Lifting my head, I calmly say, ‘If Sugar’s room contains certain things, like evidence that he took while he was still a serving officer, it’s illegal.’
‘Screw the cops,’ she throws back belligerently. ‘If they’d done their job in the first place—’
‘What do you mean?’ I start at the beginning again with her. ‘Why are you living in Sugar’s house? You’re not in love with him?’
Ronnie’s eyes widen with incredulity. ‘In love with Mister Sugar?’ She bursts out laughing so hard I think she’s going to tumble out of the booth. Her laughter abruptly cuts off. ‘He asked for my help and that’s what I’m doing.’
That’s more than she’s admitted before. This is my moment with her; I feel it. ‘Tell me what happened to you at the centre. Tell me why you began carrying a knife that year.’
I hear the air rushing from her nostrils. Suddenly, she’s the Ronnie on the day of Cherry’s funeral, head slightly lowered, hunched over, trying to blend into the background.
‘The reason Sugar wants me to stay at his house,’ Ronnie cautiously opens up, ‘is because I’m a witness to some of what went on. If this new evidence he has works out then he can also call on my testimony.’
Ronnie looks pinched. Pensive. ‘You’re right, I’m the one who got away.’ A gasp leaves me. A gasp that the truth is becoming clear. ‘I was on a mission at Suzi. You remember I told you about all the courses I did? I promised myself I’d do as many as I could. I left school when I was fifteen, so I needed skills. The only way I was going to get out of my shit situation at home was to start a new life. New lives cost money. Money meant I had to get a job.’
‘Did you end up having to work for some dodgy people?’
Her brows lift in tired annoyance. ‘Like supposed bent coppers like Sugar?’
‘That about sums it up.’
The stare she levels me with almost strips me bare with disapproval. ‘I never did an illegal act. Ever. Not my style. If I did go down that road, the last people I’d shred my honesty for would be a bunch of dirty cops. I was going to get where I needed to be on the right side of the street, head held high.’
‘Tell me.’
‘The centre manager, he’s long dead now, bless his soul. He was a good man,’ Ronnie states with hard conviction. ‘And believe me when I tell you not many of them have crossed my path during my time on this earth.’ What a terrible indictment to have to admit about the nature of the world we live in.
Ronnie shakes off the sadness. ‘I kept myself to myself, mostly. Chatted a little with the other women but I didn’t go to the Suzi Lake Centre to make best friends. Anyway, he spoke to someone who spoke to someone who arranged a job interview for me. I didn’t care if it was scrubbing floors from sun-up to sunset, I was prepared to take it. The day of the interview I put on my best clothes and a brave face. Truth was though I was a nervous wreck. Someone contacted me at home—’
‘Were they from a company called Pretty Lanes?’
Ronnie’s little face screws up as she thinks. ‘I’ve never heard that name before.’
‘Not even in connection to the Suzi Lake Centre?’
Ronnie shakes her head. ‘I didn’t ask who they were. All that interested me was bagging the job.’ Ronnie takes a sizeable gulp of tea and grimaces; it must be cold by now. ‘They sent a cab to pick me up. That’s when the warning bell should’ve rung. But, you know what, all I had my eye on was the future. The problem with that is you don’t see the things right in front of you. The bad things.’
She drinks more tea. Her hand trembles this time. ‘The building I was taken to was ugly. Squat.’ She chuckles without humour. ‘Then again, it wasn’t as if I was living in a palace. I pressed the buzzer and this woman told me she’d be down in a jiffy to get me.’
Ronnie’s fist disappears beneath the table. I imagine it doing that anxious rubbing motion along her thigh.
‘The place had a bad vibe. I sensed danger. See, me and danger are old friends.’ Ronnie’s bright gaze digs into mine. ‘Do you know what danger sounds like? It’s footsteps in the night that cast shadows under your bedroom door. It’s the thing you can’t see but sense is waiting to pounce on you around the corner. It’s the noise of you stifling the cries behind your knuckles stuffed in your mouth while you hear your dad beating down your mother and you can’t do nothing to stop it.’