Read Online Backlash by Sally Spencer - Free Book Online Page B

Dawkins was unfriendly. Far from it, she treated all her guests like young ladies. And not only treated them like it, but pretended that was what they actually were.
    What skill that took – ignoring the whispers in the hall at two o’clock in the morning, as one of the girls led a punter upstairs; being seemingly oblivious to the fact that when ‘respectable’ girls were already at work, her guests had not even got up.
    Yes, it was her hypocrisy that Marie really hated, because when rent day came around, her guests handed her a rent for their shabby bedsits which was five or six times as much as the shorthand typists and shop assistants would be paying for theirs.
    The vacuuming stopped, and Marie looked at her bedside clock.
    â€˜I’ll give it two hours – a full two hours – before I go and see Grace,’ she promised herself. ‘If I leave it that long, I’ll have made sure that nothing could possibly have gone wrong.’
    Mary Philips was a brisk, energetic woman in her early fifties, who did indeed live at the opposite end of the dual carriageway to her mother.
    Her lounge, into which she invited her visitor without hesitation, contained no mementoes or even personal touches. It was, in fact, as stripped down and functional a living space as Paniatowski had ever seen.
    â€˜Would you like a cup of coffee, or should we cut to the chase and start hitting the gin?’ Mrs Philips asked her guest.
    â€˜Vodka’s my drink . . .’ Paniatowski said.
    â€˜Got some of that, as well – bottles of the stuff.’
    â€˜. . . but, at this time of day, I think I’ll stick to coffee.’
    Mary Philips sighed regretfully. ‘And so another beloved stereotype – the hard-drinking copper – bites the dust. Very well, I’ll make you a cup of coffee – and you might just have shamed me into joining you.’
    She swept into the kitchen, and returned with two mugs of coffee.
    She gave Paniatowski the one which had an image of Whitebridge town hall on it.
    â€˜They give them out free to employees, in lieu of paying us a decent wage,’ she said.
    Her own mug said, ‘Bitch On Wheels’.
    â€˜I bought that for myself,’ she told the chief inspector.
    Paniatowski grinned. ‘You must let me know where you got it,’ she said. ‘I could use one, too.’
    â€˜Poor Tom,’ Mary Philips said, sitting down in the minimalist armchair opposite Paniatowski’s. ‘I suppose, in a way, it’s my fault the crash happened, because if I’d had a phone there’d have been no need for him to drive like a bloody maniac.’
    â€˜You’re a social worker, aren’t you?’ Paniatowski asked.
    â€˜That’s right,’ Mary Philips agreed. ‘Though I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea about that,’ she cautioned.
    â€˜The wrong idea?’
    â€˜I’m not one of those namby-pamby bleeding-heart types who can see the good in everybody and know it’s only their upbringing that makes them act as they do. Once I get my hooks into some man who’s been beating up his wife and kids, I don’t rest until I’ve got the bastard firmly behind bars.’
    Paniatowski smiled. ‘I was wondering why, given your job, you don’t have a phone?’
    â€˜It’s precisely because of my job that I don’t have a phone,’ Mary Philips replied. ‘I once heard that you can measure your success in any job by the number of people who dislike you – and if that’s true, I must be very successful indeed.’
    â€˜You kept getting anonymous calls,’ Paniatowski guessed.
    â€˜Dozens of them – and while it was very gratifying, in a way, to engender such hatred, most of the callers would insist on ringing after the pubs closed, which meant that I was losing a great deal of my beauty sleep.’
    â€˜Why didn’t you go