The Wicked Girls

Chapter Thirteen

Amber understands now what they mean when they talk of a rush of blood to the head. She feels a pressure inside her skull that makes her fear that it will crack, like an eggshell. She feels her heart, thump-thump-thump, feels the strength leave her limbs, sees darkness creep in around the edge of her vision. This can’t be happening. It can’t. Sixty million people in the country; what are the odds she’d just… be here.

Jade, now that she’s heard Amber speak her name, looks as though the same physical phenomena are afflicting her. She sways, shroud-white, on the bottom step. Stares up at Amber as though she’s seen a ghost. In a way, she has. They’ve both been dead and buried for decades now. Annabel Oldacre and Jade Walker, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist when they vanished into the system. It wasn’t safe for them to keep their names in detention, even when they were still theoretically presumed innocent. They might never have had visitors themselves, but their fellow hoodlums did, and even back then there was good money to be made from the News of the Screws for tales from the inside. Especially tales of Wicked Girls and their Wicked Ways.

Jason Murphy, Maria’s little jackal of a husband, is approaching, slowly and unwillingly.

‘Bel,’ says Jade.

Amber shivers. She hasn’t heard the name as a form of address in decades. She is no longer that girl. Everything about her is changed. Only continuity can keep you the same, and she has been Amber Gordon for almost as long as she can remember.

‘Please,’ Amber says again. ‘You’ve got to go.’

Jesus, she thinks. She looks ten years younger than me. She feels a surge of resentment towards this woman. Hair well cut – not showy, but fall-into-place neat, subtly highlighted, shiny; skin unlined; clothes not flashy-expensive but clearly not from market stalls either. Her black leather boots are classy, though. You don’t get that sort of firm-yet-yielding leather in Primark. Incarceration’s treated you well, then, she thinks.

She glances up. Jason Murphy is a few feet away now, lurking in that vulpine way of his. Has he seen that something’s going on? Something more than he’d expect? She has always suspected that Jason’s studied indifference to the world hides a sharp eye for a situation – as long as that situation provides an opportunity for himself.

She pulls herself together. ‘This area’s off limits,’ she says sternly. ‘Even if – even if the situation was different, you’d still not be allowed back here. Staff only.’

Jade’s still not found her voice. Amber looks up the alleyway, nods at Jason. ‘I don’t know how she got back here,’ she says to him, ‘and I’m not going to ask. Just get her out of here.’

Jason steps forward and takes hold of Jade’s arm. She jumps, as though she’s been ambushed, whirls her arm from his grip as though it burns.

‘Come on,’ says Jason. ‘No point arguing.’

She turns back, looks at Amber, wide-eyed. ‘Bel,’ she says again.

Amber pretends to ignore her. The name, each time she hears it, makes her jolt inside. Stop it. Stop it. Do you want them to find out? Do you? Do you want the crowds on your doorstep, the shit through your letterbox?

She turns away and goes back through the door.

Once she’s safely inside, Amber allows her legs to buckle. She slumps against the mirrored wall, slides down it to the floor, stares at her grey-white reflection. Her hands and feet are cold.

‘Ah, well,’ says Jason, letting go of Kirsty’s arm the moment he knows they’re not overlooked. ‘Tough luck.’

He’s preparing to put up a fight if she asks for her money back, but she seems strangely distracted, following him like a zombie. He doesn’t really understand what he’s just seen, but knows that this was something more than her simply getting caught. He could swear he saw something pass between the two women; even that they recognised each other. Maybe he’s wrong. This woman’s small and slight, and would be no match for Amber Gordon: maybe she just got scared at the sight of her.

Most people would, he thinks, and chuckles inwardly. The woman had a face so grim on her just now that you could have cast her in Lord of the Rings without make-up, even if she didn’t have that great knobble on her upper lip. God knows what Vic Cantrell sees in her. It must be some sort of mother thing, because it sure as shit isn’t sex. Not after the nights he and Vic have had, prowling the nightclubs on the strip, fucking and fingering the slags on holiday. I must ask him one day, he thinks, if she knows what he gets up to when she’s at work. Maybe she lets him. Maybe she thinks it’s the only way she’ll get to keep him.

The journalist’s silence is disconcerting. She’s gone a strange shade of grey, and clutches the strap of her bag like a security blanket.

‘It’s OK,’ he reassures her as they emerge into the park. ‘She’s not going to tell. She won’t even remember which one you were.’

She gulps. Looks at him with huge eyes, as though she’s only just noticed that he’s there. Stumbles away towards the café.

He notices that Vic is watching them as he rides on the back of a bumper car, holding on casually with one hand. He’s seen them emerge from the alleyway, and looks amused. Jason grins at him and flashes the universal hip-spaced-hands and crotch-thrust gesture at her retreating back. Vic laughs, gives him the thumbs-up. Jumps acrobatically on to the back of a new car to give the girls a thrill.

She wants strong coffee. Her hands are shaking and, despite what the health bores say, she finds that caffeine calms her. But of course the coffee in Funnland hasn’t seen a bean in eighteen factory processes. She fills the cup up with creamer, empties three sachets of sugar on top and carries it out to a bench. Checking her watch, she is surprised to see that only fifteen minutes have passed since she spoke to Jim.

The park has filled up. The kiddie rides are up and running now, and the first nappy change is taking place on the wooden table next to her. She realises that she’s still shaking. She takes the lid off the coffee, sips, scalds her mouth. She’d forgotten how much hotter instant is than the real thing. Wonders at the changes in her life since she last saw Bel Oldacre: that she has become an espresso-drinking, pesto-eating member of the balsamic classes. Back home – back in the time she thinks of as ‘before’ – a meal was Budgen tea and white toast with jam; potatoes and spaghetti hoops; and, occasionally, a glut of pig meat when her dad took the shotgun down to the corrugated-iron Nissen huts that functioned as sties. A place like this would have seemed like an unattainable heaven to her, somewhere to see on the telly and dream of visiting.

Was that really Bel? Was it? How can this have happened? Under the weatherbeaten skin, the brassy cropped hair, the stained polyester overall? My God. She looks the way I was meant to look.

Kirsty doesn’t think she would have recognised her had she not been recognised herself. Though she’s surprised no one thought to remove that blemish – so recognisable, so discussed – from Bel’s face when they were setting up her new identity. She supposes that more of the child she once was must still be recognisable in her own face, mole or no mole, than she realises; and the thought frightens her. Bel, up till now, has remained eleven in her mind. She barely remembers her, if truth be told; is more familiar with her features from those bloody school photos, the ones that get pulled from the archive whenever there’s an anniversary, whenever another child earns the sobriquet ‘unspeak able’. They only knew each other for the inside of a day. And afterwards, standing silently side by side in the dock, barely glancing at each other except for when one or the other of them was testifying. It wasn’t like they were best friends. Or even habitual ones.

But here they are, their names inextricably linked in the minds of the world. And banned by law from ever seeing each other again, as long as they live. Venables and Thompson; Mary Bell; Walker and Oldacre – back in the days before Child Protection took them out of public circulation, child murderers’ names were as well known – better, often – as the names of their victims. If she quoted their names at a dinner party, the majority of the guests would nod knowingly. Chloe Francis? They’d probably need prompting.

Her mouth is as dry as the desert. She screws her eyes up and forces more scalding liquid between her lips, holding it on her tongue and breathing in, hard, to cool it.

It’s a condition of your licence, Kirsty, she says to herself. No one around you even knows there’s such a thing as a probation order in your name, but it’s there nonetheless. For the rest of your life. You are not to see, or speak to, or have contact with each other ever again. Like you’d ever want to.

Oh, but I do, shrieks a small, angry voice inside. I do. More than anything. More than anything on earth. She’s the only one who knows. The only one who knows how it feels. The only other me in the world. Twenty-five years I’ve been holding this in, living with my guilt, mastering the art of dissimulation. Twenty-five years with no family, lying to the friends I’ve made, lying to Jim, lying to my children. How would they look at me, if they knew? He’s a forgiving man. But could he still love me, if he knew he’d married The Most Hated Child in Britain?

Bel Oldacre. Kirsty doesn’t even know her new name.

It’s raining by the time Amber works up the guts to leave. She’s hidden away for hours: first in the empty mirror maze, then in her office, among the files and the boxes of J Cloths, until the afternoon shift is over; scared to come out, scared to show her face in the park. Outside, the rumble of the rollercoaster, the screams of its passengers; inside, the silent scream in her ears. Then, as an English summer storm sets in, the sounds die down and the music, ride by ride, is switched off. It’s not worth wasting the power, as the crowds drop as the rain gets up. Any punters who want to stay are given a refund, or offered free entry another day. Most of them don’t even think to ask; just rush their wailing kids off to the weather-proofed arcades on the Corniche.

Still, she is afraid. She scuttles from her office towards the staff gate as though she expects Jade to be lurking in the shadows; pulls her fleece tight round her breasts and wraps her scarf – everyone who lives in Whitmouth carries a scarf with them wherever they go, even at the height of summer – round her head to hide her face. Crazy, she knows: even if Jade had been hanging around, she would have been cleared out with the rest of the stragglers an hour ago. But still, she is afraid.

Jason Murphy is sheltering in the hut, eating a cheese-and-onion pasty with his feet up on the desk. He looks at her, all insolence in his navy sweater, peaked cap shoved to the back of his head, as she swipes her card across the reader, clocking out.

‘All right?’ he says.

She feels a surge of annoyance. She knows perfectly well how Jade Walker found her way to the mirror maze. And the fact that he knows that something else has happened has given him some edge, some stupid sense of power. He smirks as he watches her.

‘No,’ she says, turning to him, ‘I’m not all right, actually, Jason.’

That look, that ugly sense of entitlement, the refusal to accept that ‘respect’ is a two-way street. Jason wants respect all the time: she’s seen him squaring up to neighbours, to kids, to random men in the street, demanding it. She’s never seen him do anything to earn it.

‘If you ever do anything like that again,’ she says, ‘I’m going to put you on report.’ She’s not his direct boss, but she’s management, and has authority of sorts over everyone who isn’t. And she’s damned if she’s going to let him forget it.

‘Do what?’ he says – whines – though he knows what she’s talking about.

‘You know what,’ she says. ‘You’re here to provide security, not take beer money off anyone who wants to give it you. There’s computers here, Jason, and cash, and it’s your job to see they don’t get stolen.’

‘She got past me,’ he says sulkily.

She waits two beats, giving him the gimlet eye. ‘Don’t give me that,’ she says. ‘If I ever find out you’ve been up to that sort of trick again, I’ll be reporting you, do you get me?’

He tries to give her the eye back. Fails. Amber perfected the art of outstaring the enemy at the Blackdown Hills detention centre. It was necessary for survival then, and it’s a skill she has never allowed to fade.

‘And get your feet off that desk,’ she says.

Slowly, sulkily, he drops one foot, then the other, to the ground. Links his fingers over his vulnerable crotch.

Amber says nothing more. Lets herself out of the street door and closes it behind her.

‘Skanky cow,’ mutters Jason, putting his feet back up on the desktop and picking up the remains of his pasty. ‘Skanky cow,’ he repeats, and rips off a mouthful with his teeth.

Out on the Corniche the rain is horizontal; there’s barely a body to be seen. Amber swings right, hurrying for the bus stop.

A voice calls her name. Her old name. She freezes.

‘Bel!’ it calls again.

Jade Walker emerges from the doorway of The Best Fish and Chips on the South Coast, walks towards her. She must’ve been waiting for her to come out. Shit.

Amber hurries forward again. Pretends she doesn’t hear.

Jade raises her voice. ‘Bel! Please!’

She swings round, catches a blast of rain-shards full in the face. It blinds her for a second. When her vision clears she sees that Jade is still there, blinking at her, hair rat-tailed on to healthy pink cheeks.

Amber has to stop her. Has to shut her up. The woman has lost her mind, isn’t thinking things through at all. She needs to shock her into understanding. She races towards her, raging; sees her recoil and feels pleasure in making her do so. Jade’s smaller than she is. Bearing down, she knows she could take her out with a single fist.

She grabs her upper arm, clamps down on the muscle like a vice, digging in her fingertips to make it hurt.

‘Go away!’ she hisses. ‘Do you hear me? Don’t call me that. Don’t follow me. Just fuck off. We have nothing to say to each other.’

‘Bel…’

Amber shakes her head, side to side, over and over like an angry dog. Hears her voice rise to a shriek to combat the wind. ‘No!’ she shouts. ‘I don’t know that name. That’s not my name. Just – shut up! Shut up! You know we’re not meant to see each other. You know! Are you mad? Go away!’

She throws the woman’s arm away like a chicken bone. Pushes her for good measure. Jade stumbles back a pace, stands staring at her with what looks like despair. Good. Bloody good.

She forces her voice back under her control. She can’t afford this level of agitation. Even here, on this empty boulevard, eyes will be watching. She can’t let anyone see. Right outside work, for God’s sake. What is she thinking?

‘I’m not Bel,’ she says. ‘I haven’t been Bel for years, you know that. Just like you. What are you doing?’

‘I didn’t mean…’ begins Jade. ‘I – if I’d known I’d’ve-’

‘Well, what are you doing now? You should have gone. What do you think they’d do if they…? Shit. Just go. Don’t follow me. Just fuck off back wherever you’ve come from.’

She turns on her heel and walks towards the bus stop. There’s a bus due in three minutes and she’s damned if she’s going to miss it.

She is jittering by the time she enters the shelter – anger, fear, shock, all turned to adrenalin. Her breath rasps in her throat and she has to sit down, hard, on the graffitied bench. There’s no one here, thank God – no one who knows her, anyway, just a couple of kids wrapped in teenage lust in the corner. They glance up briefly, his hand inside the front zip of her jacket, then turn back, indifferent.

Amber breathes. Holds her hands out, palms down, watches them tremble. I can’t do this, she thinks. It’s too much. I can’t lose this life. Not because of a stupid coincidence. No one’s going to believe we just met by accident. It would never happen. Shit. Am I going to have to move on again? What’s she doing here, anyway? What the hell is she doing here?

She sees the bus approach, pushes herself up and goes outside to hail it. It pulls in: crowded. The smell of damp hair and Persil bursts out as the doors open.

She feels a hand grip her arm. ‘I don’t-’ says Jade. ‘I’m not… look.’

She presses something into Amber’s hand. Amber looks down. It’s an old cigarette packet; a telephone number is scrawled on it in black biro.

‘I just…’ says Jade; looks her in the eye.

Amber shakes the hand off her arm and mounts the steps of the bus.