The Shadows in the Street (9 page)

‘No. I didn’t know. I’m stupid, aren’t I?’

‘Of course not. You wouldn’t necessarily realise they were prostitutes. The red-light area is mainly out beyond the canal bridge and the Old Ribbon Factory. I see them if I’m coming back late from the hospice.’

‘Dear God! I had absolutely no idea.’

‘It’s nothing new here. Don’t kid yourself that there is a city in this country without its prostitutes and its drugs. The girls being trafficked from Eastern Europe have made it a lot worse – especially in Bevham. I think Stephen Webber is right actually – the cathedral is in the heart of the city, the centre of the community, we should be trying to do something. I’m just not sure what. But I’ll be at the meeting.’

Ilona stared at her salad. ‘Now I feel ashamed of myself,’ she said. ‘So let’s talk about you. How’s the beautiful Sam?’

‘Not sure,’ Cat said. ‘He’s got an away hockey match today and is staying with one of his friends which will cheer him up.’

‘Does he need cheering up?’

‘I honestly don’t know, Ilona. I don’t know what Sam needs. He’s an oyster, closed up tight. He’s getting more and more like Simon.’ Even as she said it, Cat realised how true that was. ‘I sometimes wonder if they both intend to stay closed to the rest of us forever.’

Thirteen

The Reachout van was parked under the street lamp near the factory gates and already people were queuing at the counter. It had turned cold suddenly, the side streets like funnels for the wind to tear down. Abi had thought twice about coming out, but Hayley had arrived early, it was her turn, and besides, if she wimped out every time there was a breeze how was she going to do as she’d promised herself and make enough money to quit for good? She’d been busy. The punters were out in force, God knew why – there was never much of a pattern to it, except that it was busier on Saturday nights and at the end of the month when people had been paid, and dead when it was raining.

She saw the Reachout van as she got out of the car and headed for it, needing the brightness and the hot drink, but more, needing people, normal people who didn’t want anything from her except to give her another leaflet about their church. She had a load of the leaflets. She never liked to refuse or to dump them in the litter bins, though sometimes for a laugh she’d leave one behind in a punter’s car.

She knew both people on tonight and the one serving the soup winked at her as she got in the queue. They towed a caravan where you could go and sit, and which had a needle exchange, a lot of posters round the walls and another load of leaflets. Unless the weather was very rough most people sat outside, at the metal table and chairs, or on the bollards by the factory gates.

‘Hi,’ someone said behind her.

She was small and pasty and was wearing a weird lime-green nylon jacket. Abi had never seen her before, but there were always new ones. Usually new ones came for a night or two, maybe a few weeks, then went again.

‘Hi.’

‘Is it free?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What do you get?’

‘What you like – tea, chocolate, soup, sarnies. Crisps. You just ask. They have bananas and apples and stuff like that as well.’

‘Like a proper café then.’ She lit a cigarette, threw away the match. ‘Sorry, only it’s my last.’

‘You’re all right, I don’t smoke.’

‘Right.’

Her nails were bitten down but she’d painted them black, as if that helped. Her eyeshadow matched the nylon jacket.

Abi asked for a hot chocolate and a Wagon Wheel, which she wouldn’t eat, but put in her pocket for Frankie later.

‘You from round here?’

Abi pretended not to hear.

‘How are you tonight?’ Darren said, winking again. ‘We’re having a big open-air rally – music and that. Sunday week. The old aerodrome. Can I give you a leaflet?’

‘Yeah, right, thanks.’

‘You’d be really welcome, Abi.’

‘Right. Thanks.’

‘Anything else I can get you? Got some nice satsumas. You should eat more fruit.’

‘I know, only I hate fruit. Thanks anyway.’

‘Cheers, Abi, God bless, you take care now.’

She walked over to the bollards. The other girl followed.

‘What’s it like here?’ She relit the end of her cigarette. ‘Punters. You get many?’

Abi shrugged.

‘Don’t seem too bad. Don’t seem many working this way either.’

‘Depends, doesn’t it?’

‘Only asked.’ She half turned away and pulled at her cigarette to get it going.

Abi felt guilty. It was the bloody leaflet. Whenever she took one, she started to feel guilty about something. At least when Loopy Les came round with his little packets of sandwiches he didn’t hand out Jesus leaflets.

‘Four or five regulars,’ she said at last. ‘A few others, only they come and go. We look out for each other.’

‘Get much work?’

‘Enough.’

‘No good in Bevham any more, I tell you.’

‘Right.’

‘Used to be steady, you know, and the same girls. Coppers knew us, punters knew us, no trouble. Then all of a sudden they turned up – Eastern Europe they come from, got pimps, everything. They dumped them on a corner, maybe a dozen or fifteen at a time, it was ridiculous. And I tell you what, at least half of them was kids – thirteen, fourteen? Bloody disgrace.’

‘They got raided, last I heard.’

‘Right. Dawn raid, yeah, rounded up a load of them, cleared a couple of houses. Illegals. They just brought more in. There’s hundreds of them all over the country, they move them around.’ She ground out the cigarette end under the heel of her boot. ‘Bloody disgrace. Anyway, someone said it was good over here, nicer sort of place. So I thought I’d come. Try it. Came on the bus. Get a lift back. See how it goes.’

‘Right.’ Abi stood up.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Abi.’

‘Hi.’ The girl put out her hand. It seemed weird. But Abi took it. It was cold and small, like a kid’s hand, like Frankie’s. ‘Chantelle.’

‘Hi.’

There were cars going by at the top of the road.

‘You better get right away from the van.’

‘Why?’

‘I dunno. Just better you do. Fan out as well. No point standing together.’

‘There’s, like, plenty of space,’ Chantelle said.

‘Yeah. Maybe some others’ll be out later.’

‘Who?’

‘Kelly, Amy, Marie … there’s loads.’

‘OK.’ Chantelle turned and went down the road, looking hard at every car that passed. ‘See you.’

‘Right. See you later.’ Abi crossed over and headed nearer to the bypass. She knew the best corner to bag and, as she reached it, a Renault Mégane slowed beside her. Vince.

‘All right?’

‘Hi, Vince,’ Abi said, opening the passenger door. She didn’t know if Vince was his real name but it didn’t matter because he thought she was called Bella.

She caught a glimpse of Chantelle, looking towards the Renault as it drove away.

An hour later, she got a text message from Hayley, saying that Frankie had been sick twice and was asking for her. It was worrying that he couldn’t seem to get rid of the bug the way the others had. Maybe she ought to take him to the doctor again. He didn’t look right either, always pale and clammy-feeling, and whiny, when he wasn’t really a whiny kid.

It was a lot colder and she jogged a bit. The Chantelle girl hadn’t reappeared and the Reachout van was packing up.

Abi felt suddenly depressed, fed up with everything. If she’d been a drinker, this was just the sort of time when she’d have got in a few bottles. She could see why people did, and why they got onto crack, why it would be easy, because sometimes you needed to get out of it for an hour, times like now, when she was frozen and on her way home to spend half the night holding a bucket so Frankie could throw up into it. But she knew she was right never to start on anything at all, never go down that road. She had sixty quid in her pocket, another hundred in the tin, and tomorrow that would go into the post office as well. This time next year …

Passing the corner where she sometimes met Marie, Abi remembered that she hadn’t seen her. But Marie’s life was all over the place. She had to sort out her mother and her waste-of-space boyfriend. She sometimes took off altogether for a week at a time.

But as she reached home, she stopped under the street light and found Marie’s number on her mobile.

Hi kid, u right? c u love abi xx.

Fourteen

‘I don’t see how we could possibly go.’

Judith Serrailler got up from the table. She went to the rubbish bin, pulled out the full black bag, tied the top and carried it out, letting the kitchen door bang. It relieved her feelings, though only slightly. It was bitterly cold and the new moon had an edge like a blade. They seemed to have gone from a serene and golden autumn to raw winter in a couple of days. The air smelled frosty.

She lingered by the door, wondering if Cat’s car might swing into the drive, but it was probably too early. When the St Michael’s Singers rehearsal finished she sometimes went to the Golden Cross with the rest of them. Judith had persuaded her that she should go, rather than duck out and race for home, as she had done for so many months after Chris’s death. ‘I can sing,’ she had said. ‘It’s the one thing I have felt like doing – it’s kept me going. I just can’t go and be sociable in the pub.’ But the last couple of Thursday nights she had done just that and said that it had been fine, better than she had expected.

All three children were asleep upstairs, collected from school by Judith. She had suggested to Richard that he might collect Sam but he wouldn’t. He didn’t find his grandchildren any easier than he had found his children, did not unbend or feel able to throw himself into their affairs. He spoke to them, Cat had said once, exactly as he had spoken to her and Simon and Ivo – as if they were his equals in age and understanding. She had hated it, but her own children responded differently, Hannah telling her grandfather that he made her laugh and sometimes talking to him as if he were deaf and simple, Sam becoming solemn in his attempt to match up to Richard’s expectations of him. At least Felix was too young to know, Judith thought now, rubbing her arms in the cold. She was well aware Cat was unhappy that her father still seemed distant and aloof. Richard was not cold, not unbending, she herself knew that, and she thought that she had helped him to be more at ease and happier in his own skin. But he found it hard to let down his guard and perhaps he was too old to change. Tonight he had annoyed her and now she was annoyed with herself as much as with him. She was not by nature a banger of doors, nor a sulker – and what was she doing standing out in the cold if not sulking?

There was no sign of Cat.

The kitchen was empty and there was no sound – Richard had probably gone to bed, but the maps he had spread out were still there.

When he had produced them, she had been interested. Richard’s idea was an extended trip, starting in California. But when it became clear he intended to leave straight after Christmas, she had objected and he had become impatient. Their marriage might have gone some way towards mellowing him – but there was, Judith thought now, still a good deal further to go.

She poured herself a glass of wine, wondering whether she should go and find him and try to make peace, or remain aloof, carry on as if nothing happened, or continue with the argument. When she had been married to Don, this sort of situation had almost never arisen because Don had been the most laid-back, easy-going of men, happy to change plans, ideas, sides, almost anything, not because he was weak or any sort of a pushover but because he had believed conflict was generally self-defeating and few things worth falling out over. To him, argument should be reserved for entirely trivial matters such as whether cushions should be set straight-edged or pointed against a chair back. Richard would take a position on cushions and stick to it, expecting everyone else to see his point of view. ‘Your father has never been gainsaid,’ she had once said to Cat, ‘and it is not good for someone never to be gainsaid.’

She was halfway through
The Times
crossword when Cat came in, humming Handel.

‘All well?’

‘If you mean with the children, all fine, if you mean with your father, so-so.’ She indicated the wine. ‘Medicinal.’

Cat made a face. ‘If it’s any consolation, I’m taking to drink myself.’

‘Bad rehearsal?’

‘Not musically, no, great rehearsal. But for the first time since I have been a worshipper at Michael’s, which is nearly twenty years, the place is riven by faction – I mean serious faction. And it’s not nice. If the Dean isn’t careful he’ll be looking for a new organist and master of choristers. The Precentor is seething, a lot of people in the congregation are so unhappy they’re seriously thinking of going elsewhere –’

‘Dear God, the man’s only been in office a few months.’

‘All it takes to start tearing down what has been built up over centuries.’

‘How? You know if I’m anything it’s Catholic and we do things differently.’

Cat took a long slow drink of wine before replying. ‘Loosely, Stephen Webber is evangelical-charismatic – what my mother would have called Low Church and I call happy-clappy. I dare say it has its place – but that place is not at St Michael’s or any other of our great cathedrals which have a tradition of excellence in liturgy and music. That’s what cathedrals are about – excellence. The best. It shouldn’t mean being out of date and out of touch – times change, so do people. But change is not the same thing as wanton destruction.’

‘You’re rather cross.’

‘I’m very cross. Nothing like as cross as some though – cross and upset.’

‘Did you get my tickets, by the way?’

‘Yes.’ Cat reached for her bag. ‘Two for Saturday, about six rows back … I chose with care.’

‘Thank you, darling – how much do I owe you? And don’t say “oh, nothing”. If I come to your concerts, I pay my way.’

‘Thirty quid then, I’m afraid. Top price.’

‘Fine. Your father borrowed my last cash, I’ll give you a cheque.’

‘Talking of Dad …’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘Ah. Am I to take this seriously?’