The Wicked Girls
Authors: Alex Marwood
Alex Marwood is the pseudonym of a journalist who has worked extensively across the British press. Alex lives in South London
and is working on her next novel.
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-748-13002-3
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 Alex Marwood
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
For William Mackesy
Prologue
1986
There’s a blanket, but from the aroma that rises from its folds, she guesses it’s never been washed. The cells are overheated
and, despite the fact that Jade balled it up and pushed it into the corner of the room when they first brought her in here,
the stink of stale piss and unwashed skin is hard to ignore. Officer Magill picks it up and holds it out towards her, wadded
in her hand. ‘You’re going to have to wear this,’ she says. ‘Over your head. Apparently they’re not allowed to see your face.’
It’s hardly necessary. Jade’s face was all over the papers months ago, and will be all over them again tomorrow. She looks
at the blanket, repelled. Officer Magill’s eyes narrow
.
‘You know what, Jade?’ she says. ‘You’re welcome to go out there uncovered if you want. They’re all dying to see you, believe
me. It’s no skin off my nose.’
They’ve seen me already, thinks Jade. Over and over. In the papers, on the news. That’s why they make us queue up for those
school mugshots every year. It’s not for our families. It’s so there’s always a picture to sell to the papers. So they have
something to hang a headline on
.
THE WORLD PRAYS. FIND OUR ANGEL
.
Or, in my case
,
ANGELIC FACE OF EVIL
.
Through the open door, she can hear Bel screaming. Still screaming. She started when the verdict came in, and it’s been hours
since then. Jade has been able to hear only silence
through the thick cell walls. No sound gets through: not the baying crowd, not the hurried feet passing by in the throes of
preparation. Occasionally, the metallic slick of the eyehole cover being pushed back, or the sonic boom of another heavy door
slamming shut; otherwise, stone-built silence, the sound of her own breath, the sound of her racing heart. When Officer Magill
opened the door, the noise was overwhelming, even here in the basement: the feral, chanting voices of strangers wanting Justice.
The crowd wants her. Her and Bel. This much she knows
.
Magill holds the blanket out again. This time, Jade takes it. They’ll make her wear it one way or another, willing or not.
Their hands brush, and Magill snatches hers away as though the child’s skin is coated with poison
.
Bel sounds like an animal, shrieking in a snare
.
She’d chew her own arm off if it helped her get away, thinks Jade. It’s worse for her than it is for me. She’s not lived her
life in trouble, like I have
.
Officer Magill waits, her mouth downturned. ‘How do you feel, Jade?’
For a moment Jade thinks that she’s asking out of concern, but a glance at that face shows her otherwise. Jade gazes at her,
wide-eyed. I feel small, she thinks. I feel small and alone and scared and confused. I know they’re shouting for me, but I
don’t understand why they hate me so much. We didn’t mean it. We never meant it to happen
.
‘Not good, is it?’ asks Magill eventually, not requiring a reply. ‘Doesn’t feel great, does it?’
Bel’s voice, the sound of struggle in the hallway: ‘Nonononono! Please! Please! I can’t! I want my mum! Mummeee! I can’t!
Don’t take me out there! Nononono dooon’t!’
Jade looks back at Officer Magill. Her face is like a Halloween mask, all swooping lines in black and red. She glares with
all the loathing of the voices of the mob outside. Jade is guilty. No one has to act as though they presume her innocent now
.
That’s it, that’s us: not ‘the suspects’, not ‘the children in custody’. We’re The Girls Who Killed Chloe. We are the Devil
now
.
Magill glances over her shoulder to see if any of her superiors are listening, then lowers her voice
.
‘Serves you bloody well right, you little bitch,’ she hisses. ‘If it was up to me they’d bring back the death penalty.’
2011
Martin checks his watch. It’s nearly ten o’clock. She’ll be going to work soon. The neon lights on the roller coaster at Funnland
have been switched off, the halogen arc lights they flood the park with after hours – as much to drive stragglers away as
to help the cleaners see the globs of gum and the sticky soft-drink splashes, the careless smears of ketchup – have come blazing
on. She’ll be in the changing rooms. Like a lot of punch-card people, she is punctilious about arriving, more leisurely about
actually starting work. She’ll be shucking her civilian garb and replacing it with trackies and overalls.
He feels a swell of familiar rage at the way she has just cut him off. No response, no contact; just empty silence, day after
day. Is she even thinking about him? He’s left it three hours, but he can’t stand the waiting any longer. He picks up the
silent, baleful telephone and pulls up her number. Types in a text:
please answer me. do not ignore me
. Watches the screen as it thinks and sends.
A hen party pauses in the street below. He knows it’s a group of hens because they’re bellowing ‘Going to the Chapel’ at the
tops of their voices. It’s always that, or ‘Nice Day for a White Wedding’, just the chorus, over and over, or ‘Here comes
the bride, short fat and wide.’ There are millions of songs, but hen parties never stray beyond this narrow selection.
A shriek in the street, then a chorus of cackling. Someone’s
fallen over. Martin pushes himself off the bed and goes to the window. Cracks open the curtain and looks out. Eight young
women, in various stages of inebriation. The bride – shortie veil and L-plates – is on the ground, felled by six-inch heels
and a portly backside. She flumps about on the pavement in her tubular mini-skirt, stomach flopping over waistband and tits
overspilling her
décolletage
, while two of her friends haul at a pale and dimpled arm. The other friends are scattered across the pavement, pointing and
staggering as they howl with laughter. One of them – hot pants, giant hoop earrings and a horizontal-striped boob tube – is
pestering men for a light as they weave their way past the flailing bride.
Boob Tube strikes gold. A stag group – the town is overrun with them everyweekend, the sort of stags who can’t afford, or
who lack the passports or the probationary permission, to spread sangria vomit over warm Spanish concrete – pause, light her
up, fall into conversation. Well, mutual shouting. No one communicates under Martin’s window at anything less than a roar,
ears destroyed by thumping basslines, sense of other people destroyed by the alcohol and ecstasy and cocaine that seem to
cost less than a packet of smokes these days. And you don’t have to go outside to take them.
The bride finally regains her feet. She is limping, or pretending to, and uses the shoulder of a stag for support. Martin
watches as the man’s hand creeps down over the tube skirt, inches its way in from behind. The bride cackles, slaps him off
half-heartedly and bats her lashes encouragingly. The hand goes back. They set off up the street, heading towards the nightclub
quarter.
Boob Tube lags back, leaning against a shop window, talking to the man with the lighter. She sways from side to side, doesn’t
seem to notice as her friends disappear round the corner. She tugs at her top, pulling the droop from squashed bosoms, and
flicks lacquered hair out of her eyes. Smiles at the man coquettishly, pushes lightly at his upper arm. So goes the business
of modern mating. You don’t even need to buy a girl a drink any more. Just lend her your lighter and she’s yours for the taking.
Dropping the curtain, Martin shambles back into the darkened room, depression seeping into his pores. He doesn’t understand
the world. Sometimes he feels like they pick the road outside his flat just to taunt him. To remind him of the fun he’s not
having; of the fact that these spangled, dancing creatures would scutter over to the other side of the pavement if he tried
to join in. Whitmouth is a disappointment to him. He thought, once his mother died and he was able to choose his destiny,
that the world would be his oyster, life would roll his way at last, but instead he finds himself observing other people’s
fun as though he’s watching it on television.
I thought it was Fairyland, he thinks, as he switches on the unshaded ceiling light. When I was a kid. When we used to come
down here from Bromwich. It was families, then: cream teas, and the helter-skelter on the pier the tallest building for miles.
That was why I came back here: all those good times, all those memories, all that hope. Now I hardly dare to look in shop
doorways as I pass them, in case I see Linzi-Dawn’s knees hitched up and Keifer’s low-slung jeans humping away between them,
and me excluded, never wanted, always looking in.
She still hasn’t replied. Martin’s skin prickles as he stares at the blank display. Who does she think she is?
Throwing the phone down on the bed, he turns on the television, watches the bad news scroll out on the
BBC
. Dammit, Jackie.
You have no right to treat me like this. If you were going to turn out like the rest of them, why did you pretend to be something
else?
Another shriek in the street. Martin presses the volume control, turns it up to full. The rage of rejection crawls beneath
his skin; invisible, unscratchable. All she needs to do is text him back. He doesn’t want to go out, but if she refuses to
respond he’s going to have to. As his mother was always assuring him, persistence is the most important quality in life. And
he knows that he is the most persistent of all.
Amber Gordon clears out the lost-property cupboard once a week. It’s her favourite job of all. She likes the neatness of it,
the tying up of loose ends, even if the loose end is simply deciding that, if someone’s not come back in nine months, they
never will. She enjoys the curiosity, the quiet sense of snooping on other people’s lives as she marvels at the things – dentures,
diamond earrings, diaries – that they either didn’t notice were lost or didn’t think worth coming back for. But most of all,
she enjoys the gift-giving. For the Funnland cleaners, Sunday night brings the chance of an early Christmas.
It’s a good haul tonight. Among the forgotten umbrellas, the plastic bags of souvenir rock, the
A Present from Whitmouth
keyrings, lie moments of pure gold. A gaudy gilt charm bracelet, hearts and cupids jangling among shards of semi-precious
stones. An MP3 player: a cheap thing, none of the touch-screen bells and whistles, but working, and already loaded with tunes.
A jumbo bag of Haribo. And an international-call card, still in its wrapper and unactivated. Amber smiles when she sees it.
She knows who would benefit from a good long call home. Thanks, fun-seeking stranger, whoever you were, she thinks. You may
not know it, but you’ll have made one St Lucian very happy tonight.