“Nicole... Nicole.” Shelley shook her friend’s body, as she lay asleep in the bed next to her.
“Hmmm.” Nicole rolled over to face the opposite direction.
“Wake up. I need to ask you something.” Shelley turned on her bedside light and continued rocking Nicole until she roused. “I’m worried. What if Marianne knows Tara heard her on the phone? Her flat’s big, but it’s not that big – and if she knows, then she’s gonna know Tara told us and then this could all come back on us.”
“Calm down, love.” Nicole sat up. “She said she didn’t know.”
“But she can’t be sure, can she?”
“Marianne would’ve said something, you know what she’s like, and Tara said she didn’t. Anyway, she’s been totally normal with me. Has she been off with you?”
“No, she hasn’t but—”
“Well then, there’s nothing to worry about. What’s she gonna do anyway?” Nicole lay down and closed her eyes.
Shelley turned out the lamp on her bedside table. For a couple of hours, she stayed awake, considering the worst Marianne could do. Finally, she fell back to sleep just as daylight began creeping into the bedroom.
***
At eleven o’clock on Friday morning, Shelley was woken by her early-rising guests, and not her nightmare alarm clock that seemed to be set for mid-afternoon. In her striped pyjamas, she walked barefoot into the lounge. Tara and Nicole were sitting on the leather chairs at the circular dining table, eating toast. The bread in her freezer must’ve been in there for over a year. Keeping that to herself, she joined them and they began going through the names of working girls who might be able to help.
Although they’d listed fourteen names between them – and they only needed to choose one – it wasn’t easy. None of them were actual friends. They knew little about them.
“There is one other girl... but she’s a bit older,” Shelley said.
“They’ve gotta be young, love. He might only book the young ones.” Nicole was waving her arm as if it might encourage the air to dry the wet sleeve of yesterday’s blouse. How did she manage to remove mascara and foundation from white silk? She was magic.
“I think she’s mid-twenties, twenty-five, twenty-six, but she says she’s twenty for work.”
“That’s too old. I was eighteen when he booked me,” Nicole said.
“If she looks twenty, it’ll be fine.” Tara spoke with a mouthful of toast. “I was twenty. How old were you, Shelley?”
“Nineteen.”
“How well do you know her? Can we trust her?” Nicole asked.
“I’m sure we can trust her. But I did only meet her once, on a job.”
“Once!” Nicole stopped sleeve-shaking. “You don’t know you can trust her if you only met her once.”
“I know more about her than these girls.” Shelley pointed to their list on the table. “And I’ve worked with them loads of times, but we never really talk. Me and Angel talked for hours—”
“Where did you meet her, in heaven?” Tara sniggered.
“I just said I met her on a job. The Dorchester isn’t exactly heaven, Tara.”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion.” Tara sipped her coffee. “You’ve got an obsession with angels.”
“It’s her working name. We went—”
“You’ve got your own version of angel lust.”
“Shut up, Tara. Let her speak.” Nicole glared at Tara.
Shelley tried to keep focused. Now was not the time to be concerned with what Tara and Nicole might know about her dead client at The Lanesborough. “We went to that place on the Edgware Road. You know, where we go sometimes?” Shelley looked at Nicole, who nodded back in her direction. “We were in there talking for hours. No one on that list is better, and it won’t be the first time she’s done something like this.”
“Is she an avenging angel, Shelley?”
“Give it a rest, Tara. This is serious.” Nicole pulled a Rizla from the blue packet. “Has she really done this before?”
“Not exactly the same thing... She poured boiling water over her pimp.”
“What did he do to deserve that?” Nicole asked, stripping the paper from a cigarette.
“I can’t tell you. That’s her business, but believe me, he had that coming to him and a lot worse.”
Angel was brave doing what she did. She’d had a hard life. She was only fifteen years old when she started working the streets in her hometown – Bristol. Her mother kicked her out because her new boyfriend didn’t like her daughter. Angel’s pimp was supposed to protect her from abusive punters, but instead he’d taken over where they’d left off – raping her, beating her and stealing her money. At seventeen years old, she fought back and fled to London. She’d been working there ever since, leaving streetwalking for the higher fees paid by the clients of agencies and madams. She didn’t work regularly now. Most likely, she’d saved her earnings over the years and didn’t need to.
“I’ll call her. I’ll sound her out first. If it sounds like she’s not gonna help then I won’t tell her anything. There’s nothing to lose.” Shelley took out her brick of a mobile phone and brought up her contact list. Angel wasn’t stored. She knew she had her number. She remembered writing it down. Angel had asked if she could contact Shelley for other double bookings, so they’d exchanged numbers. Angel had never called though. And although Shelley said she’d call her too, she’d never again had that request from a client – for a pre-operative transsexual.
***
In her bedroom, Shelley rummaged through the discarded scraps of paper she’d abandoned inside more than a dozen handbags. Angel’s number had to be on one of them. As she searched, she considered whether to tell her friends about Angel’s gender. She decided she couldn’t. It wasn’t their business. Moreover, it didn’t have any impact on the plan. Angel passed for a woman and that was all that was required.
Twenty minutes or so later, Shelley returned to the lounge, exhibiting a serviette with Angel’s phone number. “I’ll call her now.”
“Well done, most precious.” Nicole stood up and passed Shelley a joint. “I’m dying for a cuppa. Let me put the kettle on first.”
“If you’re being mother, I’ll have a coffee,” Tara said.
Once Nicole had disappeared into the kitchen, Shelley spoke to Tara. “Are you sure Marianne doesn’t know you heard her?”
“She doesn’t. Why are we whispering?”
“I don’t want to worry Nicole,” Shelley lied. She didn’t want Nicole to think she was paranoid. “Are you sure? You were there when she took the call.”
“She doesn’t know. She was on the phone in the hall and I was in the lounge.”
“What about when she saw you? She must’ve said something?” Shelley passed the joint to Tara and redirected her fingers to untwisting a knot in her hair.
“She didn’t. I had my headphones on. When she came in, I jumped up like she’d given me a fright. You are worried, aren’t you?”
Shelley tried not to look worried. What did it matter if Marianne knew anyway? They only needed to keep her onside until the rapist had been dealt with. After that, it didn’t matter.
“Shell, honestly, there’s nothing for you to worry about.” Tara took a pull on the joint. “I’m the only one whose real name she knows, and she knows where I live. If it was going to come back on anyone, it would be me.”
“We’ll have to keep working for her or she’ll know something’s up,” Shelley said, though she didn’t know how she’d be able to speak to her when she was seething with loathing.
“She’ll damn fucking know about it when she gets her comeuppance.” Nicole came back in with three steaming mugs. “The sooner we deal with that cunt, the sooner we can move on to the sick bitch.”