Ivory (29 page)

For all
Candy’s attitude she had often experienced some anxiety when
approaching King’s flat, but even though he was long dead there was
a feeling breathing a chill down the back of her neck. King was
gone, but the building had taken on a life of its own. There were
stories circulating that it was haunted and that King’s tortured
soul remained in Arven Road watching the girls he had once ruled,
unable to take his cut or a free touch, but possibly responsible
for keeping other pimps off his old turf and keeping the girls
safe. Over the last few months several rough punters had received
beatings severe enough to make would-be pimps consider that whoever
was running Arven Road now was not worth messing with. Yet if
someone had taken over then they had not stated their claim or
approached the girls for their cut.

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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