Running Scared (7 page)

‘Rubbish!’ I bellowed back. ‘You’re giving up! This isn’t the time to give up!’

‘Why not?’ She sounded calm, too calm. I had to keep her there, keep her talking.

‘Perhaps together we can think of something.’

‘You’re crazy, Fran. You always were. Don’t try and help me. I told you, do-gooders always foul you up.’

‘You’re already fouled up,’ I retorted. ‘But you want to get out of this and I might be able to help. Or I can try.’ I hadn’t a clue how, mind you, and probably I shouldn’t be sticking my neck out like that, but I could feel her slipping away, not just physically, but mentally. A few moments back, just for an instant, I’d made contact. ‘Isn’t it worth it?’ I shouted. ‘Or do you want to wait until Jo Jo knocks out your front teeth and then goes off with some other girl?’

She swore at me and turned on her heel. I shouted after her, ‘You can find me mornings at the newsagent’s by the traffic lights, just down from where I saw you the other day. Or leave a message for me there with Ganesh Patel.’

A brief abusive reply drifted back to me through the evening shades.

I let her go and wondered if I’d see her again. I told myself it didn’t matter if I didn’t. That was life on the streets. People came and went. If anyone vanished it might be because they wanted to. Everyone had that right – to be anonymous, to be spared probing questions, needing to give an account of oneself. It was up to Tig to decide how she wanted to live. In the end, it mattered to no one but herself.

‘Not to you, Fran, at any rate,’ I told myself aloud. I went home.

The chap was wrong who said no man was an island. That’s what each of us is, an island.

Chapter Four

‘Morning, darling!’

‘Hullo, Hitch,’ I returned unenthusiastically.

He was on time, I’d give him that. It was just a little after eight. I’d arrived ten minutes earlier and found Ganesh in subdued mood. I fancied he looked relieved to see me. I went to take a last look at the old washroom and I had to admit, it badly needed doing up. Hari really shouldn’t complain. I just wished, somehow, it wasn’t Hitch carrying out the work. There’s always a snag where he’s concerned, something he hasn’t told you. But for the life of me, looking around the small area involved and the basic fittings, I couldn’t see what it was here.

‘Go and tell him to open up the back gate, will you, darling?’ Hitch wheedled now. It must have got through his thick skull that he wasn’t my favourite person and he was wary of me. ‘So’s Marco and I can bring the new stuff in and take the old out, right? You don’t want it coming through here, do you?’

Ganesh came out of the storeroom at that moment so I said, ‘Tell him yourself.’

‘I’ll go and open up,’ said Ganesh, who’d obviously overheard. He gave me a very direct look which meant, I knew, don’t antagonise the workforce.

Ganesh disappeared to open up the small yard out back and Hitch followed, taking a good look round him as he went. I hoped he kept his fingers to himself in the storeroom.

I was on my own. I fiddled around, tidying the mags and papers, replenishing the bins of packeted snacks and the sweet trays until the bell jingled, the paper chains and tinsel rustled, heralding a newcomer in the shop.

I emerged from behind the rack of Christmas cards and gaped. He was six foot tall and beautiful. His long blond hair was tied back with a ribbon and contrasted with large dark eyes and eyebrows in an oval face with a long narrow nose. His expression was dreamy and serene, suggesting behind it was a mind concentrating on higher spiritual matters. It was as if the Angel Gabriel had just stepped off one of the cards. Perhaps the hair was bleached – I didn’t care. He wore an old dark quilted jacket and clean but paint-stained jeans and trainers. He hadn’t, alas, brought a message from on high.

‘Hitch around somewhere?’ he asked. He had a nice voice and was altogether my idea of a Christmas present.

‘Out back in the yard,’ I croaked, adding in, I hoped, a more normal if incredulous voice, ‘You’re Marco? I’m Fran.’ If he looked like any kind of painter, he ought to be one knocking out some entry for the Turner Prize.

‘Oh, right. Can I get through here? Or have I got to go round?’

‘You can go through, I’ll show you.’ I led the way to the storeroom. Perhaps having the Jefferson Hitchens Property Maintenance Company on the premises wasn’t going to be so bad, after all.

Oh yes, it was. The rest of the morning was dominated by a deafening banging and clattering from the washroom as the old fittings were torn out. Every customer who came in asked what was going on and I soon had a headache. Brief respite came roughly every hour when Hitch and Marco took a tea-break in the storeroom.

‘You know,’ I said to Gan, ‘not that it’s any of my business, but you ought to keep an eye on them in there.’

‘I can’t spy on them,’ said Gan nervously.

‘We’ll take it in turns,’ I said. ‘I’ll go first.’

I opened the storeroom door and peered in. Hitch was sitting on a plastic chair, reading the
Sun
and drinking from a large souvenir mug celebrating West Ham Football Club. There was an empty crisp packet on the table together with the crumpled wrappings from a bar of turkish delight. Marco was drinking Coca-Cola from the can and reading a Terry Pratchett novel. They glanced up.

‘Need some more KitKats!’ I excused my presence hastily and grabbed a carton.

‘Just the job,’ said Hitch, brightening. ‘Cheers, darling.’

I handed them out a KitKat each and went back.

‘Price of two KitKats, a can of Coke, a turkish delight and a packet of crisps to be knocked off the final bill,’ I said. ‘You’d better keep a tally. Has he given you the fifty pence owing from yesterday?’

Ganesh looked at me in wonder and reproach. ‘I’ve never known you so stingy, Fran.’

‘It’s like Aladdin’s cave in there as far as Hitch is concerned,’ I warned.

Ganesh looked worried and the next time the workers took a break, he was in there like a shot, checking on them.

At eleven, I made coffee for us all, using water from the kettle I’d filled before they started work. Needless to say, the water supply was now switched off. They were quick workers, at least on the demolition side. They’d pulled out the washbasin and the loo and cistern. I’d had to go next door to the petfood shop and ask to use the loo there. This time, as I carried my offerings of coffee to our two creative builders in the storeroom, my nostrils were assailed by a distinctive sickly scent as I opened the door.

‘I don’t want to worry you,’ I said to Ganesh, ‘but Marco’s smoking a joint in there.’

‘What? For God’s sake, stop him!’ Ganesh looked as if he was going to have a heart attack. ‘Anyone coming in the shop will be able to smell it!’

‘You stop him,’ I suggested. But in the end I was the one who went back in there and informed Marco that smoking – of whatever kind – on the premises was strictly forbidden owing to the high fire risk.

‘Sure,’ he said, smiling serenely up at me. I found myself smiling back, mesmerised.

‘You mean, you gotta shop full of fags and you can’t light up?’ demanded Hitch, shocked.

‘That’s it,’ I said. With Hitch playing gooseberry, what chance romance? ‘The insurance company insists.’

‘We’ll have a couple of them Mars bars over there, then.’ He pointed airily at the box.

By now, I didn’t have to tell Ganesh to keep a tally. He was feverishly jotting it all down on a scrap of paper by the till.

‘Here,’ said Hitch suddenly, ‘we found something when we pulled the old basin out, didn’t we, Marco? You got it?’

‘Yeah.’ Marco fished in his pocket and handed me one of those small padded envelopes. ‘Jammed down behind the pipes underneath.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, taking it. I turned it over. It was stuck down with Sellotape. I pressed it cautiously and felt something small, cylindrical, and solid inside. I didn’t recognise the shape but the envelope looked clean and fresh. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been there long.

‘Dunno what it is,’ prompted Hitch, adding virtuously, ‘We didn’t open it, Marco and me. It’s stuck down.’

I forbore remarking that it was a pity the contents of the storeroom weren’t stuck down. I retreated into the shop, followed by our workers, and handed the package to Ganesh.

‘They found it hidden behind the pipes.’

‘What is it?’ asked Gan suspiciously.

‘How do I know? Open it, you’re the manager.’

‘I’m not going to open it,’ he said. ‘It might explode. You read about these things in the papers. Nutters go round shops hiding incendiary devices.’ Hitch and Marco backed off a little.

‘What would be the point of it going off in the washroom?’ I asked. ‘It wouldn’t set fire to anything in there. Besides, how would he get into the washroom to hide it? The public never goes in there and no one could get past whoever is working in the shop without being seen.’

‘You open it, then,’ he said.

‘All right, I will!’

Hitch and Marco watched with interest and from a safe distance, as I tore open the envelope and shook out what appeared to be a small roll of film on to the counter top. We looked at it. Ganesh put out his hand.

‘Wouldn’t touch it if I was you,’ said Hitch. ‘Might be dodgy. You don’t want your dabs on it, do you?’

That will tell you quite a bit about Hitch.

‘What’s it doing in the washroom?’ asked Ganesh, bewildered. ‘Why should anyone put it there?’

‘It might be mucky,’ suggested Hitch brightly. ‘You know, some feller and girl getting up to things. I mean, things like in that Indian book what tells you how to do it all kinds of funny ways.’ Both he and Marco gazed at Gan and myself with a new interest and some respect. ‘Never read it myself,’ added Hitch with regret.

This irritated Ganesh who snapped, ‘Don’t talk such nonsense! The
Kama Sutra
is a serious work of great beauty.’

Hitch opened his mouth to ask for further enlightenment but the look on Ganesh’s face made him change his mind.

I knew why Ganesh was ratty. It wasn’t just that he doesn’t like to hear his culture misunderstood (although he grumbles enough about it himself), it was because that’s not how things are between him and me. Some people get the wrong idea about that. Hitch wasn’t the first. But Ganesh is my friend, not my lover. Not that I couldn’t fancy Ganesh, or that he couldn’t fancy me. There have been times when we’ve come awfully close to moving beyond the friendship scenario. But we both know it wouldn’t work out if we did. Sex complicates things, in my experience, and for us it’d make life more than difficult. His parents have other plans for him, and I’m not part of them. They like me, or I think they do, even though they obviously fear I’m a bad influence on him and give him dangerous ideas of independence. Ganesh says they like me and they’ve always acted as if they do. But they simply don’t understand me or my life-style, my lack of family or the way I exist from day to day. It’s one of those situations. Nothing can be done about it and you just have to lump it. Still, I’m glad to have Gan as a friend because that means an awful lot.

Ganesh went on now in tones clearly meant to dash any remaining fantasies Hitch might have, ‘In any case, this doesn’t belong to me. Is it yours, Fran?’

‘Course not!’ I protested. ‘I’d have said so. Why on earth should I hide it in the washroom, even if it was mine? Besides, I haven’t even got a camera.’

‘Well, Hari wouldn’t hide it there, would he?’ argued Ganesh. ‘If he wanted to tuck it away somewhere, he’d put it upstairs. So it isn’t his.’

‘That makes it no one’s,’ I pointed out. ‘And that’s daft. It has to belong to someone.’

‘Oh well,’ said Hitch, losing interest. ‘Makes no difference to me and Marco. It’s all yours whatever it is.’

The two of them drifted back to the storeroom. I took Ganesh’s arm and propelled him nearer the entrance to the shop, out of earshot.

‘It belongs to that bloke!’ I whispered excitedly. ‘It must do, Gan. You know, the one who stumbled in here the other morning? It must be his and he hid it there. You let him use the washroom to clean up. Someone was after him – after
this
– and he stashed it there to pick up later.’

‘Don’t be daft, Fran,’ said Ganesh, but he looked uncomfortable. ‘Anyone could’ve put it there. Even Hari, though I don’t know why.’