What Nula hadn’t expected when she pitched up at the address on the note was that Terry Barton would open the door. It threw her completely. She felt her jaw actually drop as she stared at his handsome features. He’d always been tall, but now he’d bulked up, gained a lot of muscle. He looked fearsome. More of a man than he’d ever looked before. And worse – humiliatingly, awfully worse – he had her there with him, giggling and twining around him like bindweed. Slim pretty Jill Patterson who’d been in Nula’s class at school, her of the blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. Nula hated Jill. Jill had been one of those capable winning girls, first a milk monitor and then a prefect, bossing the other kids around while Nula had skulked in the background, envious and silent, with all the other no-hopers.
‘Yeah, what is it?’ Terry asked.
As he stood there staring at her, half-laughing because Jill was in his arms and she was tickling him, it struck Nula: he didn’t recognize her. Didn’t know that the fat pitiful ball of lard he’d once danced with out of sympathy was her.
Well, that was good. She’d had humiliations enough to last a lifetime.
‘Can I see Charlie Stone?’ she asked. ‘Is he in?’
‘What d’you want to see him about?’ asked Terry, pushing Jill away from him with a smile. She pouted, smiling back. Then her eyes went to Nula.
Nula gulped hard, avoiding meeting Jill’s gaze. ‘I want to talk to him about a loan,’ she said to Terry.
‘Right. OK then. Come in.’
Nula went in, looking around curiously. Charlie Stone’s house was much like her own parents’ place – a plain little two-up-two-down. Nothing fancy. Not what she’d expected, at all. Someone with money to dole out to other people should have a better place to live in than this, surely?
Terry went to a door at the end of the hall, knocked once, then opened it. Nula, growing doubtful, wondered what the hell she was getting into. She stepped into a room and the door closed behind her. It was shabby in here. The sofa looked like something left over from the war. There was a desk in the corner, and behind it sat a man.
She recognized him, of course. The one that poor little Colin Crowley, who’d died doing that housebreaking job, used to hang about with. That had been tragic, really. Her God-bothering parents had taken the view that the little bastard had broken into someone’s drum, and when you did that, you got exactly what you deserved – and Col had. Torn to ribbons by a Rottweiler, apparently.
Nula shuddered. Christ, what a horrible way to go.
He was looking at her now, Charlie who had never so much as given her a second glance. She had always been far beneath his attention.
And him?
Well, she’d been always been aware of him, obviously she had. But he was on another level to her, she’d understood that for a long time. Charlie Stone was going places. Today he looked the part in a suit that was clearly bespoke and not off-the-peg. He had the air of a successful businessman already. And he wasn’t exactly bad looking.
Charlie Stone was squat, that was the word. He was about five eight, and solid. In twenty years, Nula reckoned he would run to fat. But for now he was heavy-set, compact, with Brylcreemed dark hair. His hard, dark button eyes were skimming over her without any real interest at all – the way they always had.
‘I hear you do loans,’ said Nula, going up to the desk and sitting down with every appearance of calm, while inside she was scared shitless and she could feel her knees knocking together like castanets. If her parents or Jimmy could see her here, doing this, they’d hit the roof. They didn’t believe in Hire Purchase or in loans of any kind. ‘If I can’t afford it, I don’t bloody have it,’ Dad always said primly.
Charlie eased back in his seat, king of all he surveyed. He stared at her. ‘Don’t I know you?’
That threw her. She knew him, everybody did; but she had never supposed that he had noticed her.
Nula shrugged. ‘Probably from the dance hall. I’m Nula . . .’
Charlie’s face split in a grin. He slapped the desk hard and pointed a finger bristling with gold rings straight at her. Nula jumped. ‘The little fat bird!’ he burst out. ‘Jimmy Perkins’s sister.’
Nula cringed. That was her. The little grey fat bird. Unnoticeable. Forever fading into the background. Not worthy of anyone’s attention.
‘Yeah,’ she said, feeling a hot blush of shame colouring her cheeks. ‘That’s me.’
‘So you want to borrow?’
‘Yeah. I do.’ But now it all seemed like madness.
‘OK.’ Charlie whipped a notebook and pencil out of the drawer, put it down on the desk and looked at her expectantly. ‘How much?’
Just like that?
Nula couldn’t believe it. After the bank, this seemed like child’s play. But this bloke, who could grin at her and look friendly one moment, then look downright threatening the next, this bloke she knew from schooldays – him and Terry had been two years above her – squat little Charlie Stone, was a loan shark.
‘Um . . . a thousand?’ she ventured.
Charlie’s mouth dropped open. ‘How much?’
‘A thousand,’ mumbled Nula. ‘If I can pay it back over – say – two years? Would that be OK?’
‘Yeah, but the interest,’ said Charlie, staring at her. ‘What you want a sum like that for then, girl? That’s a lot of brass.’
‘It’s for something personal,’ said Nula, her lips in a thin line. She wasn’t going to tell him about that. What, give them all something more to laugh at her about? At Nula, the little fat girl with the big conk?
Charlie was still watching her face. Then he nodded. ‘All right then,’ he said, and started to explain about the interest rates while Nula sat there, amazed, not listening to a word.
As easy as that!
She was going to get the money she needed.
It was going to be done.
She nearly floated out of the door when their business was concluded. Then Jill, still out in the hall with Terry, said: ‘Hey – you’re Nula, aintcha?’
And her balloon was popped. ‘Yeah,’ she said, deflated.
‘Gawd, you’ve dropped a bit of timber aintcha, girl?’
Nula didn’t answer, she just shoved past her to the front door, and out.