Paradise by Joanna Nadin Page B

boiled sweets. She shakes her head at another and watches him instead, eating this beautiful thing, this work of art, until there is nothing left but a tiny pool of melted vanilla.
    Dinner costs twenty-five pounds. A weekend’s wages from the fair. But it is worth it. She is worth it.
    “Next time it’s my treat,” she tells him.
    He shakes his head but she insists. And on Saturday she takes him for fish and chips, eaten out of the vinegar-soaked newspaper on the seafront. It is perfect. Like him.

THE NEXT day Mum goes out and spends a hundred and fifty pounds in two hours. On what, I don’t know. A new camera. DVDs for Finn. Food: bags of two-pound-a-go arugula that will lurk in the fridge until they melt into inedible brown slime. Instead of pasta, we have high tea. Every meal an elaborate display of shop-bought cupcakes, quails’ eggs already peeled, sausages on sticks, jam sandwiches cut into heart shapes, like I’m a princess. Or a kid. Like Mum is a kid. It’s like when Cass’s dad first went to live with the Stepmonster and every day Cass had chips for tea. Chips with everything, like they could make it all better. Only they didn’t. Cass got so sick of them she said she could taste them in her mouth if anyone even said the word.
    *  *  *
    A few days later, Mum puts a plate of cheese straws down on the table for breakfast, and I can’t stand it anymore. We need money.
    “I’m going out,” I say.
    I don’t tell her where. Won’t until I get back, until I’ve got something. It’ll be easy, I tell myself. Resort towns are full of jobs. Cleaners and waitresses. And I walk down the hill, ignoring the weather, and the shuttered windows, and every other reminder that this isn’t Brighton or Blackpool, and it isn’t high season.
    The Grand is a joke. Maybe once upon a time it lived up to its name. But now its paint is peeling, the red nylon carpets worn and stained. Brass lamps give everything a seedy glow. It is tatty, tawdry, faded. But I figure at least the cleaning should be easy. I mean, it’s not like they’ll sack me for missing a bit. I put on my I’m-totally-reliable-and-don’t-ever-do-drugs face and walk up to the desk. The receptionist is older, and fat, her breasts squeezed into a too-small bra under a shiny satin shirt.
    “Hi. I’m looking for work.”
    She raises a fat boiled-egg eye from her
Chat
magazine but doesn’t say a word. I try harder.
    “Cleaning, or, um, waitressing?”
    “We’re empty. Try at Whitsun.”
    “Oh.” I do my winning smile and am about to ask for a pen and paper to leave my name and address when I realize she’s not even looking at me anymore; she’s gone back to Kelly-from-Harlow’s true confession.
    It’s the same at the Palace, and the row of seedy B&Bs on the main road. Laughing, raised eyebrows, and “Come back in a few months.” But I don’t have a few months.
    In the window of the Excelsior is a handwritten ad for a sous-chef. I don’t even know what a sous-chef is, but I figure the hours will be OK because restaurants don’t really open until after school. But the owner, his accent slipping from Cornetto-ad Italian to broad Cornish, tells me I need experience; it’s not McDonald’s. I look at the pictures of the green meals.
It so isn’t,
I think. And for once I find myself wishing it were. That I was back in Peckham, under the Golden Arches. Anyone could get a job there. Even Ash, for a few weeks anyway. Before he started swiping stuff.
    “You could try Jeanie’s.”
    I come to. “What?”
    “The caff.” He nods down the road to the seafront.
    There it is. The cracked-tiled, red-gingham, Danny-full café.
    I nod. “Thanks.”
    He shrugs and slices another shriveled lemon.
    Danny’s not there. It’s the woman again — Pat, he said her name was. But maybe that’s better. Don’t want to have to ask him. He might make excuses.
    “What can I get you?” Pat smiles, and I can see now why Danny likes her. She looks kind.