The Wicked Girls (26 page)

She turns back. Takes in that he has the eyes of Simon Cowell and the mouth of a beaver. ‘OO-K,’ she says. ‘Well, great to
meet you again.’

‘Let me buy you a drink. We’ve got so much to talk about,’ he pleads, and accompanies the question with one of those expansive
gestures you see in soap-opera pubs. In the crowded circumstances, it’s an error; the remains of his own pale-brown drink
slop on to the naked back of a young woman, elicit a shriek of protest. He glances at her, looks amused. Turns back to Kirsty
and cranes in towards her recoiling face. ‘Silly slag,’ he says.

For a moment she think he’s referring to herself, then realises that he is expecting her to agree. He can’t tell the difference
between newspaper comment and real life. She pulls herself together and plasters her smile back on. ‘Thanks, but you’re all
right,’ she tells him. ‘I’m not drinking tonight. And I’m off in a minute. Deadlines. You know.’

‘Oh.’ He looks affronted. Kirsty switches the headlight beam of her smile to full. ‘Thanks, though. I appreciate the offer.’

This is going well. She tries once again to step back, and runs up against a solid wall of bodies. He is frowning, confused.
‘But we were going to talk,’ he says.

She’s surprised. ‘Were we?’

‘I was going to show you around.’ He clearly thinks he’s reminding her, that she should know what he’s talking about.

‘Oh,’ she says, and tries to sound familiar with the inside of his brain, to construct a convincing lie. ‘I know. It’s just
… I’m on a deadline. Maybe another time? If I give you the office number …’ I won’t be there, she doesn’t add. Because I work
from home.

He knows he’s being fobbed off. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Now. I’ve been waiting to talk to you all day.’

Shit. So he
has
been following me. He didn’t see me with Bel, did he? There’s no way he can put the two of us together. Surely?

‘You can’t go back to London. Not yet.’

‘Farnham,’ she says. ‘We don’t all live in London. Journalists. It’s not all Docklands penthouses.’

‘Farnham, whatever,’ he says, and his tone is changing. ‘I thought you were different.’

‘I …’ says Kirsty.

‘You’re all the same. You don’t care what the rest of us think at all, do you?’

‘It’s just a job,’ she says. ‘It’s a living.’

‘You think you’re famous ’cause you’re in the papers,’ he says.

‘No,’ she corrects. ‘I make other people famous by putting them in the papers.’

She knows she’s made a terrible mistake as his head jerks back in offence. God, Kirsty, you should know by now not to get
smart with the punters without a few other hacks around as back-up. Look at him. He’s bonkers. A creepy little bonkers man,
and he’s not going to go away.

‘Oh,’ he bellows over the music. ‘So you
do
think you’re important then?’

‘Look,’ she protests, carelessly. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you, and if I have, I’m sorry. That’s all I can say—’

He pulls a wad of crumpled paper from his pocket, waves it in her face. He has a blood-blister under his thumbnail; must’ve
shut it in a door or something. She glimpses the headline on her piece from last weekend:
TWELVE ALCOPOPS, A KEBAB AND A MURDER: AN AVERAGE NIGHT IN WHITMOUTH’S SEEDY UNDERBELLY
: he’s printed it off the internet. It’s a rubbish headline and she knows it, but she doesn’t write headlines and she doesn’t
choose pictures. ‘This is my home!’ he squeals, and flecks of spittle land on her face. ‘How
dare
you? If you won’t talk to the real people who live here, then you don’t have any right to judge!’

She reels. Knows that what he says is at least partially true. If anyone would agree with what he’s saying, it would be Jade
Walker, the wicked girl, the child with no conscience. But Kirsty’s as prone to journalistic double-think as the next hack;
can remember only her good works, will always deny her bad, pass the buck, avoid personal responsibility. Just like everybody
in every office everywhere. ‘That’s not my fault!’

‘You
know
it’s your fault!’ he cries. ‘This whole place needs clearing up. I thought you got that. It looked like you got that. From
what you said here. And you don’t at all, do you? You’re just – taking the piss, and—’

A voice – deep, confident – speaks from behind Martin’s left shoulder, and her face melts with relief. ‘Is he giving you trouble?’

Martin looks behind him and feels a wave of emotions. Victor Cantrell. Amber Gordon’s bloke. You’re kidding. She knows Victor
Cantrell? How can she know Vic Cantrell?

He turns back and sees her drinking in the chiselled features, the thick dark hair, the Elvis cowboy shirt, the neat-cropped
facial hair, with something that looks like gratitude.

‘I think you need to leave the lady alone, Martin,’ says Vic.

It isn’t possible. How’s it possible? It’s some sort of – conspiracy. Some sort of … plot to fuck me up.

‘What are
you
doing here?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I’m doing here,’ says Vic calmly. ‘What matters is that I’m telling you to leave the lady alone.’

‘Fuck off,’ says Martin. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

‘I know enough, Martin. You need to stop making a nuisance of yourself.’

‘I’ll do what I want.’

Vic does something that frightens him. A tiny backward jerk of the elbow combined with a half-pace forward: too small to attract
the bouncers, clear enough to make his intent plain. Martin hops back, feels a rush of fear and frustration. ‘But I
know
her!’ he shouts. He really feels like he does. After following her the last two days, after reading everything she’s ever
written deep into the night, he knows her as well as anybody.

‘No you don’t,’ says Vic. ‘You’re just being a nuisance.’

Shit, Vic knows her, he must do, or he wouldn’t be saying that. Martin’s mind flashes back to yesterday afternoon, to looking
in through the window of the Kaz-bar to see what she was up to.

With a leap of understanding, he realises who her companion was – though he couldn’t see her clearly, what with the candlelit
gloom and the pair of huge dark glasses she was hiding her face with. Amber Gordon. Oh my God. They’ve known each other all
along. They’re all … in it together.

‘Look,’ says Vic, ‘we’ve had to see you off once. I don’t want to have to do it again. You’re a bloody nuisance and you need
to stop.’

Suddenly, Martin finds himself in tears. He turns away, swiping at his face with a sleeve. It’s not fair. Everyone, always
ganging up on him, setting him up, screwing with his head. It’s this town. It’s the people. They’re all … sick. Conspiring
to keep him out, to keep him down, to refuse to recognise that he is Someone. She’s been one of them all along.

He turns back and screams impotently at Kirsty Lindsay. She’s stepped back, can probably barely hear him over the music, but
his self-control is gone. ‘You … you bloody bitch! I’ll get you! You’ll see! You’ll fucking see!’

Victor Cantrell repeats his elbow move, laughs in Martin’s face as he recoils. Martin ducks back into the crowd. He knows
when there’s no point fighting. But someone’s going to pay. Someone. He can feel sweat on his forehead, feels himself tremble.
Wants to grab a glass and ram it into one of the laughing faces around him.

He contents himself, for now, with shoving at a couple of backs as he strides for the exit. For now.

She watches the man leave and realises that she is shaking. Looks up at her rescuer’s face. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘’S’OK,’ he replies. ‘He’s trouble, that one. Proper little stalker.’

‘Well – thanks. I thought I might be in trouble there.’

The man shrugs. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he says.

Kirsty sighs. ‘Yeah, I know. I’m going to call it a night, I think.’

‘You don’t
look
like a slag, anyway,’ he says. ‘But then again,
there’s no other reason you’d be here. Are you a slag? You can’t tell, these days. Maybe you are.’

She’s shocked. Sees a glittering half-smile on his face and doesn’t like it. She can’t bear DanceAttack for one minute longer;
wants out of Whitmouth. Blushing, she pushes away from him without another word.

I’m going to enjoy this. I’m actually going to enjoy this.

Amber sits in her office, slowly and carefully applying her make-up. She’s been locked in here since soon after her shift
began. She showed her face briefly in the shadows of the main concourse as her staff arrived, then half sprinted to the administration
block to put a layer of MDF between herself and the world.

Now she’s covering up: the way she does every day. Foundation and blusher and highlighter, wiping away the lines and the shadows,
as her fictions wipe away her past. They will not know. Her hands no longer shake and her eyes, soaked for hours with teabags,
betray no tell-tale puffiness.

It’s nearly two o’clock; the tea-break ritual approaches. Amber draws lines of black on to her eyelids and waits to take her
revenge.

The cafeteria is full when she enters. Steam and food smells, and the rumble of weary mundanity. Another night, like any other.

But no. Tonight, she’s New Amber: no bullshit, no advantage taken. The cleaners think she’s a pushover, the lenient boss who’ll
overlook most infractions in pursuit of a quiet life. Well, not any more. She’s been a yes-woman all her adulthood, rolling
over and going with the flow, but not any more. Vic, the staff at Blackdown Hills, Suzanne Oddie, her mother and stepfather,
every shitty man she’s followed till he was done with her, every landlord, every employer, every woman who’s deigned to be
her friend, and it’s got her nowhere. Taken her further down the road to nothing. Christ, if she hadn’t obeyed Deborah Francis
and Darren Walker unquestioningly one summer day twenty-five years ago, none of this would have happened. But not any more.
After today, she’s done.

‘Moses,’ she says. He looks up, smirking, expecting the usual timid word of reproof, and his face falls as he sees her expression.

‘Yuh?’

‘It’s no-smoking in here.’

‘I wasn’t …’ he begins, and trails off as he sees that she’s deadly serious. ‘Sorry,’ he mutters.

Amber folds her arms. Counts one, two, three beats. ‘It’s time you stopped,’ she tells him. ‘I don’t care what you do to your
lungs, but doing it indoors is against the law. You’re not to do it. There’s a whole park to smoke in. Do it outside, or I’m
going to have to give you a written warning. Do you understand?’

He glares at her from beneath heavy eyebrows. Then, saying nothing, he gets to his feet and, making an exaggerated show of
picking up his Gold Leaf and his brimming Styrofoam cup, he stalks from the café.

She realises that the tables within earshot have fallen quiet. People are exaggeratedly not looking at her. Right, she thinks.
This is what it feels like to be boss. They don’t like you. Big fucking whoop. None of them liked you in the first place,
not really. Not in any genuine, remembering-you-when-you’re-out-of-the-room sense. Not in a calling-to-see-you’re-OK-when-you’re-in-trouble
sense, like yesterday. You’ve been brown-nosing all your adult life in the hope that people will like you, and all it does
is make them despise you. Make them think they can take advantage. Make them think they can take your hospitality and—

Clutching her clipboard like a shield, she walks forward. She hears an outbreak of whispered comment behind her back and
smiles grimly. Just wait, she thinks. If you don’t like that, wait till you see what’s coming next.

Jackie is at her usual table, holding forth to Blessed. There she sits in her leather jacket, her sugar-pink trackies (the
ones that proclaim her shrivelled backside JUICY), her Nike knock-offs, dangling gold hoops in her ears and a Diamonesque
J dangling between her breasts. She’s talking about men. Isn’t she always? Amber stares at this woman and hates and hates.

‘… so Tania got talking to him and asked him what sort of girls he liked, and he said slim ones with olive skin, so I thought,
you know, Ooh, I’m in with a chance …’

Amber feels loathing pump through her veins, wonders at the way pity can turn to contempt at the press of a button. She keeps
her expression steady: neutral but serious. She’s not going to let her emotions get in the way of her revenge. The pleasure
will be so much greater if the news comes out of the blue.

‘… and as it turned out, he had a cock like a baby’s arm,’ finishes Jackie.

Blessed starts back from the table as though Jackie has thrown a bucket of ice in her face.

‘Jacqueline! Please!’ she protests. ‘I don’t want to hear things like that.’

Jackie feigns innocence, grins at her. ‘What?’ she asks. Blessed’s eyes flash white, then she looks down, pursing her lips.

Jackie ploughs on contemptuously. ‘So I took him back to mine, and I’ll tell you what, he went like the Duracell bunny. All
bloody night, it was, and then I couldn’t get rid of him in the morning. I’ve got bruises on my bruises …’

Amber doesn’t want to hear any more. She clears her throat.

Jackie looks up. Plasters a false welcome on to her face. Now that Amber knows, the dissimulation is obvious; the tiny gloat
that hovers round the edge of the lips, the almost imperceptible up-and-down flick of the eyes. Jackie’s the sort of woman
whose sex life is as much about scoring points as simple pleasure.
Amber should have guessed that she herself would not be immune.

‘Hi,’ says Jackie.

‘Would you like some cheesecake?’ offers Blessed.

‘No, thank you, Blessed,’ she says. ‘Actually, I wanted a word with Jackie, if that’s OK.’

Again the little flicker. Jackie knows she knows. ‘Sure,’ she says.

‘In private, maybe?’

‘No, that’s fine,’ says Jackie: a challenge. You know you’re never going to expose yourself to ridicule, Amber Gordon. Go
on. I dare you. ‘I’m sure you’ve got nothing to say that can’t be said here.’

Amber doesn’t hesitate; sits straight down and puts her clipboard on the table, face-down. Jackie’s P45 is clipped to the
underside, but she doesn’t want her to see it yet.