Essex, 1988
It’s a Saturday and I am sitting in the back room of the shop counting the coins and putting them into clear plastic bags. I check I’ve counted right with the red plastic coin shelf. I like to start with the ten-pence coins, stacking them all up until they reach the mark that says five pounds. Then I put them in the bag, it’s easy. Just as I’m folding over the top of the last bag, to stop the coins from falling out, I think I see a shadow move across the little window, but I must have imagined it, because Maggie and John are both in the shop, and it sounds awful busy.
Saturday is always the busiest day; people seem to really like placing bets at the weekend, I’m not sure why. Maybe they think it’s lucky or something. I think maybe I’m too young to understand why yelling at horses racing on a TV screen is fun. I get fed up listening to the sound of all the customers shouting, and smelling the stink of their cigarettes. The smoke creeps all the way to the back room from the shop, then hides in my nose so I have to smell it all day.
When I get bored, I play with the new Speak & Spell machine that Maggie gave me. It’s a little orange computer with a keyboard that I can carry around, and she says it will help me do well at school, if I’m allowed to go in September. I turn the Speak & Spell on, it plays a little tune, then it speaks to me in a funny robot voice. I think maybe that’s why I like it so much; nobody else has spoken to me all day.
“Spell promises,” it says, and then it reads out each letter as I type them onto the screen.
“L I E S.”
“That is incorrect. Spell promises.”
“P R O M I S E S.”
“Correct. Spell mother.”
“N O T M A G G I E.”
“That is incorrect. Spell mother.”
“M O T H E R.”
“Correct. Now spell home.”
“N O T H E R E.”
I see the shadow again, and this time I push my chair up against the window and look outside, but I can’t see anything except our car, and that doesn’t tend to move by itself. Sometimes it doesn’t move at all, and John has to push it down the little hill out of the backyard and onto the road, while Maggie sits in the front pressing the pedals with her feet and turning the key. I just sit in the back and watch. I’ve learned that they both get more cranky with me and each other if I say something when the car won’t start.
I look through the bars on the windows. All of our windows have bars, even upstairs. Maggie says it’s because bad men once climbed up on the roof. I’m still looking out through the bars, daydreaming probably—Maggie says I’m always doing that—when a face appears right in front of me. If the glass weren’t there, our noses would almost touch.
“Hello, little girl,” says the man in the window. He sounds like John, not Maggie. “I’ve lost my dog, can you help me? I saw him run up inside your backyard, but now I can’t find him.”
Our back gates are always locked, always. They are taller than John, with bits of wire and broken glass on top. I don’t know how the man’s dog could have jumped over them.
“Have you seen him? He’s a tiny little white fluffy thing, real cute, I’m sure he’d let you rub his belly if you help me find him.”
I do like dogs. I climb down off the chair and look up at the back door. It has so many bolts and chains and a great big lock, but I know where the keys are. Then I remember what Maggie said about never opening the back door, ever. So I decide I should ask her what to do. I walk through the phone room and stand behind the stripy-colored curtain that hides the back of the shop from the front. A fan is on because the shop is too hot today, and the colors blow around like plastic hair in the wind.
“Mum,” I whisper.
She’s serving a customer who is standing on the other side of the glass, and she doesn’t answer. The customer looks old and mean; he has a pipe in his mouth and looks like he needs a bath.
“Mum,” I whisper again.
She does a sideways look in my direction. “Not now, Baby Girl, can’t you see I’m busy?” She serves the next customer. He is too white and too tall, as if somebody flattened him out with a rolling pin, then hid him away from the sun for a long time.
I walk back to my little room, wondering what I should do, hoping that maybe the man will have found his dog and gone away by now. But when I stand on the chair and look out, he’s still there.
“I’m so worried about my dog. Won’t you be a good little girl? Why don’t you come outside and help me find him?” he says in a sad voice, which makes me feel awful bad.
“I don’t think I’m allowed.”
His face looks even sadder than his words sound. “It’s okay.” His face moves quite close to the glass again, so that I lean back a little, even though I know he can’t touch me. “I understand. It’s a shame you can’t help me though, he’s such a good dog, I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. You don’t want anything bad to happen to him, do you?”
“No.”
“Of course you don’t, I can tell you’re a good girl. So, if it’s not too much trouble, can I use your phone, so that I can call the police and they can help me find him?”
We have plenty of phones. We’ve got a whole room full of them, for when people want to place bets without coming to the shop, but it feels as if I need to have a think. Maggie says the police do not care about people like us, so people like us don’t care about the police and must never talk to them. But Cagney and Lacey on the TV are the police too, and I like them a lot, so maybe some police are okay? If this man is a bad man, he wouldn’t want to call the police because they would throw him in jail. I feel confused and I’m still not sure what to do, so I decide to ask Maggie, again.
I walk back to the stripy curtain and peek through the gaps, twisting one of the long red bits of plastic around my finger. Maggie still looks awful busy, and so does John.
“What is it, Pipsqueak?” he asks, counting some ten-pound notes out on the counter. I watch as he slides the bundle underneath to the waiting hands I can see on the other side. That means a customer won a bet. John hates it when they win.
“I don’t know what to do about something.”
He turns to me and shakes his head. “Can’t you see how busy your mum and I are? You’re old enough to make some decisions for yourself, Squirt. Time to grow up. Who’s next for the two-forty?” he says to the men lined up behind the glass.
I take the keys from the hook next to the phones, then push my chair up against the back door, unlocking one bolt at a time, from top to bottom, before turning the key.
The door pushes open a bit from the other side, and I can see the man’s boot. “You forgot the chain.”
I unhook it and he comes in, smiling and closing the door.
“Good girl,” he whispers. “Now, where’s the safe?”
“I don’t think your dog is in there.”
He laughs, then pushes me out of the way. I hear the race start in the shop and it’s so loud. I think I might have made a mistake.
“Who the fuck are you?” asks John, standing in the doorway behind us.
The man grabs me and I see the knife in his hand. He points it at my neck and lifts me off the floor so that my legs are dangling.
“Put her down,” John says in his normal voice, as though he isn’t scared at all. But I am scared and I wet myself, my pee running down my legs, stopping at my socks, then dripping down onto the stone floor.
“I want the contents of the safe, right now, or I’ll slit her fuckin’ throat.”
I start to cry. I can hear the race still going on out front. The voice of the man on the TV seems to get louder and louder inside my ears: “Rhyme ’n’ Reason is still in the lead, closely followed by Little Prayer on the inside, Dark Knight bringing up the rear…”
Maggie appears behind John. She looks at my face, then at the man who is holding me. Her face doesn’t change, but her eyes do.
“You can have the money, I don’t care about that, we have insurance. Just don’t hurt our little girl,” says John.
“Don’t play games with me,” says the bad man, I know that’s what he is now. I feel him press the tip of the knife against my neck.
“Aimee, don’t be scared, sweetheart,” says John. “We’re going to give the man what he wants and nobody is going to get hurt, I promise.”
“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.” The man’s breath smells like the pub on Sundays.
“Maggie, go and fill a plastic bag with whatever is in the safe, and give the man what he’s asking for.” John’s eyes seem to have forgotten how to blink, and they look different somehow, darker.
Maggie disappears. I hear the sound of the safe opening, then her high heels on the tiled floor as she comes back again, holding a plastic bag full of bundles of notes. She hands it to the man with one hand, and when he reaches to take it, her other hand comes out of her pocket holding a gun. She shoots, and this time, she doesn’t miss. I fall to the floor, and when I look over at the bad man, half his face is missing.