Ellie grabbed a tea towel and wiped at the table’s surface. She was scowling – and, like her husband, avoiding Annie’s eyes.
‘Ellie,’ said Annie, sitting down opposite.
‘What?’ Ellie wasn’t looking at her, she was still dabbing at the wet patch, trying to prevent a mark on the wood.
‘You’re supposed to be my mate.’
Ellie glanced up. Her big moon face went pink. ‘I am your mate,’ she said, and turned her attention back to the tabletop.
‘Then tell me what’s going on. I’ve had the cold shoulder off you, Tony, Steve, Gary – everyone except Jackie Tulliver, and that’s only because he’s a useless waste of space and he sees me as one big fat wad of walking cash to provide the next drink for him. Tell me, Ellie. Tell me what the hell it is.’
Ellie shrugged and looked unhappy. ‘I can’t help you,’ she said.
‘You mean you won’t.’
Ellie’s eyes darted up and met Annie’s. ‘Will you leave off? I mean I bloody daren’t. Don’t you get it? Having you here put me in bother with people – they damned near wrecked this place just because I said I’d let you stay. You’re trouble, Annie. And I don’t need trouble. I’ve had enough of all that. All I want’s a quiet life. That’s all. No bother, no aggro.’
Annie decided it was time to put the screws on. Ellie had always been the weak link in the strong chain of friendship with her and Dolly. Ellie was the self-centred one who would pull the ladder up and say fuck you when the going got rough. ‘If you came to me in trouble, I’d help you,’ she said.
‘Yeah, you say that.’
‘I mean it. I need a friend, Ellie, and at the moment I’m on my own.’
Ellie stood up and put her cup and saucer into the sink. She turned quickly, and this time she looked Annie square in the eye.
‘Look, I don’t want to have to say this to you, but I have to so I’m going to say it, straight out, no sugar coating. Just piss off, will you? For my sake. Just go away. I can’t help you, I’ve got nothing to say to you, just leave me alone.’
55
Annie walked out of the club feeling sick and bereft. Ellie had washed her hands of her. She had one friend dead and the other not giving a fuck.
Not that she blamed Ellie. Ex-tarts were always of the nervous variety, she knew that. They’d seen the rough end of life and when they escaped from the game they didn’t want anything except normality, the comfy old fire and slippers routine. How could you blame them for that? Annie knew she’d be exactly the same, in those circumstances.
A bike shot past and then a long dark car swerved into the pavement with a screech of brakes. Horns hooted, taxi drivers hollered out of their windows and waved their fists. Annie kept walking, thinking about Dolly. She paused in front of the car to cross the street; Jackie had said he’d meet her in the next road. And then suddenly there were two big men standing on either side of her and one of them was shoving something that felt like a knife into her side.
She winced and shouted: ‘What the fuck?’ in surprise and pain, and the knife dug deeper.
‘In the car,’ said the one with the knife.
She looked up into a plug-ugly big dish of a face with a nose dotted with blackheads, mean piggy eyes and thick curling black eyebrows that met in the middle.
I know you, thought Annie.
He jabbed the knife deeper into her side, hard enough to hurt.
‘Don’t fuck me around,’ he warned, nudging harder and harder, pushing into her. His mate moved in closer too. Annie flashed him a glance. Taller, shaven-headed, his darkly tanned face pitted with adolescent acne. His face was like stone, without expression.
Jesus, I’m in trouble here.
Between them they shoved her into the back of the car. Eyebrows got into the back with her while the bald one went round to the front and slid behind the wheel. The whole time, Eyebrows kept up the knife pressure on her side.
Gonna have a bruise there, she thought.
‘You don’t want to do this,’ she said, her voice breathy with panic.
‘Shut up,’ said Eyebrows.
‘No, listen. You really don’t.’
Eyebrows stared at her. ‘I said, shut up.’
Annie shut up. She was aware of her mouth drying to ashes, of her heart rate accelerating crazily with fear.
‘Can you tell me what the fuck’s going on?’ she managed to get out.
Eyebrows turned a dark cold look on her. ‘Shut up,’ he said, and the way he said it made her freeze. ‘You make me say it again, you’ll be sorry.’
The car was in motion, swerving out into the traffic; more honking of horns, more taxi drivers shaking their fists.
Help me, thought Annie, but there was no help to be found. She thought she saw Jackie, ambling along the pavement on the other side of the road, but he was there and then gone; the car moved fast, leaving Jackie far behind.
As usual, she was on her own.
They stopped beside a warehouse down by the docks. Annie was watching Eyebrows nervously, but as he got out he flicked the knife shut and slipped it into his pocket. Baldy got out too and the pair of them dragged her from the car.
Annie decided she had to front this out.
‘You don’t know what you’re playing with here,’ she said to Eyebrows. And, ridiculously, she heard the next phrase coming out of her own mouth, a phrase she openly laughed at when it was uttered by politicians, film stars, people who were so far up their own arseholes that they had lost all sense of reality. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Eyebrows just looked at her. Baldy gave a slight smirk.
‘Yeah,’ said Eyebrows. ‘We know exactly who you are, and what you are too. That’s why we’re here.’
‘I’m warning you-’ started Annie, but the words were cut short when Eyebrows slapped her hard across the face.
She flew backward as if shot from a cannon. The stinging pain of the blow shocked her. She grabbed at her face as if to check it was still attached to her head. Couldn’t believe it. This fucker had the nerve to hit her – her, Annie Carter. She drew in a gulping breath. Her eyes were watering.
She started to speak again, and then Eyebrows came in close and punched her mid-section and all the breath went from her body in a huge whoosh of exploding air. She fell to the ground and lay there, unable to draw breath, her mind floundering in shock, her body clenched, her stomach a fiery ball of agony.
You bastards! You can’t do this! I’m Max Carter’s wife, are you fucking mental…?
Her mouth formed the words but she couldn’t speak. She had no breath to speak with. Groaning, face screwed up in pain, she tried to crawl away, thinking this can’t be happening, and then Eyebrows kicked her hard in the ribs and there was pain, unbelievable pain. She felt something give; something that had been solid inside her was broken, and she went face-down into the gravel and the mud, the rain washing her hair into the dirt, covering her expensive clothes with yellow slime.
Then there were more kicks, and she was crawling, trying to get away, but it wasn’t possible. They were following her, both of them, kicking her, and in the end it was easier to just stop moving and hope that it would end.
It did end, eventually. In this century or the next, she wasn’t sure.
But not before she’d prayed for oblivion, even for death, just to make the pain go away.
Help me, someone.
But no one came.
PART TWO