Jenny Rat

By Martin Simons

Michael Ingram has a lonely existence as a twenty-eight-year-old consulting engineer. Almost all his work is done with computers and transmitted to clients electronically. His hobby is cabinet making, but he alone sees and uses the products of his workshop.

He finds solace in with Jacquie, a sex worker who visits weekly. After one of Jacquies visits, they discover a teenage girl, victim of a brutal assault, dying in the road. Michael gets her to hospital. Jacquie warns him not to get involved with the filthy little rat. He rejects her advice.

While still in the hospital, Jenny begins to draw and reveals great talent as an artist. She sketches a rat in a cage to represent herself. Her mother being untraceable and in any case hated by the girl, she decides to live with Michael.

Jenny creates a sculpture of herself and Michael fused and growing toward the sky like a blossoming tree. Jenny grows and matures.

She makes friends and brings them into Michaels life. Under her influence, he too begins to develop. The pair must be careful about how they express their affection for each other.

The novel tackles the topic of sexual consent as well as issues plaguing the foster care system.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514444429

Martin Simons

Martin Simons was born in Derbyshire, England, in 1930. After national service in the RAF, he trained as a teacher at Borough Road and Goldsmiths Colleges. While teaching full time, in the evenings, he studied geography with ancillary geology at Birkbeck College, London University. He graduated with first class honours in 1959 and subsequently became a university lecturer in London and Adelaide. He completed masters degrees in education and in philosophy. He has had lifelong interests in education, philosophy, aeronautics, especially the sport of gliding, and has written extensively about these and other subjects. In 1954, he married Jean, and they had two daughters, Patricia and Margaret. The family moved to Adelaide in 1968. After fifty happy years, Jean died of pancreatic cancer in 2005. Since then, he has lived alone in suburban Melbourne but remains fully engaged with his writing and other activities. In recent years, while continuing to fly and write nonfiction, he has written three very unusual novels, Jenny Rat, Cities at Sea, and The Glass Ship.

Book preview

1

Delivery

She was good value. He lay on his back, arms flung wide. She was straddled over him. He closed his eyes.

She moved away, leaving a damp chill.

‘Wait,’ he said. No reply. He rolled to the side of the bed, put his feet on the floor and sat, elbows on knees, sweating, a sudden small shiver. She was running water for her shower in the en suite. Good value and clean. As she had once said humorously, not a cheap whore, an expensive one, better than the others. He had never tried the others.

She re-emerged and began to dress. Smooth, slender legs, long light brown hair, a few strands wandering over her breasts.

‘Stay, have supper with me,’ he said. She grinned. A lively face, a sense of amusement always lurking, twinkling eyes. There were crow’s feet. Not a beautiful face but friendly.

‘It’s a wild night. Did you hear that hail?’ she said.

‘Have breakfast here. I’ll pay.’ She pulled up her panties, fastened her brassiere.

‘You know I don’t stay overnight, I’m tired and I’ve still to drive back to town.’ Stockings on, dress. ‘There’s traffic tonight.’

He shook his head. ‘Not much traffic out here’

‘There were some drunks careering about when I came. Your neighbours having a party.’

‘Neighbours? Miles away’.

‘Someone was tearing up tires outside, a few minutes ago.’

‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘You were busy. You’ll see the marks on the tarmac. You know what they’re like and that twisty road is dangerous. You should put a mirror up with that bend and your hidden driveway. I don’t want to get clobbered by a boozy idiot.’

‘I don’t want the place to be too visible. I like my privacy.’

‘Secrecy, more like. You can only just see the house from the road. It’s foggy tonight, too.’

‘I leave the light on to show the place is occupied. I’ll see you out of the gate,’ he said, ‘if you must go.’

‘Just watch till I’m clear. Put some clothes on. It’s stopped raining but it’s bloody cold and blowing like hell.’ She picked up his trousers and draped them over his knees. ‘You’ll be back in bed in no time.’

He pulled the wrinkled trousers on, the sweater that needed darning, shoes without socks. She walked briskly into his hall, opened the cupboard, found a coat and thrust it at him as he followed her, sluggishly.

The money lay under the paperweight where he had put it before she arrived. ‘Here, don’t forget,’ he said.

‘You’ve never known me forget, have you?’ She picked the notes up; her fee for the hour and the usual supplement to cover the time and expense of driving from the city. ‘Next week again?’

‘Yes, of course, Jacquie.’

The sex was good, hardly ever the same twice. She guided him, told him what to do, no nonsense. It reassured him. She had been coming to his home every Sunday evening for two years, a clever woman, professional and competent. She was cheerful and good company too. He wondered if she would visit sometimes just for conversation without undressing. Have to pay the same, he supposed, but it might be worth it.

The idea of buying sex had come upon him unexpectedly and terrified him at first. He had been inexperienced to the point of ignorance. It hadn’t been for want of trying. Had he tried too hard, clumsily, gauche, making a fool of himself? No girls had ever shown interest. They turned away when he approached, giggled and sneered. Something about him put them off. It became too painful. He had given up. For two or three years he thought he had successfully suppressed his desires.

One day, as he was searching for an engineering company, the screen came up with an unwanted advert; Escort Services (Social). It had not occurred to him that he could telephone for a girl. A great surge of longing arose within him, overpowering, unbearable. He clicked the keyboard. After a minute or two most of the images revolted him. These were studio photographs, posed and false. He was not naive enough to suppose the girls all looked so. These would be professional models and he knew how such pictures were created, retouched, adjusted. He had the software on his own disc, though he never used it. The headlines were worse than the illustrations: Hotline Escorts, Honeys, Wild Temptations, Hot Babes. All major credit cards available.

He wasn’t that sort of man. He had forced his mind back to business; found the firm he was looking for and returned to his calculations.

The awakened desperation did not go away. Later, he searched again. Here was an advertisement with no photo-shopped picture, a name to ask for. Explore possibilities. Call Jacquie for an appointment. If this was an agency, at least they pretended otherwise. He touched the required keys but on hearing the start of a taped message disconnected in rage at himself. Moments later he keyed again and listened. The voice was inviting. Jacquie was not available now but offered times to call. He had been fantasizing. He wasn’t that sort of man.

Days later, stammering, hand trembling ridiculously, prepared to disconnect if he didn’t like what he heard, he spoke to her directly. She was matter of fact but friendly and seemed to recognize his anxiety. She could visit him that evening, or another. Everything would be good. She quoted a price. In a rush of wild decision he was committed. He experienced a frisson of anticipatory sexual excitement but immediately after disconnecting he was overcome with shame and fear. She would laugh at him. Girls always did.

The time neared. How to receive such a visitor? In frenzy he showered, changed his clothes, discarding the scruffy things he normally wore at home, donned fresh underwear, trousers and shirt. They were shabby but not falling apart. How could it matter what he wore, why would such a woman care? He would be expected to take everything off, wouldn’t he?

On her arrival he was terrified. She understood and took charge. Doubts and fears were swept away. She helped him to take his clothes off. Hers came off too. She made a small drama of it, watching him carefully as she stripped, a little at a time. He enjoyed this. What followed was marvellous. He did, at last, what other men did. For these few minutes he felt he was a giant. The weariness came after she had gone but then he slept. In the morning he rejoiced again. She would return whenever he wanted her.

So she had returned every Sunday evening. He didn’t bother to dress after the first time but she had her rules. Above all she insisted on cleanliness. He must have a shower beforehand and she did so afterwards.

He loved her. No, she made him understand that what he felt was not love. Yet it was not merely physical release either. He liked Jacquie, why shouldn’t he? She said he had been lucky to find her and he believed it.

She opened the door, hunched her shoulders and scuttled to her small car parked in the drive. She had told him, in one of their chats, that the first time she visited she had a man waiting, unseen in the car outside.

‘I employ him quite often. Dave, he’s a retired cop. It’s his job to wait there for me unless I give a signal. I sized you up in about three seconds, knew you’d be safe. It isn’t always so easy. I could have called him in quickly if anything had gone wrong. It does sometimes, if I strike a bad guy. Mobiles make it easier nowadays. Coming out here, to this lonely place, I had to take care. I didn’t know you then, you might have been dirty. Or a monster. Dave spent the hour reading the sports pages. If you had known he was there you wouldn’t have been able to do it, would you? Silly boy. I’m on my own tonight, always have been since then.’

*     *     *

She got into her car, switched on the lights, manoeuvred to turn round in the broad driveway with its incongruously narrow exit. He pulled the coat around himself and waved for her to follow as he walked down the shallow ramp to the road. The car, lights blazing, came on. A flurry of cold rain blew into his eyes and the mist swirled. He took a couple of paces, looking for approaching vehicles. All seemed clear but as he stepped further out to extend his vision round the curve in the road his foot went into icy water, more than ankle deep. The gutter must be blocked. His other foot landed on something that caused him to stumble. The car crawled closer as he glanced down, the headlights throwing everything into highlight and deep shadow.

‘Jacquie, stop, stop.’ he yelled. The car kept coming and he staggered towards it, dazzled, held up a hand and thumped several times on the hood with the other. It stopped. He turned back to the road. By feel as much as sight he confirmed that what he had stumbled over was a human foot, an ankle, leg, knee. The rest of the body was in the gutter, ponding up the water, lying where the car would certainly have run over it.

The body moved. It coughed.

Jacquie yelled, ‘What the hell is it?’

‘There’s someone here in the road.’

‘A drunk? Drag him out the bloody way.’

‘We can’t leave him. It’s freezing. He’ll die out here.’

‘Die? Drunks don’t die,’ she shouted back at him. ‘Kick him and he’ll get up and stagger off.’ No kindness in her voice now. He knelt in the streaming gutter, trying to get a grip on wet, slippery limbs.

‘It’s a little boy.’

She came to look. ‘Oh, bugger it, get ‘im out the water, then.’

It coughed again. Hack Hack. The wind howled.

‘Phone for an ambulance,’ he yelled.

As he dragged the child out of the stream he heard a roaring sound, a vast rumble that for a few moments he could not understand; a great drum roll rising to a threatening roar, continuous and becoming louder, louder, a colossal noise as he imagined a big earthquake might sound. He stared wildly in all directions. It was not thunder. Then he knew what was coming. A massive downpour of large hail was approaching through the trees, ripping off leaves and small branches. Pebbles of ice were hammering, smashing down on the road, bouncing back into the air, an avalanche from the sky. The impact of the frozen projectiles on his unprotected head and shoulders was painful, bruising and mind numbing, forcing him down onto all fours, trying to cover his own head with the coat while sheltering the child.

Jacquie screamed, scrambling to dive back into the car. Hailstones, he thought, could dent car bodywork. They had been known to ruin cars parked in sale yards. They could be heavy enough to stun a human being, even kill. Pigeon’s egg size and larger had been known. A few relevant figures raced through his engineering mind; the acceleration due to gravity, air drag, vectors, velocities.

The hail moved away as suddenly as it had come, the roar receding down the valley, but a deluge of huge raindrops with icy cores continued. He picked the child up. There wasn’t much weight. Staggering to the house, half blinded he glimpsed Jacquie in the car using her phone. Would it work in such a storm? He butted the front door open, stumbled through, streaming wet everywhere, turned immediately left into the living room, thumped the light switch with his elbow as he went by, laid his burden on the floor. It made a wet, crumpled bundle, less than human, misshapen.

Getting his breathing under control he stared at what he had brought in from the gutter. A road accident? Had he done wrong to move him? Couldn’t leave the boy outside. He threw off his coat and knelt, saw that there were abrasions and a bruise on the cheekbone, and a gurgling, gagging noise in the throat. Half remembering a first aid diagram he turned the body onto one side with the lower arm out and the upper leg drawn up. The recovery position? Was this right? It would have to do. Fluid streamed out of the mouth. The breathing was shallow, rasping and gurgling, but it continued. There was another cough.

Vomit.

He rushed through to the bathroom, grabbed towels from the cupboard, got back to find Jacquie, soaked as he was, shivering, holding herself with arms crossed, looking down.

‘A rat,’ she said, vehemently, disgusted. ‘A dirty drowned rat.’

Grey skin and muddy brown hair, a sodden, flattened appearance, teeth bared with lips drawn back, it was rat-like, a disgusting wet thing dragged out of the dirt, foul. Not yet dead but surely dying.

He knelt to dry the limbs. A stream of thin, yellow-brown, stinking fluid suddenly jetted out from between the legs. He drew back, appalled. The garment he had thought was a boy’s short trousers was a mini skirt, clinging to thin buttocks, slimy with gutter water and now stained with shit. The eyes were open. The legs were drawn up, more fluid streamed out.

‘Get away from it,’ said Jacquie, spitting the words with revulsion. ‘How can you bring such a thing into the house? Keep it away from me. Dirty, filthy. Filthy little rat. Throw it out.’ She was a thousand years old now, chilled, lank hair straggling down her face, a hand raised as if to ward off an evil demon.

‘We must do something. She’s cold, ill, dying.’ He mopped, but the fetid garments clung to the body and he was doing little good. More coughing, gagging, more stuff from the mouth.

Shuddering, the woman grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

‘Don’t touch it, you bloody fool. Cover it up or something but leave it alone.’

‘She’s dying.’ he said, desperately, trying to break the woman’s grip.

‘Don’t touch. Look, there’s blood in the shit. What are your hands like? Did you knock your knuckles out there on the road?’

He gaped at his hands.

‘Think what you might pick up. It’s dead, let it alone.’ The woman retched and shuddered.

‘It… she isn’t dead’

The woman stared down. ‘If you must touch, put gloves on, for fuck’s sake.’

‘Gloves.’ He sped through to the kitchen, scrabbled hastily through a drawer, found the packet of latex gloves and, struggling to put a pair on without tearing them, hurried back.

Jacquie was standing further back from the vomiting, stinking creature on the carpet, eyeing it sidelong.

‘They’re sending the ambulance,’ she said, harshly. ‘It’ll be twenty minutes. They said, keep the child warm. Fuckinell I’m soaked and freezing. I’m going through there to get clean. Ugh.’ She stomped into the bedroom where they had been so warm and merry, and slammed the door.

Keep the child warm. Fumbling, he managed to strip the soaking wet clothes off, revolted as his fingers slipped in slime, forcing himself to go on. There was not much to remove; no shoes, no socks, that short filthy skirt, a zip fastener that jammed and tore. He felt squeamish, reluctant to expose the dirty little body but dragged the skirt down and threw it aside. It slumped like a wet slug onto the carpet. No knickers. She wore a T-shirt or singlet, he didn’t know which. Her ribs showed through it. He dragged the garment with difficulty over the head. The arms flopped about lifelessly. How little she had been wearing on this cold night. No bra, although there were small breasts. The eyes were closed now, the breathing wet, gurgling, choking.

The wretched body was shaken again, a small groan, a cough, convulsions. More disgusting fluid, vomit, shit, urine. He carried her to the main bathroom and ran water, adjusting the temperature, not too hot. He lowered her into the bath. Was this right? Would the shock kill her? Although the eyes sometimes opened, they were blank and she made no movement except coughing and retching. More dirt poured out, some sinking as sludge, some forming scum. He removed the bath plug, letting the foul stuff drain away, ran the taps to maintain the level of warm water.

The breathing stopped. He tried to find a pulse, but could not. Dead? The eyes opened again, narrowly, nothing behind them. There were no more faeces. The water level rose.

She coughed violently, breathed again. He must do more. What should he, what could he do? Try to get the blood circulating. Massage. She coughed and coughed. He supported her with one arm around the shoulders as he worked with the other hand, not daring to rub vigorously. Limbs like sticks, thin bones, elbow and knee joints seeming large and swollen out of proportion. He had the horrific feeling that if he was too rough they would come apart.

A bar of soap was within reach. He began to wash her. Why bother? What did a bit of body dirt matter? He struggled to remove the worst of it. Hair matted with mud. Was she infested with lice, or fleas, or both? He turned to the hands and arms. The fingernails were black and broken. He worked lather gently into the skin, round the neck, all filthy, armpits, shoulders, around and over the soft protuberances on the chest and the nipples, and hesitantly, into the furry cleft between the legs and the buttocks. As the soap touched there he felt a spasm run through the body and she whimpered. She was sore, red and inflamed. He splashed cleaner water about to try to relieve the pain. Down the legs he continued, to the feet.

He drained the bath, left her lying for a moment to spread his largest towel on the tiled floor, then lifted her onto it and worked with another towel to dry her.

In his linen cupboard he found a blanket, wrapped her in it and carried her back to the living room. He stood, irresolute, the child in his arms. The place on the carpet where she had lain was soaked and stained. His wet coat was where he had thrown it down.

Jacquie came from the main bedroom, wearing his dressing gown. At the same moment the door chimes sounded.

Coolly, expertly, the ambulance men took the girl, wrapped her in their own large blankets and a waterproof, carried her out on a stretcher through the continuing downpour, edging between the intrusive bushes and Jacquie’s car which remained where it had been left with the emergency lights flashing. She had marked the concealed entrance for the ambulance crew to see. He went to the car through the rain, found the switch and turned the flashers off. The men slid the stretcher into the brightly lit interior of the van and closed the doors, one staying inside.

The driver, in oilskins, returned with him to shelter inside the front door.

‘She your daughter?’ the man asked.

‘No, No, she’s nothing to do with us, we found her in the road, just out there. Hit by a car or something.’

‘No, she weren’t ‘it by a car, mate. Who is she? What’s ’er name?’

‘I’ve no idea. She needs help quickly, don’t hang about.’

‘She’s being looked after,’ the man said, a little sharply. ‘Brian will take care of her. There’s oxygen in there. If she’s O D’d, it may be too late anyway.’

‘O D? Over dosed?’ He had not given a thought to how the child had arrived in the gutter. ‘Heroin or something?’ The man shrugged.

‘Could be. Casualty, at the General, that’s where we’ll take ’er. You can follow if you want.’

Jacquie was listening. ‘Nothing to do with us,’ she said quickly, and turned back at once to the bedroom.

‘We’d better ’ave ’er belongings. Clothing? ’andbag? Money?’

‘Only those,’ He indicated the slug-like heaps of rag where he had left them. The man glanced briefly into the room. Cold air poured through the open door.

He clucked his tongue, wrinkled his nose. ‘Burn ’em. Made a right mess. You will need the steam cleaners. I suppose you’ad to bring ’er inside, night like this.’ A fleeting look of regret passed across his face. He nodded over his shoulder. ‘Poor little bugger. She may not last the night. Not your problem, mate. Did your best.’ He turned to go but hesitated.

‘Go inside, you’ll get cold. If you phone in the morning, they’ll tell you ’ow she is, if you want to know.’

‘Oh, I will.’ He was shocked at the suggestion of indifference.

‘They might ring you, one of the social workers, someone like that. We ’ave your name and number. Your good lady gave them over the phone.’

‘She’s…’ He was going to say, ‘not my good lady’, but the man did not need to know who Jacquie was. Or wasn’t.

The man was about to say something more but shook his head slightly. ‘We’ll be on our way. He turned to go, then looked back again, briefly. ‘I expect someone will get in touch. You know.’ He didn’t know.

The ambulance, lights flashing, set off down the hill and out of sight. He stood shivering. Carried by the wind, the sound of the wailing siren reached him faintly. He guessed the vehicle would be joining the freeway. He closed the door. Saturated trousers clung to his legs, the woollen sweater hung heavy and wet.

He found a plastic garbage bag and dropped the slimy rags off the carpet into it, took it to the back door and threw it out into the continuing rain. His coat was stained and would need cleaning. He dumped it on the veranda. Trousers and sweater must be washed. He went into the laundry, kicked his shoes off. The machine was already running. Jacquie had thrown her own clothes into it and started the automatic cycle. Another bag took his garments for the time being. Naked, he went to the bathroom, picked up the dirty towels that were strewn about. The bath was fouled with sludge. He gave it a quick rinse, wiped with the towels, threw them outside to join the other things. A thorough cleansing must wait for the morrow.

His hands, sweat soaked and wrinkled underneath the gloves as he peeled them off, were clean and unmarked. There were no skinned knuckles or cuts. Waves of exhaustion passed over him. He turned on the shower and stepped under it, dried himself on yet another towel from the cupboard, grateful for its clean, dry texture. There were not many useable towels left now.

Jacquie was sitting in his double bed, his dressing gown around her shoulders.

‘I’ll have to stay the night now,’ she said. ‘I can’t go like this with all my clothes bloody soaking. Do you have another bed?’

‘Yes, but it isn’t made up,’ he said. ‘There’s only a mattress. Stay where you are.’ He took his pyjamas from the top of the chest of drawers.

‘Looks like I have to. We’ll sleep together. I mean sleep. Eh?’ Neither of them felt like smiling but she tried.

‘That was terrible,’ he said.

Jacquie shuddered. ‘Why did it have to be right outside here? A few yards along the road, we’d never have known.’

‘It’s a good thing it was here. She’d have died.’

‘Best thing if she had.’

‘Jacquie, a little girl.’

‘She had boobs, you must have seen.’

He nodded. The girl had pubic hair as well as the small breasts.

‘Not such a little girl then. A street whore.’

He shook his head. ‘Out here? Never. She’s so thin, so young.’

‘She’s beyond her use-by date for sure.’

A cruel thing to say. He was too weary and upset to argue. He got into bed, reached for the light switch. Jacquie turned away from him. Exhausted, he expected to plunge at once into slumber but lay for a long time, unable to forget what had happened.

Jacquie snored, taking more than her share of space. He tried to find a comfortable position. The child would die.

2

The Whore

‘A whore, like me, but filthy and disgusting.’

‘You can’t possibly know that. She’s a child.’

Breakfast in the kitchen, late, Jacquie now in a pair of his winter pyjamas only a little too long for her, trousers rolled up to calf length. She wore his dressing gown and a pair of his woollen socks, much too large, but her shoes were drying on the veranda. It turned out to be a bright morning, though still cold. She had found the hoist and hung out her damp clothes to dry in the breeze. There was a foul, stinking atmosphere in the living room. He had phoned urgently for carpet cleaners. Michael could eat nothing and Jacquie took only fruit juice, toast and coffee.

‘Don’t you understand how she got here?

‘A little girl bush walking. Missed her group, got lost in the scrub, wandered about until too sick and cold to go any further.’ Even as he spoke he knew it was nonsense.

‘With no panties on? Who would be in that state, on a night like that?’ Jacquie went on, ‘She’s a hooker, a little junkie. It’s disgraceful that she ever allowed herself to get into that condition. I would die rather than let myself degenerate like that.’

‘You don’t know. How can you know?’

‘In weather like that, any half decent street girl gets indoors but there’s this skinny, half-alive slag looking for customers, and they found her.’

‘So?’

‘When the lads are buying the grog someone says; Hey, why don’t we pick up a couple of sorts and take them back with us for the guys?’

‘Are you talking about a pack rape?

‘A reject, on sale at a discount, hanging out, high on ice or coke, sheltering in some doorway, flaunting what little she’s got, and that isn’t much.’ Jacquie shuddered. ‘They yell: Hey, you. Come to a party. Some so-called men will do anything when they are drunk but even these yobs wouldn’t take her if the light were better. She knows what to expect, it’s either go with them or collapse where she is. They drive off with her to their mates, out this way somewhere. Pissed the lot of them, they screw the girl for an hour or two, those who can stomach her filth. She’s ill, very bad, an embarrassment, they don’t want a corpse on their hands, must get rid of her. They bundle her into the car, drive down the road a way, kick her out and tear off. I told you I heard screaming tires last night. Disposable rubbish.’

‘You make me feel sick. She was in such a dreadful state, so thin, dying. No one could… could have intercourse with a child in that condition.’ He almost retched.

‘Oh, my. Intercourse is it? Aren’t we grand this morning. It was a rough fucking, Michael, bloody rough. That’s what happened, something like it anyway. What you picked up was the wreckage from an old-fashioned gangbang. Your bad luck.’

‘Poor little kid.’

‘She didn’t have to be there.’

‘Jacquie, that’s dreadful. That little girl. How could men behave like that? I’m ashamed.’ He was almost in tears.

‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of. You couldn’t do it, I know, you are a nice boy, too nice for your own good, bringing her inside like that. Most of my clients are decent enough, looking for a bit of fun. Lonely, a bit of healthy lust. But there are pigs, worse than pigs, pigs when they are sober and pig shit when they are drunk. I know them. I can deal with them. Or my bloke Dave can. She went on, angrily, ‘How could a girl ever let those shits do that to her?’

‘A child, for Christ’s sake, Jacquie Even if you are right, you don’t know what she might have been through. She may have had no chance.’

‘She had chances and didn’t take them.’

‘How can you know? It’s all right for people like us, warm and dry.’

Jacquie glared at him, fists clenched on the table.

‘People like us?’ He quailed before her sudden fury. ‘Have you forgotten who I am, what I am?’

‘No.’

‘What do you know about my chances?’

‘Nothing. You never said.’

‘No, and I’m not going to. But I wasn’t always warm and dry. There were many times when I could have gone down the way that nasty little bint went. People, men and women, used me, tried to dump me in the garbage when they’d finished.’ Her expression was determined and angry. ‘I schemed and used my brain from the time I was a little kid. I stood up for myself.’

‘Perhaps she had no choice.’

‘There’s always a choice. No girl should let people treat her like that. It’s bad faith.’

‘Faith? What’s faith got to do with it?’

‘You have only yourself to blame for what you become.