Our Vinnie (17 page)

‘Titch, gimme a fucking minute, will you?’ June said, adding the rest of the bags to the pile. She grinned and ruffled her daughter’s hair. ‘I have got you summat as it happens, but go make us a quick cuppa while I stash all this lot from your dad.’

‘You’d better,’ Titch agreed. ‘If he sees that coat on you he’ll go mental.’

‘Oh, not this,’ June said. ‘Sod him. I’m keeping this on. I want to see the look on everyone’s faces, don’t I? Anyway, what you doing standing there gawping? I said to go and make the tea while I get this lot out of sight!’

Titch shook her head as she went to the kitchen, her day suddenly feeling much brighter all round. Who cared where they got it anyway – she was getting a present! ‘Yeah, mam,’ she shouted back as she lit the gas under the greasy kettle. ‘Like he’s not going to notice anything when you walk in the pub dressed like a bleeding leopard!’

‘Fair point,’ June conceded, amid much exciting-sounding rustling. ‘Anyway, come on back in here, love. I found your present.’

It was in a small bag, and straight away Josie could see what it was. Well, what she hoped it would be – a record. And it was. It was Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, which was currently in the charts and was her most favourite song,
ever
. For a moment or two she simply stood there and gazed at it, unable to believe she actually held it in her hands.

June chuckled. ‘Pleased? See, I’m not such a miserable old fart, am I? Knew you’d like it.’

Josie felt a glow of affection for her mum, hearing that. She had a record. A record of her very own. She couldn’t believe it. ‘Mam, I
love
it. How did you –’

‘Know? Because I’m your mam and I know what you like. Nah, to be fair, it was just a lucky guess. The man in the shop said all the kids were raving about it. So I went for it. He said it’s going to go to number one, that one, you know.’

The glow dimmed, to be replaced by something much more familiar. That nagging sense, which was ever present, that if she’d been Vinnie, her mam
would’ve
known what she liked. She pushed the thought away. It didn’t matter. It just was what it was, and she wasn’t about to change it. Specially with Vin so far away and her mam missing him so much.

God, she couldn’t wait for him to get home so she could show him, she thought, carefully pulling the record from its sleeve and being careful not to touch the grooves and scratch them. She slipped it back again – she needed to get round to Caz’s house to play it. Her parents’ record player was rubbish – it played everything too slow. And as this was her first ever record she didn’t want to risk damaging it with their ancient stylus. And Caz would love it, too. She still couldn’t quite believe she had it.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ she told June, who was by now inspecting the contents of her other bags, and piling some of the smaller ones into the bigger ones. ‘Kettle’s nearly boiled, and I got the cups out, so can I go to Carol’s, so I can play it?’

‘Go on then,’ June said. ‘But you just make sure you’re home at a decent hour. Your dad an’ I’ll be down the Bull and I don’t want to have to worry about you walking home late. No going down the backs, okay? And if it gets late, you’re to go and stop up our Lyndsey’s, okay?’

Josie gave her mum a hug before she left, clearly startling her. She smelt of some sort of powerful, exotic perfume. Stop at Lyndsey’s? There wouldn’t be much chance of that. She’d rather sleep in the street than spend a night under that pervy git Robbo’s roof.

Chapter 13

On the way, Titch inspected the record again more closely. She wanted to read every single tiny bit of writing on it so that she knew what was what in case anyone asked. Even the bits that were scratched on the vinyl itself, round the hole in the middle, so no one could call her a liar when she told them she had it. It puffed her up with pleasure, the thought of going into school on Monday, the owner of her first single – and what a single, too! She couldn’t wait. It would be so good at last to have something to impress people. It had been so hard, moving up to secondary school and having to try and fit in. Back in primary, it was almost all kids from the estate, who were as hard up for material things as she was. But now it was different, and trying to fit in with the kids from the more affluent estates was almost impossible. In fact, she’d mostly given up. But this would show them. They were all going to be so jealous.

She sniffed the cardboard sleeve, remembering how Vinnie had once told her that he loved sniffing the pages of a new book in the same way, and how he’d shoved his copy of
Murder on the Orient Express
under her nose to prove it. And he’d been right. The paper in books just smelled different from other paper. Enticing, somehow. As if the words themselves were reaching out to pull you in. God, she missed him. He should be here now, sharing this.

A loud whistle interrupted her thoughts. She looked up then and in doing so she realised where she was – just across the street from Mucky Melvin’s. She looked around her. The street was silent again, and there was no one about. It was dusk and the air carried a mild whiff of grease: people cooking chips, sitting down, eating tea. She carried on, careful not to look up towards the window across the road from her, shoving the record up under her jumper as she went. She was just crossing the road diagonally when she thought she heard something again, and as soon as she turned around, nearly shot a foot into the air – Mucky Melvin himself was stood there, right behind her.

She turned to run, instinctively, but even before her legs could begin moving, she felt a rough yank on her arm, and almost lost her balance. And in a matter of seconds, felt a stinking hand being clamped across her mouth, and the violence of being bodily hoicked back down the street, clamped by a strong unyielding arm across her chest.

Unable to make any sound other than a muffled grunt, and all too aware that the street was still empty, she squirmed and struggled like a wild animal against his terrifyingly strong grip. He’d pulled her only a matter of yards; not as far as his house – just into the alley that separated the row of houses and gave access to the backs, where a tall evergreen hedge scraped and shifted as they passed, emitting a pungent, piney scent.

‘You’ll only make it worse, Titch,’ Melvin whispered, almost conversationally, as he huffed his way along the alley between the neighbouring houses, his stinking hand under her nose making her retch. His grip was starting to crush her chest now, in his effort to keep her from escaping, and she was only now aware that the record must be gone.
Please, please, please let someone be out in their yards
, she prayed desperately, kicking her legs out to try and crack his shin or trip him up, and trying not to let her mind take her to the place where she knew Mucky Melvin’s was right now. She could tell by his breathing; the same raggedy rasp she remembered so well and that he was emitting from disgustingly close to her ear.

But there would be no one. It was cold, it was getting dark and it was tea-time. If she could only open her mouth wide enough to be able to try and bite him –

‘Shit!’ his voice took on a sudden explosive quality and in the same instant she was propelled from his grasp. She didn’t know how or why, only that she was aware of him falling – the force of his weight against her shunting her a good foot in front of him, before he crashed down onto the ground like a felled tree. She wasted no time in stopping to find out, either. He must have tripped in the gloom; stood on something, tripped on something. She didn’t know and didn’t care, just made her legs work like pistons, propelling her down and along and out of the end of the alley, her lungs almost bursting and her throat catching fire. She didn’t stop running till she fetched up at Carol’s house, where she began thumping furiously on the door.

‘Where’s the bleeding fire?’ Carol was already asking before Josie could even see her. Then, the door fully open and their eyes meeting, added, ‘Christ, Titch – you look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

Josie’s lungs seemed to still have a life of their own, rising and falling and stopping her getting her words out.

‘What?’ Carol said, pulling her inside and shutting the door with her foot. ‘What’s happened, Titch? What’s up? What’ve you done?’

Josie shook her head. ‘Not me,’ she managed to get out. ‘Wasn’t me. It was Melvin!’

‘Melvin?’ Carol said, herding her into the kitchen. ‘Mucky Melvin?’

Josie nodded. ‘He grabbed me –’

‘He
grabbed
you? What –
where
?’ she asked, pulling out one of the mismatched vinyl chairs and pushing Josie down on it. ‘You mean you went in his
house
again?’

‘No,’ Josie said. Her hands had begun to shake violently. She could still
smell
him. ‘No, no, never. He just grabbed me – right in the street!’

‘Bloody hell – in your
street
? In broad
daylight
?’ Carol glanced out of the kitchen window. ‘Well, broad-ish. The filthy bastard!’ She sat down too. ‘And then what happened?’

‘He just grabbed me and tried to pull me down the alley, and he had his hand over my mouth so I couldn’t even scream, and he was –’ She shuddered. ‘Oh, God, Caz, s’pose I hadn’t got away from him …’

‘The shitty fucking bastard,’ Caz said again. ‘So how did you get away from him?’

‘I don’t know. I think he tripped on something, or maybe slipped. No, probably tripped. One minute he was behind me – he was holding me against him, like, at the front –’ She drew her arms into a circle in front of her to demonstrate. ‘And the next he went down like a ton of bricks, and I just legged it. Christ, Caz, what am I going to
do
?’

Carol stood up again and put her hands on her hips. ‘You want some pop? The man’s been and I told him me mam wanted some leaving. She’ll go apeshit, like, but I’m not bothered. Dandelion and burdock. In the fridge. You want some?’

Josie nodded, biting her lip to stop herself from crying, and trying to still her trembling hands by smoothing Blue, who, perhaps having sensed that she needed her in some way had climbed out of her basket and trotted across to Josie, plopping her velvety head into her lap.

Carol got the pop bottle out of the fridge and carefully opened it to stop it spurting, then poured two glasses and placed them down on the little kitchen table.

Josie reached out for one, then thought better of it, and lifting the dog’s head from her lap, went over to the sink and washed her hands as thoroughly as she could first, using a squirt of washing up liquid.

‘I can’t tell my mam,’ she said, sitting down again and stroking Blue. ‘I just can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I just can’t, that’s all.’

‘I think you should – s’pose he tries it again and this time he doesn’t trip over?’

Josie sipped at the drink, the bubbles still dancing on the surface and tickling her top lip. ‘Because what if I do and then they go for him an’ it comes out that he – well, what he did to me before?’

Caz shook her head. ‘It won’t. He’s not going to admit that, is he? He’d have to be mad as well as mucky!’

‘But he might. S’pose he tells them I was asking for it or something?’

‘Asking for it? That’s just mad. Come on, Titch – you really think he’d ever do that?’

‘Yeah, but –’ Josie sighed. She wished she
could
believe he wouldn’t. But she never told before, and she was happy that she hadn’t. And she just knew telling now would make things bad for her. That somehow it would come out – she might blurt it out herself, even. That the not telling had made
her
seem bad, all by itself. Like she mustn’t have even
cared
much.

How badly she wished Vinnie was home – she was counting the weeks till his release date in September now. How badly she wanted the summer to be done with. How badly she wished he could just go round and punch Melvin’s lights out. She should have told Vin when it happened in the first place, she realised. He might not have been home but he’d have sorted it out for her. One way or another, he would’ve. He’d have sorted it so that bastard never thought, in a million billion
years
, that he’d got away with it. That he could try it on again with her now.

Her friend must have been reading her thoughts, she decided. ‘How about you tell Vin?’ Carol suggested. ‘You’ve got to tell
someone
. I mean, it’s not like Black Bobby used to do to me, this, is it? This is different, Titch. I mean, this is him trying to kidnap you, almost, isn’t it? So’s he could
rape
you.’

The word hung there between them, stark and singular. He’d raped her before and might have raped her again. Titch felt her chin begin to wobble at the thought of what might have been, and for the record she’d now lost, and the peace of mind that had been destroyed, and she fought to hold back a fresh bout of tears. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, the bastard.

‘Hey,’ said Carol, obviously seeing her face going. ‘Count yourself lucky anyway, mate. Least you haven’t got tits to grope, like I have.’ Then she mimed it, squeezing both of hers and grinning, at which Josie, sniffing back the torrent, at least managed a wan smile.

‘I can’t tell Vinnie,’ she said. ‘For one thing mam’s
still
not paid the bloody phone bill, and for another thing, he’d go completely mental –
completely
mental – and he’d end up being banged up for another God knows how many months, just when he’s about to come home. No, Caz, I want him back and I’m not going to do anything that might make him do something that’ll stop that happening.’

Carol shrugged. ‘Fair enough. Got to tell someone though, haven’t you? Hey, there’s a thought,’ she said. ‘What about your Lyndsey? Maybe she’d know best what to do. Maybe she could send her Robbo round to put the frighteners on him even. Or maybe tell your mam
for
you? Something, anyway.’ She drained her pop and banged her empty glass down on the kitchen table then, startling Josie. ‘Men, eh?’ she said, rolling her eyes.