witnesses, professional busybodies and hangers-on.
Sally was a professional hanger-on. She’d invoice for time and any expenses. Later she’d compose a note and fax the client a footnote. ‘We Never Sleep’, she could claim.
The ravette yielded the phone. Taking in Sally’s bun-tied hair red cardie and long black skirt, the girl blurted ‘Olive Oyl’. Sally had change for coin-ops, cards for cardphones: part of the job. It was nearer three a.m. than two; Mum wouldn’t have stayed up even to note the video clock slip silently from 11.59 to 00.00. On the line, her own phone rang. Double-doors opened: a bag lady staggered in, swathed in ratty scarves. Sally wondered what horrible injury she’d sustained, but the weather-beaten virago turned out to be a relief driver come for the joyrider’s lawyer. This must be the worst night of the year for minicabs.
‘Mum?’
The receiver was fussed with. Mum always got the cordless phone the wrong way up. A baby mewed in the background. The Invader was as likely to wake up screaming without a dead-of-night phone call but Sally still had a guilt-stab.
‘You said you’d be home hours ago. Where are you?’
‘Casualty,’ she said.
Mum groaned silently. Other women’s daughters had husbands, careers, settled lives; Maureen Rhodes was stuck with a minimally self-employed single parent who typed reports on Christmas morning.
‘I’m not hurt,’ she assured Mum. ‘A guy at Dolar’s party...’
* * *
The party was a bus-hop away in Highgate Village. Dolar owned the shop where Neil did odd shifts behind the till. She’d seen him about well before the commission, wizardy in black velvet coat and dragon-badge-ringed hat. They had fringe friends in common but only really met when Sally started on Neil Martin. She’d probably have gone to the party anyway: having been cooped up with Mum and the Invader over the holiday, she could do with talking to someone in her age range and dancing off chocolate and leftover turkey.
The invite said ‘come as your favourite comix character’. Fancy dress was a bother. The icy fog that descended before Christmas made Highgate Wood a haunted forest of sparkly frost and witch mist. Imagining Amazon Queen, her childhood heroine, with nipples frozen to knots and acres of goose-pimples between thighboots and brass bra, she decided on Olive Oyl. She pinned a collar to a cardigan, found an ankle-skirt that didn’t hobble her, fussed her hair into a ball.
Protective colour, Mummy?
Mind your own business, flesh of my flesh.
‘My hero,’ she said to her mirror pining for a sailor with forearm elephantiasis. Actually, Olive Oyl was a drip: fecklessly making up to Bluto then yelling to be saved from justifiable date rape. The only cartoon woman worse was Amy McQueen, knock-kneed alter ego of Amazon Queen, but she faked feebleness to stop her boyfriend guessing her double life. Sally did her lipstick. Like Amazon Queen and Dr Shade, she needed a secret identity. Under her cupid’s bow, she was Sally Rhodes, Investigator.
After peeking in on the Invader and telling Mum she’d be home before one, she put on a coat and left. It was tenish. The 43 or the 134 would get her from Muswell Hill to Highgate Village in seven minutes. Two and a half hours of party, a walk through the wood, and 1993 would be here, full of chilly promise.
Her year-end report was delivered. Dolar would have invited Neil but she didn’t have to pay attention. If anything, she was bored by the man she knew but had never met. The only curiosity was why the client was interested after so many years in so unexceptional a citizen.
Hopping off the bus at the top of the Archway Road, she looked for the address, a garden flat near Planet Janet. A group ten paces ahead was obviously on course: a busty woman in a strategically torn uniform carried a plastic Oddbins bag heavy with bottles; apes with steel helmets, ammo bandoliers and toy weapons.
Sally caught up as they waited
Sally was a professional hanger-on. She’d invoice for time and any expenses. Later she’d compose a note and fax the client a footnote. ‘We Never Sleep’, she could claim.
The ravette yielded the phone. Taking in Sally’s bun-tied hair red cardie and long black skirt, the girl blurted ‘Olive Oyl’. Sally had change for coin-ops, cards for cardphones: part of the job. It was nearer three a.m. than two; Mum wouldn’t have stayed up even to note the video clock slip silently from 11.59 to 00.00. On the line, her own phone rang. Double-doors opened: a bag lady staggered in, swathed in ratty scarves. Sally wondered what horrible injury she’d sustained, but the weather-beaten virago turned out to be a relief driver come for the joyrider’s lawyer. This must be the worst night of the year for minicabs.
‘Mum?’
The receiver was fussed with. Mum always got the cordless phone the wrong way up. A baby mewed in the background. The Invader was as likely to wake up screaming without a dead-of-night phone call but Sally still had a guilt-stab.
‘You said you’d be home hours ago. Where are you?’
‘Casualty,’ she said.
Mum groaned silently. Other women’s daughters had husbands, careers, settled lives; Maureen Rhodes was stuck with a minimally self-employed single parent who typed reports on Christmas morning.
‘I’m not hurt,’ she assured Mum. ‘A guy at Dolar’s party...’
* * *
The party was a bus-hop away in Highgate Village. Dolar owned the shop where Neil did odd shifts behind the till. She’d seen him about well before the commission, wizardy in black velvet coat and dragon-badge-ringed hat. They had fringe friends in common but only really met when Sally started on Neil Martin. She’d probably have gone to the party anyway: having been cooped up with Mum and the Invader over the holiday, she could do with talking to someone in her age range and dancing off chocolate and leftover turkey.
The invite said ‘come as your favourite comix character’. Fancy dress was a bother. The icy fog that descended before Christmas made Highgate Wood a haunted forest of sparkly frost and witch mist. Imagining Amazon Queen, her childhood heroine, with nipples frozen to knots and acres of goose-pimples between thighboots and brass bra, she decided on Olive Oyl. She pinned a collar to a cardigan, found an ankle-skirt that didn’t hobble her, fussed her hair into a ball.
Protective colour, Mummy?
Mind your own business, flesh of my flesh.
‘My hero,’ she said to her mirror pining for a sailor with forearm elephantiasis. Actually, Olive Oyl was a drip: fecklessly making up to Bluto then yelling to be saved from justifiable date rape. The only cartoon woman worse was Amy McQueen, knock-kneed alter ego of Amazon Queen, but she faked feebleness to stop her boyfriend guessing her double life. Sally did her lipstick. Like Amazon Queen and Dr Shade, she needed a secret identity. Under her cupid’s bow, she was Sally Rhodes, Investigator.
After peeking in on the Invader and telling Mum she’d be home before one, she put on a coat and left. It was tenish. The 43 or the 134 would get her from Muswell Hill to Highgate Village in seven minutes. Two and a half hours of party, a walk through the wood, and 1993 would be here, full of chilly promise.
Her year-end report was delivered. Dolar would have invited Neil but she didn’t have to pay attention. If anything, she was bored by the man she knew but had never met. The only curiosity was why the client was interested after so many years in so unexceptional a citizen.
Hopping off the bus at the top of the Archway Road, she looked for the address, a garden flat near Planet Janet. A group ten paces ahead was obviously on course: a busty woman in a strategically torn uniform carried a plastic Oddbins bag heavy with bottles; apes with steel helmets, ammo bandoliers and toy weapons.
Sally caught up as they waited
Similar Books
