Free The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood Page A

hospitality. Vic likes everything to have a place. The bag will have been bugging him since she arrived. Jackie
     interprets it differently and sees it as a gesture of welcome. She tears up again. ‘God, you guys. I don’t know what I’d do
     … Honestly. I swear, half this town would’ve fallen apart without you.’
    ‘Oh, come on, Jackie,’ says Amber uncomfortably.
    ‘She’s right, you know,’ says Vic, from the door. ‘Salt of the earth, our Amber. D’you know what she’s been doing all morning?’
    ‘No,’ says Jackie, with little enthusiasm. She’s never that interested in other people, especially when a drama of her own
     is under way.
    ‘Calling everyone on the estate to see if they’ve got a spare computer for Benedick Ongom. She’s been on the phone all morn
     ing, haven’t you, darling? I had to get my own bacon sandwich.’
    He moderates the complaint with a bright and winning smile, but Amber hears it anyway.
    ‘Yes,’ he continues. ‘She’s amazing, really. Sometimes I can’t help wondering if she’s got a guilty conscience. If she’s making
     up for something she did in a past life, or something.’
    Jackie laughs. Amber, blushing, hurries the subject away from herself. ‘So tell me what happened? I’m still not sure I get
     it.’
    ‘It just – I don’t know why he’s doing it. You know? I don’t get it.’
    ‘No,’ she says. ‘Well, I don’t suppose you would. He’s obviously not right, is he? Anyway, I thought Tadeusz had seen him
     off. With that text.’
    Jackie shakes her head. ‘I think it’s made him worse. He’s angry now. I can feel it coming off him. He just seems to be out
     there the whole time. And it’s going to be worse when I go back to work. Going out at night, all by myself.’
    ‘That’s OK. I can give you a lift,’ says Amber, calmly adding another item to her list. There’s room in the car. She’s only
     shuttling Blessed at the moment.
    ‘But it’s not just that, it is? I’m not sleeping, either. I feel like I’m going to wake up and find him standing over me or
     something. Seriously. He’s just there, all the time. I feel like I’m going mad …’
    Vic watches them through the kitchen window: the two blond heads bent together, the curl of smoke rising off Jackie’s cigarette.
     They’ve forgotten all about him. Out of sight, out of mind, he thinks. Women. The minute you’re not talking, you might as
     well not exist. He studies them quietly, his face blank. He feels dog-tired. He used to feel exhilarated for days at a time,
     during high season, but the thrill gets shorter-lived year on year. Eight different resorts he’s worked over the years, but
     nowadays Whitmouth seems to tire rather than thrill. It’s my age, he thinks, catching up with me. I’m getting too old for
     this. I need to find an easier way to live. I don’t think I’ll have the energy for much longer. It really takes it out of
     me.
    Jackie’s left her tea mug on the table, a swill of tannin on the bone-china inside. He picks it up and takes it to the sink.
     Scrubs methodically, thoroughly, as he listens to the murmur of the women’s voices. Wipes round the sink, polishes the chrome
     dry and puts the cup on the folded tea-towel on the drainer.
    Out in the garden, Jackie’s phone starts to ring.
    ‘Don’t answer it,’ Amber says. ‘Leave it.’
    Jackie regards the phone as though it’s a turd she’s found in her handbag. ‘I wasn’t planning to.’
    The phone rings out. Jackie lights another cigarette. Amber suppresses an eye-roll.
    ‘I’ll get Vic to make up the spare bed,’ she tells Jackie.
    ‘God, he’s so great,’ says Jackie. ‘How did you manage to find him?’
    Her phone rings again.

Chapter Ten
    I’m a lousy wife. He’s really hacked off with me and I don’t blame him. Oh God, I can’t wait for this evening to be over.
     What the hell made me behave so stupidly? I don’t suppose I was even legal to drive when I got into the