Page 49

Chapter 48

2000 – Twenty-Five Years Earlier

Margot

I feel the pinch of the cold night air on my cheeks. I smell the spices from a curry house a little further along the road and hear the leaves crunching under my feet as I hop from foot to foot, trying to rid myself of nervous energy.

I steal a glance at the people waiting with me. We’re all trying to keep a distance between us and the street light above, hiding in the anonymity of an estate agent’s doorway.

Jenny is fourteen too, and I know her better than I do the others, even though we only met properly for the first time during a lunchtime detention when our teacher slipped on his headphones and ignored us for an hour. She and I have similar tastes in music, celebrities, TV shows and the hottest guys in school. I get the impression that, like my parents, hers have checked out. My mum isn’t a bad person – neither is Dad. We’re all just mismatched. They have the wrong daughter and I have the wrong parents. Mum as much as admitted the only thing stopping her and Dad from formally giving up and handing me over to social services is the shame it’d bring them in front of their friends.

For a few months, Jenny’s been dating Warren Jones, a boy four years older than us. What Jenny sees in him is beyond me. He has acne, is missing a front tooth, and the stench of weed and Lynx Africa follows him around like a noxious cloud. But with nothing better to do, I hang out with her and an older group Warren is desperate to be accepted by.

These twenty-plus-year-olds smuggle us into grimy, spit-and-sawdust pubs, they buy us booze and gave us our first taste of speed and ecstasy. They drive us around in souped-up cars with spoiler upon spoiler fixed to the back, and while none of them work, they’re never without money. They in turn worship Eddie, a much older man they’ll do anything for. He’s both charm and menace in one. You don’t need a shark to introduce itself to understand he’ll rip you to shreds if he feels like it.

‘Eddie has a job for us,’ Warren informed us last week. His wiry frame was hunched over the table in a pub garden, his pupils dilated.

‘Really? What?’ Zain asked, trying to hide his excitement at finally being asked to step up.

‘Supermarket,’ Warren continued, speaking as ever in clipped sentences. ‘Owners live upstairs. Cash will be left on the premises.’

‘How does Eddie know this?’ I asked.

‘Have you ever met Andy?’

We all shook our heads.

‘A kid who owes Eddie money. Was about to have the shit kicked out of him when he spilled. This is how he’s paying off his debt.’

Warren opened his jacket ever so slightly to reveal the black grip of a gun tucked in his inside pocket.

Zain gasped. ‘That thing real?’

‘For sure.’

I felt the blood drain from my face. ‘Why do we need it if the place is empty?’

Warren shrugged. ‘Just in case.’

Zain slumped in his chair. ‘Nah, man. I ain’t going down for a ten stretch if this goes wrong.’

Warren shook his head. ‘It won’t, mate. In and out in five minutes. Promise.’

He went on to explain how, most evenings, the supermarket owner deposited the daily takings into the bank, leaving only a small float on the premises. But on the night we were to enter, the shop would be closing early, as the owners were attending a family event. The cash was to be left overnight in a safe.

‘Victimless crime,’ Warren concluded. ‘Insurance will pay out. And Eddie will know we’re for real.’

As the others thought about what it might mean if we pulled this off, I was busy trying to find a way out without losing face. Jenny was my only real friend, but if I backed out, she’d choose Warren over me and I’d be locked out of that group. There would be no second chances.

Which is why, following a sleepless night and countless toilet trips, the four of us now find ourselves walking down an alleyway towards the back entrance of a SupaSaver supermarket in an unfamiliar part of town.

As I’m the smallest and most agile, Warren hoists me through a storeroom window, the one Eddie told him would be unlocked. Once inside, I locate the key to the reinforced rear door. It’s on a shelf, as his informant said it would be. Within five minutes we’re making our way through the shop by torchlight until we find a door that leads upstairs to the owners’ flat. Then, once in the flat, we make a beeline for the concealed safe, hidden under a rug in the corner of the living room.

‘Why can’t we turn the lights on?’ Zain asks.

‘We don’t want to be seen from outside,’ Warren replies, shining his torch at a console table. ‘The key should be over there by the telephone.’

Jenny approaches it first, looking under old newspapers and a Yellow Pages business directory. ‘I can’t find it,’ she says.

‘Look again,’ Warren barks. ‘Check the drawer.’

It’s the same outcome: there is no key inside. Warren pushes her to one side and checks it himself, and when he realises she’s right, his temper flares. He curses as he yanks the table hard, sending it toppling to the floor.

‘Are you sure Eddie said the keys were in there?’ Zain asks, brow furrowed.

‘I’m not a fucking idiot.’

‘So what happens if we can’t get into the safe?’ asks Jenny.

If she’s anything like me, she’s hoping we’ll give up and get the hell out of here.

Instead, Warren flashes his light around the room until he spots a framed cricket bat hanging from the wall. He pulls it down to the floor and its glass shatters. He grabs the bat, lifts it above his head and starts pounding it against the metal safe. It’s a hopeless cause. Safes were built to withstand more than a man armed with a piece of wood.

‘Mate, you’re wasting your time,’ says Zain.

Warren doesn’t answer, and instead goes on hitting it repeatedly.

‘Give up,’ Zain says. ‘Let’s go, man.’

‘No!’ yells Warren, striking it another half-dozen times before hurling the bat at the wall. ‘I can’t fail Eddie. It’s my only—’

Our lives as we know it change with the flicking on of a light switch, and the appearance of a man in a doorway. He’s glaring wild-eyed at us and holding a bedside lamp above his head. He looks furious.