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  Corrine had a job at the salon on the weekends now. Just sweeping up and making the tea, but Lizzy had said that if she kept it up, she’d take her on as an apprentice when Corrine left school. It had been the social worker’s idea. She was all right, that Sheila.

  “It’s brilliant,” said Debbie.

  Corrine looked at herself in the glass and smiled. “That is all right, in’t it?” she allowed.

  “Well,” said Darren, who had his arm around Debbie, “if that in’t worth celebrating, I don’t know what is. Come on Corrine, we’ve missed you, you know.”

  Corrine felt herself blush. Since she’d been out of hospital and back in school, things had been going all right for once. They had put her in a much smaller class, where one nice teacher took all the lessons and let them talk about things that were bothering them. With the Old Bill breathing down her neck and Sheila threatening to take Corrine into care, her mum had backed off, stopped hitting her and let her keep the ten quid she earned at the hairdressers each weekend without making her go out and earn any more. So she had kept her newly coiffured head down, doing her best to forget the events of the past few months and avoiding socialising with her former classmates. Sheila said it would be better that way; it would stop other people from leading her into trouble.

  But Corrine knew what was really behind her recent change in fortune. It was Noj’s protection spell at work, the rituals they repeated together every Sunday night. Not that she could tell anybody about that. Not even Debbie.

  “Where you now going?” she enquired.

  “Meeting Jules down the Dodger’s,” said Darren. “What d’you reckon?”

  “The Dodger’s?” Corrine hesitated. Debbie and Darren were being so nice, surely it wouldn’t hurt? So long as she stayed away from Sam … “Not Swing’s?”

  Debbie shook her head and smiled, as if reading her thoughts. “Not Swing’s.”

  “All right then,” Corrine decided. Smiling, she joined them, weaving their way through the crowded pavements, thick with shoppers touting bags of sales bargains and early evening revellers heading for the pubs. Above their heads, strings of coloured lights proclaimed the end of the festive season, shooting stars and sprigs of holly sparkling against the dark, midwinter sky. Paul Young singing lullabies of love for the common people from every shop doorway, the smell of hot chips and vinegar wafting over from the market stalls. It gave Corrine a sudden rush of cheer, the prospect of seeing out this bad old year in the company of her friends.

  “So,” she said to Debbie as they turned towards the pub doorway, wanting to be sure, “you meeting Alex and them later on, then?”

  Debbie scowled. “No I in’t,” she said. “I told you, I in’t going in Swing’s …”

  “In case she’s in there,” they said together.

  * * *

  Alex looked up at the clock. Quarter past seven, it said.

  “Anyone want another?” Shaun MacDonald, swilling the dregs of his bitter around his glass, looked round at the assembled table.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Bugs, putting his own empty glass down with a belch.

  “Al?” offered Shaun.

  Alex looked down at his pint. He had drunk most of it in five minutes flat and it still hadn’t given him any insights into what to do next. In his pocket was a ticket to a gig in Norwich, bought back in September, when they had first gone on sale. Right now, Bully and Kris would be at the station, waiting for the half-past train to come in, waiting for him to join them as they had planned.

  But in his head was a girl with black hair, a girl who had stolen him away from them with a kiss and more back in October. Her face filled his mind, a face he could not seem to put down on paper, no matter how hard he tried. Her image evaded his pencils and paints. But she had put her own markings on him.

  Until the moment she had walked into this bar, Alex had been trying to accept the fact that his failure to feel genuinely aroused by women could mean only one thing, a sense that had been heightened by meeting Debbie’s friend Julian and the look of recognition he was sure he had discerned in the younger boy’s dark eyes.

  But Samantha had turned that, and everything else, upside down. She had begun their first evening together by dropping into conversation how she had grown up in London surrounded by artists, contemporaries of her father’s from his counter-culture days. She ended it just outside her house, lips and teeth all over his face, nails scoring lines down his back as she pushed him inside her, hot and fast, up against the old Tollgate wall. Alex’s response had been instinctual, primal, a coupling of shock and lust that overrode everything else, including the memory of Debbie’s ashen face as she watched him leave Swing’s with the girl from school she so detested.

  He had hardly been able to catch his thoughts since. This woman-child, so sophisticated in adult ways, so coolly able to surpass all his artistic endeavours, so increasingly wild in her carnal behaviour that his initial relief at finally proving he was normal after all had lately given way to a nagging doubt that he no longer knew what “normal” meant. The scars she made in his flesh every time she pulled him into an illicit embrace – down darkened alleyways, on the beach, even one time on the floor of her bedroom while her mother was making their tea downstairs – began to throb and itch as he remembered the other promise that he had made for tonight.

  Marc Farman caught his eye. “Shouldn’t you be heading?” he said.

  Marc knew what time the train left, Alex had already told him about that plan. Marc had opined that it sounded better than hanging round here.

  “I’ll come with you,” Marc offered. “Reckon I’ll get a ticket off a tout, easy.”

  Alex looked at the minute hand moving round the clock, felt for the ticket in his pocket.

  “Come on,” said Marc.

  * * *

  Amanda cast her eyes around her packed front room, a plate of vol-au-vents in one hand and sausage rolls in the other. The clock on the mantelpiece said it was early days yet, but the party was showing every sign of success.

  “I know I shouldn’t,” Mary Grimmer, one of the mothers from Sammy’s school, plucked out another prawn and avocado pastry, “but these are delicious, Mands.”

  “Mum made them,” Amanda replied, lowering her voice. “A bit of a Christmas miracle. Mind you, we’ve had a few of those this year …”

  Her gaze travelled across the room to the bay window, where Edna, resplendent in pussy-bow and polka dots just like the prime minister, was engaged in an animated conversation with Wayne over the bowls of crisps and finger sandwiches.

  It had been a combination of things that had gradually won her over. This house, for one, restored to what they imagined had been something of its former glory. The kitchen, both bathrooms and Sam’s bedroom had all the modern fittings, but down here, in the lounge and adjacent dining room, they had kept the look traditional. Despite themselves, Edna and Eric had taken in the depth of the restoration, and the speed she and Wayne had achieved it, with respect. It had shown them there was a lot more to Amanda and Wayne’s relationship than they had assumed.

  The beams across the ceiling and the old fireplaces had been exposed and deep pile claret carpet ran luxuriantly underfoot. Oak dining furniture and crystal glasses gleamed from the dresser in the dining room; in the lounge were mushroom-brown suede sofas and walls hung with hunting prints depicting the nineteenth-century Norfolk landscape.

  Assuming the role of master of foxhounds, Eric had assembled all the middle-aged men in the room around him in an admiring circle by the fireplace, where, foot up on the brass guard and a tumbler of whisky in his hand, he was spinning his repertoire of stories and blue jokes. By his side, Samantha joined in the laughter.

  “I mean,” Amanda went on, “look at that, for instance.”

  Sam’s hair looked like someone had run an iron over it compared to the bird’s nest they had got used to her wearing. She had fixed the front into a roll with a hairclip, to which she had attached a r
ed tinsel bow, the rest hung down to her shoulders and flicked up at the ends. The black and red velvet dress she was wearing went over her knees and puffed up at the shoulders; she had teamed it with black tights and little pointy suede boots. And she’d reduced her pancake make-up to a mere smudge of shadow and red lipgloss.

  “She almost looks human.”

  “Oh,” Mary giggled, “you are awful, Mands. I think she look lovely in her new frock.”

  “She does,” Amanda agreed. “That’s the amazing thing. I never asked her to make an effort, just that she stay here to please her nana and granddad ’til they have to leave and then she can go off and meet lover boy. This is all off her own bat …”

  A frown crossed Amanda’s face as she wondered if this was what Sam had spent her Christmas money from Malcolm on. There wasn’t very much of it this year, no wonder she’d had to wait for the sales.

  “Mind you,” she added, dismissing her soon to be legally ex-husband from her mind, “she’ll probably throw herself through a hedge backwards before she does go out.”

  Mary whinnied a laugh and then lowered her tone to a gossip’s whisper. “She still seeing Alex Pendleton, then, your Sammy?”

  Amanda nodded. “Best thing that ever happened to her, that boy. I mean, he hasn’t done much to improve her appearance, but he has got her back into her painting again.”

  “I reckon it was that Corrine Woodrow,” said Mary, “put them ideas in your Sammy’s head. You see anything of her these days?”

  “No,” said Amanda, her eyes drifting back towards her mother and Wayne.

  “Good job and all,” Mary said. “She’s a wrong ’un that girl. ’Bout time they put her in the special class, keep her away from the rest of them. ’Cos, you know her mum’s a tart, don’t you?”

  Noodles the dog had had to be put down in the end. His ordeal had left him a nervous, incontinent wreck. Which wasn’t something Amanda wanted to think about right now. She caught Wayne’s eye, tilted her head towards the door.

  “And God knows who the father is, probably one of them bikers what’s always hanging about round there,” Mary continued, getting into her stride. “Don’t suppose she did have much chance of turning out all right, when you think about it. But you don’t want your kids getting mixed up in it, do you?”

  To her relief, Wayne’s hand came down on Amanda’s shoulder. “How’s my girl?” he said. “Hello, Mary, you all right for drinks there? I’m just going to fetch some more bottles, we’re running a bit low.”

  Amanda glanced down at her platters. “I’ll give you a hand, darling, these could do with topping up too.” She fixed Mary with her most dazzling smile. “Would you excuse us?”

  * * *

  It was warm and noisy in the pub, HAPPY NEW YEAR signs draped across the ceiling, tinsel and fairy lights hanging from the rafters and around framed prints of the Artful Dodger, Oliver Twist and Fagin. Only the Christmas tree was showing signs of fatigue, drooping under the weight of too much revelry, its needles in a pile on the carpet.

  They managed to cram themselves round a little table near the jukebox, which Darren and Julian were busily scanning for decent singles, while for the moment Simple Minds’ “Waterfront” crashed around their ears.

  “So go on then,” Corrine was urging Debbie, “what’s happened?”

  “You were right. That bloody Samantha Lamb,” said Debbie, “has taken over everything. Every day she look more like me, she copy my hair, my clothes, my shoes … I don’t even know how she get hold of half of it. Like these,” she stuck out her ankle to draw Corrine’s attention to the boots she had saved up three months for. “They were the only ones in the shop, I got them up Norwich the last Saturday before we broke up. Monday morning I come to school and she’s got on the exact same pair! How do she do it?”

  Corrine shook her head. “She’s a rich bitch, in’t she?” she said. “Her folks give her whatever she want.”

  Debbie nodded. “She come in the art room every day and sit there, watching what I do, waiting ’til I’ve nearly finished – then she copy the whole idea.” Debbie scowled, hating to admit what she was saying, but finding herself unable to stop. “Only she do it about a million times better, like she’s got a camera taking pictures of whatever’s in my head. So now old Witchell’s putting my marks down ’cos he think I’m copying her!”

  Debbie’s eyes smouldered with outrage.

  Corrine thought back to Sam in the art room, staring at Debbie’s jacket and asking all them questions. Remembered the way she had made her say bad things about her friend, and how she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing it. Debbie was right. Sam did have a way of seeing into your mind.

  “She’s a fuckin’ cow,” she said, her own anger rising.

  “But that in’t even the worst of it,” Debbie said. “Everyone else love her. I mean,” she glanced up at Darren, still poring over the jukebox while Julian pressed the buttons, “not them two, thank God, but …”

  Debbie reined herself in. If she told Corrine, would she blame herself? Or would she think Debbie was blaming her? Even if there was a grain of guilty truth to it, Debbie didn’t want Corrine to feel any worse than she had that day in October. A shudder of emotion ran through her, like a blade twisting in her heart.

  “What?” Corrine demanded. “Tell me, Debs. I can handle it.”

  Unwelcome tears stung the corners of Debbie’s eyes.

  “It’s Alex, in’t it?” Corrine pressed on. “She got him like she said she would.”

  Debbie raised a finger to dab at her eyeliner. “I only seen him once after that,” she said, “and he didn’t listen to a word I said. Now, every time I call for him, his mum say he’s out, and it in’t with his mates. Last time we seen Bully and Kris, they asked me if I knew what had happened to him, so maybe he don’t go in Swing’s with her either. But I can’t face going in there now,” her voice hardened. “She’s got what she wanted, in’t she?”

  A tear dropped off the end of her lashes as she looked into Corrine’s eyes. “It might sound mad, but it’s like …” She looked up to make sure Darren and Julian were still busy. She had never voiced this thought before and wasn’t sure she wanted her boyfriend to hear it.

  “No it won’t,” Corrine assured her. “I know exactly what she’s like, remember?”

  Debbie nodded. “Well it’s like, how she’s suddenly so brilliant at art and that, how she’s got to be teacher’s pet. It’s like she’s sucked up all Al’s talent and now it’s coming out of her instead.” Debbie gave a snort of startled laughter at the ridiculousness of her own words. “Oh, I’m sorry, Reenie,” she said, “that do sound mental, don’t it?”

  But Corrine’s face was gravely serious.

  “That in’t mental,” she said. “That’s black magic.”

  She looked at Debbie, an idea forming in her head.

  * * *

  “Byeee! Happy New Year!” Amanda and Samantha stood on the doorstep, waving Edna and Eric off. Eric sounded the horn as they pulled away, cigar clamped between his teeth. Edna blew them a kiss.

  “Well,” said Amanda, turning to face her daughter, “I’m proud of you, Sam, you were great tonight with your nana and granddad. And you look lovely, you really do. Did you go and have your hair done today?”

  “M-hmm,” Samantha nodded, twirling a strand of her shining black locks around her index finger. “New salon in the arcade,” she informed her. “They were doing £5 specials so I thought I might as well.”

  “Don’t suppose you’re going to keep it like that, though, are you?”

  “No,” said Sam, her mouth twisting into a smile. “But it was worth it, wasn’t it?”

  “It really was,” said Amanda, putting her arm around her daughter’s shoulder and giving her a little squeeze. “Go on then, off you go and mess it all up again.”

  Samantha disentangled herself from the embrace with a little chuckle. “It proved something to me,” she said, staring at her mother with undisgui
sed disgust. “Just how easy it is to be as false as you.” And with that, she bounded off up the stairs.

  * * *

  Bully looked up at the clock for the tenth time in five minutes.

  “Don’t reckon he’s coming,” he said.

  “In’t like him to be late,” Kris agreed, crumpling his empty beer can and tossing it in the bin. “But if we don’t catch this train now … Oh, hang about.”

  A figure appeared through the turnstiles, waving in their direction. He was wearing a long black coat the same as Al’s, but he was shorter and thicker set, the black corduroy hat on his head barely containing a big ginger quiff of hair.

  “Hold up!” Marc Farman called.

  “Where’s Al?” frowned Bully.

  “In Swing’s,” Marc panted an explanation. “He said he don’t really feel like going up Norwich tonight, so he sold me his ticket.”

  Bully and Kris exchanged glances.

  “He have anyone else with him?” asked Bully.

  “Shaun and Bugs,” said Marc. “But he was looking at the clock the whole time …”

  * * *

  “Where you been hidin’ yourself anyway, Al?” asked Shaun. “We in’t seen you round for a while.”

  “I been working,” Alex lied. “You know, on my course. They start laying it on thick in the second year.”

  “Oh,” said Shaun, for whom working meant standing on a conveyor belt, slicing up dead turkeys, day in and day out. “That’s hard, is it?”

  Alex nodded, thinking of the times he had held the pencil up, measured so carefully with his thumb the proportions of her face. His eyes flicked up to the clock. Quarter to nine.

  “You seen much of little Debs?” Shaun went on.

  Alex shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Any minute now, he realised, Debbie could walk through that door. He didn’t want to see that hurt, uncomprehending expression on her face. Not when he couldn’t explain it to her any more than he could explain it to himself.

  “Sorry, Shaun,” he said, getting to his feet, “but I now got to be somewhere else.”