She swallowed more beer. What was she thinking? Someone like her. As if she knew what she was like. She was making assumptions about herself based on what? Gut feeling? Hope? The fact that she had a reasonable grasp of English grammar and spoke with a middle-class accent?
She reached into her plastic bag and drew out her notebook. The fact was, she didn’t know what she was like. It was quite possible that she wasn’t actually a very nice person.
Suddenly, a tremendous roar filled the room and Jo felt glad she hadn’t opted for a seat on the floor. Men cheered, footballers cartwheeled and pints of beer spilled all over the place.
‘One-nil,’ said the barman excitedly. Jo nodded as though she cared.
Buffalo Club = strip club
Needed the money?
Friend(?) Saskia
‘You a journalith, then?’ asked the barman, peering at the book.
Jo turned the page quickly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just…writing a shopping list.’
She was impressed at her quick-wittedness, given the amount she had drunk. This pint would be her last, she decided.
‘You causing trouble, Den?’ yelled a coarse voice from across the bar. Lumbering towards her was a large man in a dirty white vest. ‘Is he causing trouble?’
Definitely her last drink, thought Jo, shaking her head politely and realising that her head was actually resting on her arms. She sat up.
‘She’s writing a shopping lith,’ explained the barman.
‘Oh, very organised,’ chuckled the man, leering over Jo’s shoulder. ‘Chips,’ he said, nodding. ‘My missus always forgets them.’
Jo glanced at his belly and decided he was lying. She shut the notebook and slipped it back in her pocket.
‘What’re you drinking?’ asked the fat man.
‘Hey, she’th got a pint,’ said the barman. Clearly Jo didn’t get a say in the matter.
‘It’s nearly finished,’ argued vest man.
Jo looked down. It was true. She was nearly through her second pint. She had to slow down. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ she tried to say, although it came out as ‘phalanx’.
‘Come on, let me buy you a drink,’ pressed the man.
It was then, as the man leaned sideways and gave a sort of nod of encouragement, that Jo saw it again. She saw the guy at the bar. She felt him tap her elbow. She heard him ask what she wanted to drink. Only this time–and maybe it was the alcohol doing funny things with her head–it was much clearer. She could see every line on his face. She could picture the rows of expensive spirits behind the bar, even hear the throb of the music in the club. And this time, the memory didn’t stop there. She knew what happened next.
‘You all right?’ asked the barman, squinting at her anxiously.
‘Yeah,’ she said quietly, trying not to lose hold of the memory, feeling the blood drain out of her face. ‘Where are your toilets?’
Locked in the cubicle, slumped on the lid with her head in her hands, Jo closed her eyes. Her head was spinning and she felt as though she was on a boat in stormy weather.
She remembered accepting the offer and choosing a vodka martini–an expensive drink, as the club dictated. Wow, it was coming back to her. The man had pushed the glass towards her and then moved closer himself. He’d smelt nice. Expensive aftershave. She had smiled seductively, the way she’d learned to do, and then asked him a question. Something mundane. Nothing personal. Jo fought to hold on to the image as she marvelled at how much was coming back.
She had led him away from the bar. He’d settled in one of the leather chairs in the corner of the club. He was shy, she thought. Probably not a regular. She’d started to dance, gyrating a little, nothing special–then something had happened.
Jo ground the palms of her hands into her head, trying to remember the details. It was hazy now, though. She couldn’t picture the scene. Just voices. Shouting. And those alarms, the frantic noise. There was panic everywhere. She thought she remembered struggling with the straps on her shoes, scratching at her ankles so she could take them off and run, but it was all muddled.
‘Is there someone in there?’ The cubicle door rattled.
Jo flushed the toilet for effect and lifted the lid. Her thoughts swung back to the present.
‘Sorry.’ She brushed past the girl, falling sideways against the sink. A strange feeling of déjà vu came over her. She tried to summon more detail, but her brain was fuzzy. Had something happened in a toilet, somewhere, sometime…?
‘You want that drink, then?’ asked the barman as she walked back through the pub.
Actually, Jo had been heading for the door. ‘Gottago.’
‘C’mon, juth one more–ooh.’ The man seemed distracted. In fact, as he squinted across at the screen the entire roomful of bodies erupted like an over-shaken can of beer and the noise levels rose to deafening. ‘Hey!’ yelled the barman along with everybody else. ‘We won! C’mon, you gotta have one more now!’
Jo said something that got lost in the din and wandered unsteadily onto the street. She didn’t even know who’d been playing.
She was somewhere in West Oxford, it transpired. Out of courtesy to the helpful shopkeeper who told her how to get to the bus stop she needed, Jo purchased some crisps and a couple of cans of lager.
She ignored the scowls of fellow passengers as she cracked open the first can. It was probably illegal or something, but Jo didn’t care. She had worked it out. She had discovered what made the memories come back: alcohol. Good or bad, her thoughts were flowing freely now.
Jo wondered how many people knew her dirty secret. In a way, it made things easier, the fact that she was officially dead. It meant that nobody was looking for her. Maybe there were people out there who knew that Rebecca Ross had been a stripper, but now she was dead…Saskia Dawson was the only potential leak, and she had her own skeletons locked away–assuming she didn’t make a habit of disclosing her line of work. Jo had to hope that that was enough of a threat to keep the girl quiet.
It occurred to Jo as she fell off the bus and tottered onto Radley Road that Jo Simmons was no longer just a temporary alias. It wasn’t just something she used in order to fit in. It was her name. Her new identity. So as long as she didn’t draw attention to herself in Radley, she could survive as Ms Simmons for…well, for ever if necessary. Jo shuddered. That was a horrible idea. She couldn’t just draw a line under the last twenty-odd years of her life. But at the same time, in a way, it appealed. There was something comforting and neat about the idea. Like wiping a virus-ridden computer: it was a drastic step, but it worked. And everything ran more smoothly afterwards.
Of course, there were benefits to starting again, cleaning the slate of her life and all that. But what about Rebecca? Effectively, Jo had killed her off. She hadn’t done so intentionally; it had just been a consequence of events. And now she had to decide whether to resurrect her old self or leave her behind and move on. She opened her second beer, her mind in a state of flux.
It was early evening when she stumbled into the shop. Mrs Phillips was on a stepladder with her back to the door, sliding packs of toilet roll onto the top shelf. Jo slipped past quietly. She didn’t have the energy for a conversation this evening–let alone one of the landlady’s interrogations.
‘Nice day?’ sang the woman without turning round.
Jo stopped in her tracks.
‘You knocked the doorstop,’ she explained.
‘Oh, right. Yeah, good.’ The words tumbled out like porridge: lumpy and stuck together.
Mrs Phillips got down from her stepladder and started packing it away. Jo took