Cross Her Heart(54)
I keep the make-up, dye, clippers and nail varnish, but stuff my old clothes into the sanitary bin and wash away all evidence of shaved hair down the sink. As I leave I find I’m walking differently. My hips are thrust forward and my shoulders are back. This woman doesn’t take any shit. This woman does things her own way. She’s hard as nails. This woman is my shadow and I know it. This is the Charlotte who could have been.
An hour or so later and I’m at the small services at the edge of the motorway. It’s still light, but there’s an edge of grey to the sky. I cruise up and down the rows of lorries that fill the car park until I find an occupied one. A driver, reading his paper, sipping from a flask, Burger King wrappers on the dashboard. All so ordinary. I tap on the side, smile, and he winds his window down to lean out.
‘I don’t suppose you’re going anywhere near Calthorpe?’ I ask. ‘There or Ashminster?’ They’re both close enough to home. I can get a bus from either and be back in Elleston in less than an hour.
‘I’m going to Manchester,’ he says. ‘So yeah I’m passing that way, but I’m parked up for the night. Done my hours. Sorry, love, but I won’t be leaving until about four in the morning.’
He isn’t an unpleasant-looking man. There have been worse men. I don’t give myself time to think about what I’m doing but shrug and smile. ‘I can wait.’ No one will look for me in a parked-up lorry. I’ll be safe there.
He looks at me for a long moment. ‘What’s your name, love?’ His tone has changed. Almost nervous but also wily. He’s sensing an opportunity. The sort of situation he’s probably only read about in top-shelf magazines.
‘Lily,’ I say. It comes from nowhere and is at odds with my wild look but also kind of suits it for exactly that reason. Lily is a nice girl from a good family who rebelled and never went back. Her story is weaving together in my head as his eyes flicker up and down and I see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows.
‘I’m Phil.’ He opens the cab door and pulls me in. I’m relieved to find he smells clean and so does the cab. No cigarette smoke. No stale booze. Only leather and deodorant. It could be worse. It could be much much worse.
‘I’ll have to have a kip.’ He nods back to where the rear seat is covered by a duvet. ‘Sooner I sleep, the sooner we leave.’ His eyes slide over me again. ‘I normally have a wank, if I’m honest, but …’ He half laughs, as if he’s making a joke, but his eyes are watery nervous.
‘I guess I should pay for the ride somehow,’ I say, knowing I sound like something from a cheap porn film but hoping it will make him come quicker. He’s overweight and middle-aged and I doubt he and his wife do it often. Even if he gets a second wind I can make him finish fast. I’m thinking like Charlotte. I have to be Charlotte Nevill now. My old self. I need all her anger. All her strength. Ava needs me and I won’t let her down.
I am Charlotte Nevill, I think, as I reach across to find his belt buckle under his gut. I’ve done worse. I can do this.
44
BEFORE
1989
It’s May half-term for Katie but that doesn’t mean anything to Charlotte. She barely goes to school any more and no one cares. None of the teachers want Charlotte Nevill in school. She breaks things. She swears. She hits the other kids. There’s no controlling her. She’s getting worse. The little ones are scared of her. Her anger is like a grinning wolf, gobbling up the bairns’ fears to kill her own. Big bad wolf. Little Red Riding Hood.
‘Charlotte? Are you listening?’ Katie twirls circles in the empty shithole of a room, sending dust up in a cloud around her ankles. ‘His skin was all grey and sort of baggy. Like he was empty. I could have stared at him all day.’
They’re in one of the condemned houses on Coombs Street, stripped of lead by grasping estate hands, and now forgotten until the bulldozers get round to demolishing it which doesn’t seem to be happening in any hurry as Mrs Copel next door keeps banging on about.
‘Grey,’ Katie says again, rubbing dust between her fingers. ‘Like this.’
Katie’s granddad died and she’s only been back from the funeral a couple of days and she can’t stop talking about it, which is good because it stops the words inside Charlotte’s own mouth spilling out.
‘Gross,’ she says, as Katie flops down beside her. They’re sitting on Charlotte’s jacket in case Katie gets dust on her dress, but their backs are pressed against the wall and Charlotte makes a note in her dull, fuzzy head to check Katie’s clothes before she goes home. She’d hate for Katie to get in trouble because that would mean she wouldn’t be able to see her and right now, Katie is all she has to stop her from snapping completely.
‘Yes, but wonderfully gross.’
Charlotte’s never seen a dead body but sort of wishes she had. She wishes she’d seen it with Katie. ‘Did he smell?’ This house smells, damp and rotting, even though it’s sunny and warm outside.
‘No, not bad anyway. A bit like chemicals maybe. Like a science lab at school.’
Charlotte has no idea what that smells like but she hmms in agreement.
‘Of course it’s all made Mummy worse.’ Katie lets out an exaggerated sigh. ‘Doctor Chambers has given her some pills for her nerves but they don’t seem to be doing anything much.’