Playing Around (21 page)

She shook her head.

‘I came in here and said – I want to speak to the owner. Stefano came over to me, and I said to him – Here’s thirty quid. Me and Bobby here want a meal. We don’t know nothing about grub like your’n, so we need you to help us. And he did. And I’ve been coming here ever since. Plenty of other places as well, of course. Places that think they’re
chic
’ – he said the word with such contempt that, for a moment, Angie flinched – ‘Well, let me tell you something else. You, Angel, are as good as anyone in here. Better, because you’re not a phoney. You don’t pretend. You are who you are. Got it?’

Angie stared down at the pure white cloth. She wanted to say, but I’m not. I’m no dolly bird, I’m just Squirt, a frightened kid from Dagenham, who wishes she could get up and run away. But he was being so kind. ‘Yeah. I’ve got it.’

‘Good. Now I’m going to make you a promise, Angel. I like you. I like you a lot. And I’m going to teach you all the things that Stefano taught me.’ He squeezed her hand harder. ‘And lots of other things as well.’

Angie didn’t know why but somehow he had made everything seem all right again. Just like he had when they had gone into the club in Westbourne Grove.

‘I’d like that,’ she said, lifting her chin and meeting his gaze. ‘I know I’ve got a lot to learn.’

‘All the better, Angel. All the better. Self-knowledge, see.’

He turned her hand over and looked at the marcasite watch her grandmother had given her for her birthday.

She gazed down at it. Was it really only six weeks ago?

‘That’s a nice watch. A boyfriend get it for you, did he?’

‘Yeah. That’s right.’ Why had she lied? She knew why: to come over as all experienced. ‘A boyfriend.’

‘I’m not surprised. I fancy spoiling you myself. That’s why I’m taking you shopping.’

‘Shopping?’

‘Yeah. Tomorrow.’

‘I can’t. I’ve already taken today off. I’ve got to go to work or I’ll get in trouble.’

David snorted loudly. ‘This is a first. A bird preferring to go to work rather than be taken out shopping? You really get to me, do you know that, Angel? You’re a real one-off.’

‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’

‘Don’t get all upset.’ There was laughter in his voice, but it wasn’t cruel. ‘I don’t think you’re rude. I think you’re a really nice girl. And it doesn’t matter. We can go on Saturday.’

Vi pulled back her bedroom curtains and watched Angie stride easily along the front path. Then, as her daughter bent forward to open the gate, Vi saw her already short skirt ride up to show almost the full length of her firm, young legs.

Vi raked her fingers through her unbrushed hair. If only she was seventeen again. It wasn’t fair.

She let go of the curtain, plonked down on the bed, and lit her first cigarette of the day, drawing the smoke deep into her lungs.

She had heard Angie come in last night, it was gone
eleven
– a good quarter of an hour after Nick had left – and yet there she was this morning as fresh as a bloody daisy.

God, she hated getting old.

Angie stood waiting for someone to open the Murrays’ front door. Unsurprisingly, it was Tilly. She was holding a fork in her hand as if it were a magic wand and she was the good fairy in the pantomime.

‘Morning, Mrs Murray. Don’t suppose Jackie’s ready yet?’

‘You’re a bit early for that, love. But come in.’

‘It’s such a lovely morning, I woke up all raring to go.’

‘Good to hear you so cheerful. Let’s just hope it’s catching. Go up and see if you can make that girl of mine get a move on.’

Angie pointed to the little paved area of the garden under the front room window, where Martin’s scooter was usually parked.

‘Martin up and out all early as well?’

‘No,’ said Tilly, heading down the passage towards the kitchen, where she was frying enough bacon and sausages to feed half the street, but which was intended solely for Stan, her defiantly slim husband. ‘He phoned last night. Tea-time it was. To say he was staying with a friend of his from college. Had to get some work done. I just hope he gets a decent breakfast down him. I know what you youngsters are like.’

What Tilly didn’t know about her own particular youngster was that his breakfast that morning consisted of nothing more than sex with Jill Walker, followed by a cigarette and a cup of black, instant coffee.

Remembering to buy milk hadn’t been the first thing on either Jill or Martin’s mind.

*

With only a little coaxing and cajoling, Angie had Jackie out of the house and on the way to the station a good ten minutes before they really needed to leave. Not only was Angie bursting with all the things she had to say about her day playing hooky from work with David Fuller, Jackie was as eager to hear them.

‘So you didn’t think it was as good as the Canvas Club then?’

‘Good? It was a total grot hole. Terrible. But David said all the stars go there. Can you imagine?’ She shielded her mouth with her hand as though the streets of Dagenham were teeming with spies, and dropped her voice to a low whisper. ‘Apparently, even a member of the Royal Family goes there.’

Jackie had no such concerns. ‘No!’ she shrieked.

‘Yes,’ Angie continued, all wide-eyed and breathy. ‘And – you won’t credit this, Jack, I’m telling you – she,
she
likes girls. If you know what I mean.’

Jackie was momentarily lost for words, then she gasped, ‘No! What, like that Kay at school?’

If it hadn’t been for Angie wrenching her backwards, Jackie, completely distracted by such juicy gossip, would have stepped straight into the Woodward Road, right in the path of a passing 62 bus.

‘Not exactly like Kay,’ Angie said, looking for a gap in the traffic. ‘She likes blokes as well.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Nor did I when he told me. But the music was brilliant. Ska.’ Angie shoved Jackie across the road to the safety of the far pavement, and they began climbing the little hill up to Becontree station.

‘Sing us one of the songs then,’ Jackie demanded, her old bossiness with Angie not quite forgotten. ‘Go on. How did they go?’

Angie pulled a face. ‘I knew you’d say that. I did try
to
learn one for you, but they’re sort of hard to understand. You must have to be used to the accents. But they’re great for dancing to. Honest, Jack, you wouldn’t be able to sit still if you heard one.’

Ordinarily, Jackie would have felt more than a touch narked, being excluded from something as important as the music that the magazines were saying was going to be the Next Big Thing, but this morning there were too many other things for her to hear about for her to start throwing tantrums.

‘What else did you do? Where did you go after he’d had the meeting with the bloke?’

Angie shrugged up her shoulders and sucked in her lips in anticipation. She had been saving this bit. ‘He took me to his flat. In Mayfair.’

This time Jackie stopped dead without any need for any arm dragging on Angie’s part. ‘Angela Knight. You went to his flat? Don’t tell me you and him …’

Angie pushed Jackie towards the ticket barrier, while doing a very passable impression of looking absolutely mortified. ‘No we did not, thank you very much. What do you take me for? He had to drop something off. Some keys. For his housekeeper. Then we went to Stefano’s.’

They both began fumbling around in their bags for their season tickets.

‘What’s that then?’ The casual reference to ‘housekeepers’ and ‘Mayfair’ would, ordinarily, have supplied enough material to have kept Jackie questioning Angie closely for hours on end, but this was all so appetizing, she hardly knew where to start. ‘This Stefano’s? Another club is it?’

‘No. It’s an Italian restaurant.’ Angie smiled pleasantly at the ticket inspector. ‘We had champagne. He’s taking me there again. On Saturday. For …’ She
hesitated
, wondering what the word would sound like coming out of her mouth. ‘… lunch.’

Instead of the mocking reaction she had expected from her friend –
hark at you, lunch
– Jackie blinked slowly, like a cheap ventriloquist’s dummy, and said simply, ‘So you won’t be coming shopping with me on Saturday?’ She had kind of assumed that Angie’s big day out, her mad adventure with an older man, was going to be a one-off. OK, they’d probably go to the Canvas Club again some time, in a few months maybe, but as for Angie seeing that bloke again …

‘You don’t mind do you, Jack?’

‘And how about Saturday night?’

‘I’m not sure yet. I’ve got to phone him.’

‘Angie—’

‘Angel.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what he calls me: Angel. Good, eh?’

‘Yeah,’ Jackie said flatly. ‘Great.’

Angie walked over to the changing-rooms in Solar, a King’s Road boutique that she and Jackie wouldn’t have been brave enough even to enter a matter of weeks ago, with a pile of dresses slung over her arm, a cerise floppy hat with holes punched in the brim perched on her head, and a turquoise feather boa draped round her neck. David had insisted she try them all on. He was very persuasive.

As the curtain fell behind her, Angie’s eyes widened. Instead of the individual cubicles she had been expecting, what she saw was a communal changing area.

Communal.

She had heard they existed, of course, but she had never actually been in one. And she wasn’t sure she
liked
it. No. Wrong. She knew she didn’t like it at all.

The room was full of young women, all in varying stages of undress, and all totally uninhibited. She buried herself away in the corner and turned her back on them, as if her not seeing them would somehow make her invisible, would spare her blushes.

It was a vain hope.

Slowly, she slipped out of her dusty-pink minidress, folding it and putting it on top of her shoes – anything to avoid eye contact with the other girls – then pulled on the simple white shift.

‘That looks absolutely gear. Really fabulous on you,’ yipped a plummy-voiced, rather sturdy brunette, who Angie hadn’t even noticed in the crowd. ‘You are so lucky.’ She brayed a whinnying, horse-like laugh. ‘Wish I had a figure like yours, I’d buy up the whole ruddy shop.’

Angie raised her eyes and looked at herself in the mirror. Her nan had always said she had a good figure. And Martin had certainly seemed to have approved of her. And that student – that horrible student – and now David.

Maybe she was OK.

Maybe she was better than OK.

She turned to the girl and looked directly at her. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But do you think it’s short enough?’

‘How are you doing, Angel?’ David, standing outside Solar, with his arms filled with bags and packages, had spotted a cab at the traffic lights.

Angie didn’t hesitate. ‘I’m so tired. After that really nice …’ she paused for just a beat ‘… lunch. Then doing all this shopping. I don’t know if I’ve got the energy to try on anything else.’

He looked relieved. ‘I’m glad you said that. Look, it’s
nearly
five. How about if we go and have a drink?’

‘Smashing.’

‘I know a nice little hotel. Not far from here. We could have an early dinner.’ He shoved half the bags under one arm, put two fingers in his mouth, gave a piercing whistle and showed out to the cab driver.

‘A hotel,’ said Angie softly, panicking about how she would handle being in yet another new, and no doubt scary, type of place. ‘That’ll be nice.’

Sonia strolled aimlessly along Kensington High Street, deep in thought, barely registering the existence of the regular crowd of Saturday browsers, window shoppers and tourists who moved around her in shoals, like small fry avoiding predators.

She didn’t notice any of them, that is, until she saw one particular young woman – a uniformed nanny who was pushing a high-wheeled, coach-built Silver Cross pram in the direction of Kensington Gardens.

It was as if a light suddenly came on in Sonia’s head, as if she now knew what she had always wanted to do with her life, but had simply never realized it before. Up until now she had been happy – well, driven, more than happy – to have nice things, to go to nice places, and to live the life she had believed, truly believed, she had wanted. But now she knew she had just been passing the time, playing around, living half a life.

What Sonia really wanted, what she
had
to have, was Mikey’s baby.

She lay back on the rumpled pillows, her sweat-covered body tangled in the sheets, with a smile of blissful satisfaction. Not only sex in the afternoon with Mikey, but in the flat, when David could turn up at any moment. And she hadn’t put in her cap.

It couldn’t get a lot better than this.

Mikey stroked his hand over her taut, flat belly. ‘Sonia, you are—’

‘Insatiable?’ She stretched lazily.

‘I think that’s the word.’

‘That’s a big word,’ she purred suggestively.

He raised an eyebrow, patted her belly as if it was a pet dog, and rolled over on to his back. ‘You don’t just love me for the size of the words I know, do you, darling? Cos I don’t know very many.’

‘Mikey, I just love you.’ She opened her eyes and propped herself up on her elbows. ‘And I want to have your baby.’

He turned on to his side so his back was to her and yawned. Here we go. ‘Course you do.’

‘I mean it, Mikey. I want us to go away together.’

‘Yeah. So do I, darling.’

‘You did like my little present?’

Mikey frowned. ‘Present?’

‘The keys.’

‘Oh yeah. Lovely.’

‘Did it work? Pressing them into the Plasticine?’

‘It had better.’

‘And will …’ She gently pulled him round by the shoulder until he was looking at her. ‘Will having those keys mean we’ll be able to get enough money to go away?’

Mikey looked at her blankly.

‘You said you wanted to. You do, don’t you, Mikey?’

‘Course I do.’ Mikey blasted her with a smile. ‘Come here.’ He put his arms around her and pulled her on top of him.

As he closed his eyes, he could see his future: him on a white, sandy beach, a glass of bubbles in one hand, and the little blonde sort who worked in the Coffee
Bongo
in Greek Street in the other. And that’s exactly what he would have, just as soon as he’d creamed off enough of Sonia’s old man’s takings.