But as we passed 19 I couldn’t resist glancing at the house. And I was rewarded, if that’s the word. Max was coming furtively up the iron staircase from old Mrs. Fisherton’s. He was wearing his chocolate-colored tracksuit, as far as I could see by the street-lamp’s light. I heard the woman he had been visiting close the door behind him. Instead of looking in our direction, he kept his head lowered and let himself in quietly by the front door. I began to laugh, I couldn’t help it, and covered up my mouth with my hand.

Chapter 23

23

SILVER WAS FIRM. “I can’t let you phone her anymore, Liv. I’m sorry. I can’t afford it.”

“When I am finding my papa I will pay you back.”

“It’s still no.”

She began to cry, a fierce bawling. Wim had disappeared again. There was no sign of Jonny. When she had recovered a bit and was only sniveling I walked her downstairs and down the front steps. She set foot upon the path itself, lifted up her head and looked into the bright sunlit street. It was another fine hot day. The sun shone on her swollen tear-marked face and made her blink. But I think she was really making progress, might within a week or so have reached the point when she could have been got across the pavement and into a taxi—if the police hadn’t come. But that was later. That wasn’t till the afternoon.

At the time I was optimistic, though my cheerfulness took a downturn as we mounted the staircase and she told me what had happened the previous night.

“Jonny has violated me.”

She must have looked that word up in her dictionary. “Rape,” which she certainly knew, wouldn’t do for her. She saw it as too mild and perhaps too hackneyed. I asked her when this was and she said it had been soon after we had gone out.

“Nobody cares about me. Wim doesn’t want to hear. To Jonny I am prostitute.” She added, as if remembering it was expected of her, “My money is gone, stolen by my own father.” She looked at me, her mouth working like a crying child’s. “I am thinking I must kill myself.”

“You mustn’t say that,” I said. “I care about you and Silver cares. Oh, Liv, don’t start crying again.”

“I am not first with anyone,” she said through her tears and sobs.