He turns back and sees her drinking in the chiselled features, the thick dark hair, the Elvis cowboy shirt, the neat-cropped facial hair, with something that looks like gratitude.
‘I think you need to leave the lady alone, Martin,’ says Vic.
It isn’t possible. How’s it possible? It’s some sort of – conspiracy. Some sort of… plot to fuck me up.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I’m doing here,’ says Vic calmly. ‘What matters is that I’m telling you to leave the lady alone.’
‘Fuck off,’ says Martin. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’
‘I know enough, Martin. You need to stop making a nuisance of yourself.’
‘I’ll do what I want.’
Vic does something that frightens him. A tiny backward jerk of the elbow combined with a half-pace forward: too small to attract the bouncers, clear enough to make his intent plain. Martin hops back, feels a rush of fear and frustration. ‘But I know her!’ he shouts. He really feels like he does. After following her the last two days, after reading everything she’s ever written deep into the night, he knows her as well as anybody.
‘No you don’t,’ says Vic. ‘You’re just being a nuisance.’
Shit, Vic knows her, he must do, or he wouldn’t be saying that. Martin’s mind flashes back to yesterday afternoon, to looking in through the window of the Kaz-bar to see what she was up to.
With a leap of understanding, he realises who her companion was – though he couldn’t see her clearly, what with the candlelit gloom and the pair of huge dark glasses she was hiding her face with. Amber Gordon. Oh my God. They’ve known each other all along. They’re all… in it together.
‘Look,’ says Vic, ‘we’ve had to see you off once. I don’t want to have to do it again. You’re a bloody nuisance and you need to stop.’
Suddenly, Martin finds himself in tears. He turns away, swiping at his face with a sleeve. It’s not fair. Everyone, always ganging up on him, setting him up, screwing with his head. It’s this town. It’s the people. They’re all… sick. Conspiring to keep him out, to keep him down, to refuse to recognise that he is Someone. She’s been one of them all along.
He turns back and screams impotently at Kirsty Lindsay. She’s stepped back, can probably barely hear him over the music, but his self-control is gone. ‘You… you bloody bitch! I’ll get you! You’ll see! You’ll fucking see!’
Victor Cantrell repeats his elbow move, laughs in Martin’s face as he recoils. Martin ducks back into the crowd. He knows when there’s no point fighting. But someone’s going to pay. Someone. He can feel sweat on his forehead, feels himself tremble. Wants to grab a glass and ram it into one of the laughing faces around him.
He contents himself, for now, with shoving at a couple of backs as he strides for the exit. For now.
She watches the man leave and realises that she is shaking. Looks up at her rescuer’s face. ‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘’S’OK,’ he replies. ‘He’s trouble, that one. Proper little stalker.’
‘Well – thanks. I thought I might be in trouble there.’
The man shrugs. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he says.
Kirsty sighs. ‘Yeah, I know. I’m going to call it a night, I think.’
‘You don’t look like a slag, anyway,’ he says. ‘But then again, there’s no other reason you’d be here. Are you a slag? You can’t tell, these days. Maybe you are.’
She’s shocked. Sees a glittering half-smile on his face and doesn’t like it. She can’t bear DanceAttack for one minute longer; wants out of Whitmouth. Blushing, she pushes away from him without another word.
Chapter Twenty-six
I’m going to enjoy this. I’m actually going to enjoy this.
Amber sits in her office, slowly and carefully applying her make-up. She’s been locked in here since soon after her shift began. She showed her face briefly in the shadows of the main concourse as her staff arrived, then half sprinted to the administration block to put a layer of MDF between herself and the world.
Now she’s covering up: the way she does every day. Foundation and blusher and highlighter, wiping away the lines and the shadows, as her fictions wipe away her past. They will not know. Her hands no longer shake and her eyes, soaked for hours with teabags, betray no tell-tale puffiness.
It’s nearly two o’clock; the tea-break ritual approaches. Amber draws lines of black on to her eyelids and waits to take her revenge.
The cafeteria is full when she enters. Steam and food smells, and the rumble of weary mundanity. Another night, like any other.
But no. Tonight, she’s New Amber: no bullshit, no advantage taken. The cleaners think she’s a pushover, the lenient boss who’ll overlook most infractions in pursuit of a quiet life. Well, not any more. She’s been a yes-woman all her adulthood, rolling over and going with the flow, but not any more. Vic, the staff at Blackdown Hills, Suzanne Oddie, her mother and stepfather, every shitty man she’s followed till he was done with her, every landlord, every employer, every woman who’s deigned to be her friend, and it’s got her nowhere. Taken her further down the road to nothing. Christ, if she hadn’t obeyed Deborah Francis and Darren Walker unquestioningly one summer day twenty-five years ago, none of this would have happened. But not any more. After today, she’s done.
‘Moses,’ she says. He looks up, smirking, expecting the usual timid word of reproof, and his face falls as he sees her expression.
‘Yuh?’
‘It’s no-smoking in here.’
‘I wasn’t…’ he begins, and trails off as he sees that she’s deadly serious. ‘Sorry,’ he mutters.
Amber folds her arms. Counts one, two, three beats. ‘It’s time you stopped,’ she tells him. ‘I don’t care what you do to your lungs, but doing it indoors is against the law. You’re not to do it. There’s a whole park to smoke in. Do it outside, or I’m going to have to give you a written warning. Do you understand?’
He glares at her from beneath heavy eyebrows. Then, saying nothing, he gets to his feet and, making an exaggerated show of picking up his Gold Leaf and his brimming Styrofoam cup, he stalks from the café.
She realises that the tables within earshot have fallen quiet. People are exaggeratedly not looking at her. Right, she thinks. This is what it feels like to be boss. They don’t like you. Big fucking whoop. None of them liked you in the first place, not really. Not in any genuine, remembering-you-when-you’re-out-of-the-room sense. Not in a calling-to-see-you’re-OK-when-you’re-in-trouble sense, like yesterday. You’ve been brown-nosing all your adult life in the hope that people will like you, and all it does is make them despise you. Make them think they can take advantage. Make them think they can take your hospitality and-
Clutching her clipboard like a shield, she walks forward. She hears an outbreak of whispered comment behind her back and smiles grimly. Just wait, she thinks. If you don’t like that, wait till you see what’s coming next.
Jackie is at her usual table, holding forth to Blessed. There she sits in her leather jacket, her sugar-pink trackies (the ones that proclaim her shrivelled backside JUICY), her Nike knock-offs, dangling gold hoops in her ears and a Diamonesque J dangling between her breasts. She’s talking about men. Isn’t she always? Amber stares at this woman and hates and hates.
‘… so Tania got talking to him and asked him what sort of girls he liked, and he said slim ones with olive skin, so I thought, you know, Ooh, I’m in with a chance…’
Amber feels loathing pump through her veins, wonders at the way pity can turn to contempt at the press of a button. She keeps her expression steady: neutral but serious. She’s not going to let her emotions get in the way of her revenge. The pleasure will be so much greater if the news comes out of the blue.