After an early evening visit to her aunt, Shelley returned to her car. She drove father along Queens Grove then onto Queens Terrace. Parking up a few yards past a low block of flats, she prepared a shot.
Having transferred the junk into her body via a vein on her wrist, she sat back in the driver’s seat and closed her eyes. This is too much responsibility. Trying to look after herself was hard enough, but she had her mother to take care of, Aunt Elsie to check up on, and now she had to stop a serial rapist.
Cramming this much into one day was draining. She preferred leaving her flat as seldom as possible, so in order to spend the weekend at home, she’d arranged all of her plans for today – Monday. But she knew this couldn’t go on. There was so much to put in place this week. She’d need to be out another two or three times at least. The crack would have to be reduced, or cut out, or she’d never make it.
In her weakened state, she feared toppling her wall of lies. Keeping track of the various stories she told was hard, problematic when drugs were added, and at its most complex when drugs were combined with her two lives on the same day.
Perhaps it appeared even more challenging because she’d been disheartened on seeing her mother on Friday. When she’d arrived at the maisonette around lunchtime, the curtains were drawn and her mother was still in bed. She was despondent every time Shelley tried to engage her in conversation. She ate little of the toasted sandwich Shelley made for her and watching her favourite film – It’s a Wonderful Life – didn’t yield the smile it usually did. The progress Rita had been making evaporated, and it had happened so suddenly, like a death, as if Shelley had dreamt it. Now everything had returned as it was before, possibly worse.
When she’d left her aunt’s house earlier, Elsie was stressed and Shelley felt responsible. She’d told Shelley she needed more help with Rita, that with her own commitments and work, she couldn’t visit more than three times a week. Shelley suggested increasing her visits, which had slipped from daily to weekly, and recently from weekly to fortnightly, but Elsie said she’d find another way, that she didn’t want Shelley’s life taken over by her mother. But there was no other way – Shelley knew that. And her failure as a daughter and the guilt she experienced from the storytelling of her imaginary life was gnawing at her conscience.
It was her own fault that her visits had slipped. The blame didn’t lie at the door of her fictitious demanding boss at Foxtons. She was a poor excuse for a daughter. She was undeserving of the pride her aunt showed for her.
She took the syringe with a needle too blunt to use for a fix, and ran it down the inside of her arm. The blood that fountained was unexpected. Quickly, she found the rag and pressed it to her arm. How would she explain away blood seeping through her sleeve?
Stupid junky whore. Stupid junky whore. Stupid junky whore. The mantra repeated in her head. She looked at the gash on her arm.
“You deserve it,” said one of the harsher directors on the board.
With only a miniscule amount of junk in her blood stream, her arm throbbed as she drove from St John’s Wood towards Hampstead. A decent hit was unfeasible as she had yet to attend the meeting with Angel, Nicole and Tara.
Whether or not she was wise to have invited Tara concerned her. The decision had not, and could not, be made with her head. Nicole and Shelley accepted Tara had become more unstable, but she wanted to be involved. How could Shelley take that away from her? An opportunity for revenge on a man who’d raped her. Somewhere buried under the heavy rubble crushing it was Shelley’s heart.
***
On her arrival at The Magdala, Shelley saw Angel sitting at the same corner table in the back. As she manoeuvred her body past the battered tables and chairs, she scanned the smoky saloon; Nicole and Tara weren’t there.
“Are you incognito?” Angel whispered. She stood up and kissed Shelley on the cheek. “What’s with the wig?”
“It’s not. It’s my hair.” Shelley combed her fingers through her hair that was not a wig as if proving its authenticity.
“Sorry, babe, you just look so different.” Angel smiled. The dimples in her cheeks surfaced.
While Angel stood at the bar buying Shelley’s drink, Shelley took out her mobile and phoned Nicole. Nicole informed her that a punter had kept her longer than she’d anticipated but she would be there soon. Before Shelley could phone Tara, Angel had returned and handed her a pint of snakebite and blackcurrant.
“Your girls are gonna show, babe, aren’t they?” Angel asked.
“Nic’s on her way. Tara, I don’t know.” Shelley wished her friends would hurry up so she could get home. She could feel the crusty blood cracking on her sleeve every time she moved her arm, and she was sweating from keeping on her coat.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned her head and gaped as she set her eyes on Tara. Although in three days, Tara hadn’t lost the spots or put on any weight, she looked nearly beautiful again. She wore a maroon dress, her shoulder length hair looked clean and silky, and make-up covered the spots that plagued her face.
“Why can’t we go to The Freemasons? It’s much nicer in there,” Tara said to Shelley as she bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “This has got to be the most council pub in all of Hampstead.”
Shelley smiled, hiding her disapproval of Tara’s snobbishness. “We need somewhere quiet,” she said.
On taking Tara’s order for an orange juice, Shelley went to the bar. Tara never took non-alcoholic drinks, with the exception of coffee, and the orange juice wouldn’t be to do with not drinking and driving because Tara used taxis; she didn’t have a car. Perhaps she was making changes. Shelley hoped she’d stay clean-smelling too. For the first time in ages, she hadn’t smelt like a mountaineer after a week trekking the Whiskey route up Kilimanjaro.
As she returned to the table, Shelley caught the end of what must have been a conversation about Tara’s son. It had taken Tara two years to tell Shelley about her child, and Nicole even longer, and there she was telling a stranger. Shelley plonked Tara’s drink on the table then sat herself down on the cushioned bench next to Angel, opposite Tara.
“My clit’s the size of a small penis,” Tara announced, obviously not as sober as Shelley had thought.
“My clit is a small penis,” Angel whispered. Was she always this frank?
“Not that small, from what I remember,” Tara replied.
Shelley pointed at them alternately. “Have you two...?”
“Yeah, we’ve done jobs together.” Angel nodded. “Took me a while to recognise you though. You’ve lost a lot of weight, babe.”
“And what’s with the name change? I like Destiny better.” Tara sipped her orange juice. “What do you think it could be? It’s itchy as hell and it’s huge.”
“Could be tight jeans, washing powder, could be anything. You’re always safe aren’t you?” Shelley spoke with some concern for Tara’s clitoris, but more for her sanity and sobriety. This wasn’t like her, talking uninhibitedly about personal matters.
“Of course, I’m safe.”
“Get checked at the clinic just in case,” Shelley told her. “I’ll come with you. My throat’s been feeling really rough.”
“Then go to a doctor like a normal person.” Tara sniggered.
“We’re not normal people,” Angel said.
Shelley saw Nicole standing at the door of The Magdala. She stood up and waved to get Nicole’s attention. In her fitted black dress and with her hair in large curls, Nicole reminded Shelley of a taller and slimmer, but equally stunning, Marilyn Monroe. Contributing to the 1950s vision was the decor that looked like it hadn’t been updated since David Blakely was shot and killed outside the pub. Forty-two years on, the bullet holes that Ruth Ellis had been blamed for still remained on the cream-tiled exterior wall.
Nicole kissed Shelley on the cheek. “My Resident Most Precious,” she said. Her breath tickled in Shelley’s ear. Nicole turned to the others and began to apologise for her tardiness, but Shelley took her arm and stole her away to the bar.
“There’s something not right with Tara. She’s being very strange,” Shelley told her.
“She looks a damn sight better though, doesn’t she?”
“You know what looks can be.”
While they were waiting for Nicole’s wine, Shelley deliberated whether she should tell Nicole about Angel’s gender. She decided against it. It wasn’t her secret to tell, and perhaps Tara would think the same way – if they both were fools, or great minds.
When they returned from the bar, Nicole took a seat next to Angel. Shelley reluctantly moved her pint glass across the table and sat down beside Tara.
“Is everything all right with you?” Nicole asked Tara.
“Top of the world, me.” Tara released a stench of vodka as she poorly mimicked Nicole’s slight Irish accent. “Apart from a cock-sized clit, I’m fucking sound.”