The Wicked Girls (20 page)

The councillor takes the opportunity to slide away from an awkward conversation, glad-hands the little man as though he’s
a visiting dignitary. She wonders whether it’s worth persisting. But there’s a press conference in twenty minutes down at
the police station, and she should head there, in case there’s actually any news.

She glances over at the far pavement and catches sight of Bel, hurrying away. Christ, she thinks. That’s the last thing I
need. Please don’t let her have seen me.

‘… dressed like tarts, howling under my window,’ the man is saying. He casts a look so full of longing at Kirsty that the
skin on her back crawls. The councilman puts a calculated hand on his upper arm, just above the elbow, the way a kindly vicar
would do.

‘And we want you to know that we hear your concerns,’ he says.

Kirsty takes the opportunity to turn away while the hand is still there. The last thing she wants is to get sucked into another
discussion with the bloke from the beach. She feels twisted with tension. Bel looks like she’s heading for the seashore. I’ll
go the other way, she thinks. I can take a detour to get to the police station. She pops the MP3 into her bag, throws Rat
Man a grin and a propitiatory little wave, and turns back to the far pavement.

Amber takes refuge in the shadows between the whelk stall and the bucket-and-spade stall, and watches which way Jade goes.
Watches her hunch against the wind and turn up her collar to shield her face from the horizontal rain. She turns up the alley
by the Cross Keys, heading for Fore Street.

Crazy, she thinks. What am I doing, hiding? This is
my
home.
My
town.

But she wonders. Every day she’s thought of this woman, if only in passing. A single day’s acquaintance, and they have been
constant companions ever since, though it looks like their outcomes have been different. Jade looks like she’s thrived, she
thinks; as if rehabilitation has been as good for her as it was bad for me.

She can taste bitterness in her mouth. Feels as though life’s been unfair,
knows
it’s been unfair: somehow, Jade has been rewarded where she has been punished. Look at her, she thinks. Walking about in
broad daylight, her head held high, while I’m scurrying through the shadows. Does she even think about me? The way I think
about her? Half love, half rage, the friend I never got to have, the source of everything rotten in my life?

She realises that there are tears on her face, mingling with the rain. Stops in her tracks and grips at the strap of her bag
while a wave of grief breaks over her, shocks her with its power. I was a child. And everything – everything – got snatched
away in one wicked afternoon.

She dashes the back of her hand across her eyes and strides back to the Corniche.
She
’s the interloper, not me. And if she’s going to invade my territory, she can answer some questions.

Martin tries to look unfazed, though inside he is squirming with embarrassment. I can’t believe I said that, about the press.
She’ll think I think she’s like the rest of them now, even though I tried to get across that I’d said it wrong. I’ve blown
it, and I didn’t even manage to talk to her properly. I’ll have to keep trying. She’ll want to listen to me once she sees
who I am.

He shakes off the councillor’s clinging hand, and walks on towards town without bothering to say goodbye.

Kirsty hurries inland, checking her watch. Ten to three. The press conference begins in ten minutes. She needs to get up there,
to where the crowds are beginning to gather, to get through the cordon with her credentials and find herself a spot where
she can record what’s said. It won’t be easy, in weather like this, and taking notes in the rain is the Devil’s own business.
And that’s when you’ve got a working brain.

She stops by a shop selling brightly coloured plastic beach toys, stares at fluorescent windmills as they rattle in the breeze.
Maybe I should buy one for Sophie. Yeah, because what’s
missing from Sophie’s life is a windmill on a stick. Get a grip, Kirsty. You’re here to do a job. You can’t let your concentration
slip. You’re only as good as your current job, you know that. Doesn’t matter how much you’ve done before: one cock-up and
you’re dropped, that’s how the world of freelance works especially with half the staff of the
News of the World
wandering the streets looking for work. She’ll be avoiding you as much as you’re avoiding her; the stakes are equally high
for both of you.

A tap on her shoulder. She turns. Bel has stepped back a pace, is regarding her with the same mix of fear, curiosity and disgust
that she feels herself.

‘Amber,’ says Bel. ‘That’s my name. Who I am. Amber Gordon.’

Kirsty takes a moment to find her voice, and is amazed by how steady it is when it finally comes.

‘Kirsty,’ she says. ‘I’m Kirsty.’

Noon

Jade is being Madonna. Everyone’s being Madonna this summer, though the older girls are finding bits of lace and fingerless
gloves in dressing-up boxes to look the part more convincingly. Jade’s had to make do with wrapping a cotton scarf they’ve
found, damp and slightly grubby, tied to the lychgate of the church, round her head, and hitching up her ra-ra skirt to show
a greater expanse of thigh. She stands on the church wall and gyrates, flinging her hands above her head and clutching them
together to flex her chest muscles
.

‘Like a vir-gin – pooh!’ she pants, for the dance is energetic and her stamina spud-fed. She runs her hands up and down her
body suggestively. ‘Fucked for the very first time.’

‘Touched,’ says Bel. ‘It’s “touched”.’

‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ asks Jade. ‘Luh-ike a vur-ur-ur-ur-gin, uh-when yuh heartbeat’s nuh-nuh-nuh necks
to mine.’

She wobbles, saves herself with a whirl of the arms. Kicks out one hip then the other, like a burlesque dancer. ‘Wuh-hoooo-uhuh-uh-woah-o-uh-woah-oh,
woah-oh,’ she sings. Bel thinks for a minute, then climbs up beside her, strikes a pose
.

‘No, no,’ says Jade. ‘Not like that. You’ve got to give it welly with the hips. Like you’re on a gondola.’

Bel’s not allowed to watch
Top of the Pops
, so she’s not seen the video. In fact she only knows the song from listening, transistor radio pressed to her ear on bottom
volume, to the chart show on Radio Luxembourg after bedtime on a Sunday night. But she imagines what it would be like to be
on a wobbly boat on an Italian canal, and thrusts her hips out as though trying to keep her balance. ‘That’s it,’ puffs Jade,
and they both giggle
.

The church door clunks open, and one of the Good Women of the Flower Committee, as Bel’s stepfather Michael calls them, steps
out, carrying a pair of green-encrusted glass vases. She wears a Puffa jacket and tartan trousers, and her grey hair is clamped
down by a silk scarf printed with snaffle bits and spurs. She tips the dregs from the vases into the church’s side-drain,
straightens up and addresses Jade and Bel
.

‘What are you girls up to?’

‘Nuffink!’ Jade employs her default response. ‘It doesn’t look like nothing to me.’ Her voice, adjusted to disciplining dogs
in the open air, roars across the graveyard like a hurricane. ‘What are you doing on that wall? I hope you’re not damaging
it.’

‘No, we’re not,’ says Bel in her plummiest tones. ‘We’re just dancing.’

‘Well, you can go and dance somewhere else. If that wall falls down, we’ll be expecting your parents to pay for it.’

Jade looks down at the century-old cross-stones beneath her feet. ‘We’ll take that chance,’ she tells her. ‘Don’t think it’s
going to fall down for a bit.’

‘Don’t be cheeky!’ bawls the woman. ‘I know who you are, Jade Walker. Don’t think the whole village hasn’t got its eye on
you!’

‘Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir,’ says Jade, and Bel sniggers. Girls in her world don’t talk to grown-ups like this.
And if they do, they get sent to their rooms. Or, in her case, the cellar
.

The woman tuts and heads back into the porch. Casts a parting shot over her shoulder. ‘I’m very busy or I’d be sorting you
out right now, young lady,’ she says. ‘As it is, I’m going to finish these flowers, and by the time I come out I expect you
to be gone.’

‘Or what? You’ll call the vicar?’ asks Jade
.

‘Hunh,’ says the woman, and slams the church door
.

‘Silly cow,’ says Jade. Crosses her wrists above her head and circles her hips suggestively. ‘Yuh so
fine
, and yuh
mine
.’

Bel copies the stance, joins in singing in her fine contralto. ‘Ibbe yoz, tuh the enduv tiy-yime—’

‘Woah,’ says a male voice. ‘It’s an itty-bitty titty committee.’

Bel starts, wobbles, clutches Jade’s arm for support. They hold balance for a couple of seconds then plummet together into
the graveyard. Bel catches her thigh on a tilted gravestone as she falls, breaks the skin
.

‘Ow!’ She looks down at the blood beginning to seep through the pink cotton of her shorts. Jade struggles to her feet and
stands, arms akimbo, on a mossy box-tomb
.

‘Piss off, Shane,’ she says
.

Bel looks up. The eldest of the Walker boys stands on the pavement, a cut-price Martin Kemp in leather jacket and swooped-back
hair, grinning blankly
.

‘Who’s yer little buddy, Jade?’ he says
.

‘Piss off, Shane,’ she says again
.

Bel stares at him long and hard. She’s never had a chance to study him close up before; the general village policy is to scurry
past when he appears, eyes averted. Shane, at nineteen, has a string of convictions for burglary and car theft: lacking his
brother Darren’s street smarts and driving skills, he keeps getting caught. He’s only avoided prison because of his famously
low IQ, but everyone predicts he’ll end up there sooner or later
.

‘Think you’re the Human League, do you?’ he asks. His jaw seems to dangle from his skull as though its fixings have never
been properly tightened, so that his lips have a wet, loose look to them
.

Jade pulls a tuft of grass and earth out from by her foot, lobs it at him. ‘I said piss off, Shane!’

‘Going down the Bench anyway. Oh, and Jade?’

‘What?’

‘You been nicking again? Only our dad’s after your hide.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ says Jade, and sits down hard in the grass. Bel’s never met anyone who swears with such casual calm before, as
though the words were simple adjectives. She’s impressed and
unnerved at the same time by it. If she let the sort of words slip from her mouth that Jade uses without seeming to even register
them, she’d be locked up for days. She gazes at her admiringly, her hand still clamped on her leg
.

‘I hate this bloody village.’

‘Me too,’ says Bel
.

‘Does it hurt?’ asks Jade
.

‘Bit.’

‘Let’s have a look.’

Bel lifts her hand away and shows her. There’s a graze the size of a fist on her thigh, a bruise already forming. Pinpricks
of blood seep into the wound, filling out, closing up
.

‘Fuck,’ says Jade admiringly
.

‘It doesn’t hurt. Not really,’ Bel says proudly
.

Jade shoots darts of poison at Shane’s swaggering back. ‘Bastard,’ she says. Then: ‘You ought to wash that.’

‘Oh, it’ll stop,’ says Bel
.

‘It was only twenty p,’ says Jade. ‘How could he notice twenty p?’

‘Grown-ups,’ says Bel authoritatively, ‘notice everything.’

Well, if it’s me they do, she thinks. If it’s Miranda they don’t notice a thing. Or if they do, they find a way to blame it
on me anyway
.

She gets to her feet and hobbles over to the wall. ‘What’s your dad going to do?’ she enquires
.

Jade shrugs. ‘God knows. But I’d better keep out of his way for a bit.’

‘He’s not going to hit you, is he?’

Jade acts scandalised, the way she’s been trained. ‘Of course not! Who do you think we are?’

Yes, thinks Bel. Best not to talk about it. Not till I know her better
.

‘I’m going to get a bollocking,’ says Jade. ‘Best not go back for a while. Maybe I can put the money back and he’ll think
he made a mistake.’

‘Yeah,’ says Bel. ‘Good plan.’

Jade sighs. ‘Bloody Kit Kat’s not going to get me through to teatime though,’ she says
.

‘That’s OK,’ says Bel. ‘You can come back to mine.’

Jade raises her eyebrows, unused to invitations. She’s certainly never issued one herself, even if she had anyone to ask.
‘Won’t your mum and dad mind?’

‘Stepfather. They’re on holiday,’ says Bel with affected insouciance. ‘In Malaysia.’

‘What, and they didn’t take you?’

‘No. They’ve taken Miranda. But I was naughty so they left me behind.’

‘So they’ve left you all by yourself?’

Bel waggles her head. ‘Don’t be stupid. Romina’s there. But she does what I tell her.’

It’s dark inside the café. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust and make out Amber, sitting on a sofa in a corner at the
back, her features half hidden behind a pair of gigantic sunglasses, despite the gloom. She’s not sure what she should do
next, now that she’s finally spotted her. What
do
you do in a situation like this? Smile and wave?

As she approaches and the other woman’s features fall into focus, she see that Amber’s face is solemn, slightly defiant, slightly
frightened. She vacillates between staring hard at Kirsty and looking anywhere
but
at her as Kirsty winds towards her. She feels the way I feel, thinks Kirsty. She doesn’t know what to do or why she’s here,
any more than I do.