The Killer Next Door (33 page)

The youth worker likes everyone to call him Steve, but behind his back the kids all call him Wicked, because that’s his favourite word. She sees him Monday and Friday lunchtimes, which is good because it means that no one asks where she’s going when she leaves school to do it. She’s got into the habit of dawdling on her way back, dropping in to Poundland and Primani, or just having a couple of ciggies by one of the duck ponds in Sefton Park, and she’s found that the words ‘youth worker’ seem to be enough to stop anyone asking questions as long as she doesn’t actually skip the whole afternoon. The school has classified her Special anyway, and in her case ‘Special’ seems to mean ‘not much point bothering as we all know where she’s going to end up’, so a bit of dawdling is neither here nor there.

He’s bent over a piece of paper when she comes in, looks up and says, ‘Cheryl. Wicked. I won’t be a moment, take a seat,’ the way he always does, and goes back to ticking boxes, the way he always does.

Cher plonks herself on the padded bench against the far wall of the office and starts picking at a patch of seat foam exposed over the years by her waiting peers. She’s been picking at it for two months and has managed to make a hole that’s almost six inches wide as she’s waited for Wicked. The office is small – more of a cubicle than an office, really, its temporary walling covered in posters of smiling teenagers and exhortations not to catch chlamydia – and cluttered with piles of paper and box files. She kicks her duffel bag into the space beneath the bench and crosses her legs in front of it.

‘And… there! Sorted. Wicked,’ says Steve, and sweeps his clipboard up from his desk. Comes over and perches on the other end of the bench, one foot on the floor and the other tucked beneath his knee. Props an elbow on the back of the bench, rests his temple on his knuckles, and gives her his understanding smile. Steve likes to meet your eye. All the time. He’s like one of those pictures that follow you round the room. It’s disturbing, really, though he probably thinks it makes him look like he’s
down wiv da kidz
.

‘So how’s it going, Cheryl?’ he asks.

‘Okay,’ says Cher, and plucks at the foam.

‘Wicked,’ he says. ‘Minted.’

She carries on staring down at her plucking hand, because she’s afraid she’ll laugh. He ticks something off on a box. His eyes stray down to her moving hand, but he refrains from reproving her. Everyone, she’s noticed, refrains from reproving her, these days. The last person to tell her off was Vesta, and she misses it. She’s had enough of boys who’ve not been told off enough, for a start. ‘And school? How are you settling in? Made any friends? Got any
homies
?’

‘Homies?’ She shoots him her fierce glare. Don’t Homie me, white bhoy. You’re thirty-six and you’ve got a degree in sociology. You’ll be asking me if I dig my crib, next. Who d’you think you are? Quentin Tarantino?

She shrugs. ‘It’s okay,’ she says again, though school is basically a mix of the ones who avoid her because she’s the runaway from the Murder House and the ones who think that such an exotic history lends her promise. Either way, she’s not interested. She was past hanging with a bunch of fifteen-year-olds by the time she was twelve.

‘Sweet,’ he says. ‘And your teachers?’

‘They’re trying to teach me to read better.’

‘Awesome!’ He ticks another tick.

‘Not really. I’m not learning. It makes my head hurt.’

‘Oh.’ The tick is crossed off. He puts the clipboard on his lap and leans forward sincerely. ‘It takes time, Cheryl. It doesn’t happen overnight. Just keep trying and you’ll get there in the end. And it’s really worth it. If nothing else, it’s good to have a goal, isn’t it? You don’t want to spend your life with nothing to aim for, do you, hmm?’

She shrugs again. ‘Whatever.’

‘Have you thought about what you might like to do when you leave?’

‘Not really. It’s not like there’s any jobs around here, is it?’

‘Oh, now,’ he says. ‘Never say die.’

This time, she looks up and meets his eye. ‘I saw a man die three months ago, Steve. You know what he looked like as he slid down that roof? Surprised. That’s what. Just surprised, all the way down to the edge. I guess
he
never said die, either. But he did, didn’t he?’

A little spot of colour appears in his cheek. Nothing to tick off on your form there, she thinks. Go on. Say ‘sweet’ to that one.

‘Er,’ he says. Then: ‘There’s still counselling, if you want it, Cheryl. The offer’s still open.’

‘No, you’re all right,’ says Cher. ‘I had counselling before.’

He ticks another box, this one to the right hand side of the form. Whatever he was looking for, she’s failed. Oh, well, she thinks. Whatever. It’ll just go in a drawer anyway.

‘And the home? How’s that? How are you doing?’

‘Wicked,’ she says, to encourage him.

He looks pleased. ‘Cool!’

‘I’ve got a new room-mate,’ she says. ‘Sylvia. She’s nearly sixteen. She’s really fat.’

He’s so sunk into his slang that he automatically puts a ph on the front of the word and beams. ‘Great!’ he says.

‘Yeah,’ she tells him, ‘she’s a
playah
.’

Plays One Direction on her iPod, plays Angry Birds every chance she gets. While eating Mars Bars and crisps sent in by her fat brother, and staring at Cher with red-rimmed eyes when she tries to start a chat. Sylvia wants to be a hairdresser, or a manicurist. Personally, Cher thinks there might be too much standing up involved in hairdressing, and some of those cubicles are mighty small.

The pen moves back to the left-hand side of the page and he does another tick. ‘Wicked,’ he says. Checks his watch. Her allotted five minutes is up. ‘Sweet. Great, well. Good to see you. Monday as usual, then?’

‘Oh, yes,’ says Cher.

‘Maybe,’ he says, adding it as though it were an afterthought, ‘you and Sylvia might like to come to the Youth Centre one night? Down on Chester Street? I’m down there quite a lot, cause I sort of co-run it, so there’d be a friendly face, if you were worried.’

Like a hole in the head, thinks Cher. ‘What goes on there?’ she asks.

‘Oh, it’s cool,’ he says. ‘Lots of young people. There’s a pool table and table tennis. And just, you know, places to sit and chillax. Be with your people. Come tonight. It’s open from seven on a Friday, and there are
tunes
.’

‘I think it’s too late to get permission for tonight,’ she says, and gives him her innocent eyes. ‘I need my care worker’s permission to be out after seven. And then they’re – you know. Cause I ran away before, they’re…’

Steve looks sympathetic and tips his head to one side. ‘I know, Cheryl. Would you like me to give him a call? I’m sure I could work out a way to keep them happy, if you’d like.’

Cher beams at him. ‘Would you? Oh,
would
you? That would be
wicked
! That would be
super
cool!’

He looks pleased. The first piece of enthusiasm she’s ever shown him, and it works. Three ticks go down the side of his form and he returns her smile with triumph. It was the chillax, he’s thinking. I got her with the chillax.

‘Well,
great
!’ he says. ‘I’ll do that, then!’

‘Sweet,’ she says, and pulls her bag out from beneath the bench. Her school bag, issued along with her uniform and a selection of modest nightwear when she arrived back in Liverpool and was placed. She’s not put a lot in it. Didn’t want to raise suspicions. ‘See ya Monday! Have a good weekend!’

He looks surprised. She sees him register pleasure at the thought that he might have had a breakthrough, and feels a tiny twinge of guilt. Tiny. ‘Thanks, Cheryl,’ he says. ‘You too.’

She slopes down the stairs with her bag over her shoulder and turns left as she leaves the office block, shrugging up her collar against the cold. It’s half a mile to school, and the bell won’t go for another forty minutes – stacks of time. There’s a nasty estuary drizzle in the air, but the Friday lunchtime street is full of people. Less than a month until Christmas, and holiday panic is already beginning to fill the air. Office workers push their way, harassed, into Boots in search of perfume and bubble bath and hair straighteners. Five men in hi-viz jackets stand outside the Bricklayer’s Arms, with pints and fags clutched in hands that are still swathed in work gloves against the weather. She sees four girls from her year turn, giggling, through the door of Top Shop – the snotty girls, all shiny hair and little heart-shaped studs in their ears, the ones who literally back off when they see her coming, as though her past might be catching. There’s a school disco at the end of the week. Cher’s never been to one of those. Doubts she ever will, now.

She walks on towards the school, passes the steamed-up windows of McDonald’s and sees some more of her peers stuffing down Big Macs and milkshakes, two of the boys throwing handfuls of fries at each other, lining themselves up to be thrown out. After so long away, the voices she hears around her are alien to her ears. Suddenly she knows how she, herself, must have sounded to the people in the south: all Dees for Tees and Ees that sound like the speaker has smelled a bad smell. She hadn’t even noticed that she’d lost the Mersey ‘gh’ till Craig Caffey, a boy who looks a bit like he’s been extruded from a putty machine, turned round and called her Poshgirl just before he tried to pin her against a wall and stick his tongue in her mouth.

I don’t fit in here any more, she thinks. I’m not a perky Scouser. I’ve lost the we-suffer-but-we-laugh-through-the-tears thing and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back. Do I fit in anywhere, though? I’m not a Londoner. Not really. I thought I would be, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever go back there, now. But here? There’s nothing that keeps me here apart from the fact that the council wants me back. And even they don’t really want me; they’ve just got to take me, and resent me, and eventually turn me into a statistic. But everyone who ever loved me here is dead, or in prison, and apart from my Nanna the love thing was never exactly obvious.

It’s only one o’clock, but night is already drawing in. The day never really got light at all through the misty rain, and what brightness there was has long since given up trying to penetrate the clouds. A long, northern winter: salt wind off the Mersey, institutional Christmas dinner and a single present picked out by someone who’s been paid to choose it. Coca-Cola and the sound of Sylvia crying for New Year, then the long grey wait till the end of the school year and sixteen-ness finally sets her free. I can’t stay here. There’s no point; it’s just more loss of time and the long, long slide to nothing.

Cher reaches the turn that leads to school, and stands looking up the road towards it. I could go back, she thinks. At least it’s warm inside the Special Needs block, and they mostly just let you sleep on Friday afternoon. I could go back there and suck it up.

She dips her head and walks past the turning. Walks on into the darkening streets. As she walks, she strips off her stripy tie and hangs it, damp and droopy, from the spike of a railing as she passes it; stops for a moment by the greengrocer’s and digs in her bag for her denim jacket. Strips off her school blazer and pulls the jacket on in its stead, then drops the blazer in the clothes collection bin outside Age UK. She leans against the blank window of the bookie’s to kick off her black school trainers and replace them with a pair of red patent wedges. Uses the window of Burton as a mirror to paint her lips dark red. Feels in the bag once again and finds her raspberry felt cloche, with the mauve rose over her temple, and pulls it over her hair. It was far too big when her nanna gave it to her that last birthday, but she’s kept it with her ever since, and now it fits just right. By the time she turns the corner once again, Cheryl is gone for good.

She steps up her pace. Just a few hundred yards to the station, now. They won’t be looking, she thinks. You don’t have to worry. It’s ages until the bell. But still she looks over her shoulder, fearful that a teacher will be out prowling for stragglers, that Wicked Steve will have taken it into his head to escort her back to the gates. The road is empty. Here, away from the shopping crowds, she might as well be in the country, for all the company she’s got.

The lights of the station loom up ahead. Drab little suburban station, nothing but a waste bin and a timetable and an empty grey platform. She climbs up on to the footbridge and looks down on the tracks. Oh, well, she thinks, easy come, easy go, and walks on down to the southbound platform.

A gate on the platform leads out to the car park. Cher passes through it and stands on the pavement, looks left and right. Over by the exit, an old transit van, white paint, rust on the bumpers, turns on its headlights. She tosses her head and walks towards it. As she nears, the door on the side slides open and shows a dark, box-filled interior. She doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t think. Just reaches the van and climbs inside.

Vesta slams the doors and clambers into the front seat. ‘We thought you were never coming,’ she says.

‘I know,’ says Cher. ‘Fucking social workers. Talk, talk, talk.’

‘Language, Cher,’ says Vesta, and Cher feels a big smile spread across her face.

‘Hiya,’ she says.

‘Hi,’ says Collette, and puts the engine into gear.

‘How’s your hand?’ asks Cher.

‘Bloody horrible,’ says Collette, ‘and I’ll never play the piano again. How’s your collarbone?’

‘Bit less broken,’ says Cher. ‘Thanks for asking.’

‘Great,’ says Collette, and starts to reverse. ‘Sit down, there’s a good girl. Don’t want you killing yourself before we even get there.’

‘Where are we going, again?’ asks Cher.

‘Ilfracombe,’ says Vesta. ‘You’ll love it.’

‘If you say so,’ she says, contentedly. ‘Sounds like crap to me.’

She settles down on one of Vesta’s sofa cushions, next to the sports bag Collette’s been carrying with her for three long years, and allows herself a sigh of contentment.