The Wicked Girls

Chapter Twenty

Her name is Stacey Plummer, and she is a veterinary nurse. Was. At twenty-five she is older than the other victims, and the postmortem shows that she was stone-cold sober, to boot. At midnight on Saturday she tired of the company of her friends, who were intent on drinking the bar at the Hope and Anchor dry before hitting a nightclub, and set out to walk home to their B &B. Her body was found six hours later, in a beach-café car park, by yet another cleaner from Funnland on her way home from her night shift. Those women must be really starting to hate their jobs.

It takes almost two days to identify her, mostly because her friends were so hungover that they didn’t leave their room other than to eat their full English, and assumed that she’d gone home in protest. And partly because the killer has stepped up his game. Stacey’s face has been beaten so badly that her gamine features have been almost obliterated.

The other victim is a different type of person altogether, though the occurrence of two murders so close together has kicked off a frenzy of fear and speculation. Tina Bentham, a forty-five-year-old grandmother of four, an alcoholic and occasional prostitute. Found by council bin men on Monday afternoon in a gore-soaked alleyway off Fore Street, her body undamaged apart from a couple of old, probably unrelated, bruises, and a ragged double-puncture wound to the neck that has ruptured her carotid artery, causing her to bleed to death. The victims, and the manner of their deaths, are so different that the police – and, even more, the press – are beginning to speculate as to whether there’s a single killer at all.

Kirsty arrives on Tuesday afternoon, before Stacey’s name is released to the press. She doesn’t want to be within a hundred miles of Bel, but Dave Park has gone up to Sleaford, where Child F and Child M are due at the magistrates’ court, and work is work is work. I’ll keep my head down, she thinks. It’s not that small a town; I’ll probably never bump into her, especially if I stay away from the theme park. She wishes fiercely that she’d never handed over her number. Doesn’t know what temporary madness possessed her.

The town is buzzing, despite the images on the news-stands. The cash registers in the pubs and cafés ring red-hot as the press corps huddle behind their windows, getting news off each other between the ritual announcements. The sea thunders up the pebbles, washing evidence and bathers in its wake. Police tape turns quickly to streamers which whiplash over the promenade, catching the unwary with paper-cut edges.The streets are crowded with health-and-safety officers handing out Keep Yourself Safe leaflets, with feminist groups and opportunist politicians and churches and police liaisons and council tourism officers reassuring holidaymakers. Travelling burger vans park up on the double yellows on the seafront on the safety-in-numbers assumption. Hotel rooms are full and cafés are running out of bacon butties. Through the steamy atmosphere of the penny arcade, frustrated sunbathers huddle over slot machines, watching their what-the-hell money drain away at a pound a minute. Funnland, with its high walls and patches of shelter, is doing a roaring trade. There’s nothing, it seems, like a serial killer to foster a tourist boom.

Kirsty can’t find parking anywhere near the front and ends up leaving the car at the Voyagers Rest (no apostrophe; she wishes she were less sensitive to these things). With a scarf wrapped across her face she trudges a mile through the pedestrian maze of shopping streets to the sea.

There’s a queue outside Funnland, just as though it were another normal day. She looks at the people shuffling up the line and wonders if Bel is inside.

Amber studies Suzanne Oddie’s skin. It’s shiny and brown and taut, and holds no clue as to her age. And yet somehow she looks every year of it. That’s the thing with plastic surgery and all the rest of the stuff rich women spend so much on, thinks Amber. It’s not really about making you look younger. It’s to make you look more expensive.

Suzanne is looking at the books, frowning over a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed designer spectacles. She wears a suit that Amber recognises as Chanel. Beneath the desk, a pink-soled stiletto heel drums back and forth. She has three rings on her left hand – one engagement, one wedding, one eternity, the stones the size of corn kernels – and a tourmaline knuckleduster on the right. Amber feels dowdy and poor in front of her. Of course, she is meant to, today. Today, Suzanne is power-dressing to make the pecking order clear.

‘Eighteen tampon-disposal units? Seriously?’

‘You need one in every cubicle,’ says Amber.

‘Why can’t we just have them out in the washroom? And leave bags on the cisterns?’

Amber shrugs. ‘Up to you. I’d’ve said it was a false economy. What with the plumbing, and the cleaners resigning. I think you’re overestimating the average punter’s sense of communal responsibility.’

‘Mmm,’ says Suzanne; looks suspicious that a cleaner should be using such long words. Drums her nails again on the desk. Then she looks up, sharply. ‘Well, we need to make economies somewhere, Amber.’

Why? She wants to shout. Why? Thanks to the murder, and its I’d-forgotten-about-Whitmouth effect, we’re having the best season in living memory. There’s queues thirty minutes long just to get in through the front gate. ‘Really?’ she asks, faintly.

‘Yes. We’re in a recession, you know.’

Ah, she thinks, yes. The recession. ‘But we’re doing well here,’ she argues, aware that she’s wasting her breath. ‘Just judging by the amount of rubbish we’re carting out, numbers must be well up.’

Suzanne doesn’t look at her. Has she always avoided my eye like this? wonders Amber. Was I just so keen to please that I didn’t notice? Suzanne flips the page as she speaks. ‘Yes, well, but these murders are upward blips in a general downward trend. We can’t rely on them for ever.’

Amber’s eye pop. She’s not seen the murders from the business perspective. ‘No, I suppose we can’t,’ she says.

‘Especially with Innfinnityland out of action,’ continues Suzanne. ‘A total waste of an asset. We’re going to have to invest capital in finding another use for the space.’

Yes, thinks Amber. That Strangler’s one selfish bastard. She waits while Suzanne rattles her fingernails a bit more, wonders what’s coming next.

‘Twenty-six cleaners,’ she says eventually. ‘It’s a lot.’

‘Most of them on minimum wage,’ Amber points out.

‘That’s still…’ she turns to the calculator, taps away, ‘twenty-three-grand-odd a month. That’s a lot to be paying for cleaning.’

‘It’s a lot of cleaning,’ Amber replies. ‘Coke and ice-cream aren’t the easiest things to get off.’

‘Still,’ says Suzanne. ‘We’re not made of money.’ She fingers the strand of pearls around her neck, looks at Amber patronisingly. ‘You’re discovering the down side of management, I’m afraid,’ she says. ‘Sometimes you have to make the tough calls. That’s what we pay you for.’

Not enough, Amber thinks. ‘Can I just… get it straight what it is you’re after here, Suzanne?’

She smiles, tight-lipped. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’d say twenty per cent?’

Amber feels like she’s going to have a heart attack. ‘Twenty per cent? Off the wage bill?’

‘Oh, no,’ says Suzanne airily. ‘Wherever you want to find it.’

Her mind’s racing. ‘You mean, off the whole budget?’

Suzanne Oddie meets her eye icily. ‘Yes, Amber. That’s what I mean.’

Dear God. She wants me to lose a hundred thousand pounds off a budget that’s already creaking at the seams. I’m using the cheapest everything. There isn’t anywhere to get any of this stuff cheaper, unless I go to China myself and bring it back on foot.

‘Suzanne…’ she begins.

The smile again. ‘Yes?’

‘I… that’s a lot to ask out of the blue.’

‘Oh, it’s OK,’ says Suzanne. ‘I’m not asking you to do it by tomorrow. It’s over the whole year.’

‘Yes, but… twenty per cent?’

Suzanne looks down at her pad. ‘And how much is it we pay you, again?’

She feels a blush. She’s not counted her own salary into the mix. ‘Twenty-two thousand five hundred.’

‘Hmmm.’ Suzanne makes a note.

Martin feels strong, powerful, confident. Feels the way he’s always thought he should. It’s as though Saturday night has taken a big syringe full of self-esteem and shot it directly into his veins. He rarely leaves the house before noon, but today he’s been striding the streets of Whitmouth since nine o’clock, earwigging the shuffling crowds, listening to the talk on the streets and bathing in his glory. I exist now, he thinks. I really exist. They’re all wondering who I am.

He strolls up Mare Street, past the scene of his triumph, and feels the swell of pride as he sees the yellow tape flapping in the wind. Lets himself indulge in a moment’s sensual memory – the whore staggering from side to side, hand hopelessly clutching the gouting wound. He had to jump back a few times to avoid getting gore on his new trainers. I need to be more careful, he thinks. That’s not the way to do it, not if I don’t want to get caught. I need to learn a thing or two from that other guy. Try something less messy next time.

But he doesn’t think the next time will need to come for a while. This is the best he’s ever felt. My God, he thinks. I haven’t even thought about Jackie Jacobs in a couple of hours. She’s nothing to me now. She doesn’t deserve me. Not now I’m Someone. I deserve better than her. Her and her prison guard Amber Gordon. They can’t keep me down any more.

As he’s thinking it, someone brushes his sleeve as they hurry past, apologises, and he looks up. It’s that journalist who chatted him up on the beach: Kirsty Lindsay, flashing him a smile as she hurries on towards the front. Wow, he thinks. I’ve been so caught up in my triumph that I completely forgot to look up what she wrote on Sunday. He makes a mental note to check the Tribune website when he gets in, but decides to follow her for a while first. She won’t be able to brush him off the way she did before. When she notices him, she’ll see he’s Someone too.

She’s dressed down for the day in jeans and a mac, but he sees that there’s a nice body under the clothes. She’s not spectacular, not flashy like the mayfly beauties who totter past him on the strip at night; but she has the sort of solid, womanly good looks, the evidence of self-respect, that a Someone should be aiming at. She’s talking on the phone, has an oversized computer bag hanging off her shoulder, clamped to her body by her other arm, and looks younger than he remembers from their brief meeting. He waits till she’s got a few feet further on, then falls into step behind.

Whoever’s at the other end of the phone isn’t happy with her. ‘I know, darling, and I’ve told you I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s not like I’m here for a fun day out. I can think of a lot of places I’d rather be.’

She stops, and he almost runs into the back of her. He quickly diverts to read the small ads in the window of the newsagent’s. He doesn’t really need to bother with the pretence, as she’s too absorbed in her call to notice what’s going on around her. I should warn her, really, he thinks. To pay attention. People get pickpocketed all the time because they’re not paying attention. Maybe that would be the way to get her talking. She’d be grateful…

‘Yeah, yeah, I know, Jim,’ she says. Her voice is less posh than he remembers; he’s surprised by that. ‘And again, I’m sorry. What? Yeah, I know. Blimey. Like women haven’t been complaining about that for centuries.’

He’s beginning to be concerned about the tone of her voice when she lets out a laugh. ‘I told you not to call me when I’m at work,’ she says.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says. ‘Nag, nag, nag, bitch, bitch, bitch. Here I am working my arse off to keep you in the style you want to be accustomed to and all you do is complain. You don’t even keep the house clean.’

Martin doesn’t really understand what’s going on. It doesn’t sound like a happy marriage. She’d never talk like that to me, he thinks. You’ve got to have respect in a relationship, or it will never work.

She laughs again. ‘Yeah, not a chance. I wish I could, but there’s no point. I’d just have to come back tomorrow, and I’ve got copy to file this afternoon. What? Yeah. Pissing down, and the sort of wind that tears your knickers off. Yup. Yes, I am, you dirty sod. The Voyagers Rest. The Trib really know how to treat a girl, don’t they? Still. No. Not yet. Tomorrow, probably. Yeah. I’ll give you a call later. Yes. I promise. Promise. Yes.’

She hangs up, drops the phone into her bag. Walks on, then turns abruptly into Londis. He follows her in and watches her buy an egg sandwich and a bottle of sparkling water.

Amber’s head is so full she feels it will burst. Meetings with Suzanne Oddie always leave her feeling wrong-footed, ill-educated and unimportant, but today’s has left her terrified.

They’ll hate me. All of them. The ones I sack and the ones who will have to take on the extra work for no extra pay. And who do I sack? Who? There’s no way to reframe this; no way to make the outcome a good one.

A little voice says: Jackie. She pushes it down. Being a selfish house guest doesn’t mean she deserves to lose her job.

Shit, she thinks. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

She sees Vic, working the waltzer. A couple of girls in the queue have obviously noticed him, are nudging each other and passing comment the way girls always do. She feels a sharp ache in her lower back, is suddenly aware again of the bruises on her thighs, as though the sight of him has set the pain off. I hope he comes back soon, the Real Vic; I can’t take much more love from the Other One.

Vic sees her, and a smile flickers across his face. He’s feeling right on top again; he’s got the old adrenalin surge. Feels like it will last for days this time, like it did in the old days. Yeah, he thinks at the departing back. But I’ll be home tonight anyway, won’t I? When I feel like it.

He spots the girls in the queue, gives them a treat with his sparkling eyes. Sees them look at each other and burst into a fit of giggles. It’s so easy, isn’t it? he thinks. Just so damn easy. Women, they’re just there for the taking. A flash of your arms and a Bacardi and Coke, and you can do anything you want. That’s why I stay with her. She’s not a pushover. A woman with a bit of self-respect, that’s what I like. That and the other.

Not so much self-respect yesterday, he thinks.

The girls come round again; they’re pretending not to look, simpering into each other’s eyes. He knows the routine. Three more circuits and they’re all his.

He steps over to the nearest gondola, sets it spinning, raises shrieks of fear-filled pleasure from the tarts inside. The graze on his knuckles is beginning to scab over, and splits slightly when he grips the seat-back. He quite likes the feeling. It makes him feel alive. He spins the gondola again and listens to them scream.

Amber doesn’t want to stay in the park. Feels as though everyone – though only a couple of cleaners are on duty, emptying bins and rushing over to the rides when the Tannoy calls for an emergency mop-up – knows about what Suzanne’s just said in their private meeting. She goes back to her office and collects her bag and coat, leaving her umbrella behind. There’s no point, on a day like today; it’ll have gone inside-out before she’s got as far as the rock shop.

The Corniche is virtually deserted, though it resonates with the delicious scent of frying onions from the burger vans. Amber walks towards the bus stop, feeling miserable. Everything aches, partly from tiredness, partly from Vic, partly because (she’s noticed) bad news always shows up first in her shoulders.

She walks on, eyes a knot of people gathered by the town hall, shouting questions. Press, she guesses. In the middle she recognises a couple of local councillors, hair brushed and business suits on specially for the occasion. She realises with a frisson that one of the journalists – close to the outside of the crowd, Martin Bagshawe standing near by seemingly hanging on her every word – is Jade Walker. Christ, she thinks. I’ve got to get out of here. She steps up her pace.

Kirsty’s got her MP3 out. ‘… So what you’re saying, in effect, is that they asked for it?’

The leader of Whitmouth Council glances at his head of PR and goes into denial mode. ‘I would never suggest any such thing,’ he replies. ‘You’re putting words in my mouth.’

Martin Bagshawe hangs back, strains to hear what they’re saying, but finds it hard over the sounds of the seafront. Hears her say ‘asked for it’ and thinks: My God, she’s fearless. And he remembers Tina and her taunting, and thinks, Yeah, but she’s not wrong, is she?

‘Not really,’ she says.

‘I was just saying that there has to be an element of personal responsibility involved,’ says the councillor. ‘It’s not the same thing at all.’

‘Personal responsibility not to get randomly murdered?’

He smiles uneasily, wishing he’d never got into this corner. ‘You wouldn’t walk barefoot across a minefield, would you?’

‘If I knew there was a single landmine somewhere in several thousand square miles and I needed to get home, I’d probably take a punt on it, yes,’ she says. ‘Are you saying that men are helpless victims of their own urges, then?’

‘No. Of course not. But the fact is that there is a man who seems to be just that at large in this town,’ he says, ‘and like it or not, our young women – our visitors – need to take this into consideration. We do have a problem, with a minority of our visitors, of overindulgence in alcohol, and alcohol makes people careless. We’re simply begging these young women to keep themselves safe, that’s all. We don’t want any more deaths in our lovely family resort.’

She’s vaguely aware that someone is earwigging them, glances up to see a small, ratty man in an anorak, pretending to read. He’s familiar, but it takes her a moment to place him. Oh yes, the bloke from the beach. One of those weirdos who pop up wherever there’s news, gawking and looming and trying to get on camera. He gives her a ghastly smile, the sort of smile that suggests that he’s not had much practice at doing it. ‘It’s time somebody said it was wrong,’ the weirdo tells them. ‘There’s thousands of decent people in this town, but you’d never know it from the way the press go on.’ He pauses, seems to find something wrong with what he’s said. ‘Most of them,’ he adds. ‘Most of the press. Not all of them.’

The councillor takes the opportunity to slide away from an awkward conversation, glad-hands the little man as though he’s a visiting dignitary. She wonders whether it’s worth persisting. But there’s a press conference in twenty minutes down at the police station, and she should head there, in case there’s actually any news.

She glances over at the far pavement and catches sight of Bel, hurrying away. Christ, she thinks. That’s the last thing I need. Please don’t let her have seen me.

‘… dressed like tarts, howling under my window,’ the man is saying. He casts a look so full of longing at Kirsty that the skin on her back crawls. The councilman puts a calculated hand on his upper arm, just above the elbow, the way a kindly vicar would do.

‘And we want you to know that we hear your concerns,’ he says.

Kirsty takes the opportunity to turn away while the hand is still there. The last thing she wants is to get sucked into another discussion with the bloke from the beach. She feels twisted with tension. Bel looks like she’s heading for the seashore. I’ll go the other way, she thinks. I can take a detour to get to the police station. She pops the MP3 into her bag, throws Rat Man a grin and a propitiatory little wave, and turns back to the far pavement.

Amber takes refuge in the shadows between the whelk stall and the bucket-and-spade stall, and watches which way Jade goes. Watches her hunch against the wind and turn up her collar to shield her face from the horizontal rain. She turns up the alley by the Cross Keys, heading for Fore Street.

Crazy, she thinks. What am I doing, hiding? This is my home. My town.

But she wonders. Every day she’s thought of this woman, if only in passing. A single day’s acquaintance, and they have been constant companions ever since, though it looks like their outcomes have been different. Jade looks like she’s thrived, she thinks; as if rehabilitation has been as good for her as it was bad for me.

She can taste bitterness in her mouth. Feels as though life’s been unfair, knows it’s been unfair: somehow, Jade has been rewarded where she has been punished. Look at her, she thinks. Walking about in broad daylight, her head held high, while I’m scurrying through the shadows. Does she even think about me? The way I think about her? Half love, half rage, the friend I never got to have, the source of everything rotten in my life?

She realises that there are tears on her face, mingling with the rain. Stops in her tracks and grips at the strap of her bag while a wave of grief breaks over her, shocks her with its power. I was a child. And everything – everything – got snatched away in one wicked afternoon.

She dashes the back of her hand across her eyes and strides back to the Corniche. She’s the interloper, not me. And if she’s going to invade my territory, she can answer some questions.

Martin tries to look unfazed, though inside he is squirming with embarrassment. I can’t believe I said that, about the press. She’ll think I think she’s like the rest of them now, even though I tried to get across that I’d said it wrong. I’ve blown it, and I didn’t even manage to talk to her properly. I’ll have to keep trying. She’ll want to listen to me once she sees who I am.

He shakes off the councillor’s clinging hand, and walks on towards town without bothering to say goodbye.

Kirsty hurries inland, checking her watch. Ten to three. The press conference begins in ten minutes. She needs to get up there, to where the crowds are beginning to gather, to get through the cordon with her credentials and find herself a spot where she can record what’s said. It won’t be easy, in weather like this, and taking notes in the rain is the Devil’s own business. And that’s when you’ve got a working brain.

She stops by a shop selling brightly coloured plastic beach toys, stares at fluorescent windmills as they rattle in the breeze. Maybe I should buy one for Sophie. Yeah, because what’s missing from Sophie’s life is a windmill on a stick. Get a grip, Kirsty. You’re here to do a job. You can’t let your concentration slip. You’re only as good as your current job, you know that. Doesn’t matter how much you’ve done before: one cock-up and you’re dropped, that’s how the world of freelance works especially with half the staff of the News of the World wandering the streets looking for work. She’ll be avoiding you as much as you’re avoiding her; the stakes are equally high for both of you.

A tap on her shoulder. She turns. Bel has stepped back a pace, is regarding her with the same mix of fear, curiosity and disgust that she feels herself.

‘Amber,’ says Bel. ‘That’s my name. Who I am. Amber Gordon.’

Kirsty takes a moment to find her voice, and is amazed by how steady it is when it finally comes.

‘Kirsty,’ she says. ‘I’m Kirsty.’

Noon

Jade is being Madonna. Everyone’s being Madonna this summer, though the older girls are finding bits of lace and fingerless gloves in dressing-up boxes to look the part more convincingly. Jade’s had to make do with wrapping a cotton scarf they’ve found, damp and slightly grubby, tied to the lychgate of the church, round her head, and hitching up her ra-ra skirt to show a greater expanse of thigh. She stands on the church wall and gyrates, flinging her hands above her head and clutching them together to flex her chest muscles.

‘Like a vir-gin – pooh!’ she pants, for the dance is energetic and her stamina spud-fed. She runs her hands up and down her body suggestively. ‘Fucked for the very first time.’

‘Touched,’ says Bel. ‘It’s “touched”.’

‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ asks Jade. ‘Luh-ike a vur-ur-ur-ur-gin, uh-when yuh heartbeat’s nuh-nuh-nuh necks to mine.’

She wobbles, saves herself with a whirl of the arms. Kicks out one hip then the other, like a burlesque dancer. ‘Wuh-hoooo-uhuh-uh-woah-o-uh-woah-oh, woah-oh,’ she sings. Bel thinks for a minute, then climbs up beside her, strikes a pose.

‘No, no,’ says Jade. ‘Not like that. You’ve got to give it welly with the hips. Like you’re on a gondola.’

Bel’s not allowed to watch Top of the Pops, so she’s not seen the video. In fact she only knows the song from listening, transistor radio pressed to her ear on bottom volume, to the chart show on Radio Luxembourg after bedtime on a Sunday night. But she imagines what it would be like to be on a wobbly boat on an Italian canal, and thrusts her hips out as though trying to keep her balance. ‘That’s it,’ puffs Jade, and they both giggle.

The church door clunks open, and one of the Good Women of the Flower Committee, as Bel’s stepfather Michael calls them, steps out, carrying a pair of green-encrusted glass vases. She wears a Puffa jacket and tartan trousers, and her grey hair is clamped down by a silk scarf printed with snaffle bits and spurs. She tips the dregs from the vases into the church’s side-drain, straightens up and addresses Jade and Bel.

‘What are you girls up to?’

‘Nuffink!’ Jade employs her default response. ‘It doesn’t look like nothing to me.’ Her voice, adjusted to disciplining dogs in the open air, roars across the graveyard like a hurricane. ‘What are you doing on that wall? I hope you’re not damaging it.’

‘No, we’re not,’ says Bel in her plummiest tones. ‘We’re just dancing.’

‘Well, you can go and dance somewhere else. If that wall falls down, we’ll be expecting your parents to pay for it.’

Jade looks down at the century-old cross-stones beneath her feet. ‘We’ll take that chance,’ she tells her. ‘Don’t think it’s going to fall down for a bit.’

‘Don’t be cheeky!’ bawls the woman. ‘I know who you are, Jade Walker. Don’t think the whole village hasn’t got its eye on you!’

‘Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir,’ says Jade, and Bel sniggers. Girls in her world don’t talk to grown-ups like this. And if they do, they get sent to their rooms. Or, in her case, the cellar.

The woman tuts and heads back into the porch. Casts a parting shot over her shoulder. ‘I’m very busy or I’d be sorting you out right now, young lady,’ she says. ‘As it is, I’m going to finish these flowers, and by the time I come out I expect you to be gone.’

‘Or what? You’ll call the vicar?’ asks Jade.

‘Hunh,’ says the woman, and slams the church door.

‘Silly cow,’ says Jade. Crosses her wrists above her head and circles her hips suggestively. ‘Yuh so fine, and yuh mine.’

Bel copies the stance, joins in singing in her fine contralto. ‘Ibbe yoz, tuh the enduv tiy-yime-’

‘Woah,’ says a male voice. ‘It’s an itty-bitty titty committee.’

Bel starts, wobbles, clutches Jade’s arm for support. They hold balance for a couple of seconds then plummet together into the graveyard. Bel catches her thigh on a tilted gravestone as she falls, breaks the skin.

‘Ow!’ She looks down at the blood beginning to seep through the pink cotton of her shorts. Jade struggles to her feet and stands, arms akimbo, on a mossy box-tomb.

‘Piss off, Shane,’ she says.

Bel looks up. The eldest of the Walker boys stands on the pavement, a cut-price Martin Kemp in leather jacket and swooped-back hair, grinning blankly.

‘Who’s yer little buddy, Jade?’ he says.

‘Piss off, Shane,’ she says again.

Bel stares at him long and hard. She’s never had a chance to study him close up before; the general village policy is to scurry past when he appears, eyes averted. Shane, at nineteen, has a string of convictions for burglary and car theft: lacking his brother Darren’s street smarts and driving skills, he keeps getting caught. He’s only avoided prison because of his famously low IQ, but everyone predicts he’ll end up there sooner or later.

‘Think you’re the Human League, do you?’ he asks. His jaw seems to dangle from his skull as though its fixings have never been properly tightened, so that his lips have a wet, loose look to them.

Jade pulls a tuft of grass and earth out from by her foot, lobs it at him. ‘I said piss off, Shane!’

‘Going down the Bench anyway. Oh, and Jade?’

‘What?’

‘You been nicking again? Only our dad’s after your hide.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ says Jade, and sits down hard in the grass. Bel’s never met anyone who swears with such casual calm before, as though the words were simple adjectives. She’s impressed and unnerved at the same time by it. If she let the sort of words slip from her mouth that Jade uses without seeming to even register them, she’d be locked up for days. She gazes at her admiringly, her hand still clamped on her leg.

‘I hate this bloody village.’

‘Me too,’ says Bel.

‘Does it hurt?’ asks Jade.

‘Bit.’

‘Let’s have a look.’

Bel lifts her hand away and shows her. There’s a graze the size of a fist on her thigh, a bruise already forming. Pinpricks of blood seep into the wound, filling out, closing up.

‘Fuck,’ says Jade admiringly.

‘It doesn’t hurt. Not really,’ Bel says proudly.

Jade shoots darts of poison at Shane’s swaggering back. ‘Bastard,’ she says. Then: ‘You ought to wash that.’

‘Oh, it’ll stop,’ says Bel.

‘It was only twenty p,’ says Jade. ‘How could he notice twenty p?’

‘Grown-ups,’ says Bel authoritatively, ‘notice everything.’

Well, if it’s me they do, she thinks. If it’s Miranda they don’t notice a thing. Or if they do, they find a way to blame it on me anyway.

She gets to her feet and hobbles over to the wall. ‘What’s your dad going to do?’ she enquires.

Jade shrugs. ‘God knows. But I’d better keep out of his way for a bit.’

‘He’s not going to hit you, is he?’

Jade acts scandalised, the way she’s been trained. ‘Of course not! Who do you think we are?’

Yes, thinks Bel. Best not to talk about it. Not till I know her better.

‘I’m going to get a bollocking,’ says Jade. ‘Best not go back for a while. Maybe I can put the money back and he’ll think he made a mistake.’

‘Yeah,’ says Bel. ‘Good plan.’

Jade sighs. ‘Bloody Kit Kat’s not going to get me through to teatime though,’ she says.

‘That’s OK,’ says Bel. ‘You can come back to mine.’

Jade raises her eyebrows, unused to invitations. She’s certainly never issued one herself, even if she had anyone to ask. ‘Won’t your mum and dad mind?’

‘Stepfather. They’re on holiday,’ says Bel with affected insouciance. ‘In Malaysia.’

‘What, and they didn’t take you?’

‘No. They’ve taken Miranda. But I was naughty so they left me behind.’

‘So they’ve left you all by yourself?’

Bel waggles her head. ‘Don’t be stupid. Romina’s there. But she does what I tell her.’