Cross - Spilt Milk, Black Coffee

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Arts Council England for the International

Fellowship to the Banff Centre, Canada, where this

book began, and to the British Council and the

staff and students at the University of Mumbai

where this book was completed.

For invaluable insight, inspiration and encouragement,

thanks to Deborah Rogers and all at RCW, and

Alexandra Pringle and all at Bloomsbury. Special thanks

to Victoria Millar, Gillian Stern and Sarah-Jane Forder

for their perceptive suggestions and good judgment.

As always I am indebted to Andy, Kendra and Cleo

for their patience, assistance, support and love.

Amir

Its a cold Christmas Eve in city centre six weeks after our Jackie left her young daughter home alone while she ran off to Greece to follow a bloke.

Like magic its snowing. Tinsel collars hang round each snow-coated lion, and a golden veil of lights encircles the stone pillars. I can hear the tinkle of rides in the German market and a drift of oil and sugar; perhaps Jackie was going round on the carousel, a bratwurst stuck in her giggly gob. On the town hall steps carol singers were gathering. Joy to all men. Which about summed up our Jackie.

Its also the morning of Jackies wedding, to a completely different gora, one she had met in The Bar just weeks back. Wine? What wine you want? Tony, the gimpy stranger, had asked, coming over to our Jackie with a letchy grin. Whatever wine goes best with gin, love, Jackie had replied. And, perhaps to let me know that she was unchanged, still happily filthy, despite everything that had occurred during the last disastrous year, she said shed given tosspot her muckiest smile the one Id once told her lingered in the air like smoke.

Meet Jackie, come away with smiles soaked in your clothes, twisted through your hair.

Some snaky blokes taking photographs; perhaps just a manky relative, though I fear a tabloider.

Im becoming a gimp: imagining all the time. Perhaps shed just forgotten she was getting married today. Another headline Ashfaq, my 48-year-old newsagent brother, had drawn my attention to said, OOOPS WHERES MY DAUGHTER, and a picture they could have used as the dictionary definition of dizzy: Jackie full-colour red-face, ice-creamy hair, grinning, sucking on her little finger, dumb as daylight. Though shes smart as a whip really.

And she looked good, real friendly, even in the BOOZY BLONDE MOTHER OF ONE exclusives, though she was a real tough Yorkshire lass, slamming towards middle age, and there were faint lines that ran from the corner of her nose down to the sides of her mouth, like fine cracks in plaster, and sometimes when she was laughing and crying at the same time you got this sparky rainbow spread over what she called her old fizzog.

ave we met before? Tony had asked Jackie later on that night they first met.

Perhaps youve seen this old fizzog in the papers, love, she said, tapping her pinkish wine-warm cheek, and Tony laughed, never considering she was telling the truth.

Because of this non-stop truth-telling she isnt a woman people trust.

TROUBLE AT TILL FOR BUSTY MUM was how one local rag greeted the news. Or, in another, DUMB BLONDE FORGETS DAUGHTER, 12. All this would have been in the weeks before Jackie and Tony met. And the old perv would have been high on her, at first, and perhaps in no state to read papers.

Thats if he could read.

And who could have tipped him off? Few of Jackies mates had even met Tony, let alone got to know him. Those that did know Tony Shoe did so only in his capacity as one of our stores many shoe reps. No one knew his real surname. And thered been no time even for proper invitations.

Thinking never got in the way of her fun, though. Ive heard all about her punk days, her acid-house days. Her disco days. All the slutty disasters. She loved making fools of men, and yet she craved their love and approval, which was the cause of her chaos.

So the first many even heard of this do was when they received Jackies text: Tony and Jackie request yr company @ a Winter Wedding: 2pm Sat 24 Dec @ City Register Office. Drinks and dancing l8r venue tbc.

Orla said the timing, on the biggest day in the retail calendar, was deliberate. Still, despite huge sodding inconvenience, Orla had, to everyones surprise, arranged the rota as if around an important funeral, and most of those who wanted to attend could.

But theres still no limousine and I think I might gimp out and cry so I put on my shades. Glance up at the CCTVs, cotton-woolled with snow. The traffic is caught in a slow weave, all the cars stuck together and then all the buses. A few single lashes of rain streak windows of vehicles and a few moments later the wipers begin. There was a tug on my elbow. So where is she? Tony Shoe, fianc, says, real nervous. The guys a complete half-head. But. But if shes happy...

I cant say, mate. Shes just not here yet.

Is this normal, mate? Tony says, in a conspiratorial man-to-man whisper, which blows the words out the corner of thin dry lips. Weve not known each other long. Is this just like regular female lateness?

No, I say. This is completely out of character.

Im chuffed that shes making this tosspot sweat. It was obvious what Tony saw in busty bubbly blonde Jackie Jackson. But what did she see in him, the girls gossiped? Again. Perhaps Tony Shoe was a secret lottery winner, as Leo had suggested.

Leo. It all started sliding after Leo. Who yesterday said he wouldnt begrudge Jackie an easier life as long as it wasnt Leo himself who had to provide it, because Leos had women, flashy birds, local lasses, who expect, after a few shags, him to fund them, knowing all the time that he has a mortgage and a family of his own back home.

Generally, Id say Marilyns right: most men dont risk much for Jackie.

After the end of the affair with Leo, Jackie told me shed stopped going out, because it was when she went out sharking that bad stuff happened, and Id thought how it sounded like my own ma, who at that time, last April, was just losing her reading glasses hourly, and innocently asking the exact same question several times a day. So its right boring, is it, this snow-white life youre living? Id asked Jackie. Ah, but I imagine Im not living the life I am living, Amir, just reading about myself in a book, she said.

Boooook: I had to laugh at that Englisher accent, teeth-achingly cheap-jam-sweet so when she said book, it rhymed with spook. And that helps? I said. Well, it gets me to sleep, love. You so wouldnt be the kind of book to put anyone to sleep, Id said, not thinking. For a few years I was the kind of book you could only read with the lights on, Amir, she whispered sweet lips bang on my ear. So no way, I said, total dry mouthed, youd be a page-turner. One with a great plot, gripping, thrilling. But kind of throwaway? A beach read, she said and pretended to sigh sadly, and she was half right: I was infected back in April, at the start of all this, no matter how hard I tried not to be, by the way my ma and bro thought of the boozy goris.

DASH OF A SALESWOMAN: SEXY SHOPKEEPER DESERTS DAUGHTER that was Ashfaqs favourite header. Though he normally gets all his news online, because he hates all papers and journalists and says he wont read the rags he sells because of what they wrote about us lot round here, but about Jackie hed broke his rule, and read every article, leered over every bosomy photo, even sniffed the pages so he had ink on the end of his nose. Even if Id tried to buy up and burn all the papers, itd not have saved her from our Ashfaq, because my bro proudly owns Fags n Fings, and plans to build a Fags n Fings empire. First throughout Yorkshire, then across the world.