Sixteen Shades of Crazy. Rachel Trezise

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СКАЧАТЬ wanna listen to my mother, love. She’s as senile as a cunt. Don’t know urgh arse from urgh elbow one day to the next.’

      Rhiannon’s mother was a liability, interfering all the time. Cut a long story, she was jealous, because Rhiannon had made it out of the estate. Rhiannon had never had to stand in a queue in the post office to cash a giro and everyone from up there hated her for it. It was like she’d let the team down by having the cheek to better herself. Any more lip from her mother and she’d have to send someone up there to batter her, make it look like a botched burglary.

      She looked around at her shop, at the chrome shampoo bottles and glass shelves, the apples that no fucker ate. This wasn’t Curl Up & Dye on Dynevor Street. This was a proper professional salon, like Vidal Sassoon or Toni & Guy, and she was going to put a sign up in the window that said, ‘No DSS’. She put her tongs in the holster, said, ‘Ang a banger, love. Just going outside for a bit of fresh air.’ As she started towards the door she got an idea and turned around. She looked at the woman, said, ‘Did Kelly mention the price increase? It’s another ten per cent. Cost of the products, love. Iss out of my ’ands.’

      In the doorway of the old ironmonger’s she reached into her tunic, took a quick slug of rum from her silver hip flask, then lit a cigarette. There was a meat wagon parked outside the butcher’s opposite. The drivers were carrying the carcasses into the shop. Ellie’d have a coronary if she could see that. She was a veggie, one of those awkward bastards, had ‘Meat is Murder’ written in felt-tip on her duffel bag. One Boxing Day, at Marc’s mother’s, she’d seen a group of fox-hunters in the street and got up from the table, went screaming blue murder at them, didn’t say boo to a fucking goose usually. But she had a crush on Johnny, Rhiannon could tell by the way her little blue eyes lit up whenever somebody mentioned his name; as if a man like Johnny’d have any interest in Ellie. She was an olive short of a pizza, that one; had some really fucked-up ideas about not taking Andy’s name, about it being the MFI who flew the planes into the big buildings; read too many of those bloody fat newspapers.

      The lorry indicated out of the kerb and Rhiannon dropped her fag butt, crushing it under her heel. She was about to light another when she noticed a blue BMW slowing to let the lorry out. It was only Johnny’s BMW. Well, talk of the devil! ‘Oof,’ she said to herself as a stem of heat ran up the back of her legs. ‘Oof.’ She waved at the car as it pulled up alongside her, music blaring out of the stereo.

      Louisa poked her head out of the window. ‘Is this where you work?’ she said, voice all English. ‘Are you a hairdresser?’

      Rhiannon looked at the chrome nameplate shimmering in the sunlight. She’d named the shop after its own postcode, CF25. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’m a stylist.’

      Johnny was looking at her tunic, his eyes following the white piping at the edge of her lapels down to the dark pit of her cleavage, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Something in her chest snapped at the thought of him touching her, long fingers pressing on her buxom flesh. An electrical current shot straight from her throat to her snootch. Oof. There was a man who could turn profit out of cunning, who could afford to buy her a new pair of Manolo Blahniks. There weren’t many men around here like that, not since Rhiannon’s dad had died. Marc thought nicking a muffin from the Services was adventurous.

      She panicked when the car began to roll away. ‘If ewe ever want ewer ’air done,’ she said, pointing at the plate-glass window, ‘on the cheap, like. I own the shop.’ Louisa smiled, but didn’t seem interested. She lifted an apple to her mouth and bit into it.

      What Rhiannon said next was the first thing that came into her head. ‘I’m organizing a picnic on Saturday, at the park in Pontypridd,’ hand curled around her mouth, her voice strained. ‘They ’ave bands down there on the weekend. Ewe’re welcome to come along. We’ll be meeting in the Pump House at lunchtime.’

      Louisa nodded and waved, the wedge of fruit jammed between her teeth.

      Rhiannon stood in the doorway until the car had gone, her blood still pumping ten to the bloody dozen. She took another quick slug of rum and went into the salon. ‘Ewe’re working on ewer own on Saturday, Kel,’ she said. ‘Somethin’s come up.’

      Kelly grunted.

      Rhiannon smiled anew at the woman in the hydraulic chair. ‘So, where are ewe goin’ on ewer ’oneymoon, love?’ she said.

       9

      On Thursday night, Ellie closed her desk drawer on three mugs she was planning to steal later. She walked with Safia along the main road, cutting through the Riverside area, the quickest way back to the city. They passed a schoolyard where children were playing football, little red jumpers tied to the steel railings. There were only two white kids among them, and one little black girl, hair braided into chunky cornrows. Safia stopped to chat to the tutor, a man in a long taupe cloak. Ellie patiently listened to their mysterious language as it ebbed and flowed, hurrying Safia along Wood Street when the conversation had ended, past the Japanese and Bangladeshi shop-fronts.

      At the Millennium Stadium, the low sun was boring down on the commuters who scuttled like ants around the pavestones in Central Square. Two men sat on the bus-station floor, black T-shirts faded to slate grey, their emaciated pet terriers yapping at one another. Ellie waited with Safia until her Tremorfa bus arrived, admiring the cut and thrust of the disparate metropolitan lives that moved hurriedly around her, listening to the brisk tunes of the human traffic. She loved the anonymity of the city; faceless pedestrians coiling through the walkways like one long centipede. She didn’t know their names, their secrets, didn’t know who their mothers were. In the city, anything seemed possible.

      When the bus arrived Safia climbed on to it, waving through the dirty glass as she walked towards the back. Ellie ventured into the city centre, running along the wide pavements of St Mary Street and into Castle Arcade. Her breath quickened as she climbed the stairs to the Victorian attic. She could hear the resonant Zzz Zzz sounds of the violin doctor tuning a cello. The aroma of coffee and garlic from the cafeterias blended into a steam cloud lingering above the balcony. She walked to the end of the narrow landing and stood in front of the office door, staring at the white letters on the glass. The Glamour, it said, some of the u and the r flaking away. The man inside swivelled around in his old captain’s chair. It was Jamie Viggers, one of the staff writers. ‘Elizabeth,’ he said, beckoning her inside.

      ‘I wasn’t sure I’d catch you,’ she said. She walked over to the empty chair next to him and sat down. ‘I’ve come straight from work, a mug factory in Canton.’ She folded her arms around her waist and then unfolded them to brush an imaginary speck of dust from the thigh of her combat trousers. She glanced around the room, at the bubbling white paint, the colourful stacks of books and CDs, the splodges of coffee stains on the vinyl floor. There was a half-eaten seafood fajita on one of the computer desks, the flotsam of busy city living. ‘Andy’s been really busy with the band. They’ve been touring a lot. I had to find something which paid the rent, and freelancing didn’t.’

      When Ellie was fresh out of Plymouth University with a bellybutton bar and a prescription for the combined pill, she’d come back to Wales with the blind intention of becoming a rock music journalist. She was a neurotic, depressive, frustrated romantic who loved everything from bubblegum pop to grating industrial noise, and her prose could piss all over Julie Burchill’s. She’d discovered this talent quite by accident when her friend who edited the student magazine had asked her to review The Cardigans’ concert at the Pavilions. Her plan was to part the Atlantic like Moses did the Red Sea; beat a path all the way to Rolling Stone, where the critics were СКАЧАТЬ