The Ice Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson Read Free Book Online Page B

known him, to be the kind of man who would not advocate simply throwing away the only key – but melting it down, freezing it in liquid nitrogen, shattering it into a trillion pieces and having those pieces scattered all across the world’s oceans just to make sure that they were never found, even accidentally, so one such as I could never be released.
    ‘Is this your licence, Madam?’
    ‘Yes. I haven’t got around to updating it with my new address,’ I say.
    He raises his left eyebrow a little. And new name? he’s trying to ask.
    Correct , I think back at him. I will not say it, though. If he wants to know what I’m calling myself these days, he’s going to have to work that bit harder.
    He hands the licence back to me. ‘You should get it updated. It’s an offence to drive without a valid licence,’ he says.
    I nod at him. ‘Yes, officer,’ I say.
    ‘I could breathalyse you and have you come down to the station for driving over the speed limit,’ he says, just to watch me squirm, I’m guessing.
    ‘Yes, officer,’ I say. He is getting a thrill out of this. He’s only human, after all. In his shoes, I might do the same thing. I might get some enjoyment out of ‘paying back’ someone I thought beat the system.
    ‘I won’t, this time. ’ He knows how to be professional and menacing in just the right proportions and it would worry me if not for Verity. My concern for her overrides my fear. She must be scared of this skin-deep Jekyll and Hyde impersonation he has going on. It’s bound to be even more terrifying because she doesn’t know what is really happening here. ‘I’d better not have occasion to stop you again,’ he says. ‘You won’t be so lucky next time.’ We both know what he means by that.
    ‘Yes, officer,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
    As I shut my door behind me, I feel safe again. Protected from the prying outside world by a simple metal shell. I was lucky that time. If he had been the true menacing type, I would be heading for a cell. For a breathalyser, for a urine sample, for what feels like a catalogue of small humiliations only to receive a metaphorical slap on the wrist and to be sent on my way with no charge, not even a few lines scrawled on a page ripped out of a notebook. No record. That’s happened to me about twenty times. I’ve been stopped in a car and recognised and then ‘put in my place’. After each time, I vow to change my licence details, to make myself inconspicuous, but each time I forget. My defences kick in and I try not to think about it. I can’t tell anyone – least of all Evan – about it, so I end up pretending it didn’t happen . . . until next time.
    This is the first time it’s happened with someone else in the car. And poor Verity is still trembling.
    ‘It’s all right, sweetie,’ I say, trying to hide how much I’m shaking as I slot the key into the ignition. ‘Just a misunderstanding.’
    ‘But why did he say all those things?’ she asks, distressed. She looks every one of her thirteen years; no longer older and a little mature, now she looks like a little girl who needs a hug and a mountain-load of reassurance from her mother.
    ‘He was just doing his job,’ I say.
    ‘But he said he was going to arrest you!’ she wails.
    ‘No, he didn’t. He said – quite clearly – that he could arrest me, but he wasn’t going to. It’s fine.’
    ‘It’s like he knew you, Mum,’ she says. ‘It’s like he knew you and he didn’t like you. Why?’
    I shrug my shoulders and shake my head. ‘How could anyone not like me?’ I say as I check my rear-view mirror and blindspot then indicate to pull out. ‘I’m lovely.’
    April, 1995
    I was lost. Properly lost. I had parked my car around here somewhere while I went to the house to pick up the material for Medina for her dressmaking course – although why she couldn’t do it herself was still a mystery – and now I couldn’t find my way back to my car. The material, which was light