Scarlet Women

She ran to the bench.

The hunched figure was gone. Had no doubt heard the commotion on the road, and legged it.

‘Fuck it.’ Annie looked frantically around.

Not a hundred yards away, a thin girl was walking fast, head down, hurrying away.

‘Mira!’ Annie bellowed.

The girl stopped. Turned. Then started walking again, away from Annie.

Annie sprinted after her. Caught hold of her arm. It was Mira.

Annie was elated, despite the state Mira was in, despite everything. She’d thought the silly mare was in some sort of danger—if not actually dead. Yet here she was. Mira, her old friend, still stinking like a polecat, still skinny and covered in sores—what a bloody mess she was; but it was Mira, thank God.

‘What the hell do you want now?’ asked Mira, wild-eyed, twitching away from Annie when she reached out to touch her.

‘Hey, is that any way to greet a friend?’

‘What do you want?’ asked Mira, shivering. Shivering, on a summer’s day with male office workers out on the grass in shirtsleeves, secretaries with their cheesecloth tops rolled up to expose pale midriffs, all of them just lapping up the heat, and here was Mira—emaciated, filthy and shivering like she was in the teeth of an arctic gale.

‘I want to help,’ said Annie. ‘For fuck’s sake Mira, come on. Why’d you run off like that? I’m trying to help you.’

‘You can’t,’ said Mira. ‘No one can.’

‘That’s crap.’

‘You can’t make me do anything,’ said Mira weakly.

‘No? Look at yourself,’ said Annie. ‘You couldn’t knock the skin off a fucking rice pudding. So you’re coming with me.’

‘I can’t,’ said Mira, and now there were tears trickling down from her eyes. ‘I can’t.’

‘You can,’ said Annie, still holding on firmly to Mira’s arm. It felt like a skeleton’s, all bone, hardly any muscle at all. ‘Come on, Mira,’ said Annie more gently.

Mira just lowered her head, all the fight going, draining from her in an instant. Annie led her over to the car, and got her seated in the back. Tony looked at Annie in the mirror as if she’d finally taken leave of her senses. His boss had just put a female tramp in his nice clean car. Annie cranked open a window and gave Tony a winning smile.

‘Dolly’s place, Tone,’ she said.

‘Jesus, no!’ snapped Mira, making panicky movements to throw open the door. ‘I can’t…don’t make me go there.’

Annie stared at her in puzzlement.

‘It’s his patch. I shouldn’t be there. It’s his,’ said Mira, wide-eyed with fear.

‘Redmond Delaney?’ Annie was still staring—and now she was remembering how Mira had run last time from Dolly’s place, just as she’d told Dolly that Redmond was on the phone. ‘You scared of Redmond?’

Mira nodded. More than scared: she looked terrified.

‘It’s okay,’ she told Mira. ‘He never goes there.’

Hardly ever, thought Annie. She wasn’t about to add that, or Mira would freak again.

Mira didn’t look convinced, but at least she stopped looking as if she was going to throw herself bodily from the car.

Now what the hell is that all about? wondered Annie as Tony drove them over to Limehouse.

Chapter 33

‘This is Mira. You remember Mira, she’s been here before. She used to be one of my girls up West,’ said Annie.

Dolly was staring at the apparition that had materialized in her spotless kitchen. So was darkhaired, sharp- faced Sharlene, who looked as if someone had just dropped a dead rat at her feet. Even easy-going, sleepy-eyed little Rosie was struck dumb. Ross was out. Just as well, really.

‘I remember Mira from your place up West,’ said Dolly, her eyes travelling up over the bag of bones standing there whiffing the place out. ‘Jeez, I thought this one looked familiar when she came here last time, sort of. But you’ve got to be kidding me. This ain’t Mira.’

‘Yes it is, Doll. This is Mira.’

‘Well, for fuck’s sake. What happened, she get hit by a truck?’

‘Don’t talk about her as if she ain’t here,’ said Annie, getting miffed on Mira’s behalf. She might be a wreck, but she still had feelings.

‘I’d prefer it if she wasn’t,’ said Dolly smartly.

‘I’ll go,’ said Mira listlessly, turning on her heel, heading for the hall. ‘I should go, let me go, for God’s sake…’

‘No, you won’t,’ insisted Annie. She turned to Dolly, who was nearly quivering with disgust at this thing Annie had brought into her tidy, homely little place. ‘Look, Doll. I can’t take her to the flat over the club, I’m never there and she needs keeping an eye on.’

‘She needs her next fix by the look of her,’ said Dolly in disgust. ‘Get her out of here. I don’t want her here.’

Annie looked at Mira. Whatever Mira was on, she was clearly starting to feel withdrawal symptoms. The shivering had stepped up a gear. Dolly had a point. But it wasn’t like her to be so bluntly uncharitable. ‘Yeah, about that,’ she started in.

‘You can’t be thinking she’s going to stop here,’ said Dolly, reading her mind.

‘I’m not stopping here,’ said Mira through chattering teeth.

‘Yes you bloody are,’ said Annie. She turned to Dolly. ‘Yes she is, Doll.’

‘No,’ said Mira.

‘See? She don’t want to stop here,’ said Dolly triumphantly. ‘So for fuck’s sake get her out, okay?’

Sharlene and Rosie were watching from the sidelines like spectators at a tennis match, their heads moving back and forth, following the action.

‘Will you both shut it?’ snapped Annie. ‘Mira—you’re stopping. Dolly—she’s stopping. I hate to ask, but —’

‘Oh, here we go,’ snorted Dolly.

‘Come on, Doll. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t necessary. Please. I want someone I can trust to keep an eye on her. Just tuck her away nice and quiet. Keep her out of the Delaneys’ way.’

Dolly’s mouth dropped open. ‘What the…now look, if she’s crossed up the Delaneys in some way, I don’t want to know. I don’t get involved in their business, you know that.’

‘I’m not stopping here,’ bleated Mira.

‘You’re stopping,’ said Annie, her eyes flinty with determination as she turned her gaze on Dolly. ‘What is up with you?’

‘Me?’ spat back Dolly. ‘Nothing wrong with me. I didn’t bring this piece of shit in here.’

Annie turned away from Dolly. ‘Rosie, take Mira up to the back room, settle her in. Oh yeah—and run her a bath.’