Midnight Girls Read online

  ‘Yeah?’ His boss’s brow creased and his mouth twisted. ‘How do you misunderstand a man shoving his fuckin’ hand up a woman’s chest, and tellin’ her he wants to fuck her? Huh?’

  Mitch saw with sudden clarity that his boss had been wary of him for some time: no doubt he’d always feared that his brawny young employee would set his wife’s pussy buzzing. His suspicions were mature, ready to ripen the minute Jo-Lynn gave them voice. I just gotta get out of here, as soon as I can, Mitch realised.

  ‘OK, OK,’ he said in as calm a voice as he could manage. ‘I fucked up, Stanley. I was drunk and made a bad mistake.’

  ‘I’ll say you fuckin’ did …’

  ‘I’m outta here right now, sir.’ He felt Stanley’s grip loosen and pulled himself free. ‘I’m gonna get my things and go.’

  Stanley looked surprised, wrong-footed. Then his face darkened. If Mitch was giving in so fast, then it must all be true, there could be no doubt. Fresh rage seemed to boil up in him. ‘You get out of here within the next twenty seconds or you’ll be so damn’ sorry, you’ll be cursing your mother for ever squeezin’ you out! And I want you out of this town too. Or I’m gonna come looking for you, I promise you that, you cunt-stealing piece of crap!’

  Mitch ripped off his jacket and headed for his locker, aware of the watchful eyes of the other chefs. Heading out through the restaurant with his jacket and bag, he saw Jo-Lynn sitting in the front. She gave him a look as he went, something like triumph and something like despair. He ignored her, walked out on to the main street and headed to his place to pick up his belongings. He was on the evening bus out of town.

  The man behind the reception desk at the hostel on West and Sixty-third had a kind of surly air about him. Mitch had been expecting a warmer welcome than this: maybe not quite singing and dancing, but a smile and perhaps some food.

  ‘How many nights?’ the man demanded.

  ‘I don’t know. Three?’

  ‘That’ll be fifteen dollars a night.’

  Mitch nodded. He pulled out some notes.

  ‘Just pay for tonight. And fill in this form.’ The man handed him a clipboard with a sheet of paper attached. ‘Got some ID?’

  Mitch handed over his driver’s licence. The man looked at it and nodded. ‘Now, you know the rules here. No drink, no drugs, right? Give me your bag, I gotta search it.’

  ‘Sure.’ Mitch had never felt so respectable in all his life. He’d never touched drugs, not even pot in high school when everyone was smoking it, and he rarely drank much beyond a couple of beers after work or when he was watching baseball games.

  The man took the shabby nylon rucksack and unzipped it. He put his hand in and began rummaging about, peering in to see what he could find. ‘What’s this?’ He pulled out a cotton towel rolled up into a thick sausage of cloth.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Mitch said. ‘That’s …’

  Before he could explain, the man unrolled the towel, revealing a steel knife glinting with sharpness, riveted into its handle for extra strength. ‘What the hell—?’

  ‘That’s my knife.’

  ‘I can see it’s your damn’ knife!’ The man stared up at him with horror in his eyes.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ Mitch said, seeing at once how it looked. ‘I’m a chef. It’s a tool of the trade. It’s my knife.’ He didn’t know how to explain what a chef’s knife meant to him, and how right it felt when you finally found the exact one, weighted just so and with the heft that exactly suited your hand and a blade so honed it could slice through anything with the merest pressure.

  ‘You can’t walk around carrying this thing,’ the man said, shaking his head in astonishment. ‘You wanna be arrested? I’m telling you, I oughta call the cops!’

  ‘Don’t do that, sir!’ Mitch said swiftly. ‘Like I said, I’m a chef. I don’t mean any harm with it.’

  ‘You can’t stay here with that thing. Want my advice? Go drop it in the Hudson right now. You’ll only get into trouble – bad trouble – with a knife like that in a place like this.’

  Mitch stared at him, his spirits dropping. ‘I gotta go?’

  ‘You gotta go this minute. Or I mean it – I’ll call the cops. That’s a deadly weapon, boy.’

  Mitch walked through the city, disconsolate and apprehensive. He walked all the way to the western side of Manhattan, and stared out across the blue waters of the Hudson. Night was coming on and he had nowhere to stay. Should he drop his knife into the river, like the reception guy had said? He didn’t dare even take it out of his bag.

  No, I can’t do it. It’s all I’ve got. I could never afford another one like this. Besides, he loved it. He’d left behind all his books, his papers, his attempt to get himself an education. All he had now was his knife, the one reminder that he could cook.

  Cooking is what I do. That’s how I’ll get out of this mess.

  He turned away from the river and headed back into the city, veering south. He would find restaurants and ask for work. Restaurants always needed chefs, he knew that. The workforce was always shifting and changing. He would go from kitchen to kitchen and find himself a job, and then he’d worry about where he was going to sleep.

  He wandered into a district where there were more restaurants and started going round the back and knocking on the kitchen doors, asking if anyone wanted an extra pair of hands. But it was getting late and evening service was well under way. In the packed restaurants they yelled at him to come back tomorrow, couldn’t he see they were fuckin’ busy? And in the quiet ones, they shook their heads sorrowfully: there wasn’t enough work for the staff they had, they didn’t need more idle hands.

  It was two in the morning and the kitchens were closing when he gave up. He was exhausted, desperate to sleep, and feeling more and more lost and confused in the big city. The night seemed full of threats: faces looming out of alleys, cars cruising by with music thudding from the open windows and shouts and taunts from the occupants, passersby giving him suspicious looks. Then at last he found a grubby hotel, the kind where he didn’t think they’d search his bag, and handed over twenty-five of his precious dollars for a bed, but the place was alive all night with noise – thudding, screaming, gasping, fighting – and he rolled over, buried his head in the thin pillow and tried in vain to sleep.

  The next day, he was even more tired than when he’d gone to bed, but he knew that today he had to find a job. More than that, he needed some food. Apart from a bagel he’d bought from a stand the day before, he hadn’t had a proper meal for nearly two days.

  He walked out on to the grey streets and wandered for a block or so, then found a cafe, went in and ordered eggs and coffee, which he wolfed down and immediately felt better.

  I can do this. I’m young, I’ve got talent and I’m in the centre of the restaurant world, with no ties and nothing to hold me back. I can make it here, I know it! He had tried to look at the whole sorry incident with Stanley as the kick up the ass he needed to get him out of small-town life and into the big city. He’d always dreamt of something special for himself. Now he was forcing himself to seek it out.

  The kitchens were just coming to life when he started looking again. The porters were hauling out rubbish, the day’s supplies were being delivered to the back doors, and the chefs were fortifying themselves for the day ahead, outside with coffee, cigarettes and bacon bagels.

  ‘Hey,’ Mitch said, going up to a couple of guys in baggy black chef’s trousers and white T-shirts as they stood smoking at the back of an Italian joint. ‘Any work going around here?’

  The men looked at each other and said nothing for a moment as they eyed him.

  ‘What you do?’ asked one, who was young but whose face still looked ravaged by late nights, hard work, and a punishing regime of alcohol, junk food and nicotine.

  ‘I can turn my hand to most things,’ Mitch said with a shrug. ‘All the basics.’

  ‘You speak English – so, you legal?’

  Mitch nodded.

&nbs
p; The ravaged-looking one ran a hand through his curly hair and turned to his friend. ‘Tony’s looking for someone while Jerry’s in hospital. Whaddya think?’

  The other one shrugged. ‘Guess so.’

  ‘Hey!’ The younger one looked at Mitch with a smile. ‘You know what? You might be in luck. Our pal’s in hospital for a day or two, maybe you could fill in for him. How about you come in and meet the boss? He’ll be here in an hour or so.’

  ‘Great,’ Mitch said, happiness filling his heart. This is my chance, I know it.

  ‘Can you do pasta?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Mitch made a face. ‘Never do anything else.’ How hard is it to dunk spaghetti in hot water?

  ‘Good. I’m Herbie, by the way.’ The young chef held out a hand.

  ‘Mitch.’ He took the hand and shook it hard.

  ‘Cool. Good to meet you.’ Herbie grinned. ‘You’ll like it here, I promise.’

  Chapter 5

  Westfield Boarding School for Girls

  2000

  ROMILY COULD TELL that Allegra was more dissatisfied than ever and had the distinct impression that trouble was brewing, though what it might be exactly she couldn’t say. Exams were about to begin and she hoped they would defuse the tension she could feel like a storm in the air, ready to break. Usual lessons had stopped and now it was revision and study periods, and then long hours spent in the sports hall, sitting their papers.

  Today they’d already stuffed their heads with geography and history and needed a break.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ Allegra moaned discontentedly. She was sitting on the edge of Romily’s bed and staring out of the window while Imogen was cross-legged on the floor, rifling through Romily’s capacious and expensive make-up bag. Allegra pointed out over the playing fields that stretched away into the distance and disappeared into hedges and woodland. ‘We’re in the middle of bloody nowhere! I’m going to die of boredom if I have to stay here much longer.’

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ Romily said, carefully painting pearly clear polish on to her nails as she sat at her desk. Polish was forbidden, of course, but she got round that in her usual way: she did what she wanted, but subtly, so no one would notice. ‘Besides, we can’t make it go any faster, even if we want to.’

  ‘You’re so unromantic, Rom,’ grumbled Allegra. ‘Don’t you want to get out? Get away from school bloody uniform and start living properly? We’re completely sex-starved. It’s just not natural.’

  Romily shrugged. She refused to let frustration get the better of her, the way Allegra did. ‘Maybe. But I can’t see the point in letting it make you miserable.’

  ‘It’s all right for you. You get to live so glamorously when you’re not at school. Come on, tell us what you’re doing in the holidays.’

  ‘Well, the first bit of July I’ll be in Paris and there are some parties and things to go to. Then my mother is taking me on our usual tour: Venice, St Tropez, Cap d’Antibes and the Moncivellos’ palace in Tuscany. Then we go to Chrypkos for the rest of the summer, and back to Paris for fittings and clothes shopping for the autumn.’ Romily looked up at the other two, her big brown eyes candid. ‘Nothing special. Just the usual.’

  Allegra and Imogen looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  ‘What?’ demanded Romily, hurt. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Oh, Rom, only you can talk about a summer itinerary like that and call it nothing special!’ spluttered Allegra.

  ‘You’ve got a private island, for God’s sake!’ cried Imogen. ‘How normal is that?’

  Romily frowned at them and then gave in, rolled her eyes and smiled. ‘All right, all right. I get it.’

  It was partly because the other two teased her that she felt so comfortable with them. She’d arrived at Westfield two years after most of the girls and at first she’d been very lonely indeed. For one thing, she didn’t look like any of the others. While they tried their best to scruff themselves up and break the uniform rules, Romily had been perfectly turned out every day, in the most expensive shoes, tights and uniform that could be bought. She had been told off for wearing real diamond studs in her ears – they had been taken away and put in the school safe – and for putting on mascara for her lessons, which was strictly forbidden. The other girls had laughed at her skincare routine, when the idea of not following it had seemed heretical to her.

  She had been, she could see now, very French, and also very sheltered. Her family’s wealth had kept her removed from the world and she’d found the life of an English girls’ boarding school extremely strange. Just when she had thought she would never understand and couldn’t bear it any longer, Allegra rescued her. She came to her cubie one afternoon and asked if Romily would draw a picture of Queen Victoria for her history project, because she was sure Romily would be brilliant at it. ‘After all, your grandfather was a famous artist, wasn’t he?’

  Romily had laughed and explained that although her grandfather had indeed been a very famous artist, she was only capable of drawing stick men and cats. Nevertheless, she would try and draw Queen Victoria if that was what Allegra wanted. Her attempt was so bad that Allegra said she thought perhaps she would give it a go herself.

  Romily had already noticed Allegra and Imogen, of course, partly because of Allegra’s striking looks and mischievous nature – even Romily had laughed when Allegra had remained hidden under a pile of science overalls for an entire lesson while Mrs Crawford taught on, oblivious – and partly because they always seemed to be talking and laughing together, engrossed in each other’s company. Theirs looked like the kind of friendship where you would never be bored. She’d never had any hope that she would be allowed to join in, but with the ice broken, Allegra had asked Romily if she wanted to sit with them in the refectory and, slowly, they’d accepted her as one of them.

  Now, she was almost impossible to tell apart from the other girls in the school, except for a certain polish she couldn’t help retaining: her clothes and shoes were so much more expensive than everybody else’s. While they were looking for copies of things they saw in Vogue at Camden Market and Top Shop, Romily was ordering the real thing, and all the girls came to sigh and ‘Aah’ when a box arrived for her from Harrods. An audience would gather – even sixth-formers came to look – when she unwrapped the wonderful tissue-covered goodies: real Chanel sunglasses; Vivienne Westwood jeans; T-shirts from Miu Miu, Chloé and Comme des Garçons.

  She loved her clothes but she was generous with them: she let Allegra and Imogen borrow whatever they liked.

  Other boxes arrived from Paris, direct from Romily’s mother. They were full of skincare products, some specially blended for her by expert dermatologists, and supplements to ensure her perfect health.

  ‘Mama is a hypochondriac,’ Romily explained, emptying out all the bottles and packets. ‘She organises most of her life around all this stuff.’

  The other two found it fascinating if rather crazy and she didn’t try to explain to them. From her earliest childhood, Romily had listened to her mother’s maxims. Madame de Lisle had one mantra: elegance. A woman must be elegant in all ways: in her mind, her manners, and, of course, her person. Romily had already learned lessons in self-presentation from her. At six, she was going to bed wearing little white cotton gloves, her hands inside slathered with cream, in imitation of her mother who never went to sleep without lashings of expensive moisturiser wherever expensive moisturiser could be put.

  ‘Protect your skin!’ her mother advised her solemnly. ‘It must last your entire life. Look after it as though it were your most precious possession.’

  Romily had taken the lessons to heart. She wore hats and shunned the sun. She took her supplements and drank her water. She fed her young skin with the richest creams her mother would allow her (‘Your skin is still adolescent – nothing too rich, it will overpower you and clog your pores. Light, oil-free and not on your T-zone!’) and exfoliated religiously, all over, every day. She was blessed with a light olive
complexion that appeared smooth and almost poreless, and was never marked with a blemish – unlike Imogen and Allegra, with their pale Scottish skins that seemed to change like the weather, veering between pink and healthy or grey and heavy. Then there were the spots that were the bane of their lives, which they hid under great dollops of pink concealer. Romily had never experienced more than one or two spots in her life, and secretly she was convinced it was because of her dedication to vitamin pills, and her strict regime of face masks, moisturiser and sunscreens.

  ‘What’s this?’ Imogen held up a gold tube with a pinkish brush at one end.

  ‘That’s Touche Eclat,’ Romily said.

  Imogen brushed the tube across her hand but nothing came out. ‘It’s not working. What is it?’

  ‘Look.’ Romily took it from her, clicked the top and smeared a line of pale pink creamy liquid along the back of Imogen’s hand. ‘You use it under your eyes to hide the bags.’

  Imogen looked up at her dubiously. ‘Bags? You don’t have bags under your eyes.’

  ‘It’s not just a concealer, it’s a highlighter too. It reflects light and makes you look fresher and younger.’

  ‘I don’t want to look younger,’ Allegra said with a laugh. ‘I’m trying to look older. Any younger and they’ll be moving me back down a year.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Romily clicked the lid back on to her Touche Eclat. ‘Let’s put it away. I don’t want you to waste it.’

  Allegra got up and wandered about the cubie, picking up anything that interested her. ‘What I don’t understand, Romily, is how you can go on about looking after your bloody skin the entire time, and then smoke cigarettes.’

  Romily shrugged. ‘My vitamins counteract the effects of the smoke. Besides, it will be years before I need to worry about that. I’m going to give up before then.’

  The other two nodded. They had agreed that they would give up smoking before they turned twenty-one, and that way they would avoid any nastiness associated with their favourite vice. Twenty-one was so far away that they hardly needed to think about it.