sights around her. The dazzle of ExEx was her preferred reality.
She wa . s remembering the way she had experienced
Shandy's walk, with her tiny leather miniskirt constraining her thighs and her stiletto heels clacking dismissively on the paving. Teresa put her hands in her coat pocket, and dragged the garment round her, tightening it in front of her legs to make a tiny reminder of how it had felt to wear that skirt.
She thought about being young and pretty again, of having the sort of legs men admired in the street, the kind of high, prominent breasts that looked good no matter what she wore, and for which wearing a bra was an option. She relished the memory of how Shandy's body had felt from the inside: supple and agile and much used to pleasure. She even loved Shandy's attitude to everyone around her; it was years since she had felt free not to care what other people thought.
In the cold winter's evening, with the sea wind moist in her face and the lights of the depressing housing estate glinting around her, Teresa could not help fantasizing about lovemaking. She imagined she was in a large airliner, flying slow and low, the engines a subdued roar. She would stretch with her lover across the cushions of a row of seats, the armrests raised erect to make room; she would be sating her body, naked and languorous, dreaming of buttes in 'Arizona, while below her the unending lakes and forests of Finland would be slipping deliriously by.
CHAPTER 28
Teresa was in a car, parked on the seafront at Bulverton. Brilliant sunlight poured in on her from the direction of the sea. She was tightening the hotwired connection she had made earlier beneath the dash, stretching forward with her hands, her cheek pressed against the boss of the steering wheel.
A figure stopped beside the car, shading the flood of sunlight. Without looking up at him Teresa straightened and wound down the window.
'You Gerry?' the man said.
'Yeah.'
The man outside pushed his hand through, palm up. Teresa laid six tenpound notes on the hand, and watched as he crumpled them up and withdrew. Moments later, a small plastic bag was thrown in; it flew past her face, bounced on the passenger seat beside her and ended up on the floor.
'Fuck you,' she said automatically, and reached over to pick up the bag. The man was already moving quickly away, weaving through the cars parked along the front. He was tall and thin, and his long black hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wore a dirty palebrown jacket and faded jeans. He hurried across the main road without looking back, then disappeared down a sidestreet.
Teresa weighed the bag in her hand; it felt about right, but she had probably been undersold, as always. She could see the white powder through the polythene, and it ground with the right feeling when she squeezed it lightly between
her fingers. She slipped the bag into her jacket pocket.
As she drove away she saw Fraser johnson hanging around outside the amusements arcade.
He waved to her urgently, but she drove on. She owed Fraser a bit of cash, not a lot, but because of the deal she had just done she wasn't going to be able to settle up with him for a while. Anyway, she would probably see him that evening, and by then things would be different.
She drove towards home, thinking about Debra, the titless bitch, the bleeding bitch with the spotty fucking face, and that lad called Mark who'd turned up with her from somewhere and crashed at her place the night before. In fact, all of them had been at her place overnight, because Mark's mates came along too. They'd gone through her stuff, looking at her lists, asking her stupid bloody questions about what she wrote down.
Because of this she was ready for more aggravation from them, but halfway up the long hill of Hyde Avenue the engine coughed and she pulled over to the side. She left the car where it stopped, the driver's door open. lt was a pile of crap, anyway. It took her ten minutes to walk up to the house where she was staying, the one the Housing Benefit woman had found her a couple of weeks back. The lads had gone. She looked for food, but if there had been any they had stolen it. She did a line of the coke, then put away the rest for later.
She walked round the damaged interior of the house, angry with everything and everyone.
Someone had had a piss on her stuff. Why did people always do this to her? There was another broken window downstairs; it must have happened during the night, because the bits of broken glass were still lying around on the floorboards. There was one of the lads, a kid from Eastbourne called Darren, who'd really wound her up over that window. She couldn't remember
why, now. Probably something to do with Debra, because he was the one who'd run off with her that morning, wasn't it? She couldn't remember exactly. Her fingernails curled into the palms of her hands, and she wished she'd smacked him in the fucking face, like he deserved.
outside, she saw another mate of hers, Steve Ripon, driving down towards the front, and she grabbed a ride with him Steve dropped her outside the Bulver Arms, saying he might call in for a pint later. She didn't want to know. Steve usually got on her nerves. She saw a couple of the lads in the bar, playing pool, so she hung around with them for a while, hoping for a game. They pretended they hadn't seen her, and made jokes about her as if she wasn't there, the sort she'd heard before. Fuckers. One of them said he'd buy her a pi nt but in the end didn't, and made the others laugh at her again, and she had to buy her own. She was hungry, but didn't fancy any of the food. Couldn't afford it.
'Fin going home,' she said, but they didn't seem to hear.
She set off in the direction of Hastings, but it meant walking along the seafront and there was no shade from the sun. She was already feeling light in the head, and the sun only made it worse. She turned off the coast road at the first big Junction, and started walking up Battle Road.
Steve Ripon drove past again, and slowed down. She didn't want another lift from him, so she pretended not to notice.
Through the driver's window, Steve shouted, '01, Gerry! That Debra of yours told Darren all about you.'
,piss Off, Steve!' she yelled back.
'She reckons you can't get it up. That right?'
