The Wicked Girls (15 page)

Amber gets up, takes a shower and washes last night’s work out of her hair. The water, lukewarm, wakes her up a little. She
can hear faint sounds of movement downstairs. Vic is still home – it must be his day off – but she doesn’t hear the sound
of voices and guesses Jackie has gone out.

Rubbing her hair with a towel, she checks the clock by the bed. Five p.m. Several hours to work-time. For once, it’s worth
putting
on home clothes. She digs through the wardrobe and chooses a sundress, gaily printed with a pattern of birds and tropical
foliage. Slips it over her head, feels the pleasure of dressing pretty for once, and goes down to find her common-law husband.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, all the windows and the back door thrown wide. Her bag sits before him, open. He holds
something loosely in his hand. She greets him brightly. He merely looks at her, silently, in return. Amber feels the smile
slip from her face. The day goes dark.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

He opens his hand and shows her. ‘So what else have you been lying to me about?’ he asks. His voice is cold, reptilian. She
blanches. The Other Vic is back.

He’s holding the cigarette packet Jade pushed into her hand yesterday. She’d shoved it into her handbag and forgotten about
it. She stares at it like a rabbit caught in headlights. ‘No, Vic, I … They’re not mine,’ she stumbles.

He raises his eyebrows, then drops them so his eyes are hooded. ‘Liar!’ he says accusingly. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Don’t lie
to me. I told you, Amber. I will always find you out.’

‘Vic …’ Lying is his big bugbear, his pet hate. He’s always said it: lying is the biggest betrayal of all. ‘Vic, I’m not lying
to you.’

‘Or what?’ he asks. ‘You think I’m stupid then? Don’t take me for a mug, Amber.’

‘I’m not. I—’

‘The whole place stinks of fag smoke. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?’

‘That’s Jackie. C’mon. You
know
she smokes like a chimney. I’m sorry. It was raining and I let her smoke in the kitchen.’

‘Yeah,’ says Vic. ‘Good try.’

‘No,’ she says, knowing she’s fighting a losing battle. Once he’s got the bit between his teeth, there’s no stopping him.
He’ll twist and twist her words until whatever she says sounds like lying. He’ll do it once a month or so, and leave her wrong-footed,
shaking. And yet, every time he does it, she tries to
protest, tries to assure him he’s wrong, keeps hoping that one day the outcome will be different, the way she did as a child.
It’s like some ritual dance they have to perform with the dark of the moon. He’ll apologise afterwards, beg forgiveness, but
the intervening days will be a cold, baleful hell of accusing looks and silent judgement. ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong. I
swear, Vic.’

‘If you’d just tell me the truth, it’d be a different matter,’ he says, ignoring her. ‘That’s the thing I don’t understand.
Why you have to lie about things when you know what it does to me.’

She’s aware that a big fat lie is coming from his own mouth. Come on, she thinks. You don’t really think that. If I came to
you and said, ‘Hey, Vic, I’ve decided to go against your wishes and take up smoking again,’ you’d never just say, ‘Oh, OK,
babe, that’s fine as long as you’ve told me.’ You know I only gave up because you made me; because the sulks and the barbed
remarks about my body smell and the refusal to kiss me wore me down. And the stupid thing is that I know, deep down, that
you don’t really care either way. That the reason smoking was an issue was nothing to do with any of those things, or with
fear about my health or yours, it was all of it about control. All about imposing your will on mine and watching yourself
win.

‘I’m not lying,’ she repeats. She snatches the pack from his hand, turns it over to find Jade’s phone number. ‘Look. That’s
why I’ve got it. See?’

She realises her error the instant the words leave her mouth. Wonders if she will ever learn. He’s got her now, can segue
straight into new accusations.

He takes the pack from her. ‘What’s this?’

‘A phone number,’ she says hesitantly, wishing she could backtrack. ‘You know how people write phone numbers on fag packets.’

‘People?’ A small smirk plays at the edge of his mouth. ‘And what
people
would that be, then, Amber? You didn’t tell me about any
people
.’

Christ, she thinks. Now I
do
have to lie.

She knows she sounds as guilty as he’s making her feel as she fishes around for the right words. Vic is turning the pack over
and over in his hands as she speaks.

‘Just … this chick I used to know,’ she says, and sees his eyes flick up to read her guarded expression. ‘Like … You know
… Ages ago.’

‘Chick,’ he says.

Don’t. Don’t rise to it. You know how, when he’s in this mood, he will interpret any sort of excuse, any sort of explanation,
as protesting-too-much. ‘Yes,
chick
,’ she says, trying to make it sound firm and hearing the defensiveness in her tone. ‘Chick from Liverpool. She used to live
two doors down from me.’

He says nothing.

‘She was at Funnland,’ she says. ‘I bumped into her. Vic …’

He shakes his head, slowly, emphasising his disbelief. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘What?’

‘OK. So you bump into some
chick
and you don’t tell me about it?’

‘Jeez. You don’t tell me every detail of
your
day, do you?’

‘I would if it was something like this.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she lies. ‘I forgot about it. It’s not as big a deal as you’re making it out to be.’

Of course she’d not forgotten. Not the shock of meeting Jade, not the unpleasantness of trying to shake her off. But a scrap
of cardboard in the bottom of a loaded handbag? Yes. Maybe the forgetting has some Freudian element to it, is an unconscious
way of avoiding dealing with the evidence of the encounter, but she certainly had forgotten, until she saw the pack in Vic’s
hand.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘What’s her name then? This
chick
?’

Amber panics. She can’t use the real name; has probably used it, out loud at least, less in the past twenty-five years than
any member of her generation except Jade herself. She flails internally, tries to think of an alternative, finds that every
female name she has ever known has fled her head. ‘Jade,’ she says.

She sees a flicker behind the unwavering smile. Some strong reaction, suppressed so she can’t read it. The name has some resonance
for him. What it is, she doesn’t know.

‘Yeah, not fast enough, Amber. You took much too long making that up.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Jade. I just couldn’t remember her surname. She just … lived down the road, you know—I don’t know if I ever
even knew it. I swear to you, Vic, I’m telling the truth.’

‘Well,’ says Vic, and picks up the phone. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

He dials. There’s silence in the kitchen. Vic smiles at her coldly as the ringtone kicks in. He puts the handset on Speakerphone
and waits, staring her out like a crouching panther. Christ, she thinks. What am I doing here? Do I even like this man? Sometimes
I feel like I don’t even
know
him.

A man’s voice, on the other end of the line. ‘Hello?’

Vic’s head jerks; a tiny movement of huge significance. ‘Who’s that?’ he asks.

‘Jim,’ says the man.

‘Jim,’ repeats Vic, and raises a cynical eyebrow at her.

‘Who’s that?’ asks Jim.

‘Vic,’ says Vic. ‘Sorry,
Jim
, I was looking for
Jade
.’

The man at the other end of the line sounds calm, casual, unfazed. Her bloke doesn’t know either, thinks Amber. Her whole
life’s as big a lie as mine is. ‘No, sorry, mate. I think you’ve got the wrong number. No Jade here.’

‘Oh,’ says Vic, ‘OK. Thanks,
Jim
.’ He emphasises the syllable for Amber’s benefit.

‘’S’OK,’ says Jim, and hangs up.

Vic puts the phone down on the table. ‘
Jim
,’ he says.

She leaves it for ten minutes, then follows him upstairs. He’s locked himself into the bathroom; she can hear the sound of
running water. She taps at the door and listens. No answer. ‘Vic?’ she calls timidly. Hears the water being turned up harder.

In the bedroom, a shirt lies on the bed; one of his going-out shirts. Her heart sinks. He always does this when he’s angry.
Goes out after work without a word and, often, doesn’t come back all night. She’s felt this mood building for days now. Jackie’s
presence – her discarded towels, her unwashed tea mugs, the brimming ashtray in the garden – has been increasingly irksome
to him. She regrets having asked her to stay. It doesn’t help that Jackie, at close quarters, has proved to be one of those
self-absorbed individuals who never notice much beyond their own boundaries. She talks incessantly, every thought that enters
her head falling instantly from her lips: lists the source and cost of every purchase she makes, counts calories – her own
and other people’s – out loud, rehearses the detail of every slight, every snub, every overlooking that fills her life.

He’s using this as an excuse, she thinks. Really, this is about resenting the fact that I imposed a guest on him without consulting
him, and about the fact that I’m too weak to ask her to leave. But raising a subject like that would require that we actually
talk, and Vic will do anything to avoid having to do that. He would always rather make his point by withdrawing his presence.

She hears the bathroom door open, turns to see him emerge, topless, his muscles rippling above his jeans. He’s shaved, and
gelled his hair. Rubs at the back of his neck with a towel. A clean one, she notices. He’s got it out of the airing cupboard
specially. He brushes past her and enters the bedroom; throws the towel pointedly into a corner.

‘Vic,’ she says.

He ignores her. Goes to the bed and picks up the shirt.

‘Are you going out?’

He pops open the mother-of-pearl buttons one by one, still refusing to look at her. I ironed that damn shirt, she thinks.
‘Yes.’

‘Vic.’ She doesn’t know what to say. Wants to persuade him to change his mind, knows the desire is pointless.

His back still turned, he slides his arms into the sleeves and
begins to button the shirt up. She can see from the set of his shoulders that he is angry and cherishing his anger. Which
is worse? she wonders. A man like Vic, who expresses anger with silence and isolation, or one who, like most of the men around
here, expresses it loudly, often physically. Sometimes, as she tiptoes around him, sick with misery and wondering where he
goes when he takes off, she wonders if a brief, flailing burst of rage wouldn’t be better.

‘Please,’ she says. ‘Can’t we talk?’

He turns his profile to her, his mouth downturned. ‘Nothing to talk about,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to hear any more lies.
I’m done listening to you.’

‘I’m not lying!’ she protests for the thousandth time. ‘Vic! Why won’t you believe me?’

He whirls and strikes, like a cobra. She recoils, tries to get away, but he grabs her arm, grips like a vice and pushes his
face close to hers. His eyes have narrowed to slits, and glitter like diamonds. She can smell the mint on his breath where
he’s brushed his teeth. He’s planning to score tonight, she thinks. To get back at me. Does he think I don’t know? Or is it
the other way round? Does he do it to see how far he can push me before I crack?

‘Don’t you dare speak to me!’ he hisses. ‘I know all about you, Amber. You liar. You bloody, filthy little liar! You’ve been
lying to me all along, haven’t you? I know what you’re like. I know what you’re all like. I thought you were different, but
you’re not, are you? You’re just another fucking –
slag –
’ he lets go of her arm, walks abruptly away, ‘like all the rest of them. A lying’ – he carries on buttoning his shirt, the
words coming out calm and matter-of-fact, now that this brief burst of temper is over – ‘fucking – slag.’

He pushes her on to the landing. She props herself against the banister, shocked. He marches past, stone-faced. Moments later,
she hears the front door slam.

11.30 a.m.

‘You got any scars?’ asks Jade. The roundabout is slowing down, and she’s not sure she can be bothered to hop off and push
any more. It’s funny how boring roundabouts get; she never gets bored on the swings
.

‘Scars? Yes.’

‘Me too,’ says Jade. She rolls up her top and shows a line of livid ragged dots running across her ribcage. ‘Barbed wire,’
she informs Bel. ‘When I was three.’

‘Cool!’ says Bel. ‘How?’

‘Fell over,’ says Jade
.

‘Did you have to have stitches?’

Jade shakes her head. ‘My dad said it was my own stupid fault.’

‘Mmm,’ says Bel, following the logic
.

‘I’ll never learn if I don’t see the consequences,’ says Jade. ‘Go on then. Show us.’

Bel considers, then rolls up her sleeve. Shows the scar down the inside of her upper arm. ‘Operation,’ she says, ‘where I
broke it. I’ve got a metal pin in there. I set off bomb detectors in airports. It was all sticking out through my skin and
everything.’

‘Nice!’ says Jade. ‘How’d you do that, then?’

The roundabout reaches a standstill. Bel considers her story. ‘Fell downstairs,’ she says casually, ‘when I was four.’ Doesn’t
add any detail. Some things you don’t tell to just anybody; she’s long since learned that
.

Jade pulls off her sandal to display a slit between her big toe and the next one along. It intrudes a good half-inch into
her foot, a ropy red scar delineating the edges
.

‘Crikey!’ Bel is impressed. ‘How did you get that?’

Jade tuts. ‘Me and Shane was playing chicken with Darren’s hunting knife and I didn’t get out of the way. My dad says I don’t
have the sense I was born with.’

‘Did you go to hospital with that one, then?’

‘Are you kidding? They’d have the SS on us in no time, a Walker coming in with a knife wound.’