Chapter 6

SIX

Wind feathered up along Amy Whyte’s bare legs as she pulled hard on her cigarette before dropping it to the floor and grinding it out with the heel of her silver-glittered sandal. A drift of cold air swirled around her shoulders and she felt the first smattering of rain. Oh no! Her false tan would run down her legs. She wanted to go home. Now.

Looking around for Penny, she saw her laughing with a group of lads under the Perspex roof of the smoking shelter. How was she going to get her to leave? It was gone one o’clock and the nightclub was in full swing, but Amy was tired. Getting too old, she thought as she scanned the crowd of teenagers. It was supposed to be strictly over twenty-ones, but that rule was never adhered to.

She approached her friend. ‘Penny, are you coming?’

‘No, it’s just the way she’s standing,’ one of the men joked.

Typical of Ducky Reilly. He always had to be the smart one. Amy’s lips trembled with the cold and she couldn’t find a suitable reply in her vodka-soaked brain. Maybe she shouldn’t have had that last drink. Too late now, she told herself, and wished she had a warmer jacket.

‘Let’s have one more,’ Penny Brogan said, smiling coyly at Ducky while wrapping her blonde hair around her hand, her little finger sticking up in what looked to Amy like a sexual gesture. Penny should know better, even if she was drunk.

‘Yeah, one for the road, as my auld fella says. Or a little blow?’

Amy wasn’t sure who had said this, but she wasn’t hanging around to find out. She shook her head and balled her hands in frustration. ‘I’ve to work tomorrow, so I’m heading off.’ Working on Sunday was a bitch.

‘Don’t be a spoilsport.’

She felt her arm being clutched by someone who dragged her into the middle of the crowd lounging under the canopy. Cigarette smoke clogged the air. She was sure the last vodka had yet to reach her stomach, and it was likely to rise up her gullet if she didn’t get out quickly.

Arms snaked around her shoulders, huddling her into a group, as a phone appeared and someone took a photo. Shit, now she’d feature in a Snapchat or Instagram story. Bad enough trying to hide a hangover without the world seeing the evidence of how she’d come by it.

Wriggling out from the centipede of limbs, she squeezed through the pulsing bodies and headed back towards the club. ‘Text me when you get home.’

‘Yes, Mammy,’ Penny laughed, and the crowd around her shouted, ‘Night night, Mammy!’

Immature imbeciles, Amy thought as she barrelled through sweating torsos towards the chair where she’d been sitting earlier. Her jacket was nowhere. Now she’d have to walk home in the rain bare-shouldered, and would probably catch a cold. Hoisting her sparkly red top up as far as it would go, she dragged her skirt down to her knees. It was the best she could do.

Outside the nightclub, she looked up and down the narrow lane hoping to see a taxi. The taxi rank was on Main Street and she estimated she’d be drowned by the time she reached it, and anyway, she didn’t want to waste a tenner. No, she’d walk. Get some air in her lungs before she reached home. Might keep the hangover at bay.

Deciding to take the shortcut down by the railway, she turned left. At twenty-five, she was long past phoning her father to collect her, and past fearing being attacked. There were plenty of drunk and high teenagers who stumbled through the town nightly, and not one of them had been harmed. Not that she’d heard about anyway. She straightened her shoulders in her resolve and continued to walk. Quickly.

The street narrowed into an alley between a row of apartment buildings, and Amy saw a moth shimmering under a lamp outside a door. She stopped and stared as the large-winged, furry-bodied insect flapped against the light, trapped by its inability to see a way out. She felt a trickle of fear nestle in the nape of her neck, and a shiver skittered down her spine.

Turning around, she picked up speed and headed towards Petit Lane car park. It was even quicker to scoot down that way, under the railway bridge. The thump of music from the club permeated the night, and she wondered how anyone in the apartments she’d just passed could sleep at night. Then again, maybe they were used to it.

She heard the windshield wipers, swishing away the rain that was now becoming more persistent, before she heard the car. Standing to one side, she paused and waited for it to pass her. Instead, it stopped and someone got out. She moved to skirt around the back of the vehicle, but a hand caught her arm and pulled her backwards.

‘Hey, let go!’ she yelled.

‘Just a minute.’ The voice was low and hoarse. Like someone with a sore throat trying not to strain it. ‘I want a word with you.’

‘I’ll scream if you don’t take your hand off me.’

Amy thought her own voice sounded like that of someone else. Someone who was not terrified like she was. The car park light was behind the person and she couldn’t make out the features beneath their hooded coat. She felt like the moth she’d just seen flapping against the brightness. Sirens screeched in the distance; the music continued to boom from Jomo’s and she felt the night darkening with each passing second.

The grip tightened on her arm and she wriggled, trying to free herself. She fell off the high heel of one sandal, and with the strap caught around her ankle, she stumbled. An arm shot around her waist, and as she opened her mouth to scream, a hand clamped tightly over it. She thought she felt something prick the skin behind her ear.

The hoarse voice was behind her. ‘If you keep still for a moment, I will explain.’

Amy tried to scream, but the hand was stifling her cries. She was trapped. Her words were lost and her ankle pulsed with pain. As she was pulled tighter, she felt her assailant’s body against her spine. The smell of fresh mint mingled with the rain, and lips brushed close to her ear. She struggled to hear what was being said as the sirens blared louder and the music thumped relentlessly through the rain.

At last the noise faded and the only sound Amy heard was the thudding of her own heart. Her hair was plastered to her scalp but the hand held firm. She scanned the car park, the deserted spaces slipping in and out of focus, but it offered her no safety. She felt the head lower to her face again. And this time she heard the words.

If she could have screamed, she would have, but Amy could do nothing but slump against her captor as all the power disappeared from her body.

Katie Parker hadn’t been out on the town in almost two years. This was supposed to be the start of the new Katie, but now her ass of a sister was ruining it for her.

‘I told you not to drink shots, Chloe. You’re too young, plus you haven’t the constitution to withstand so much alcohol.’ Katie held her sister’s arm, trying to keep her upright.

‘You sound just like Mother. Dictators, that’s what the two of you are.’ Chloe folded into a hoop with a bout of hiccups. ‘And I’m nearly eighteen. So there.’

‘Yeah, well you’re a fool and you’ve ruined my evening.’ Katie guided her away from the gathering crowd and into the ladies’ toilets.

The cubicles were all empty. Chloe dropped the toilet lid and plonked herself down. Katie watched her in the mirror as she ran a finger around her smudged mascara. She turned on the tap and brown water spluttered into the sink.

‘What the hell is that?’

‘Water?’ Chloe offered.

‘No, the sink. It’s all gooey.’ Katie touched a finger to the bowl and knew instantly what it was. She moved to one of the cubicles and noticed the same substance on the cisterns. Vaseline. Dotted with white powder.

‘Coke, is it?’ Chloe slurred.

‘In my day, a few joints was all we could afford.’ Katie recalled with a wry smile her illicit smokes with Jason, her boyfriend and the father of her son. Jason had been murdered, and it seemed like a whole lifetime ago. She suddenly felt a lot older than her twenty-one years. Maybe she was getting too like her mother. ‘What am I going to do with you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Chloe said.

‘You can’t go home drunk as a skunk. Mam will kill you.’

‘Don’t want to go home.’

With a sigh, Katie hauled her sister up off the toilet, stretched her arm around her and hugged her tightly.

‘You and me, we have to make life work for us. And getting blotto on a Saturday night isn’t doing either of us any favours.’

‘I think you’re drunker than me,’ Chloe said.

‘I’m being pragmatic.’

‘Ooh. Big words now.’

‘Yeah, and you’re a big girl, so quit the melodramatics and act your age.’

‘Yes, Mam.’

Katie held her at arm’s length. ‘I’m serious. We’ve been through some bad times. Both of us. And Mam has always been there for us. I think it’s time we cut her some slack and helped her out.’

‘What has that got to do with me enjoying a rare night out?’

‘Everything.’

‘You’re talking like a jigsaw puzzle, and I’m sick as a dog.’

Katie stepped out of the way just in time as Chloe puked all over the toilet seat. She realised the lid was coated in Vaseline too. She coiled Chloe’s hair around her fingers and waited until her sister raised her head.

‘Can we go home now?’ Katie said.

‘Yeah. I think that’s a very good idea. But …’

‘But what?’

‘Don’t tell Mam.’

Katie laughed at the childish plea. ‘I won’t tell her if you promise not to throw up all over our new bathroom.’

‘Pinky promise.’ Then Chloe turned and vomited once again.