Dead Tomorrow

as laces either side of her haunted face. Then she put an arm around Simona.
    ‘No, that was not God punishing you. It was a bad person, just a bad person, that’s all.’
    ‘I don’t want this life any more. I want to go away from here.’
    ‘Where do you want to go?’ she asked.
    Simona shrugged helplessly, then began sobbing again.
    ‘I want to go to England,’ Valeria said. She smiled wistfully, and her face suddenly came alive. She nodded. ‘England. We are in the EU now. We can go.’
    Simona continued to sob for some minutes, then she stopped. ‘What is the EU?’
    ‘It’s a thing. It means Romanian people can go to England.’
    ‘Would it be better in England?’
    ‘I met some people a while ago who were going. They had jobs as erotic dancers. Big money. Maybe you and I could be erotic dancers.’
    Simona sniffed. ‘I don’t know how to dance.’
    ‘I think there are other jobs. You know, in bars, restaurants. Maybe in a bakery even.’
    ‘I’d like to go,’ Simonasaid. ‘I’d like to go now.’ She sniffed. ‘Will you come with me? Maybe you and me and Romeo–and the baby, of course.’
    ‘There are people who know. I have to find someone who can help. Do you think Romeo will want to come too?’
    She shrugged. Then behind them, they heard Romeo’s voice.
    ‘Hi! I’m back and I have something!’
    He jumped down from several rungs up the ladder and walked over to them, dripping wet and panting, his hood up over his head. ‘I ran,’ he said. ‘Long way. Several places, you know, watched me, they got to know us. I had to go a long way. But I got it!’ His huge, saucer-like eyes were smiling brightly as he dug his hand inside his jacket and pulled out the pink plastic bag.
    He stopped and coughed violently for some moments, then removed a squat, plastic bottle of metallic paint and twisted the lid to snap the seal.
    Simona watched him, everything else suddenly gone from her mind.
    He poured a small amount of the paint into the bag, then, holding it by the neck, passed it to her, making sure she had a good grip on it before letting go.
    She brought the neck to her mouth, blew into it, as if inflating a balloon, then inhaled deeply through her mouth. She exhaled, then inhaled deeply again. And a third time. Now, suddenly, her face relaxed. She gave a distant smile. Her eyes rolled up, then down, glazing over.
    For a short while, her pain was gone.
    The black Mercedesdrove slowly along the road, tyres sluicing through the rain, windscreen wipers clop-copping . It passed a small, run-down mini-market, a café, a butcher’s, an Orthodox church covered in scaffolding, a car wash, with three men hosing down a white van, and a cluster of dogs, their fur ruffled by the wind.
    Two people sat in the back of the car, a neat-looking man in his late forties, wearing a black coat over a grey, roll-neck jumper, and a woman, a little younger, with an attractive, open face beneath a tangle of fair hair, who wore a fleece-collared leather jacket over a baggy jumper, tight jeans and black suede boots, and big costume jewellery. She looked as if she might once have been a minor rock star, or an equally minor actress.
    The driver pulled over in front of a decrepit high-rise building, with laundry hanging from half the windows and a dozen satellite television dishes fixed to the bare walls, and turned off the engine. Then he pointed through the windscreen at a jagged hole where the road met the pavement.
    ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s where she lives.’
    ‘So there’s likely to be several of them down there,’ the man in the back said.
    ‘Yes, but careful of the one I told you about,’ the driver said. ‘She’s feisty.’
    With the wipers off, the steady droplets of rain were fast turning the screen opaque. Passers-by became blurred shapes. That was good. On top of the blacked-out windows, that would make it even harder for anyone to see in. The cars in this neighbourhood were beat-up wrecks. Every person walking past was going to notice the gleaming S-Class Mercedes, and wonder what it was doing here and who was inside.
    ‘OK,’ the woman said. ‘Good. Let’s go.’
    The car pulled away.
    Beneath the tarmac underits tyres, the baby slept. Valeria read a newspaper that was several days old. Tracy Chapman was singing ‘Fast Car’ again. Romeo held the neck of the plastic bag in his mouth, exhaling and inhaling.
    Simona lay on her mattress, serene now, her head full of dreams of