Читать книгу The Day I Died - Polly Courtney - Страница 7

The moment her eyes fluttered open, she knew something was wrong. The bus was empty and flying along a dual carriageway through fields and forests that didn’t look at all like London.

She poked the crustiness out of her eyes and ran both hands through her hair. A pain shot down her neck and spine as she pushed herself up in the seat. She tried to catch her reflection in the window, but the sun was shining fully now and all she could see was a layer of translucent grime. She staggered to the front of the bus and down the steps.

‘Gad Almighty!’ cried the driver as she tapped on his plastic booth window. The bus lurched a little to the left, then righted itself. He looked at her and shook his head. ‘What da hell is you doin’ in here?’

She shrugged apologetically. ‘I fell asleep. Sorry–I…’

‘You been on dis bus all mornin’?’ he demanded, slowing down for a roundabout.

‘Mmm,’ she replied, flying sideways as they swung round. She wondered where they were. Not London, she was fairly sure.

‘You comin’ to the depot then?’ he asked aggressively. ‘How was you up dere widdout me seeing, eh?’

She mumbled something about being tired and glanced through the window for a clue. There was a road sign a little way off, but too distant to read.

‘Where was you wantin’ to go to?’ growled the driver. He seemed quite cross.

‘Um…’ The road sign was almost upon them; she could nearly make out the place names. ‘Well, west…’ She strained her eyes. ‘Bagley,’ she said.

‘Bagley?’ he repeated angrily. ‘Where da hell’s dat?’

She glanced up as the sign flashed past. ‘Radley,’ she said. ‘I said Radley.’

He screwed up his face and looked at her, perplexed. ‘Radley’s where we’s at now! You was tryin’ to get to Radley by gettin’ on the N ninety-seven? Jeez.’ He shook his head again. ‘I don’t know what you’s playin’ at, but you better get off my bus ‘fore I get done for runnin’ a taxi service. I’ll drop you up here.’

The bus slowed down and pulled off the main road, then, to her surprise, turned a corner and weaved through a series of narrow lanes that were clearly not designed for motorised vehicles, let alone double-decker buses.

‘Station’s up there,’ he barked, pressing a button that made the doors hiss open and watching her stumble out into the daylight. He was still shaking his head as the bus thundered off down the small country lane.

It wasn’t clear whether Trev’s Teashop, the greasy spoon that occupied part of the quaint station building, was open; it looked dark inside, although she thought she saw movement in the window as she approached.

She was about to enter and ask about her chances of a cup of tea when the door swung open and a ruddy-faced bald man in an apron waddled out.

‘Morning!’ he squawked, sounding as though his voice box was blocked–a bit like his arteries, perhaps.

She smiled and watched as he set to work winding out a frilly brown awning above them, humming tunelessly to himself.

‘Hi,’ she ventured, watching as he straightened out one of the tassels on the awning and stopped to admire his work.

‘Yes, yes.’ The man–whom she presumed to be Trevor himself–brushed his hands against one another and bustled back inside. She followed him in. ‘I haven’t forgotten about you. You’re a tad early, though, aren’t you? Not that that’s necessarily a bad trait. I mean, early is better than late, of course. But on time is preferable.’

She frowned and loitered by the counter, wondering how a café stayed in business when its owner was so rude to the customers.

‘Are you…are you open, then?’

‘Nearly there, nearly there,’ he muttered, switching the lights on and squeezing behind the counter to flick more switches. She waited patiently, hoping that the preparations would soon be in place for her cup of tea. ‘Watch and learn, watch and learn.’

She continued to wait, perplexed as to why she should watch or learn, and irritated by the man’s habit of saying everything twice.

When it was clear that the water was boiling, the mugs were in order–twice rearranged by the red-faced man–and there was milk in the fridge, her frustration began to get the better of her.

‘Can I have a cup of tea?’

The man stared at her as though she’d just demanded he hand over the contents of the till. ‘What a presumptuous young lady!’

She stared back at him, mirroring his expression. She was the customer, for God’s sake. She’d been here nearly ten minutes. All she wanted was a cup of bloody tea.

‘I think perhaps we’ll have to run through the ground rules again. Remember, I’m paying you to serve the customers here, not to sit around drinking cups of tea,’ he said testily.

‘I—’ she started to protest and then stopped herself. The pompous man seemed to be assuming she was here to serve customers. He thought she was a waitress or something. Which might mean…which might mean he’d pay her. And if he paid her, she might be able to use the money on somewhere to live, which would mean that she could get a proper job, lead a normal life, do all the things that normal people did when they had a background and qualifications and experience and a past they could remember. In a moment of clarity, the plan formed in her mind.

‘Of course, no, sorry.’ She smiled apologetically, still thinking through the details. ‘I didn’t mean to sound rude. I was just asking whether, in general, I can have a cup of tea. You know, like, in a quiet moment when there’s not many customers, when I’ve been on my feet for hours…whether I can have a cup of tea in that instance.’

The man looked at her, touching his shiny head and clearly trying to work something out. ‘Hmm.’

He continued staring at her, his forehead deeply creased. He knew, she thought. He knew she wasn’t the girl he’d hired.

‘Well, in that instance…well, yes, I suppose that would be OK.’ He nodded, dipping his head in and out of his multiple chins. ‘Where did you say you were from, er…sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

She opened her mouth, hoping something would tumble out automatically. Nothing did. Her fingernails dug into the leather wallet in her pocket as she struggled desperately for an answer.

‘Er, what, my name?’

He looked at her strangely. ‘Of course your name.’

Then it came to her: not her name, but the closest thing to it.

‘Jo,’ she said. ‘Jo Simmons.’

‘Oh. Right.’ He frowned again. ‘And you’re from…?’

Oh God, thought Jo. Too many questions. Where on earth was she supposed to be from?

‘Well, London, most recently.’ At least that much was true.

‘But you’re foreign, aren’t you?’

‘Um…my parents are.’ Genius. She was getting quite good at this.

‘But where—’

‘Could you just remind me of the hours I’ll be working?’

He looked at her, smoothing the apron over his enormous belly, then finally replied, ‘Well, you’ll remember we settled on seven till noon because of your classes in the afternoons.’

‘My classes, yes, exactly…Seven, that’s what I thought. And I can’t remember what you said about pay. Could you…?’

‘Thirty pounds a day, as we agreed,’ he snapped. ‘Six days a week.’

Jo nodded again. That was a hundred and eighty pounds a week. How much did it cost to rent around here?

‘Shall I show you the ropes?’

Jo breathed a sigh of relief and allowed the bald man to give her a sweeping tour of what was really quite a basic setup: hot-water tank, toaster, fridge, coffee machine, cupboards filled with grotesque sets of matching brown and gold crockery. It was clear that the man had delusions of grandeur for Trev’s Teashop.

The reference to Jo’s parents had left her feeling ill at ease. It wasn’t that she didn’t like to lie to the man; she barely knew him, and what she did know she didn’t particularly like. It was that she didn’t know what the truth was. She didn’t know where her parents were from–or where they were now. She didn’t know whether they knew about the nightclub explosion, or whether they knew she’d been caught up in it. She didn’t even know if she had parents. The chances were, though, there was someone out there who cared about her. She just didn’t know how to let them know she was OK without turning herself in–and that was the one thing she couldn’t do.

‘I’ll expect you to do most of the flitting between tables.’ The man waved a stubby arm across the premises. She nodded again, wondering who had been flitting up until now. ‘Now, you’re wearing black trousers, I trust?’

Jo froze, suddenly remembering that she was wearing a tiny dress and no shoes underneath the jacket. ‘Well, I couldn’t find trousers, but—’

‘Ooh, Mr Jackson! First customer!’ cried Trevor. ‘First customer!’ he said again, ushering her towards the back of the café. ‘Your shirt’s in the store cupboard under the stairs. Quick, quick!’

It was with mixed feelings that Jo pulled the brown aertex shirt over her head. She wasn’t keen on the embroidered teacup that covered her left breast, or the fact that she had Trev’s Teashop’ plastered across her front, but she had to admit that it was more appropriate than her own attire, which she was desperately trying to convert into a knee-length skirt to cover the tops of her long legs.

Along with a trowel, a plastic rhino, a sketchbook and a rah-rah skirt, Jo found what she was looking for in the back of the store cupboard: a mirror. She peered at her reflection in the half-light.

It was like looking at somebody else. Jo pulled at her skin–young skin, she thought, probably early twenties–and tilted her head this way and that, inspecting her face. Her eyes were bottle green, with dark lashes, which were coated in heavy, day-old makeup. Her lip had been bleeding slightly. She gathered her long, knotted hair in one hand and tried to twist it into some sort of order. It was almost raven black, with a dyed red streak at the front.

She spat on her hand and wiped the worst of the dirt off her forehead, wondering how her appearance had passed without comment by the portly teashop owner. Something caught her eye in the mirror. On the back of her hand was a splodge of blue ink. Writing. ‘SASKIA DAWSON,’ it said.

Who was that? Was it her? Was she Saskia Dawson? If so, why had she written her name on her own hand? Saskia. It didn’t sound familiar. But then, very little did. Jo tore a page from the faded sketchbook and scrabbled around for a pen. Letter for letter, she copied it down and tucked it into the waist of her newly formed skirt.

‘Ah, Jo! Go and serve table four, would you?’

Jo quickly worked out how Trev’s Teashop operated. It wasn’t so much a teashop as a caffeine outlet for commuters on their way into London–at least, that was how it seemed at seven o’clock in the morning. She did her best to flit from table to table, but there was only so much flitting one could do with so few seated customers and a queue for takeaway coffee that occupied most of the shop. She marvelled again at her boss’s self-delusion.

‘Blasted thing,’ muttered Trevor, turning purple with exertion as he tried to break his way into a new tub of coffee beans.

Jo cast her customer an apologetic look and turned round. ‘Let me try.’

‘Doesn’t work,’ he said, reluctantly loosening his grip on the tin-opener. ‘The tub’s got some new-fangled seal thing on it. We’ll have to—Oh. Right. You’ve done it.’

Jo handed over the open container and got back to serving customers, trying not to smirk. It had just been a case of employing some common sense: twisting the seal, applying some pressure and then levering off the lid.

Common sense. That was something. At least she had that. And having it gave her a clue as to what type of person she was. Her brain worked in a logical way–like a scientist’s, perhaps. She could think laterally and solve problems. It was true, she made a reasonable waitress, but she didn’t think she’d been one before. Not properly. Maybe as a summer job a few years ago, while at school…School. That was another blank.

She tried picturing herself in various workplace scenarios. Sitting in an air-traffic control tower. No, too stressful. Patrolling the streets in police uniform. Too much authority. The Trevor experience had taught her that she didn’t like being told what to do. Staring at a computer screen in an office. Boring. Standing up in court dressed in robes and a wig. Not unfeasible, she thought, although she was probably a bit young for that…Jo poured another filter coffee and sighed. She didn’t have a clue.

Fortunately, Trevor seemed sufficiently unobservant to overlook his waitress’s lack of footwear. Her feet were freezing and the soles were turning slowly black, but there was nothing she could do except try to keep them in the shadows behind the counter. Occasionally, he would send her to check on table ten, the little bench outside the café where a commuter would occasionally perch as he waited for a train or a friend, and every time, somehow, he failed to spot the bare feet.

It was on one of these errands that Jo found herself in the situation she’d been dreading. Another girl, about her own age and of similar build and colouring, was running up the road towards the teashop, hair flying, satchel banging against her hip. She was dressed in black trousers and a cheap polyester blouse.

Jo caught her attention and stepped out to greet her. ‘Hi! You must be…’

‘Renata,’ she gasped, trying to push her way into the café.

‘Yes, you were due to start work at seven, weren’t you?’ Jo stood in her way.

‘Am so sorry,’ she said breathlessly. Her accent was Polish, or something like that. No wonder Trevor had been confused by Jo’s fluency. ‘Bus was not come, so I walk, then bus come but wrong bus…’

‘Oh dear.’ Jo smiled sympathetically. She felt terrible for doing this, but her need to survive outweighed her remorse. ‘Unfortunately, because you were late, we had to find someone else for the job. It was getting busy, you see.’ She gestured towards the queue snaking out of the café.

The girl’s mouth fell open. Her English wasn’t perfect, but she understood.

Jo couldn’t bear it. ‘But if you come back in three or four weeks we may well need another waitress.’ She nodded encouragingly. ‘Do come back, won’t you?’

The girl muttered something in her own language and looked at the ground. For a moment, Jo thought she might march into the teashop and demand an explanation from the boss, but then she just turned, shook her head and walked back the way she had come.

Jo wandered into the café to help with the coffees. She was filled with self-loathing. Good people didn’t behave like this. Good people didn’t steal wallets. They didn’t con innocent girls out of jobs. They didn’t reject the help of others and they certainly didn’t turn their backs on friends or loved ones who might have been hurt or even killed…

She stared into the frothing milk. It was a possibility–and one that left her feeling very uncomfortable–that actually she wasn’t a good person. Deep down, with everything else erased, all that was left was this. A lying, calculating, hard-hearted thief. Or maybe she was just desperate. Maybe the terror and guilt and paranoia had made her act in this way. Maybe she was just trying to stay alive.