She starts to cry. ‘How the fuck am I supposed to get him out?’
Mark is watching her cry, which feels good, an audience to her suffering (ever the narcissist).
‘Have you been in to see him?’
She shakes her head. ‘The AV paperwork hasn’t gone through yet, takes an age, with the holidays and everything.’ She lets out a guttural sob. ‘I miss him so much.’
‘You’re a good person,’ he says.
‘No I’m not,’ she says, stopping her tears with a tissue and a deep inhalation.
‘I’m checking on him,’ Mark says. ‘I’ll chase the AV paperwork when I’m next in there seeing him.’
She nods. ‘Shall we pin your artwork up on the wall like two sociopaths building a shrine?’
Birdie
What did I think as I walked down the stairs from my flat, on my way down to open up the shop?
I thought, she’s a prostitute, can you really rely on what she tells you? I thought, yeah, these girls come from not-great backgrounds, like she said, so how far do they tell the truth? I thought, that story showed her in quite a favourable light, victim of the rich and powerful. I’ve never even met a prostitute before and I was surprised how harshly it made me feel towards her – as if she was damaged goods to be kept at arm’s length.
I thought a few hours away from her, doing normal stuff like stocking up on Magners and John Player Blues, and serving my usual alkie fan base, would help me to get things straight in my mind. Because if what she was telling me was true, then someone connected to Titans or Dunlop & Finch had got a 15-year-old girl’s body out of one of London’s most exclusive hotels. And the threat of a leak – of information about the connection between the bank and Titans – might have led to murder.
I started to ask myself – as I always did when a particularly knotty dilemma presented itself – what would Tony do? I went back upstairs to have a good look at his portrait hanging in the lounge. Angel was having a lie-down in her room.
I looked at him: the grey hair at his temples, the steel grey eyes, boyish ears, emphatic mouth, and I wondered how this man, the most successful leader we’ve ever had, has been so roundly demonised. This man that I have loved since he first became leader of the party in 1994, who seemed the sensible yet stern father after all those weak and shambolic fathers of the past, has now come to represent deceit and villainy and all his achievements swept away, as if winning was something to be ashamed of.
Did we expect too much in 1997 when the landslide took place and we couldn’t believe our luck? Did the love affair founder because no one could deliver the socialist perfection we dreamed of?
Looking up at him and feeling very sorry, it seemed to me that we live in an age of sanctimony – it is the fashion to pass judgement on people, to refuse to acknowledge context or accommodate nuance, and this made me think about the judgements I had passed on Angel only moments ago downstairs at the till, while serving people their tinnies and tobacco, their sugar and scratch cards. I looked at Tony and asked what he would do, in a whisper because I didn’t want Angel thinking I was some kind of loon.
And Tony said, Go to the police.
He didn’t really say it, obviously. His lips didn’t move. I don’t hallucinate, but his eyes hinted at it. Who could fail to listen to a terrified hooker-turned-Goth and the morbidly obese owner of the Payless Food & Wine?
I shouted to Angel, rattled her door. Nothing. Silence.
‘I have a plan,’ I yelled through the door, shuffling next door to the kitchen to put the kettle on. ‘It’s all going to be all right.’
The door opened and she emerged groggy with matted hair, saying, ‘What?’
‘Cup of tea?’ I said.
‘I can’t go,’ she said. ‘They’ll definitely kill me if I go.’
She was watching me eat my second Penguin while eating nothing herself, as per. I was starting to catch on that slim people might actually deny themselves. This concept is completely alien to me.
‘But we have to tell someone,’ I said. ‘We can’t just let this carry on, you being terrified, Jade’s death, all that? I mean, what are you going to do, hide forever?’
She smiled at me, laying her hand flat on the table towards mine, though we didn’t touch. I was contemplating another Penguin when she said, ‘I’m going to live in Spain. Thought you were coming with me.’
‘I am,’ I said gently. ‘I am coming with you.’
‘Why don’t I buy a flight today and you can sell up here, lease out the shop, whatever you need to do, and join me when you’re ready?’
‘D’you want to spend your life looking over your shoulder?’ I said.
‘I won’t be, not in Spain.’
‘I think you will,’ I said.
I ate a third Penguin and it tasted even better than the other two. ‘You never told me,’ I said, ‘what happened after, with you and Jon-Oliver.’
‘After the Carlton and those few nights at his house, he said he was going abroad on business so I had to hop it. Then he stopped taking my calls. He changed his number I think, because when I texted him on the number I had, they pinged back with ‘number not recognised’ and if I rang it, the number didn’t work. I cut my ties with Titans. At that time, the end of last summer, I was staying on a friend’s sofa, or sleeping outside. I disguised myself – dyed my hair black, did the Goth makeup, all that. Thinking about it now, it’s not really a disguise being a Goth. I mean, it makes you kind of noticeable, but I looked very different to how I looked as a blonde, so that gave me a feeling of safety I guess. As if I had become someone else.
‘That’s when I started drinking – you remember? – coming in and buying a bottle of Lambrini. I followed Jon-Oliver a bit, saw him go into a flat round the corner from here – some woman and a kiddie. I’m guessing it was his kid – not like he was the type to get friendly with someone else’s. I was drunk, watching him with her and I was so jealous I could’ve killed them both. She was normal. Natural-looking. Not a hooker like me.
‘I got in the way of this builder and he shouted at me and that brought Jon-Oliver across the road to me. He said he wished I was dead and if I ever came near him again, he’d make sure I was.’
‘He’s sounding like a keeper,’ I said.
‘Yeah well, he’s dead now, isn’t he?’
Day 23
6 January
Manon
There he is, most familiar stranger. He looks so much older here than he has ever seemed at home and so much lonelier. His face elfin; the huge dolefulness of his eyes. He sits opposite her in the empty room, just the two of them on blue plastic chairs and the guard, back to the wall.
Fly’s head is bowed; he is slouched forwards, legs apart. Only 12 and he’s perfected the manspread.
‘So, this room’s full of charm,’ she says, seeking him out with a smile.
Silence.
‘Are you all right?’
He shrugs.