Karen shuffles them all together into raggedy piles of mixed amounts; something that hurts my eyes simply to look at.
‘There’s almost nine-hundred quid here,’ she says.
‘Wow.’
She unties her hair and runs her fingers through it, pulling out a knot and then stopping to stare at the money. I’m doing the same. It’s what I’ve spent large part of my time doing since Friday.
‘Where did it come from?’ I ask.
Karen breathes in deeply and stuffs the money back into the envelope. There’s no neatness or finesse. It’s all rammed in together. She returns the envelope to the drawer and then starts going through her cupboards until she’s found a bottle of vodka. She unscrews the cap and then offers it to me.
‘No, thanks,’ I say.
She eyes the liquid and there’s a moment in which I think she’s going to wrap her lips around the bottle and neck it. She doesn’t. She slowly re-screws the cap and returns it to the cupboard.
‘I should’ve told you before,’ she says.
I say nothing, waiting for her to continue.
‘When you’ve been babysitting on the Sundays, it’s because I’ve been earning this.’ She nods to the drawer and there’s silence as I wait. ‘The agency sent a few of us out for a cleaning job a couple of months ago,’ she says. ‘It was at this big old house in the country. I think they get us in three or four times a year to go bottom to top. There are ten or twelve bedrooms, plus two dining rooms, this other one that’s full of art – proper Downton Abbey stuff. It takes us a whole week.’
She’s out of breath and fills a glass with water from the tap, before swigging it.
‘I got talking to the housekeeper and he said there might be a bit of extra work for me if I gave him my number. He told me not to tell the agency. I figured he meant cleaning but, when I phoned him at the end of the week, well… it wasn’t that.’
Karen has another glass of water and I realise she’s stopped to stare at the drawer in which the money is kept. I know that feeling of being indebted to an idea.
‘What was it?’ I ask, not completely sure if I want to know the answer.
‘There are parties there every Saturday and Sunday night,’ she says. She bites her lip and then lowers her voice. ‘Sex parties.’
At first, I think I’ve misheard her, but then I’m not sure if I should laugh or if this is serious.
‘You go to sex parties?’ I reply.
‘No!’ she fires back, before lowering her voice again. ‘Well… yes – but not like that.’ Her brow wrinkles and she squeezes the top of her nose. ‘They were looking for a couple of people to work as greeters on the door. You have to hand out glasses of champagne and these wristband things that people have to keep on. Everyone’s supposed to have an invite, so you have to check that, too. Then there’s this giant rack where everyone leaves their phones and you have to hand out tokens. That’s it. I don’t get involved with any of that.’
This time I do laugh.
‘Stop it!’ she scolds – but that only makes me laugh harder. ‘I don’t understand what’s funny,’ she says.
‘It’s the way you said it. “Any of that” – like you’re a granny repulsed by the idea of s-e-x.’
A grin creeps onto Karen’s face and then she’s laughing too.
‘It’s cash in hand,’ she says eventually. ‘All I have to do is put on a black dress and be on time. Nobody cares what anybody else looks like. It’s every body type you can imagine.’
‘So, every time I’ve been looking after your kids, you’ve been sexing it up with strangers?’
I burst out laughing before she can answer and she stands with her arms folded.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she says.
‘Course not. It sounds hilarious.’
The edges of Karen’s lips twitch. ‘It kind of is.’
‘Where do they keep the tokens?’ I ask.
‘What tokens?’
‘People check in their phones and you give them a token for it – but when they’re doing all the sex party stuff, where do they keep the token?’
She looks at me and then dissolves into giggles. ‘I’m not going to be able to get that out of my head now.’
It’s a good ten minutes before we stop sniggering. As soon as I think it’s over, the laughing starts once more.
Eventually, Karen says: ‘I’m using that money to pay for my birthday party.’ She pauses and then adds: ‘Can I tell you something?’
‘It’s your fiftieth?’
‘Oi! It’s my thirty-sixth.’ Her smile fades and she adds quietly: ‘What I was going to say was that I’ve never had a birthday party before…’
The silliness seems to evaporate.
‘I went to other kids’ but never had one of my own,’ she says. ‘I wanted to do something for me for once.’
I touch her on the arm and then wrap an arm around her back until my head is resting on her shoulder. It was only a few days ago that the idea of going seemed like such a chore. I’ve spent days thinking of myself, how seemingly small things mean different things to different people – that lad with his ‘only two quid’ – but this is the same thing.
‘How many are going?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know,’ Karen replies. ‘People are being flaky. Lots are saying they’ll see what they can do, that sort of thing. Maybe fifty, if I’m lucky. There are a few I know from work and others from the building. It’ll clash with Bonfire Night, obviously, but there’s not a lot I can do about that. I can hardly go back in time and tell Mum to stop pushing for a few hours.’
I feel her body relaxing and, when I let her go, Karen lets out a little grin.
‘I’ve never liked fireworks,’ she says.
‘I used to.’
‘They always stole my thunder,’ she says. ‘No one seemed bothered about my birthday because they all had fireworks displays to go to.’
‘Shall we both agree that Bonfire Night and fireworks in general are rubbish?’
‘Definitely.’
I take a step backwards and it feels as if things have changed. There was an innocent reason for all this suspicion – so perhaps that’s true of everything else?
The sense of well-being lasts for about a minute until I remember I’m holding onto Melanie’s jacket.
‘What about you?’ Karen says.
‘What about me?’
‘It feels like there’s something on your mind. If you want to share…?’
She’s read me better than I thought. There definitely has been something on my mind – more than one thing. I could unload everything on her now and see what she thinks. Tell her about the money and the music from across the hall. About Melanie stumbling back into my life and her jacket. About being fired and the man outside our building, who also happened to be at the memorial service. About Harry and how he was attacked in the same way that Ben’s brother went to prison for.
Then I remember the poster from the lamp post – and the fact that somebody wants their money back.
It’s all or nothing and I choose nothing.
Or almost nothing.
‘I left my job,’ I say. ‘I didn’t want to do it any more.’
Karen stares at me for a second and then leans in, wrapping her arms around my back. ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she says.
I suppose I can add lying to the whole fired-for-stealing outcome.
‘Can I do anything to help?’ she asks.
I pat her back gently, wanting to be released. ‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘I think I’m going to have to sort it out by myself.’
Chapter Twenty-Five