The Wicked Girls (36 page)

‘Oh, hi,’ she croaks, self-conscious and afraid of letting out too much information. ‘Is she there?’

‘Can I ask who is calling, please?’ asks the woman.

‘Um …’ She is momentarily flummoxed. Will she remember my now-name? Which should I use? ‘Kirsty Lindsay,’ she says eventually.

‘Kirsty Lindsay,’ repeats the woman, and pauses. Then: ‘And what is it about?’

‘I – I just wanted to see if she was OK,’ she says, half honestly.

‘Yes, she’s fine,’ says the woman. ‘Would you like me to take a message?’

‘I – can’t I speak to her?’

‘No,’ says the woman. ‘I’m sorry, but she can’t come to the phone at the moment. If you would like to leave a message, I will
…’

A rustle, then the sound of the handset changing ears. Amber’s voice, unfriendly, defensive. ‘What? I suppose you thought
you’d be able to get a story?’

‘No!’ she protests. ‘No, Amber! I—’

‘I saw you, you know,’ says Amber. ‘Outside the police station. Out there with your
buddies
.’

‘I was … yes. It’s my job. I wasn’t exactly expecting it to be you who turned up.’

‘Some job. Nice. So now what? I suppose you want an
exclusive
?’ The emphasis of the word is sarcastic, resentful, the cynicism acidic.

‘I … no. Of course not. I’m gone. I’ve packed up and come home. I went the moment I saw you.’

‘Good. Hooray. Bully for you.’

‘I’m sorry, Bel.’ She uses the name unthinkingly as she tries to back away from the conversation. ‘This was a mistake. I thought
maybe I could … I don’t know …’

‘Fuck off,’ says Amber. ‘I’ve got enough of your kind camped outside my door right now to last a bloody lifetime. Christ,
Jade. What on earth made you think it would be
nice
to be a journalist?’

‘I …’ says Kirsty, shocked back to her senses by the careless use of her old name, ‘I’m not being a journalist right now,
Amber. I’m not calling as a journalist, I’m calling as a—’

The voice cuts across her, full of contempt. ‘As a friend? Was that what you were going to say? A friend?’

‘Y-yes.’ She feels small, contemptible.

A sound of derision. ‘Do me a favour,’ says Amber. ‘We’re not friends. We only knew each other for one solitary day, you silly
bitch. One day. And see where that got me.’

1.45 p.m.

The shop is closed, the roller-blinds pulled down. It’s Wednes day, so it’s early closing
.

Chloe starts up a childish wail when she realises that she’s getting no sweets, no drink, and rubs at her eyes as though they
are full of smoke
.

‘Shhh,’ says Bel. The sound sets her teeth on edge, for it’s the same tone with which her sister Miranda attracts attention
– attention that usually, one way or another, results in Bel being punished
.

‘There’s no point in doing that,’ says Jade, more pragmatically. ‘It’s not going to make any difference, is it?’

‘Want to go home,’ wails Chloe. ‘I want my mummy!’

‘Come on,’ says Jade. ‘We’ll take you back to your sister.’

Chloe, as puce as the hood that wraps her head, hangs behind as they silently retrace their steps.

They’ve both sort of known, of course, that Debbie and Darren won’t be there when they return to the bench, but it doesn’t
stop Jade from swearing out loud when she finds it empty. ‘Bloody fucking Norah,’ she shouts. ‘That bloody Darren!’

‘Where’ve they gone?’ asks Bel
.

‘I don’t bloody know, do I?’ snaps Jade
.

Chloe bursts into tears again. ‘Waaaah!’ she bellows. ‘I want my mummy!’

‘Shut up!’ shouts Jade. ‘It’s not my bloody fault, is it?’

‘What are we going to do?’ asks Bel
.

Jade frowns, thinking. ‘Well we can’t leave her here, can we?’

‘I don’t know …’ says Bel. ‘It’s not our fault, is it?’ she repeats hopefully
.

‘Yes, but,’ says Jade, ‘it
will be
our fault, won’t it?’

‘Uh,’ agrees Bel, ‘I suppose it will. Should we ask a grownup?’

Jade imitates her, nastily. She’s hot and hungry and thirsty herself, and doesn’t want to hear any more rubbish. ‘Should we
ask a
grown-up
?’

Bel colours and shuts up. Chloe sits down on the tarmac, feet in front of her like a plastic dolly. ‘We can’t leave her here,’
says Jade decisively. ‘Anybody could come along. You never heard of stranger danger?’

‘Well, what do we do with her?’

‘Take her home, I suppose,’ says Jade
.

‘D’you know where she lives?’

‘Yeah,’ says Jade. ‘Down Bourne End.’

‘But that’s the other end of the village!’

‘Have you got any better suggestions?’

Bel is silent. Of course she hasn’t. She just wishes she’d not got mixed up in this in the first place
.

Jade crouches by the crying child and tries to look into her face. ‘Come on, Chloe,’ she says. ‘Up you get.’

Chloe just cries louder; adds a slap to Jade’s face to punctuate her howls. ‘OW!’ shouts Jade. Loses her temper and starts
to drag at the kid’s arms. ‘We’re bloody taking you home, you little cow! Come on! Get bloody UP! Come on, Bel. Help me, will
you?’

Between the two of them, they get Chloe to her feet. She dangles between them by her armpits, but refuses to put the soles
of her shoes on the ground. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ says Jade
.

They drag her along the road. The sun beats down, and even though there are two of them, she’s made a dead weight of herself
and seems to weigh as much as a small bullock. The three hundred yards to the gates of the school take ten minutes to cover,
and all three, by the time they get there, are wringing with sweat
.

‘Come on, you selfish little cow,’ pants Jade. Her heart is
pounding and she feels like steam is about to burst from her eyeballs
.

‘Leave me alone!’ screams Chloe. ‘Put me down.’

Jade loses her temper. Hurls the child on to the ground and shouts: ‘Bugger it! All right, I bloody well will then!’

‘Help!’ shouts Chloe. ‘Help!’

A voice, behind them. ‘What are you doing?’

The two girls look up, surprised to find themselves in any sort of company. The Good Woman of the Flower Committee stands
there, holding her basket, hand on the door handle of a turquoise Toyota. ‘None of your business,’ says Jade
.

‘It certainly
is
my business,’ says the woman, ‘when I see two big girls like you bullying a child like that. I’ve a good mind to take you
straight down to your mother,’ she says to Bel
.

‘Can’t,’ pants Bel. ‘She’s not there.’

‘We’re taking her home, not bullying her,’ says Jade, ‘Mrs Nosy-Parker.’ Then has a flash of inspiration. ‘Don’t you recognise
her sister?’ she asks. She knows that Bel’s half-sister is close to Chloe’s age; and the furious beetroot face, half-hidden
by the hood, is unrecognisable really. ‘She’s having a tantrum, ’cause the shop was shut.’

The woman looks doubtful
.

‘She’s not my sister!’ bawls Chloe
.

‘Half
-sister,’ says Bel, picking up the theme and riffing on it. ‘Everybody knows that.’

‘Get off me!’

Jade turns away from the woman and glares at Chloe. ‘Well, bloody walk then,’ she snaps. ‘Then we won’t have to carry you,
will we?’

‘And why don’t you have a grown-up with you?’ asks Mrs Nosy-Parker
.

‘We do,’ says Bel. ‘Romina’s at the garage. She’ll be along in a minute.’

‘What’s she done to her knees?’ says the woman
.

Both girls look down, surprised. Somewhere along the way
,
Chloe’s knees have dangled along the roadway. They are a mess of oil and blood and grass stains. ‘She’s bleeding, look,’ says
the woman
.

The girls shrug and start to bat at the cuts, as though they’ll just brush off if they use enough force. Chloe shrieks and
bats back with clenched fists
.

Mrs Nosy-Parker checks her watch. ‘I’m meant to be over at Great Barrow in five minutes,’ she says
.

‘It’s OK,’ says Bel. ‘We’ll get her home.’

‘And clean her up,’ adds Jade. ‘She’s just having a tantrum.’

‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ says Mrs Nosy-Parker. Checks her watch again and decides to settle for a lecture. ‘You can’t treat
smaller people like this,’ she says. ‘I don’t care who’s dragged you up, Jade Walker. Even
you
know better than that.’

‘Yes, Mrs Tonge,’ says Jade
.

‘I’m going to ring your mother tonight and tell her what you’ve been up to,’ she tells Bel. ‘It’s disgraceful. I suppose I
wouldn’t expect anything else from a Walker, but you ought to know better.’

‘No, Mrs Tonge,’ says Bel. The woman’s eyes flick suspiciously over to her, but she’s fixed a look of unctuous respect on
her face. Tilts her head to one side like Shirley Temple
.

‘Right,’ she says, opening the car door. ‘Well. Personally, I think the pair of you would benefit from a good spanking, but
there you go.’

She slams the door, starts the engine and winds down the window. ‘And get some Dettol on those cuts,’ she orders. ‘They’ll
go septic. Honestly. You should be taking care of your little sister, not treating her like a doll or something.’

She puts the car into gear and drives away. The three girls – two standing, one glowering on the verge between them – watch
her leave, silently
.

‘Three bags full, Mrs Tonge,’ says Jade. She aims a sly kick at Chloe’s thigh. ‘That’s for getting us into trouble. Come on.
Get up. Any more noise from you and we’ll just leave you here.’

Everyone who still reads a newspaper has their ritual for doing so: the place and time and posture they reserve for only this
activity. Lunch hours, commutes, those snatched moments when the baby’s gone down for her nap; a ritual more personal than
anything the television can offer. On a normal day, Kirsty and Stan and their peers skim them all online while the kettle’s
boiling and the twenty-four-hour news channels play in the background. While they wait for conference to be over and commissions
to come in, they fish through the Reuters and AP news feeds to give them a chance to get ahead of the game; then, mostly,
they settle down with their favourite read, though they’d all pretend to the outside world that their favourite read is the
paper that mainly employs them.

Martin Bagshawe usually does his reading at the library, but today he buys a bottle of chocolate milk, a Scotch egg, some
cheese-and-onion crisps and a copy of the
Sun
, and reads it while he waits for Kirsty Lindsay to show her face so he can tell which of the five houses he’s looking at
is hers. He’s rented a white van with his emergency credit card and bought navy-blue overalls from Millets, because no one
ever, in his experience, questions someone in overalls snoozing in a van. He has no idea how long he’s going to be waiting;
he just hopes he can spin out the sudoku.

*

Deborah Prentiss works the early shift at Asda, and reads the paper at two o’clock when she gets home, before she scoots through
the housework and goes to pick the kids up from school. She has the same ritual every day: comes in, puts the kettle on and
goes upstairs to change out of her hated polyester uniform. Deb takes pride in her appearance; always has, since she was a
teenager. She never stays in that uniform for a moment longer than she has to. She reapplies her make-up, brushes out the
hair that’s been squashed by the net hat she has to wear in the bakery and, once she’s in a skirt and a decent jumper, comes
down and makes a pot of tea. Then she sits at the kitchen table and takes a precious half-hour out to scan the
Mirror
for scandal and disaster. Despite having been the subject of tabloid speculation herself in her time, she loves it; loves
the window on a grim and ugly world from her nice quiet house, and believes every word. She calls it her ‘me-time’.

Millions of people, same blank expression. Soaking up the words and believing that, having done so, they are In the Know.
Kirsty, still digesting her phone conversation, catches sight of herself in the mantelpiece mirror and observes that her own
face betrays none of the emotions she feels. I’ve done what I can, she thinks. I’m mad to have even involved myself this far.
I need to get a grip and call Features before all the assignments have been handed out for the rest of the week. I need to
forget about Amber Gordon. It’s the past. She needs to mean nothing to me now.

Martin finds Jackie spread across the centre pages and feels his upper lip curl as he reads her account of herself. He winds
the window down and spits on to the tarmac. The road is empty, not a sign of activity behind the neat suburban nets, but the
self-employed don’t keep the same hours as the rest of the world. Kirsty Lindsay could come – or go – at any time, and he’ll
be here to see it when she does.

Jackie looks old and slutty beneath the make-up. He finds it
hard to believe that this woman can ever have excited such intense emotion in him; he feels nothing now, other than a faint
contempt and an amused interest in what she has to say. He doesn’t want her back now, and as he reads and sees what a weak
woman she is, how easily influenced, he wants her even less – but it feels good to have his suspicions confirmed. He wasn’t
dumped because of himself, he was dumped because of other people. The story of his life. He’s been tripped up and blocked
all his life, and Amber Gordon is just one in a long line of teachers, officials, bosses and so-called ‘friends’ who’ve stopped
him ever, ever catching a break. And now this Kirsty Lindsay, accusing him of something he never did, on the smug assumption
that her position would protect her. And all along she’s clearly been protecting Vic Cantrell, which means she’s been protecting
Amber Gordon too. In collusion with him. In his opinion, she’s as guilty of his crimes as if she’d done them herself.