Free Beauty by Raphael Selbourne Page A

for missing the start of the course at RiteSkills. The housing benefit for the six weeks might not get paid either; they were deciding that at the minute. Just for missing an appointment!
    Still, he’d started the course now. The JSA would get paid from next week, plus the extra tenner, and he had enough money from selling the phone to get a five of weed before he went up town that night.
    He waited until it was darker before going to the phone box at the bottom of the street to call Paula. She’d been raided again recently and didn’t like giving you the weed in daylight. The cops hadn’t been able to do her though; she never kept anything in the house. She knew one of the neighbours had grassed her up, but not which one, so two nights after the raid she’d slashed all the tyres of every car on the street.
    Fair play to ’er.
    Mark hoped she wouldn’t send her son Darren out to bring him the weed. You could always tell he’d pinched a bit by the way he never wrapped the clingfilm like she did. He was only twelve, so what could you expect? Mark had done worse by his age.
    At the phone box some Kosovan was shouting down the line in a foreign language. Mark waited impatiently forless than a minute, wishing he’d brought Titan with him, then decided he didn’t need the dog. He opened the door and asked the startled man if he was going to be long, mate, because he had an important call to make.
    The Kurd hung up and made way for the white man.
    ‘Ta,’ said Mark.
    Paula’s number rang. She only lived up by the shops but didn’t want people coming round to the house.
    ‘Oright Paula? It’s Mark.’
    ‘Ullo bab! Am y’oright, am y’?’
    ‘Ar, sowund.’
    ‘What d’you want?’
    ‘Can I come and fetch a five?’
    ‘Where am you?’
    ‘At the phone box on Dunstall Road.’
    ‘Darren’ll bring it. There’s too many five-oh rowund ’ere.’
    ‘Nice one, Paula. See you.’
    ‘Ar, see you, bab. Tra.’
    ‘Tra.’
    Mark kept the phone pressed to his ear. He might as well stay out of the cold. The Kosovan could wait for a bit. Darren would be there soon anyway.
    Two minutes later he hung up as he saw the boy’s white cap rounding the corner at the end of Leicester Street. He left the phone box and walked towards him, stopping in the darkness between lamp posts.
    ‘Oright Daz?’ Mark said.
    ‘Sowund.’
Prick
, the boy thought.
    Mark gave him the five-pound note and the twelve-year-old took a small cellophane wrap from the pocket of a new Bench jacket. Mark held the weed in his fist. It felt all right.
    ‘Say hello to yer mam for me,’ he said.
    ‘Yeah, sure,’ the lad answered, wheeling away on his bike. He didn’t like Mark. He was too friendly.
    Back at home Mark inspected the clingfilm. It was untouched. He’d roll a fat one, get a can from the fridge and listen to some music in the bath. That would kill some time before he went out. He’d need to iron some clean clothes dry, too. He could do that in front of
EastEnders.
    By eight o’clock Peter had only got as far as P for Panties. The tightly stretched white cotton made his chest ache and he saved some of the images for a soft-to-hard full-screen slide-show of the evening’s findings. He ignored Pantyhose – the word made him cringe – and left Peeing and Puffy Nipples for later.
    EastEnders
was dull. It had been ever since Sharon had died in a ball of flame on Tracey Fowler’s bench in the park. Peter picked up the TV guide to see if there was anything else that would help draw out his internet research. He didn’t want to have to do it twice just to fill up the evening. But there was nothing to watch, apart from DIY programmes, chat shows with special guests who were the presenters of other chat shows, repeats of unfunny sit-coms, opinion-as-fact on the news, or lurid documentaries with titles like
Half Ton Man, The Boy With A Tumour For A Face,
and
The Woman Who Lost Forty Stone And Put It Back On Again.
Or there was a two-part