The Wicked Girls (2 page)

She checks her watch, sees that she’s already late for tea break. Locks the cupboard back up, drops the gifts into her
shoulder bag and hurries across the floodlit concourse to the café.

Moses is smoking again. It’s something of a sport with him. He knows that she knows – now that everywhere is non-smoking,
a single whiff of tobacco indoors stands out like lipstick on a collar – and that she knows that it’s him who’s doing it.
And yet he likes to test it anyway, to bend the rules and see what will happen. They’ve reached an unspoken truce on the matter.
Amber feels that there are battles worth fighting and battles that are a waste of breath, and this is one of the latter.

And anyway, he’s a good worker. By the time the café staff arrive in the morning, their territory will gleam with hygiene
and the scent of chemical lemon.

She sees him jump and drop his butt into the open Coke can in front of him when she pushes the door open, suppresses a smile
as he assumes a look of injured innocence and, at the same time, pretends not to have noticed her. Amber pointedly meets his
eye, as she always does, and gives him the knowing smile she always gives him. Life is full of small complicities, and she’s
found that being boss involves even more than before.

Amber misses very little that goes on in Funnland. The room is full of people whose small stuff she resolutely doesn’t sweat.
Jackie Jacobs, and the fact that all work grinds to a halt when her phone rings, but who keeps up morale with the stream of
innuendo that pours from her mouth between times. The fact that Blessed Ongom is first into and last out of the café every
night but works half as hard again as any of her colleagues in the hours either side. And Moses, of course, who has the stomach
of a robot and can be relied on to clean up customer deposits that reduce weaker colleagues to tears.

The room is crowded. Their communal tea break is a ritual that none of these night workers would miss for their lives; not
even the new ones, not even the ones whose English is so sketchy they have to communicate with smiling and sign
language. A night spent scraping off the evidence of other people’s fun is a wearisome thing, Amber knows that. If a sit-down
and a handful of sell-by-yesterday doughnuts make the whole thing bearable, she sees no point in token whip-cracking. As long
as everything’s done by shift’s-end at six in the morning, she doesn’t question how her staff timetable themselves. It’s not
as if Suzanne Oddie or any of the rest of the board are going to be down with stopwatches and clipboards when they could be
tucked up under their 500-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. This is the great advantage of unsocial hours: as long as the
job’s done, no one cares who’s doing it or how it gets there.

Moses’ face falls and his dark eyes fill with doubt as Amber alters her course to approach his table. He thinks I’m going
to tell him off at last, she realises. Even though we’ve known each other for years, the fact that I’ve been promoted makes
him – makes all of them – look at me now with a touch of suspicion. She smiles, and sees the wariness deepen. Forces herself
to laugh, though she feels a tiny bit hurt. ‘It’s OK, Moses,’ she calls reassuringly. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

She reaches his table, takes the card from the bag and holds it out. ‘Lost-property night,’ she says. ‘It’s got about twenty
quid on it, I think. I thought you might want to call your gran.’

The suspicion falls away, is replaced by deep, warm pleasure. Moses’ gran, back in Castries, has been ill lately; isn’t expected
to last much longer. Amber knows he’ll never find the cash to fly back for the funeral, but at least a final phone call might
help ease the loss. ‘Thank you, Amber,’ he says, and beams a wide white smile at her. ‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’

Amber tuts, tosses her hair. ‘It’s nothing,’ she says. ‘No skin off my nose,’ and walks on. She knows, and everyone else does
too, that this is not entirely true. Her predecessor in the job treated lost property as a personal bonus. But she couldn’t
do that. She’s never earned this much in her life, and she’d feel ugly, keeping these treats from a group of people whose
lives are lived on
minimum wage. These aren’t just her employees, they’re her neighbours. Her friends. If she kept herself apart at work, they’d
soon keep themselves apart on the high street. She gives the bracelet to Julie Kirklees, a skinny eighteen-year-old whose
Goth eye-paint, she often suspects, hides black eyes, and walks on to the counter.

She pours herself a cup of stewed tea from the urn and adds two sugars. Eyes the display fridge and the domed plates on top.
There are precious few perks to this job, but an almost limitless supply of leftover junk food is one of them. Amber suspects
that some of her staff live on little other than half-stale hamburger buns, lukewarm frankfurters, sausage rolls, cold chips;
tinned tomato soup and apple turnovers their only vegetable input.

She’s not hungry, really. Just wants to stretch out the interval between doing the accounts and starting on the single cleaning
duty she reserves for herself because she can’t trust anyone to do it well enough. Her eye skims over the plates of scones,
the giant, softening chocolate-chip cookies. Blessed holds forth behind her, her voice filled with refined African distaste.

‘I don’t know,’ she is saying, ‘what they are thinking. And their friends … are they animals, these people?’

Amber selects a ham salad sandwich with yesterday’s sell-by. It will be sludgy in the centre, the crusts like cardboard, but
there’s not much that’s savoury on offer and she’s not in the mood for sweet.

‘What’s that, Blessed?’ she asks, turning to their table.

Jackie drains her coffee mug. ‘Blessed’s found another turd,’ she announces.

‘What?’ Amber sits down and starts to unwrap her sandwich. ‘On the waltzer?’

Blessed nods, pulls a face. ‘Right in the middle of the seat. I don’t understand how they manage it. I mean, they must have
to take their trousers down to squat.’

Jackie’s face goes dreamy. ‘I wonder if they do it when it’s moving?’

‘I’m sorry, Blessed,’ says Amber. ‘Are you OK dealing with it? Do you need me to …?’

‘No,’ says Blessed. ‘Fortunately, Moses has dealt with it already. But thank you. I appreciate the offer.’

‘Thank God for Moses,’ says Jackie. By her elbow, her phone leaps suddenly into life, skitters across the table.

‘Good God,’ says Tadeusz, springing suddenly awake from his small-hours reverie. ‘I don’t believe you. Two-thirty in the morning?
Who gets calls at two-thirty in the morning? Woman, you’re insatiable!’

Jackie kisses her teeth. ‘You wish,’ she says. Picks up the handset and frowns. ‘Oh, fuck sake.’

Amber takes a bite of her sandwich. Warm, soggy, somehow comforting. ‘What’s up?’

Jackie slides the phone over to her. Tadeusz reads the text on the display over her shoulder.
Where are you? You have no right to do this. call me!

‘Someone’s keen,’ he says.

‘Fucking nuts, more like,’ Jackie says.

Tadeusz stares at her with renewed respect. ‘You’ve got a stalker?’

She looks up from the screen sharply. ‘Does that raise my value in the market, Tad?’

Tadeusz shrugs. His own, lean, slightly lupine appearance has accustomed him to easy attractions, clingy extractions. Blessed
looks concerned. ‘Who is this man?’

‘Just … Stupid little arsehole. I went on two dates with him.’

And the rest
, thinks Amber uncharitably. But she says nothing, slides the phone back across the table. She learned long ago not to be
a judger. Out loud, at least.

‘You don’t reply, do you?’ asks Blessed. ‘You shouldn’t respond, Jackie.’

Jackie shakes her head. ‘Not any more, no. I was stupid and humoured him for a bit at the beginning, but no, not now.
Weaselly little wanker. I only went on the second date ’cause I felt sorry for him that he couldn’t get it up the first time.’

‘Jackie!’ Blessed protests. She hates talk like this. And yet it’s always at Jackie’s table that she sits. ‘Because you shouldn’t.
Respond. You must be careful. Women get killed, you know. You know that. You need to be careful.’

‘Oh, hardly,’ says Jackie. ‘He’s not a bleeding serial killer. He’s just a sad little wanker.’

‘You shouldn’t joke about this,’ says Blessed. ‘That’s two girls this year already in Whitmouth, just off the strip. And you
don’t know anything about this man. Not really.’

‘I wasn’t joking, Blessed. Sorry.’

Blessed shakes her head. ‘Well, don’t. I don’t understand how people can be so casual about it.’

‘’Cause they weren’t from here,’ says Tadeusz. ‘Simple as that.’

‘That’s terrible,’ says Blessed. ‘If you think that.’

‘But it’s true,’ says Tadeusz. ‘No one from around here knew either of those girls, so it doesn’t count.’

‘But they’re still
people
,’ says Blessed.

‘Yes, they are,’ says Jackie. ‘But they’re not
our
people. If it was
our
people we’d be too scared to go out. Thank God it’s outsiders, that’s what I say.’

Blessed shakes her head, sorrowful. ‘How cold you are, Jackie.’

‘Realistic,’ corrects Jackie.

‘How long has this been going on, anyway?’ asks Blessed. ‘This man …’

Jackie sighs and puts the phone down. ‘Christ. For ever. What is it, Amber? About six months?’

‘I have no idea,’ says Amber. ‘Why would I know?’

She could swear she sees Jackie pout. ‘Well, he’s
your
friend.’

It’s news to her. ‘You what?’

‘Martin. Bagshawe.’

The name’s faintly familiar, but she can’t attach it to a face. Shakes her head and feels herself frown. ‘Who?’

‘Vic’s birthday.’

‘Vic’s birthday? That was months ago.’

‘Yuh-
huuh
.’

Amber shakes her head again. She doesn’t remember that much about Vic’s birthday. Especially not what other people got up
to.

‘I know. Told you,’ says Jackie. ‘Can’t shake the grimy little weasel off. Where the hell did Vic get a nutter like that for
a friend?’

Amber casts her mind back. A Saturday night, the Cross Keys. Not so much a party as a telling-your-mates-where-you’ll-be.
Vic on fine form, his arm slung round her shoulder all night, drinking Jack and Coke and not saying a word when she got in
her third glass of dry white. A good night, a fun night. And vaguely, from the corner of her memory, she remembers Jackie,
late in the evening, wrapped round some bloke, a diminutive figure in, as far as she remembers, an anorak. An anorak on a
Saturday night. Jackie must’ve had the Heineken goggles on to have copped off with that.

‘Don’t blame Vic, Jacks. You can’t exactly tell someone to go away in the Cross Keys, can you? He’s just some bloke who goes
in there.’

‘No,’ says Jackie. ‘He said Vic was …’

Amber can’t quite suppress a smirk. ‘And it didn’t occur to you to ask Vic?’

‘Well, if somebody’d
warned
me …’

‘If you’d
asked
, we might’ve been able to. I don’t suppose Vic even knows what his name is. He’s just one of those weird little pub people
you can’t shake off.’

‘You see,’ says Blessed, ‘that’s what I mean. You need to be careful. You can’t just … pick people up in pubs.’

Jackie shoots her a look. ‘Yeah. Church isn’t my scene, Blessed. Thanks all the same. It’s the way it is. Christ, I only talked
to him in the first place because I felt sorry for him.’

‘You’re all heart, Jackie,’ says Tadeusz.

‘Yeah, well,’ says Jackie, ‘we can’t all be jammy slags like Amber. Not all of us have a lovely warm Vic to come home to.’

‘You should tell the police,’ says Blessed. ‘Seriously. If the man is harassing you.’

Jackie laughs. ‘Yeah. Right.’

‘No, you should. If it worries you, you should ask for help.’ Amber is often amazed that, of all the people she knows, the
one who shows unshakeable faith in the authorities should be a woman who spent the first two thirds of her life in Uganda.
Blessed has emerged from sub-Saharan hell with a moral framework that puts her neighbours to shame. She remembers her final
gift, and reaches into her bag. Leans towards Blessed and lowers her voice as the others carry on talking. ‘I found this in
the lost property,’ she says. Holds out the MP3 reverently.

‘What is that?’ asks Blessed. ‘It certainly isn’t something I’ve lost.’

‘It’s an MP3 player,’ says Amber. ‘I thought Benedick might like it. I’m sorry it’s not an iPod, but it does the same thing.’

‘Really?’ Blessed looks gobsmacked. ‘But this must be worth a lot of money, I would think.’

Again Amber finds herself shrugging off her own generosity. She knows how tight Blessed finds life as a single mother, knows
that her son lacks a lot of the gadgets his peers take for granted. ‘Probably not. I don’t know. But it’s got some music on
it already, look. To start him off, anyway.’

‘I …’ Blessed looks up at her with tear-filled eyes. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she says.

‘Then don’t say anything,’ says Amber. ‘Just take it.’

‘Why don’t you just change your phone?’ Tadeusz picks up Jackie’s handset and starts scrolling through the menu.

‘Doh,’ says Jackie. ‘Because I can’t afford to?’

‘Ah,’ says Tadeusz. They all understand about not affording stuff. You don’t work nights cleaning up other people’s leavings
if you have a choice about it. He presses Reply, starts keying in letters.

‘What are you doing?’ The alarm in Blessed’s voice is palpable. ‘Tadeusz! Don’t!’

Tadeusz continues to type.

‘I said, don’t reply. If you reply you give him hope that they have a relationship. She must ignore him. It’s the only way.’

‘It’s OK.’ Tadeusz glances up, shoots her a small smile.

‘Give it back, Tadeusz,’ says Jackie.

He hits Send. Hands the phone back.

‘Shit,’ says Jackie. ‘What have you done?’

She stabs at the buttons, scrolls through to her Sent box. Opens the message and starts to laugh.

‘What is it? What does it say?’ asks Blessed.

‘“Your message could not be sent because the number is disconnected.” Genius. You’re a genius.’