Friday 8th September
Jodi washed her hands in the dingy restaurant bathroom, trying to remove the smell of burnt oil, lemongrass and fermented fish that had saturated her clothes and skin. It didn’t matter how many times she washed her tunic, there always seemed to be a hint of Thai curry invading her wardrobe. She didn’t mind working at the restaurant, she was grateful for the income, but waiting tables wasn’t her dream job.
She dried her hands and removed her tunic, rolling it into a tight ball and stuffing it into her bag, trying to contain the potent smells. Maybe she didn’t deserve a dream. Perhaps she’d given up her right to lead a better life when she’d gone off the rails and ended up in prison. Maybe karma was wreaking its revenge.
But if that was the case, then she wouldn’t have been offered a job at the Starlight Playhouse, would she? It might not be permanent, but it was the type of job she’d always wanted.
When she’d attended the interview, she’d assumed it would go the same way as all the others. The interviewer would switch from being impressed by her first-class business degree and glowing references from her tutors, to discovering her criminal record, and the vibe would instantly change. Awkward glances would be exchanged, followed by concerns about her ‘lack of work experience’ or ‘suitability for the position’.
No matter how hard she’d studied, how many nights she’d volunteered at the homeless shelter, or how much commitment she’d shown over the years waiting tables for Mr Pho at the local Thai restaurant, she couldn’t seem to escape her past.
But Carolyn Elliot-Wentworth hadn’t been put off by Jodi’s stint in prison. And if she’d remembered Jodi from her days spent attending the youth club at the Starlight Playhouse a decade earlier, she hadn’t acknowledged it. Instead, she’d offered Jodi the position of business manager for a fixed three-month period. The salary wasn’t great, and it was only twenty hours a week, but it would give her some much-needed office experience.
Plus, if Becca could be persuaded to apply for the dance teacher position being advertised, she might even get to work alongside her cousin. It was almost perfect.
Jodi had one reservation. It meant working at the scene of her teenage misdemeanours. Was that a good or bad thing? She didn’t like being reminded of her past. But maybe that was the point. It was karma again, ensuring she could never escape her mistakes. A daily reminder that she needed to stay on the straight and narrow.
She said goodnight to Mr Pho and headed into the street, unsurprised to find it full of revellers. It was Saturday night. The party had only just started.
Like most of the locals, she usually avoided using the main road that led away from the railway station down to the seafront. The area was frequented by pale-skinned out-of-towners who’d travelled down for the weekend, eager to get pissed, hook up and start fights. The Pho-King Good restaurant was situated in the heart of the tourist area. As such, it attracted large groups of twenty-somethings, eager to line their stomachs with cheap curry before consuming barrel-loads of booze.
One such group were hanging around outside the restaurant. They’d been in earlier, already drunk, making her job torturous. She was used to dealing with unruly behaviour, attempts to chat her up and ask whether she had a boyfriend. It was all part of the job. But she’d be lying if she said it didn’t upset her when reference was made to her ethnicity. They say alcohol makes a person tell the truth, that inebriated people become brutally honest and offer unfiltered opinions. Whereas a sober person would keep their prejudices under wraps, a pissed person might not.
One of the guys whistled as she walked by. ‘Hey, sexy.’
He stunk of smoke. Yet another pungent smell to add to the stench infiltrating her clothes.
‘Anyone ever told you, you look like Thandie Newton? I wouldn’t kick her out of bed,’ he said, showing off to his mates.
Jodi ignored him.
Her relationships with men had been influenced by several things, most of which revolved around her upbringing. Apart from witnessing her mum shacking up with numerous blokes, her own destructive behaviour had attracted a certain ‘type’ – one she was no longer interested in. As with job hunting, man hunting had proved disappointing. She’d had one semi-serious relationship in her early twenties, but the moment she’d plucked up the courage to tell Ned about her criminal past, he’d suddenly developed a desire to go travelling. Despite promising to contact her on his return, he never did.
And that was the problem: if they were decent blokes, they didn’t want a girlfriend with a criminal record. And who could blame them?
The guy stepped in front of her, blocking her route. ‘Want to join the party?’ He offered her the joint he was smoking.
The smell acted as a trigger, a time capsule that transported her back to her teens. Of waking up with no recollection of where she’d been, or what she’d done the previous evening. Of nights spent in police stations waiting for her mum to pick her up. Aunty Ruby showing up instead and taking her back to the guest house to sober up. Crying her eyes out, as she dealt with the comedown of a drug-fuelled night.
She’d grown up in Hove, the posh end of town – although there’d been nothing privileged about her upbringing. Her mother had lacked direction, until she’d met Ratty. To this day, his real name remained unknown. All Jodi knew was that he was a musician from Jamaica, who played steel drums in a reggae band and spent one summer in 1988 touring the UK with her mother in tow.
By the time he left England and headed home to the Caribbean, Adele Simmons was in love, addicted to the ‘groupie’ lifestyle and six weeks pregnant. Unfortunately for Adele, it was all downhill after that. She flitted from one man to another, trying to find another Ratty, and increasingly annoyed that her youth, fun and night time partying had been curtailed by a screaming baby.
Consequently, Jodi grew up without a father and with a mother who resented her. She’d accepted being passed from one relative to another, while her mother entertained numerous male ‘friends’. She did what the other kids did, watched films at the Duke of York cinema, hung out at the skate park and ice-skated at the now closed Ice Cube. When she reached her teens she realised her mum’s lifestyle wasn’t normal. Her reaction to discovering that her mum was the talk of the school gates, was to rebel. When Adele failed to respond to her daughter’s pleading for her to change her ways, Jodi switched to behaviour that ensured her mum had to pay attention to her. But even that hadn’t worked.
She preferred to avoid thinking about her mother, who was currently shacked up with her latest man in Glasgow and no longer part of her life.
Side-stepping the guy with the joint, Jodi walked off, ignoring his drunken suggestion that she ‘go back to where she came from’.
Ignorant arse. She came from bloody Brighton.
Her teenage years hadn’t all been rotten. Her best memory was from the summer of 2005 when one of her favourite bands, The Kooks, had moved into a property in Adelaide Crescent and used to sit outside on the lawn practising their latest songs. She and Becca had felt so cool, so grown-up hanging out with them. The memory made her smile.
But her smile faded when she turned into East Street and saw a homeless man lying on the ground. He was wrapped in a blanket, his worldly goods stored in carrier bags next to him. She dug out her tips from the night and placed the coins into the hat lying next to him.
‘Would you like details of the homeless shelter?’ she asked, crouching down, but he was asleep. She tucked his hat under the blanket, out of sight, and left him alone.
Her life could so easily have ended up the same way. Aunty Ruby was the reason it hadn’t. Her aunty had taken her in after she’d left prison, helped her study for her GCSEs, A levels, and had been thrilled when Jodi finally obtained her degree last year.
When Jodi reached the guest house, she found the place in virtual darkness. Pushing open the front door, she spotted Mrs Busby carrying a tea tray across the foyer. It was a nightly ritual. Two glasses of hot milk, one for her and the other for Dr Mortimer, accompanied by a packet of Milky Ways.
Jodi ducked behind the front desk, unwilling to be collared and grilled. Neither of her aunty’s long-standing guests knew about her past and she wanted to keep it that way. But it was getting increasingly tricky to keep the truth hidden, especially when the pair couldn’t understand why ‘a nice girl like her’ seemed so inept at finding a job.
While she was hiding, she heard a noise coming from the study. When she was sure Mrs Busby had disappeared, she crept over and peered around the study door.
She loved her uncle’s old study. There was something about the smell: a mixture of worn leather and old books. It was also the room where her aunty spent a good deal of time. It seemed to give her comfort.
Over the years, books on gardening, horticulture and organic produce had been added to the tall bookcases, already crammed with publications about science, religion, cricket and war history. The dark green carpet was covered with a thick woven cream rug and a vase of fresh flowers adorned the window ledge, next to the nautical weather predictor. But other than that, it remained as her uncle had left it – more of a safe haven than a shrine. A place her aunty could retreat to when life got too much.
Her aunty was sitting in the wingchair, her legs tucked up, spinning the chair around, faster and faster, with a glazed look.
Jodi leant against the doorframe. ‘Bad day?’
Her aunty nearly fell off the chair. ‘Goodness, you made me jump.’
‘Sorry.’ Jodi went into the room. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Fine, love. I was lost in thought. I’ve been trying to balance the books.’
Jodi noticed a pile of invoices on the desk. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Other than my lack of enthusiasm? Not really.’
Guilt kicked Jodi in the ribs. Why hadn’t she realised her aunty was struggling? Her cousin had spotted it straight away. ‘Do you have to do this tonight? Can’t it wait until morning?’
‘Possibly, but I’ve been putting it off for over a week.’ She sighed. ‘It’s not my favourite pastime, but the books won’t balance themselves.’ Flicking on the desk lamp, her aunty reached across for her reading glasses. ‘Of course, it might help if the books actually tallied for once. Dealing with the accounts was always Derek’s area of expertise.’ Her expression turned melancholy. ‘Still, it wasn’t like the poor man expected to die so young. It took us both by surprise.’
Jodi dumped her bag on the floor and went over to the desk. ‘You seem dejected, Aunty.’
‘Oh, ignore me, love. My back’s playing up. It always makes me crabby. Anyway, how are you? Busy night at the restaurant?’
‘Hectic.’ She perched on the desk, noticing a discarded travel brochure in the waste paper bin. ‘Have you been to see your GP?’
Her aunty pushed her hands into her lower back, stretching out the muscles. ‘It’s nothing a hot bath and a decent rest won’t solve.’ She stopped. ‘And losing a few pounds.’ She visibly sucked in her tummy.
Jodi smiled. ‘You look fine, but you could do with a holiday.’
‘If only.’ Her aunty rolled her eyes. ‘I think the five-a.m. starts are taking their toll. If I’m not in bed by nine p.m. these days, my body objects.’ She let out a sigh. ‘Mind you, my body seems to object whatever I do, so I’m not sure why I bother.’
Jodi rescued the brochure from the bin and flattened out the pages. The front cover depicted a white boat cutting through deep blue water, advertising a cruise around the Mediterranean. ‘What you need is a change of routine. A wise person once told me, if you carry on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll only ever be what you’ve always been.’
Aunty Ruby laughed. ‘Very profound… Ghandi?’
‘You, actually.’
‘I said that? Goodness.’
‘It was good advice.’ Jodi gestured to the brochure. ‘Yours?’
Aunty Ruby looked away. ‘When would I get the chance for a holiday?’ Her cheeks had coloured, so Jodi knew the brochure was hers.
Her aunty resumed spinning on the chair. ‘But perhaps I do need a change. When I opened up this morning I caught the reflection of a middle-aged woman staring back at me in the glass. It took me a moment to realise the woman was me. I’m sure the last time I looked my hair was still brown. Now look at it?’ She pointed to her wavy bob. ‘I look like Miss Marple.’
Jodi laughed. ‘You do not. But if you don’t like it, why don’t you colour it?’
‘I’d look like mutton dressed as lamb.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. The colours you can buy these days look really natural. And besides, only the other day you were telling me how much you admired Helen Mirren. And I’m sure she dyes her hair.’ Jodi placed the travel brochure on the desk, hoping the enticement of a holiday might prove tempting.
Her aunty looked thoughtful. ‘Helen Mirren, eh?’ And then the chair stopped spinning. It had unwound in height. She peered over the top of the desk, making Jodi laugh with her miffed expression.
Maude interrupted them, sauntering into the room carrying something mangled between her teeth. She dropped the carcass by Jodi’s feet and looked up, radiating an air of arrogance as she turned tail and sauntered out again.
‘That’s right, leave me to clear it up,’ her aunty called after her, struggling to get out of the unwound chair.
Jodi went over to help, steering her aunty towards the door. ‘I’ll deal with this. Pour yourself a glass of wine, have a warm bath and then go to bed. In the morning, I’ll sort out the accounts.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to do that.’
Jodi looked at her. ‘Actually, I do. In fact, I don’t know why I haven’t offered before. What’s the point of studying for a business degree, if you don’t use it to help your family? You’ve helped me enough over the years; it’s time I repaid the favour.’
Jodi might be struggling to persuade an employer she was trustworthy and loyal, or convince a guy she wasn’t trouble waiting to happen, but she could prove to her family that their belief in her was justified. Because without them, she’d be lying in a gutter under a blanket somewhere…like that homeless guy, wondering what the hell had gone wrong with her life.