“Oh, Flipp, Flipp,” he said. “Sweet little Flipp. Are you going to take me to a tribunal? Are you going to inform your union rep? Or perhaps the police? Somehow, I don’t think so.” And now his face was set and grim, and Flipp knew he was coming to the real bones of the matter, the whole purpose of hiring her. “Suppose I decide to ask you for references? Suppose I ask you for the name of your school and your children’s home so I can ask their opinion of your trustworthiness and intelligence? I’m well within my rights as your employer to demand you give them to me.”
“I…would rather not…Look, I don’t feel well. I think I’m going to be sick. I need to go home.”
“You can’t run away, Flipp. You don’t have anywhere to go. You need this job to pay your rent.”
“I need to get out. Please let me go home.” Flipp was on her feet now, leaping for the door.
“Flipp,” he was saying, all friendly again, all concerned and paternal. “Don’t be afraid. I don’t mean you any harm. I want to take care of you. Let me help you.”
“I have to go,” she almost screamed, bolting down the stairs and towards the side exit of the arcade, mercifully still open for the takeaway man.
“You can’t run,” she heard him shout after her. “You’ll be back. I’ll be waiting for you, Flipp.”
From the pier steps, she called Rocky. It took him a while to pick up and, when he did, there was shouting and loud music in the background.
“Where are you?” they said simultaneously, Rocky getting his repeat question in first.
“I’m on the pier steps. Rocky, I’m sorry, you were right, I should have listened to you.” She couldn’t hold back the tears and had to listen to his voice through her high, hysterical sobs.
“Meet me at the bus shelter by the statue of Queen Victoria. I’ll take you home.”
Home? I have no home.
But she didn’t say it. She ran all the way to t
he end of the pier, past the darkened curves of the roller coaster and the shuttered-up chip and candy-floss booths, towards Rocky, towards the only home she knew.
She crouched down behind a low flowerbed wall, expecting to hear the roar of his engine, but he arrived on foot, running across the quiet road, eerily free of its messy sunburned daytime crowds and chock-a-block touring coaches.
“Flipp?” She peered over her self-created parapet, only reassured by the unmistakable sound of his voice. “Come on. Back to mine. It’s not far.”
He helped her up and hustled her along the seafront as quickly as he could, seemingly desperate not to be seen, keeping to the shadows until they reached the facade of what must once have been a luxury hotel, now converted to flats. The once proud white stone steps were now sticky with spat-out gum and cigarette butts, and the paint on the rails was peeling badly. Rocky ushered Flipp through the door and into a lobby that smelled of stale beer and burned carpet, towards the stairs.
“You live here?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought Cordwainer would have paid you better.” The timer switch that controlled the light ran out before they reached the top of the stairs, and they negotiated the fourth and fifth flights in darkness, the silence broken by distant dance beats and the yells of rowing couples.
“He does,” said Rocky shortly. “I spend as little as I can, though. The bike’s my only luxury. I need to put the rest away.”
“For a rainy day?”
He didn’t answer but led her along the top corridor, past doors that were covered in scratches and windows sealed up with tape, to the flat at the end.
“In,” he said shortly, pushing her over the threshold and switching on the lights. “Sit down.” He indicated a battered leather sofa in the living room cum kitchen area that constituted the largest of the dingy flat’s three rooms, shrugged off his jacket, took two cans of beer from the fridge and threw one over to Flipp. His face, as it had been since he picked her up, remained grimly set throughout.
“So do you believe me now?” he asked, sitting down beside her and opening his can.
“Yes. Yes, okay. I said so, didn’t I?” Flipp looked around at her surroundings, which somehow managed to be simultaneously sparse and chaotic. “Is this where we were going to eat?”
“I’d have cleared up a bit.”
“Good. Not that my place is much better.”
“What did he do to you? Did he touch you?”
Flipp put a hand on Rocky’s wrist. He was shaking. She looked up at him, struck with love and tenderness that surpassed her own fears.