Bad Girls (19 page)

‘You need to listen now,’ Slava said, settling back into her own chair, reaching for her own drink. ‘Listen carefully to what I am going to tell you. It’s easy for you. You are so beautiful,
láska.
The men who take you out, they have millions of pounds. They take you to five-star hotels and they treat you like a queen, and you’re nice to them, to show you like them and the presents they give you. That’s what all women do. And almost every woman wants your life, to have these rich men ask to take you away for the weekend and buy you Louis Vuitton suitcases because you smile at them and lie down for them.’

She reached over and clinked glasses with Amber, who was staring at her mother in disbelief.

‘Drink,’ Slava said, nodding at the vodka she had poured Amber. ‘It’s good to drink vodka when you hear hard things. Because you will hear hard things, now,
láska.
What you do with those men you go away with, I have done myself. But not nice and easy, in smart hotels, on silk sheets with people to clean them for me afterwards. I have done it for years, standing on the street with other whores like me, waiting for men to come by, doing it in dirty corners or in their dirty cars.’

Amber’s jaw dropped open. Numbly, she fumbled the glass to her lips and drank some of the cheap vodka; it burned going down, but Slava was right. It did help.

‘You thought I was cleaning offices when I went out at night and locked you in,’ Slava’s harsh voice continued relentlessly, the guttural consonants of her native language adding emphasis to her message.‘But no; I needed to make more money than a poor immigrant could do on my hands and knees scrubbing floors and emptying rubbish for two pounds an hour. I needed to make money to buy nice clothes for us, to save, so that when we went to London to try to make you a model they didn’t laugh at us. I needed to make money to put in the bank in case they didn’t want you as a model, because if that was the case, we still needed to go to London, but to find a rich man who would want to meet you because you are so beautiful. You had to have the right clothes, your hair done at the best places, the right things. And there isn’t much time for girls. Maybe ten years, not much more. I was a fool. I married your father when I was young and pretty. I wasted myself on a bad man, a drunk. But I wasn’t a beauty like you. I wasn’t a prize like you. You’re worth a fortune.’

She indicated her daughter with that red-tipped hand. ‘You were my fortune. I could tell that, even when you were young. So I made myself a prostitute for you. Yes, I did that, so that we could get away from
Margate
.’ Slava never said the name of the town Amber had grown up in without making a ritualistic spitting gesture over her shoulder, and she did it now. ‘So that we could go away and never go back. What I did there, I’ve left behind me. I’ll never see those men again, and it is nothing to me. They were dirt, and what they wanted was dirt. But now that’s all over.’

She took another long sip of her drink, and motioned impatiently at Amber to do the same. Mutely, Amber obeyed, finishing her vodka, her head cold and hot at the same time. Slava’s every word had the unmistakable ring of truth. Flashes of memory were swirling through Amber’s champagne-and-vodka-soaked brain: Slava putting on makeup to go out to work in the evening, snapping at Amber if she told her mother she looked pretty; the fact that Slava never seemed to have a fixed schedule for her cleaning jobs, but would come home in the early hours, almost always at different times, so that Amber could never be sure when to expect her; and the long, stiff drink Slava always poured herself when she came in, kicking off her shoes, swearing to herself in Slovak, crawling into bed next to Amber smelling hot and rank and musky, smelling, Amber realized now, of odours that were not her own.

She was crying. Tears were pouring down her face, dropping into her lap, into the empty glass she held there.

‘I’m so sorry,
Matka
,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry you had to do that for me . . .’

‘It’s over now,’ Slava said impatiently. ‘Don’t cry for what is over,
láska
. It’s too late for that. But we haven’t been careful, either of us. We haven’t saved like I did then in Margate.’ Another spit. ‘I was foolish too. When the money started to come in, I thought it would go on for ever. But nothing goes on for ever. We need to buy this flat. I like it here. And maybe other flats too. An income. Or we’ll find you a rich husband. It’s not too late, but now we must plan.’

She reached out to her side table, unpopped a vial of Vicodin and poured out a handful for her daughter, handing her own glass of vodka and Sprite for Amber to swallow them down with.

‘Be calm,
láska
. Much worse things have happened in the world,’ she said, as Amber took the pills from her. ‘This trip to Dubai – bad things won’t happen to you there, not like they did with me. These men won’t say they’ll pay you, and then cheat you and laugh at you. They won’t call you bad names. Every time I got in a car with a man, every time I walked down an alley with him, I would think: will he kill me? Will my Amber be left all alone, locked inside our flat, thinking her mother will come back, waiting for me, as I lie dead on the ground?’

She shook her head. ‘But you – no dirty cars or dirty streets for you. You’ll fly business class, you’ll stay in paradise. You’ll have this girl Mara with you, to make sure you’re happy. A friend! You look like a queen and they’ll treat you like a queen, that’s how it is in this world. They’ll give you wonderful presents, these men. And soon we will have this flat, and then maybe more.’

Amber was crying even harder now, but if someone had asked her why, she would have had trouble telling them; the Vicodin was knocking her out, making her brain so woozy that she could barely focus on her mother’s face. The aftertaste of Sprite was sticky in her mouth. She couldn’t help the tears, and she could do nothing but sit there as they poured out; she felt completely helpless, overwhelmed by her mother’s revelations. Slava, observing this, shrugged and got up, standing behind her daughter, stroking the thick mane of chestnut hair.

‘So cry,’ she said philosophically. ‘Cry and then sleep. It’s good to cry and sleep. Tomorrow you’ll see that I am right,
láska
.’ She bent to drop a kiss on top of her daughter’s head. ‘All this was for you. To make you safe and happy. You know that, don’t you?’

Amber had never felt such intense pain. The revelation of what her mother had done for her – the terrible guilt Amber felt as a consequence, and the guilt she felt now at being so reluctant to go to Dubai – Mara’s words in the bedroom at the St James’s Hotel, the knowledge of what lay in wait for Amber in Dubai if she agreed to go – and her mother, pushing her to take the money, to agree, effectively, to become a prostitute . . .

But I should do it, Amber thought frantically, shouldn’t I? If Matka did it for me, I should do it for her, to keep her safe now as she kept me safe when I was little. There’s no way out.

Amber thought her head would burst from the agony of this dilemma. She was under so much pressure, and there was nowhere to run, no safe place to fall.

Reaching out, she grabbed the vial of Vicodin and palmed some more pills, washing them down with Slava’s vodka.

Oblivion, she thought. That’s all I want right now. Oblivion.

And all the time, Slava was smoothing back Amber’s hair from her tear-streaked face, stroking her forehead gently, crooning to her daughter: ‘Everything I have done was for you,
láska.
Everything has only ever been for you . . .’

A
mber was fighting unconsciousness with everything she had. Ironic: she’d spent more than half of her life partially sedated, in a haze of Percocet and Vicodin, wrapped in a big fluffy cloud she’d never wanted to shed.

And now she had to push that cloud away with every fibre of willpower she had. If she wanted to stay alive.

She tried to sit up, but she could barely raise her back an inch. Still, if she couldn’t sit up, there had to be another way to get off this bed. Because the bed was a big part of the problem: it was so comfy, so soft, so yielding. She’d never manage to stay awake if she stayed here.

Heaving one elbow into the mattress, she used the leverage to twist her body up and over in an awkward roll, impeded by the weight of the coverlet and all the books and magazines and photographs strewn on top of it. Impatiently, she kicked out, and heard some books fall to the floor.

One whole turn. She was on her back again, further away from the woman standing over her, closer to the side of the bed. Another roll over, this one easier; she’d almost got the hang of it. Then she tried to slide her legs off the bed and everything went horribly wrong. Her silk nightdress slid too easily along the sheet below her; she’d meant to feel for the ground with her feet, but before she knew it she was slipping. She threw out her arms, desperately trying to catch hold of something to slow her down. Instead, she hit the bedside table, whacking one forearm on its sharp corner; she heard herself whimper aloud in pain as she collapsed to the floor, her legs crumpling under her.

The pain in her left arm was cutting through the haze of drugs and vodka like a knife. She’d sliced herself open on that table; there was a wet trail of blood dripping down her arm.

Good. It was waking her up. Amber hauled her legs back, one at a time, getting to her knees, bracing herself on hands and knees. Hands flat to the carpet, pulling herself along, knees shuffling after; round the corner of the bed. The blood drops on her arm were tickling, and she rubbed it impatiently against the carpet, which hurt still more; even better.

Amber had been avoiding pain all her life, and now she was actually seeking it out. The realization actually made her lips twist into a sort of smile.

She was at the door now, pushing back with her hands, forcing herself to sit up high enough to reach for the door handle. She had to get her balance before she could loosen her grip and manage to turn the knob, pull it, crack the door open
. . .

In her debilitated state, it was like having a torch shone directly in her eyes. The windows in the bedroom had their curtains drawn; she’d assumed it was evening. But the sunlight in the hallway was clear and bright and dazzling. Amber blinked, overwhelmed. She was still hanging on to the doorknob, and she tried to pull on it to help her to her feet; but her legs were like lead. No way was she going to manage that.

Gritting her teeth, Amber dropped to all fours like an animal, and started to crawl through the open door.

‘No, no,’ said the woman, crossing the room with swift steps, catching the edge of the door and slamming it shut, catching Amber’s fingers as it went.

Amber yelped in pain. The woman leaned down, put her hand on Amber’s back and pushed her over, onto the carpet. Amber was much weaker than she’d realized; she went over like a toy toppled easily by a child’s hand.

‘You can stay there,’ the woman said coldly. ‘It looks even better – you realized you took too much and tried to get help. Just a sad, sad accident.’

No!
Amber thought frantically.
No!

But the burst of energy that had carried her across the room had been a bubble that popped as soon as the daylight vanished, as soon as she’d been tipped back over onto the carpet. The waves of Vicodin and vodka-induced sleep were rolling over her, pulling her under. And despite every effort she could make to prevent it, Amber’s eyelids slowly sank closed.

U
p until the moment she clapped eyes on Joe Jeffreys in the flesh, Skye had been having
serious
second thoughts about this whole crazy rehab setup.

Sure, California was unbelievable. It really was the way it seemed in the movies and TV shows: the palm trees, the low white Spanish Colonial houses, the blue, blue skies, everything bathed in sunlight, everyone acting easy and friendly like they were always bathed in sunlight too. Tans and smiles and wide generous streets, nothing like New Yorkers, with their grim expressions and grey faces. No twenty-foot-high canyons of buildings, dark and menacing. After years in the Big Apple, trying not to get eaten by the worms hiding in its rotten core, Skye realized, as she stepped out of Burbank Airport and drew in a long happy breath of warm damp golden air, that she was more than ready for a change of pace.

She remembered her tearful farewell to Jada early that morning; Jada had hugged Skye so hard she’d picked her right up off the ground, made her promise to keep in touch with tons of calls and texts, sobbing that Skye was going but excited for her too.

‘You’re never coming back!’ Jada had wailed, her chin resting on Skye’s head. ‘I can feel it in my bones!’

Skye had told her not to be so silly, that LA and Joe Jeffreys and this crazy assignment were just a temporary thing. But, dragging her cases through their crappy apartment, bumping them down five flights of mildewed-lino-covered stairs and out onto garbage-strewn 37th Street, Skye had realized that Jada might know her better than she did herself. Skye was ready for a change, for a new adventure. And she was ready to leave her New York life far behind her.

Jada’s the only thing I’ll miss out of that whole stinking city, Skye thought. Look how gorgeous this place is!

New Yorkers were always snotty about LA: well, that was clearly because it was so much nicer on the West Coast, and they were eaten up with jealousy. The warmth, the sunshine, the positivity; the flowering shrubs, the palm trees, the greenery everywhere were a world away from grey old NYC. Even the wide generous roads had birds-of-paradise flowering gorgeously in the centre dividers. And she was being paid to be here – all expenses, plus twenty grand just for taking the assignment, and a promised bonus of up to eighty grand more if she got the goods on Joe.

Eighty grand, just for having sex with one of the hottest men alive, Skye marvelled. This is insane. Of course, I do have to go through rehab. And that’s not going to be a bundle of laughs.