Cocooned under the covers while her cuts and bruises healed, Dolly decided to close her mind to it all. She could do that. It was better here than on the streets, that was for sure. Days turned into weeks, and she was able to get up, get dressed. Celia had seen to cleaning her clothes for her, and although the mirror in the bedroom told her that her face still looked a fright, all yellow and purple with bruising, she could open both eyes properly now. She brushed out her short mousy hair, which was straight as a yard of pump water, and went downstairs into the hall. She could hear voices.
Dolly went along the hall and opened the door at the end of it. The volume of the chatter shot up and she was confronted by a collection of girls – there was one boy among them – all sipping tea and smoking fags. The air in the room was blue, warm and fuggy. Conversation stopped short as Dolly appeared there.
‘Oh, hello, Dolly love,’ said Celia, getting to her feet. ‘Come and join our merry little band, eh? Tea, ducky?’
Dolly nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘You’re looking a bit better now,’ said Celia, as she went and boiled up more water. Slapping the kettle on the hob, she turned to the room at large and said: ‘I told you, didn’t I? One of those bastard pimps beat her up, poor kid.’
There were murmurs and ‘Ohs’ all round the room.
‘Here’s a seat,’ said the handsome blond boy, standing up and grabbing another chair, pulling it into the table beside his own. ‘Come and sit down, lovey.’
So this was Celia’s family, thought Dolly. They seemed a nice bunch; friendly. She sat down beside the boy.
‘I’m Darren,’ he said, and held out a soft, slender hand. ‘Glad you’re better.’
‘Dolly,’ she said, and shook it.
‘This is Ellie,’ said Darren, pointing to a fattish brunette across the table.
‘She does the chubby chasers,’ said a hard-eyed blonde.
Ellie paused with her hand in the biscuit tin. Her face reddened. ‘Oh, very fucking funny,’ she said.
Dolly didn’t have a clue what a chubby chaser was.
‘And that’s Aretha.’ Darren indicated a gorgeous black dreadlocked woman at the far end of the table. ‘That’s Cindy…’ That was the hard-eyed blonde. ‘And that’s Tabs. Tabs was a vivid redhead.
Dolly nodded to all of them to be polite, but these couldn’t be Celia’s family, could they? Aretha was black. Tabs was red-haired. Darren himself was blond and so was Cindy. There was no family resemblance between Celia and any one of these people – not even Ellie, who at least shared the same hair colour. Dolly’s own family looked somewhat alike, with puggish noses, round faces, and blondish or mousy hair. They were none of them beauties, nor ever would be, but you could see at a glance that they were kin. These people clearly weren’t.
Well, she thought as Celia placed tea and biscuits in front of her, it was none of her business. And before long, she’d be out of here anyway, it wouldn’t matter. She’d be back on the streets. Then she thought of the pimp who’d beaten her up, and shuddered. She’d have to find another spot to work. That was all. Make sure she didn’t fall foul of him again.
‘Nice to see you up,’ said Celia, sitting down at the table and daintily tapping the ash off her cigarette into a glass ashtray with a Capstan logo on the side of it. Dolly watched her, fascinated. With her sharp suits, fully made-up face, scarlet fingernails and ivory fag holder, Celia certainly had style.
The front doorbell rang, and Tabs the redhead went to answer it. When Dolly heard a man’s voice out there, she thought of her dad. Maybe he was looking for her. She felt sick with fear. The kitchen door opened and she jumped as if she’d been shot. Aware of Celia watching her, she picked up her teacup with a shaking hand, and drank.
Tabs poked her head around the door. ‘Customer for Aretha,’ she said, and the beautiful black woman uncurled her six-foot length from her chair with a grin.
‘Some of us, we just so in demand,’ she purred, and headed out of the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Cindy.
Tabs sat back down.
Customer? thought Dolly. She heard people going up the stairs, heard a door open and close overhead. No one else seemed to be taking any notice. The chatter resumed. She picked up a biscuit and bit into it and let the warmth and the camaraderie in the kitchen wash over her. It was comforting, somehow. Not like home. Presently Darren stretched and said he’d better make tracks, and Cindy and Tabs said they were off to the shops. Celia said she was expecting Billy, so would Ellie see Dolly back up to her room?
There was another knock on the front door when Ellie and Dolly were out in the hall heading for the stairs. Ellie let in a vacant-looking man in a deerstalker hat, clutching a briefcase.
‘Hiya, Billy,’ she said, and he walked past her without a word.
‘You think you’ll be staying on?’ asked Ellie as they went up the stairs and stopped outside Dolly’s bedroom door.
‘Nah,’ said Dolly. She could hear a strange sound coming from the room next door to hers. Like someone being beaten or whipped, she thought. Only it couldn’t be. Could it? Surely Celia wouldn’t allow anything cruel to go on, not in her house? Maybe she’d been wrong about Celia, though. Maybe the streets would be safer after all.
‘That… noise,’ she said to Ellie.
‘Yeah? What about it?’
‘Do you think we ought to help…?’
‘Help Aretha?’ Ellie laughed out loud. ‘Oh no, I don’t think so. Aretha can handle herself, no bother. It’s the client that’s in trouble, not her.’
‘What?’ Dolly stared in bewilderment. Aretha was beating someone up? But why?
Ellie rolled her eyes. ‘Jesus, you’re a little innocent, ain’t you? Look, Aretha’s a dominatrix. Do you know what that means?’
Dolly shook her head.
‘It means she beats the crap out of the customers because that’s what they want her to do. They love it.’
‘Customers?’
‘Yeah, customers.’ Ellie lightly tweaked Dolly’s nose. ‘This is a knocking shop.’
When Dolly still looked blank, Ellie raised her eyebrows and puffed out a sigh. ‘A fuck-shop. Full of whores. Got it now?’
36
Dolly’s first instinct was to run. Ellie’s words shocked her, but she understood them. She understood plenty now. Ellie meant that people were doing the man-and-woman thing right here, under this roof. Money was changing hands for services provided. And how long would it be before she got dragged into it, made to do it with some bastard she didn’t want?
She seriously thought about it, just upping and getting gone. But over the weeks that followed, Celia made no demands. She continued to be kind to her, and seemed perfectly willing to go on providing bed and board. And the place was happy. Despite all the comings and goings, despite what really went on here, the place was orderly, neat, run on a strictly businesslike footing.
No one hurt her. Celia took her up West, bought little bits and pieces for her, fussed over her in a way that Mum had never done. She’d missed that, and had never realized it until now. But Celia had a hard side to her too; she could be firm with the girls and tough with the punters. One day Dolly walked into the kitchen when Celia was sitting at the table having tea and biscuits with that bloke ‘Billy’, who looked like a dimwit in his deerstalker, his briefcase on his lap like a shield against the world.