‘You mean you’re going to grass on him?’ she asked, as he started undoing the buttons on her blouse. ‘Because that would look a bit bad, wouldn’t it, with your dad being a cop?’
Jimmy smiled and touched his finger to the undamaged side of his nose. Funny, Lucy thought, he looked strangely sweet with his face a bit roughed up. Perhaps she was feeling maternal. No, not that. No – she caught her breath. Suddenly, far from maternal.
He leant to whisper in her ear then. ‘There are lots of different ways to skin a cat, my love. Now, come on,’ he added, slipping the blouse from her shoulders. ‘The night’s young and my dad won’t be back for hours. I can think of much better ways we can chill out …’
Vicky felt anger welling up in her like bile. It sometimes felt as if there’d never be an end to it. Not while she and her mam inhabited the same house. She watched her staggering towards her now, shocked at how powerful was the temptation to slap her – just as her mam had slapped her so many times this past couple of years, every incidence of which she remembered like it was yesterday.
She pretended not to, of course, because that’s what you did. When her mum, the next day, all sobriety and snot and snivels, always sobbed her apologies for being the way she was. And all the promises – no, just the one promise. That she’d stop drinking. That yes, she understood that Vicky wasn’t her father. That no, she had no right to take her shit life out on her. After all, it wasn’t her who’d upped and left, was it?
God, but how Vicky wanted to. Sometimes she just wanted to walk out of the door and never come back.
Vicky’s mam was far from sober now, of course. So drunk that she could hardly weave her way across the living room – cannoning off bits of furniture like they were the bumpers in a pinball machine.
‘When I was a fucking kid,’ she roared, ‘I tipped up all my bleeding wages to my mother, you hear me? And if I didn’t, I’d get a good bloody hiding!’ She lurched close enough that Vicky could smell the cider fumes hanging in the air between them. Her mam burped then. ‘You’re a selfish little get, that’s what you are!’
Vicky dodged, so that her mam didn’t actually fall into her. She was now swinging the almost empty cider bottle in her face. ‘Mother, look at the state of you!’ she barked back, disgusted. ‘Just sit down before you fall down! I gave you a tenner yesterday, and I only get paid twenty-five quid! I’ve told you that. You know that. What the hell am I supposed to live on? How do I get lunch? Pay for my bus fares? I’ve got fuck-all left as it is!’
Too drunk to formulate a response to this, her mam did as instructed, landing heavily in the closest armchair, and banging her elbow as she did. Thank God, at least, that it was Saturday night, and Vicky could escape round to Paddy’s till Sunday.
Paddy’s home, increasingly, was her haven. A haven from her own bloody mother. One she increasingly needed, as well. It had been like a switch had flipped once she’d left school and started work. As if something had happened to her mother, something Vicky couldn’t quite get her head round. She’d become so much more needy. So much less inclined to do anything but lie on the sofa. So much more inclined to drink herself into a stupor. So much nastier.
Leanne at work had a theory, of course. Leanne had a theory about everything. ‘She’s frightened,’ she’d suggested. ‘Because she’s losing you, isn’t she? You’ve got your independence now, haven’t you? Full-time job, your own money. Not to mention that bloke of yours. She probably realises you don’t need her anymore.’
Vicky thought what Leanne said had a lot of truth in it. But if that were so why did her mam keep doing such a good job of pushing her away? Like she was doing now, in fact, glaring up at her with a face like a slapped arse. ‘I’m not surprised you’ve got fuck-all left, madam,’ she said, waggling the bottle like it was a stick to beat Vicky with. ‘Because you spent it all on them fancy knickers and lacy bra, didn’t you? Anything for that fucking lover boy of yours. You’ll see your mam go without fags and a fucking drink just so’s you can dress up like a bleeding whore for him!’
‘That’s it!’ Vicky railed at her mam, grabbing her overnight bag from the couch. ‘I’ve listened to enough. I’m going outside to wait for Paddy. He’ll be here any minute,’ she added, hefting the strap onto her shoulder. ‘And if he hears you talking to me like that,’ she added, the thought having suddenly come to her, ‘he’ll have a few words to say to you, I can assure you!’
‘Oh, you assure me, do you?’ her mam yelled at her back as she stomped out of the living room. ‘I’ve heard that cocky bastard call you a lot worse. A lot worse. You think I don’t have working ears? Go on, piss off to him then. See if I care.’
Slamming the front door didn’t have quite the satisfying effect Vicky had hoped for and, out on the doorstep, shaken and tearful, she took in gulps of warm air. She didn’t want Paddy seeing her in a state; he really would kick off at her mother if he thought she’d been giving her grief. And rightly so – it was all so unfair.
A month she’d been working now, and it had been the same every frigging week. She’d pay her mam her board money every Friday, but because she’d found out – God knew how – that hairdressers got tips on Saturdays, she’d start again, for more money, every week, without fail. And Vicky couldn’t see an end to it, either. Her mam would no more get a job than fly, even assuming anyone would give her one and, where once Vicky had thought that, in time, her mam might start getting over having been left by her dad, it was like it was going in the opposite direction. Like a scab made worse every time she picked at it.
Leanne was right, she decided. Right about her mam being scared of her leaving and about the fact that leaving was the thing Vicky most wanted to do. Leave and move in with Paddy, and his mam and dad – his mam and dad who were always civil and sober and nice to her. And, better still, almost never there. Like this weekend. She doubted she’d see them at all. So it would just be the two of them. Her and her Pad. She smiled at the thought. Like a regular married couple. Like they were practising.
As if conjured by the force of her very thoughts, he turned up moments after, his arrival heralded as ever by the thump of the music as much as the roar of the Capri. She hurried down the path and out of the gate so she could make a quick getaway, just in case her mam had decided she hadn’t said enough already.
‘Alright, gorgeous?’ Paddy greeted, winking at her as she climbed in. He helped her push her holdall onto the back seat, commenting that she’d packed the kitchen sink with her like she always did, then, as they roared away again, nodded suggestively at his crotch. ‘I’m packing too,’ he said, looking at her in the way that made her melt. ‘And if you play your cards right, I’ve got a package down here just for you.’
Vicky groaned, despite secretly loving it when he said things like that to her in private. ‘Honestly, Paddy, is that all you ever think about?’
‘Pretty much,’ he conceded. ‘Though it’ll have to wait for a bit. I’m going to drop you home so you can start making us a bit of dinner, while I go and see a man about a dog.’
Vicky huffed, because that was the required response, obviously. ‘What am I,’ she said, twisting to face him, ‘your frigging wife, or something?’
The thing that, increasingly, she most wanted to be.
‘Fuck, no,’ he retorted, smirking. ‘Thank God! Wife? Can’t think of a bigger turn-off.’
Lads always said that, of course. That was just the way they generally were. So Vicky’s mood, now so much brighter, wasn’t dimmed too much by this assertion, and though