She had been sycophantic in her interactions with the other woman, and in that exchange by the door, she had sounded scared.
There were dealers who were even more malign than the ones who simply sold the stuff. There were the ones who used the power of supply to make the users, the addicts, do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. What kind of pressure was Leesha putting on Poppy?
Kay wasn’t going to give up. She needed to get Poppy away from this Leesha woman, and that would involve… She thought hard as she walked back to her car. How could she stop Leesha? Get the police onto her? Kay had no proof. Physically remove Poppy from her influence? Residential rehab? Tania’s House offered some short-term residentials a bit further north, near Bridlington, but apparently places were like gold, and Kay couldn’t see Poppy agreeing to a stay in Bridlington, especially not the way she was at the moment.
As she drove back, she made her decision. She’d fought battles before to win back young people who seemed to be lost beyond hope. She thought about Becca, the foster-daughter she was closest to. She and Matt had been told more than once that Becca was a lost cause, and look at her now.
Not that Becca was in such a good place at the moment.
Kay sighed. That was a different problem for a different time. But she was going to fight for Poppy. She would get Poppy back.
Chapter 5
Bridlington
Becca’s flat – or more exactly, her bedsit – was above a shop on one of the main roads out of the centre of Bridlington. The shop was a sell-everything hardware sort of place, and if Becca had wanted mop heads or tin buckets, it would have been handy. As it was, it was just the place she had to get through to reach the stairs to her room.
It was a twenty-five-minute walk from the supermarket, maybe twenty if you walked as fast as Becca did. Walking saved on the bus fare, and anyway, the service was pretty much crap. The weather, that had been so good earlier, was turning. Clouds were gathering. She pulled up her hood and huddled into her waterproof to protect herself from the early evening chill.
When the shop was closed, she had to go in through the back of the building, along a narrow alleyway where people dumped the kinds of stuff you didn’t want to look at too closely. Becca had seen needles and used condoms among the dumped rubbish. She always watched where she was putting her feet when she came along here.
She let herself into the backyard, noting again that her landlord, George, the guy who owned the shop, hadn’t repaired the lock on the gate yet; it was still held by a loop of string.
Becca unhooked it and stepped through, pulling the gate closed behind her. There were high walls separating the yards along the terrace, and the limited space was crammed with discarded storage boxes, an industrial-sized wheelie bin, some cracked paving slabs and bits and pieces of broken furniture. A metal fire escape ran down the wall from the attic window of Becca’s room, ending about three metres off the ground, where a drop-down ladder provided access.
Tucked away under the fire escape and hidden under a tarpaulin was a small motorbike that Kay, Becca’s foster-mother, had bought for her at the beginning of the year. Not that Becca could afford to run it, though she hadn’t told Kay that.
The yard could have been nice. In the summer, the sun had shone on it all day, and plants had grown up through the cracks in the asphalt, making it look green and garden-y, but right now, it was just a place where all the junk from the shop got dumped.
She let herself in through the back door, checking round as she did so for any sign of the kitten that had appeared just a couple of days ago. She’d often see it pouncing on leaves blown across the ground, and vanishing as soon as it became aware of her watching. It looked very small to be out, and she hoped it had a home somewhere.
There was no sign of it, so it probably did.
Upstairs, she had a quick shower – cold, because the water heater hadn’t been on, and anyway, her card was short of credit – then pulled on trousers and a T-shirt, loose, with long sleeves. Carl Lavery, her boss at the pub, could get a bit grabby, so she never gave him anything to grab if she could help it.
She pulled her hair up into a high ponytail. When they were dancing, that time they had gone clubbing, Andy said he liked it. As she looked at her face in the mirror, she saw her cheeks flush. She could remember him watching her that night, here in this flat, when she’d pulled the clip free and her hair had fallen down round her shoulders.
And he was back tonight. She felt a tension inside her that was half painful, half nice as she finished getting ready. A bit of make-up, just to hide the scar that ran down from the side of her nose to her lip, and a brush of eye stuff to make her eyelashes and eyebrows a bit darker, because otherwise they tended to vanish.
She’d first met Andy when he started coming into the pub several weeks earlier, and from the off, he’d treated her like she was a person, not some robot with tits who was there to give him a show while she served drinks.
One evening, before she really knew him, he was at the bar on a busy night, taking time as he decided his order. She’d snapped at him to get a move on and he’d looked at her sadly. ‘You don’t like me because I’m a Transformer.’
She’d stared back, prepared to take offence.
