fleetingly to the rich dark nipples that, braless, pressed against her thin white T-shirt, it was owing to this humanity. Pure biology worked in him for a moment, but he mastered it. He removed Ness’s hand from his body. He said, “Good way to get into trouble, innit.”
She caught his hand, pressed it to her waist and held it there. She fixed her eyes on his and raised his hand slowly till she had it at the swell of her breast. “Why she got all the luck?” she repeated. “’Specially when I saw you first. Come on, mon. I know you wan’ it. I know
Biology again and he felt himself heating in spite of his wishes. But this prompted him to jerk away from her. He said, “You readin t’ings wrong, Ness. Dat, or you makin ’em up.”
“Oh right. You was bein’
Dix held up a hand to stop her words. “Don’t go dat way,” he told her.
“What way? Way of you grazin your fingers cross me like you want to do now? Way of your hand sliding up my leg, high as you can, till you find what you want? Which way is it you don’t want me to go?”
He narrowed his eyes. His nostrils flared when he breathed, and he took in her scent. Kendra was sexy, but this girl was sex. She was raw, she was present, and she scared him to death. He said, “You a liar as well as a slag, den, Ness? Keep away from me. I mean it, y’unnerstan.”
He pushed past her then and left the kitchen. What he left behind was the sound of her laugh. A single note of it, high and possessing neither heart nor amusement. It felt like a scalpel peeling back his flesh.
NESS WAS NOT of an age to understand what she felt. All she knew about what was going on inside her was that she was roiling. To her, this roiling was a thing demanding action, for action is always easier than thought.
Her opportunity for taking an action to express herself came soon enough. She’d imagined the action being sexual: herself and Dix entwined hotly in such a manner and in such a place that discovery by Kendra was guaranteed. But that was not how her life played out. Instead, Six and Natasha supplied the opportunity for expression, which came about because two circumstances to which none of them were strangers occurred simultaneously: Lack of cash collided with a desire for substance on an evening when the girls had nothing to do.
This should have presented no problem. Following hand jobs, blow jobs, full penetration, or whatever else they had negotiated for, the area’s bicycle-delivery boys had always been happy to hand over to the girls payment in the form of cocaine, cannabis, Ecstasy, crystal meth . . . the beauty for them being that the girls weren’t choosy about substance. But lately, the situation had altered. The source of dope had begun watching the boys more carefully because a wary customer along the line had complained about someone skimming. Thus, the well had run dry and no number of sexual favours appeared to be able to prime it.
There was no question that the girls needed money. But they had nothing to sell, and the idea of actually seeking employment—had any of them been employable, which they were not—didn’t occur to them. They were of the instant-gratification generation anyway, so they thrashed around through their options in order to decide how best to come up with cash. There seemed to be two possibilities: They could sell sexual favours to someone other than the delivery boys or they could nick the money. They chose the latter option, as it seemed quicker, and it left them with merely deciding from whom they should lift what they needed. Here again, there were further choices: They could nick money from Six’s mother’s purse; they could nick it from someone using a cash-point machine; they could nick it from someone defenceless in the street.
Since Six’s mother was rarely around, neither was her bag and she had no cache of cash in the flat that Six knew about, so that eliminated her as a possibility. The cash-point machine sounded quite good until Tash, of all people, pointed out that most machines had CCTV cameras mounted nearby and the last thing they wanted was to have their faces photographed in the midst of mugging someone using the machine. That left them with a confrontation in the street. This was agreed to, and all that remained was selecting the area in which to carry out the operation and selecting the appropriate victim.
The three estates in which the girls lived were rejected at once. So were Great Western Road, Kilburn Lane, Golborne Road, and the Harrow Road. These, they decided, were far too crowded and a person mugged would likely send up a cry that would get them noticed if not get them stopped. They settled on an estate directly across from the Harrow Road police station. While others might have rejected this as a ludicrous spot in which to mug a London citizen, the girls liked it for two reasons: It had a locked entry gate, which would foster a false sense of security in their potential victim; it was so close to the police station that no one would expect to be mugged there. It was, the girls decided, sheer brilliance on their part to make the estate their selection.
Getting onto the estate proved no problem. They merely hung around three wheelie bins near the gate and waited until an unwary elderly woman approached, toddling along with a shopping trolley in tow. Tash dashed forward to hold the gate open for her once she had it unlocked, saying, “Lemme help you wiv dis, ma’am,” and the woman was so surprised to be spoken to and dealt with politely that she had no suspicions when Tash followed her inside and gestured for Six and Ness to do likewise.
Six shook her head to indicate that they’d let the woman go on her way. A pensioner, she’d be unlikely to have enough cash on her for what they wanted, and anyway, Six drew the line at mugging defenceless old ladies. They reminded her of her own gran, and not mugging them was a form of deal making with fate, guaranteeing that her gran would remain unmolested on her own estate.
So the girls began to prowl up and down the paths, watching and waiting. Neither operation took long. They hadn’t been inside the walls ten minutes when they saw their target. A woman came out of one of the terrace houses and set off towards the Harrow Road, foolishly— and in direct defi ance of everything the police recommended—taking a mobile phone from her bag.
She seemed a godsend as she punched in a few numbers, oblivious of what was going on around her. Even if she had no cash, she had a mobile, and nothing had changed in the lives of Six and Natasha heretofore, so possession of a mobile phone still represented the apex of their dreams.
Three of them and one of her: The odds seemed excellent. All it would take was two girls in front of her and one behind. A confrontation without violence but with the threat of bodily harm omnipresent. Looking tough because they
Six led the way. She and Tash would confront. Ness would be surprise backup behind the lady.
“Patty? This is Sue,” the woman was saying into her mobile. “Could you unlock the door for me? I’m running late, and the students aren’t likely to wait more than ten minutes if . . .” She saw Tash and Six in front of her. She stopped on the path. From behind, Ness clamped a hand on her shoulder. The woman stiffened.
“Le’s have the moby, bitch,” Six said. She closed in quickly. Tash did the same.
“Le’s have the purse ’s well,” Tash said.
Sue’s face was white to her lips, although the girls had no way of knowing this was her natural colour. She said, “I don’t know you girls, do I?”
“Well, ain’t that true,” Six said. “Give us the moby an’ do it now. You don’t, you get cut.”
“Oh yes, oh of course. Just . . .” Sue said into the phone, “Listen, Patty, I’m being mugged. If you wouldn’t mind ringing—”
Ness shoved her forward. Six shoved her back. Tash said, “Don’t play games wiv us, cunt.”
The woman, appearing flustered, said, “Yes. Yes. I’m terribly sorry. I just . . . Here. Let me . . . My money’s inside . . .” And she fumbled round to reach into her bag, which had straps and buckles all over it. She dropped it and the mobile on the ground. Six and Tash bent to get them. And in an instant the complexion of the mugging altered. From her pocket the woman whipped out a small can, which she began spraying wildly at the girls. It was nothing more than a strong room freshener, but it did the trick. As Sue sprayed and began screaming for help, the girls fell back.
“I’m not afraid of you! I’m not afraid of anyone! You rotten little . . .”
Sue shrieked and shrieked. And to prove whatever point she was attempting to make, she grabbed
