A mail van barrelled down Wood Lane, accelerating through a red light and disappearing in the direction of Shepherd’s Bush. Yawning widely, Chantelle kicked the bucket of dirty water along the empty platform of the westbound platform of White City tube, cursing her supervisor for putting her on cleaning duty again. She had been forced to wash down the station platform for three of the last four mornings. It simply wasn’t fair: the other members of her crew, Marlon, Pavel and Anton, all got to sit inside, reading the paper and having a kip while she slogged her way from one end of the station to the other, picking up litter and cleaning up after the dirty bastard passengers. Nothing surprised Chantelle any more – in less than a month on the job, she’d had to retrieve everything from false teeth to used condoms. People were so disgusting. Not for the first time, the girl wished that she had stuck with her hairdressing course at Goldhawk Road Technical College.
Wearied by the injustice of it all, Chantelle pushed her mop across the sticky concrete. This was exploitation, pure and simple, but there was bugger all that she could do about it. The supervisor, Crina, was a skanky bitch from Romania or some other Eastern European hell-hole. She had all of them reporting for duty at four o’clock in the morning so that her employment agency could claim workfare credits from the Department of Work amp; Pensions. Meanwhile, Chantelle had to work for six and a half hours a day for no money or risk losing all of her state benefits.
‘What do they want you to do?’ her father had asked when the letter from the DWP had arrived, instructing Chantelle to report for their latest welfare-to-work programme. ‘Go on the game?’
‘Probably,’ Chantelle grumbled. The idea had crossed her mind. Her useless bastard father wouldn’t give a toss if she did but, instinctively, the girl knew that she didn’t have the stomach for it.
‘I would tell them to get stuffed,’ her dad huffed, retreating behind his copy of the Daily Express.
Easy for you to say, Chantelle thought. Her dad hadn’t done a day’s work for more than thirty years. Good luck to anyone trying to get him back into a job.
In the end, however, there was no alternative. Two weeks later, Chantelle had reported for duty with her career reorientation provider, a company called New Life Horizons, which operated out of a two-room office in the basement of a crumbling office block just south of Brook Green. The place smelled of cigarettes and piss. All the people looked like they were on medication. After filling in a handful of forms, Chantelle was informed that she had been assigned to an environmental services crew who would be providing outsourced services to London Underground.
‘What are outsourced services?’ she’d asked the young guy behind the desk.
‘You’ll be doing the cleaning,’ he told her, not looking up. ‘Make sure you pick up your uniform before you go.’
‘Hey. Do it all.’ The Romanian slag, all peroxide hair and fake fingernails, appeared from behind a pillar and took a deep drag on her Lambert amp; Butler cigarette. Exhaling into the dark morning sky, she pointed towards the far end of the platform, past an advert for the latest James Bond movie.
‘Fuck off,’ Chantelle whispered to herself.
‘What you say?’ Crina jabbed an angry finger in Chantelle’s direction. ‘I’m watching you.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
Standing about five feet four inches tall, the Romanian woman was dressed in jeans and a red puffa jacket. Not for her the green jumpsuit with the letters NLH in black on the back that Chantelle and the other ‘employees’ were forced to wear. Behind her slapdash make-up, the woman could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty. Taking another drag on her cigarette, she glanced at her watch. ‘The station opens in less than half an hour – you have to finish soon.’
Looking up, Chantelle caught sight of Anton through the staffroom window. He was pointing at her and laughing. ‘Sod you,’ Chantelle mouthed, flipping him the finger.
‘Leave him alone,’ the woman snapped.
‘Get them to do some work,’ Chantelle demanded, stomping along the platform like an angry eight year old.
‘They work,’ Crina said flatly.
‘Yeah, right.’ You don’t tell them others what to do, Chantelle thought bitterly, ‘cos they’d kick your bony arse all the way back to the shitty little country you came from. Get you deported, so you can spend the rest of your life standing by the side of the road, sucking off Russian truck drivers for a living.
‘Hurry up!’ the woman squawked.
With her foot, Chantelle pointed at the cardboard box containing a selection of industrial-strength cleaning materials. ‘I need more disinfectant.’
Shaking her head, Crina took a final drag on her smoke and flicked the stub towards the empty train tracks. ‘There’s more stuff over there.’ She pointed at a small concrete shack, a glorified cupboard about six feet high by three feet wide, set to the side of the station building. To the right of its metal door was a keypad. ‘The code is 1026. Don’t take forever.’ Lecture over, she headed back inside.
‘Dunt tek fowevvva,’ Chantelle parroted in a cod Eastern European accent. Letting the mop fall from her hand, she watched the woman disappear into the ticket hall. ‘Fuuukkk uuu.’ Slouching across the platform, she stepped up to the shed door.
‘Urgh.’ White City really was an outdoor khazi. Something didn’t smell good and the cleaner looked around to see if she could locate the offending excretions. Wrinkling her nose, she punched in the key code, waiting for the lock to click open before reaching for the door handle. As she did so, the door swung open and the stink intensified.
‘Bollocks.’ The cleaner jumped backwards as a large black bin bag fell out on to the platform. As the sack hit the concrete, it split open to reveal its contents. As Chantelle realized what was inside, her eyes grew wide and she felt her legs wobble.
‘Crina.’
Slowly she backed away.
‘CRINA!’
What time was it? Where was she? Jade Jones tried to sit up in bed but the searing pain bouncing around her skull caused her to abandon that idea pretty damn quickly. She didn’t remember drinking that much, but this sure was a monster hangover. Her mouth was dry and her head felt like it had been split open with an axe. She could feel some noxious brew bubbling away in her stomach, all too eager to force its way back up her throat.
Concentrating on not throwing up, Jade waited for the nausea to subside, before trying to piece together the events of the night before. Slowly, it started coming back to her – the row with her boyfriend, the spur-of-the-moment trip to London, the guys in the car, the bottle of Smirnoff Black, the party . . . The bit she didn’t want to remember. Gently easing herself off the bed she sifted through the crumpled pile of clothing lying on the floor. Where were her knickers? Deciding that it didn’t matter, Jade picked up her jeans and checked the pockets. To her relief, she still had her return train ticket, ATM card and some spare cash. Her mobile phone was still in her jacket. It was time to get the hell out of this shit-hole, get back home and have a nice bath, forget all about last night. Hopefully Paul had learned his lesson. She had certainly learned hers.
Flopping back onto the bed, Jade struggled into the jeans before slipping on her trainers. Pulling on her jacket, she stepped gingerly towards the door. When she turned the handle, however, it didn’t budge. It took her a couple of moments to realize that the door was locked. She gave it a smack with her fist, followed by a series of rapid kicks.
‘Hey! Open the bloody door!’
When no one responded, she sat back on the bed and took out her mobile. Paul’s number was at the top of the dialled list. She hit call and listened to it ring. As it went to voicemail, she didn’t know what to say. The whole thing just seemed too stupid, too embarrassing. Ending the call, she wondered who to try next. No one came to mind.