Free Bad Girls by Rebecca Chance

fireplace and in waist-high vases in the corners of the room. Huge matching brocade curtains draped the floor-to-ceiling windows that led out onto the wrought-iron balcony. It was a stunning room, a real showpiece, and Slava only ever entered it to keep it polished and dusted and to water the flowers in pots on the balcony. She said it was too smart for her.
    Slava didn’t like to go out. She spent ninety per cent of her waking hours in the kitchen, in her comfy old armchair, knitting and doing embroidery, watching daytime TV. It was no surprise to Amber to find her mother in her usual place, a circular wooden tapestry frame on her lap, a wooden sewing box by her side, its lid open to show skeins of silk arranged by colour.
    ‘Tony had to get back to the States by tonight,’ Amber said, coming into the kitchen, kissing her mother on her forehead. ‘He had a lift with some oil guys in their jet.’
    ‘So glamorous,’ Slava sighed approvingly. ‘But you always come back to your old mother in the end. Did you have fun, láska ?’
    Slovakian by birth, Slava prided herself on her good English, but still larded it with endearments and emphases from her mother tongue, which meant that she and Amber often slipped between English and Slovak without realizing it.
    ‘Yes, Matka ,’ Amber said, responding automatically with the Slovak word for ‘mother’.
    Amber took a glass tumbler from the drainer and slid it into the dispensers in the front of the Sub-Zero refrigerator, filling it with crescent-shaped pieces of ice, then filtered water.
    ‘Give me some Lucozade,’ Slava said. ‘I’m thirsty. My throat is always dry.’
    ‘It’s the pills, Mum,’ Amber said, reaching into the fridge for the open bottle of Lucozade, which was one of the few items it contained. ‘They’re dehydrating.’
    ‘Well, at least I don’t smoke,’ Slava said as Amber brought over her glass. ‘Do you want to watch a film? They have new ones to buy on the film channels.’
    ‘In a couple of hours,’ Amber said. ‘I should unpack now.’
    ‘Oh, yes!’ Slava looked animated, her green eyes sparkling. ‘Your beautiful clothes, you must take care of them!’
    She shook out two Vicodins from the prescription container on her side table and swallowed them with the Lucozade. Her fingers were heavy with rings; Slava was inordinately proud of her jewellery, and the first thing she did every morning was to reach out to her bedside table and slide on the rings, with their crusted gold and diamond settings and bezel-cut stones.
    ‘My back is bad again,’ she said.
    ‘You should go for a walk,’ Amber responded. ‘It’s a lovely day. You could walk round Grosvenor Square. Even go to Green Park.’
    ‘Maybe later,’ Slava said, turning back to the television.
    Amber knew this meant ‘never’. She leaned against the door jamb, finishing her water, looking at her mother’s profile. Slava was as elegant as ever, dressed up so smartly that any observer would think that she was about to go out to tea with girlfriends at the Ritz: slim shantung trousers, a beige silk twinset, a big necklace of cultured pearls to hide the wrinkles on her neck that she was very sensitive about, her ash-pale hair, as thick as Amber’s, piled on top of her head. Slava’s hair was carefully dyed by one of the most expensive colourists in London, streaked in delicate shades of grey-blonde that looked as natural as possible. Her eyebrows were pencilled in, and her cheeks were dusted with light pink blush.
    Slava had been a good-looking young woman, but she couldn’t hold a candle to Amber. Amber had the same slanting green eyes as her mother, but Slava’s eyelids were hooded and heavy-lidded; her jaw was a little square, her nose a little too wide for beauty, while Amber had a prettily rounded chin and a long, straight, perfect nose. Slava had always been slender as a wand, but Amber, though slim, had the curves that made people’s palms sweat: firm, high