Nothing to Lose by Christina Jones Page A

of its nightly heave. April, shaking and pouring Purple Rains, Pink Squirrels and Yellow Fevers until she was almost colour blind, had earlier rehearsed and re-rehearsed her explanations, should she require them, with Jix and Daff. Cair Paravel would belong, as she’d said, to a friend. Bee, they’d decided, would be Jix’s progeny, visiting her paternal grandmother for the afternoon. Should Sebastian by any chance have heard the giveaway M word, they’d decided – may God forgive them – to credit Bee with a pronounced speech impediment.
    The tenth race of the evening had just taken place in the glitter-ball stadium; drinkers who had picked the winner were surging away from the bar towards the Tote, while those who hadn’t were making inebriated selections for race eleven.
    Martina, in a white lacy sprayed-on frock and with diamanté dust in her crew cut, spiked her way on vertiginous stilettos behind the bar. ‘April! I’ll take over here for a sec. Table forty-seven wants another bottle of shampoo.’
    ‘OK.’ April gave Martina a wild-eyed stare. ‘Don’t you want to serve them?’
    Table forty-seven were celebrating a wedding anniversary. Loudly. They’d already had half a dozen bottles of the Stadium’s overpriced Moët. None of them seemed to have the slightest interest in greyhound racing. Most of them were singing football anthems.
    Clattering the champagne from the fridge, swooshing the bucket under the ice-maker, then ramming the bottle into the blue-white crackles, April was sure Martina must have an ulterior motive. On the rare occasions that she worked in the Copacabana, she always preferred to serve the high spenders herself. High spenders were frequently high tippers, and many a twenty-pound note had found its way into Martina’s crepey cleavage. Was this just a ploy to get April to drop her guard? Was she to serve champagne to the partygoers and then collect her cards on the way out for keeping a dog and child in a Gillespie flat?
    Swamped with guilt and fear, April ventured the question again.
    Martina’s heavily creased turquoise eyelids flickered rapidly. ‘No, I don’t want to bloody serve them. They’re mouthy scum. Anyway, that’s what I pay you for. And while you’re doing it, I’ll check the till – so there better not have been any freebies tonight, or else.’
    ‘There haven’t been.’ April almost kissed the scrawny pancaked cheek in delight. It was merely her light fingers that were causing the Gillespies concern – not the existence of her family. ‘I’ve learned my lesson . . .’
    She winced. Maybe that was a Uriah Heep too far. Martina obviously didn’t think so. The oil-slick lips oozed into a death’s-head smile.
    ‘Good. That’s what I like to hear. Now, get that poo out to the punters. Cheap trouncers they may be, but they’re pouring money into our pockets. Go on! Shift!’
    Ramming the cap on to her curls, making sure that her knickers weren’t showing, April wrapped the ice bucket in a cloth, placed it on a tray, and shimmied her way out into the throng.
    ‘Ouch!’
    Two bottom pinches before she’d even reached the plastic palm tree. This was certainly no job for Shere Hite.
    Table forty-seven snatched at the champagne in delight, not even breaking off in the chorus of ‘Football’s Coming Home’. The cork exploded into the multitude of twinkling ceiling lights and several people cheered. Down below them, in a blaze of floodlit glory, the blue-jacketed greyhound had just sped to victory in the eleventh race of the evening. No one on table forty-seven took the slightest notice. The wedding anniversary couple, April noticed, both had black eyes.
    ‘Here you are, darling.’ A fat man in bri-nylon waved a flabby hand towards her. ‘Come and get your tip!’
    April smiled her sweetest fuck-off smile and shook her head. ‘We’re not allowed to accept tips, I’m afraid. All gratuities have to be placed in the communal jar on the bar and –