Her mouth is as dry as the desert. She screws her eyes up and forces more scalding liquid between her lips, holding it on her tongue and breathing in, hard, to cool it.
It’s a condition of your licence, Kirsty, she says to herself. No one around you even knows there’s such a thing as a probation order in your name, but it’s there nonetheless. For the rest of your life. You are not to see, or speak to, or have contact with each other ever again. Like you’d ever want to.
Oh, but I do, shrieks a small, angry voice inside. I do. More than anything. More than anything on earth. She’s the only one who knows. The only one who knows how it feels. The only other me in the world. Twenty-five years I’ve been holding this in, living with my guilt, mastering the art of dissimulation. Twenty-five years with no family, lying to the friends I’ve made, lying to Jim, lying to my children. How would they look at me, if they knew? He’s a forgiving man. But could he still love me, if he knew he’d married The Most Hated Child in Britain?
Bel Oldacre. Kirsty doesn’t even know her new name.
It’s raining by the time Amber works up the guts to leave. She’s hidden away for hours: first in the empty mirror maze, then in her office, among the files and the boxes of J Cloths, until the afternoon shift is over; scared to come out, scared to show her face in the park. Outside, the rumble of the rollercoaster, the screams of its passengers; inside, the silent scream in her ears. Then, as an English summer storm sets in, the sounds die down and the music, ride by ride, is switched off. It’s not worth wasting the power, as the crowds drop as the rain gets up. Any punters who want to stay are given a refund, or offered free entry another day. Most of them don’t even think to ask; just rush their wailing kids off to the weather-proofed arcades on the Corniche.
Still, she is afraid. She scuttles from her office towards the staff gate as though she expects Jade to be lurking in the shadows; pulls her fleece tight round her breasts and wraps her scarf – everyone who lives in Whitmouth carries a scarf with them wherever they go, even at the height of summer – round her head to hide her face. Crazy, she knows: even if Jade had been hanging around, she would have been cleared out with the rest of the stragglers an hour ago. But still, she is afraid.
Jason Murphy is sheltering in the hut, eating a cheese-and-onion pasty with his feet up on the desk. He looks at her, all insolence in his navy sweater, peaked cap shoved to the back of his head, as she swipes her card across the reader, clocking out.
‘All right?’ he says.
She feels a surge of annoyance. She knows perfectly well how Jade Walker found her way to the mirror maze. And the fact that he knows that something else has happened has given him some edge, some stupid sense of power. He smirks as he watches her.
‘No,’ she says, turning to him, ‘I’m not all right, actually, Jason.’
That look, that ugly sense of entitlement, the refusal to accept that ‘respect’ is a two-way street. Jason wants respect all the time: she’s seen him squaring up to neighbours, to kids, to random men in the street, demanding it. She’s never seen him do anything to earn it.
‘If you ever do anything like that again,’ she says, ‘I’m going to put you on report.’ She’s not his direct boss, but she’s management, and has authority of sorts over everyone who isn’t. And she’s damned if she’s going to let him forget it.
‘Do what?’ he says – whines – though he knows what she’s talking about.
‘You know what,’ she says. ‘You’re here to provide security, not take beer money off anyone who wants to give it you. There’s computers here, Jason, and cash, and it’s your job to see they don’t get stolen.’
‘She got past me,’ he says sulkily.
She waits two beats, giving him the gimlet eye. ‘Don’t give me that,’ she says. ‘If I ever find out you’ve been up to that sort of trick again, I’ll be reporting you, do you get me?’
He tries to give her the eye back. Fails. Amber perfected the art of outstaring the enemy at the Blackdown Hills detention centre. It was necessary for survival then, and it’s a skill she has never allowed to fade.
‘And get your feet off that desk,’ she says.
Slowly, sulkily, he drops one foot, then the other, to the ground. Links his fingers over his vulnerable crotch.
Amber says nothing more. Lets herself out of the street door and closes it behind her.
‘Skanky cow,’ mutters Jason, putting his feet back up on the desktop and picking up the remains of his pasty. ‘Skanky cow,’ he repeats, and rips off a mouthful with his teeth.
Out on the Corniche the rain is horizontal; there’s barely a body to be seen. Amber swings right, hurrying for the bus stop.
A voice calls her name. Her old name. She freezes.
‘Bel!’ it calls again.
Jade Walker emerges from the doorway of The Best Fish and Chips on the South Coast, walks towards her. She must’ve been waiting for her to come out. Shit.
Amber hurries forward again. Pretends she doesn’t hear.
Jade raises her voice. ‘Bel! Please!’
She swings round, catches a blast of rain-shards full in the face. It blinds her for a second. When her vision clears she sees that Jade is still there, blinking at her, hair rat-tailed on to healthy pink cheeks.
Amber has to stop her. Has to shut her up. The woman has lost her mind, isn’t thinking things through at all. She needs to shock her into understanding. She races towards her, raging; sees her recoil and feels pleasure in making her do so. Jade’s smaller than she is. Bearing down, she knows she could take her out with a single fist.
She grabs her upper arm, clamps down on the muscle like a vice, digging in her fingertips to make it hurt.
‘Go away!’ she hisses. ‘Do you hear me? Don’t call me that. Don’t follow me. Just fuck off. We have nothing to say to each other.’
‘Bel…’
Amber shakes her head, side to side, over and over like an angry dog. Hears her voice rise to a shriek to combat the wind. ‘No!’ she shouts. ‘I don’t know that name. That’s not my name. Just – shut up! Shut up! You know we’re not meant to see each other. You know! Are you mad? Go away!’
She throws the woman’s arm away like a chicken bone. Pushes her for good measure. Jade stumbles back a pace, stands staring at her with what looks like despair. Good. Bloody good.
She forces her voice back under her control. She can’t afford this level of agitation. Even here, on this empty boulevard, eyes will be watching. She can’t let anyone see. Right outside work, for God’s sake. What is she thinking?
‘I’m not Bel,’ she says. ‘I haven’t been Bel for years, you know that. Just like you. What are you doing?’
‘I didn’t mean…’ begins Jade. ‘I – if I’d known I’d’ve-’
‘Well, what are you doing now? You should have gone. What do you think they’d do if they…? Shit. Just go. Don’t follow me. Just fuck off back wherever you’ve come from.’
She turns on her heel and walks towards the bus stop. There’s a bus due in three minutes and she’s damned if she’s going to miss it.
She is jittering by the time she enters the shelter – anger, fear, shock, all turned to adrenalin. Her breath rasps in her throat and she has to sit down, hard, on the graffitied bench. There’s no one here, thank God – no one who knows her, anyway, just a couple of kids wrapped in teenage lust in the corner. They glance up briefly, his hand inside the front zip of her jacket, then turn back, indifferent.
Amber breathes. Holds her hands out, palms down, watches them tremble. I can’t do this, she thinks. It’s too much. I can’t lose this life. Not because of a stupid coincidence. No one’s going to believe we just met by accident. It would never happen. Shit. Am I going to have to move on again? What’s she doing here, anyway? What the hell is she doing here?