Renée stays stony-faced while Parnell taps his palms on the table – a chirpy move, almost like a drum roll. ‘So all good things come to an end, as they say. How long were you and Maryanne involved?’
She answers instantly, like it’s just yesterday. ‘Maryanne took off for Brighton early 2001 – she was always going on about wanting to live by the sea. I kept going for a bit but it was too much for just one person. I started making mistakes at the clinic, being too obvious, I suppose. Anyway, I got fired when they caught me with clients details on my phone.’
‘The Mackies must have been angry at Maryanne for leaving?’
‘Yeah, but not as much as I thought. I think Mackie was wanting to wind things down anyway. Bigger fish to fry, easier scams to run. And I reckon Gina’d lost interest – don’t know if she ever had any interest, to be fair – she was just following Daddy’s orders. She was like a robot.’
‘So is that what happened with Maryanne?’ There’s a taunt in Renée’s tone, I wonder how Saskia will take it. ‘She lost interest in earning lots of money for eating picnics and watching Sky TV?’
Saskia blinks slowly, doesn’t react. ‘She lost faith in what she was doing.’
‘Faith?’ echoes Parnell.
‘Yes, faith. Look, I’ll hold my hands up, I did it for the money, pure and simple, but Maryanne – now I’m not saying she wasn’t a greedy cow, ’cos she was – but she did genuinely think we were doing a good thing. Giving someone a good option. I used to take the piss out of her, laugh at her fairy godmother act, but to be fair she’d been through it, not me. She knew what a lifeline it had been.’
‘Sure, sure,’ says Parnell, nodding quickly. ‘So what changed? Why’d she lose faith?’
She stares at the table, bites her lip. Blood pools at the centre again but she doesn’t seem to notice. ‘Something happened, late 2000, coming up to Christmas. There was this girl, her name was Kristen. Nice girl, but she kept chopping and changing her mind throughout the pregnancy, she was high-maintenance, a pain in the arse, really. Maryanne was always having to talk her around – I left that side to Maryanne – like I say, she’d been through it, not me. Anyway, after Kristen gave birth, that was it, she was keeping her baby and that was the end of it. It was the first time it’d actually happened. Maryanne was shitting herself, expecting Gina to go mental .?.?.’
‘And she didn’t?’ asks Parnell
Her face sours. ‘No, because she just walked into the flat and took it anyway. Literally just lifted the baby out of the Moses basket with Kristen sitting there screaming.’
Every hard edge I’ve tried to cling on to begins to dissipate, liquefy.
Renée adjusts her ponytail – beats punching the table, I guess. ‘Surely this Kristen went to the police then?’
Saskia looks from the table to the floor and her voice becomes a mumble. ‘No way, she wouldn’t dare. We had their contact details from the clinic, remember? She told Kristen in no uncertain terms, “We know where you live, where your family lives.” I mean, that was always sort of implied once a girl had given birth and she was getting ready to leave the flat, just to keep her in line, you know, but it was the first time I’d heard it said so blatantly.’
‘What did you take it to mean?’ says Renée.
Saskia throws Renée a ‘you-work-it-out’ stare.
‘That they’d harm her family if she said anything?’ offers Parnell.
Saskia shrugs. ‘I don’t know that for sure. Harm her family, make trouble for her family, I dunno? I just know you wouldn’t want to risk finding out.’
‘And this got to Maryanne?’ asks Parnell. ‘Didn’t fit with her fairy godmother image?’
She nods, keeps her gaze on the floor. ‘It gets worse. Gina, after she’d effectively threatened Kristen, says it’s our job to bring her back into line, make her realise it’s all for the best. So she gives us ￡500 to go up to Oxford Street and buy her some treats. Fucking treats. Few hours later, we walk back into the flat, Kristen’s slit her wrists in the bath and we’re standing there with fucking Topshop bags.’ The memory pales her. ‘I was gutted but seriously, Maryanne was inconsolable. I watched her for weeks afterwards. I was worried she’d slit her wrists too, the way she was moping around. But she didn’t, she just took off. Didn’t even say bye, just left a two-line note. “Gone to Brighton, Have a nice life,” pretty much. It hurt, you know? We’d been through a lot.’
‘Was Kristen dead?’ says Parnell – his tone light, his body language relaxed.
Minimise the crime, keep them talking – ‘Interrogation for Dummies: Intermediate level’.
‘No. She was in a really bad way but she had a pulse.’
‘Did you call an ambulance?’ asks Renée.
‘We called Gina.’ Saskia goes from pale to a deep blush – an appreciation of how piss-poor that sounds, at least. ‘Some guy was there within minutes. Gavin something. Like I say, I don’t remember names. He told me and Maryanne to get out.’
‘Do you know what happened to Kristen? Did she live?’
‘I don’t know. Neither of us could face asking.’ She looks away, loses herself in the oppressive grey walls. ‘Jesus, she was so young.’
‘So were you.’ Renée’s tone stays cool but there’s compassion in the statement. Saskia’s eyes well up. ‘You must have thought of taking off too?’ adds Renée, back to business. ‘What kept you there? What’s kept you there this whole time?’
‘I did, at first, but then I was flavour of the month, you see. The one who stuck around. So once the baby thing wound down, Gina said I could stay on for a bit while I found my feet. All I had to do was “entertain” Patrick Mackie’s friends now and again, turn a blind eye to whatever business they were doing. It was all right for a while, but then one of Mackie’s crew got me into drugs big-style and soon I wasn’t just entertaining the odd villain, I was turning tricks full-time. Earning my keep, they told me. And then they moved other girls into the flat. I recognised one of them – she’d been with us about a year before, one of the girls who’d sold her baby. She’d been this real A-grade student, I remember her telling us she had a place lined up at uni for the following year, she wanted to be an architect. God, by the time she turned up back at the flat, she had a coke habit and two black eyes and I doubt she’d have been able to spell architect.’ Her eyes flick between Renée and Parnell. ‘Me and Maryanne didn’t know this, I swear, but Mackie’s crew were grabbing the most vulnerable ones when they left the flat, the ones feeling a bit down, hormones all over the place, you know? They’d offer them drugs, get them hooked and well, you know where that leads .?.?.’
‘Are you still using now?’ asks Parnell.
I know what he’s thinking. ‘If you are, you look well on it.’
‘No, I got clean six years ago. Hardly even drink now. But I keep doing what I do because the money’s good and in another few years I’ll have saved enough to start again somewhere. Far away from here. New Zealand, maybe.’
HMP Bronzefield? HMP Downview?
‘And you pay what to who?’ asks Renée.
‘Forty per cent of my earnings to Gina. More than if I worked for an agency, but I get the run of the flat too. I get to choose who I work with these days.’
Renée raises an eyebrow. ‘So Gina Hicks isn’t your landlady, she’s your pimp?’
A nervous dry laugh. ‘I suppose so. I’d like to be a fly on a wall when you put that to her though. Gina likes to think of it as “rent”. She went all up-herself years ago. I think ever since her old man fled the country, she’s tried to live a semi straight-ish life – as much as you can when all your wealth’s come from misery – so she doesn’t like to think of it as taking a prostitute’s earnings.’