Gemma James 08 - And Justice There Is None by Crombie Deborah

Author:Crombie, Deborah
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER TEN

Funny thing, history. Since the sixties, all sorts of people, moral reformers, right-wingers, left-wingers, politicians, feminists, male chauvinists, law-and-order campaigners, and censorship freaks of every kind, have invented a straightlaced, well-behaved public life from which the country somehow strayed with the invention of permissiveness.

—Charlie Phillips and Mike Phillips,

from Notting Hill in the Sixties

Although never very substantial, Angel lost weight rapidly after she moved into the Colville Terrace bedsit. This was in part from lack of funds, as her wage did not stretch as far as she'd expected, and in part because the single gas ring in her room didn't encourage more than heating soup or stew from a tin. She took up smoking, finding that tobacco both dulled hunger and eased boredom, not to mention the fact that her boss gave her a discount on cigarettes.

She grew her hair long and straight, with a fringe that brushed her eyebrows and, unable to afford the new fashions, hemmed her skirts above her knees with clumsy stitches that would have made Mrs. Thomas cringe. Her lashes were heavy with mascara, her skin pale with the latest pancake foundation.

There were boys, of course, to impress with her newfound sense of style. As soon as word got round that she was on her own, they came into the shop in pimply droves, wanting to take her to the cinema, or out for a coffee.

At first she was flattered, but she learned soon enough what those invitations meant. After the first few disappointing encounters, she decided she preferred to stay in her room in the evenings, watching the telly and listening to 45s that scratched and hissed on her father's old phonograph.

Posters of the Beatles now covered the damp stains on her walls— their smiling faces watched over her like medieval saints.

These small comforts kept her going until a bitterly cold night in March, when she came to the end of her wages, her food, and paraffin for the heater. It was two days until payday and, shivering beneath a swath of blankets as her stomach cramped from emptiness, she wondered how she was going to manage. Her employer, Mr. Pheilholz, was kind enough, but she knew he had nothing extra to give her. She could go to the Thomases, but the thought of Ronnie's pity and contempt made her decide she'd rather die than give in to that temptation.

Prompted by the thought of the Thomases, however, a memory came to her unbidden. She had been ill once, as a child, and her mother had soothed her with tinned chicken soup and fizzy lemonade. The recollection brought tears to her eyes. She shook it off, as she did most reminders of her former life, but the thought of her mother had triggered another vivid flash.

She got out of bed and scrabbled in the bureau. She didn't remember throwing away the last of her mother's tablets— were they still there? When her mother had been too fretful to sleep, the tiny morphine tablets had given her ease.

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