Everyone Lies (6 page)

She remains calm, warm, sweet. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Tell me about yourself.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Anything. Tell me about when you were a kid.’

‘I wanted to be a ballet dancer—’

He frowns, petulant. ‘You already told me that. Tell me something new, something interesting.’

‘I had boring childhood in boring town. This is why I came to England.’

His eyes fill with tears. ‘Am I asking so much?’ he pleads.

Marta suppresses a sigh and strokes his arm. Most men leave after they’ve fucked her, but there is still ten minutes on the clock, and Trevor will take every minute owed. ‘Okay. I’ve never told anybody this …’ She settles in his arms and makes up some new stories – the small dusty town she came from; her family’s vegetable patch and the chickens she would feed as a child and which terrified her because they pecked her legs – and it makes her tired, because now she’ll have to remember all this stuff.

When the half-hour is finally over, she watches him tuck these intimate details of her life near his heart, like a lock of her hair, and hates him for it.

He’s dressed and, eager for him to go, she swings her legs over the side of the bed and reaches for her silk night robe. He catches her hand and entwines his fingers in hers, turns her hand over and begins kissing her palm. She thinks it’s an overture to more sex, but he holds her arm straight and examines the crook of her elbow.

‘What are you doing?’ She snatches her hand away. ‘You think I am junkie, Trevor?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, immediately. ‘I’m just concerned. It was on the evening news, didn’t you see it? Girls are dying – bad drugs, they think.’

She throws on her robe and fastens the silk cord tight. ‘I work nights, Trevor. I don’t watch news.’ She moves to the door. ‘And I don’t do drugs.’

‘Marta, please, it’s only because I care about you.
Please
,’ he says again, and she softens her eyes, even though what she wants to do is slap his face.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Come, I’ll see you downstairs.’

He is reassured, and flattered, too, because he doesn’t know what all the girls know – that she is walking him down to reception to make sure he leaves.

After he has gone, she can’t recall her mother’s face. Georgs, Veronika, little Toms; they’ve all vanished. She locked them in a dark room with the rest of her past when she came here, and now she can’t find the key. For a second she can’t breathe, starts to panic.

‘You all right?’ Amy is working reception tonight because Sharon, the old pro who usually does it, has called in sick. Amy is brunette, tanned and slim, though the tan is sprayed on. She has brown, heavily lashed eyes, and there is not one atom of human compassion in them. ‘You shouldn’t let them get to you, Marta.’

To hell with it.
Marta turns on her heel and heads back through the archway. It’s only half an hour until her shift ends, and anyway, there is no one waiting in the lounge. She turns left, into the kitchen. She opens her locker and takes out her purse, slides the fee from Trevor into the wallet section. She keeps a photograph of herself with Veronika in the ID section. It reminds her why she’s here, and she touches it, for good luck.

Candice is sitting at the table, fully dressed, drinking coffee.

Marta’s phone is in her locker. She checks her text messages: one from her mother. Tweets from two friends who know nothing about what she does for money, sent at one in the morning from a club in the city. She follows a link to ‘yfrog’ and finds a picture of them dancing, laughing. They look very drunk, and very happy.

Candice sniffs every few seconds, like she has a cold, and sits hunched over, both hands wrapped around her cup, although the place is always overheated. As she bends to take a sip of her drink, she shows a half-inch of dark brown grow-back at the roots. Her make-up is three shades too dark for her complexion, and completely fails to hide the heroin sickness underneath.

Marta’s phone jingles – another text. She feels a shiver of excitement – it’s from Gary. ‘Ready for a F2F?’ – a face to face – for the first time.

Candice finally realizes there’s someone else in the room. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Hiya.’ Her eyes go to Marta’s phone. ‘Boyfriend?’

Marta shakes her head, smiling.

‘Oh,’ Candice says again. ‘Business.’

‘I suppose,’ Marta agrees, although it’s a very different kind from the usual. It’s a professional relationship, sure, but one which does not make her feel ashamed, one that she is proud of.
A face-to-face meeting?
Yes, she thinks she is ready. She smiles to herself, texts back. ‘Will call U.’

Candice sets her cup down and twirls a lock of hair between her fingers, squinting at the ends. Her hair has been bleached so many times that it has started to break around the hairline.

‘Marta, love.’ She talks in the singsong voice which means she’s about to ask for something. ‘Couldn’t borrow us a tenner, could you – for the kids – buy them breakfast?’

For the kids
– it’s always for the kids. Candice has three and, if you believe her, the whole Chinese economy couldn’t generate enough money to keep them fed and clothed and happy.

‘What about what you just earned?’ It’s a rude question, and Marta already knows the answer, but she doesn’t want to be seen as a pushover.

Candice shrugs, embarrassed. ‘Still paying Frank back on last week’s advance. You know how it is with kids.’ Under the table, her foot starts a rhythmic tapping. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I love them, and all that, but I swear, if it isn’t food, it’s coats, or uniforms or school trips, or shoes.’

Unthinking, she pulls at the brittle hairs at the rim of her hairline, plucks out a tuft. She stares at the stubs of broken hair for a moment, then rubs her fingers together, watching them fall to the table. ‘See that? Know what does that to you? Having
kids
does that to you.’

Marta shakes her head. It is heroin, and working double shifts, and alcohol substitutes when she couldn’t get a proper fix that did this to her, but Candice is strung out, her brain screaming for a fix, and she can’t admit the truth. She wipes her nose with the heel of her hand, turns her pink-eyed gaze on Marta. ‘Don’t ever have kids, love. First they ruin your figure. Then they ruin your life. It’s not like them babies in the Cow & Gate ad, laughing their little socks off.’

Marta thinks again of her nephew, and how he seems to carry the sun in his smile, and the way his laugh can make her heart swell with so much joy that she has to put her hand to her chest to stop it from bursting.

Candice’s foot-tapping becomes a frantic, angry rattle, like a resentful child intent on annoying. She flicks her thumbnail against the mug handle, setting up a constant
pingpingping
in time with the nervous tapping of her foot. ‘Take, take, take – that’s all it is with kids. Always wanting
something
. I swear, I stick my nose round the front door, the first words out their mouths: “I want”.’

‘Candice.’

‘I mean – what about what
I
want?’

‘
Candice
.’

‘What?’

‘It won’t help,’ Marta says.

‘What? A tenner to buy my kids breakfast
won’t help?
If it shuts them up for five minutes, believe me, kiddo, it’ll help.’

A shadow falls across the doorway, and Marta sees it’s Amy; she looks from Marta to Candice, a sardonic smile on her face.

‘Forget it, Candice. She thinks you’ll spend her tenner on smack.’

Candice looks at Marta like she had snatched her cup and poured her coffee over her head.

Marta says, ‘I didn’t say that—’

‘We all know she’s been working double shifts, moonlighting at the new place,’ Amy says, talking over Candice’s head.

Candice slides lower in her chair and Amy bends to catch her eye, talking loudly, as if she is deaf. ‘You should be rolling in cash, sweetheart. But you’re not, because it’s all going in your saggy veins. And if working double shifts isn’t enough to keep the monkey off your back, an extra tenner isn’t going to help. Now, is it?’

Candice blinks back tears, wipes her nose with the heel of her hand again.

‘Leave her alone.’ Marta takes a card from her purse and places it in front of Candice.

‘What’s this?’ Amy says, picking it up to read it. ‘A drop-in centre?’

‘It is for Candice,’ Marta says, plucking it from her fingers and placing it in the other girl’s hands.

Candice stares from the card to Marta as though she has suggested taking up embroidery to curb her cravings.

‘I’ll pay for cab, go with you, if you like?’ Marta says.

Candice licks her lips, shoots a look at Amy, her eyes pleading for a way out.

Amy laughs. ‘Go on. Ask nice, she might stop off at your dealer’s on the way.’

Frank and Sol don’t allow drug deals on the premises.

‘And when you’re all smoothed out, you can go and get a sausage and egg McMuffin “for the kids”.’

Candice stares down at her hands and a tear falls into her coffee cup.

Marta looks into Amy’s face, trying to understand why she would want to make someone as pathetic as Candice cry. Suddenly, she sees it. Amy’s eyes are bloodshot, pupils way too big. ‘
Hypocrite
.’

‘Wh—?’ Amy knows what she means before the question is fully formed. She’s been sussed. ‘Oh, right,’ she says, folding her arms. ‘I forgot. You’re Saint Marta of
Just Say No
. You don’t need nothing to see you through, do you, Marta?’

Grateful that she’s no longer the butt of Amy’s sarcasm, Candice joins in. ‘Yeah. Why don’t you fuck off, Miss I’m-too-good-to-get-high? You think I should try rehab? Been there, done that, got the fucking cavities to prove it. I mean, do you know what methadone does to your teeth?’

Marta closes her eyes, trying not to remember. ‘Yes, Candice, I know.’

‘Well, don’t talk to me about rehab then. And anyway, you
need
something to get you through double shifts sucking men’s knobs sixteen hours a day. Right, Amy?’

Amy is offended. ‘What you asking me for? I’m not the smackhead skank, working double shifts to feed a habit.’

Candice wraps her arms tight around her middle like she’s just been punched. ‘Fuck off,’ she whispers. ‘Just fuck off, Amy.’

Marta turns to Amy. ‘Shouldn’t you be in reception?’

‘I came on a message,’ she says. ‘Frank wants you.’

Amy must see her hesitation because she says, ‘Go on, she’ll be all right with me.’

‘No, I won’t. Make her go away,’ Candice sobs.

‘You heard her.’

But Amy stays where she is. ‘You got it wrong. We’re best mates, me and her.’

‘I fucking
hate
you.’ Candice is red with humiliation and rage. ‘You’re a fucking
bitch
, Amy.’

Amy smirks. ‘Watch this.’ She takes two ten-pound notes from the tiny handbag she carries to stash her tips, places them on the table. ‘There you are, Candy – for the kids,’ she says imitating her high-pitched singsong voice.

Candice wipes her hands over her face, dries them on her jeans, stares at the money as if she’s afraid this is part of Amy’s cruel game.

‘Go on then, if you want it.’

Candice’s hand is shaking as she reaches for the cash. ‘Cheers, Amy,’ she says, her voice bright, but she can’t disguise the crack in it. ‘I’ll pay you back. Next week.’

‘Sure you will.’ Amy keeps her eyes on Marta. ‘See? Best mates.’ She waits a moment, relishing Candice’s humiliation.

Then, satisfied, Amy turns her back on them and saunters out, heading back to reception.

A second later, she’s stumbling backwards through the door, wild alarm in her eyes.

Frank comes in after her. She’s brought up short against the kitchen table and her ankle gives way. She lurches sideways, grabs the table edge to steady herself, and he moves in close, bends her backwards over the table, plants his hands either side of her. They are strongly muscled and the index and middle knuckles enlarged from heavy punch bag training.

‘I told you to fetch Marta.’

‘I did, Frank.’ Her voice is a breathless squeak. ‘I told her she was wanted.’

‘Yeah? ’Cos I heard a lot of screeching and namecalling, but I didn’t hear my name.’ Frank is taller than his brother and, unlike Sol, he’s proud of his hair, which he wears long and curling, tied loosely in a ponytail. He’s suited and newly shaved, but he looks like a roadie from a rock band – which apparently he was, back in the nineties. His eyes are so near black you can’t tell the iris from the pupil.

Amy tries to avoid Frank’s eye, but his face is inches from hers and he keeps moving, so that unless she shuts her eyes, she can’t escape him.

Marta quietly slips her phone back into her bag and replaces it in her locker. The discreet click of the lock distracts him for a second, and the danger passes.

‘Get out front and earn your keep,’ he says. He keeps his hands on the tabletop so Amy has to squirm and duck beneath his arms to get past him. Now there is nothing between him and Candice. She flinches under his gaze, clasping the money between her two hands, hiding it like a guilty secret.

‘
You
– go home – and get yourself straight before you come back for tonight’s shift.’ Candice jerks to her feet.

‘Marta – if you wouldn’t mind?’

Marta sees a flash of surprise and envy in Candice’s eyes: she’d heard the respect in his tone. Marta straightens her shoulders and smiles. ‘Of course.’

The corridor to the office is narrow, and he walks slightly behind her. She can feel the pulse in her throat; there is no way out except back the way they came, and she doesn’t think Frank is in the mood to give way.

‘Just curious,’ he says. ‘Most of the girls dabble a bit. But you never touch the stuff – why is that?’

‘I have … reaction,’ she says.

‘What – like an allergy?’

‘Sort of …’ She smiles crookedly. ‘Kind of a lockjaw? Makes me want to bite down.’ She snaps her teeth to demonstrate, and he chuckles.

They’re outside the office, and he grips the doorknob, but holds the door closed and looks down at her. ‘You got your reasons, and you don’t want to say. That’s okay, I respect that. But don’t be causing me grief with the other girls. We clear?’