
‘Negotiate, buy bling, then. Do what you have to. Why would she lock Electra in a shed? Why?’
His enormous shoulders slumped. ‘So’s you or Lil Missy would nag me to negotiate and buy bling.’
‘It’s freezing out there. I don’t even know if Electra’s wearing her coat. She’s a greyhound, Pierre – greyhounds are very thin-skinned and they don’t have an undercoat. They get cold. She could die.’
‘Cherry’s got this competitive streak a mile wide.’ He spread his arms. ‘I used to think it was cute.’
‘What does she want?’
‘Don’t start. She wants a new car and a new kitchen. She wants me to take her to New York. She wants me to wear suits and ties and take her to the theatre. She wants me to go to works parties and fancy-pants dinners with her family. She hates the wigs and gowns. She wants a proper boyfriend.’
‘Why did she pick you, then?’
‘I don’t think it matters who she picks. It’s like she’s picking raw material she can shape to suit her needs. All I had to do was want to have sex with her. She did all the rest. I coulda walked away after the first time.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know.’ He almost wailed. ‘She put out. It was there on a plate. Easy. Maybe I’m just lazy. It’s turned into the most expensive fuck of my life.’
‘What time does she go to work?’
‘She don’t work on a Saturday.’
‘Saturday?’ I laid my head on the table and just shook. The Devil dropped his icy claw onto my shoulder and said, ‘You didn’t think this would be simple, did you?’
‘Wha’d’ya want me to do?’ Pierre said in a helpless tone that made me want to slap him.
‘Something,’ I said. ‘Anything.’
‘Cos I ain’t talkin’ to that bitch – from now on she’s dead to me.’
Yesterday she was ‘sweetie-honeee’. Now she’s dead to him. Men are terrifying. Think of everything the Devil did to me. Yet I still love him, don’t I? Dead to me? I wish.
I said, ‘If Electra dies of cold in that shed, and I die of a broken heart because of it, we’ll all be dead to you. Problem solved.’
‘You’re such a drama queen!’
‘For “drama queen” read hysterical,’ the Devil sneered. ‘It’s a really good way of controlling women. I thought it up millennia ago. It’s one word I’ve never had to improve on. You should remember it – you heard it often enough as a child.’
‘Oh shut up!’ I cried.
‘And another thing – that racist bastard you nearly killed last night – ain’cha interested in how he’s doin’?’ He’d been taking self-righteous lessons from frozen Miss Always-in-the-right.
‘The ambulance has gone,’ I said, raising my head. ‘And you’re down here planning a change of career. So either Alicia and Colin took Billy away or he’s okay.’
‘Tantie’s sittin’ with him. Why haven’t those kids brought her clothes over?’
‘If they leave they’ll be homeless. Same as Smis…. Little Smissy. He gave Electra to your chilly Honeee cos he was so scared of having nowhere to live. She’s dangerous, Pierre. She’s killing Electra.’
‘It’s so weird. She works for one of those public service unions. I kinda thought if she had a fault it was cos she was so straight and white bread.’
‘Evil can be banal and boring.’
‘Y’know, I had those wigs custom-made,’ Pierre said, running his hand over his perfect mahogany scalp. ‘Cost me thousands. Ruined.’
‘Concentrate, Pierre. How do I rescue Electra? Is the kitchen door bolted? Where does your frosty friend keep the key to the shed?’
‘Gimme back my keys and money or I won’t tell you diddly. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?’ He glared at me.
‘Tough enough when you’re dealing with me,’ I complained. ‘How come you can’t stand up to Ms Arctic Arse?’ I managed to liberate what I hoped was a ten pound note before I retrieved the money clip from Billy’s coat pocket and handed it to him. He didn’t count it. If he was that comfortably off I should have doubled the take. ‘Speaking of being ripped off,’ I said hastily, ‘didn’t you say you were paying Ms Grabbit’s mortgage?’
‘Shit – how the hell did that happen? All I did was offer to help with the groceries. Then I moved in and as soon as I had nowhere of my own… ’
‘And Smis… Little S… Missy moved in… ’
‘… with Electra, so she wanted rent for the two of us and a dog, plus the space for the van… I guess that’s how it happened.’
‘Step by tiny step, while your man-mind was on other things,’ I said, having been caught that way myself while my woman-mind was occupied by the one-time-only offer of someone to love. ‘Then she’d make you get rid of Smister and Electra – without you noticing – and you’d be left with the mortgage and no friends. I hope she didn’t make you sign some sort of term covenant?’
Pierre looked horrified.
Long ago, in another life, I worked in a building society. I dealt with mortgages, term agreements and all the trimmings every day of my working life – until the Devil contaminated my timidly honest nature. I said, ‘You’d better let me look at the papers.’
Pierre stared at me, at my baggy, grubby tracksuit, swamped by Billy’s ginormous coat. He saw my unwashed hair, my swollen hands, my neglected face. He almost laughed.
‘I didn’t always look like this,’ I said sorrowfully. ‘You show me how to rescue Electra and I’ll get you out of any mortgage agreement you made with Madam Exploitation next door.’
His phone started buzzing like a bee on a windowpane, making me jump. Sometimes I forget you can communicate with the world outside my head.
Pierre said, ‘It’s her.’ His giant thumb hovered over the screen.
I said, ‘Dead to you, but only till she calls?’
He frowned at me till the phone stopped buzzing. Then he picked it up and listened to the message. ‘She wants to meet,’ he said. ‘She says we can’t leave it like this. She says I gotta go to the house cos she’s got intruders who won’t leave. She says she needs my help.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She needs a bouncer, a big strong tough guy to kick Zach and Sylvie out into the cold like Connor and poor Tantie. She needs a car and her mortgage paid regularly. In other words, she needs a sucker.’
‘Not helping,’ he said.
‘Wrong. I wish someone had said the same to me before I followed the Devil down to Hell. “Sucker” is a polite word for what I became.’
‘You’da listened?’
Not a popsicle’s hope in Hades. The Devil was my one chance of escape. Listen to my mother? Never in a million years. That’s why I have a prison record.
‘Result!’ the Devil said gleefully.
‘You won’t be much of a catch for a lovely generous woman like Alicia if you fold every time Cherry Tart gives you orders.’
‘You really ain’t helping.’
‘Well at least negotiate,’ I said, in despair. ‘She works for a union, she understands negotiations. Get Electra out of the shed and give her back to me. After that you’ll help her. And after that I’ll help you with the mortgage.’
His phone pinged and he picked it up. ‘Text’ he said, ‘from Li’l Missy.’ He handed the phone to me.
The message read, ‘pleaseplseplse cm hom. She gt my meds. I scrd.’ It took me a couple of minutes to un-jumble what Pierre had understood immediately. He was already buttoning his jacket.
‘Don’t do this, Pierre – you’ll lose the only bargaining chip you have. And I’ll lose Electra.’
‘Li’l Missy’s my friend,’ he said simply.
‘Text him back… ’
‘Her!’
‘Text her back, suggest something else. She doesn’t know you’re next door, does she? She must
n’t know you’re next door or that I am, or Tantie.’ I was on my feet hanging on to his sleeve. I said, ‘Smissy’s helpless against Cherry – she’d sell her soul for a good bathroom mirror. You know that’s true. I’m not blaming her, Pierre, but she’s so insecure. She’ll do anything for safety.’
He hesitated. I took a firmer grip on his sleeve. ‘Little Missy needs rescuing too,’ I said. ‘He’s been coerced into betraying his friends. All the Troll will do is to corrupt hi… her into further treachery. And then she’ll kick him… her out. Or persuade you to kick him out. She’s implacable. And you know Missy’s not strong enough.’ I nearly said, ‘Cherry’s the Devil’s daughter – she learned all her tricks from him.’ But I managed to stop myself. Pierre’s views on the Devil are mundane, sceptical and not at all helpful to me.
He said, ‘We don’t know what’s happening. We don’t know who all’s in the house.’
Unless the solicitor was still there it was probably just Zach, Sylvie, Smister and the Ice Queen. I went to the front door and looked out. It was a chilly, dark grey morning. I scanned the road for police cars. My guts felt hollow and raw but my head was full of wallowing sludge. I needed it to be clear and logical. I needed to know how Electra would advise me. Back in the kitchen I unscrewed the top of the last bottle of wine and poured what I hoped was a ladylike slug. I didn’t want to do it in front of Pierre but here he was, still at the table, not going anywhere. He rolled his eyes, but I drank a restrained gulp.
Perhaps it was drinking from a glass that made me more aware. I knew it was breakfast time. I knew I was asking Pierre to do something that went against his soft-hearted instincts. I said, ‘I promise I’ll only drink from a glass from now on. I promise to do my absolute best to keep it under control till I’ve got Electra back and I’m out of your hair.’
He rubbed his shiny scalp with a hand the size of a shovel and grinned at me sourly.
I said, ‘Have I ever promised anything before?’
‘Not to me. No.’
‘Well then?’
‘Promises come cheap. You just ain’t capable.’
‘I know,’ I said, suddenly crushed under the weight of loss. Loss of logic, sanity, reliability and my best and only true friend. I used to be capable. I used to be able to keep promises. ‘I can only promise to try.’
‘We-ell… ’
‘Up in Birmingham,’ I began, ‘the woman I cleaned bogs with asked me to check on her little boy, Connor. I never promised, Pierre, but I went anyway. You know what I found.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ruefully, ‘and I know what followed.’
‘Good intentions,’ I said sadly. ‘But it all went shit-shaped. And then it turned truly evil when the cops brought Connor’s grandma to Cherry’s house to identify him. And Cherry kicked him out. She didn’t tell the cops why his appalling nan is the last person to give him to. She just dragged him out by the straps of his dungarees. It was a cold night, Pierre, and he was crying his eyes out. She knew why you snatched him. She knew what his nan had done to him but she just said, “Take him away.” And away he got took. They put him in the same car as the woman who stubbed her cigarettes out on him.’
I paused to let information he really didn’t want to accept dodge past the defenders in his brain – namely that the woman he’d been as close to as two people can be was unfeeling, cold and heartless. The red wine was calming. The sight of another three undrunk inches in the glass gave me space to breathe. And manipulate.
His head sank into his hands. I was about to follow up the advantage when the doorbell rang.
‘Stay here,’ I said. ‘Don’t make a sound.’ I was afraid of cops, social workers and Billy’s daughter. But when I opened the front door I found Alicia, out of uniform, but still carrying an instrument case.
She gave me a morning-fresh minty smile and said, ‘I’ve come to check on the patient.’
‘Where’s Colin?’
‘Gone home to bed. He’s such a lightweight.’
Hiding my disappointment I showed her into the kitchen and went upstairs to check on the patient myself. I thought she might do better work downstairs, using her gorgeous smile to re-unite Pierre with his lost humanity.
Upstairs, Billy was mumbling, ‘Doorbell, doorbell,’ through sleep-swollen lips and a tongue as dry as a woolly sock. Tantie was now wearing two flannel lumberjack shirts. The second one was tied like a sarong around her waist. She was curled up on Billy’s couch, fast asleep.
‘Mornin’ sunshine,’ I said brightly, turning my back on my own exhausted brain. I handed him a bottle of water and watched while he glugged it down. At last his half-opened eyes fell on Tantie.
‘Who-zat?’
‘Tantie,’ I said. ‘Last night she helped save your life.’
‘Why’s she weaning my shirt?’
‘You puked on hers.’ I sensed I could give birth to an origin myth. ‘Billy, you took too many downers and too many beers last night. You passed out and kind of stopped breathing. I couldn’t move you or get to your phone so I had to go next door for help. One of the paramedics has come back to see you. Do you want to use the bathroom or shall I show her up now?’
‘Oh shit,’ he said, and began the slow painful journey out of bed.
He wasn’t very steady on his feet and I was afraid of being fallen on. But he instructed me to find him clean pyjamas and to change the sheets. That’s when I discovered that, some time during his near-death episode, he’d wet the bed.
‘Oh joy,’ I said, and woke Tantie up to help me. My sympathy for her exhaustion didn’t go that deep.
Back in the kitchen I found Pierre and Alicia, knee to knee, deep in talk. His phone was buzzing, unanswered on the table between them. He was not talking about leaving for work or visiting his girlfriend next door.
Alicia got up when she saw me and said, ‘I was telling Pierre that I’ve informed Billy’s GP about last night’s incident. So expect a visit. But I thought I might as well give him the once-over while I was on my way home – just to put your minds at rest.’
‘So sweet,’ Pierre said. His smile was as daisy-white as hers.
‘Yeah,’ I said by way of endorsement. ‘Billy can’t remember what happened last night. He’s only just met Tantie and he doesn’t know Pierre’s here… ’
‘Yeah,’ Pierre said. ‘Maybe keep that to yourself – he ain’t a fan of mine.’
‘But you kept him alive while you were waiting for us.’
‘He doesn’t know that yet,’ I said.
‘He’s got a problem with colour,’ Pierre explained charitably.
Alicia and Pierre exchanged a look of complete understanding. I began to like Pierre again.
When Alicia went upstairs I took another civilised gulp from my glass and then shoved Billy’s soiled sheets and pyjamas into his washing machine. There my fragile grasp on competence broke. Faced with too many dials, buttons and choices I had to ask Pierre to set the machine and switch it on. He didn’t mind. He didn’t seem to mind about anything any more. He even seemed to tolerate me. He certainly didn’t wonder, quite reasonably, how he could rely for help with his mortgage on someone who freaked out about the number of buttons on a washing machine. D cups seem to render a bloke oblivious to practical concerns.
‘Alicia wouldn’t drag a sad, damaged kid out like a sack of garbage,’ I said, ‘or lock a kind, beautiful, old greyhound in a shed on a winter’s night.’
‘She would not,’ he agreed.
‘Or frighten your best friend to death by withholding his meds, just to force you to help her.’
‘Shee-it, no.’ He suddenly came down to earth and listened to the messages on his phone.
There were two, increasingly forceful calls from the Queen of Coercion, and a new text from Li’l Missy.
‘Crappo-crappola,’ he said. ‘Okay, here’s what I’ll do.’ His th
umbs were big as a Rottweiler’s paws but they danced gracefully over the screen on his phone. ‘I said: tell her I’ll help but only after you confirm she’s given your meds back.’
I felt panic rising from my guts to my throat. ‘What about Electra?’
‘Dumb-ass,’ he said. ‘How did I find out about Electra in the shed if Cherry’s not supposed to know we’re next door?’
‘But what’s to stop her threatening Missy and making him text back confirming she’s given hi… her the meds and then not giving them to her?’
‘You out of sight paranoid about her,’ he said. ‘She ain’t that devious.’
‘She uses your friends and innocent dogs to manipulate you – do what she wants or she’ll hurt someone. Even a three-week-old kitten would call that devious.’
‘Know what? You should get some sleep. You look like you been ridden out hard and put away wet.’
‘Know what? Until you find a place of your own where Missy can stay, you’re dependent on Chillee Honee next door and you can’t protect anyone let alone a dog and a baby.’
‘Why am I the protector?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Who’s protecting me?’
‘I am,’ I said, to my own astonishment. ‘I brought you in out of the cold last night, and I’ll help you with the mortgage.’
‘Everyone thinks, cos I’m big, I’m responsible.’
‘Yeah, right, Sister Diana Ross of the Order of Sweet Charity. You’re responsible all right. Responsible for all the fuck-ups happening in my life since I got out.’
‘Know what?’ he said. ‘When we nunned up I felt this, like, huge release. And I thought I hadn’t had so much fun in months.’
‘Those wouldn’t be the months you’d spent living next door, would they?’
He ignored me. ‘Then it went all Afghanistan and Syria.’
‘Connor’s not one of your fantasies. He’s a real live suffering little kiddy. Real people get really hurt, badly hurt, in the real world.’
‘Yeah, well, you tell that to Billy who you almost wasted.’
‘The Devil… ’ I began, but then Alicia walked into the kitchen, D cups first, and what was left of Pierre’s attention went galloping away over the horizon.