‘It’s me, it’s Sar. You all right, Doll?’ came her sister’s voice.
Christ, she couldn’t let poor little Sarah see this!
‘Fetch Dad will you, Sar?’ she called, and stepped away from the pot, wetness trailing down her legs and making her shiver with revulsion. She toed the pot under the bed and got back between the sheets, feeling blood sticking to her, messing up the bed. It was a horrible thing she’d done and she was shivering now, bleeding, feeling sick at what had just happened.
Dad was up within a couple of minutes, and came in the room, closing the door behind him. He stood there, and said: ‘Has it come away then, Doll?’
Dolly couldn’t bear to look at him. She nodded, swiped at her tears.
‘Under the bed,’ she said, and Dad moved forward, delicately stepping around the afterbirth, and pulled out the pot. Dolly heard him draw in a sharp breath.
‘Doll?’ he said.
Dolly turned her head and stared at her father. His grizzled face looked sweat-sheened and white; he looked like he was about to puke his guts up and Dolly knew why: he’d seen what she had seen – that the tiny dead girl had his face – the same chin, the same nose, everything.
‘You all right then, girl?’ he asked, and his voice shook.
Something hardened in Dolly then. She stopped crying, and nodded. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘But the sheets are dirty and so’s my nightie, I’ll need clean.’
He was nodding too. With a shudder his eyes went back to the tiny dead thing in the pot. ‘I’ll see you all right,’ he said.
Before he’d taken her to that ugly cow in Aldgate, Dolly would have believed that.
Now, she didn’t.
London, June 1994
‘Fuck, it’s you,’ said the man.
Annie turned. It was the day after she’d got to Ellie’s. She’d overslept so she had a quick bath, dressed, skipped breakfast, said hello to Chris, Ellie’s husband, who was sitting at the kitchen table and who grunted a reply. She braced herself and took a cab over to the Palermo Lounge to see what was happening there.
Answer? Not much. The big double red doors were closed, the neon sign was switched off, there were police tapes strung up and a beat copper was standing there, staring impassively into the middle distance. And now this other man had arrived, one she recognized. He was about six-three, with straight dark hair and dark hard eyes that endlessly scanned everything around him. He was formally dressed in a black suit, white shirt and tie. His downturned solemn trap of a mouth didn’t lift in a smile.
