Musclebound (17 page)

She brought ajar of coffee and some chocolate biscuits. I don’t drink coffee usually ‘cos of Harsh saying caffeine was poison, but Simone made some for herself so I had some too. I was practising being sociable. Maybe if she hadn’t been taken away and adopted I wouldn’t have to practise. We could of spent years having coffee and chocky bickies together.

She brought a bottle of Scotch too, so we had a drop of that in the coffee with lots of sugar. We was really comfy.

‘Eva,’ she said, ‘we got to talk.’

After that it wasn’t so comfy.

‘Eva,’ she said, ‘we’ve got a problem. It’s Ma, and it’s a big problem.’

Tell me something new. When wasn’t Ma a big problem?

‘Don’t start ranting and raving,’ Simone said, ‘but I’ve got to ask you something.’

I didn’t feel like ranting. We was comfy with our coffee and biscuits, and I was tired. Everything was catching up on me. I wanted to sit quiet and let my back go to sleep.

‘Ask,’ I said. ‘You can ask anything, Simone, you know that.’

‘It’s about money,’ she said. ‘Have you really got any?’

‘Why?’

‘Because if you don’t we’re in even bigger trouble than we were this morning.’

‘Why?’ How could we be in bigger trouble? Wozzisname was croaked and in the Thames same as he was this morning. There was nothing we could do to change that.

‘Have you got any?’ Simone said.

‘Some.’

‘How much?’

‘Dunno. Why?’

‘Ma wants it or she’ll turn us in.’

‘
What?’

‘Don’t shout,’ Simone said. ‘Shouting won’t help. I’ve given her everything I’ve got but it isn’t enough. I never had much – I was never a saver.’

‘You’ve gave her all your dosh?’

‘I had to. She was screaming about the cops.’

‘How much?’

‘Hundreds,’ she said, ‘everything I had.’

‘Oh,
Simone,’
I said. ‘How could you?’

‘I
had
to, Eva. I can’t get arrested. I can’t. You
know
what’ll happen. We’ll be taken away and locked up. Just like the old days.’

I stood up. ‘I’ll get it back for you,’ I said. ‘Come on, Simone, we’ll face her down. I’ll get it back.’

‘Eva, no!’ she said. ‘You don’t understand. Her other boyfriend is involved. He’s winding her up, egging her on. They’re both drinking.’

‘Don’t care how many boyfriends she’s got. I can handle it.’

‘Please don’t shout. I can’t stand any more violence, Eva. I can’t stand for anyone else to get hurt. What if
you
got hurt next time, Eva? How could I stand that? What if she got the cops in? What if we got taken away again?’

That stopped me. I said, ‘I’d rather die than be locked up again.’ But I was thinking, maybe if we got took away we’d be locked up together. Like the old days.

She said, ‘Me too. I’d rather die than be locked up again. I couldn’t take that, Eva, all the shouting and bullying. I couldn’t take it before and it’d be worse now. I’ve got a life now.’

What was she talking about – bullying?

‘I always protected you,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after you.’

‘Oh, Eva,’ she said, ‘how could you? You’d be in solitary. You’d be done for murder. I’d be done for accessory.’

They’d chuck away the key. And I had a horrible thought – suppose they put us in separate chokeys?

I said, ‘How much does Ma want if your hundreds ain’t enough?’

‘How much have you got?’

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘I was never much good at counting, you know that.’

‘Show me,’ she said. ‘I’ll do the counting.’ Which reminded me of the old days too. She always helped with the maths.

So I went out to the dogs’ pen and I took the Puma bag down from the wall where I’d nailed it. I gave Ramses and Lineker a Bow Chow rusk each ‘cos they’d done their best and no one had touched that bag except me.

I was nearly in tears. I was giving Ma my future. I was giving her all my personal training and the chance of a fitness centre called Musclebound.

I was choked up – that lovely crinkly stuff hadn’t hardly
been mine for two lousy minutes before I was forced to give it to Ma.

I carried it across the yard, walking slow with Ramses and Lineker, like a funeral procession. But first Ramses, then Lineker, peeled off and took a sprint to the fence. ‘Yackety-ro-ro,’ they went. So I put the bag down really careful and went after them.

There was a bloke at the fence. With the streetlight behind him I thought it was Keif. He had the same brick shit-house build. But then I saw it wasn’t.

‘Where’s Simone?’ he said.

I said, ‘Move your big arse away from my fence or I’ll set the dogs on you.’

‘
Simone!’
he yelled.

‘Oh,
you’re
the one,’ I said, ‘you’re the tart-raking fuckin’ dumb boyfriend.’

‘
Simone!’
he yelled..‘Yeah, I’m the boyfriend all right. What you going to do about it – hit
me
over the head with a hammer?’

And then Simone was there. She flew over to the fence. She said, ‘Eva, leave this to me.’ She said, ‘Andy, go a
-way
. Just get out and leave us alone.’

Andy said, ‘Oh no. I’m not having that. You said you’d only be a minute.’

I said, ‘Come on. Come over my fence. Meet my dogs. That’ll only take a minute.’

‘I don’t trust you,’ Andy said to Simone, and,
wow
, you should of seen Simone then. She was my sister all right – never mind her fancy ways.

She beat the chain fence with both hands. She said, ‘You stupid, stupid bastard. You troll. You greedy, useless fucker.’

He stepped back – it was like he got bitten by a butterfly.

I said, ‘What’s a troll?’

And then Simone turned on me. ‘Go indoors,’ she said. ‘
Now
. Right now. Or I’m going back to Copenhagen and I’ll never come back. You can all stew, kill each other, I don’t care. I mean it. I’ve had enough.’

Where the hell was Copenhagen? It sounded a long, long way away and it made me feel cold. I stepped back too. I said, ‘If you lay one finger on my sister again

‘You’ll what?’ said Andy.

‘Shut the fuck up, both of you,’ said Simone.

‘I’ll hang your bollocks over my door and you’ll be dangling from them.’

‘
Eva!’
Simone said.

‘I’m going,’ I said. ‘But I’m leaving the dogs.’ And I went, walking backwards so’s I could see if he put one finger through the fence.

I didn’t stop till my heel hit the Puma bag. I picked it up. ‘That bastard ain’t having you,’ I said. Instead of taking the bag to the Static I took it to the dog pen.

I know. A troll is the man-version of a trollop. It should be – there’s all sorts of rude words for women but there’s never enough for men when you need ‘em. If Ma scores a bloke in a pub for the price of a rum and coke she’s a slag, a slapper or a slusher. But when he scores her, what d’you call him? Unlucky?

I wasn’t going to hand over all my gold to a troll and a trollop. No cocking way. I’m supposed to pay Ma off, keep her sweet? What for? What’s she done to deserve it? And him – the troll, the slut-puller, with his slick face and hairy hands – what’s he done I should pay him for? Scored a cheap shag off of my ma and tried to grab my sister. Does that deserve zillions? Well, does it?

I banged the nail into the doghouse wall and hung the bag on it. While I was doing that I had another thought, so I reached in, snatched a wad and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I went to the Static.

But before I got there I noticed that Simone was standing all alone with her back to the fence. Andy, the troll, wasn’t there no more. She was just standing, small and cold, with Ramses and Lineker sitting in front of her. I almost had to laugh. She really blew me away, my sister. She could come steaming out, with nothing but a little thin jersey to protect her, and mouth off to
a beefy bugger who was threatening me. But she couldn’t walk past two dogs.

‘Every time I move,’ she said, ‘they snarl.’

‘Oi, shit-heads,’ I said. ‘
Behave’:
And they stood down immediately.

‘Don’t shout at them,’ she said. ‘I’ve had it with abuse and shouting.’

‘If you don’t shout, they don’t listen.’

‘There’s other ways,’ she said.

‘What other ways?’ I said. ‘
You
couldn’t walk past them.’ I put my arm round her, ‘cos she was shivering, and we went back to the Static.

I said, ‘Where’s he gone, that Andy bastard?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t care. Back to Ma’s, I suppose.’

‘Is he living with her?’ None of them lived with her for more than a couple of days.

‘He’s always there,’ she said. ‘He smells a pay-off.’

See, blokes
can
smell gravy. No wonder I was so popular.

She said, ‘So what
is
the pay-off, Eva? What’ve we got?’

‘What’re we buying, Simone?’ See, Wylie by name, crafty by nature.

‘Silence,’ she said. ‘Freedom.’

‘Do them things stay bought?’ I said. ‘Or do you have to keep paying for them like the electricity? Every month, year in, year out?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Ma and Andy, they want whatever we’ve got.’ She knuckled her eyes. ‘They aren’t thinking ahead. But you’re right. We’ve got to think ahead.’ Her knuckles were mauve with cold and she drew her knees up to her chin.

I made us some more coffee and she poured the Scotch in. She said, ‘I could go off abroad again. I don’t need to do this, Eva. I’m stuck in the middle and I hate it.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No!’

‘Shshsh. If I left the country they’d never bother looking for me.’

‘Can I come too?’

‘Got a passport?’ she said. ‘You couldn’t take your dogs.’

‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘Just don’t.’

She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with them dark blue eyes and brushed her hair with her fingers. The torchlight picked up each strand and turned it silver-gold.

‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘Promise. Please. I ain’t got no one but you.’

‘You did all right before,’ she said. ‘Think about it. It’s me that got you into this mess. If I hadn’t come back Ma would never’ve thought of that trick.’

‘She’d of thought of another one,’ I said, but then I wondered, would she? She pickled her brain so regular it was amazing she thought up the first one. ‘It ain’t your fault,’ I said. ‘You can’t leave. I’d much rather be in a mess with you than not in a mess without you. You’re the only family I’ve got. There ain’t no one else. No one.’

‘Oh, Eva, don’t say that.’ She covered her face with her hands and teardrops leaked down her wrists into her sleeves.

I couldn’t bear it. I emptied my pockets on to the bunk between us.

‘Look, Simone,’ I said. ‘Look. I don’t know how much I got. Count it. Give it to Ma. Keep it. Just promise me you won’t go.’

She looked. She counted. She said, ‘Where did you get all this, Eva? It’s over two
thousand.’

‘The lottery,’ I said. ‘I bought a ticket.’ Well, I did, didn’t I? I wasn’t lying.

‘How much did you win?’

‘I didn’t get all six numbers. Nothing like that.’

‘How much?’

‘Dunno, I’d had a couple of beers – I ain’t clear on a few beers.’

Yeah, all right, I’m very nearly lying to my own sister. But see it my way – I didn’t want her to leave, and Ma and the troll was too much for her already. What in hell would she think about the red Carlton and the Puma bag and Droopy-drawers who might have a sawn-off hidden under his anorak? Go on – tell me what she’d do if she found out about that? She’s sensitive. She’d bugger off for sure, and maybe I’d never see her again.

‘Jesus Christ, Eva,’ she said. ‘You keep all this money lying around? Here? Didn’t you put some in the bank?’

‘Bugger banks,’ I said. ‘I ain’t giving my dosh to a bank, ‘cos then I have to ask permission to get it back. I ain’t stupid. I know what they do. You got to pay for cheques and stuff. It’s like your dosh got to pay rent for itself, when it can live here for free. They keep it and do what they like with it, but you got to say, “Please, sir,” when you want any back. And then you pay to get it back.’

‘But it isn’t safe.’

‘It was safe enough till now.’

‘Oh, Eva,’ she said. ‘You need a manager. You do. You need …’

‘Doesn’t matter now,’ I said. I was looking at all that lovely lucre sitting on the bunk between us. It was like losing a friend.

She sat there all thoughtful for a minute. Then she said, ‘I can’t take all this. It isn’t right or fair. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take half. I’ll tell Ma and Andy about the lottery. I’ll say this is all that’s left. They don’t know any better, do they? You never told Ma what you won, did you?’

“Course not,’ I said. ‘And she wouldn’t know about it now except I paid her rent. Out of the kindness of me heart.’

‘It isn’t fair, is it?’ she said. ‘OK, so no one knows how much you’ve got. So I’ll give Ma half. It has to be over a thousand.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’ll seem like a lot.’

‘It fucking
is
a lot.’

‘Yeah, but a few hundred wasn’t enough, so maybe if we give her a four-figure amount it’ll satisfy her.’

‘Shit, Simone, it’s got to satisfy her. When did she ever
see
this much? She never had a pot to piss in. And you know she’s only going to piss it away.’

‘I know. But it’s got to be more than a thousand. And it can’t be a round number ‘cos that’s too neat. She’s got to think it’s everything you’ve got. If she doesn’t think that, she’ll keep coming back for more.’

She decided on one thousand one hundred and sixty-seven pounds. I don’t know why. She said it wasn’t the sort of number you’d invent. She said the clincher was the sixty-seven. It was psychology, she said. If we’d made up a number under fifty Ma would suspect she was being short-changed. But a number over fifty was believable. She said one thousand one hundred and sixty-seven was a truthful sort of number. No one would make up a number like that.

And she was right – it sounded like masses more than one thousand one hundred and fifty. It even sounded like more than one thousand two hundred even though I knew it was less. Numbers are very, very weird, and very muddling.

And look at what she saved me! Did anyone ever have a sister as smart as Simone?