Billy and Girl Read Free Page B

trees laden with snow on the box. ‘A present from me. Tell her to pop in, I haven’t seen her for a while.’
    ‘Shall I tell you where she is?’ Billy knows that Raj is always interested to know where Girl is.
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Doing a Mom check.’
    ‘What’s a Mom check?’
    Billy decides to chew on a Jaffa after all. ‘It’s where she knocks on the door of a house and pretends that any woman who comes to the door is our mother.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Sad.’ Billy guffaws.
    ‘Why do you say “Mom”? That’s American, isn’t it?’
    ‘Watching telly. We like American sitcom moms.’
    Raj nods, bewildered. It’s quite nice to feel bewildered, makes a change from Stupid Club reading out loud the nutrition information on plastic tubs of margarine.

Chapter 4
    The A27 is a circular road that goes around London. A three-lane carriageway. The sky is grey and the tarmac is grey. Girl asks the cab driver to stop for a while so she can look at the 1930s houses built on the shore of the highway. Pebble dash. Old-fashioned flowers growing in the front drive. Tall purple gladioli and trimmed bushes of honeysuckle. Latticed windows. A shining car parked in each well-swept drive.
    ‘Thinking of buying a property then?’ The cab driver smirks behind his hand.
    When Girl winds down the window the lever falls off. Foam stuffing oozes out of the back seat. Rusting springs poke into Girl’s hips. ‘Your car’s a fucking lousy pile of shit.’
    The driver can’t decide whether she’s a rock star or a psycho. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says, just to be on the safe side.
    ‘I won’t.’ Girl suddenly opens the door of the cab and a rush of dust flies into her face.
    ‘Mad cunt.’ The driver leans towards her trying to keep his hands on the wheel as the door comes off its beaten-up hinges. It drags down on the tarmac and Girl jumps out, skipping between the traffic until she makes it to the other side. The Other Side is important to Girl. She always wants to make it to there.
    Girl strides in her silver loafers right up to the driveway of the biggest house in the street and thumps on the door with her fists. Then she rings the bell. While she waits she takes out apack of menthol cigarettes and lights up. Her face is pale. It always is, but today it is especially pale. Every now and again she bends her knees and peers through the brass letterbox. Girl takes a deep drag of menthol. As far as she’s concerned, menthol is a painkiller. A painkiller with a bit of glamour. She pushes away her peroxide-blond fringe and straightens up. Someone coming. God, she’s so slow. Come
on
!
    ‘Hello, Mom,’ Girl says loudly to the middle-aged woman staring at her from behind the door. What a fucking hideous sight.
    Dirty pastel-pink fake-fur slippers. Summer dress patterned with faded rosebuds and threadbare red robins. Plump arms covered in a peppermint-green cardigan, most of the buttons missing. Band of gold on the finger of left hand. A fucking thick band of gold. The woman shoves her hands into the pockets of her cardigan and gasps when the fabric crackles, sending little electric shocks into her fingertips. Her mouth is open wide, gaping. Girl observes that Mom’s teeth are white and straight. Well looked after. Landscaped. Cleansed by a hygienist. Filled with white porcelain. Bleached and filed.
    ‘Who does your teeth, Mom?’ Girl drops her menthol cigarette on the doorstep and stubs it out with the toe of her silver loafer. The woman just stares. She starts shaking her head, very slowly from side to side, her hand rummaging for something in her pocket. A piece of tissue stained with pink lipstick. She brings it to her lips as if to catch something in her mouth, something unpleasant she has chewed and wants to spit out.
    ‘Billy is quite well but not all that well, thank you, and I am as you see me.’
    ‘Don’t shout.’ The woman can’t quite bring herself to plead, but her eyes are scanning the neighbours’