She was looking at me, she was watching me speak, but she wasn’t really hearing me. Lori was still in shock, probably. Reeling and unsteady from the fact she had escaped whatever was previously making her life hell. She wouldn’t hear me this time, but if others told her and told her and told her and told her, maybe she would hear it. Maybe she wouldn’t make the same mistakes most of us had made along the way. ‘Lori, I’m really sorry that you’ve ended up out here,’ I said to her. ‘I know how awful it is when you feel like you can’t go home.’ I took another sip of my hot chocolate; this time it was the right temperature, the milky, cocoa sweetness of it slipping easily down my throat. ‘If it’s all right, I’ll sit here with you for a bit. And if you want to talk about anything – anything – do so. I’ll stay as long as you want me to.’
We sat there for most of the night and she didn’t say another word to me.
Brighton, 2016
At the end of my shift, I am half expecting Mrs Nasir and one of the burly bellboys to be waiting for me, ready to search me and my trolley for something I have allegedly stolen from Todd. I am expecting him to do anything to discredit me, teach me a lesson for walking away from him for the second time. But nothing. I finish my shift, and leave the building without incident. I stand outside the service entrance, wondering what to do next.
That wasn’t as scary as I always thought it would be. During an ordinary shift, I’ve discovered that Mind Todd is far scarier than Real Todd. Maybe my memory makes people scarier than they are. Maybe I should get another confrontation over with right now. It’s not like I can go straight home anyway, because despite not being scared of him, I don’t want Todd to follow me and find out where I live. So maybe the safest, sanest thing to do will be to go out of here, turn back off this seafront road and head back towards the centre of Brighton, get on a train and go and see my parents.
Birmingham, 2015
I arrived at Bernie’s to meet Reese and he wasn’t there. Lori was. She had her rucksack with her, and she looked dishevelled and tired. A tiredness swept through her body that you expected to see in those worn out by life. Her hair was pulled back into a greasy-looking ponytail, her clothes were grubby, she moved like a person who hadn’t slept in weeks. She was weak now, emotionally exhausted, physically depleted enough to be doing what she was now – sitting opposite Judge.
My stomach turned over. I wanted to march over to their table and rip her away from him, remind her what I had told her, what I knew other people had told her, that you mustn’t get involved with people like him, nor with him. ‘You mustn’t take anything from him!’ I wanted to scream. ‘You must stay as far away from him as possible. Home is unbearable, and Judge will make here unbearable, too.’
Pretending I didn’t see them, I went to the counter and ordered a coffee, before I sat at the table I always sat at, facing the door, pushed my headphones into my ears and turned the music all the way up, drowning out the conversation he was having with her. I saw, though, how the conversation ended – with him passing her a small wrap she secreted away under her hands, him gently patting her hand with a verbal reassurance, her vigorous nod, her smile of gratitude.
Don’t panic, I told myself. It wasn’t too late. If I could speak to her, make her see that Judge wasn’t the way to get through this, it would be OK. ‘Living on a Prayer’ continued to play in my ears and I counted down the seconds until he walked out the door.
Judge got up and moved to leave, but instead of simply walking out, he wanted to make his presence felt to me. ‘Ace, nice to see you,’ he said, standing too close to me. I could smell his aftershave, and it catapulted me, as always, back to the last night I had worked for him.
That night, when I had refused to take his money and the wrap of something he’d put on top to help me deal with what had gone before, he’d been quietly raging. I’d kept my eyes lowered and had simply repeated over and over that I didn’t want the money, I wouldn’t feel right about taking it because I wanted to call it quits. Eventually he’d accepted what I was saying and with a look that told me he wanted to grab me by the throat and snap my neck, had opened the car door to let me go. He’d wanted to hurt me, but couldn’t. People like Judge managed to keep control by seeming to stick to a code of conduct. If I had taken something from him, he would be well within his rights, the code would say, to do whatever he liked to me. Because I never had, if word got out that he was hurting people who owed him nothing, people would turn on him, would find another supplier. He’d never be sure, either, when someone was going to talk to the police just to get rid of him. Judge had let me go that night, but it hadn’t been the end of it. Over the years, he’d ignore me, and other times would come over to me, like now, and say how nice it was to see me.
I always kept my gaze lowered, and this time I took out my earphones and mumbled a hello, knowing which way this conversation was going to go.
‘How you doing, Ace?’
‘Fine,’ I replied quietly.
I continued to stare down at my hands, examining the lines in my skin, the shapes of the wrinkles over my knuckles, the colour of my short, stubby nails. He leant in close to me, so near that his smell filled my senses; his breath moved gently over my skin when he spoke quietly and deliberately. ‘Do you still think about that time, Ace?’ he murmured. ‘Fucked by six men in one night. They told me all about you, your body, the noises you made when they hurt you. It sounded so good, so special. And you did it for free.’ He leant in so close his lips grazed my ear as he spoke. ‘Never forget I did that to you. Never forget I can do that to you again whenever I want.’
He stood upright again, satisfied that he’d felt me flinch, pleased he’d got a reaction from me. ‘Ace, if you ever want to come to another of my parties, let me know,’ he said at normal volume. ‘I’m sure there are lots of people who’d love to party with you again.’
‘OK,’ I muttered.
‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘I’d certainly like to party with you again, if that makes any difference.’ With one last grin at Lori, then me, he left.
I covered my mouth with my hand, inhaling and exhaling deeply to clear my nostrils of the smell of him, cleanse my mind of him, stop the flashbacks about that night rolling in and unspooling themselves.
‘Do you know him?’ Lori asked from across the café. ‘Judge, do you know him?’
I nodded, not yet able to speak.
‘He’s been really good to me,’ she said. ‘He’s been dead nice. I know you said not to take stuff from people, but he’s been dead nice about everything. He even said he’d find me a place to stay if I wanted to stop sleeping out.’
‘Lori,’ I began, and then wondered what to say. She was in his thrall. Not so much that she’d agreed to stay in one of his houses, but it wouldn’t be long. Not when he’d got her hooked enough to do anything he asked of her. ‘Lori, just be careful of people like him, all right?’ I had to be careful, too, that she didn’t go mouthing off to him about what I’d said. There’d be repercussions if he heard I was slagging him off. ‘Not everyone is who they seem to be, and it’s not a good idea to take things from people you don’t know. You don’t know what they’ll want in return.’
‘But Judge’s dead nice. He said not to worry about the stuff he’s given me, that it was all part of the getting-to-know-each-other process.’
‘Lori, I wish you would go and talk to the people who could help you. You’re young enough to get all sorts of help and they won’t make you go home. They really won’t.’
She tutted at me, her nostrils flaring in disgust. Immediately she was on her feet, she snatched up her rucksack and sleeping bag and stormed out of the café without another look at me. Who could blame her? Really, who could?
I pushed the earphones back into place and reinserted the music into my head. I needed it to wipe out those two conversations, neither of which had done me any good.
Roni
London, 2016
‘Hello. This is Edna Hyde, headte
acher of Chiselwick High School, leaving a message for Veronica Harper. Ms Harper, I was wondering if you had had time to consider my offer of you coming to work at our school permanently? The children responded extremely well to you and we thought you fitted in at the school in a rather unique way. We will, of course, discuss with you updating your training, but I’d be grateful if you would please consider it. I look forward to hearing from you.’
I delete the message from the phone because I do not want to consider it. At any other time, I would of course consider the offer of a job at a school I loved teaching at, and I would love the regular income it would bring that would help me move out of my parents’ house, but I haven’t found Nika yet. It might sound ridiculous, but I do not want to be tied down too much until I have an idea of where she is, what I will do when I find her. I feel it is a ‘when’, not an ‘if’. I have faith in that if nothing else.
The machine beeps, clicks through to the next message, also left this afternoon. Mum and Dad are not in, the house is in darkness and I am standing in the corridor, listening to the messages on the answerphone attached to the house phone. I really should get a mobile. I feel a lot freer without one, though. Not tied down to always speaking to people when they choose to speak to me.
‘Hello, this is Cliff calling for Veronica. I hope this is the right number as I’ve left a couple of messages and I haven’t heard back. Veronica, it would be nice to go out again? Well, it would be for me. I thought we had fun? Look, give me a call at the school—’ I delete Cliff’s message, like I have deleted his others. I like him, but I’m not looking for anything like that right now. I have to find Nika. That’s the long and the short of it. I am being single-minded because until I find her, I cannot make any other plans for my life. I left the convent to do it, and that is what I need to do.
I am having trouble sleeping again. I am up for many hours in the night nowadays, and the fractured hours with their jagged nightmares are far too much to handle cooped up in my bedroom, trying hard not to make the bed frame creak with every move. I’ve taken to getting a bus up towards the centre of London and finding late-opening cafés to sit in to read.
I’m sitting in a bagel shop that is open most of the night, by the window, when the door tings open and I see her stumble in.
I watch her at the till, barely standing up and trying to order a coffee and bagel to go. The left shoulder of her coat, covered in an off-white fake fur, keeps falling off her shoulder, as does the spaghetti-thin strap of the black dress she is wearing underneath it. Gail.
After the third time of her looking over her shoulder through the glass front door of the bagel shop, I finally manage to catch a glimpse of him, the man she’s with. He’s another one who is at least three times her age, dashing in a salt-and-pepper way with a well-cut suit and an expensive-looking raincoat. His hands are buried in his pockets, but I know on the left hand there’ll be a wedding ring, in his wallet there’ll be a family photo with smiling faces of children, probably not much younger than the girl he’s planning on having sex with at some point tonight.
Without really thinking about what I’m going to do next, I carefully close my book with its bright pink cover and stand up, abandoning – briefly – my half-drunk coffee and untouched bagel, and head to the counter. ‘Gail, how lovely to see you,’ I say to her. She double-takes, is terrified for a moment when she realises it’s really me, and then she shakes herself back to normal, back to that line of contempt she has for me.
‘What are you doing here, Miss?’ she asks. Her eyes dart to where I was sitting as though checking that none of the other teachers will be out in a café at 2 a.m.
‘Catching up on my reading,’ I say to her, raising my book so she can see.
Her eyes widen in surprise as she reads the title. Before she can say anything, I ask: ‘Who’s your friend waiting for you outside?’
‘Erm …’ She shrugs. ‘Just some guy.’
‘I’d like to meet him,’ I state. I didn’t mean to say that; I don’t know what I meant to say, but not that, I don’t think. But then, what was I meaning to do? I could have turned a blind eye, pretended I hadn’t seen her and let her get on with it.
‘Yeah, right,’ she scoffs.
‘Why not?’
‘Who are you, my mother?’
‘No, just someone who is interested. In you, your life, the “just some guy” you’re hanging out with.’
What she’s about to say is interrupted by the brief, loud knock of Just Some Guy rapping his knuckles impatiently on the window. When we turn towards him, he raises his hands at her in an aggressive ‘what are you doing?/don’t keep me waiting’ gesture. She is momentarily worried, looks at me, scared, then she makes an ‘I’m going as fast as I can’ movement in reply. I smile at him, and raise my hand to wave at him. He shoots me a well-concealed snarl. I’ve seen that look from men like him so many times before. Don’t get involved, that look is saying, not if you know what’s good for you. Those looks were almost always directed at Nika when she wouldn’t leave me with whichever man was pawing at me.
If I knew what was good for me, I would not have left the monastery, I would not have come out at this time of night to sit and stare at the pages of my book and wonder when I was going to get a proper night’s sleep again. If I knew what was good for me, I would give up all ideas of finding Nika and would get on with my life. If I knew what was good for me, I might have taken the advice of the priest who now regularly hears my confession in north-west London and would have sat in that wooden box, found a way to tell all about what I did, and then accept absolution and move on.
I stride towards the door and open it, the jangling of the bell bringing the owner of the café from out back. He took Gail’s money for her order then disappeared out back into his bakery area and had not reappeared since. I suspect he was stalling her, trying to stop her from doing what she was about to do because she is so young. If you ignore the clothes and hair, the make-up and the attitude, you can see she is so young.
The man straightens up as I approach. He takes his hands out of his pockets and confirms what I thought – wedding ring, thick and gold, sitting proudly on the ring finger of his left hand.
‘Hello,’ I say to him. ‘My name is Sister Grace. I’ve just been talking to lovely Gail in there.’
He scowls at me, not sure what to think. I’m hardly dressed as a nun today, but his gaze does stray to the book in my hand and he’s unsure.
‘Did you know she was fourteen?’ I say with what I call my ‘nun voice and smile’. I only use it on particularly obnoxious people; that quiet, calm, patronising tone is so much more effective with the habit, but the name and the book in my hand should be enough for this deviant. ‘Fourteen. And how old is your daughter?’ I ask. It’s a guess, of course. He suddenly stands up a little straighter, his arms fold themselves across his chest in a protective, defensive move.
‘I-I-I-I don’t have a daughter,’ he says. By the end of the sentence, the end of the lie, he is quite confident about what he is saying. So confident, in fact, that he repeats it: ‘I don’t have a daughter.’
I hold out my Bible. It is pink and new. I bought it the other day when I reached for my usual Bible, much used and much loved, and couldn’t make contact with it because guilt was spreading out through my fingers. I’d felt something every time I touched it, but hadn’t been able to name it until that moment, and I realised. I felt guilty. That Bible had been a part of my life as a nun. As I regularly say to people, I’m not a nun any more. I needed to get myself a new one to match my new life. ‘Swear on this that you haven’t got a daughter,’ I say to him. ‘Swear on this that you haven’t got a daughter and I’ll believe you.’
He stares at the pink-covered book, his eyes full of fear.
‘It’s only a book,’ I say to him. ‘I’m sure someone like you doesn’t even believe in all that God stuff. So just put your hand on this good book and swear that you haven’t got a daughter.’ One who i
s probably the same age as Gail, which is probably the reason why you picked her, I add silently. I don’t care what anyone might think, someone his age going after someone her age is disgusting and perverted and if he has a daughter her age, then he is even more perverted.
The perverted ‘ordinary bloke’ in front of me stares at my pink Bible. The bell of the door tings and Gail steps out. ‘What’s going on?’ she asks.
Just Some Guy looks up from the book at her. A thousand thoughts flit across his face as he takes her in, and I wonder if she can see them, understand them. He’s older than me, probably from a generation where many, many people didn’t necessarily believe in God but didn’t actively disbelieve, either. They quietly ignored that part of life, hoping it would go away, and only went to church for the usual festivals of life, maybe even for Christmas. He’s wondering, in that way a secular person who has memories of religion once being a large part of his life would, if Gail is worth it. If it is worth denying the existence of his daughter(s) so he can get to screw someone this young.
‘I don’t have to put up with this shit,’ he says.
‘No, you really, really don’t,’ I say.
‘What’s she been saying to you?’ Gail demands.
‘I asked him how old his daughter was,’ I state, ‘and he claimed he didn’t have one. So I asked him to swear on my Bible that he didn’t have a daughter and he was about to, I think?’ I turn towards him, thrusting the book a little closer to him as I do so. ‘You were about to, weren’t you? I mean, knowing I’m a nun and all, you were going to swear on my Bible that you don’t have a daughter.’