The Fall - By Claire McGowan

The Fall - By Chana Keefer


Prologue


Monday

This is it. Her head was strangely clear despite the blood filling up her nose and mouth. An inch from her eye, the floor of the toilet was that kind of speckled plastic you got in public buildings, the dots like islands marooned in a sea of blue. Funny how she’d never looked at it properly before. But yes, that was it – little islands, on a vast blue sea, and every one filled with small people, somewhere a million miles from here. She heard distant sounds, like someone talking far, far away, a voice on a crossed phone line. It was a whimpering, like an animal in pain. It was coming from somewhere inside her.

This is it. She was bleeding from her mouth and she couldn’t get up; something had happened to her legs – they’d given way or they wouldn’t work or . . . something. Maybe she would lie here for ever. Maybe if she just stayed here and closed her eyes she could go back and none of it would have happened.

This is it. Through the roaring in her ears, she had the thought very clearly, as if looking down on herself crumpled up on the floor. This was what it felt like when you hit rock bottom, when you’d lost everything that mattered. Rock bottom, and it smelled of bleach and tasted like the sour, metallic tang of blood.





Part One



Three days earlier – Friday

Keisha

The social-worker woman was really f*cking Keisha off. It was the way she sat there, dull as shit in this awful cardie from BHS or somewhere, and the short grey hair and the glasses on a string, like a granny, for f*ck’s sake. But mostly it was the way she talked, all soft and gentle, like she’d been on a course to deal with f*cking retards.

Keisha slumped down in the plastic seat, squeaking her Dunlop trainers over the floor, and her mum gave her a look. Of course she was nodding along with every word Sandra said, like it was the Lord’s own gospel. Yes, Keisha, you are too unstable to have your own bloody kid living with you, even though you’ve got a flat and a job and a man. What f*cking more did they want?

‘But I don’t get it, right?’ She folded her arms in her new denim jacket – one of his presents, trying to make up for yet another crappy thing he’d done. ‘I did what you said, yeah? I got her room sorted, and her bed, wardrobe, all that shit. In bloody pink ruffles.’

Keisha’s mum glared at her. ‘Language,’ she muttered, her thick voice pure Kingston even after thirty years in England. ‘Manners of a field hand.’

Sandra was staring between them probably thinking she couldn’t get enough of all this juicy unresolved conflict, as she would call it. If she loved it so f*cking much, she should go and work on Trisha or something.

‘The thing is, Keisha,’ Sandra said, setting her pen down carefully. ‘The thing is, we’re still a bit concerned about the relationship you’re in.’

‘He’s her f*cking dad!’

‘Don’t you be effin’ and blindin’ before the lady!’ her mother bellowed. If Keisha had been just a few years younger, Mercy would have belted her round the ear.

‘That’s OK, Mercy,’ said Sandra earnestly. ‘I understand it must be hard for Keisha, when Christopher is, as she says, Ruby’s father. But after what happened, you must see he needs to change. He’s never even come to meet with me, in all this time.’

‘He’s busy.’ She’d begged him to come, much f*cking use it was. Sat at home in his pants and Arsenal top, playing on the Xbox – me time, he called it. While she had to trudge up to this depressing shithole, smelled just like her old school, same echoing corridors, and Sandra talking at her in that you-are-a-loony voice.

Her mum was nodding along again, meaty arms folded over her vast boobs. ‘Good for nothin’, that boy. Only good thing he ever do’s make that baby.’

Keisha slumped further. It wasn’t fair, these two spinster bitches telling her to leave the man she loved – her man. When everyone knew how lucky she was to even be allowed to breathe near Chris Dean. They didn’t understand a thing.

‘OK, Keisha,’ Sandra said, blinking rapidly. ‘We’ll see if Christopher will come next time. Until then my hands are tied, I’m afraid. He has to show he won’t let it happen again, what he did.’

‘He won’t.’ He’d promised her, when she screamed in his face. She’d even slapped him – now, months later, she wasn’t sure how she’d been able to do that, or why he hadn’t slapped her back harder.

‘I’ll let you out.’ Sandra got up, huffing. She wasn’t as fat as Mercy, but she still had rolls of flab jiggling under her chin. Gross.

In the crappy waiting room, all dirty windows and bent plastic seats, Ruby was playing. She had a colouring book and a tatty old Barbie doll Mercy’d bought her in the pound shop. It wasn’t even a real Barbie, just a white plastic doll with blonde hair. Didn’t look much like Ruby, with her kinky hair tied up in bunches. The kid’s big dark eyes were nervous behind her glasses. The cast was off now, thank God. Keisha had hardly been able to look at the thing. She hovered in the doorway, looking at her daughter.

Sandra obviously thought she was good with kids; probably she’d been on a course for that too. She stuck her fat face down to Ruby’s. ‘Hello, precious. Is that your dolly? Isn’t she pretty?’ Ruby ducked her head, and you could see her going in on herself. She was shy, and who could blame her after what her own dad did to her? Ruby looked from the social worker to Keisha. Then she shuffled close to Mercy, clutching hold of her cheap dolly, hiding in against her granny’s fat body.

‘Well, you’re a shy one.’ Sandra laughed but Keisha could see she was hurt. She understood how that was – it’d taken her a while not to expect Ruby to come over and hug her like she used to. She stuck her hands under her arms so she wouldn’t try to hold the kid.

‘Come on, my sweetypie, home time.’ Keisha’s mum folded her granddaughter into her chest, and it was right, Keisha had to admit. You would see the two of them, and even though they were both light-skinned enough, you’d say, oh yeah, black granny, black grandkid. It looked right. That was the problem. That was when everything had started to go wrong.

‘We’ll get sweets, eh? Fruit Pastilles, ice lolly?’ Puffing, Mercy let the girl slide down. Ruby’s face puckered, thinking about what sweets to have, no doubt, and for a moment Keisha wished it was her going home with her mum, the safeness of it, eating sweets in front of Friday cartoons. Or even that she was the one buying, saying to Ruby, You have to brush your teeth after.

She wanted to say something to Ruby. It was the first time she’d seen her in weeks; Chris didn’t like her going to visit. She wanted to say something, but what was there? Nothing. F*ck all. She waited till Mercy and her granddaughter had wobbled far enough down the corridor, and then set off fast in the opposite direction.


Charlotte

‘So, Charlotte – keeping busy? Not long now, eh?’

Charlotte was by now an expert at minimising one computer window while beaming a large smile at her boss and calling up a document on the branding of a new rice-cake snack. ‘A week tomorrow.’

‘So we shouldn’t count on seeing you down the boozer after work?’ He leaned over the partition, so close she was breathing his aftershave.

She managed to look regretful. ‘Oh, sorry, no. We just have so much to do – you know how it is.’

He waved his empty coffee cup. ‘How about I make you a cup of the hard stuff, at least, before you abandon us?’

‘I’ll do it, Simon, you must be swamped,’ she said, as she knew he expected.

Filling the kettle at the tiny sink area, Charlotte sneaked a look at the clock. 4.06 p.m. She would be out of here soon, for an increasingly rare free weekend with Dan. It was a lie that they had plans. For the past month Dan had crashed into bed at nine, worn out from fourteen-hour days, and she’d sat up poring over wedding magazines and stationery designs. It felt like they’d been passing in the corridor for so long. But not tonight. It was going to be a proper romantic evening in, talking, being together. She’d make sure of it.

As she brought him his coffee, Simon was standing over the new girl – what was her name again? Tory, that was it – his crotch pressed into the back of her ergonomic chair as he pointed to something on the screen. Charlotte remembered it – she remembered that part of Simon a bit better than she wished.

‘Coffee,’ she said brightly, passing him the mug he always had to have, the one with the crest of his Oxford college on it, to remind everyone he was an intellectual, even if he wrote copy for cereal ads.

‘Oh, Tory,’ she said. ‘I wanted a quick chat with you, about the Snax rebrand?’ Like every woman in the office, all Charlotte’s statements were questions, rising up at the end. It showed friendliness, a willingness to be contradicted. She didn’t notice she did it any more.

Simon withdrew. ‘You’ve got it now, Tory. I’ll leave you ladies to it.’ He strutted off in his Prada cardigan, drips of coffee catching in his beard.

Tory looked worried. ‘God, it’s a bit dodge, isn’t it? His you-know-what was, like, millimetres from my armpit.’

Charlotte pushed back her curly hair, the colour of very good old gold, and imparted some wisdom. ‘It’s mostly harmless. But listen, if he asks you for a drink, make sure there’s other people there too. Like, seriously.’

The other girl laughed uncertainly and Charlotte felt pleased with herself, how she knew her way round this office, how she could handle Simon like a little lamb, after hard-learned lessons. She’d done it now, and she wouldn’t have to go back and be like this Tory, clueless. ‘It’ll be OK. Don’t worry.’

4.15 p.m. Surreptitiously she opened her table-planning software. Yes, the rebranding of seventy-calorie snack bags was a big deal, and she would definitely buy them herself when they came out, but the wedding was just a week away and her bloody cousin Mary and that drip of a husband of hers still hadn’t RSVPed. Unbelievable! And what about Dan’s rowdy college group, which would include at least one broken-up couple and an ex of his? She pursed her lips, moving little names round the screen, like some very organised goddess.


Keisha

Chris hadn’t believed her at first, when Ruby arrived. ‘She’s f*cking black, that kid,’ he’d said, when the baby was just days old, when you could see her eyes turning all these shades of brown, like stones drowned under water. It was the most gorgeous thing Keisha’d ever seen.

‘I dunno how,’ Keisha had said over and over, her eyes leaking as much as her stupid pregnancy boobs, like a tap she couldn’t turn off. ‘She’s yours. I swear to God, she’s yours.’ Of course the kid was his. There’d been no one else, not since Keisha was twelve and sitting in History and saw him standing in the door with a fag hanging down from that mouth of his. She’d heard it could happen sometimes. And it must have. Only a quarter black in this baby – less, maybe, if Mercy had any white in her – but you could see it in Ruby’s hair, in her nose, in the dark almonds of her eyes. And there was Keisha, nothing like either of them. White, you would say, unless you looked closely.

‘People be sayin’ I stole you,’ Keisha’s mum used to say when they went to mother and toddler group, years ago. But whose fault was that? It was Mercy who’d had it off with some random white guy, got knocked up, and dropped out of her college course. Keisha had spent most of her life wondering about every white guy she saw of the right age; dudes with briefcases and umbrellas, drunks hanging round tube stations. It could be anyone. Mercy had never told her a thing.

Walking away from Sandra’s office in West Hampstead, she decided. She would bring Chris home some nice dinner out of Waitrose, that shiny new Waitrose on Finchley Road, and if he was in a good mood she’d ask him again to help her get their kid back. But when she took out her purse she realised the money from her wages was gone again. ‘You f*cker,’ she said out loud, and set off walking home.


Charlotte

With just a week to go to the wedding, Charlotte’s mother’s phone calls were up to four a day. Did she get the message that Auntie Jan was gluten- and dairy-free now? Had she found out the surname of Cousin Lucy’s new boyfriend? Because you couldn’t just put someone’s first name on the place-tag, imagine. And what if the roses weren’t the right shade of pink? They’d clash with the table linens. And now, right at the checkout in Waitrose on Finchley Road, as Charlotte was struggling with her basket of Friday-night groceries, her phone rang.

‘Mum?’

‘Hello? Hello? Goodness, I can hardly hear you.’ Charlotte’s mother only used the phone if she was seated at her special phone table, the message pad and pen at the ready. She didn’t understand that her daughter might pick up while at work, or in the gym, or crossing a busy road.

‘Hang on, Mum, I’m just paying.’

‘Pardon? Oh, you’re in a shop.’ Gail considered it extremely impolite to be on the telephone whilst being served in a shop.

Charlotte heaped her groceries up, balancing the phone while stacking the olives, the ciabatta, the good bottle of Prosecco.

‘Hello? Hello? I just had another thought, darling – what if someone’s lactose-intolerant?’

She scrabbled for her debit card. ‘What if someone’s what?’

‘The chicken, Charlotte, it’s cooked in cream. Some people don’t eat that. That’s why I wanted to get the salmon. Chicken’s so – well, it’s ordinary, darling, for a wedding.’

Charlotte took a deep breath, as Dan had urged her to do when her mother went off on one. ‘It’s fine. It’s the Mandarin Oriental, Mum. They’ll handle it.’

The girl was waiting for her to pay, and Charlotte heard an impatient sigh behind her from another shopper. She flashed an apologetic smile at the cashier, keyed in her pin, and started dumping the groceries into her eco-friendly cotton bag. ‘Sorry, Mum, can I call you later?’ She hung up with no intention at all of ringing again.

From the Waitrose on Finchley Road it was just two streets to Charlotte and Dan’s flat, the second floor of one of the square, solid Belsize Park townhouses. She fumbled with the keys and shopping, but someone had left the front door ajar again, it was so annoying. She suspected the weird guy from the basement flat.

She bent to pick up the scattered post from the shared hallway – again, no one ever lifted it – flyers, a catalogue from Mothercare (Dan would raise his eyebrows and throw it straight in the recycling), an acceptance card from Tom and Julie. She blanked on the names for a minute, mentally scanning the endless guest list her mother was insisting on. Tom was a friend of Dan’s from Oxford, she thought. Who would RSVP with only a week to go? It was so rude. Dan always shrugged and said, ‘Who cares?’ but he didn’t have a retired mother breathing down his neck every day, and an endless source of worry about everything from bridesmaids’ hair accessories to the ribbon on the favour boxes.

Her phone rang again, as she hefted the shopping up the two flights of stairs to their flat, and she rolled her eyes – Please, not another Mum call.

‘Charlotte, it’s Sarah.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’ She juggled her key into the lock of the flat door.

‘What?’

‘I mean, your name comes up – never mind.’

‘Has Gail spoken to you about this shoe issue?’

‘She called before, but not about shoes. I thought it was sorted.’

‘It’s not sorted! I can’t actually wear the shoes. I’ve told her again and again, my toe’s broken. I can’t wear strappy sandals when I have a splint on.’

Charlotte vaguely remembered her mother saying something about Sarah breaking her toe on a dry-ski slope, but she’d screened it out.

‘I don’t want to get Dad involved, but really, I know she’s your mum and all, but I really think she’s lost it on this one.’

Charlotte was in the flat now, registering with distant surprise that the lights were on and Dan was home already, standing at the window looking out at the view of Parliament Hill. She tried to focus on her step-sister. ‘Well, I don’t know, can you get a different pair in the same colour?’

Sarah laughed bitterly. ‘You’d think so, but no, that would be far too easy.’

Dan hadn’t turned round as she crab-walked into the kitchen with the bags and started putting things in the fridge, all the while struggling with the phone. ‘Look, I’ll talk to Mum. I’m sorry about your toe. Call you tomorrow maybe?’

‘I’m going to Bangladesh for a week, remember?’

Wondering how she could still travel with a broken toe, Charlotte said goodbye and hung up. Her step-sister Sarah, tall and square, a journalist who skied at weekends, hadn’t responded well to being decked out in Charlotte’s mum’s vision of pink frills.

‘Finally,’ she said to Dan, who still hadn’t turned round. ‘I’m switching this phone off.’ She bustled round the kitchen, looking for the nice plates to put the food on. ‘I got us some little tapas-y bits, I thought we both needed a relaxing night . . .’

Finally he spoke. ‘Can you come here?’

‘Just a sec.’

‘Charlotte – come here.’

She had a tub of olives in one hand and one of marinated anchovies in the other. That was what she remembered afterwards. That for just a moment before he told her, choosing between olives and anchovies was the most difficult thing she thought she’d have to do that night.


Keisha

It took Keisha a while to trudge back to her flat, down Finchley Road to the Swiss Cottage junction, under the underpass, to one of the grey concrete blocks overlooking the busy road. She could hear their TV three floors below, the stone stairs echoing with it – he was home, watching The Simpsons on Sky. He could always find the cash to pay for things he wanted.

The flat was cold when she went in, and it smelled greasy, like an empty McDonald’s wrapper, and no surprise there was a heap of them on the coffee table, scarred with tea-rings and fag burns. He never thought to put the heat or lights on, but he was there, in front of the telly with a joint, a two-litre bottle of Coke open at his feet. The kitchen was a tip. It was so bad she didn’t even notice anything was gone for a while, clearing the dirty dishes and takeaway boxes and fag-ends.

Lifting a crushed can of Carlsberg, she stopped. ‘Where’s the microwave?’

‘Eh?’

‘The microwave – it’s gone.’ Was it? She turned round in the cramped space, thinking maybe she was losing it. But it wouldn’t be the first time she came home and something was gone, like the CD player. Or her GHD hair-straighteners. Both easily found by walking down the road to Cash Converters in Kentish Town.

He didn’t even look round when she went in. ‘You hocked it,’ she said.

‘Needed to pay the Sky. Anyway, it’s mine, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, but . . .’

‘But?’ He tapped out his joint into an empty beer can, still not looking up from the TV.

‘What’re we going to eat?’ There were only ready-meals in the freezer. ‘I was gonna go to the shops, but . . .’ She decided not to mention the cash.

‘Who needs to eat? C’mere.’ He jerked his head at her and, encouraged, she sat down and ran her hand over his shaved hair – like rough velvet.

‘Leave off,’ he said, but not nastily.

‘So I saw her,’ she risked. ‘Earlier.’

‘Who?’ He scratched his eyebrow, where the new ring was still red and swollen.

‘You know. Ruby.’

He said nothing, and she lost her nerve. ‘Yeah, she was OK. They said maybe, soon, if everything’s OK, we can have her back.’

He flicked ash delicately, waiting for her to say more. She didn’t. It was the right thing to do. His arm snaked round her and under her jacket, under her T-shirt. His breath in her ear was of ash and sugar. ‘How’s about we head out, babes? If there’s no dinner. You can get those sexy legs out for me.’ He ran a hand over her thighs.

‘Where?’ She was so knackered. After a week on nights, she’d gotten up early to see Sandra. She was so worried about Ruby. The last thing she wanted to do was go out with high heels blistering her feet and R ’n’ B pounding her head.

‘Well, there’s this guy, yeah, and he’s got this club down in Camden, so I thought I’d do, like, a bit of a business visit . . . What? What’s that f*cking look for?’

‘Oh! Nothing.’ What his business was exactly she didn’t ask any more. When Chris got fired from his security job in the recession, he said he wasn’t going crawling to some twat, he’d set up on his own. She wasn’t sure what his work was but it meant going to bars and clubs a lot, never the same one twice, shaking hands with men in cheap suits, ordering bottles of vodka.

His mouth came down on hers, as he threw the spent joint on the table. ‘You and your looks. Drive me mad, them looks.’

She tried one last time, as his hands reached into her jeans. ‘Will you come with me, next time? Maybe?’

‘Maybe.’


Charlotte

Dan said, ‘Did you not even see it? How could you miss it?’ He turned round from the window, still in his crumpled suit, and she saw his face. She should have known something was wrong, because he always took the suit off right away when he came in. It had cost over five grand.

‘Did I see what?’ she said stupidly, still holding the tubs of food in both hands. But when he said it, she knew. She had seen it, yes, on the paper-stand at Waitrose, but flustered and rushed, she hadn’t taken it in. ‘Oh, God. It was your place – your bank.’ HAUSSMANN’S AT THE BRINK. That was where Dan worked. ‘What does it mean? Are you . . . ?’

‘No.’ He collapsed down on the sofa, running his hands through his hair. ‘Not yet. They sent us home. People were walking out with boxes. You know, in case we don’t open next week.’

‘Christ. Is it really that bad?’ She couldn’t take it in.

‘I don’t know.’ He looked shell-shocked. ‘They won’t tell us if there’s a buyer or not. I swear, people were walking round like a bomb went off. I saw one of the partners crying. F*ck. It’s a mess.’

She sat the olives and anchovies on the table and went over to him. ‘But there could be a buyer?’

‘Maybe. There was talk – I don’t know.’ He was staring at the blank eye of the TV, shoulders rigid with shock.

‘But that’s crazy,’ she soothed, rubbing down his hair. ‘They’d hardly let a whole bank go under, come on. All they’ve done is send you home. I’m sure there’s loads of buyers. It’s a good asset, isn’t it?’

He just shook his head. ‘If anyone goes, it’ll be me.’

‘What? You’re one of the best, aren’t you? Dan? Didn’t you make them tons of money last year?’

She looked at him, all the muscles in his solid back stiff, and a jolt of fear went through her. ‘Dan? Oh God. It can’t be true. The wedding – what will we do?’

He let out a long shaky breath. ‘No, you’re probably right. It’ll be OK.’

Relief flooded her. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Course. I’ll look after you.’ His hand scrabbled for hers, the one with the ring, and pressed it to the side of his face. ‘I’ve been going mad. Why’s your phone always busy?’

‘Well.’ She got up to change. ‘That’s because my mother is crazy. Did you know you were marrying into a family of nutters?’

‘Yeah.’ He put on his wedding look, unsure and slightly afraid, as if he didn’t quite know what of.

‘So you can’t lose your job,’ she said, saying the words out loud, to make them true. ‘We’ve got two hundred people coming for dinner next week – we need that bonus!’


Keisha

After they did it on the sofa, Chris had a sort of gleam in his eyes. He slapped her on the arse as she cleaned her teeth. ‘Get your kit on, then.’

He was different from most blokes. He noticed what she wore, bought her things. Could be a cheap print dress from the market, and the colour would bleed out in the wash, or could be brand-new Kurt Geiger shoes, fresh from the box. She didn’t ask questions any more.

‘Put on the purple dress,’ he said, leaning on the doorframe. When they went out like this, aftershave rolling off him, his tie tight to his raw shaved throat, his eyes so cool, so blue – well, she was proud. She always hoped they’d bump into someone she knew, one of those bitches from school who looked down on her for being not white, not black. Look, it’s my fella, she’d want to say. He’s sexy. He’s mine.

‘Wear heels with it.’

‘But I’m too tall! And they’re so sore.’ Keisha was five-ten, and the heels made her taller than him, but he wanted her like those other girls, plucked and tweezed and squished. So long as it wasn’t comfy it would do. Had he always been this way, wanting her squeezed into things, so other men could see? Or was it the gangs, the clubs, the scabby men and tarty women he hung out with? She’d rather wear her jeans and trainers, but she took out the untouched box from the bottom of the wardrobe and limped into the stupid high shoes, like he wanted.


Charlotte

Secretly, Charlotte had always fancied Dan more when he was in a bad mood. His eyes would go flinty, his mouth set firm. When she saw him so shocked, so beaten, she felt the weakness in her, that her world was built all around him like a fragile plant on a trellis, and if he pulled away it would tear her up. Let’s go somewhere, he’d said, rifling through their untouched copy of Time Out, and even though she was so tired and she wanted to watch a DVD, she knew she would say yes, just because of that look on his face.

‘I suppose we could. Is anything on?’

‘What about this? Kingston Town – a Jamaican club. That’d be good, wouldn’t it, get us in the mood for the honeymoon?’

She’d never been anywhere like that in her life. ‘Where is it?’

‘Just down the road. Camden.’

‘Oh.’ She didn’t say it, but Camden on a Friday night . . . Well, Dan would keep her safe if anything happened. ‘Are you sure . . . Do you think we’ll like that sort of thing?’

‘I don’t know. I just want to try something new. Don’t you?’ Restlessly, he got up and came to stand in the bedroom doorway. ‘You should wear that thingy. You know, that lacy thing.’

He didn’t know much about clothes, but liked her to have expensive ones. Charlotte earned enough at the PR company, more than lots of people, she knew that, but it was Dan’s money that had floated them up to this level, like boats in a lock.

‘What thing?’ Charlotte’s French Connection wrap dress puddled on the bedroom floor, and she was glad she’d put on vaguely matching underwear that morning.

He pointed. ‘That one.’

She looked at it doubtfully, a slip dress he had once brought back from Hong Kong for her. She would never normally have worn it, never had before, but her body was winnowed out with the wedding diet – she would be her thinnest when she walked down that aisle if it killed her.

‘I’ve got something for you.’ Dan had something in his hand, a small plastic baggy. ‘Guess what Alex wanted out of his desk in a hurry?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Charlie, Charlotte. It’s Charlie.’ He laughed, sounding not like himself, and she understood what it was, and that he had already taken some.

‘Oh. But you know I’ve never . . .’

‘Come on, sweetheart. I really need something. My head’s f*cked. Everyone there’ll be on something, I bet.’

‘But – is it safe?’ She hesitated as he chopped the powder up on the dresser and held out a tenner. He put up his hand, stroked her face. She was still in her underwear.

‘You’re so sweet, you know that? The only person I know still just saying no. Was it Grange Hill that did it?’

She pushed him gently; so strong, so solid. If she could lean on him, things would be OK. ‘As long as you look after me.’ She bent and inhaled and felt it fizz up her nose. ‘I don’t feel anything. Is it working?’

‘It’ll work. Take some more.’


Keisha

Keisha was pissed off. He’d made her walk all the way down from Swiss Cottage to Camden, too tight to pay two pounds for the bus, so when they got to the club her ankles were red-raw. It was May, but she was still f*cking freezing in just her denim jacket. He spoke to the doorman in that annoying cool-dude way of his, and they breezed in past the queue of people. Some white guy standing with his girlfriend shouted out in a posh voice, ‘Oi, mate! We were here first!’

That felt good, she’d admit. But now they’d been in the club ages and he was still ‘doing business’ in the VIP section – two crappy roped-off booths. Chris was acting like P bloody Diddy or someone. That was when she spotted the girl, the blonde one from the queue coming in, saying loudly to her boyfriend that she wanted a mo-hi-to, saying it with an annoying accent. She’d a lovely dress on, all silk and lace, not like the cheap knock-offs Keisha could afford to buy. Some people got all the luck.

The two other girls in the VIP bit were getting right on her tits, too. This ho with the ’fro, the tall pretty bitch in the silver dress, was flirting with Chris so blatantly, even touching his arm. He bought her a Bacardi Breezer, green colour, the twat. The other girl – shorter, skankier – had an over-relaxed ‘do’ and no self-respect, you could tell. When the owner of the club came out he squeezed the shorter girl’s arse, and gave Keisha a look-over. Probably thinking she could do with a boob job and a hair weave. She thought somehow this boss was pissed off with Chris being there, though he was all smiles. The two men pulled their chairs away from the girls, and talked, leaning in close. Anthony, they’d called the owner. The girls didn’t talk to her and the stupid shoes hurt, so Keisha was already in a pretty bad mood when the white guy from the queue came over shouting at Anthony about something. When it started getting loud she decided to go to the loo. Stay out of trouble, that was the way. She had to if she wanted Ruby back.


Charlotte

The drug was definitely working by the time they got on the tube at Belsize Park. She giggled, clutching at the yellow pole in the carriage, wobbling on the Louboutin shoes he’d bought her for her birthday. They were so high, it was lucky she couldn’t feel her feet any more. ‘It’s working,’ she’d said, too loudly. ‘This must be why people do it.’

‘Shh, you cokehead.’ He stroked the metallic blusher from her cheek and kissed her hard. Charlotte felt dizzy, his muscles solid against her. How long since he last kissed her this way? Everyone was watching. The carriage was packed with people struggling home, dead-eyed with exhaustion like Dan usually was on a Friday. The cocaine, the fright of earlier, the unexpected night out, it cast a glow over everything, transforming the trundling tube, littered with free papers, into something magical.

Charlotte was feeling the effects even more now they were in the Kingston Town club. It had crept up like a fine mist over her brain, like one minute you felt the same, wondering what all the fuss was about, and then suddenly, pow! Your brain moved at light speed, and your voice was loud and fast; it was like you could do anything. Warp speed, she thought, reaching out for him, but although he was dancing close to her, the drug was making them all alone in the haze. The music was fast and loud, ringing with steel drums, and she thought about the honeymoon they’d be on soon, the warm sand under her feet, looking at him through the dark of the sea. She motioned to him, as if already underwater. ‘Just going . . . ladies’.’ She wasn’t sure he noticed.

Charlotte stumbled to the toilets, feeling clumsier than ever. She hadn’t noticed it before, but this was a very black club, a mostly West Indian crowd. Probably that was why they called it Kingston Town. Maybe they thought she shouldn’t be here, with her blonde hair. Charlotte felt inside the first stab of bad feeling. Paranoia, she said to herself, running water over her hands. It was why she didn’t normally take drugs.

There was no soap or paper towels – dirty and wet underfoot as the toilets were, there was an attendant. Christ, they made her feel awkward. The woman had probably hidden the soap so she could scrape up more wet coins for herself.

‘F*ck off,’ someone was saying. ‘I’m not paying to wash my bloody hands, you dirty cow. This is London, not f*cking Nigeria or wherever you’ve come from.’

Charlotte was about to be virtuously shocked by the racism, but as the face of the speaker wavered in and out, she saw the girl was black too, or at least half-black or something. Her skin was pale but you could tell from her eyes, the shape of her face. ‘It’s f*cking disgusting,’ the girl was saying.

Privately, Charlotte agreed – it was disgusting, but still feeling the sharp chafing of panic, she scrabbled in her Radley purse for money. Crap, she only had notes.

The girl turned on her. ‘What’re you looking at?’

‘Oh. Nothing.’ Charlotte was swaying so much she could hardly get the money out. ‘It’s kind of a pain, I know, I agree, but yeah – bet it’s not much fun, is it, sitting here? No – right?’ She gave a slightly dazed smile to the angry girl and the blank-faced toilet attendant, and crumpled a fiver down in the dish, embarrassed. ‘Anyway, thanks.’ She wobbled out.


Keisha

The bitch! The f*cking bitch! She’d been trying to make a point – it was f*cking horrible to steal all the soap and charge people a pound for it. It was like begging, it was shameful, sitting there with your cheap market perfumes and sad little lollies. Who’d want a lolly when there was wee all over the floor? She hated clubs like this, tired black women in the toilets, your drink on a little napkin so you had to leave the change just for pouring it.

Keisha liked to know the price of things, pounds and pence, not tips and VAT and all that shit. Just a haircut, a drink, a f*cking piss, for Christ’s sake. She hated it when Chris hid tenners in his hand and palmed them to doormen and waitresses. There you go, mate, darling, love. Since she had Ruby she could only see those tenners as nappies that weren’t going on her baby, shoes not on her kid’s feet.

And then this rich bitch from the queue, chucking down her fiver, making Keisha look like a tight-arse. She would get what was coming to her, this one. You couldn’t walk around for ever with lovely wavy hair and loads of money in your purse that was real designer and not off a market stall. Keisha was sure of it – things had to come back around again sometime.

She was so annoyed she went in and sat on the toilet seat for a while, just to calm down. She wondered was the white guy still going off on one outside. She had to watch herself. Chris was in a funny mood, she was in a funny mood. It was times like this that things happened, and not good things. She knew that now.


Charlotte

The first Charlotte knew anything was wrong was when the music stopped. She stood in the middle of the dance floor, like someone caught out in musical chairs – quick, run – dazzled by the lights.

It was Dan who was shouting. When they’d first met he never shouted, not even when shares dipped and he lost millions of pounds at work, or when she drove his Alfa Romeo into the gatepost.

‘It’s not f*cking cancelled,’ he was yelling – bellowing. ‘That’s a twenty-grand expense account, mate. Your machines are buggered up.’

Dan was over in the so-called VIP section of the club, not much to look at, and having an argument with a short dapper black man in a shiny suit, diamonds winking in his ears. Or diamanté, at least. There was another white guy there too, walking quickly away from the group, his back to them, and a short girl with flat fake hair and fake boobs was screaming in Dan’s face, ‘Don’t you f*cking speak to him like that!’ Another girl with an afro and a silver dress, a tall pretty girl, was crying.

Dan shouted again – she couldn’t hear what the black guy was saying to him. ‘Just run it through again! There’s thousands on there.’

She remembered it suddenly. Dan two months ago, in that restaurant. The long wait, the waiter rude, the food cold. Then the crash, the broken glass. Afterwards, Dan looked surprised more than anything, like he didn’t understand what had happened. It slipped. It must have slipped.

‘Maybe they stopped the card,’ she said out loud, but no one would have understood her thickened voice, and anyway, she was too far away. Dan had a company credit card, but half the time he used it for himself to get the air miles that built up, and it got taken back from his salary. He was holding a beer in his hand, which she guessed he’d been trying to pay for.

Across the stilled dance floor, where people were starting to murmur and stare, Charlotte saw the black man smile. It was as if he said, ‘Let’s step into my office and sort this out.’ That was more or less what he did say, she would later learn. When everything that happened in the next ten minutes would be repeated and endlessly rehashed in court.

She saw Dan sag, as if ashamed of what he’d said, and walk off with the man to a little door by the bar. They disappeared through it, and the music started up again.