The Wicked Girls (8 page)

Amber doesn’t need to ask who she’s talking about. ‘Oh my God,’ she says again.

‘He’s just … there. All the time. He just sits outside the flat. Or he’s … you know. Like yesterday. Down at the beach, or
down at the supermarket, or wherever I am. I feel like I’m going mad.’

‘You’re not.’ Amber takes the bag, drops it on the stairs. It’s clear they’ve got a house-guest. Amber Gordon’s Home for Fallen
Women, Vic calls it. When he’s feeling nice. Sometimes, depending on the guest, he calls it the Whitmouth Dog Sanctuary. ‘I
can understand why you feel that way, but you’re not. You haven’t spoken to him, have you?’

‘No,’ says Vic. ‘You’re supposed to ignore them.’

‘I’ve tried,’ says Jackie. ‘But what am I supposed to do? If someone’s there every day, when you go to the shops, waiting
outside work, ringing on the doorbell, leaving messages, leaving …
daisies
on your doorstep …
you
try ignoring it.’

‘Oh God, Jackie. You always make a joke of things. I didn’t realise it was this serious.’

They follow Vic back into the kitchen. He goes to fill the kettle. The Whitmouth solution to all troubles, a nice cup of tea
and a biscuit. And God knows, for most troubles it works a treat.

‘I know. Yes,’ says Jackie. ‘I guess maybe I didn’t either. I thought he’d get the message or something. Get bored. But since
you … The body. That poor girl. One minute she’s alive and the next some bloke’s just … Maybe it’s freaked me out more than
I thought it had. But it’s worse now. I can’t … I really can’t be there any more, Amber. He just stands there and stands there,
and it doesn’t seem to make any difference what I do. I’ve no idea when he sleeps, ’cause it feels like he’s there twenty-four/seven.’

‘It’s OK,’ says Amber. ‘You can stay here. As long as you like. Till we work out what to do.’

She glances up at Vic. He’s standing by the sink, his face inexpressive. If he has any feelings on the subject, he’s not sharing.

Jackie goes pink about the nose and takes a pack of blue Camels from the pocket of her jacket. Searches around for a lighter.
Vic clears his throat.

‘I’m sorry, Jackie,’ he says, ‘d’you mind taking it out to the garden?’

She looks surprised, as though no one has ever suggested such a thing before, but picks up the pack and starts to get up from
the table.

‘I’ll get you an ashtray,’ says Vic.

She looks unexpectedly grateful. ‘Thanks,’ she says.

Amber follows her out on to the patio, Mary-Kate and Ashley tip-tapping quietly at their heels. She’s proud of her little
patch of ground. The salty estuarine soil makes it fairly useless for growing things, but she’s filled it with pots and baskets
of busy Lizzies and geraniums and verbena, and the little garden is bright and welcoming. The chairs are tipped up against
rain, their cushions in the shed. She pulls them out, brushes water off their coated-wire seats. ‘Sorry,’ she says.

‘What? Oh, no. Don’t be stupid. It’s your house.’

Vic appears with the ashtray, puts it on the table, smiles and retreats indoors.

Jackie lights up. Amber can see the nicotine bliss cross her face, remembers it well. She gave up for Vic, but she still misses
it, every day. ‘God, you have an ashtray. Most people don’t do that, and then they give your stubs
looks
, like they’re nuclear waste or something. Even when they’re in the bin with the potato peelings.’

‘Yeah, we’d never do that,’ says Amber.

‘No,’ says Jackie, ‘Vic’s got the manners of a priest.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t go
that
far,’ says Amber, but quietly she thinks, yes, that’s how the world would sum up our relationship,
probably:
polite
. Vic has great manners. It was like getting into a big warm bath, meeting Vic: having doors held open and appreciation shown,
knowing that a dish eaten from would quickly be cleared and cleaned. After all those years, she’d been quite afraid of men,
of their drives and stubbornness; thought them bullies, only interested in personal gratification.

And then there was Vic. Hands always clean despite the running repairs that form a large part of his duties on the Funnland
rides. A please and a thank-you and a protective arm ushering her through the crowds. She remembers noticing him, the way
he’d give a helping hand to customers as they tottered on and off the rides; how he’d always have a smile and a laugh for
anyone who wanted one; how he could appease the most swaggering yob in search of aggro. Whitmouth relationships aren’t long
relationships, on the whole, but it’s six years they’ve been together now, and if politeness is the price you pay for longevity,
then thank God for good manners. All those years, when she longed to fetch up in a place of calm – she still finds it difficult
to believe it’s happened.

‘You don’t realise how lucky you are. I’d give anything to have a bloke like that,’ says Jackie, and looks tearful again.

Amber reaches out and rubs her forearm, feels awkward doing it. She’s never really learned the touchy-feely habit; hasn’t
thought of Jackie as an intimate. ‘Don’t, Jackie,’ she says. ‘It’s all right. You’ll be all right.’

Jackie stares at her cigarette, her face working. Mary-Kate comes and stands on her back legs, front paws resting on Amber’s
thigh. Automatically she takes her hand from the arm and chucks her dog behind the ear.

‘It’s not
fair
,’ Jackie bursts out. ‘It’s just not bloody
fair
. I
never
catch a break.’

Vic appears in the doorway, calm as ever. He’s carrying Jackie’s bag. ‘I’ll put this in the spare room, Jackie,’ he says.
‘OK?’

Amber knows that the gesture is more about his aversion to
mess than about hospitality. Vic likes everything to have a place. The bag will have been bugging him since she arrived. Jackie
interprets it differently and sees it as a gesture of welcome. She tears up again. ‘God, you guys. I don’t know what I’d do
… Honestly. I swear, half this town would’ve fallen apart without you.’

‘Oh, come on, Jackie,’ says Amber uncomfortably.

‘She’s right, you know,’ says Vic, from the door. ‘Salt of the earth, our Amber. D’you know what she’s been doing all morning?’

‘No,’ says Jackie, with little enthusiasm. She’s never that interested in other people, especially when a drama of her own
is under way.

‘Calling everyone on the estate to see if they’ve got a spare computer for Benedick Ongom. She’s been on the phone all morn
ing, haven’t you, darling? I had to get my own bacon sandwich.’

He moderates the complaint with a bright and winning smile, but Amber hears it anyway.

‘Yes,’ he continues. ‘She’s amazing, really. Sometimes I can’t help wondering if she’s got a guilty conscience. If she’s making
up for something she did in a past life, or something.’

Jackie laughs. Amber, blushing, hurries the subject away from herself. ‘So tell me what happened? I’m still not sure I get
it.’

‘It just – I don’t know why he’s doing it. You know? I don’t get it.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Well, I don’t suppose you would. He’s obviously not right, is he? Anyway, I thought Tadeusz had seen him
off. With that text.’

Jackie shakes her head. ‘I think it’s made him worse. He’s angry now. I can feel it coming off him. He just seems to be out
there the whole time. And it’s going to be worse when I go back to work. Going out at night, all by myself.’

‘That’s OK. I can give you a lift,’ says Amber, calmly adding another item to her list. There’s room in the car. She’s only
shuttling Blessed at the moment.

‘But it’s not just that, it is? I’m not sleeping, either. I feel like I’m going to wake up and find him standing over me or
something. Seriously. He’s just there, all the time. I feel like I’m going mad …’

Vic watches them through the kitchen window: the two blond heads bent together, the curl of smoke rising off Jackie’s cigarette.
They’ve forgotten all about him. Out of sight, out of mind, he thinks. Women. The minute you’re not talking, you might as
well not exist. He studies them quietly, his face blank. He feels dog-tired. He used to feel exhilarated for days at a time,
during high season, but the thrill gets shorter-lived year on year. Eight different resorts he’s worked over the years, but
nowadays Whitmouth seems to tire rather than thrill. It’s my age, he thinks, catching up with me. I’m getting too old for
this. I need to find an easier way to live. I don’t think I’ll have the energy for much longer. It really takes it out of
me.

Jackie’s left her tea mug on the table, a swill of tannin on the bone-china inside. He picks it up and takes it to the sink.
Scrubs methodically, thoroughly, as he listens to the murmur of the women’s voices. Wipes round the sink, polishes the chrome
dry and puts the cup on the folded tea-towel on the drainer.

Out in the garden, Jackie’s phone starts to ring.

‘Don’t answer it,’ Amber says. ‘Leave it.’

Jackie regards the phone as though it’s a turd she’s found in her handbag. ‘I wasn’t planning to.’

The phone rings out. Jackie lights another cigarette. Amber suppresses an eye-roll.

‘I’ll get Vic to make up the spare bed,’ she tells Jackie.

‘God, he’s so great,’ says Jackie. ‘How did you manage to find him?’

Her phone rings again.

I’m a lousy wife. He’s really hacked off with me and I don’t blame him. Oh God, I can’t wait for this evening to be over.
What the hell made me behave so stupidly? I don’t suppose I was even legal to drive when I got into the car this afternoon.

Kirsty uses the cover of being in the kitchen to down a pint of water and slam three ibuprofen down with it. She feels like
she’s been turned inside out, and her guilty conscience makes it worse. It’s like a frenzy, she thinks. Not the drink in itself,
but the company of journalists. You can’t have a dozen hacks spend an evening together without everyone getting so blotto
they can barely stand up; it’s never happened.

She drains the glass and refills it. Opens the fridge and gets out the gravadlax, the bags of salad. The sort of food they’ve
not been allowing themselves for months. But exigency has driven her through the aisles of Waitrose like a WAG with a Man
U pay cheque. The whole family will be living on beans and rice for the rest of the week to pay for this dinner, but none
of the people in the dining room is going to know that. Nothing breeds success like success, and if Jim’s going to get a job,
they must persuade these money people that he doesn’t need one. The good side plates are laid out on the countertop, checked
for chips, and all she needs to do is fill them, decoratively, while their guests drink Sophie’s shoe fund in Sémillon-Chardonnay.

She feels an urge to vomit and swallows it down. Flaming
shooters. At your age. At
any
age. What on earth possessed you?

Because it was fun. Because I love the company of journalists. Because I love their casual, competitive intelligence, their
ranty partisan opinions, the way they compete to reduce everything on earth to a five-word headline, their cynical search
for the perfect pejorative. Because I’m tired of being good, and I’m tired of being patient, because I’ve been living it small
for months now and I just needed to kick over the traces, and because I got caught early for my round in the White Horse and
wanted to get my money’s worth back. Because you can’t describe what a town where people come to go on benders is like unless
you’ve gone on one there yourself. Because, despite the heartless carapace we all carry around with us, spending a day digging
up the detail on the deaths of five young girls is depressing enough to drive anyone to the bottle. And because I just bloody
forgot about this dinner party.

The door bangs back and Jim enters, the sociable-host smile dropping from his face as he crosses the threshold. He lets the
door swing to before he speaks. ‘Fuck’s sake, Kirsty,’ he mutters. ‘What’ve you been doing?’

Her skin feels raw under the thick layer of make-up she’s slathered on to hide her pallor. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Had to take
a painkiller.’

Jim’s jaw is set like concrete as he snatches up the salad bags. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it. You open the salmon.’

He turns his back and rips open the packets. Pea-shoots, watercress and rocket, the TV-chef dream combo. A small earthenware
jug of dressing he made this afternoon waits by the salad bowl. He dumps the leaves in, sloshes on the dressing and starts
tossing. Miserably, Kirsty finds the kitchen scissors and begins cutting open the salmon. Her hands are shaking, visibly.

‘Sorry, Jim,’ she says for the eighteenth time, laying the slices of fish as neatly as she can on to the plates. ‘I’m really
sorry. I didn’t mean to.’

He’s so angry he can’t even look at her as he dishes the salad out next to the fish. ‘I really don’t think sorry’s good enough
right now. You
knew
how important tonight was. You’re just …
selfish
. I can’t think of another word for it. Just bloody
selfish
.’

‘Yes,’ she says, penitently. ‘I know. It was. I am. And I’m really, really sorry.’

Miserably, she cuts open a sachet of the mustard sauce that came in the packet. Squeezes it over a portion of fish.

‘
NO!
’ He grabs her wrist and his cry is loud enough to be heard through the door. The murmur of voices dies down for a moment.
Someone giggles.

‘What?’

‘Don’t use the
packet
stuff, you idiot. I made some.’ He flourishes a beaker of identical yellow glop that’s been sitting by the sink.

‘Oh shit, sorry.’

He shakes his head again, suppressing his rage with difficulty. ‘Look, just get out of the way. I’ll do it. I can’t believe
you’d do this to me. These are people who eat in restaurants all the time. Like they’re not going to notice the sauce came
out of a packet.’

‘Sorry,’ says her autopilot. She feels so wretched she’s amazed she’s still on her feet. All she wants to do is curl up in
front of the telly and doze until bedtime. I will never drink again, she thinks, for the 763rd time in her life.