“One month, and here you are,” he said. “Back to the slum.”
Mummy just looked at him.
“One month,” he repeated. “I’m not surprised the fat cunt kicked you out. I’m only surprised it took him so long.”
He walked up to the table and took the plate with Mummy’s slice of cake on it, and he threw it against the wall. I watched as it shattered into pieces and I followed one of those pieces, the biggest one, I followed it with my eyes at it bounced off the floor and back against the wall and then span along the lino, taking the legs out from the neat line of soldiers I’d left there.
“Slut,” he said, and I turned and looked at Mummy’s face and saw it change into something familiar, something I knew, so I dropped to the floor and scooped up the soldiers and ran upstairs and stayed there with my hands over my ears until the shouting stopped.
I crept down later. It was dark by then and there hadn’t been any shouting for ages, so I thought maybe they were asleep, but they weren’t. They were sitting in the living room, silent, glasses in their hands. Mummy turned to me as I entered and patted her leg, so I scooted up onto the sofa and rested my head on her, and Daddy made a noise as if he were snoring, but when I turned to look at him he was still awake and looking at us with a mean twist on his face. I turned back and looked at the sofa, the marks and burns, the scuffs and wine stains and things I couldn’t put a name to. After a while I closed my eyes and let my breathing slow, and then Mummy got up and my head fell onto the sofa.
I turned again, so that when I peeked out through my eyelids I could see them both. They sat there. They sit there still, silent, moving only to refill their glasses and drink until they are empty and refill again and drink again, and I lie here and think it’s OK, Penny, Mummy’s home now.
I should be happy, but I don’t think I am.
5: 17:20-17:40
GRAHAM HAD NOTHING new up. It had been a few weeks since he’d posted an image of the painting, a message I knew was meant for me and me alone, even if he couldn’t be sure I’d see it. It wasn’t like I was keeping track of the days, but there was a sense it was almost time for the painting to come out again. Nothing else on his profile, nothing new except a reminder that his birthday was coming up – I’d forgotten about his birthday entirely, and for a moment I sat there, motionless, my fingers poised above the keyboard, before sense took hold and I navigated away from Facebook entirely. Graham was one reality I’d vowed to forget, but forgetting wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped it would be.
I took a look at the state of my portfolio, which was a long and serious word for a handful of bitcoins which were worth a lot more than they’d been when I’d first got them, but weren’t exactly a retirement fund. I’d done for the day, I thought, or at least for now. The only thing left to do was take a quick look at the Bitch.
The Bitch was unlikely to be any use to me, not now. She’d already made me close to eight thousand pounds, not that she knew it. The Bitch was a real piece of work, blessed with a remarkable combination of arrogance and stupidity that had made her the perfect mark. And even though she’d served her purpose, she was worth checking out, if only for the fun of it.
The Bitch worked in human resources for a City consultancy that charged big money for big reports that said next to nothing but still somehow satisfied the people who’d paid for them. She was mid-level or lower, but the way she talked about herself you’d have been forgiven for thinking she ran the place, which was precisely what I had thought when I’d first closed in on her, assuming that someone with that kind of power would have the kind of money that might set me up for a while.
I’d learned the truth soon enough. The Bitch – whose real name was Sophia Nichols – was just the woman they called in when they wanted someone fired. She’d find a reason, something buried deep in an employment contract that no one had ever read, and she’d do the deed herself with a smile on her face – she was always smiling in those Instagram selfies she took outside the room she was about to fire someone in. She captioned those Instagrams with lines like Twat thinks he’s getting a payrise or Gonna make a rich man cry and hashtags like #WelcomeToTheFiringLine. I wondered which hashtag she’d pick when she learned her dad had been robbed. I wondered what witty little comment she’d add when she realised it was all down to her stupidity.
She’d swallowed my spyware whole the first time I’d pointed it at her. I’d appeared out of the blue as George, a tall, thin, bespectacled manager in a large and entirely fictional telecoms business. George was intelligent, funny in a dry way, and, like Sophia, clearly single, although that wasn’t something he really talked about. George was the type of person who looked down on people like Sophia, I thought, so when he found her under attack for her general attitude on a Facebook business forum and leapt to her defence, praising her honesty and telling her don’t let the bastards get you down, she’d been, as I’d hoped, surprised, flattered and highly gratified. She’d accepted his friend request before they’d both been kicked out of the group, and they’d moved quickly from liking one another’s photos and comments to exchanging private messages that consisted for the most part of complaints about the people they were forced to work with. Sophia’s critical vocabulary was vast – I was genuinely impressed by the variety with which she slated her colleagues – and provided an easy way in: George’s “nephew” had found an entirely new set of emojis that expressed the full range of hatreds and disappointments, and when he’d mentioned them to Sophia, she’d been all too keen to download. The moment she’d hit the button, my spyware was in.
At first I’d been disappointed with what I found there. Sophia’s investments and pensions were fully automated and heavily secured, and her online banking was defended by both 128-bit encryption and a secure key. Sophia herself was surprisingly careful.
But her dad wasn’t.
Her dad was a prick, and he was a prick without a computer, so on the rare occasions that he needed one – sending out emails to his chums about an illegal hunt they were planning, or checking his bank balance – he used his daughter’s. William Nichols didn’t have a great deal in the bank – he got money in, and drew it straight out again in cash, as far as I could tell, presumably because he didn’t enjoy paying tax on it.
William Nichols was a “high quality carpenter”, or at least, that was what he called himself. He was semi-retired – I still hadn’t figured out what it was he’d retired from – and had turned a hobby into a small and moderately successful business.
I’d pulled two invoice scams on him a few weeks back. In the past I wouldn’t have risked anything like that – I’d made a habit of drinking once from the well and running – but William Nichols checked his emails so rarely it was hardly a risk at all. When I saw he’d drawn up two invoices in the space of one afternoon – and it took him most of that afternoon – it was too good an opportunity to ignore. Four thousand on one, three and a half on the other, and the money was mine just four days later. Not exactly yacht money, but not bad for a few weeks’ stalking and a couple of hours’ actual work. Not bad at all.