She was looking upon Robin with respect and interest now.
“See, you’ll have been a worker, not an employee. That’s how the bastards get away with it.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Fewer statutory rights,” said Flick. “You might have a case against them if they deducted from your wages, though.”
“Dunno if I could prove that,” said Robin. “How come you know all this?”
“I’m pretty active in the labor movement,” said Flick, with a shrug. She hesitated, “And my mother’s an employment lawyer.”
“Yeah?” said Robin, allowing herself to sound politely surprised.
“Yeah,” said Flick, picking her nails, “but we don’t get on. I don’t see any of my family, actually. They don’t like my partner. Or my politics.”
She smoothed out the Hezbollah T-shirt and showed Robin.
“What, are they Tories?” asked Robin.
“Might as well be,” said Flick. “They loved bloody Blair.”
Robin felt her phone vibrate in the pocket of her second-hand dress.
“Is there a bog anywhere here?”
“Through here,” said Flick, pointing to a well-hidden purple painted door with more racks of jewelry nailed to it.
Beyond the purple door Robin found a small cubbyhole with a cracked, dirty window. A safe sat beside a dilapidated kitchen unit with a kettle, a couple of cleaning products and a stiff J-cloth on top. There was no room to sit down and barely room to stand, because a grubby toilet had been plumbed into the corner.
Robin shut herself inside the chipboard cubicle, put down the toilet lid and sat down to read the lengthy text that Barclay had just sent to both her and Strike.
Billy’s been found. He was picked up off street 2 weeks ago. Psychotic episode, sectioned, hospital in north London, don’t know which yet. Wouldn’t tell docs his next of kin till yesterday. Social worker contacted Jimmy this morning. Jimmy wants me to go with him to persuade Billy to discharge himself. Scared what Billy’s going to tell the doctors, says he talks too much. Also, Jimmy’s lost bit of paper with Billy’s name on & he’s shitting himself about it. Asked me if I’d seen it. He says it’s handwritten, no other details, I don’t know why so important. Jimmy thinks Flick’s nicked it. Things bad between them again.
As Robin was reading this for a second time, a response came in from Strike.
Barclay: find out visiting arrangements at the hospital, I want to see Billy. Robin: try and search Flick’s bag.
Thanks, Robin texted back, exasperated. I’d never have thought of that on my own.
She got up, flushed the toilet and returned to the shop, where a gang of black-clad goths were picking over the stock like drooping crows. As she sidled past Flick, Robin saw that her messenger bag was sitting on a shelf beneath the counter. When the group had finally left in possession of essential oils and black candles, Flick took out her phone to check it again, before sinking once more into a morose silence.
Robin’s experience in many temporary offices had taught her that little bonded women more than discovering that they were not alone in their particular man-related miseries. Taking out her own phone, she saw a further text from Strike:
That’s why I get paid the big money. Brains.
Amused against her will, Robin suppressed a grin and said:
“He must think I’m fooking stupid.”
“Wassup?”
“Boyfriend. So-called,” said Robin, ramming her phone back into her pocket. “S’posed to be separated from his wife. Guess where he was last night? Mate of mine saw him leaving hers this morning.” She exhaled loudly and slumped down on the counter.
“Yeah, my boyfriend likes old women and all,” said Flick, picking at her nails. Robin, who had not forgotten that Jimmy had been married to a woman thirteen years his senior, hoped for more confidences, but before she could ask more, another group of young women entered, chattering in a language that Robin did not recognize, though she thought it sounded Eastern European. They clustered around the basket of supposed charms.
“Dzi?kuj? ci,” Flick said, as one of them handed over her money, and the girls laughed and complimented her on her accent.
“What did you just say?” asked Robin, as the party left. “Was that Russian?”
“Polish. Learned a bit from my parents’ cleaner.” Flick hurried on, as though she had given something away, “Yeah, I always got on better with the cleaners than I did with my parents, actually, you can’t call yourself a socialist and have a cleaner, can you? Nobody should be allowed to live in a house too big for them, we should have forcible repossessions, redistribution of land and housing to the people who need it.”
“Too right,” said Robin enthusiastically, and Flick seemed reassured to be forgiven her professional parents by Bobbi Cunliffe, daughter of a dead ex-miner and Yorkshire trade unionist.
“Want a tea?” she offered.
“Aye, that’d be great,” said Robin.
“Have you heard of the Real Socialist Party?” asked Flick, once she had come back into the shop with two mugs.
“No,” said Robin.
“It’s not your normal political party,” Flick assured her. “We’re more like a proper community-based campaign, like, back to the Jarrow marchers, that kind of thing, the real spirit of Labor movement, not an imperialist Tory-lite shower of shite like fucking ‘New Labor.’ We don’t want to play the same old politics game, we want to change the rules of the game in favor of ordinary working—”
Billy Bragg’s version of the “Internationale” rang out. As Flick reached into her bag, Robin realized that this was Flick’s ringtone. Reading the caller’s name, Flick became tense.
“You be all right on your own for a bit?”
“Course,” said Robin.
Flick slid into the back room. As the door swung shut Robin heard her say: “What’s going on? Have you seen him?”
As soon as the door was securely shut, Robin hurried to where Flick had been standing, crouched down and slid her hand under the leather flap of the messenger bag. The interior resembled the depths of a bin. Her fingers groped through sundry bits of crumpled paper, sweet wrappers, a sticky lump of something Robin thought might be chewed gum, various lid-less pens and tubes of makeup, a tin with a picture of Che Guevara on it, a pack of rolling tobacco that had leaked over the rest of the contents, some Rizlas, some spare tampons and a small, twisted ball of fabric that Robin was afraid might be a pair of worn pants. Trying to flatten out, read and then re-crumple each piece of paper was time-consuming. Most seemed to be abandoned drafts of articles. Then, through the door behind her, she heard Flick say loudly: “Strike? What the hell…”
Robin froze, listening.
“… paranoid… it alone now… tell them he’s…”
“Excuse me,” said a woman peering over the counter. Robin jumped up. The portly, gray-haired customer in a tie-dyed T-shirt pointed up at the shelf on the wall, “could I see that rather special athame?”
“Which?” asked Robin, confused.
“The athame. The ceremonial dagger,” said the elderly woman, pointing.
Flick’s voice rose and fell in the room behind Robin.
“… it, didn’t you?… member you… pay me back… Chiswell’s money…”
“Mmm,” said the customer, weighing the knife carefully in her hand, “have you anything larger?”
“You had it, not me!” said Flick loudly, from behind the door.
“Um,” said Robin, squinting up at the shelf, “I think this is all we’ve got. That one might be a bit bigger…”
She stood on tiptoe to reach the longer knife, as Flick said: “Fuck off, Jimmy!”
“There you are,” said Robin, handing over the seven-inch dagger.
With a clatter of falling necklaces, the door behind Robin flew open, hitting her in the back.
“Sorry,” said Flick, seizing her bag and shoving the phone back inside it, breathing hard, her eyes bright.