The Elephant Girl(24)

She dressed carefully for the interview. Letitia was always so elegant, but the best Helen could come up with was a white blouse of Indian cotton and a layered skirt in the most sombre shade she could find. As for shoes, it had turned cold again lately, and she had to rely on her trusted Doc Martens.

Charlie whistled when Helen entered the kitchen.

‘Going anywhere nice?’

‘Job interview. Of sorts. At an auction house.’

‘Of sorts?’

‘Well, you know. I’m hoping they won’t mind me not having any experience of the trade.’ The lie slipped off her tongue easily enough. Too easily, but she doubted the personal connection and her part-ownership of the company would go down well with Charlie.

‘Lucky you. I haven’t had much luck finding a job. Everywhere I go, they take one look at my record and all my piercings, and then they suddenly don’t need me any more.’ Charlie pushed a brown teapot across the table. ‘Here, I just made it.’

Helen poured a cup. ‘Shouldn’t I be paying something towards food and drink? Or does it come out of the rent money?’

‘Don’t worry about it. Fay comes around with the kitty tin once a fortnight. It used to be my job, but Jason gave it to Fay when she moved in.’

‘Why?’

Charlie sent Helen a direct look. ‘I’m a thief. I’d steal from my own granny, or so they said at the juvie. Trouble is, I don’t have a granny. Or anyone else.’

‘I’m sure that’s not why he asked Fay to take over.’

‘It doesn’t bother you?’

‘I don’t have anything worth taking, except these.’ Helen showed Charlie her mother’s elephant pendant and the silver amulet Mamaji had given her, then tucked them back inside her blouse. She ignored the voice in her head which reminded her about the two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds a year she was supposed to get. It was just too unreal, and she hadn’t really taken it in yet. Besides, she wanted to make her own way in life before accepting handouts from her family.

‘I don’t steal from friends.’

‘I wouldn’t have shown them to you if I thought otherwise.’ Helen sipped her tea. It was scalding hot and bitter, just the way she liked it. ‘So, you don’t have any relatives at all?’

‘Me going to prison wasn’t part of my parents’ plan, so they’d rather pretend I don’t exist. The people that matter live in this house. Even that bastard Lee.’ Charlie looked at her fingernails which were bitten to the quick.

‘Why don’t you like him?’ Helen didn’t like him much either, especially not the way he crept about silently and popped up when you least expected him to.

Charlie scowled. ‘Because he could do so much more with his life. Unlike me. Because of what I did.’

‘Why unlike you?’ What had Charlie done?

‘I ran with a bad group, right. A gang of girls. We’d hang around on street corners after school, you know, just being a general nuisance. There was this one girl we liked to pick on. She had some sort of facial deformity, and we just didn’t give her a break. Then … one day she killed herself. That’s when I flipped because I realised what I’d done. Ruined the life of another person. And why? Because I was bored, didn’t care about other people’s feelings. Didn’t have any prospects.’

Helen digested this in shocked silence. The dead girl could have been her. Almost was her, except she knew she was stronger. And Charlie was taking all the blame on her shoulders, which was unfair because there was a whole group of them.

‘It wasn’t just you,’ she said.

‘I had a choice, I could’ve said no.’ Charlie shrugged, as if she wasn’t sure about that herself. ‘So, I decided I was going to make good some of the harm that I’d done. I took a college course in computing and got a job working for HM Revenue & Customs. Then I made sure her family got a big tax rebate.’

Another person who thought money could make up for everything. ‘How?’

‘Oh, it was a piece of cake, but of course it all got found out because these people really were too good to be true and they queried it, the silly bastards. Then I got sent down for hacking the system, and I knew there was no justice in life. It should’ve been manslaughter.’

‘You didn’t kill her.’

‘I almost did.’ Charlie looked at her fingernails, then back at Helen with a grin. ‘I hope you still like me.’

The joke was skin deep. Helen felt it, and Charlie knew it. ‘Of course I do. I’m glad you told me.’ It was still a shock, though.