Playing Around (29 page)

Sam’s always speedy achievement of sexual gratification – his own, not hers – was not a problem for Vi, it was a relief. She preferred to have as little contact with his flabby, sweaty body as possible.

Now Craig on the other hand, with his firm, taut belly, and his big, muscled thighs, she could have had him pumping away at her for hours, have had him touching her and …

She could kill that ungrateful little cow. Making a pass at him like that. Her own daughter.

‘Violet.’ Sam was panting into her ear. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

‘What’s that then?’ she asked, looking up at him through the curtain of greasy grey hair that had fallen over his pudgy face.

‘I’ve decided to tell Cissie. About us.’

With surprising force, Vi pushed him off her, shoving
him
to one side like an unwanted portion of overboiled cabbage, and then levered herself up on to her elbows. ‘Don’t be hasty, Sam.’ Christ, if he left his old woman, he’d want to be hanging around her morning, noon and night.

‘Don’t you want to be with me?’ He looked like a kid whose lolly had melted.

‘Of course I do, darling.’ With a bit of difficulty, Vi rolled him back on top of her, knowing that the feel of her flesh against his would soften his brain as surely as it would harden his penis. ‘I just don’t want you losing everything in the divorce courts. Not when you’ve worked so hard for it all.’

Sam smiled happily. ‘You’re so good, Violet. Always worrying about me. Most women would only be after what they could get.’

‘I know, Sam,’ she said, running a fingernail over his fluff-covered buttock. ‘Some women are just selfish.’

‘Craig.’ With one eye on the light shining from under the lavatory door, Vi whispered urgently into the phone that was mounted on the stock-room wall. Sam had only just gone into the loo, and she knew from experience that he would be in there a good few minutes. ‘I had to call you. I can’t get you out of my mind. I promise, nothing like what happened tonight will ever happen again. Honestly, Craig. It was all so stupid. She was just showing off. I don’t know what’s got into that girl lately. Please, let’s be friends again.’

Craig took a long moment as he considered what to do, and eventually came to the conclusion that he was at a loose end for the night, Vi was always willing, and, what the hell …

‘I’ll be round in about an hour,’ he said.

Gratified as she was to be back in Craig’s good books,
this
wasn’t what she had expected. She’d thought he would punish her. Make her wait at least a couple of days.

‘An hour?’ she said brightly, then jumped at the sound of Sam pulling the chain. She’d better get a move on.

‘Tell you what, Vi. As I’m already in bed, come over to the hotel. I’ll tell reception to expect you.’

She was already half-dressed when Sam appeared in the doorway of the loo, wearing a pair of voluminous white Y-fronts and a look of profound disappointment.

‘Not going already are you, Violet?’

Vi put on an appropriately pained expression. ‘I’ve got to, Sam. I was enjoying myself so much I lost all track of time.’

He wobbled towards her, his amorous intentions clearly showing in his underpants. ‘Can’t you stay for a little bit longer?’

‘I’d love to. You know that. But I promised I’d go and stay with my mum. She’s not been well and the neighbour who usually looks in on her has had to go away for the night. I can’t leave her by herself. Not when she’s been poorly.’

Sam smiled a benevolent, understanding yet disappointed sort of a smile, and kissed her chastely on the forehead. Then he led her through to the shop.

‘Here,’ he said, taking two five-pound notes from the still not cashed-up till. ‘Take this for a cab, and get a few flowers for your mum in the morning.’

Vi looked suitably surprised and grateful. ‘You are such a generous man,’ she said, tucking away the money in her bag.

It was almost half past nine, and Sonia was driving at speed through the back streets of Chelsea, trying to
avoid
the worst of the Friday evening traffic. She was going to meet Mikey in a pub in the King’s Road and she couldn’t wait to be with him. She hadn’t seen him for four whole days – David had been working him ridiculously hard – and all she could think about was being in his arms, making love with him and then discussing their future together, the family they would have and the life they would share for ever.

Sonia had just negotiated the left-hand turn into Flood Street – where she could only hope she would find a parking place – when she screeched to a sudden, tyre-burning halt.

There, across the road, outside a pretty, flower-bedecked house, was someone who looked exactly like David.

She frowned, screwing up her eyes for a better focus.

It was him. There was his Jag, parked behind a taxi, and there he was, unloading parcels from the back seat of a cab and chatting to a girl. A young, pretty girl.

Now he was carrying the parcels into the house. David, who never did anything that he could pay someone else to do for him, was carrying some kid’s shopping.

And he was bloody smiling.

Smiling like a lovestruck teenager.

And – she didn’t believe this – there was Bobby Sykes, coming out of the house and walking down the path, carrying a parrot in a cage.

A bloody parrot?

And he was sodding smiling as well.

Sonia, forgetting her carefully achieved reinvention of herself into a charming, sophisticated wife, slapped the steering-wheel angrily and hissed nastily under her breath, ‘What the fuck is going on here, David Fuller?’

It took her only a few minutes more to work it out.
The
bastard was setting up some cheap little tramp in a cute little house off the King’s Road, a place that she herself would have loved as a pied-a-terre. Some rotten bitch who looked barely old enough to have left school and, worst of all, looked almost young enough to be her daughter.

Sonia reversed into the kerb and did a careful U-turn. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself, didn’t want him to see her, didn’t want him to know what she knew. Not yet. Not until she worked out what she was going to do next.

As she turned back on to the King’s Road, Sonia took a last look at the sickening sight of the love birds in her rear-view mirror. ‘Two can play at that game, David Fuller.’

‘If I get off right now, Angel, I can sort things out and be back in an hour. Two hours, top whack.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘OK?’

‘OK. And, David. Thank you.’

He pulled a mock stern face. ‘What for?’

‘Everything. I can’t believe you’ve done all this for me. You’ve been so kind and generous. And I am so lucky.’

He chucked her under the chin and winked. What a little doll. And a virgin! ‘You make yourself at home. All right?’

‘Thanks.’

‘And don’t keep thanking me.’ He walked along the parquet-floored hall towards the door. ‘You can show me your appreciation later.’

Angie smiled, but, as David closed the door behind him, her stomach was tying itself into knots. To distract herself from thinking about what was going to happen later – that something she had been longing for so badly,
but
which still absolutely terrified her – Angie wandered around the flat, trying to take it all in.

It was small, compared to David’s other places she had seen, but it was incredible, fantastic, just like the fashionable pads featured in magazine articles about trendy, busy young women living in London.

There was a main, L-shaped room divided into sitting and dining areas, a neat little kitchen, fitted out with all the latest equipment, a smallish single bedroom, and, best of all, a big, bright, airy double bedroom with French doors that opened out on to a tiled terrace, with a table and chairs and pots and tubs spilling over with all sorts of plants and greenery.

Angie roamed through the rooms, imagining herself to be a character in some groovy film like
Darling
, or
The Knack
, or
A Hard Day’s Night
, or something – with David co-starring as Michael Caine, of course – then, more prosaically, wondering how this had all happened to her. How such good fortune had smiled on mousy little Angie Knight from Dagenham. How she had met this wonderful, exciting, powerful, generous, handsome man; had gone on the Pill; had got groped by that revolting Craig and thrown out by her mum – that had definitely been what her nan would call a blessing in disguise; and had then moved into a flat in Chelsea.

A flat.

In Chelsea.

Jackie was going to go green with envy, completely bottle green. No, she wasn’t, she was actually going to pass out cold when she saw it. Flat as a mat.

If she saw it.

Angie started tidying all her bags and parcels into the wardrobe – she wanted it to look nice for when David came back, but wouldn’t take the liberty of hanging anything up – and thought about Jackie. Angie really
missed
the closeness of their old friendship. Since she had become Angel, things just weren’t the same any more; it was as if they were from different worlds.

Angie looked at her watch to see how much longer she had to wait for David. The watch her nan had given her.

She missed her too.

Angie wandered into the white-carpeted living-room and looked at the telephone on the smoked-glass coffee table.

David had told her to make herself at home. If she was quick, surely he wouldn’t mind, and she could always offer to pay for the call.

She settled herself gingerly into the basket chair that was suspended on a chain from the ceiling, lit a cigarette and picked up the phone. It took her a moment to get used to the press-button dialling, but then she was through.

‘Honestly, Nan, I’m fine. Marilyn’s mum said I can stay as long as I like. I’m in Marilyn’s brother’s room. He doesn’t need it because he’s away at college. It’s funny, he’s at exactly the same place as Jackie’s brother, Martin. And East Ham’s really convenient for work. Much nearer than Becontree. The fares’ll be so much cheaper.’

Sarah wanted to say,
Don’t strong it too much, Angie, I’m no fool
. Instead she just asked her granddaughter, ‘Are you sure you’re all right, babe? You would tell me if you were in trouble?’

Angie put on her brightest, happiest voice, and set about changing the subject. ‘I’m fine. Really. I promise. Here, how’s Doris’s friend Lily? Pleased she can stay in her house?’

‘I wanted to ask you about that, Angie.’

Annoyed with herself for choosing such an unwise
diversion
as Lily Patterson and Burton Street – she didn’t want to get drawn into discussing David, however indirectly – Angie butted in. ‘Mum was ever so angry, Nan.’

Sarah Pearson let the subject of Burton Street drop. For the time being, at least. ‘Does she know where you’re staying?’

‘No. I’m going to write to her. Let her know I’m all right.’ Angie hesitated. ‘I worry about her, you know, Nan.’

Sarah sighed. Poor little love, it should be Violet, the mother, worrying about her daughter, not the other way round. ‘I know you do, lovely. Just like I worry about you.’

‘There’s no need, Nan.’ Angie looked around the room at the impressive pictures, expensive furnishings and exotic plants and closed her eyes tightly. She hated lying to her. ‘I told you, I’m fine here at Marilyn’s. Just fine.’

‘Come and stay with me.’

Not only would her nan never approve of David,
say she found her Pill packet
…

‘I’m fine, Nan. You know Mum. It’ll all have blown over in a day or two and I’ll be back home.’

‘If you’re sure.’

‘I’m sure.’ And I’m sure I want to be with David as much as I want to be away from my spiteful, selfish mother and her disgusting boyfriends.

‘Are you sure about this, Sonia?’ Mikey definitely wasn’t sure. After spending the past four days amongst the missing – he’d been busy schtupping the little blonde waitress from the Coffee Bongo, who he had generously decided to give a second chance – Mikey had expected Sonia to rip off his clothes the moment she
saw
him, not insist they go to bloody Plaistow to watch the boxing.

It wasn’t as if he had even wanted to see her tonight. The novelty of fucking Fuller’s wife, regardless of her very appealing adventurous streak, had worn thin. He preferred younger birds. Then, when she had mentioned the boxing, he had given her a knock back at first, not fancying being with her in full view of any face in London who fancied a bit of sport that night. But Sonia, much to his surprise, had started making threats about talking to her old man about the keys and the club. They were veiled threats, admittedly, but still threats. Then she had gone all soft and lovely again and had talked some girlie bollocks about how much she loved him.

Anyway, he was here now and he might as well enjoy himself, have a few drinks and earn a few quid – he’d already heard who was going to win the first bout from a bloke he knew, Dodgy Pete.

‘I’m putting a ton on the Irish kid in the first,’ he told Sonia, as they filed through an anonymous-looking, black-painted door. ‘Same for you?’

Sonia nodded, took the money from her gold mesh evening bag and handed it to him. ‘I’ll be sitting over there.’ She gestured with a lift of her chin, and smiled seductively at him. ‘I’ll make sure I save you a seat.’

The seating, set round a central boxing ring, made the room look like a miniature version of a professional sports arena, which it was – except for the large, well-stocked bar that ran all along one wall – but outsiders would never have guessed. The building was a brick-built, single-storey affair on a parcel of waste ground at the back of a pub near Balaam Street. It had been built to look like a storage facility, a small warehouse, but had never served any other purpose than staging unlicensed boxing bouts, and was known to those privy to such
matters
as one of the premier illegal venues in East London.

The crowd tonight were typical: men of all ages from youthful to quite elderly, mostly smartly dressed and prosperous-looking, with the occasional individual, attached to one or other of the fighters, in more casual clothes. The women, on the other hand, were generally much younger and, regardless of age, were dressed to the nines in outfits that would have graced a cocktail party – had they been the types to attend such functions. As for accessories, fur stoles seemed to be the favourite choice amongst the women, while the men sported large cigars; showy gold and diamond jewellery was favoured by both sexes.