He lets go. ‘What have you done with it?’
‘Je take nuffing.’ The girl backs away, putting what distance the alley allows between them. It is not much.
‘I should flip you over and shake to see what other of your muggings falls out.’ He moves in close again and, standing above her, lights a cigarette. Gripping it between his fat fingers, he drags on it and blows the smoke down around the girl’s face, making her cough.
Evie gets to her feet and moves to the doorway. The situation outside is charged with violence and although the child seems hell-bent on making things worse for herself, it can’t be right to leave it to play out.
‘Final warning,’ Pompie says.
The child juts her chin.
‘Before I stop being all gentle.’ A flush of evening stubble glistens on his cheek.
‘Pompie, je ne got em pas plus.’
Pompie reaches for her neck, his hand groping but failing to locate it. She reverses into the bins, knocking off the lids which crash to the ground like cymbals. He reaches out again, this time grabbing her by the shoulders, and pins her against the wall.
The girl struggles, pleading, and when that doesn’t work, wails for help, until he thwacks her cheek with the back of his hand and her head topples sideways as if it has been knocked off her neck.
Evie recoils, as if she herself had been hit. Emerging from the doorway, she crosses the alley on tiptoe towards them.
Keeping the girl pinned with one hand and ignoring her sobs, Pompie rifles the pockets of her skirt and jacket again, chucking more of her thefts on the ground – a collection of useless frippery and magpie opportunism. A Japanese paper fan flutters down, opening for a second into paper butterfly wings, before landing flat, soaking up the ooze. More shiny coins bounce on the cobbles, rolling into dark corners.
With a shout of triumph, he pulls out the watch by its chain and holds it up, letting it spin in front of the child’s nose, its face illuminated by the glow from the distant street.
‘So you did have it, you deceiving little tramp,’ he mutters.
Evie comes up behind, entering his shadow. She thinks she’s undetected but Pompie, barely turning, swings his fist and strikes the side of her head so that her legs fold.
Ignoring Evie on her hands behind him, he leans over the child and, sucking together a gob of phlegm, spits onto the crown of her head. ‘Don’t you ever keep stuff from me, do you understand?’ he mutters. ‘If you lie again, Pinocchio, as to what you’ve got, there’ll be worse coming than what you just had.’ And he wipes a moist curl of filth from the sole of his shoe along her shin.
Tucking the watch and chain into an inside pocket and rewrapping his boa around his neck, he strides back towards the light, his high-heeled shoes echoing on the wet stone.
Evie clambers to her feet and unsteadily begins to follow. If she can catch up and leap on his shoulders, maybe she can bring him down. Though such a notion is suspect logic and likely the result of a shorted circuit.
With her gyroscope impaired and with the latest blow to the head still ringing, she weaves helplessly, banging into the bins on left and right, stumbling and sliding on the slime. Unable to maintain a straight course or even hold herself upright, she falls hard against the wall, sliding down the brickwork, and ends seated on the wet cobbles.
She tilts her head to watch him leave. With no more strength left to pursue or to fight, she slumps forward, head in her hands.
Evie hears the girl rise to her feet the other side of the alley and, stepping around the fallen lids, cross the cobbles and kneel beside her. The girl’s arms close around her neck. What is she stealing now? she wonders. I have nothing for her to take.
‘Did hee hurt you?’ she asks gently, stroking Evie’s neck, trailing her fingertips over the contours of her cheek and the bridge of her nose. A fingertip curls inside her ear. She discovers the edge of the blonde wig and, lifting it, frees her hair. Is that it? Is it just the bright hairpiece she is after?
Despite the poor light, the girl’s face is close enough to reveal a layer of bruises beneath the grease paint.
‘A bit,’ she murmurs.
A tear rolls down the child’s cheek. Slow as a snail. Leaving a silvery trail. Is this sympathy? Evie’s heart lurches, even though she’s seen her perform, with spontaneous ease, such a feat on stage.
Evie shakily stands and starts to hobble away.
The girl wipes her face with the backs of her fingers. ‘Here,’ she says, extending her palm, a wad of cash held in front of her.
‘What? Why?’
The girl shrugs. ‘You can ‘ave it, but you must take us with you.’ She picks up the small dog and holds it to her chest.
‘Take us?’ The sharp bend the encounter has taken brings her up short. It is the oddest place, this stinking alley, to be conducting such a negotiation, that in fairness would be peculiar anywhere. Does the girl really think she is able to buy her?
The money is as suddenly withdrawn. Too fast for the eye. ‘Well?’ the girl asks.
‘I don’t understand?’
‘Cos je fancy somethin’ better than thees.’ She glances around at the dingy brickwork. ‘And moi fond of you.’
‘Fond of me! You know nothing about me.’ Even as Evie probes the request, she wonders why she is doing so. Isn’t this what her heart desperately wants?
She absent-mindedly reaches for the money but again, lightning-fast, it is removed from her reach.
‘I can tell enough,’ the child says.
‘Where are your parents?’
The girl stares back. Hostility enters her look. Even the dog yelps crossly. Then her expression relaxes and she shrugs noncommittally.
She holds the notes out again, the negotiation back on. ‘Everythin. Tout. Everythin. You can ave it.’
The child picks up her hat from the ground and twirls it on a finger. When it comes to a stop, she flips it over and takes out a second sheaf of notes from inside the band.
‘Je ave this aussi.’
Evie stares open-mouthed.
The child fans the greasy dollars and neuros, sliding them through her fingers as slipperily as a sharp.
‘But you have a home.’
‘Not so much un joli maison, je think.’ The girl nods towards the grimy brickwork of the theatre wall. ‘Do you believe moi like being slapped around tout le temps? Je ne une grande idiot.’
‘I don’t have anywhere,’ Evie says.
‘Moi loves an adventure.’
‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘Mon nom ees Sola.’
‘Sola,’ Evie repeats helplessly. She murmurs a nervous, ‘Okay,’ realising as she does so that she had been prepared to capitulate from the start. That she would have accepted such a deal from the moment the child stole her ribbon in the park.
30
As soon as they are away from the vicinity of the theatre, Sola takes Evie’s hand, as if such familiarity between virtual strangers is the done thing. Maybe the girl doesn’t trust her not to desert her, now that she has thrown in her lot.
After a few turns, Evie stops to make sure none of the child’s rather alarming actor acquaintances are following. The child, oblivious to her caution, paces joyfully, whistling music hall tunes to the little dog.
‘You wouldn’t tell me earlier about your family?’ Evie asks, risking the question again. Wondering how crazy she has been in allowing events to develop like they have.
‘Ma mère, she died,’ Sola replies dismissively.
‘Oh!’ She should have spotted that one coming.