The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood Page A

stringer,’ he says, ‘for the
Tribune
.’
    ‘What’s a stringer?’ asks Penny Lucas-Jones. She teaches French and Italian at a girls’ boarding school outside Salisbury.
     It fits in well with childcare.
    ‘A journalist,’ Jim tells her. ‘She covers a patch of the southeast so the staffers don’t have to leave London.’
    ‘A hack!’ says Lionel. ‘Well,
well
! Doorstepping celebrities, eh? Hacking phones?’
    ‘No,’ says Jim. ‘They have specialists for phone hacking.’
    ‘Mostly crime,’ Kirsty says. ‘And, you know – London people visiting the provinces.’
    The joke falls flat. He’s taken me literally, she thinks. Of course he has. Prising him out of Belgravia was like pulling
     hens’ teeth, and now I’m blowing it. She feels another wave of nausea break over her, gulps it back. I bet I’m green, she
     thinks. Which at least will cover the yellow of liver damage.
    ‘How exciting!’ says Gerard Lucas-Jones. ‘We read the
Trib une
, funnily enough. Well, Penny does. I’m more of an
FT
man myself.’
    ‘I’ve not noticed you in there,’ says Sue. ‘Do you get published often?’
    ‘She got two pieces in this week, actually,’ Jim says. ‘She had a full page today, and she’s got
two
on Sunday.’
    ‘Clever girl!’ says Lionel, drawing out the ‘i’ in girl so it lasts two seconds.
    Sue has the grace to look faintly embarrassed. ‘What about?’ she asks.
    ‘Oh, this rather sad-sack bunch of moral rearmament nutjobswho launched this week. But it was a bit of a damp squib, to be honest. And the other one’s on Whitmouth. The Whitmouth murders.
     I’m still writing that.’
    ‘Ah, yes,’ says Lionel. ‘Prostitutes, isn’t it?’
    Mustn’t argue, she thinks. We’re here for Jim’s career. And frankly, I don’t have the spit for it anyway. I got most of my
     bile out last night. ‘No,’ she replies, ‘just girls on holiday. Teenagers having fun, you know?’
    Her mind conjures up an image of Nicole Ponsonby’s sister on the Whitmouth Police station steps, behind a bank of microphones,
     weeping. Begging for someone, somewhere, to dob the killer in. The families always think the pain will go away if the killer
     is caught; that they’ll get some kind of closure. Like drowning sailors, they grasp at any straw of hope, anything that suggests
     that they won’t be feeling like this for ever. Kirsty’s seen them so often now, struggling to get words out, propping each
     other up on tottering legs. Knows that the weeping never ends, not really.
    ‘A bit of a shithole, isn’t it, Whitmouth?’ Lionel asks, and crams half of his starter in his mouth in one go.
    ‘I suppose so. Depends on what you like, really. I think it has a – I don’t know, a sleazy charm.’
    ‘Went to Southend once,’ he says. ‘Someone’s idea of an ironic stag weekend. Now
there
’s a shithole. As bad as that?’
    She thinks. She’s done a fair amount of time in Southend. It’s a fruitful venue, if you’re on the crime circuit. ‘Yes,’ she
     says. ‘But pebbles, like Bognor.’
    ‘Oh,
Bognor
,’ he says, as though he need say no more.
    The conversation hits a lull. Kirsty looks down at her plate, struggles to find a new topic. Struggles not to vomit. She can
     feel Jim burning to start in on vacancies, but it’s too early. They need to wait till the crème brûlée is on the table. Business
     can never be discussed directly until you’re eating crème brûlée. She can feel herself getting hot, just from the contact
     of the wine with her lips. Thinks she might be about to break into a sweat.
    *
    The pinger goes off in the kitchen: time to take the meat out and put on the mange-tout. She excuses herself and goes through.
    Taking the pork loin from the oven, she puts it on the dish to rest, then goes to the freezer and finds a packet of peas to
     press against her forehead. She’s closer to forty than thirty, but she still finds formal entertaining a strain. And that’s