The Shadows in the Street (2 page)

Abi Righton pulled the sleeping bag further up round Frankie’s neck. He mumbled and chewed his lips for a moment, but did not wake. Next to him in the camp bed against the wall, his sister Mia coughed, stirred, coughed again and opened her eyes.

‘It’s OK, go back to sleep.’

The child coughed again and struggled to sit up. They were in sleeping bags because Abi thought they were safer and warmer, and because apart from a large knitted blanket she didn’t have any other bedclothes for them.

She sat at the mirror that hung from a nail on the wall, stretching her eye from the outer corner to get the black liner round, trying to look only at what she was doing and not at her own face, the sepia shadows under her eyes, the crack in the corner of her mouth where a cold sore had just dried.

Mia coughed again and started to whimper. Abi didn’t have any cough medicine but there was some orange drink at the bottom of the plastic bottle; she could tell Hayley to give her that warmed up if Mia coughed too much. Where was Hayley, anyway? It was ten past nine, she was supposed to come at nine, that was always the arrangement. Three nights, Hayley came here to stay with Abi’s two; and three nights, Abi took them to Hayley’s. She couldn’t go out until Hayley had arrived, that was a given. Leaving their kids alone was something they had both said they would never do. That was how the arrangement had started, over a year ago. She turned her head and started on the other eye. At least it had stopped raining. Rain was the worst, though the bitter cold last winter had been something else – she’d had flu and then a cough she couldn’t get rid of for weeks, Frankie and Mia had been ill on and off the whole time and she hadn’t been able to afford the gas fire more than a couple of hours a day. That had been her rock bottom. If she hadn’t had Hayley she wouldn’t have got through it. They had kept one another going, and if one of them had money they’d help each other out that way too. Once or twice they’d stayed here, all the kids sleeping together, she and Hayley next to them, for warmth. It was like being kids themselves again. One night they’d had no money for the meters, so Hayley had gone over to the Catholic church and nicked a couple of candles from the stand. They’d lit them and talked about ghosts with the light flickering up the walls. They’d wet themselves laughing, woken the kids, made jam sandwiches with the last of the loaf.

I was happy, Abi thought suddenly, putting down the eyeliner. That was what it was. It was being happy.

She heard Hayley coming down the steps. If they could just be like that, have a laugh, be with their kids all together and not go out. Not go out ever again. Only, she had to go out, she was saving. Her savings were in an old biscuit box and every time she looked into it they’d grown a bit. Not enough. But a bit. She thought three years, maybe four, the kids would be in school, and she’d have enough to move into somewhere else or maybe her name would have come up for a house – either way she could get something better than this.

Four years, maybe five. Then not go out ever again. Not once.

‘Hiya.’

Hayley came through the door and Mia started up coughing.

‘Thought you’d got lost.’

‘He was sick.’

‘Oh bloody hell, you haven’t brought him sick, have you? He’ll give it to mine, and that’s all I need.’

Hayley stood in her jeans and parka, holding Liam by the hand. He was the colour of wax.

‘Well, you’ve got to go out, what else was I supposed to do?’

‘OK, OK. Only maybe put him over there. Put him on the other side.’

‘Make it sound like he’s got fucking mad cow disease or something. He can’t help it, you know.’

Hayley muttered on, dumping Liam on the old sofa up against the window, pulling off her jacket.

‘Anyway, it’s stopped raining. Can’t be bad.’

‘My luck, it’ll start again five minutes after I get out. And I ran out of tea bags.’

‘Great.’

‘If I’m quiet I’ll go to the all-night, get some. There’s a bit of milk.’

Abi got her fleece from over the chair back, checked the pocket for her mobile. It wanted topping up, and she didn’t have enough cash for that either. Another reason she had to go out. You could do without a lot before you did without the phone. The lifeline.

‘Lend us your mobile, Hayles.’

‘No way. What’s wrong with your own?’

‘Nearly out. Go on, I’ll leave mine here, there’d be enough on it to call an ambulance or something if you had to.’

‘Same goes for you then.’

Hayley stared her out. When she was in this mood, it was best to leave her. Jump down your throat, yell, bang her head on the walls, chuck something at you, all of that, it happened, and they both knew why. Abi wasn’t risking it when all the kids were here with her.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Anyway, the van might be out, they’ll give us some tea bags.’

‘Not seen it for a week.’

‘Or Loopy Les.’

Hayley let out a snort of laughter. Mia woke, coughing, and Liam threw up a stream of pale vomit that went arcing across the floor.

Twenty minutes later, Abi was on the street. The sky was clear and a sneaky wind had got up, the sort that went through your clothes and out the other side. But it was dry. Rain was the pits. If you stood somewhere you could be seen properly, you got soaked. And cars didn’t stop so much in the wet. Nobody came by on foot when it rained. Not that you got too many of them anyway, apart from Beanie Man, unless you went right into the town when they were turning out of the pubs. She used to do that quite a bit, but lately it had been hopeless. Four girls had turned up one night, brought by a van and dropped off near the Lanes, foreign girls, across from Bevham where there were too many of them now. A couple of nights after that there were three more.

The police had started moving them all on, no messing, whereas before they’d left you alone.

She walked quickly, cutting across the car park and then along the main road to the grid of streets between the canal and the bypass, short cuts for motorists heading to Bevham. On one side, there were the posh apartments carved out of the Old Ribbon Factory, expensive but now with several For Sale boards cluttering up the front. Who could afford those? Yuppie couples, buy-to-lets, only the bottom had dropped out of all that. She could picture them, all the same, from glances up into the lighted windows and photos in old magazines, guess what they’d be like inside. Space. Lots of wood on the floor. No kids. You didn’t live here if you had kids. But why shouldn’t you? Why didn’t she have the right to live with her two in a place like this instead of in her dump of a room?

She knew why.

She reached the corner opposite the snooker club. There were a couple of girls nearby. The foreigners. Another two round the corner. Abi turned away, cut through a side alley, came out into the last street before the main road. It ran alongside the locked gates and high fence of the printworks, but it wasn’t bad – there was shelter and the Reachout van sometimes stopped in the works entrance. And the men knew this part, knew which girls were generally here. The police didn’t seem to bother either, not like they did in the town centre.

She saw Marie leaning on the street lamp near the corner, smoking. Nobody else. Abi pulled the collar of her jacket up tighter. Her legs were cold, but they always were, you had to wear a short skirt and some of them wore low tops as well. But in winter it made sense to look after yourself a bit. If she got sick, she was no use. The collar of a fleece wasn’t a lot but it helped. It was quiet. There weren’t even many cars going down the main road. She walked up and down a couple of times, then went towards Marie.

‘Y’all right?’

Marie shrugged and threw her cigarette butt onto the pavement.

‘Nobody else been around?’

‘I saw that van go by. Foreign girls. Think it was that one.’

‘They better not stop here.’

Marie shook her head. ‘Going towards town.’

‘They’ll get moved on.’

‘Yeah, but there’s more people about in town, isn’t there? Dead here, I tell you.’

‘I’m sick of them.’

‘We never had any of that, you know. It was us. That was it. Maybe a new one now and again …’

‘That girl with the dead white face.’

‘Melissa.’

‘Right.’

‘She didn’t last.’

‘No. Them foreign girls just better not stop here,’ Abi said again.

Marie looked at her. ‘British jobs for British workers.’

They both cracked up.

A car came round the corner and they separated, Marie crossing the road to wait by the warehouse. It didn’t stop. Ten minutes more and three girls came down the street, girls they knew. They separated too, one of them walking down towards the canal end, the others crossing over.

It was colder. Abi banged her feet on the path. Then, two cars, and another, slowly round the corner and gliding up the street. Abi felt herself caught in the headlights of one, saw Marie go towards the kerb where another had stopped. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a dead night after all.

But it was another twenty minutes before there was anyone else, this time on her side of the street. She moved forwards but it stopped a few yards away and doused the lights. Engine off. Driver’s door open.

Bloody hell, it was only him. She moved quickly away. Marie was getting out of a car further up, pushing money into her inside pocket.

‘Keep walking, it’s Loopy Les down there.’

Marie glanced. She looked young, Abi thought, young in the half-light, not like she looked under the street lamp. Like they all looked. She knew Marie lived in a caravan on a patch off the Starly Road. Her mother was with her on and off, when she wasn’t locked up or drunk in a ditch somewhere.

Footsteps.

‘Abi? Yes, I thought so. Abi and … who’s that … ?’

‘Marie.’

The girls glanced at one another. They didn’t mind Les. But he wanted to stand and chat and that put off any punters driving down.

‘Hiya.’

‘Come here, nearer the gate.’

They followed him to where there was a bollard by the turn-in to the factory. He had his usual canvas satchel, plastic bags of sandwiches, the chocolate bars, the flask of coffee.

‘Cold for you tonight,’ he said, unwrapping the packets. ‘Too cold to be out on the streets.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Thanks anyway.’

Abi wasn’t hungry but the coffee was OK, still quite hot, and she took a couple of bites of the chocolate, before putting the rest in her pocket to take home.

‘That’s a good bit of cake.’ Marie was scoffing the food down as if she hadn’t eaten all day, which, Abi thought, she probably hadn’t. She was thin as a rake, bony-thin. She smoked instead of eating. She stuffed another half of ham and bread into her mouth.

He’d been coming out like this for the best part of a year. He just turned up, brought the food and the flask, chatted a bit about nothing. She’d wanted to ask him why he did it but had never bothered. He wasn’t one of the Reachout lot, wasn’t Sally Army or any other Church, so far as she knew, and besides, he never preached at them, never mentioned anything like Jesus. He chatted about the weather and asked them if they were all right, asked after anybody who hadn’t been out for a while. Once, when he knew one of the girls who’d used to come was ill, he’d offered to get her a medical appointment, take her to the hospital. She hadn’t gone and the next week the word was out that she was dead of an overdose. Les had asked about her but they hadn’t told him anything.

Just lately, he’d been coming out a couple of nights a week. Hayley had seen him as well.

‘I thought you’d be nearer town. Bit warmer, bit more shelter.’

Abi shrugged.

‘Safer as well.’

‘We’re all right. We look out for each other.’

They could never quite decide if he was OK or not. He wasn’t weird. He wasn’t anything. All the same …

One of the girls had asked him if he was looking for payment in kind but Leslie had been horrified. He’d jumped in his car and driven off fast, leaving the flask behind on a bench, and nobody had seen him for a couple of weeks after that.

‘Say what you like,’ Hayley had said, ‘not normal.’

Only he seemed normal, watching them eat the sandwiches he’d made for them, pocket the chocolate bars he’d bought out of his own money, finish off the hot tea or coffee. He had a normal coat, normal trousers, normal blue wool scarf. Normal black shoes. Normal. He was clean, he shaved, he hadn’t got anything special about him or anything peculiar either. Just normal.

Only not.

Abi handed back the plastic cup. ‘Thanks.’

Not normal. How could it be?

‘Oh, Christ.’

‘What?’

‘I remembered I have to get tea bags. I’ve got to go to the all-night. Fuck it.’

A car turned round the corner.

Marie walked quickly away, sensing it would stop further down. Abi swore.

‘Cheers, Les,’ she said, and went, not wanting to mess around there keeping him company or whatever and waste the rest of the night. She hadn’t even earned the money to pay for the tea bags yet.

But as she got to the top of the street, a car came off the main road and flashed its lights at her.

Her last punter dropped Abi off by the printworks just after midnight. Things had got a lot busier, she had more money than she’d expected, but that was it, she’d had enough. She’d always had enough, had enough before she started out, but it wasn’t going to be forever. That was what kept her going. Knowing it wasn’t going to be forever. Four years. You could put up with anything for four years. Or if she did really well maybe three.

The street was empty. The others had gone. She’d take a cut along the canal towpath and over the footbridge. She didn’t like going that way usually but it saved ten minutes.

As she passed the bollard by the factory, she saw something. Maybe Les had left his satchel behind, though that wouldn’t be like him. Neat and tidy, that was Les.

She couldn’t make it out until she got right up to it. It was a plastic carrier bag from the supermarket on the Bevham Road. She hesitated. You never knew.

‘Les left it for you, I was going to text you.’ Marie appeared out of the shadows. ‘He went but then he came back with it.’