Page 186 of The Hallmarked Man

‘Café,’ said Tia.

‘So she didn’t meet him online?’

‘I’ve just told you,’ said Tia, ‘she met him in Jimmy’s. She bunked off one afternoon and she got talking to the guy in there. He bought her a coffee. She said she’d looked him up online, so she knew he was for real.’

‘“For real” in what sense?’

‘He worked in the music industry or something.’

‘Did she tell you his name?’

‘Nah, she stopped telling me anything about him because I said he was full of shit and she went off on one and hit me round the face.’

‘Shehityou?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tia, with a wry smile. ‘Didn’t hurt, really. She’s tall but she’s really skinny… some of the boys used to call her Olive Oyl.’

‘But you were friends with her?’

‘Not really,’ said Tia, with a slight shrug. ‘I was her “buddy”. If you’re a good student, you get to look after people, if they’re new…’

‘You had to take care of her?’

‘Kinda, yeah… she was always fighting, though. Spent most of her time in special ed when she was here.’

‘What else do you know about her?’

‘Know her dad and uncle were abusing her until she went into carewhen she was seven,’ said Tia, a pronouncement more shocking for being said in such a matter-of-fact tone.

‘How awful,’ said Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Tia unemotionally. ‘She put it about a lot. Girls like her, they think they’ll get over it by letting boys do it to ’em again. Telling themselves it’s no big deal.’

Tia’s thickly lashed eyes looked too old and world-weary for her youthful, rounded face. Robin didn’t think the girl’s unshockability was a pose. Perhaps she’d been ‘buddies’ with too many troubled students to remain ignorant of the uglier facts of life.

‘D’you think Sapphire was sleeping with this so-called music producer?’

‘Probably,’ said Tia, taking another drag on her vape.

‘Can you remember her saying anything else about him?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tia, ‘he give her a necklace. She told me it was rubies.’

In spite of her general misery, a shiver of excitement shot through Robin at this.

‘Rubies,’ sneered Tia. ‘It was just beads. My auntie’s got a ruby ring, I know the difference.’

‘Do you remember anything else she said about him?’

‘Nah,’ said Tia, and as she said it, a bell sounded in the distance, and Robin saw the red sweatshirt-ed hordes swarming into the ugly grey building. ‘I gotta go.’

Robin watched the girl cross the road, but Tia had barely reached the school gate when she suddenly wheeled around and dashed back to Robin.

‘Jus’ remembered. He told her she reminded him of a Swedish girl he used to know. When he said she had the right look for the backing singer job.’

‘A Swedish girl,’ repeated Robin, her heart suddenly racing.

‘Yeah,’ said Tia.