AS THE TWANGING opening strains of ‘Ticket to Ride’ struck up on her transistor, Angie Knight closed her magazine with a sigh, and shoved it under the bed.
It was all right for Jackie – she looked like a fair-haired version of that Cathy McGowan off the telly – and for all the other girls who looked as though they belonged to the world that Angie could only glimpse in the glossy pages of Honey. They all knew how to dress, how to look good, and how to do their make-up.
On the secret occasion when Angie had experimented with cosmetics, she had wound up looking like a cross between Coco the Clown and a cheap tart: just like her mother, only without the fag hanging from the corner of her mouth. Mind you, men seemed to like the way Angie’s mum looked. Lots of men.
It was a good job Angie didn’t care what blokes thought about her, and that she didn’t mind spending yet another Saturday night with no one for company except a bunch of pirate disc jockeys who sounded as though they were speaking with their heads stuck in a bucket. Although, Angie suspected, that had more to do with the radio her nan had bought her off Doris Barker than the quality of the actual broadcast, despite the fact that it was coming from somewhere out at sea instead of a nice, cosy, BBC studio.
The unexpected sound of a key turning in the street door had Angie hurriedly flicking off her crinoline lady bedside lamp and turning off the transistor with a metallic click, darkening the room and silencing Radio Caroline and the Beatles right in the middle of their final chorus.
She groaned inwardly and pulled the blankets up over her head. It was only a quarter past ten. She hadn’t expected them home nearly so soon. Had the pubs run out of booze? She had hoped, really hoped, that she would be asleep by the time they got back.
Angie listened, in the muffled darkness, as Vi, her mother, and Chas, her mother’s latest, useless, boyfriend, stumbled drunkenly up the stairs, their voices raised in anger over something or other.
She hadn’t expected them to be rowing quite so soon either. It usually took at least a month for her mother to grow bored with her men – or rather her ‘meal tickets’, as she called them behind their backs, and sometimes to their faces as well if she’d had a few too many Snowballs – and then another week or two for the inevitable, and occasionally spectacular, battles to begin.
‘All I said,’ she heard her mother shriek, ‘was I didn’t like the way your nasty little brother was looking at her yesterday.’
‘Vi, your daughter is meant to be how old?’
‘She’ll be seventeen next week, as you’d know if you’d listen to a single, bloody word I say.’
Angie threw back the covers and propped herself up on her elbows. Had she heard right? Were they actually arguing about her?
‘Seventeen. Exactly.’ Chas was triumphant.
This was a first. Her mother was the centre of the universe, the only possible topic of interesting conversation, everyone knew that. Well, you did if you spent any time in this house, regardless of whether you were her daughter, or a visiting boyfriend, even if you were a well-off, dodgy car dealer – sorry, businessman – from Chigwell, like Chas, rather than a casual pull off a local building site as the last one had been.
‘Surely she can look after herself at that age.’
There was a pause, then the sound of her mother’s bedroom door being swung back viciously on its hinges, and her mother snapping, ‘You’ve seen how slow she is around fellers. She could get really conned. Specially by a nice-looking boy like your Matthew. You’ve got to do something, Chas. I mean it.’
Slow? Conned? Angie sank back on her pillows, her cheeks burning red with shame.
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I’m telling you, I didn’t like the way that randy little so-and-so was looking at her.’ Vi’s voice was now whiny and low, as, in a customary display of acrobatic mood-swinging, she had leaped from banshee to pouty child in a single, accomplished swoop. ‘He could take advantage.’
Angie heard Chas snort derisively, and then the twang of bedsprings. ‘Be honest, sweetheart, who’d want to take advantage of that mousy little thing? She’s as timid as a bloody rabbit. And twice as gormless.’
‘Don’t talk about her like that.’
Chas snorted again. ‘I’m not saying she’s got a furry coat, long, pointy ears and big teeth, I’m just saying—’
Angie could hear Vi laughing. ‘Stop it, Chas. She can’t help the way she is.’
She can’t help the way she is? Angie felt her eyes begin to prickle with humiliation.
‘Well, don’t be so silly.’ There was another pause, then she heard Chas say, ‘Here, you’re not jealous are you?’
‘Jealous? Of her?’ The sound of her mother’s obvious outrage made Angie feel sick.
‘I’m not a fool, Vi. I know as well as you what you’re up to. As long as you keep her looking like some gawky schoolkid in those terrible clothes you make her wear, people’ll look at her as if she’s a child. And that makes you seem younger.’
‘You bastard. You know I’m only thirty-four. And I don’t tell her what to wear, I just sort of advise her, that’s—’
‘Come off it. If anyone did show interest in her, you’d be right up the Swannee. Who’d you have to skivvy for you then?’
‘You know I’ve got my condition.’
‘What? Lazyitis?’
‘Don’t be so rotten. The doctor said it was a very traumatic birth. He said I was to get plenty of rest. I had a lot of trouble. It affected me. Psychologically.’
‘Vi. That was seventeen years ago.’
‘You’d understand if you were a woman.’
‘Well, I’m not, am I? As you can see.’ There was another, brief pause, followed by Vi squealing in half-hearted annoyance. Then Chas went on, ‘Come on, darling, don’t let’s fall out over a bloody kid. Show me how good even an old girl like you can be.’
As Angie felt the tears brim, and then trickle down her cheeks and flow into her ears, she pulled the blankets back over her head and tried to block out her treacherous mother’s lascivious giggles, and the vision of what was happening in the next room, as the bedsprings began squeaking like a rhythmic, asthmatic donkey.
Chas was right, she was a mousy little thing, a timid little rabbit. She was too scared, or too stupid, to make it clear how unhappy she was, how unhappy people could make her. Her nan was always telling her to stand up for herself, but somehow she never had. She knew she had to do something about it, or she would be trodden on for ever.
But knowing something didn’t mean you could do it.
Angie sobbed as quietly as she could, hoping that they had no idea next door that she had heard every humiliating word.
The petite, expensively dressed blonde glanced down at her gold cocktail watch as she strode purposefully across the concrete floor of the private underground car park, her high heels tip-tipping like a metronome.
Nearly half past ten.
Without pausing, she looked over at the security booth. The guard wasn’t there. He often wasn’t at this time of night. She smiled indulgently. Lazy sod. Off having a crafty drink and a cigarette as usual. If only the other tenants of the exclusive Mayfair block knew that their precious E types and Bentleys, supposedly being defended to the death, were regularly abandoned to the mercy of any even half-way competent thief or resentful vandal, the guard would have been sacked on the spot. If you lived in these flats, you could afford the luxury of bypassing any sentimentality regarding the jobs and lives of lesser mortals such as car-park attendants.
She stopped beside a scarlet Mini Cooper, dropped her chin, opened her handbag and began to rifle through the lipsticks and screwed-up tissues, searching for her keys.
As a large, masculine hand clapped over her right shoulder, the woman froze.
‘Don’t turn round, and don’t even think of screaming.’ The voice was deep, husky. ‘Understand?’
She swallowed hard, then nodded.
‘Good.’ The man laughed, a sound that rose from somewhere deep in his broad chest. ‘Look at you. Birds like you, you’re asking for it. Dress up your arse, flashing all you’ve got. Now. Now you can turn round. Slowly.’
Wide-eyed and with her open bag still in her hand, the woman did as she was told. But, before she had a chance to call for help, run, or even faint, the man, in what seemed a blur of movement, had slammed her back against the car, had pulled up her skirt with one hand, and had ripped open his flies with the other.
‘Stockings and suspenders. Good.’ His breath came in short, excited grunts as he made a wild grab for the triangle of sheer black lace that barely covered the mouse-coloured curls of her pubic hair – the woman was not a natural blonde.
She snapped upright, clapping her knees together. ‘Careful!’ She spoke in a refined, Home Counties accent, and she sounded annoyed: a middle-class woman complaining about the behaviour of the lower orders. ‘David only bought these for me today. They cost a fortune.’
The man grinned. ‘Glad I’m the first to appreciate them, Sonia.’
Sonia grinned back, and stepped delicately out of the panties. She tucked them neatly into her handbag, clicked the clasp shut, set it on the ground next to her, and then rolled her skirt tidily up her thighs.
‘Get on with it then, Mikey, or the guard will be back.’ She ran a perfectly manicured fingernail across his cheek, and peered up at him through suggestively lowered lashes. ‘Or maybe you’d give a better performance with someone watching …’
As the man thrust into her, and the woman threw back her head with a gasp, neither of them realized that they did, in fact, actually have an audience.
Too busy with their game, they had failed to notice the hot, red glow of a cigarette, coming from the back seat of the nearby racing-green Jaguar, as her husband, David Fuller, took a draw on his rare, imported Turkish Imperial, before crushing it, without a flinch, in the palm of his hand.
‘Coming.’ Tilly Murray, a pleasant-looking woman in her early forties, walked along the passage to answer the door, wiping her floury hands on her apron. Sundays, especially the mornings, were all go for Tilly – even harder work than the other six days of the week were for her and her husband, Stan. And that was saying something.
‘Hello, love. How are you, then?’ She stepped aside to let Angie Knight into the hallway. Like a lot of other homes on the estate, the Murrays’ house had a front room, kitchen and bathroom leading off the passage downstairs, and two main bedrooms and a box room leading off the tiny landing above. Being on the other end of the five-house terrace to the Knights’, the layout was a perfect mirror image of Angie’s own, but there the similarities ended: the Murrays grafted long and hard to make sure their house was warm, comfortable and full of the tantalizing smells of cooking, with Stan working all hours to pay the bills, and Tilly doing all the domestic chores, so they could make a decent home for their kids, while the Knight house offered none of those things, not unless Angie herself did something about them when she got in from work. Violet Knight was not a bad woman, in fact she could be a loving, lovable, warm and funny person to be around, it was just that men, rather than her daughter’s comfort and future opportunities were her priority, and when one of them was in her life, which was most of the time, she was definitely above such banal matters as home-making.
‘Hello, Mrs Murray. Is Jackie around?’
Tilly jerked her head towards the stairs. ‘She’s not out of bed yet, but go on up. I know she’s awake.’ She smiled warmly at Angie. ‘I don’t know how you youngsters manage to spend so much time laying about doing nothing. You’re like little dormice in hibernation.’ Immediately wishing she hadn’t said something so stupid to a kid who spent just about every waking hour either at work or slaving to keep her idle, no-good mother’s house in some sort of order, Tilly put her hand on Angie’s shoulder. ‘Stay for dinner if you like, love. I’m doing a nice shoulder of lamb with all the trimmings, and I’m making a jam roly-poly for afters, with loads of custard. It’ll be no trouble, I’ll just peel a few more spuds.’ She nodded encouragingly. ‘You know how Mr Murray likes his Sunday roast. And he deserves it, how hard he works.’
‘Thanks all the same, but I’m going round to see Nan.’
Good for you, thought Tilly, you leave that lazy mare to sort herself out. ‘Well, you’re more than welcome if you change your mind, you know that.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Murray, I know.’ Angie grabbed hold of the banister and swung herself up the stairs.
‘So much energy.’ Tilly shook her head in affectionate wonder as she took herself back to the kitchen and the monumental task of cooking the Sunday dinner.
‘It’s only me, Jack. Can I come in?’
‘Course.’
Going into Jackie’s room always made Angie feel happy; no matter how often it was decorated, or changed round, it was just the way Angie would have chosen – if she had had the chance. The latest look involved the walls being emulsioned in white with a big red, white and blue target painted on the wall facing the door: the handiwork of Jackie’s older brother, Martin. The carpet was plain navy – terrible to keep clean, according to Mrs Murray, but as beautiful as the finest velvet according to Angie – and had a thick, sheepskin rug by the bedside to warm Jackie’s toes. The bed itself stood along the length of one wall, and was covered in a Union Jack bedspread, with matching pillowcases; opposite was the ‘dressing unit’, as Jackie called the combination white melamine dressing-table and wardrobe. Reflected in the mirrored wardrobe door was a much-kissed poster of the Beatles, which showed the Fab Four walking along a beach dressed in jokey, old-fashioned stripy swimsuits and straw hats; strange outfits, but, as Jackie said, they looked gear in whatever they wore, and Paul especially could get away with anything.
The only concession to the pink, girlie bedroom that it had been up until just a month before was the crinoline lady bedside lamp, with its deep rose, nylon skirts, through which the bulb glowed warmly: an altogether feminine accessory, and a match with Angie’s own. Angie’s nan had bought them for the girls from Doris Barker, a woman who lived in her buildings in Poplar, and who, considering she didn’t go to work, seemed to spend all day, every day, at home being visited by people and always seemed to have a whole flat full of stuff to sell. Where it all came from was a mystery to Angie, but, as her nan told her, it wasn’t polite to ask people about their private business; it was like a code in the East End, she had said.
Angie settled herself at the foot of Jackie’s bed with her back leaning against the wall.
‘You look so miserable, Ange.’ Jackie made herself comfortable in her nest of pillows and blankets. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Not really. Mum’s new boyfriend said something horrible.’
‘How do you mean?’ Jackie first frowned, then her mouth and eyes widened. ‘Here, he didn’t try it on or nothing, did he? Didn’t try and get a feel up your kilt?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ Angie closed her eyes and rubbed her hands roughly over her cheeks, refusing to let the tears come. ‘I heard him say to Mum’, she said, her voice catching, ‘that I was ugly, and stupid, and useless, that no one would ever fancy me, and that …’ Too late. Her bottom lip began to tremble, and her eyes watered.
Jackie threw back the covers and scrambled to the other end of the bed to be close to her friend. Tugging down the hem of her blue-and-white striped, granddad-collared nightshirt that had recently usurped her pink baby dolls, she screwed up her face in anger. ‘The buggery, rotten old sod. What did your mum say?’
All Angie could do was shake her head as the tears flowed.
‘Was this last night?’
She nodded.
‘Drunk, I suppose.’
Another nod.
‘I told you, you should have come with me to the Palais.’
‘I couldn’t. You know I don’t …’
‘Angie, it’s only the Ilford Palais we’re talking about, not the Scotch of flipping St James or the Canvas Club.’
‘I wouldn’t fit in with your friends,’ wailed Angie. ‘You know I can’t …’
‘Angie, you are my friend. And you know I’d love you to come out with me. It’s only because you won’t that I still knock around with that lot from school.’ Jackie put her arm round Angie’s shoulder and gave her a little shake, in the mistaken belief that it would cheer her up. ‘We had a right laugh.’
The door opened and a male voice asked, ‘Who did? What have you pair been up to?’
Angie and Jackie looked round to see Martin Murray, Jackie’s big brother, standing in the doorway.
‘Hello, Squirt,’ he said, smiling at Angie, ‘you look pissed off. My little sister’s not been upsetting you, has she? If she has I’ll take her teddy off her. She still cuddles that ratty old bear every night, you know.’
Angie managed to wring out a feeble smile in reply. Last October, Martin had become an economics student at London University, but he didn’t have a duffel coat or a scruffy beard. Martin was a mod, with a parka, a tonic mohair suit and a chrome-covered Lambretta, and, during the past couple of years, had grown into just about the most beautiful thing that Angie had set eyes on.
‘Ignore him, Ange,’ Jackie said haughtily. ‘Being the first one in the family to go to college has gone to that fat head of his. But what he doesn’t realize is, being clever doesn’t mean he’s got any sense.’ She pointed to the box of tissues on her bedside table. ‘Why don’t you make yourself useful and give Angie a paper hankie, then go down and brew up so me and Angie can have a cup of tea?’
Martin handed the tissues to Angie. ‘Actually, I was going to offer to put the kettle on, sis, but, now you’ve asked, I think I’ve changed my mind.’
He ducked just in time to avoid the tissue box, expertly aimed by Jackie, from hitting him on the head.
‘That was one sugar, wasn’t it, Squirt?’ he called as he ran down the stairs to the kitchen.
‘Listen, you two.’ Martin held out a tin tray bearing two cups of tea and a plate of Jammy Dodgers. ‘Mum’s bending my ear about persuading Angie to stay for lunch.’
‘Lunch? Ooh, lah-dee-flaming-dah!’ Jackie jeered at her brother in a high, mock-posh voice. ‘Don’t they have Sunday dinner at your toffee-nosed college, then? Too common for the likes of them?’
Martin did not rise to the bait. He had sworn he would never wind up in a job like his dad’s: ruining his lungs as he cleaned out the crud from the boilers in the local car factory, with only a nightly pint of mild and bitter in the Fanshawe Tavern and a fortnight in a chalet in Leysdown to look forward to. He wanted more from life, a better life, but that hadn’t stopped him being as scared as hell about going to university. Jackie knew all about his anxieties, and, despite being at times boastfully proud of her big brother, it didn’t stop her exploiting them whenever she wanted to jerk his chain around.
‘How about it, Squirt?’ he went on, ignoring Jackie. ‘How about helping us all out by giving Mum the chance to cook an extra mountain of food?’
Angie took one of the cups and handed it to Jackie, then took the other one for herself. ‘It’s really kind, but I already promised Nan I’d go over to see her.’
Jackie blew across the top of her steaming cup, while helping herself to the plate of biscuits. ‘Go later.’
‘I can’t. Once I’ve got the underground to Mile End, I have to get the bus down Burdett Road, and you know what they’re like on a Sunday.’
Angie sipped at her tea, agonizing over the choice of missing the chance of sitting down to eat with Martin or of letting down her beloved Nan. And even if she did stay, she would probably be too embarrassed to say anything much to him. It was so different trying to talk to him lately, not like it had been when they were kids. But she really liked him. Not like that, of course, but it was just …
‘Come on, Squirt.’
‘I suppose if I missed the bus, I could walk from Mile End.’
‘Tell you what,’ Martin slapped the empty tray with his hand as though it were a tambourine, ‘I’m meant to be seeing someone from college about borrowing some books. I could go up there this afternoon and give you a lift on the Lambretta at the same time.’
Angie’s mouth went dry. Was this like being asked out on a date or something?
‘I couldn’t let you do that, Martin.’ Oh yes she could.
‘Why not? They live in Mile End. Bancroft Road. Right along by the college. I could drop you at your nan’s, then go on. And I do need the books today. I’ve got to finish some work I’m meant to be handing in by the end of the week.’
Jackie pulled a Jammy Dodger apart, separating the biscuit into two, and thoughtfully licked at the filling. What was this all about then?
Angie could hardly breathe. Her world had just turned upside down: misery to pure joy in a matter of moments.
‘You’d have to make your own way home, though. I don’t know how long I’m going to be.’ He paused. ‘So? What d’you reckon?’
Angie stared up at him from the bed.
‘It means you’ll be doing us all a favour: keeping Mum happy by staying and having –’ he paused and looked pointedly at his sister ‘– lunch with us first, means she’ll be able to cook even more grub than usual.’
‘If it makes Mrs Murray happy,’ Angie finally managed to gasp.
‘Great.’ He smiled and winked at the poor little thing. What a life that kid had. He felt really sorry for her. She was so grateful for everything. If only she realized what a real favour she was doing him, giving him the excuse to get out for the afternoon. Living at home was driving Martin Murray stark, raving bonkers.
‘Busy last night, David?’ Sonia Fuller put down her cigarette and sipped her orange juice, as she flicked lazily through the Sunday Times colour supplement. Her attention was suddenly focused. She really had to have her hair done like that. An asymmetric cut would look wonderful with her jaw line, and would take at least five off her thirty-two – off her twenty-nine – years.
‘Actually, I came home around half ten.’ David, a look and soundalike for Michael Caine – the first thing, apart from all his money, that had attracted Sonia to him – calmly continued with his breakfast, despite knowing he had just dropped a bombshell right in the middle of the bizarre kitchen table that Sonia had ‘found’ in some ‘wonderful little shop in Chelsea’. Until he’d met Sonia, David had had no idea that ‘finding’ things could be so expensive.
He shook another dollop of ketchup on to his plate. Regardless of his wife’s attempts to get him to eat muesli – trendy, overpriced hamster food, in his opinion – and to drink orange juice, David was still a resolutely fry-up and dark brown tea man, especially on a Sunday, and even more especially when he’d had his appetite whetted by anger.
Sonia was no longer concerned with the shiny pages and their drooling displays of the latest, overpriced fashions.
‘Half past ten?’
‘Yeah, where were you?’ He dipped his toast into the yolk of his fried egg, knowing how much she hated such ‘common habits’.
‘I popped out for cigarettes.’ Sonia waved her hand breezily, as though the gold-tipped menthol she was currently smoking was proof of her story, a king-sized, Virginia alibi.
‘Why didn’t you send the doorman out for some? Or a cab?’
David was beginning to enjoy this, maybe even more than the crisply fried bacon that he had speared on his fork with half a grilled tomato. Sonia might have been a crappy liar – in fact, as a wife, she had proved to be a major let-down in most areas – but she could make a very tasty breakfast, and it had been a while since anything else about the little tart had interested him. But being made a mug of by people, that interested David Fuller, that interested David Fuller very much indeed. That guaranteed his full attention. And it made him think of all sorts of nasty things he wanted to do to people. Very nasty things. Things that would make Sonia’s dainty little lips curl right up.
His appetite – for food – satisfied, David shoved the plate away from him.
‘Enjoy your breakfast?’ Sonia could have hit her husband right over the head with his nasty, greasy, egg-stained plate. God, she hated him. Why wouldn’t the pig just say if he had seen her and Mikey together in the car park?
‘Handsome, darling.’ David belched into his fist, and then scratched his bare chest under the lapels of his navy silk robe.
‘Do you mind?’
‘Sorry.’ He sucked noisily on his teeth trying to dislodge a piece of bacon.
He was driving her to bloody distraction. She stomped over to the sink and dumped the plate on the side, ready for the daily to deal with. Daily! That was a laugh. Despite how well Sonia treated her, the cow couldn’t even be bothered to drag her fat, lazy arse over to the flat just because it was a Sunday, so the dirty dishes and clearing up just accumulated over the weekend until Monday morning. It was disgusting. Just like him.
‘David, I have to know.’ She stared down at the filthy plate, took a deep breath. ‘You’ve been very quiet. Have I upset you in some way?’
David made a show of thinking about it. ‘Nothing that occurs,’ he lied, leaning back in his chair. He reached out and pinched her – hard – on her neat little backside. ‘Just appreciating your cooking, darling.’
Sonia closed her eyes. Thank God for that. She wasn’t ready – not yet, anyway – to give up everything that the aggravating, uncivilized swine could give her. She intended to accumulate rather more in her private account before she did that.
So, Sonia Fuller, time to be nice.
She turned round to face him. ‘I might change my hairstyle,’ she said, flirting down at him through her lashes. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’d look the business whatever you do with that barnet of your’n.’
‘You are sweet,’ she pouted, and ran a perfectly manicured fingernail across his cheek.
Just like she’d done to him. To bloody Mikey Tilson. David could have killed her stone dead on the spot. But he wasn’t going to. Not yet, anyway. He was a man who knew the value of hiding his hand.
By biding his time he could make a situation really work for him, when other men didn’t realize that a situation even existed. He’d show the pair of them, and any other disloyal fucker, exactly who was in charge, that he couldn’t be monkeyed around with. Any idiot who thought they could cross him would see exactly who called the tunes in David Fuller’s organization. He’d make them suffer. All of them. In all sorts of ways.
He shoved his chair away from the table and stood up. He hadn’t gone from errand boy to top man by being impatient; he’d got there by using his brain. He tightened the robe round his taut, muscled belly and smiled to himself. And by using his brawn, of course. What was more, he enjoyed playing games. It amused him. Even his teachers had said he was always playing around, always acting the goat. And they’d been right. Mind you, they’d been wrong about one thing. They’d all said he would never amount to anything. That he would never get anywhere, that he’d stay stuck in the same, poxy, Bethnal Green backstreet he’d been born in for the rest of his natural. He’d like to see their faces now. He’d rub their sneering, bastard noses right in it.
‘Don’t you drive that thing too fast, will you, love?’ Tilly Murray and her daughter Jackie stood on the Cardinal-red doorstep, watching Martin and Angie standing on the other side of the privet hedge, preparing to set off on the Lambretta.
Jackie was grinning at them in bemusement. Did her big brother actually fancy Angie? She was her best friend, had been ever since she could remember, but Angie? Nobody could ever rate her as fanciable, and, as much as she teased her brother, Jackie had to admit Martin was considered something of a catch. It was all very strange.
While Jackie grinned, Tilly frowned: the concerned mother hen. Rotten scooters, why ever had she let Stan talk her into letting their boy get one in the first place? Bloody deathtraps. You heard such stories.
‘Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll take care of her.’ Martin handed Angie a crash helmet, a rarity amongst image conscious mods, with a dramatic flourish. ‘See, look how responsible I am.’
Tilly flapped her tea towel at her son in surrender and went back indoors to work her way through the mounds of clearing and washing-up that cooking a decent Sunday dinner for her family inevitably seemed to result in.
Jackie stayed where she was, watching her brother’s every move with a confused fascination, but had she been close enough to notice how Angie was quivering as Martin bent forward to fasten the helmet under her chin, she would have been genuinely amazed.
Misreading Angie’s excitement for resistance, Martin whispered to her, ‘Don’t worry, Squirt, I know it’s a bit big, but I’ll stop round the corner and you can take it off again.’ He winked conspiratorially. ‘Don’t want to mess up your hair, now, do we?’
Angie suddenly visualized what a shocking state her greasy brown hair, only partly dragged back in an elastic band, was in and what it must look like poking out from under the helmet. She snatched a crafty look at herself in one of Martin’s long-stemmed side mirrors.
She looked ridiculous.
Why hadn’t she washed it this morning?
Why? Because her mum never had any change for the gas meter, that’s why, and any change Angie might have had in her purse would have disappeared, as usual, and boiling up kettles and saucepans to fill the plastic washing-up bowl in the sink took time, and all Angie could think of that morning was getting out of the house as soon as she could, and then—
‘You all right?’
‘Sorry?’
Martin zipped up his parka. ‘You looked like you were about to pass out. Not that frightening, am I?’
As she shook her head, vigorously denying such a preposterous idea, the loose helmet slipped round.
Stopped only by her nose from covering her entire face, it still managed to completely cover one eye. Forget frightened, he must think she was a moron.
Why couldn’t the ground just swallow her up and let her disappear?
‘Here, you daft doughnut, come here.’ Gently, he put the helmet back in place, then threw his leg across the scooter, and twisted round to help her on behind him. ‘Good job you don’t wear miniskirts, eh, Squirt?’
This was getting worse. Not only did her hair look a complete mess, she was now all too aware that she was wearing her old, brown, corduroy slacks, the ones her mum said made her look like a refugee from the Land Army – whatever that was – and here she was about to get a lift from Martin. Martin! With his scooter, with all the chrome, the big, waving aerial with its foxtail flying out behind, the latest, long-stemmed, shiny mirrors, and, most of all, him, with his brains, his mod haircut, and looking just completely, totally, gorgeous in his parka. What was she – what was he – thinking of?
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Too much roly-poly, Ange?’ shouted Jackie with an encouraging wave. ‘Why don’t you hurry up and get on the back of that thing and clear off? The film’s coming on in a minute and I don’t want Dad settling down in front of the telly, thinking I’m going to let him watch some old rubbish on that BBC2.’
‘I thought I might go out for a walk.’ Sonia was peering round the door of what she referred to as the study, and what David called the spare room.
‘Hang on.’ David raised a finger to silence Sonia as he spoke into the telephone. ‘I’ll call you back.’ He replaced the receiver. ‘What did you say?’
‘Such a lovely afternoon. I thought I might take a stroll over to the park and have a look at the daffodils.’
‘Daffodils? You’ve got a flat full of sodding daffodils. And roses, and whatever else all them other flowers are.’ He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. ‘But what do I know? I just pay the florist’s bills.’
‘I’m bored.’
‘So why don’t you go and clear up the kitchen?’
Sonia ignored such an insulting suggestion. Instead, she stepped into the room and lifted her chin dramatically. ‘God, I hate Sundays. You’re always working. The shops are closed.’ She sighed loudly. ‘I am so bored.’
Abruptly, David stood up, knocking over his chair. ‘All right, you win. I’ll go out with you.’
This wasn’t the plan. ‘But—’
‘I’ll drop you over at Speaker’s Corner. You’ll have plenty of company there. And I can drop into the office. Like you say, some of us have plenty of work to get on with.’
This was more like it. She could almost have kissed him.
Almost.
‘Go and get your stuff, I’ll see you down in the car park in five minutes.’
As soon as Sonia was safely in the bedroom, buried in the delights of her walk-in, room-sized wardrobe, David made a telephone call.
‘Bobby. I’ve got a job for you.’
David watched Sonia hover around the edge of the throngs of tourists, as the regulars heckled and laughed at the placard-wearing preachers vying for the crowd’s attention at Speaker’s Corner. Exactly as he had expected, Sonia hung around, pretending she was interested in what was going on, but actually just waiting for him to leave.
David stayed where he was for a few more minutes, his blood pressure rising along with his temper, then, as soon as he caught sight of Bobby’s shiny black Humber approaching in his rear-view mirror, he did a screeching U-turn in the middle of the Bayswater Road, drove off at speed along Oxford Street, and then suddenly stopped his car with a squeal of brakes and a surprising mouthful of expletives from a passing middle-aged female dog-walker.
David slapped a ‘DOCTOR ON CALL’ sign on his dashboard, and ran across the road, flipping a two-fingered salute at a taxi driver who had almost run into him, and yanked open the door of the telephone box that stood on the corner of Duke Street.
‘Mikey?’
‘Yeah.’ He sounded put out. ‘That you, Guv?’
David’s jaw was rigid. ‘I need you over at the office.’
‘But, Guv—’
‘I’ve got a job for you. Be over in Greek Street in fifteen minutes or I’ll be all upset and think you don’t want to work for me no more.’
David knew that was enough of a threat. Even for a hard little bastard like Mikey Tilson.
Mikey Tilson, the bloke who David was now sure was shafting him in more ways than one.
As they whizzed their way along Goresbrook Road, heading for the A13, Angie breathed in great gulps of air and was sure she could smell the sweet scent of the bright flowering bulbs that swayed gently in the spring breeze in the neat little front gardens behind the privet hedges.
She had nearly swooned when Martin told her she could either lean back and grip on to the chrome luggage holder behind her, or lean forward against him and put her arms, tightly, round his waist. She had, of course, opted for leaning back, although she had regretted it immediately. So, when Martin stopped the scooter on the corner of Flamstead Road for her to take off the helmet – just as he had promised! – she resolved, just as soon as they were mobile again, to hold on to him rather than on to the cold metal.
But Martin didn’t seem in any immediate hurry to be on their way.
‘Mind if I have a quick fag first?’ he asked her a bit sheepishly, stowing away the helmet. ‘I know I’m nearly twenty and shouldn’t give a damn about what Mum says, but you know what she’s like, she could nag the Krays into going straight.’
He offered Angie the packet of Player’s No 6, but she shook her head.
‘I think she means well. She’s just being kind.’ She stared down at her feet while Martin lit his cigarette and then took a deep lungful of smoke. ‘I wish my mum would show a bit more interest in what I do.’
Martin took another drag. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are, Squirt, not having someone wanting to know everything you’re up to every minute of the night and day. It’s bad enough having to live at home still, without having a jailer thrown in for good measure.’
Angie’s head snapped up. ‘Do you want to leave home?’
‘Are you kidding? The other students are all having a great time living up in London, and I’m stuck down here in Dagenham. Why wouldn’t I leave?’
‘So why haven’t you?’ Angie had to struggle to keep her voice steady.
‘That’s easy.’ He looked at her, eyes narrowed against the smoke. ‘Mum says they won’t help me any more if I do, and that would mean using the money I earn working at the petrol pumps for living on.’ He tapped the toe of his desert boot on the footrest of the scooter, then smiled wryly. ‘And then I’d have to sell the scooter and I wouldn’t be able to buy any more new clothes. Shallow, eh?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’re a good kid, Squirt.’
Angie glowed under the light of his praise.
‘But I am shallow. I really care about that sort of thing. Sometimes I feel right out of place at college. Sort of separate. The other students are so different from me. And not just in the way they dress. But the way they talk and …’ He blew a plume of smoke down his nostrils and laughed, not entirely convincingly. ‘They should see me when I’ve got my full mod gear on, eh? They wouldn’t know what had hit them.’
He dropped the cigarette butt into the gutter and ground it out under his heel. ‘I’ve wondered, you know, if I should try to be more like them. The other students. The way they do things. I’m just as clever as they are, but I don’t really—’ He stopped mid-sentence. ‘Hark at me, going on to my little sister’s mate, like she was Sigmund Freud or someone.’
Angie frowned, wondering what this Sigmund Freud looked like. Knowing her luck, she probably had squeaky clean hair and a really fashionable pair of trousers.
He nodded at the Lambretta. ‘Come on, Squirt, let’s get the wind in our faces.’
Angie climbed aboard. ‘He must be nice, though.’
‘Who?’ Martin shouted above the noise of the revving engine.
‘The boy who’s lending you the books.’
Martin turned his head to check the traffic before pulling out into the street. ‘He, Squirt, is a very nice young she.’
Jill Walker was wondering how all this had happened to her. Here she was, on a Sunday afternoon, ironing in the semi-darkness because she couldn’t afford to waste the electricity – Of course I can manage, Mummy – in a dingy basement room in a house that she shared with two miserable biology students, who were more interested in things in jars than in going out anywhere. There was a world outside that everybody said was ‘swinging’; but she had yet to see any evidence of it. To think she had actually chosen to live here: to leave her family, her friends and the beautiful Sussex countryside, and to come to London to study economics because everybody said what a fantastic place it was. Well, she had yet to see what was so fantastic about it. In the six months or so that she had been here, what had she seen? The Mile End Road, damp washing, and nasty things in formaldehyde left on the bathroom shelf. Oh, and don’t forget the library, she’d seen that as well. Totally thrilling.
She blew out a long puff of air and smacked the iron down on the board in frustration.
What a swinger she was. They should do a feature on her in the papers.
She picked up the iron again and posed like a fashion model. ‘Miss Jill Walker of Twycehurst’, she said, simpering into an imaginary film camera, ‘is taking London by storm. You will have noticed the faint sheen of grease on her hair that she has tried to disguise with a sprinkle of talc. This is not due to the lousy hot water supply in her flat, but is a statement of the very latest style. Soon, every dolly bird will be wearing theirs just like it. Probably even greasier and positively caked with powder! Asked about her constant appearances at all the trendiest nightclubs, on the arms of Mr David Bailey, Miss Walker replied—’
The sound of the doorbell – even that had a dull, monotone buzz – jolted her back to reality. ‘Coming,’ she said, hurriedly getting rid of the pose and the iron.
She opened the door, forgetting, as usual, her mother’s anxious warnings about the supposed terrors of city life and her instructions that she should never, ever, do so without first peering through the letterbox to find out who was there.
‘Hello. Er …’
‘Martin.’
‘Yes, Martin. Of course. Er … Hello.’
‘I came about the books?’
‘Books?’
After a few moments’ awkward silence, it dawned on Martin, that George, the bloke in his group who had assured him that Jill had every book anyone could possibly want – she was loaded apparently, a rich farmer’s daughter – and that he, George, had asked her personally if Martin could borrow some of them and she had said ‘Why not?’, was maybe exaggerating a little bit. Or, more likely, he was a bloody, rotten liar who had just put him, Martin, in a really embarrassing situation. He’d kill the lying toe-rag when he saw him on Monday.
And then there was all that petrol he’d used. He could have put that towards the blue checked Ben Sherman shirt he’d set his heart on.
‘Sorry, Martin, you’ll have to explain.’
Martin ran his fingers through his short fair hair. ‘It was George.’
‘You’ve lost me already.’
‘Red-haired bloke, bit of a know-all.’
Jill was none the wiser. ‘Look, why don’t you come in and have a quick cup of coffee? I could do with a break.’
Martin was sitting in a battered utility armchair, with threadbare upholstery and a broken spring, by a spitting, feeble gas fire, sipping chalky instant coffee, facing Jill Walker, who was perched on a similarly dodgy chair. And he was in heaven.
He had known her for less than ten minutes, but Martin had decided that Jill Walker was the nicest, sweetest, funniest girl he had met in his entire life. Not exactly the prettiest maybe, although she certainly had something really special about her: a lovely face, rather than a beautiful one, and flicked-up, dark hair that was sort of cute, like Emma Peel’s in The Avengers. Gorgeous. But whoever she looked like, she was definitely the nicest, and poshest, girl he had ever met. And she also owned more books than anyone he had ever met before either, although she seemed to think she had hardly any compared with what she was used to at home. George appeared to be right about one thing at least: Jill Walker was obviously loaded.
‘Honestly, Martin, take them.’
He looked at the pile of books at his feet. ‘But you might need them.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Jill curled her legs under her, and took another mouthful of coffee. ‘I’m thinking about changing courses. Probably colleges as well. So I’ve not bothered even starting the latest essay.’ She flashed her eyebrows. ‘Or the one before that.’
Martin felt as if he’d been pole-axed. This wasn’t right, he’d only just met her and she was clearing off.
‘That’s a shame,’ he said feebly. ‘Why?’
Her smile lit up her face. ‘Sounds pathetic, but I’m lonely. I just haven’t settled in here.’
He wanted to say: You’re lovely. How can you be lonely? Instead, he said: ‘You’ve met me now.’ He hid his fluster at his own boldness in a careful study of his coffee mug.
‘That is so kind, Martin. Thank you.’
Say something else. Quick. ‘Er, must be nice living in a flat,’ he busked. ‘Independence and all that.’
She grimaced around the room. ‘If this is independence, I don’t think it’s all it’s made out to be.’
Martin grinned back like a ninny. She was smashing.
‘Maybe if I had a chic little bachelor-girl flat in Chelsea? What d’you think?’
‘No! That’s miles away!’ He had blurted out the words before he had registered what he was actually saying. ‘From college, I mean.’ He stood up clumsily, gathering the books into an untidy heap. ‘Thanks for the coffee, Jill. And, really, thanks a lot for these.’
‘My pleasure.’
She followed him over to the door. ‘Maybe it might be worth starting those essays after all.’
He spun round to face her, shedding a heavy volume on the basics of macroeconomics at her feet.
She bent down and retrieved it for him. As she returned it to the toppling tower in his arms, she looked up into his eyes.
Martin gulped. ‘I could help you if you like. With the essays. You know, to say thanks for the—’
‘Coffee?’ That smile again.
‘Yeah. And the books.’
‘I’d be really grateful. Thanks.’
As she reached round him to open the door and her hand brushed his arm, Martin felt giddy from her touch and the smell of her standing so close to him.
‘Perhaps we could meet up?’ she suggested. ‘Tomorrow? At college?’
Martin nodded enthusiastically. ‘Sure. Yeah. Sure.’
‘Good. I’ll see you then.’
Martin backed up the basement steps, smiling down at the wonderful girl smiling back at him. Was this really happening to him? A girl with her own flat?
It was a dream come true.