Think what you could buy if you had that. She’d never have to go out anymore, never go begging round Fat Kenny’s, Keith could just fuck off. Yeah, you. You heard. Just fuck off. What are you to me, you little cunt, now I’ve got all this money? All the fucking bling-bling. I could have you fucking killed, mate. Just like that, a fucking hit man, bang and then I’ll go out on the piss with Lisa Mafia. She’ll be all like “You’re Marla, yeah, the fucking artist done that picture of Diana on the sun and all that? Fucking wicked. Fucking sorted, yeah? You fucking go, girl.” This was going to be so fucking good. She went to get the scrapbook with the picture on from where she’d left it on the coffee table and that’s when she realised she’d been fucking burgled.
What the fuck? Someone had been in, though there weren’t like nothing broken. Had she locked the back door, had she locked it when she went out? Had she needed to unlock it when she come back in? For fuck’s sake. Someone had been in while she was out. They’d been in and they’d taken not the telly, not the beatbox thing, not even took the carriage clock. No, now she looked around they hadn’t taken nothing except Marla’s scrapbook. And her Ripper books. She’d left them there as well, there on the coffee table so that she’d know where they were. Oh, fuck. Someone had been in, had her scrapbook with her picture of Diana on and the worst of it was that she’d been right. Been right about the picture. Why would someone nick it if it wasn’t valuable? Oh fucking hell, the millions that she could have got for that. Now look. Now look at her, she’s fucking crying. Fucking crying. Keith thinks she’s a cunt and Lisa Mafia thinks she’s a cunt as well. Princess Diana thinks that she’s a cunt.
Cry all you want. Cry all you want you stupid, stupid fucking cunt. Cry all you want ’cause you’re not going out.
It was a new moon like when they’re all sharp and pointed, over Scarletwell what run downhill to Andrew’s Road. That was the only place, where there were customers but where there were no cameras what could see you, although they kept saying they were going to put some there. On Marla’s left across the road there were the maisonettes what had their front round Upper Cross Street. Most of them were dark where you could see over the balconies but some with lights on, shining through all coloured curtains. On her right across the criss-cross wires that made the fence she had the grass bit at the top of Spring Lane School. Marla thought schools always looked haunted when it was at night and there weren’t kids there. She supposed it was because a school had such a lot of noise and kids all running round during the day, it made you notice more when it was dark and quiet and there weren’t nothing moving.
She went down past the school gates and carried on down by the bottom playing fields. Over the road now there were other flats, Greyfriars flats had she heard them called? They looked sort of the same as Marla’s flats, about as old, perhaps in better nick, you couldn’t really tell at night. Some of the balconies down here had rounded corners, though, and that looked sort of better than round hers. She carried on, down past where Greyfriars ended on the road’s far side and Bath Street’s bottom end curved round to join with Scarletwell. She went on past the empty playing fields, where they were fenced off at their bottom on her right and other than the traffic in the distance over Spencer Bridge all she could hear were her own footsteps on the bumpy path what had all weeds come up between its stones.
There was that little house all on its own there, little red-brick house at one end of this strip of grass by Andrew’s Road, just where it met with Scarletwell Street. It weren’t big, but looked as if it might have been two really little houses once what had been knocked together. It shit Marla up, shit her up every time she saw it and she’d no idea why. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t work it out, why it was standing there when what looked like the terrace it had been on had been pulled down years ago. It had a light on through thick curtains, so there must be someone living there. She pulled the collar of her mac tight and went clacking past the funny house and round the corner to its right, along the pavement by St. Andrew’s Road, between the road and that long strip of grass that ran towards Spring Lane, the bit where all the other houses must have used to be. Up in the sky, just here and there between the brown bits from the street lights, she could see all stars.
She knew. She knew exactly what was going to happen, in her guts she knew. There’d be a car along now, any minute. That would be the one. There wasn’t anything what she could do to stop it, nothing she could do so she was somewhere else. It was as if it had already happened, was already in the script of that bloke with the waistcoat’s comedy and there weren’t nothing she could do except just go along with it, go through the moves that she was meant to make, take one step then another up along beside the grass towards Spring Lane, then at the end turn back and walk along the other way, to Scarletwell Street, with the house all dark there on the corner and no windows lit from this side.
Walking back to Scarletwell, there were the noises from the station yards, behind the wall across St. Andrew’s Road, just shunting noises, but she could hear kids as well, kids’ voices giggling. They were coming from the big dark row of bushes on the far side of the strip of grass, that ran along the bottom there of the school playing fields to Marla’s left. It must be them what she’d seen earlier, the little girl with the fur stole from up Chalk Lane. What were they doing, all still out this late? She listened but the voices didn’t come again from up behind the hedge. She’d probably imagined them.
The little house was black against the grey sky up the hill behind it, up towards the railway station and up Peter’s Way. The car was coming down St. Andrew’s Road from up the station end towards her, moving slow, its headlights getting slowly nearer. She knew what would happen but it was like it would happen anyway. It was all set, the minute that she’d left the flat, all set in stone like with a church or something where it was already built and nobody could change it. The car stopped, pulled in across the road and stopped there at the corner on the other side of Scarletwell, across from where the house was. Marla couldn’t hear the kids now. There was nobody about.
She walked towards the car.
ROUGH SLEEPERS
It had been in one sense forty years since Freddy Allen left the life. One day he might go back to it, there was always that possibility. That door was always open, as it had turned out, but for the moment he was comfortable the way he was. Not happy, but amongst familiar faces and familiar circumstances in a place that he was used to. Comfortable. Somewhere that you could always get a bite to eat if you knew where to look, where you could sort of have a drink and sort of have some of the other, now and then, although the now and then of it could be a pain. But there was always billiards, up the billiard hall, and there was nothing Freddy loved more than he loved to watch a cracking game of billiards.