Girl Seven (36 page)
Authors: Hanna Jameson
‘Hey, it’s me.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I shut my eyes at the sound of my sister’s harsh cockney twang. ‘What do you want, Harriet?’
‘Er, I need a favour…’
‘How did I guess?’
‘I’m not doing too good. I had this fight and I got fired and… I just need a little bit of cash. Just a little bit; I’ll pay you back, I promise. It’s just until I find another job.’
It was almost funny, the regularity and predictability of these requests.
‘Why were you fired?’ I asked.
‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘It never is.’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘So what happened to the last five hundred I gave you?’
She hesitated. What was most insulting was that she didn’t even bother to sound convincing. Like other addicts I had come across she didn’t speak for herself any more; everything she said was a stock phrase used on everybody in order to get what she wanted. When one didn’t work she moved on to another.
‘Um… well, I had to pay off a few debts, and—’
‘Don’t give me that shit, it went to your fucking dealer.’
There was a silence.
‘I only need a couple of hundred, just to pay off this debt and pay my rent and then I’m done, I promise. Oh come on, it’s not as if you need it!’
She had managed to go from self-pity to excuses and then on to anger in less than a minute. I had the option, as I did every time, to tell her to piss off and make her own way, but even as I entertained the thought I knew it would never happen. I hated her sometimes, most of the time these days, but not nearly as much as I hated myself for giving her the money.
‘Yeah, you’re always a couple of hundred quid away from being
done,
aren’t you?’ I said. ‘It would be nice to hear a promise from you one day that I think you might actually keep.’
‘Oh please, I really need to pay this guy off and I don’t have anywhere else to—’
‘OK, Harriet,
OK
.’ I just wanted the call to be over. ‘How much do you want, two hundred?’
‘Er, could you make it three?’
I shook my head, fist tightening around the wheel. ‘Fine, three hundred. You can come and pick it up yourself, I’m not gonna waste any petrol money on you.’
‘Thanks, Nic, I promise—’
‘Whatever.’
I ended the call. Our parents gave her money too; it wasn’t just me, but that didn’t make me feel much better. Sometimes I caught myself wishing that our childhoods had been harder, more traumatic from an early age. I wished that Dad had been stricter or Mum had drunk too much, that either of them had done anything to unburden us of the responsibility for how our lives had turned out. It wasn’t their fault, none of this was, but that was the problem.
Tony was the only one who refused to pay. I knew she had stopped asking him years ago, way before he went to Afghanistan. She had stopped seeing him because he was of no use to her, and around the same time I had also started avoiding him. I suspected the real reason was that he reminded us too much of our own failures, but I didn’t like to dwell on it.
Sidney’s car pulled into the driveway across the road.
It was half past four.
I memorized the number plate and watched Edie’s son, Scott, walking up the drive holding a gym bag. He looked in his early teens and held himself like his mother. Sidney was tall, Scandinavian, square-jawed. From the one time I had met him in Edie’s club a few years ago I remembered that he was quite softly spoken for someone with his build.
I checked my watch again, just to be sure. Time was almost an obsession to me; it had to be, in my line of work. Nothing was more crucial than timing.
Two more minutes had passed.
It didn’t look like an easy house to break into, I thought. Someone would have to let me in, or I’d have to find another method of coercion…
What is the price of revenge?
The day her parents and sister were murdered, Seven did not cry. Instead, she tried to forget. She vowed that one day she would be free from the sight of their blood.
But Seven could not forget. And now that she is part of London’s criminal underworld, she knows men who can maim; men who can kill. But they all have a price.
Will Seven betray her friends to avenge her family?
“Taut, spare and gripping with unmistakeable undertones of Chandler, Ellroy and Rankin”
Red
“Hanna Jameson writes like an angel on speed… gripping, shocking and relentless”
Q Magazine
LONDON UNDERGROUND
The
London Underground
series is set in the bleak ganglands of southeast London. An upmarket club, The Underground, forms the centre of this amoral, violent, and moneyed world: this is where drug smugglers and corrupt officials discuss business over cocktails and cocaine; where hit men devise honey traps with the gorgeous girls who work the poles...
Emma Dyer left her parents’ house yesterday morning. She was going to meet a friend. She never arrived. Her family assumes she has run off with a boyfriend. Until the police find her body: beaten, raped, shot, and dumped in an alley.
In South London, if you want someone to disappear, you call Nic Caruana. And Emma’s father doesn’t just want his daughter’s killers to disappear; he wants vengeance. He wants suffering. And he’s willing to pay for it. But first, Nic has to follow Emma Dyer through the final hours of her life…
S
omething You Are
is available
here
.
2. Girl Seven
What is the price of revenge?
The day her parents and sister were murdered, Seven did not cry. Instead, she tried to forget. She vowed that one day she would be free from the sight of their blood.
But Seven could not forget. And now that she is part of London’s criminal underworld, she knows men who can maim; men who can kill. But they all have a price.
Will Seven betray her friends to avenge her family?
H
ANNA
J
AMESON
published her first novel,
Something You Are
, when she was just twenty-one. It was nominated for a CWA Dagger. She has lived in Australia, travelled Europe, Japan and the USA with bands such as the Manic Street Preachers and Kasabian, and worked for three years in the NHS. She is currently studying American History & Literature at the University of Sussex.
You can contact Hanna Jameson via twitter:
@Hanna_Jameson
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