Playing Around (8 page)

Mikey missed that cream; it had kept him in the manner to which he had recently become very agreeably accustomed. And Sonia wasn’t a cheap hobby either.

‘What’s going on here? Eh?’ He picked up the large vodka and ice that Jeff had pushed across the bar to him. ‘I’ve been collecting five per cent less every night this
week
. How am I mean to rake me bit of bunce off that?’ He tossed back almost the whole glassful, and continued with barely a pause. ‘Have you been opening that big, ugly gob of yours? Or have you got yourself some little scheme going with one of your black bastard mates? I know how you lot stick together.’

Jeff pulled himself up to his full six foot three. He would take crap from David Fuller, he was his guvnor and he treated him a lot more fairly than anyone else he’d ever worked for. But being expected to take crap, especially crap like that, from a stupid prick like Mikey Tilson who kept his brains in his underpants?

‘Do you want to think again about what you just said, Tilson?’ Slowly, he took the long serrated knife from under the bar that, in a raid, could just about pass for a lemon slicer, and slapped it down – whack! – on the shiny wooden surface. ‘I don’t think I like your tone.’

Mikey drained the rest of his drink. ‘Don’t be so fucking touchy.’

Jeff raised the blade and touched it to Mikey’s pale, smooth throat. ‘Tell me, do you whiteys bleed the same colour as us
black bastards
?’

‘Jeff.’ Mikey put his hands up in surrender. ‘Don’t get aerated, mate. I’m upset, that’s all. Take no notice of me.’

‘No notice?’

‘I’m sorry. All right?’

‘You make me sick. Now clear off. If you’ve got any questions about the takings, you ask Mr Fuller.’

Mikey stood up to leave.

‘Only I don’t think you will ask him, will you, Mikey boy? And let’s face it, you won’t exactly be going without, will you? Knowing your past form, you’ve got some rich old tart keeping you. Paying you for your services.’ Jeff stared at Mikey’s groin. ‘Ain’t there a
name
for blokes who do that?’

Mikey shrugged down into his expensive tonic mohair jacket and sneered his derision. ‘You want to mind your own business, then perhaps you won’t get that nose of yours bashed in no more than it already is.’ He swaggered over to the door. ‘See you tonight.’ He turned and looked the other man up and down with slow contempt. ‘Jeffrey.’

Angie felt like a star as she stepped out of the hairdresser’s with her glossy, conker-brown hair shaped into the very latest geometric cut.

Dusty’s words were ringing in her ears. Her hair was a ‘perfect frame for her lovely green eyes’, and her ‘really pretty face’. Pretty!

Jackie followed her out of the salon, with her shoulder-length fair wavy locks frosted to a pale, Nordic blonde and relaxed into a dead-straight, centre-parted style with a heavy fringe. Marcie’s colleague, Mojo, had achieved the look with the help of up-to-the-minute smoothing tongs and a styling brush, a bit different from the iron-and-brown-paper job that Jackie used at home.

Mojo had insisted that it made her look just like Julie Christie.

Marcie, the bemused junior stylist, had taken real care with Angie, and had made sure that Jackie was fitted in as well – as a favour to Terry – and kept insisting that everything was absolutely ‘no trouble at all’. Typical Terry, she had thought, as she had smilingly asked Mojo to help her out, he was always meeting these little girls and promising them the earth. She just wished he could actually carry out the promises himself sometimes. Mind you, she’d been a bit shocked at first, when she’d seen the state of the dark-haired one, but once she’d
taken
a closer look she realized the potential that Terry had seen in her. With a bit of know-how, she could be quite a stunner, far more attractive than her more obviously pretty friend. Terry had taste all right. But then that was probably why he owned a string of top salons around the world and why she was only a junior stylist.

Jackie would never have admitted it to her friend, but she had been as terrified as Angie about going into the celebrated hairdresser’s. She had never met people called Dusty, or Mojo, or Marcie before, and they scared the life out of her. It was only because she had casually tossed the name Michaelton around in their conversation in the Wimpy, when she and Angie were planning her transformation, that she hadn’t been able to back out.

She just hoped her nerve held out, now that they were going clothes shopping in Kensington Church Street, and that she would find the courage to actually go inside the trendy boutiques she had been frantically reading up about since she had rashly made all these promises to Angie.

While Jackie took a deep breath, lifted her chin in the air, and prepared to hustle Angie into a terrifyingly trendy shop, with black-painted windows, a pulsating light show and throbbing music, Sonia was climbing into the taxi she had flagged down outside a boutique just a few doors away.

She had stood there, seething, while the driver – who was thinking that this arrogant mare had better come up with a decent tip – stuffed the back of his cab with all her glossy carrier bags. But despite having spent the entire morning venting her anger on the world, and on ‘Dusty’ in particular, by seeing just how much of David’s
money
she could manage to get rid of before lunchtime, Sonia was still in a bad mood. A very bad mood indeed.

‘Let’s have a look, then.’ Jackie emptied the bags on to her bed and held up a navy chiffon, A-line, sleeveless shift, covered with tiny white dots. ‘See, it didn’t matter we couldn’t afford West End prices,’ she said airily. ‘This is smashing. Romford market’s always got the latest styles. And you don’t get taken on like a mug.’

‘I think it’s smashing too.’ Angie held it against her and looked into the full-length mirror on Jackie’s dressing unit. The dress finished a clear four inches above her knee. ‘And I think it was definitely worth blowing all that on the haircut.’

‘So do I, Ange. Now let’s see. With the navy one you’ve got there.’ She rubbed her hand thoughtfully over her chin. ‘The two I got. A few of my other bits and pieces you can borrow. Then there’s all the material we bought – I’ll show you how to make that up later. Yeah, I reckon you’ll be able to get by for a good couple of weeks. Till you’ve saved up enough to buy something else.’

‘I’ll have to get some shoes.’

Jackie jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the see-through plastic racks hanging on the back of her door. ‘There are more shoes in there, Ange, than there are in the Oxford Street Dolcis. Everything from black patent Mary Janes to a purple suede tap style – thank you, Mum’s catalogue – and I’m only half a size bigger than you.’ She picked up the lime-green dress she had bought earlier. ‘I might wear this tonight.’ Then she picked up the other one, which was almost the same, but with a pattern of bold psychedelic swirls. ‘Mind you, this is nice as well. What do you think?’

This was novel; Jackie never asked Angie’s opinion about anything to do with fashion or appearance. ‘I …’ She hesitated.

‘Yeah?’

Here goes, she thought. ‘I think the bright colours in the patterned one show off your hair really well, and the lime-green one would look really good with my eyes.’

‘Right. That’s what we’ll wear tonight.’ She tossed the dresses on to the bed. ‘Now, let’s have a good look at that material we got.’ Jackie studied the lengths of fake Pucci cloth bought from a remnants stall in Romford market. ‘We’ll have to use the pattern I had to make my maroon halter-neck. This’d look great in that style.’

‘When shall we do it?’

‘Tell you what, instead of us doing it, I’ll be nice to Mum and get her to run it up for us.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘It’ll be a bit of a nuisance. We’ll have to re-sew the hems. She won’t make anything shorter than mid-knee. But it doesn’t matter what our sewing’s like, we’ll only wear them once or twice.’

Angie carefully folded the navy and lime-green dresses. ‘I’d better get home now, Jack. By the time I have a bath it’ll be almost time to go out. And you said you wouldn’t mind—’

‘—doing your make-up. Course I don’t. I’m just pleased you’re actually coming out with me for once.’ She raised her shoulders and grinned. ‘This is like playing dressing up.’ She gave Angie a big kiss on the forehead. ‘With a great big, real-life doll.’

Angie grinned back.

They were both still grinning as Jackie saw Angie to the street door.

‘Watcha, Squirt.’

Angie spun round to see Martin, with just a bath towel wrapped around his waist and a smaller towel
draped
round his neck, appearing from the bathroom.

‘Hello, Martin.’

‘Look at you,’ he said appreciatively. ‘With your hair all pretty like that, you’re going to make me jealous.’

‘You’re right there, Martin.’ It was Tilly Murray, red-faced from doing yet another batch of baking. ‘Doesn’t she look a picture? But it’s a shame about your hair, Jackie. If you’re not careful you’re really going to spoil it. Other girls’d love having all them waves you keep getting rid of.’

As Jackie rolled her eyes at Angie, sharing the knowledge that Mrs Murray was
such a square
, Angie could not remember feeling happier in her entire life, until that was, Martin winked broadly at her, grabbed the banister rail and raced up the stairs two at a time.

‘See you, Squirt,’ he called down to her. ‘Or should I say, see you, gorgeous?’

Almost swooning, Angie just about managed to find her way down the front path and back along the terrace to her own house.

Martin, who was whistling like a canary as he considered his freshly shaved reflection from every angle in his bedroom mirror, was almost as ecstatic. He was getting ready to go to Jill Walker’s.

To Jill Walker’s flat
.

‘And where do you think you’ve been?’ Vi, still in her dressing gown despite it being nearly five o’clock in the afternoon, was sitting in the little back kitchen drinking a mug of coffee. ‘And what have you done to your hair?’

‘I’ve been out shopping with Jackie and I’ve been to the hairdresser’s, and,’ she added before she lost her nerve, ‘now I’m going dancing.’

‘What?’

‘Me and Jackie. We’re going to the Wyckham Hall. In Romford.’

‘If you think you’re going out till all hours …’

‘No, Mum, I don’t. Jackie has to be in by eleven, and we’ll be together. Mrs Murray gives her the money for a minicab.’

‘Typical of that Tilly, lets them kids get away with murder.’

Angie refused to be drawn. She had heard what her mum had said to Chas about her. She knew what she really thought of her, her own daughter. But she wouldn’t let her mum spoil things. Not tonight. She wouldn’t let her mum spoil anything for her ever again.

‘You can’t go out and leave this place like this.’ She waved her cigarette about to indicate the supposed squalor she was sitting in. ‘Chas is coming round later.’

‘Why don’t you do it?’

‘I don’t think I heard you right.’

‘Yes you did, Mum. And I can’t do it. I’m getting ready to go out.’

‘You’d leave me to do all this with my condition?’

‘Mum, I don’t want to be unkind, but I don’t think you’ve actually got a condition.’

‘If only you knew what I went through when I had you.’

Angie stared down at her feet. ‘Women have babies all the time. All over the world. And they don’t make their kids feel guilty just for being born. Every single day of their lives.’ She raised her eyes. ‘You can be so cruel to me. Do you know that?’

Violet gulped. ‘Don’t be soft. I’m not cruel. You know how much I think of you.’

‘I know exactly what you think of me. That I’m pathetic. A timid little rabbit. Well, I’m not. Not any more.’

‘I don’t understand how you can treat me like this, Angela. Not after all I’ve done for you. When your dad got killed down the Mile End Road …’ She paused to sniff loudly. ‘They tried to take you off me. But I wouldn’t let them. I said to them, I said, you’re not taking my baby.’ She fussed around, digging out a hankie from her pocket. ‘Any other woman would have let them. But me, I wouldn’t. I kept you. Despite everything.’

Angie had heard it all so many times before, yet somehow it still worked.

‘I’ll do the kitchen, but you’ll have to sort the rest out yourself.’

‘Thanks, love, you know how much I appreciate it.’

‘Yeah.’ Angie walked over to the door. ‘I’ll just hang up my coat.’

‘Wait a minute, darling. Just come up and help Mummy make the bed before you start in here.’

‘Peter, I’d like you to meet my wife.’ David grabbed Sonia’s arm as she glided through the crowd of chattering strangers who were filling her drawing-room. He held her arm so tightly that she couldn’t do anything but meet her husband’s fat, slimy-looking, business associate.

‘Sonia, this is Peter.’

‘Peter? Peter who?’ she asked, the boredom clear in her voice.

‘Peter Burman, but just Peter will be fine,’ he replied graciously in a heavy, middle European accent. As he smiled, he showed a mouth almost full of gold teeth. He inclined his head in a short bow from the neck, and took Sonia’s slim, manicured hand in his large, plump paw. ‘Charmed,’ he said, and touched her fingers to his lips.

She was about to mutter some further inane
pleasantry
, but Peter’s interest in her was apparently at an end. He turned from her and continued his conversation with David as though she was no longer there.

Sonia was momentarily furious at such treatment. What was going on? First that little madam at Michaelton’s this morning, then the cab driver acting as if he were doing her a favour carrying a few parcels into the flat, and now this boor. But she was glad not to have to make any more ridiculous small talk with such a dull person. Peter, whatever his name was, was obviously in charge and if he wanted to talk business, then that, apparently, was what they’d all do.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

Anyway, Sonia had other things on her mind. Well, one thing, and that was how many hours it would be before she would be back in Mikey Tilson’s arms.

‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ she said sarcastically, and disappeared into the corner where she feigned a solitary fascination with her husband’s vulgar popular record collection.