Dirty Game

‘I won’t,’ said Annie tightly, pushing past Connie and running up the stairs. She paused in front of Ruthie. ‘What time did you say we had to be at the hairdresser’s?’

Ruthie rolled her eyes. ‘Nine o’clock. I told you.’

‘I forgot. I’ll get washed up,’ said Annie, and hurried into the bathroom.

She leaned on the sink and looked at her reflection. Her face was flushed, her dark eyes flashing with suppressed anger. She heard Ruthie go downstairs, heard their murmuring voices and knew what they were saying.

Poor Annie, Ruthie would say, she seems so lost.

Little tart, Connie would retort, if she isn’t knocked up before Christmas I’ll eat my hat.

Annie touched her belly thoughtfully. No, Max had been careful. An unplanned pregnancy would really put the cat among the pigeons. She thought back to how tender he had been at first, how sweet … and then how dismissive. Had and then forgotten, she thought. Her first time, a special time with a special man. That’s what it had been to her. To him, it had been nothing.

Nothing at all.

She felt tears prick her eyes again and blinked them back, hating the momentary weakness. Dig deep and stand alone, she told herself. She never cried. Even when her dad had left, she hadn’t cried, even though she had missed him like mad. She had idolized her dad and he had called her his little  princess, but he had left her all the same, left them all, without so much as a kiss-your-ass.

Annie had withdrawn into herself with the shock of his leaving, but Ruthie had cried for days and got lots of cuddles off Connie as a consequence. Annie was made of tougher stuff, and she knew it. You could only ever rely on yourself in this world, she knew that too. Hard lessons, but she had learned them well.

So what if Connie had cuffed her more often than cuddled her? She had learned to cope with that.

She would cope with this.

4

Billy Black was excited. He stood among the gathering crowds outside the Bailey house and stared with awe at the pristine white Rolls-Royce parked at the kerb. Peach-coloured ribbons fluttered from the flying-lady mascot on the bonnet and flowers were draped over the parcel shelf behind the rear seats. Small, wide-eyed boys in short trousers ran their grubby hands over the paintwork.

The chauffeur stood there in his peaked cap and glared.

Aproned mothers with curlers in their hair and fags in their mouths snatched the boys back, but not too roughly. Everyone was in a good mood. The sun was shining, that was good too. Ruthie was a sweet girl and she deserved the sun shining upon her on this special day.

Then the front door opened.

The onlookers surged forward with smiles and cheers.

‘Look out, here she comes!’ rippled through the crowd, but it was the bridesmaids. It was Annie, Ruthie’s sister, and Kath her cousin, done up in empire-line peach silk and awkwardly clutching bouquets.

Billy held his breath.

‘Don’t they look a picture?’ cooed a woman beside him, but he was deaf to all that, his attention focused one hundred per cent on his beautiful Annie.

That was how he always thought of her: his beautiful Annie. He had adored her since she was eleven years old and he was sixteen, but not in a pervy way. In a pure and noble way. Her sister was all right, but Annie’s beauty glowed like a beacon, eclipsing all around it. He’d never been in love until he clapped eyes on Annie Bailey across the school playground. Once he’d seen her, he’d been lost.

Not that she would ever show the slightest interest in him, he knew that. He knew he was odd-looking. He had a long, thin face and a vacant look to his eyes. He’d had rickets when he was little and so he had a limp, and a bit of a humped back. Sometimes he stammered.

Billy had always been the outsider, watching everyone else having a good time and wanting to be included in that charmed circle. He had desperately wanted to be in Max’s gang when they were at school. All the others were part of Max’s gang, and they had grown up still in a gang and become Teddy boys together and gained a reputation for being tough nuts to deal with.

Billy remembered Max back then, how elegant he’d been in his royal-blue, black-trimmed Teddy jacket, black drainpipes and blue brothel-creepers, while his brother Jonjo had gone for red with black trim.

Billy didn’t like Jonjo.

Jonjo had a bit of a temper.

All the boys in the gang had gone on to work for Max in the rackets. Max was the leader and everyone else was doing his bidding. This had always been the case. When Max was a boy, he’d hung his white shirt out of his bedroom window, the signal for all the gang members to come running; and they had.

Billy had so wanted to be one of them, summoned by Max, valued by him, and he had been as proud as punch when one of Max’s boys had approached him in The Grapes and asked if he wanted some work. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer but he was dependable, everyone knew that. It was just picking up and dropping stuff around town, that was all. He didn’t have to split the atom or anything. He’d jumped at the chance to be on the inside for a change, a part of the action; and he’d done his job punctiliously, pleasing Max and prompting him to trust Billy with other jobs.

Now he regularly did the milk round for Max. That was what the boys called collecting the takings from the billiard halls and arcades and parlours. Billy relished the responsibility and he was scrupulously honest.

Max appreciated that.

Billy was a bit slow but he was not a fool. The temptation was there sometimes to pinch a bit, but no one in their right mind would cross Max Carter.

Sometimes the Delaney mob pushed their luck, and Max didn’t like that at all. Billy felt a tremor of unease when he thought of the Delaneys. They’d done him over many times at school, but he’d pushed in on the edges of Max’s crowd and so gained a tenuous place of safety.

The Delaneys were scum, that’s what Max said, a mad, red-haired family of self-serving, devious Irish tinkers who didn’t belong here, and there was big trouble brewing. Tory Delaney and Max Carter had always been sworn enemies, and there had been many minor rucks between hot-tempered Jonjo and Mad Pat Delaney.

The whole thing made Billy nervous. The Delaneys were right cheeky gits and getting bolder all the time. He wondered at their nerve. Billy knew it was madness to upset Max. There were stories of people being done over by the boys, broken bottles and chains and even knives and guns coming into play.

There were even rumours about a pub landlord who’d parted company with a hand and a foot because he’d been into something nasty. Billy didn’t know what the man had done and he didn’t want to either. Keep your head down and do your job, that was his policy. That way you kept Max sweet, and nothing was more important than that.

Oh, but Annie was beautiful! She grinned, full of self-confidence, and waved to the crowd. Billy edged back among the throng. He didn’t want her to see him. He was too bloody ugly even to be in her presence. But he loved her. Worshipped her.

She ducked into the Rolls and was gone from view. Kath followed, looking surprisingly good for a change. She was an ugly mare, but today she looked okay. Her mum Maureen stood by, beaming with pride, in a purple suit and one of those feathery little clip-on hat efforts. Annie’s mum, Connie, was in yellow which didn’t suit her. Her weary, washed-out, smoker’s skin was emphasized by her yellow cartwheel hat.

Billy had a fine appreciation of hats. He’d seen Jack the Hat McVitie in his trilby around town, doing a bit of business and rattling the Kray clan, and Billy thought he looked quite stylish. He had quickly realized that here was a way of attaining sartorial elegance.

He chose for himself a deerstalker, which made him look intelligent like Sherlock Holmes. He teamed the hat with a raincoat and a large brown leather briefcase in which he carried the tools of his trade, his notebooks and pens. People looked at him, and he felt proud. He had achieved what he had long craved for; to be a respected