Bad Girls Good Women. Rosie Thomas

one lifted her head. ‘We’ve got nowhere to sleep. We thought we’d just stay up all night. But the night didn’t last quite long enough for it to be day again.’

      She gestured, wearily, at the sleeping city. The first car of the morning, or the last car of the night, purred past them. The crowd from the club was disappearing, and they began to feel as they were the only people left between sleeping and waking. Mattie looked up too. She noticed that he was tall and slim, with black hair that curled close to his head. He looked foreign and handsome, and exotic, but she was too tired to work out whether that was threatening or not.

      ‘Do you know anywhere we can stay?’ she asked. ‘Just for tonight? What’s left of it.’ They were both watching him.

      Felix thought of home, and of Jessie who would now be prowling heavily, wakefully, in her room.

      All his instincts warned him to offer nothing, but the memory of how they had looked inside the Rocket Club made him fight back his instincts. He sighed. ‘There’s a spare room where I live. It isn’t much.’

      ‘After last night, anywhere with a roof will be a palace,’ the dark one said.

      ‘Which way?’ the other one demanded. Felix pointed, and they began walking. He noticed that they were both almost falling over with exhaustion. He held his hands out for one of the suitcases, then the other.

      ‘Hey, what have you got in here?’

      The dark one shrugged her shoulders. They were thin and bony, he saw, like a young boy’s.

      ‘Everything,’ she said.

      They came into the square as the light changed from grey to gold. Felix looked up at Jessie’s window. The curtains were open.

      ‘I live with my mother,’ he said baldly.

      The one who called herself Mattie smiled. ‘Mothers tend not to like us very much.’

      ‘Mine’s different.’

      But it was Mattie’s expectations that were proved right. Felix unlocked the door at the top of the stairs and they crowded together into the awkward hall. There was hardly room for the three of them and the two suitcases. There was a slow creaking noise, and Jessie appeared from her room. Her bulk seemed to block out the light. Mattie was at the back, and she saw only an old woman, very fat, who breathed with difficulty. But Julia was closer and she saw that Felix’s mother had quick, sharp eyes that were at odds with her size. Her expression was closed, and hostile. Felix’s heart sank. He had seen Jessie confront unwelcome customers with that face.

      ‘Who’s this?’

      He told her.

      ‘They can’t stay here. This isn’t a rooming house.’

      Jessie was suspicious, and defensive, and she didn’t like strangers any more. The little lair perched at the top of the offices was all she had, and she didn’t want it to be invaded. Felix understood, and he wished that he hadn’t dragged these waifs back here with him.

      ‘It’s just for one night,’ he soothed her. ‘There’s not much of it left, anyway.’

      Jessie peered at the two girls. They were hardly more than children, and she thought that she recognised the type. And then the one with the terrible ratty tangle of curling fair hair said softly. ‘Please.’

      Jessie was angry, but she knew that she had lost. She couldn’t deny that appeal. It was characteristic that she accepted her defeat and moved swiftly on.

      ‘You’ll be out of here by twelve o’clock sharp. There’ll be no noise, no waste of hot water, and no funny business of any sort.’

      Mattie grinned at her. Their relief was like a light being turned on.

      ‘We’re the quietest sleepers in London. And we’re too tired to wash or think of anything funny, I promise.’

      Jessie turned her massive back and shuffled away to her chair.

      The room that Felix showed them into had one single mattress and a sleeping bag. He brought them some pillows and blankets, and they murmured their thanks and burrowed into them, fully clothed.

      They were asleep, like small animals, even before he had draped a blanket over the dormer window.

      ‘Well, where do you live?’ Jessie demanded.

      The girls had slept for six hours, and they only woke up at midday because Felix rapped on their door. They tried to slip into the bathroom, but Jessie was too quick for them.

      ‘Don’t sneak around,’ she shouted from her room. ‘Come in here and let me have a look at you. Then you can be off and leave us in peace.’

      They stood in front of her, like schoolgirls facing the headmistress. Glancing round the room, Julia saw that it was full of photographs. There were dozens of laughing faces and raised glasses, and most of the groups showed a younger version of Felix’s mother beaming somewhere in the middle. It was hard to reconcile that conviviality with this huge, formidable woman.

      ‘You must live somewhere,’ Jessie was insisting. ‘Why d’you have to turn up at my place in the middle of the night? Although that boy’s just as much to blame for bringing you.’

      They looked round for him, but Felix was prudently keeping out of the way. They could hear him rattling plates in the kitchen. The homely noise reminded them that they were hungry.

      ‘Well?’ Jessie demanded.

      Julia decided rapidly that there was no point in attempting anything but the truth. Jessie would certainly recognise anything that wasn’t.

      ‘We haven’t got anywhere to live,’ she said. ‘Just at the moment, that is. The night before last we slept on the Embankment. Last night we were going to stay up, dancing, but somehow there’s a gap between night and morning, you know?’

      ‘I remember,’ Jessie said, a shade less grimly.

      ‘Felix rescued us, and brought us here.’

      ‘I know that already. What I’m trying to find out is why you had to sleep on the Embankment in the first place.’

      Very quickly, putting in as little detail as possible, Julia told her. In Julia’s version of the story, Mattie had had an argument with her father about staying out too late. That was all. But Jessie’s little round eyes, sunk in the cushions of flesh, were shrewd as they darted to and fro. They lingered on Mattie for a minute longer.

      When Julia had finished her speech, Jessie said, ‘I see. And now you’ve done your running away and found out how nasty it is, you’ll be going back home where you belong, won’t you?’

      Mattie spoke for the first time. ‘No. We can’t do that.’ Her voice was quiet and steady and utterly definite, and Jessie’s glance flickered over her again.

      ‘We’ve both got jobs,’ Julia told her quickly. ‘Well-paid jobs. As soon as we’ve got some money we can rent a flat. Everything will be all right then.’

      Jessie had seen enough. They looked so vulnerable, both of them, still sleepy, with their eyes smudged round with their unnecessary make-up, and their strange, young-old clothes all rucked up with the weight of sleep. But they weren’t so young, either, Jessie thought. A shadow of something, the beginning of experience perhaps, had touched both their faces, and sharpened them out of the softness of childhood. And they had a defiance in them, a determination, that touched her. The way they stood, the way they looked around, stirred memories in Jessie. They reminded her of friends she hadn’t seen for a long time, most of whom she would never see again. And, just a little, they reminded her of herself.

      Jessie sighed.

      ‘Oh, bloody hell. You’d better have a drink and something to eat before I really do kick you out. Felix! Bring that bottle and some glasses in here.’

      And Felix came in, awkwardly tall in the low room, but moving as gracefully