Dead Like You

43

Saturday 10 January

Yac did not like drunk people, especially drunk slappers, especially drunk slappers who got into his taxi. Especially this early on a Saturday night, when he was busy reading the latest on the Shoe Man in the Argus.

There were five drunk girls, all without coats, all in skimpy dresses, all legs and flesh, displaying their breasts and tattoos and pierced belly buttons. It was January! Didn’t they feel the cold?

He was only licensed to carry four of them. He’d told them that, but they’d been too drunk to listen, all piling in at the rank on East Street, shouting, chattering, giggling, telling him to take them to the pier.

The taxi was full of their scents: Rock ’n Rose, Fuel for Life, Red Jeans, Sweetheart, Shalimar. He recognized them all. Uh-huh. In particular, he recognized the Shalimar.

His mother’s perfume.

He told them it was only a short walk, that with the Saturday-night traffic they’d be quicker to walk. But they insisted he take them.

‘It’s bleedin’ freezing, for Christ’s sake!’ one of them said.

She was a plump little thing, wearing the Shalimar, with a mass of fair hair and half-bared breasts that looked like they’d been inflated with a bicycle pump. She reminded him a little of his mother. Something in the coarseness, the shape of her figure and the colour of her hair.

‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘Sodding bleedin’ freezing!’

One of them lit a cigarette. He could smell the acrid smoke. That was against the law too, he told her, staring at her crossly in the mirror.

‘Want a drag, gorgeous?’ she said, pouting, holding out the cigarette to him.

‘I don’t smoke,’ he said.

‘Too young, are you?’ said another, and they broke into peals of squeaky laughter.

He nearly took them to the skeletal remains of the West Pier, half a mile further along the coast, just to teach them a lesson not to risk a taxi driver’s livelihood. But he didn’t, for one reason only.

The shoes and the perfume the plump one was wearing.

Shoes that he particularly liked. Black and silver sparkly Jimmy Choos. Size four. Uh-huh. His mother’s size.

Yac wondered what she would look like naked, just wearing those shoes. Would she look like his mother?

At the same time, he wondered if she had a high- or low-flush loo in her home. But the problem with people who were drunk was that you couldn’t have a proper conversation with them. Waste of time. He drove in silence, thinking about her shoes. Smelling her perfume. Watching her in the mirror. Thinking more and more how much she looked like his mother had once looked.

He made a right turn into North Street and crossed over Steine Gardens, waited at the lights, then turned right and queued at the roundabout before coming to a halt in front of the gaudy lights of Brighton Pier.

Just £2.40 showed on the meter. He’d been sitting in the queue at the cab rank for thirty minutes. Not much for it. He wasn’t happy. And he was even less happy when someone handed him £2.50 and told him to keep the change.

‘Huh!’ he said. ‘Huh!’

The man who owned the taxi expected big money on a Saturday night.

The girls disgorged themselves, while he alternated between watching the Jimmy Choos and glancing anxiously around for any sign of a police car. The girls were cursing the cold wind, clutching their hair, tottering around on their high heels, then, still holding the rear door of the taxi open, began arguing among themselves about why they’d come here and not stayed in the bar they’d just left.

He reached across, called out, ‘Excuse me, ladies!’ then pulled the door shut and drove off along the seafront, the taxi reeking of Shalimar perfume and cigarette smoke and alcohol. A short distance along, he pulled over on to the double yellow lines, beside the railings of the promenade, and switched off the engine.

A whole bunch of thoughts were roaring around inside his head. Jimmy Choo shoes. Size four. His mother’s size. He breathed deeply, savouring the Shalimar. It was coming up to 7 p.m. His on-the-hour, every hour, mug of tea. That was very important. He needed to have that.

But he had something else on his mind that he needed more.

Uh-huh.