The house is as she left it, the gate still on the latch. Cher glances up and down the road and steps inside. Bends double and lets herself breathe. Drops to her knees, then collapses back against the wall, chest heaving, and holds her hurty elbow. She is dizzy from adrenalin, her night vision impaired by lack of oxygen. She drops the wig on to the top of her bag and closes her eyes, holds the wallet against her stomach like a talisman.
This is shit, she thinks. It’s crazy. I can’t keep on like this. One day someone’ll catch me. I’ll get beaten up for the sake of an iPod. Chucked in YOI because I needed the price of a tin of beans and a pot noodle. Or I’ll start thinking it’s easier just to give them the blowies, and then I’ll want crack or something to block it out, and before I know it I’ll be my mum. Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe I should just give up and hand myself back.
For a moment she stops breathing altogether. Remembers why she can’t. Remembers Kyra, two years out of care, on a street corner for real, her eyes as dead as dolls’ and track marks on her ankles. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, really, she thinks. But if I’m going to end up a red-veined junkie whore, at least I’m going to do it on my own terms.
She opens her eyes and opens the wallet. Counts the notes: another fifty quid. He’s got six cards. Six. Cher can’t even get a bank account. She leafs through them. They’re not top of the range. There’s no blacks or platinums among them. But they’re cash, they’re credit, they’re all the things she’s not allowed. And tucked into the stamp pocket, a folded piece of paper, a four-figure number scrawled on it. A PIN. Just the one, but it’s a PIN. If she makes it back to Waterloo before midnight and uses the cards one by one she can straddle the witching hour and get herself a few hundred before they get cancelled.
She gets back to her feet. Unpacks the bag, pulls on the dress and a pair of leggings, replaces the Uggs. Unties her hair and frizzes it back into its messy Afro, ties a scarf round the roots. Adds thick-framed specs – one pound fifty from Primark, if she’d paid for them – and a chunky metal cross on a leather thong. Shrugs the jacket back on over the top. By the time she steps back on to Roupell Street, she’s just another office cleaner, coming off her shift.
Chapter Nineteen
Alice lies on the floor, face-up and grinning. The Lover kneels beside her and surveys his tool collection. Lidl and its special offers are a godsend. Disposing of Jecca and Katrina was a long, sweaty business, filled with noise and the fear of discovery, but thanks to Polish tradesmen and the European retailers who supply them, he feels, for the first time, fully equipped. Lined up in a row on the groundsheet he has a circular saw (£29.99), an electric carving knife (£8.99), a mini-tool kit for hobbyists (good for getting into inconvenient corners) (£19.99) amd a set of hacksaws (£6.99) – and a sledgehammer (£13.99) tucked in behind the shed in the garden, for later. God bless the Common Market, and God bless China, he thinks. All your DIY needs catered for, on the cheap.
Sic transit gloria mundi: nothing lasts for ever. The Lover knows that now. He’d hoped his ladies would carry him through to his life’s end, but it seems that, in the British climate, even the best of preservation is not foolproof. That’s why they keep the mummies in airtight boxes in the British Museum, of course. It wasn’t only the skill of the embalmers that ensured the longevity of the ancient world’s kings and queens, but the aridity of the desert winds.
Alice has become unbearable to be around. She splits and flakes, and her teeth drop from her mouth when he moves her, and he can’t ignore the fact that she smells any more. Her nails are coming away from their beds and slide about beneath the brush when he paints them. Superglue seemed to do the trick for a while, but with each passing week the dry flesh beneath deteriorates at a faster pace and they loosen again. He finds himself resenting her slightly more each day when he wakes and sees the wisps of faded hair that cling to the leathery scalp, the shrunken ears whose lobes seem to have slipped downwards until they are nearly touching her jawline, the razor-edged scapulae poking through her once-smooth shoulders. He knows that the state of her is mostly his fault, that he should have done his research more thoroughly, but still he resents her.
It’s the disappointment, he thinks. You go to all that trouble, you lavish such love and attention on someone, and they leave you anyway. No wonder I’ve started to resent her. It’s always best to end it first. But I’m tired of it, so tired of it: of picking up the pieces and carrying on, of getting fond and getting hopeful and still ending up alone.