Tarnished by Julia Crouch Read Free Book Online

You’ll be like some sad old spinster, looking after sick elderly relatives, “never once thinking of meself”. Well, listen, Peg. If you’re going to get anywhere at all in your little don’t-worry-about-me life, you’re going to have to start putting yourself first. You need to find your father and look after Peg.’ She jabbed a finger at Peg’s chest. ‘Harsh but true.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘But what?’ Loz stood, and clicked her fingers repeatedly, waiting for it.
    ‘But I don’t know who that is.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I don’t know who “Peg” is.’ And, despite all her best intentions of holding back, she burst into tears.
    ‘Fuck’s sake, girl, c’mere,’ Loz said at last. She reached up, took her in her strong, wiry arms and let her cry there, holding her face against her nicotine-scented sleeve, until there were no tears left.
    As she usually did when heading home with Peg, Loz left her bike tucked indoors, locked to the bottom of the stairs that led up to the club, with the arrangement that she would pick it up the following night.
    As the chilly night-bus rattled through the deserted, diesel-scented South London streets, Peg told Loz the Keith story.
    ‘And they never mentioned him before?’ Loz said, astounded, her mouth open.
    ‘Not once,’ Peg said, looking at a pink bra that had somehow found its way on to the top of a bus shelter and wondering if it had been thrown from the ground or a passing bus, and whether the owner of the bra had been upset or in on the joke. ‘Well not that I remember, of course, given the gaps. I don’t suppose it’s the kind of thing you talk about all that much.’ She cradled the voice recorder in her pocket. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that she might have been told and had forgotten.
    ‘If that was my family it would be a story repeated so often it would have grown legs and wings and taken off. There’d be some sort of shrine in a prominent room, with photographs and candles and shit.’
    ‘And that’s why we’re so different.’ Peg said.
    ‘I’d be angry not to be told.’
    ‘But it’s not really my business, is it?’
    ‘Fuck’s sake.’
    The bus went on its way, bare tree branches rattling on its windows. Peg and Loz sat, hands twisted together, bleached by the fluorescent lighting of the upper deck. The coconut-oil smell of the immaculately groomed man sitting a couple of rows in front of them coloured the bus with an improbably exotic tang.
    It was none of Peg’s business, though. Thinking about the silence around Keith’s awful death made Peg feel indescribably sorry for her tiny, grief-shrunken Nan, and this in turn made her feel bigger and more blurry than she had ever felt before.
    ‘You’re right, Loz,’ she said.
    ‘I’m liking the sound of this.’ Loz squeezed her hand and put her head on her shoulder. ‘What am I right about this time?’
    ‘I’m going to give finding my dad another shot. He does owe us. I’m not going to ask him for money, though. I just want them to get back together.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘It would mean the world for Nan if she saw him again before – before she . . .’
    ‘Shhh,’ Loz said, as another wave of tears took hold of Peg. ‘Shhh now.’

Five
    ‘Keep still.’
    ‘It tickles.’
    Loz ran the clippers one more time over Peg’s head, then stood back to admire her work.
    ‘You’ve got a lovely head,’ she said, fetching a hand mirror from the bedroom. ‘So smooth. And your scalp’s the same colour as your hair so you look just like honey.’
    ‘Jesus,’ Peg said, examining her reflection in the cold morning light filtering through their living-room window. This hair-styling session had been Loz’s way of attempting to cheer Peg up after the upsets of the night before. But Peg wasn’t too clear how much better she actually felt on viewing the result.
    ‘You’ll get used to it. It’s lovely.’
    ‘Marianne will have a fit.’ Peg’s team leader at the