Playing Around (7 page)

‘Angie? Is that you?’ a voice called from upstairs.

Angie stared up at the ceiling. She was getting ready early tonight, must be going to the West End. ‘Yes, Mum.’

‘Bring me up a cup of tea, there’s a good girl.’

Angie made the tea and took it upstairs, all the while planning what she was going to say.

‘You’re still in bed,’ she began as she put the mug on the bedside cabinet.

‘I know.’ Vi exhaled a long, lazy plume of smoke. ‘I looked in that mirror this morning and knew that I’d been letting things get to me. I looked worn out. So I decided to catch up on a bit of beauty sleep. To have a little rest.’

She stubbed out her cigarette and sipped at her tea. ‘I won’t be wanting too much to eat just now, I’m going out with Chas later. A couple of poached eggs on toast’ll do.’

Angie stood there, staring at her mother with her hair
rollers
bristling from under the pink chiffon scarf and the remnants of yesterday’s make-up streaked round her eyes. She looked a real state.

‘And have a little tidy up downstairs, Ange. I don’t want Chas coming round and seeing all that mess.’

Angie swallowed hard. ‘Shall I do the eggs before I do yesterday’s washing-up? Or shall I clear up the front room first?’

‘Don’t you take that tone with me, Angela.’

‘Mum, I’ve been working all day. And I even had to find time to do the rotten shopping, because you said you were busy.’

‘You kids, nowadays,’ sighed Violet, dramatically. ‘You have it all too easy.’

Angie’s mouth dropped open. She never usually confronted her mother about her demands, but then she at least usually got herself out of bed and dressed, even put the washing-up in to soak, and managed to drop a bit of washing round the launderette for a service wash. But this was ridiculous. And after what she’d heard her saying to Chas …

Angie steeled herself. ‘Mum, I can’t do everything any more. No. I don’t mean I can’t. I mean I won’t. I’m fed up with it all.’

Violet’s green eyes blazed with anger. ‘Are you answering me back?’

‘No, it’s just—’

‘Don’t you get saucy with me. You’re always the same when you’ve been round your bloody nan’s. She puts ideas in your head. Interfering old cow.’ Vi lit another cigarette. ‘Treat you, did she?’ she asked casually, picking a strand of tobacco off her tongue.

‘No,’ lied Angie, pulling down her sleeve to cover her new watch. ‘I wouldn’t let her.’

From her mother’s scornful expression, Angie could
see
that Vi thought her daughter was little more than a fool. ‘Just get down those stairs before I lose my temper,’ she said wearily. ‘Go on. Get the hoover out. I’ll be down in a bit.’

Course you will, thought Angie as she ran down the stairs, the tears welling up in her eyes, as soon as I’ve done everything, that’s when you’ll be down.

Angie really had had enough. Wait till Saturday. Then she’d show her. She’d show everyone. She was going to change herself. Change her life. She’d show her what it was like to have to do things for herself. She’d show Jackie that she could be just as interested in what she looked like. And she’d prove to Martin that she was a whole lot more than just a little squirt.

‘ANGIE, IF YOU
don’t get yourself in there. This minute. I’m going to start screaming.’

Angie, wide-eyed with fear, stared at her friend, knowing she was easily capable of doing something as embarrassing as screeching out loud in public, but still unable to force herself to go through the door and into the seriously posh-looking interior. ‘I can’t.’

‘I told you, it’s only a bloody hairdresser’s.’

‘But look at them.’ Angie jabbed her thumb at the stylish young women sitting on the other side of the huge plate-glass window. ‘And look at me.’

Jackie shrugged. ‘You look all right.’

‘I’d have looked a sight better, if you’d have got up in time and helped me get ready, like you said you would.’

‘It’s too late to worry about that now. Let’s just get in there and get on with it.’

As Jackie urged her friend forward, herding her like a sheep reluctant to enter the dip, a petite, expensively dressed blonde in her thirties pushed straight past them, pulling off her linen coat as though she was in a hurry to be dealt with.

‘See,’ hissed Angie. ‘She’s like something out of a magazine.’

‘A ten-year-old magazine,’ sneered Jackie, giving Angie a shove. ‘Now just get in there.’

As Jackie corralled her friend between her and the desk, she leaned forward – she hoped, casually – to listen to what the heavily made-up receptionist was
saying
to the haughty-looking blonde. It needed a bit of effort, as she was competing with the salon’s sound system that was belting out Sandie Shaw’s ‘Long Live Love’.

‘Welcome to Michaelton’s,’ she made out the receptionist growling, in a not altogether perfected version of the Mockney accent that had become quite the thing amongst nice young ladies from the Home Counties. ‘I’m Dusty. Do you have an appointment?’

Angie, Jackie and ‘Dusty’ watched – respectively alarmed, fascinated and bored – as the woman’s smile slipped from her lips as fast as raspberry sauce dripping off a 99 cornet in a summer heatwave and was replaced with a hard-faced scowl.

‘Are you a Saturday girl?’

Dusty studied her blue-painted nails. ‘Yeah.’

‘I see. That’s why you don’t know me.’

Slowly, Dusty raised her glance to meet the woman’s. ‘Can’t say as I do.’

‘I’m Mrs Fuller. Sonia Fuller. Terry sees to me personally. I don’t usually come in at the weekend, I—’

‘You mean you haven’t got an appointment.’ It was a statement, not a question.

Sonia sucked in her cheeks, stared about her as if she were about to explode, then leaned close to Dusty and spat through her even white teeth: ‘Call Terry. Tell him I’m here.’ Then she straightened up, and flicked her hair over her shoulder. ‘Now.’

‘Sorry, Terry’s in the New York salon all this week. I’m surprised you didn’t know.’ With that, she looked straight past Sonia and flashed a friendly smile at Jackie. Angie might as well have been invisible. ‘Welcome to Michaelton’s. I’m Dusty. Do you have an appointment?’

Before Angie could object, Dusty and Jackie had whisked her past the now puce-faced blonde to the
basins
for her consultation with a stylist, who was described as a junior, but whose skills would have set her apart as positively senior in the place where Angie had her usual twice-yearly trim.

But this was Michaelton’s, hairdressers to the trendy, the famous, and the absolutely gorgeous; the place where Dusty worked on Saturdays for a pittance – after a full week’s slog in an office in the Tottenham Court Road – all in the hope that she would get spotted by a photographer collecting one of his girlfriends. And then she would start appearing in her rightful place: the front cover of every fashion magazine in Europe. It had happened to at least two girls already. Maybe three. Everyone knew that.

Dusty loved Michaelton’s, and she loved having one over on rich, snooty old cows like
Sonia Fuller
, who couldn’t cope with not being nineteen any more. And what a neat revenge this was: a little girl coming up to Kensington for the day from the suburbs being seen immediately, while she,
Sonia Fuller
, got a knock back. Dusty only wished she could have made a real show by taking the boring-looking kid straight over to Terry. That would have been perfect.

‘Terry left a note that Miss Knight here was to be made a special fuss of,’ Dusty had lied loudly over her shoulder in the direction of Marcie, the junior stylist, making sure that Sonia, who was struggling back into her linen coat, could hear every word. ‘And do your very best to squeeze her friend in as well, will you? As a favour to Terry.’

That showed the old bag.

Unaware that Angie was at that very moment about to be shampooed, conditioned and set about with scissors by an expert in stylish shaping and cutting, Sarah
Pearson
was fretting about her family. Despite being in her fifties, she, Sarah, prided herself in keeping up a smart, clean appearance, and could only wonder about how her daughter and granddaughter lived.

They were both lovely, of course, but the last time Sarah had seen Violet, she was painting herself like a cheap tart and wearing skirts that showed most of what she had, and as for young Angie, she didn’t seem interested in how she looked at all. It was such a shame. She could have really made something of herself.

Deep down, Sarah knew why Angie was the way she was: her thoughtless, self-regarding daughter, Violet, had knocked all the confidence out of the poor little love. She kept her as little more than a skivvy, so that she didn’t have to soil her own lazy hands either doing stuff indoors or, God forbid, going out and finding a job somewhere.

Sarah just hoped that Vi hadn’t conned Angie out of the ten pounds she’d given her for her birthday. She was such a soft touch. It made Sarah weep.

To take her mind off things, Sarah was popping along to see her friend Doris Barker for a chat. She only lived a few flats away, just along the balcony, but Sarah only saw her once or twice a week. Unlike many of the women in Lancaster Buildings, Sarah Pearson liked to keep herself to herself. She was friendly, of course, but she was a proud woman and liked her privacy, just as she liked to keep herself looking nice.

She rapped on the door, as she called through the letterbox. ‘Only me, Doris.’

Going into Doris Barker’s flat was like entering a department store. Apart from the kitchen, which was kept ‘clean’ for unexpected visitors, it was crammed with everything from lacy underwear to overcoats, all
the
things from the West End that she fenced for the group of hoisters – shoplifters – who lived on and around the estate.

Doris’s was a profitable business, which she spoke of as if it were some kind of community service; her view being that it provided gainful employment for local women, who would otherwise not be able to care for their broods of kids, who, regardless of their mothers’ circumstances, still needed new shoes and bigger-sized jackets for school.

Apart from her almost tangerine, dyed hair, which was teased and lacquered into a bouf of high, swirling curls, Doris was a plainly presented, middle-aged woman who opted for rather matronly Crimplene frocks in shades of muted blue or beige to cover her ample sideboard of a figure. She thought that her subdued wardrobe afforded her some sort of invisibility, the protection of anonymity, but she might just as well have dressed in pink lurex tops, leopardskin capri pants and matching stilettoes. Everyone in the area knew about Doris’s entrepreneurial activities.

Not only did most of the neighbourhood do business with her – if they weren’t selling, they were buying – but most of the older members of the local police force had, over the years, happily accepted ‘gifts’ for their wives and children from her. Their justification being that while the business was kept at a domestic level in Doris Barker’s flat in Lancaster Buildings, then it was all OK. It wasn’t as if she was involved in the rapidly escalating drugs business that was now taking a hold outside the once almost exclusively West End market, and that was the talk of police stations throughout the country. And, anyway, most of them had relatives, aunties, mothers even, who were as good as employed by the old girl.

The door was opened by a thin, pasty-faced woman
in
her sixties. ‘Morning,’ she said, letting Sarah into the hall. ‘She’s through in the kitchen.’

Doris was sitting at a blue Formica table dipping a Marie biscuit into her tea. ‘Morning, Sarah. Nice out again,’ she said, pulling out the chair next to her. ‘Another cup before you go, Val?’

The woman who had opened the door shook her head. ‘No thanks, Doris. I’m working this morning and I don’t want to have to find a lav when I’ve got me drawers full of gear.’

The three women laughed at the vision of Val being caught short with her hoister’s drawers, the specially designed shoplifter’s underwear, stuffed full of swag.

‘You’d better spend a penny before you go,’ Doris said good-naturedly. ‘Give the street door a good slam after you.’

‘Will do. Bye, Sarah. Bye, Doris. I’ll be round later.’

Doris raised her hand in a little wave. ‘See you, love. Mind how you go.’

‘Now, you’ll have a cup won’t you, Sal?’

‘Please.’ Sarah dipped into her apron pocket and pulled out the crocheted flying helmet that had so humiliated her poor little Angie. ‘You ain’t got these in a bigger size have you, Doris?’

‘I told you they were knock-off copies for little ones.’

‘I know, I just thought it might do her. She’s been a bit … you know.’

‘Sal.’ She hesitated, knowing how touchy her old friend Sarah could be about her family. ‘Have you thought about going round to see your Violet about her?’

Sarah looked levelly at her neighbour. ‘No business of your own to worry about, Doris?’

Mikey Tilson bashed on the door of the Canvas Club
with
the flat of his hand, and kept bashing until Jeff let him in. ‘I want a word with you.’

Jeff had been expecting this particular visit. He stood well back and let Mikey in at arm’s length. With his sore nose still bothering him, he was buggered if he was going to put himself in the range of any more slammed doors.

He ushered Mikey through, with a lift of his chin. ‘Drink?’

Mikey settled himself at the bar. The Canvas Club was surprisingly stylish for a discothèque, even in the harsh reality of natural daylight. Unlike most similar clubs, that were little more than matt-black-painted spaces with tiny makeshift stages, this one had been decorated to an exceptionally high standard. It had imported, mosaic-style mirror tiles on the walls, a properly sprung dance floor, professional-grade sound systems, two bars with high stools and plenty of sofas and low tables. Before she had grown bored with it, Sonia had made the Canvas one of her projects and, for once, she had been right about spending so much money. The club raked in a weekly fortune. But the takings were suddenly down five per cent, and Mikey had the hump. It meant he wasn’t able to rake his usual cream off the top – the cream that he had been emboldened to scoop since he had started seeing Sonia – without it all looking like it had gone boss-eyed, when it so obviously hadn’t.