Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
IT WAS A cold December night when I first saw him.
I glanced up at the sky as I hurried down the street, my footsteps soft in the darkness. The lack of clouds meant the temperature would drop a few degrees yet. The clock in the pawnbroker’s window chimed the witching hour as I passed, muffled by thick glass and a security grille. My mouth opened in a yawn, and I didn’t bother to cover it. Why fight the exhaustion? It festered inside me, the one constant in my life since childhood. A nemesis I’d never beat.
The eight to late shift was a killer, and in five hours I’d be up and working again, bleary eyed and faking a smile until I knocked off to study at one thirty. I’d have dearly loved to pack in my second job, the one in the evening, but it paid better than the first so I was stuck with it. Every day was the same. In order for me to get the recommended eight hours of rest, each day would need to have twenty-eight hours.
Still, I carried on. What other choice did I have? I was determined not to be stuck in dead-end jobs for the rest of my life, and my long-term plan involved sacrificing any kind of fun in my teenage years so I could enjoy my twenties and thirties.
I may have only been fifteen, but I had big ambitions.
Of course, nobody knew I was fifteen. If either of my employers found out I was two years and seven months younger than I claimed to be, they’d have kicked me right back out on the streets I’d fought so hard to escape. I got away with bending the truth because I looked older, and I looked older because fending for myself my entire life had matured me in a hurry.
On the bright side, appearing a little young for the eighteen years I claimed to be gave me a definite advantage in job number two. At Silk, the strip club—sorry, gentlemen’s club—where I spent my evenings, acting like a horny schoolgirl paid decent money.
So decent that the other girls hated me, which was why, yet again, they’d hidden my clothes as I danced.
“Have you seen my jeans? And my jumper?” I’d asked Bambi, the self-proclaimed headline act.
“Are you sure you brought them? I wouldn’t have thought you needed them on your street corner.”
A crowd of her cronies stood behind her, sniggering. I’d balled my fists up, just seconds away from wiping the smirk off Bambi’s make-up-caked face when I caught myself. I couldn’t afford to lose that job.
Instead, I’d shoved my feet into the pair of trainers they’d thankfully missed, collected my coat from the cloakroom, and marched out into the night. Which was why I was currently walking home with a belted trench over my dancing outfit and my fishnet-clad legs stuck into a pair of genuine fake Nike’s I’d bought at the street market for ten quid a week earlier.
Suck it up, kiddo.
Of course, it wasn’t nice being so actively disliked, but I’d developed a thick skin, and the money I earned made the hassle worth it. I had this crazy dream, you see, to go to university and make something of myself.
Why crazy? Well, I’ll give you three reasons.
First, I dropped out of school at twelve years old. That was what happened when you had no one apart from yourself to take care of you.
Second, the tuition fees and living expenses I’d rack up over a three-year course would add up to thousands. Rent, electricity, council tax, food, textbooks—they’d all need to be paid for, and I didn’t have any family to help out.
Third, and perhaps the most difficult hurdle to overcome, was that people like me simply didn’t go to university.
Right now, I was desperately trying to ignore point three while taking steps to address points one and two. Hence, the need for both jobs. In the mornings I worked at a gym, cleaning the cavernous room that housed the equipment then opening up, looking after the customers, and minding the front desk until the owner took over from me at lunchtime.
JJ’s wasn’t one of those posh gyms full of accountants and marketing executives jogging on treadmills while chatting on their mobile phones. The clientele didn’t head off for a sauna and a smoothie so they could talk about share prices and which secretary they were shagging that week. There were no rows of perfectly made-up Lycra-clad women, all without a drop of sweat on them, cycling serenely on stationary bikes while counting down the minutes until their manicures.
No, JJ’s had sweat, bruises, and occasionally blood. And muscles. Don’t forget the muscles, including those of its owner, a gentle giant called Jimmy James. At least, he was gentle to me. At six foot five inches of solid bulk, you didn’t want to get on his bad side.
After work, or sometimes during it if the place was quiet, I’d train for an hour or so to keep fit. Apart from Jimmy’s wife, Jackie, I was the only girl who ever ventured into the place, so the guys had taken me on as their pet project. Not because they were weird perverts like the clientele at Silk. No, they’d decided changes needed to be made the day after I got mugged. I’d walked into the gym with a black eye that morning, a little embarrassed because I should have seen it coming and ducked out the way.
“What happened, Amanda?” one of the regulars asked.
“Just walked into someone’s fist. That’s all. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. He take your money?”
I nodded.
“That’s not gonna happen again, you hear? You’re training with us now.”
They’d even had a whip round and raised more than the amount stolen from me. When they handed the cash over, I got all sniffly and had to run off to the toilet to get my emotions under control.
I never cried, and certainly not in front of people.
Since that day, I’d done regular sessions of boxing, martial arts, circuits, or sometimes all three, depending on who was in the gym to help me. Nobody on the street touched me again, which was almost disappointing since I’d been itching to try out the new things I’d learned.
After training came studying. Maths was the bane of my existence. I didn’t care about Mary’s inability to work out how much she could spend on tiles for her conservatory, and why on earth did Hannah want to buy 253 pineapples anyway? If I had cash, I ate. Simple as that.
And English? Whoever invented the language must have been smoking something. Why if the plural of mouse was mice did I have two houses and not two hice? As for pronunciation—broth and brother? Moth and mother? Give me strength. Karim from the mini-mart down the road had started teaching me Arabic, and although it looked a bit squiggly, spelling words like you said them seemed a far more sensible approach.
After I closed the books and grabbed a bite to eat, I’d get a couple of hours’ sleep before I trekked to Silk again. Luckily, I didn’t have far to go to bed, because I lived at the gym. The mattress in an old storage closet may have been basic, but it was mine, and it was safe.
Those two things alone made it better than anywhere I’d lived before. All in all, I’d stayed in some pretty horrible places, the worst of which was with my mother. Name something bad and she was addicted to it—drugs, alcohol, and men were her vices of choice.
I lived with her until the age of ten and hated every second of it. I spent most of my life outside the flat because it was easier to keep out of her way than bear the bruises. By the age of eight, I’d become an accomplished shoplifter, not for the thrill of it but out of necessity. Stealing food and clothes meant I only had to go home to shower and sleep. I’d finally left for good the night one of my mother’s boyfriends paid me a visit in my bedroom. Over an hour, he was in there, but she’d passed out on the sofa, so hammered she didn’t hear me scream. No child should have to go through that.
Even then, I’d kept going to school, but when my hygiene standards suffered, one of the teachers called social services. I’m sure there are some wonderful, caring foster parents out there, but I sure didn’t meet any of them. So, I wreaked enough havoc to get kicked out of one home after another, each time hoping the next place would feel safe enough to stay.
But I never found my sanctuary. Every guardian was in the game either for money or because they had certain predilections frowned upon by society. Sometimes both, if I got particularly unlucky. Can you imagine a situation where a person had an unhealthy interest in young girls, and not only did the state deliver the object of their fantasies to their door, but paid the freak to “take care” of them?
No?
Think that never happened?
Well, let me tell you, it did.
By the time they ran out of foster parents for me, I’d been hit, burned, locked up, starved, and groped. The only way to escape from one particularly sadistic couple was by burning the house down. I’d only intended to damage my bedroom so I couldn’t stay in it anymore, but who knew hairspray and perfume would go up with quite such a bang?
Next up was the children’s home. When a so-called care-worker stole from me, for the second time, what wasn’t his to take, I decided I’d had enough.
I quit.
I left the “care” system, and I stopped going to school as well so they couldn’t find me there and take me back.
After all, at twelve years old I was practically a grown-up, right?
Two years on the streets hardened me. The great outdoors may have been tough, but when I spotted the freaks, it was easy enough to avoid them. And over those months, I gained a whole new set of life skills, ones that didn’t appear on the school curriculum.
I still remembered the thrill when I’d hot-wired my first car, my GTA mentor by my side.
“You got the lock barrel out?”
“Yep, I got it, Vinnie.”
“Now, just twist the wires together.”
The engine started with a roar, and a delicious shiver ran through me. I’d never driven a vintage Porsche before. I bet not many thirteen-year-olds had.
My shoplifting talents improved to the extent that I rarely had to do a runner from the security guards, and I perfected the art of the hustle. I’d act my little heart out for a cut of whatever the person running the scam managed to make. Accents, airs, graces, I could put on them all. In truth, I wasn’t proud of the way I lived, but once I’d been turned down a one-way street, I had little choice but to keep walking.
I’d never been afraid to get physical, even before the mugging, but a lack of patience meant picking locks frustrated me. It took months to get the hang of it, but once learned, I never forgot. Even now, I still had the habit of carrying a couple of bobby pins for that very purpose.
So, what happened? What made me go straight at the grand old age of fourteen?
Well, my lifestyle came to a dead end one winter morning when I woke wrapped in a filthy blanket on the floor of an abandoned factory. My back ached as I rolled over and stretched, my fingertips touching the dude lying behind me.
“Sunny, you got any food?” I asked.
Sunny was six or seven years older than me, and his story mirrored mine, except he’d taken to self-medicating with whatever drugs he could beg, borrow, or steal so he wouldn’t have to face his own mind anymore.
He didn’t answer.
I scrambled to my knees, catching my palm on a nail sticking up from the floor. I still had that scar, barely noticeable, as a reminder of my previous life.
My breath puffed white in the chilly air as I wrapped a T-shirt around my hand to stop the bleeding, then I took a better look at Sunny.
“No,” I whispered, unable to think of more words.
Milky white eyes stared back at me, unseeing, and I fell backwards, bumping my head on a pillar as I struggled to my feet. My wild run from the first of many dead bodies I’d encounter in my life ended outside JJ’s, as I sucked in ragged breaths and tried to block Sunny’s sagging jaw from my mind.
Cleaner wanted , the sign in the window read. Hours by agreement, enquire within .
My survival instinct kicked in, and after a quick trip to the nearest public toilet to make myself presentable, I went back, said I was sixteen, and landed the job. Jimmy didn’t mind me coming in early to take a shower before my shift, but I started creeping in even earlier to sleep for the night.
Which I thought was a good plan until Jimmy came back unexpectedly one evening and found me sneaking into the storeroom.
“What on earth are you doing here?”
I froze, hand on the doorknob, unable to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry. Just give me two minutes, would you? I’ll get my stuff and go.”
Rather than getting angry, he’d laid a huge paw on my shoulder. “You should have told me, child. We knew things were bad for you, but not this bad.”
I had a lump in my throat as I watched him clear out the room for me. When he told me I was expected for dinner each evening in the tiny one-bedroom flat he and Jackie shared above the gym, I could barely speak to say, “Thank you.”
Jimmy and Jackie turned into the closest thing to parents I ever had, and their patrons became my family. It was one of them, Donnie, who gave me the job at Silk.
“I’ve seen you dancing around while you clean, love,” he said to me. “If you’re interested in making a few quid extra, reckon I’d have a job for you.”
My first reaction had been, “No way,” but how else could I get enough money for university? There weren’t many jobs available to a person with no qualifications whatsoever, and even fewer that paid cash in hand, no questions asked.
Jimmy had been less than impressed when I told him my plan.
“You’re too good for that place, Amanda.”
“You gonna give me a pay rise?”
“Wish I could, but I can’t. It’s hard enough making ends meet in this place.”
“Then I’ve got to dance. I know you hate it, and I don’t like it either, but the money’s too good to turn down.”
“If anyone tries anything, they answer to me, you got that?”
“I got it. And Jimmy?” He looked down at me. “Thank you.”
Hundreds of pairs of eyes roaming over my body made my flesh crawl, but I put it out of my mind as I counted my cash each night. Donnie looked after me and made sure the bouncers did too, partly because Jimmy threatened to put him in an early grave if he didn’t but mostly because he was a decent guy who just happened to own a strip club.
I never did private dances or spent time alone with the customers. Any man who touched me got escorted from the premises in a headlock, usually after his instep had been introduced to my stiletto. I went to work, did my thing on stage, served a bunch of drinks, then got out of there as fast as humanly possible.
That fateful Friday night had been a quiet one at Silk. The local pubs were showing a big football match, and half of the regulars preferred to watch a bunch of overpaid boys running around a pitch rather than a bunch of underdressed girls dancing around a stage.
Tips were down, which meant I couldn’t pass up the chance to make a bit of extra cash, legal or not. Living on the streets did that to you—the lines between wrong and right got blurred, and you learned to survive by whatever means necessary.
So, when I saw a tall, well-dressed man emerging from the steps of Aldgate tube station right ahead of me, tucking his tube ticket into his wallet and placing it into his right-hand jacket pocket, my synapses fired at a thousand miles an hour and came up with a plan.
The guy turned right and walked towards me, and I kept my head down, watching him out of my peripheral vision. As he passed, I tripped over the edge of a paving slab and stumbled into him, grabbing onto his jacket to keep from falling.
He caught me easily, one hand on either side of my waist.
“Are you all right?”
His accent was American. A tourist, most likely, or a visiting businessman.
“Fine, thanks, just tripped,” I mumbled, acting embarrassed.
My smile was genuine—mission accomplished. He returned it, displaying a row of perfect white teeth as he set me back on my feet.
Just a simple mishap, right? I carried on my way, and he carried on his.
Except now I had his wallet.