The Turning Tide by Brooke Magnanti

Maybe other women wondered where their exes were more often. She supposed maybe it was because she didn’t have to wonder. She knew exactly where he was. He was in prison, probably for the rest of his life. And unless something had changed in the last two decades, an unrepentant killer.
    ‘Erykah, tilt your head this way. Erykah, over here.’
    Photographers hadn’t changed at all since the last time she was faced with a bank of flashbulbs. Ordering you to look this way and that way, parroting your name over and over, pushing for a reaction.
    Grayson had been her first boyfriend. He was ten years older, already with something of a fearsome reputation, but loyal to friends and family. He was the first to look past the gangly nerd in glasses and see – well, a gangly nerd who cleaned up nicely. And was good with sums. Which, given his ambitions, was exactly what he was looking for. ‘My diamond in the rough,’ he used to say. And she made the effort to look more like the kind of woman he wanted her to be. Not that it was all one sided. He took a subscription to the Financial Times , he said, to impress her.
    He always had money. She knew where it came from; his source of income was common knowledge in their neighbourhood. But Grayson assured her he was more than some go-nowhere street dealer. Some said he had big connections down the hill in Brixton, others claimed it was further afield, Manchester, even. He promised he was going to do her proud, cash out and go straight. Get into the real world of business. Invest in property. He talked about their future life together as he drove her from Harrods to Harvey Nicks to Selfridges in his 5 Series Beemer. ‘Nothing’s too good for my Rikki,’ he would say, and squeeze the top of her thigh. ‘You ask, and it’s yours.’
    ‘Don’t you see, Rikki,’ Rainbow would hiss as she watched Erykah get ready for a date, ‘he’s with you because he can control you. Why would a man like that be interested in a girl your age? Why would he be interested in a girl like you at all?’
    Erykah hated her for that. Hated her mother for reducing her to an ugly duckling, to a little girl. She would show her mum, she would show them all they were wrong about him.
    Rainbow put her hands on her shoulders and turned her daughter towards her. There were tears in her eyes, although that might have been the watery, unfocused look she had sometimes when she was deep in withdrawal. ‘Rikki, honey,’ she said, ‘I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made,’ she said. ‘I look at you and I see a girl who doesn’t know yet that the world is not going to give someone like you a lot of second chances.’
    Erykah shrugged her off. What was she talking about? She got good marks, worked hard. She had never even tried drugs, and she and Grayson always used protection. She and her mother were nothing alike. She knew that with the certainty only a teenage girl knows.
    It was Grayson who took her under his wing. When she was with him she saw less of the things she hated about herself. When she looked in a mirror her skinny arms and legs didn’t bother her so much. Her frizzy hair, her eyes too close together, they no longer seemed so bad. He was the one who told her, no, she was long like a model and she should dress like one. She should style her hair so it fell in ringlets, emphasise her eyes with make-up. And he was right.
    ‘Come here, baby, come here.’ She would lean in and let him rub a moistened finger along her forehead, smooth her baby hairs into place. His big hands framed her jaw. He looked her over and nodded, satisfied with what he saw. When Erykah was accepted at university to study computer science, it was Grayson who bragged to all his friends and family. His girl was going to have a degree. Rainbow barely seemed to register what was happening by that point, wrapped in the layers of her worsening addiction.
    ‘Maybe someday you gonna figure out how to hack a bank and make