The Way Out Read online

  ‘I’ll just take him for a walk around the bandits,’ said Mary. She chivvied Alec, who was a good foot taller than her, out from his seat and led him by the elbow towards the stairs.

  Dora sat on her own and looked out over what had once been a dance floor, back before everyone had televisions and computers to keep them busy. There had been a revolving stage on a massive turntable at the far end. When one band finished their set, the whole thing would revolve, and a fresh band would strike up the next number as they swung into view. Non-stop dancing. That was the Palais’ claim to fame and a lot of folk took to it like it was an order, staying on the floor for hours, sweating and spinning till they couldn’t walk or think in a straight line.

  The polished boards were now covered by a greasy carpet with a geometric design, the space filled with rows of Formica tables and chairs, all kept in their place by thick metal bolts through the legs into the floor. Near the ceiling, the old chandeliers and mirror balls that used to spill a confetti of light over the dancers below, had been replaced with blank white globes, like dead planets. Life had moved on.

  The memories this place sprung on her at times disconnected her from the here and now, as if time itself was some kind of puzzle she’d never be able to solve without going mad. All the same, being at the bingo was still better than sitting at home, waiting for nothing to happen. It always did. Then that nothing would become a something – an emptiness that pressed in on her, making her heart race and her hands shake. That was when the other, darker thoughts would creep out of the corners and torment her with detail.

  The lights dimmed as Colin again climbed the steps to the caller’s raised podium. The chatter died down. People coughed and shifted their feet in nervy anticipation.

  Saturday nights were serious money, the sort of money that could change a person’s life, if you wanted it changing. Their club linked up with a dozen others across the country and all the prize money was pooled, so your chances of success were much lower but if you did win, the jackpot was far bigger than on an ordinary night. Enough to take a good long holiday in Australia, as Mary had pointed out more than once. Like Dora hadn’t worked that out for herself.

  The silence stretched tight as all heads turned towards the podium. Colin was obviously savouring his moment as everyone hung on the very edge of his silence. He delivered his line with gravity. ‘Eyes down for the National Game.’

  The electronic board mounted on the wall at the far end of the hall lit up in a simulated star burst which dissolved to reveal a grid within which the lucky numbers would be illuminated as they were called.

  ‘Sixteen. One and six, sixteen.’

  She scanned her card for the number. Never Been Kissed. Colin was under orders from club HQ not to use the lingo. More games could be played each session without the frills. But Dora remembered them all, whether she wanted to or not.

  She remembered walking into the Palais de Danse on her sixteenth birthday. Like stepping inside a giant hollowed-out wedding cake at Christmas – all creamy columns and layered balconies decorated with pink and white mouldings, the edges trimmed with lights.

  Charlie only had a couple of years on her but seemed much older. His swaggering walk, Italian suit, the hank of black hair, heavy with Brylcreem. She knew he got into the fights that broke out in the dark recesses under the balconies where a dangerous current of young men circled like sharks. He would have cuts on his knuckles, maybe a graze on his face, a hint of swelling around his mouth. Somehow this only made his gentleness with her more overpowering. She’d been such an eejit. Never been kissed, right enough. When he dipped his head down to her and spoke softly, rested his hands on her waist, she’d felt a fierce desire to be a damn sight more than kissed. If this was love, it wasn’t about hearts or flowers. It was all hot breath and sinew and need.

  ‘Seven and eight, seventy eight.’ Heaven’s Gate.

  She’d gone outside for some air. Really she was looking for Charlie.

  Outside, the front of the Palais was a large rectangular slab of art deco with thin leaded windows and a triangular gable over four columns. Behind the façade, the hunched barn of the main hall squatted like a shameful secret.

  ‘Dora! Over here.’ He was leaning against the side of the building, smoking. His face flared in the glow from the burning tip of his cigarette before falling back into darkness. ‘Come on, I’ve got something to show you.’

  Around the back of the building, among the empty crates and rubbish bins, they slid together into a darkened doorway marked Deliveries Only. A hand at the small of her back pulled her in close, another slid under her full skirts. There was a small thud as the back of her head bumped against the metal door.

  ‘Four and one. Forty-one.’ Life’s begun.

  Back inside, as they slow danced, her head on his shoulder, breathing in his smell, her limbs seemed not to be joined to her body in the same way. The springs under the dance floor no longer supported her as she moved but seemed to work against her, causing her to lurch and sway, to cling to Charlie. Thinking of the potential consequences made her feel queasy. But everyone knew the first time was safe. They’d be more careful in future.

  ‘Two and eight. Twenty-eight.’ In a state.

  The pain was more than anyone could ever have warned her. It rose up in dark red waves that swamped her completely. ‘Pain’ was too small and weak a word for this force. It was bigger than her, bigger than the room, the hospital, something separate and unstoppable. Her mother walked over to the window in small precise steps and stared into the darkness with her lips pressed together.

  The numbers kept coming and Dora stamped them off one after another. She glanced up at the podium. Soon the game would be over and Colin would be reduced once more to making smutty innuendoes to get attention. He would stay up there all the time if they’d let him, Dora thought.

  Her card was filling up as if Colin was reading the numbers over her shoulder. She felt sweat prickle on the back of her neck. Her sense of being on the edge of something increased. She pressed her forearms down hard on the table, trying to get a grip without making it obvious she needed to. It felt as if the whole balcony was tipping forwards into the hall in the direction of the café at the far end, where the revolving stage used to be.

  The whole affair had been managed by two hand cranks, one on either side of the stage. ‘Watch this,’ Charlie had whispered in her ear, then walked that walk of his towards the stage. Dora watched as he and three of his pals took hold of the cranks, two men to each, and started working them as hard as they could. The stage began to turn, slowly at first, then with increasing speed as the Johnny Kildare Orchestra went into the closing bars of ‘I’ll be Loving You Always’. The band leaned in against the spin, tried their best to look as if nothing was happening, and kept playing. They were half way round when there was a grinding noise and the stage left its runners altogether, tipping the band off into a flailing pile of tuxedoes and instruments. Cheers went up from the crowd. Charlie and his mates sped past, an irate brass section close behind.

  ‘One and three. Thirteen.’ Unlucky for some.

  There was no reason to think Angela wasn’t nursing in Australia. No reason at all. Certainly no reason to imagine she’d ended up a druggie, like those lassies in the flats, shacked up with some arsehole who beat her up, or with ten kids she couldn’t feed that got taken off her one by one by the social, or giving hand-jobs to men who avoided eye contact and swore at her when they came, or beaten and dumped in a ditch with her own bra twisted around her neck, eyes wide open, staring at the sky for days, weeks, without anybody noticing she was gone. And all of it made possible because she believed her own mother didn’t want her, had never loved her. But that wasn’t true at all.

  What was true and what wasn’t didn’t make much difference to what happened to a person in life. It hadn’t to her, or to Angela – if that was even her name now, wherever she was, whoever she was. Adoption was easily done in those days. Happened all the
time – the product of ignorance and prejudice. She wasn’t anything special. She just thought too much. That’d always been her problem. Left to her own devices, her mind invariably wandered back to the well-worn track of whatever happened to her girl. Hoping everything worked out for her, hoping she had a good life, hoping she didn’t think too badly of her. Hope was a bastard, but it was also the only thing she had that couldn’t be taken off her. It was both her escape and her prison; life support and life sentence. It pulled her through the years, days, seconds, gifting and cursing her from breath to breath with a string of empty promises. Without it she’d hardly be human.

  There was a sudden eruption of activity right at the back of the balcony. A woman with wispy white hair and enormous glasses shouted and leapt out of her seat, squawking and flapping.

  ‘We have a claim!’ announced Colin.

  A uniformed girl came running to check the woman’s card, the microphone buzzing in her hand.

  ‘I need to see your card.’

  ‘But I’ve not won!’ shouted the woman who by now looked as if she was about to take off. ‘Look – there!’ She pointed towards the shadows in the corner behind her seat. ‘Mouse, you stupid girl! Not house – mouse! See? Over there by the wall. Bold as brass, looking at me like it owns the bloody place.’

  Dora stood and peered in the direction the woman was pointing and, right enough, there sat a small brown mouse, perfectly still, its black eyes glinting. Calmly, as if pleased it had made its point, it turned and padded out of sight.

  The hall was in an uproar, some were laughing, some shouting abuse at the woman for interrupting the game. Colin kept repeating, ‘Can I have the code number please?’

  Eventually the girl shouted over her mic, ‘No claim!’ and the game continued.

  ‘Three and one. Thirty one.’ Get up and run.

  Full house. Couldn’t be. But it was.

  Alec was watching her, a droplet of spit slowly descending from his lower lip. Without looking up from her game, Mary reached over with a tissue and wiped it away before tucking the tissue into the sleeve of her cardigan.

  Dora felt a falling, draining sensation that left the top of her head buzzing with cold, her ears filled with sea-shell emptiness. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her. She looked at Mary and Jim, at the rows of heads in the hall below, bowed over their cards.

  Then the realisation. She didn’t have to say a thing. If she simply waited, someone else’s card would fill up. Just a matter of time. All she needed to do was wait.

  Colin’s intercom crackled into life carrying the distant shouts of a winning claim in one of the other halls. Dora twisted her card tight and pushed it firmly into the neck of her almost empty bottle.

  Mary and Jim were comparing their missed numbers, groaning and laughing over their near misses. Mary looked up at her, ‘No luck either then, Dora?’

  Dora felt light, as if she could launch herself off the balcony and fly in great swooping arcs around the hall. ‘No, not tonight, Mary. Maybe next time.’

  ‘We live in hope eh?’ said Jim, rising from his seat and gathering up the empty glasses. ‘Same again?’

  Home Security 2

  The interview was in a second floor flat converted into offices. The conversion amounted to no more than stripping out anything homey and throwing in a few desks, swivel chairs and ring binders. The air smelled of sweat and adolescent aftershave. Crooked venetian blinds were drawn against the sunlight, casting the room into shadow save for the glow from a PC screen. The bluish light made everyone in the room look like corpses, including Derek and his business partner, Darren, both of whom wore wide ties and grimy-looking pastel shirts.

  Derek looked me up and down and offered me his hand to shake, already bored with the formalities. He glanced at the single printed page of my CV, sighed and tossed it onto the desk. My earlier misgivings started muttering and edging forward in my mind but I herded them back and shushed them into silence.

  ‘Take a seat over there. Be with you in a minute.’

  There were four of us, lined up against the wall on orange plastic chairs. Two youngish guys and a middle-aged woman. The faint whiff of desperation hung around us like an eggy fart. I fixed my attention on the thin ribbon of blue sky showing through a gap in the blinds and silently repeated the mantra ‘good earning potential good earning potential’. Derek and Darren bustled about, letting off volleys of forced laughter and shuffling bundles of fliers and clipboards, attaching pens on short lengths of string. We waited, not looking at each other.

  ‘Right, we’ve got two teams today,’ Derek announced, handing out the clipboards. His shirt buttons strained over his stomach as he inflated his already bulky torso with enough enthusiasm to achieve take-off velocity.

  The red plastic covering on my clipboard was split at the corners, the hardboard showing through.

  ‘Margaret and David, you’re with Darren.’

  The older woman and one of the young guys looked at Darren who winked back and made a clicking noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Neither of them appeared reassured by this.

  ‘Kirsty and John, you’re with me.’

  ‘Joe,’ said the guy sitting next to me. ‘My name’s Joe.’ His voice lacked conviction, like he didn’t care all that much, would be willing to be John, or James, or even Janet as long as he got paid at the end of the day. There were dark circles under his eyes and his chin looked raw and patchy as if he’d shaved in a hurry.

  Derek blinked and scribbled something on his own clipboard. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘What you’ve got to remember, what you’ve got to impress upon the homeowner, is that you’re not selling anything.’

  ‘We’re not?’

  I glanced over at Joe. He raised his eyebrows and gave a small apologetic shrug. This was the closest we’d come to communicating since we met five minutes earlier. Crammed together into the back seat of Derek’s Corsa as it pushed through traffic, it was too much too soon. Joe cleared his throat and I sat on my hands. We both stared at the back of Derek’s head.

  ‘No, you’re not. No selling at all. You’re giving them information. No strings attached. Completely free of charge or obligation.’ Derek’s voice sounded like a pre-recorded message playing from somewhere at the back of his throat. While the words came out level, he was swerving around a builder’s van parked in the bus lane and giving the finger to the driver behind. ‘The only cost to them is a minute of their time to allow you to deliver that information.’

  Derek was taking us for an aptitude test.

  ‘No quicker way to find out if you can do this job than going out and doing it. I don’t have time to waste fannying around, training you up on the off-chance, only to get out in the field and find you can’t cut it.’

  Joe scratched his nose and leant forward. ‘But if we’re not selling, then what—’

  ‘You’re wondering what’s in it for us? Where’s the payoff?’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose I am,’ said Joe, turning his head as we passed a police car parked with blue lights flashing outside a locksmith’s shop. ‘Wondering.’

  ‘What you’re after, the prize you seek, the Holy Grail of your quest, and the only way you’re going to be leaving with any cash in your pocket today, by the way, is… the Referral.’ Derek rolled the word out like an expensive rug for us to admire.

  We appreciated the word silently, and after a suitable pause Derek continued.

  ‘Your job is to deliver the information. And then – pay attention both of you, this is the important bit – then, persuade them to sign up for a free Home Security Consultation.’

  Joe nodded. ‘And that’ll be the sales guys?’

  ‘Specialists,’ replied Derek, his neck stiffening. ‘Home security specialists.’

  Joe looked over at me, rolled his eyes and smiled.

  ‘And those specialists just happen to sell security systems?’ I said, returning the smile, the ice broken. We could be allies, me and
Joe, I thought – help each other through this, have a bit of a laugh. He’d have his reasons for being here, same as I had mine.

  ‘Hahaha!’ Derek laughed like a machine jamming. ‘You’re a sharp one, Kirsty, aren’t you? Sharp as a tack. I could tell straight off. I reckon you could be one of my top earners.’

  Joe turned away to look out of his side window, our conspiracy disbanded before it was properly formed.

  ‘You need to focus on your goal. The Referral. That’s all you’re after. Never mind what comes next. Specialists. Sales guys. Whatever. Just keep your eyes on the prize. You are not sales people. At no point in your pitch will you mention the word sales. You will no more say sales to the homeowner than you would say tit-wank.’

  An intake of breath from Joe. I sighed inwardly but didn’t react, just kept staring at the back of Derek’s head, the way his neck bulged over his off-white collar, the rigidity of his gelled hair. I stifled a yawn. This was going to be a long afternoon.

  Derek took a corner fast. I grabbed the door handle to keep from falling into Joe’s lap.

  ‘If, and only if, the homeowner wishes to act upon the recommendations made in the consultation then our specialist will make some suitable suggestions from the product range carried by Apex Security. But that’s not your concern. Your concern is…?’

  ‘The referral,’ Joe and I parroted simultaneously without enthusiasm.

  ‘That’s right! Top marks. And what word do you not use?’

  I decided to let Joe have that one, by way of a peace offering.

  ‘Sales,’ he said.

  ‘Right again! Gold star!’

  ‘Or tit-wank,’ Joe added with a snigger and a sidelong glance in my direction.

  I stared out at the traffic as if I hadn’t heard him. Responding to this kind of crap only makes it more important. Some guys think any sexual reference is like Kryptonite to women. I don’t get it. And I don’t care enough about what they think to be arsed putting them right.