The Driver (7 page)

Cheryl was singing softly to herself when she came into the kitchen a couple of minutes later. Jumping when she saw Joe still sitting there, she said, ‘Bloody hell! I thought you’d gone.’

‘Nope, still here,’ he told her. ‘Thought you might need a hand with the cleaning.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ she protested. ‘It’s my mess, I’ll do it. It won’t take long.’

‘Be faster with two,’ he pointed out. ‘Anyway, most of this is mine, not yours.’ He indicated the table, which was covered in empty bottles, dimps and ash.

Cheryl gave him an amused look. ‘God, your ex must have had you well trained.’

Joe shrugged, but he didn’t deny it, she noticed. Thinking again what a fool his ex had been to let him go, she took a roll of bin bags out from under the sink and handed them to him. She had known most of the people who’d come to the party for a long time, a couple even since primary school, and yet not one had offered to stay behind and help clear up. But here was Joe, a man she’d known for a matter of weeks, not only offering but insisting.

Scooping all the mess off the table and the ledges into the bag, Joe tied a knot in the top when it was full. Tearing another off the roll, he glanced up at Cheryl. ‘It was a good night, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, it was great,’ she agreed, switching the kettle on and taking a couple of cups out of the cupboard. ‘I’m just amazed there were no fights. There’s usually at least one, isn’t there?’

‘I think your friend might have had something to do with that,’ Joe commented, carefully tipping an overloaded ashtray into the second bag. ‘The big guy – Eddie, is it?’

‘I suppose he might have had a hand in it,’ Cheryl conceded, spooning coffee into the cups.

‘What’s the score with him and Vee?’ Joe asked. ‘I got the feeling things were a bit strained between them.’

‘They just don’t like each other.’ Cheryl shrugged. ‘She used to be mates with his girlfriend, but they had a big fallout so they don’t speak.’

‘I see,’ Joe said, going on casually, ‘And what about you? You seem to know him pretty well.’

‘Mmm,’ Cheryl murmured. ‘I kind of went out with him once.’

‘Really?’ Joe was surprised. ‘He doesn’t seem your type.’

‘He’s not,’ Cheryl agreed, avoiding Joe’s eye as she poured water into the cups. Sounding embarrassed now, she said, ‘I was only fourteen, but he was twenty, so I lied and said I was older. We hadn’t been seeing each other long enough to
do
anything, but we were getting there, so he went off his head when he found out. When I got this flat I found out he was already living up on the fourth. But there was nothing either of us could do about it by then, so . . .’ Trailing off, she shrugged. ‘We just sort of agreed to put it behind us.’

‘So you get on all right now?’ Joe asked, understanding why she’d seemed flustered when Eddie had arrived, because it was obviously a bit of a sore subject.

‘I think he feels like he’s got to look out for me,’ Cheryl told him. ‘But there’s no way I’d ever go out with him again. I know he’s good-looking but he’s not the kind of man I’d want to get involved with.’ Looking at Joe now, she gave him a sheepish smile. ‘Now you know my dirty secret. Do you think I’m terrible?’

‘For what?’ Joe asked, knotting the second bag. ‘Everyone’s done stuff they wish they hadn’t. Doesn’t make you a bad person.’

‘Suppose not,’ Cheryl agreed. ‘Doubt Shay would see it like that, though. He’d go crazy if he knew. I’m sure he thinks I was a virgin when we got together.’

‘Some guys are weird like that,’ Joe told her, picking up the bags. ‘But women can be just as bad. I’ve had a few of those
let’s be honest and tell each other everything
conversations, and believe me it’s easier to lie, ’cos they just chuck it all back in your face when you have a row. Probably best to let Shay carry on thinking he was the first and last, eh?’

‘In his dreams,’ Cheryl snorted, having already decided that there was no way she was spending the rest of her life licking up the crumbs that Jayleen left on her plate when there were so many gorgeous men out there for the eating.

Leaving her to her thoughts, Joe carried the bags out and dumped them in the communal wheelie bin. Just as he was heading back inside, the four girls he’d seen on his first morning appeared. Holding the door for them, he wasn’t surprised when the first three scuttled through without looking at him. But the last one glanced up at him as she passed and their eyes met for the briefest of moments, leaving him with a strange feeling in his stomach.

‘What’s up?’ Cheryl asked when he came back into the flat with a thoughtful frown on his face.

Reaching for his brew, Joe said, ‘Nothing, really. I just saw some girls and they got me thinking.’

‘Four of them? Dressed like tarts?’

‘Mmm. I saw them when I was moving in, and they just seem a bit – I don’t know . . .
odd
.’

‘They’re not odd, they’re ignorant,’ Cheryl corrected him with a sneer. ‘You can be standing right in front of them and they’ll make out like they can’t even see you. And you know they’re prostitutes, don’t you?’

‘Really?’

‘Well, obviously I don’t know for
sure
, but that’s what everyone round here thinks. Why else would they come in at this time every morning and only ever go out late at night? And normal girls don’t dress like that, do they?’

‘I guess not.’

‘I think it’s disgusting,’ Cheryl went on, lighting a cigarette and pursing her lips prudishly. ‘But Chrissie’s obviously not bothered what they do for a living so long as they pay their rent.’

‘Chrissie?’ Joe repeated.

‘Oh, sorry, I forgot you don’t really know anyone yet.’ Sitting down, Cheryl pulled the ashtray across the table. ‘She’s Eddie’s girlfriend. She’s got the flat next to his, but she lives with him.’ Pausing, she gave Joe a guarded look. ‘You’d best not repeat any of this ’cos I don’t think anyone’s supposed to know.’

‘Course I won’t. But you don’t have to tell me if you’re worried.’

Feeling guilty, because he obviously thought she didn’t trust him, Cheryl said, ‘It’s Molly I’m thinking about, not me. She lives a few doors down, and she let slip that she’d seen him letting the girls in and out of Chrissie’s place. Only she begged me not to say anything in case he found out and had a go at her.’

Joe couldn’t help but smile. ‘Very James Bond,’ he teased. ‘What’s the big deal about someone renting a flat?’

‘The DSS,’ Cheryl told him, as if he really shouldn’t have needed to ask. ‘Molly reckons Chrissie’s still signing on from there, and she’ll get in trouble if anyone finds out she’s really living at Eddie’s.’

‘But if those girls rent her place,’ Joe said, trying to put it together in his head, ‘surely they’d have their own keys?’

‘We figure she’s trying to make it look like they’re just visiting,’ Cheryl explained. ‘Mind you, I don’t know why they’re being so careful, ’cos no one would dare grass her up. Eddie would
kill
them.’

‘Well, I certainly won’t be saying anything,’ Joe assured her. ‘I’m getting the impression that it’s not too smart to get on the wrong side of Eddie.’

‘It isn’t,’ Cheryl said flatly, taking a last drag on her cigarette and stubbing it out. Glancing out of the window now and seeing how light it was, she said, ‘God, look at me keeping you up with all this gossip. I can finish the rest off. You go home and get some sleep.’

Joe couldn’t deny that he was tired, and there didn’t seem to be an awful lot left to do, so he said goodnight and straggled home to his bed.

6

As Joe fell asleep on the floor below, Chrissie Scott was being dragged out of her dreams by insistent knocking on the front door. Knowing that it would be Eddie’s bitches, she threw her arm over to his side to tell him to go and deal with them. Furious when she found that he wasn’t there, she shoved the quilt off and staggered into the kitchen to get the keys, calling him all the lying bastards under the sun for saying that he was only nipping out for half an hour last night.

Stepping into a pile of dog shit, she screeched, ‘Oh my fucking
God
!’ when it squelched up between her toes.

Eddie had used up the kitchen roll and put the empty tube back in the drawer, and Chrissie refused to go to the bathroom and risk getting crap on her lovely carpet so she was forced to rinse her foot in the sink. And all the while the stupid bitches were still knocking, as if they thought she was deaf or something.

Chrissie yanked the door open when she’d cleaned herself up, stalked past them and unlocked the adjoining flat. Following when they scuttled inside, she held out her hand, impatient to get this over with and get back to her bed.

Elena gathered the money from her friends and handed it over, glad that Chrissie had come instead of Eddie, because he always took it from them individually and would have seen that Hanna had yet again brought home the least and Tasha the most.

Standing beside Elena with her arms folded, Tasha stared at Chrissie with barely concealed contempt. Wrinkling her nose when Chrissie snatched the money and shoved it into her pocket, she sniffed the air exaggeratedly. ‘What’s that disgusting smell?’

‘Probably your body telling you it’s time to get a wash,’ Chrissie sniped, pulling the door open and backing out into the corridor.

‘Liar!’ Tasha hissed when Chrissie closed the door. ‘It’s
her
who stinks. You could smell her as soon as she came out.’

‘Oh, give it a rest,’ Elena said, slipping her jacket off and heading for the bathroom.

‘Make me!’ Tasha yelled, yanking her own jacket off and hurling it into the corner. ‘What are you staring at?’ she demanded, catching Hanna looking at her.

‘Nothing,’ Hanna muttered, rushing into the bedroom to escape.

Katya was sitting on the couch taking her boots off. Tutting softly now, she said, ‘Do you have to be so nasty?’

Spinning on her heel, Tasha gave her a dirty look. ‘What?’

‘I’m sick of you picking on Hanna,’ Katya told her wearily. ‘She hasn’t done anything to you – why can’t you just leave her alone?’

‘She’s an idiot,’ Tasha snapped, taking a crumpled cigarette out of her pocket and looking around for a lighter. ‘And what’s got you talking all of a sudden? We usually can’t get two words out of you.’

‘I speak when I have something to say,’ Katya said quietly. ‘And this needs saying, because you’re upsetting Hanna and that affects us all.’

‘You’re making my heart bleed,’ Tasha sneered, inhaling deeply on her smoke and eyeing Katya with the same contempt she’d aimed at Chrissie. ‘You really think you’re something special, don’t you? But you’re no better than me. You’re exactly the same.’

‘I know,’ Katya agreed. ‘But I don’t take my frustrations out on everybody else like you do. We’re all trying to get through this as best we can but you’re making it unbearable. Can’t you see that?’

‘Trying to get through this?’ Tasha repeated nastily. ‘You’re as stupid as
she
is if you think you’re ever going to see a happy ending. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is
it
, sweetheart.’

Tasha was voicing what Katya was constantly struggling not to allow herself to think, and the words settled over her like a cold, dark cloak of hopelessness.

A glint of malice in her eyes, Tasha said, ‘Oh,
please
 . . . you’re not going to
cry
, are you?’

Holding it together with difficulty, Katya said, ‘We all cry, Tasha – even you. You might hide it better than we do but you’re not so different on the inside.’

‘You’re so wrong,’ Tasha informed her. ‘You’re all weak, but I’m a fighter, and I’ll get out of here while you’re still sitting here accepting your fate like little sheep.’

‘What’s she going on about now?’ Elena asked as she walked back in just then with a towel wrapped around her hair.

Raising her chin, challenging her to deny it, Tasha said, ‘I’m saying that you’re all pathetic little sheep who do as you’re told without question. But I’m a
wolf
, and I’ll bite and claw my way out of here – and I don’t care
who
I have to hurt in the process.’

‘A
wolf
?’ Elena gave a mocking laugh. ‘Have you any idea how ridiculous you sound? You’re a child, you silly girl. A spiteful, vindictive bully of a child.’

‘And you’re a whore,’ Tasha spat. ‘A dirty, disgusting whore.’

‘Just like you,’ Elena reminded her. ‘And if you’re so tough, how come you’re still here?’

Tasha’s lips tightened. They all knew why she was still here – why they were
all
still here: because Eddie Quinn had them so terrified of what would happen if they tried to run that they could barely put one foot in front of the other when they were outside. But she
would
get out of this situation one day, and then they would see who was the strong one.

Tired of Tasha’s nonsense, Elena turned her back on her and smiled at Katya. ‘Don’t fancy making me a coffee while I dry my hair, do you?’

‘Sure,’ Katya said, glad of an excuse to get out of the room. She hadn’t planned to tackle Tasha tonight, but she was so sick of these poisonous atmospheres. She had hoped that they could reach some sort of compromise and stop this constant bickering, but she’d known even before she started that it would be a waste of time.

Staring at the wall now as she waited for the kettle to boil, her thoughts floated off Tasha and onto the man in the hallway. She’d seen him from the window several times but had never been able to see his face clearly. That was why she had looked at him when she’d passed him today, so that she would know what he
really
looked like instead of what her imagination had built him into.

And, almost impossibly, he was even better-looking than she’d thought, with the kindest eyes she had seen in a long time. She never looked into those of the men who slobbered over her in their cars at night because she wanted to stay as far removed from them as possible. And she actively avoided looking into Eddie’s for fear of seeing the devil staring back at her. But the man’s had been such a lovely dark shade of blue, like a river in the moonlight.