Musclebound by Liza Cody (The Mysterious Press 1997)

I was going to have it out with the driver of the Carlton. I was going to pick him up by the armpits and say, "Oy, pus-bottom, watch where you're going." But by the time I got up off the floor and kicked the chain for tripping me up, I saw the driver wasn't in the Carlton no more. He'd gone inside the booth, and he'd left the driver's door open and his motor running. Which is exactly the same as saying, "C'Mon, Eva, here's a nice red Carlton all warm and ready to take you home."

So I said, "Ta, very much. Sorry I called you a pus-bottom." I jumped in and shoved the stick in first.

At the same time, the driver struck his head out of the booth and shouted something. I didn't catch the exact words because I was too busy revving up and moving out. But what happened next was very weird. As I swung past the booth, the passenger door slammed shut. I hadn't noticed a passenger. And then another man, who I hadn't seen before, walked out from the booth and pointed a stick at me.

I thought. "Why's that dink pointing a stick at me?" And I'd hardly finished thinking that when the passenger-side window shattered. Kerash-kerunch. Glass everywhere. I was so startled I nearly whacked into one of the petrol pumps.

I went nought to sixty, out of the forecourt, right under the nose of a Safeway truck. I was sweating but, do you know, I was half a mile up the road before I realised what shattered the windows.

The dink wasn't pointing a stick at me. He was pointing a sawn-off shotgun. The windows didn't shatter. The dink shot them out.

Can you believe that? Some bastard shot at me. Me. Just for borrowing a Carlton. Who the hell'd do a thing like that?

If he didn't want his motor borrowed, why didn't he just remove the keys like a sensible person?

Shit. He could of killed me. Fancy that. Ex-Wrestler Shot. What a headline that'd make.

Monkey Wrench by Liza Cody (The Mysterious Press 1994)

I only wanted a bunch of bananas. I was on my way to the shop to buy them when I saw a bunch of kids circling and yowling like hyenas. They chanted,

Dirty Dawn
Stinks like a prawn.
She lost her bra
In a punter's car
And she doesn't know where her knickers are.

Dawn is trouble.  She's a mess and a waste of space. She's always on the piss. I crossed over to the other side of the road. If she saw me she'd expect me to get rid of the kids and wheel her home in a barrow. I ducked into Hanif's shop instead.

I took my time behind the shelves. If I stayed there long enough Dawn would pull herself together and shamble off without my help. Helping people always ends in tears. And helping drunks is a total waste of time. They're never grateful, they don't pay their debts and they've got rotten memories. What's the point in being nice to someone who can't remember how nice you've been? Tell me that. The only point in doing someone a favour is if they remember and do you a favour back.

Besides, angry wasps are better-natured than the kids in this part of London. Take a tip from me - if you like a quiet life don't ever get yourself outnumbered by kids. I was a kid once myself so I know how evil they can be once they get into a pack. Normal rules don't apply to a pack, and a little kid who wouldn't do hokey-cokey on his own becomes Conan the Barbarian in a bunch. Come to think of it, that's true of grown-ups as well.

I know about crowds. I should, I'm a wrestler.

Bucket Nut by Liza Cody (Double Day 1992)

There was a little bloke in the aisle screaming his head off. Quite sweet he looked in his grey mackintosh and muffler. His flat cap fell down over one eye.

'Bucket Nut!' he yelled.

I could hear him clearly over the screams and yells. The things they think of to say.

'Shut yer face!' I gave him the finger.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Blonde Bombshell stagger to her feet. I turned my back.

There was a little old lady in the second row bouncing up and down with rage.

'You big ugly bully,' she screamed. 'Big ugly . . . trollop!'

'Trollop yerself,' I shouted.

The Blonde Bombshell hit me in the back and I fell against the ropes. The front row came alive, bashing me with shoes, programmes and handbags. I rolled away to the middle of the ring.

The Blonde Bombshell crashed on top and twisted my arm behind my back.

The front row went wild.

'Kill 'er,' they howled. 'Have her rotten arm off.'

The Blonde Bombshell grabbed a handful of hair and pulled my head up off the canvas. She is such a wanker.

'Watchit,' I said. 'Mind me teeth.'

She knew I had the toothache. But she bashed my face into the floor. Silly cow.

Backhand by Liza Cody (Doubleday 1991)

At home, north of Holland Park, Anna walked into a domestic row of gigantic proportions. All the lights in the house blazed. The television was on in the Prices' flat but the shouting came from upstairs in Anna's front room. Bea and Selwyn stood nose to nose in the middle of the Turkish carpet.

'You selfish, opinionated, destructive bastard,' Bea was yelling as Anna opened her door. She had a rolled-up copy of the Kensington Chronicle in her hand, and at every adjective she whacked Selwyn on the arm. His arm was protecting his left ear.

' . . . Bourgeois, small -minded . . . sneaking behind my back . . .  and undermining my position . . .' Selwyn thundered at the same time.

' . . . in the bloody papers, the bloody newspaper.' Whack. 'I've never had my name dragged into the press.' Whack. 'This is the last straw.'

In the background was the unlikely sight of a huge man trying to look inconspicuous: Quex sat in the corner of the sofa pretending to read.

'Home sweet home,' Anna said, but nobody noticed.

'You've no right.' Whack. 'To draw on that account.' Whack. 'That's the house account.' Whack. 'And I'll need every penny . . . '

'I'm not moving to a poky bloody hole in Potters Bar. You're trying to castrate me, woman . . . '

'Bleeding shut up!' Anna shouted.

'I'm stopping the cheque!' Bea screamed. 'I'm warning you!' Whack.

'You're on your own!' bellowed Selwyn. 'What you want is a pet poodle with a pay packet.

Under Contract by Liza Cody (Charles Scribner's Sons 1986)

"Think of the overtime. I dunno," Anna sighed, "why does everyone slag everyone off so much? I've never come across such a slagging match."

"You've never been security on one of these tours before, have you?" Dave looked down his nose at her. "You'll learn. It's because there's a lot of vultures on only the one carcass - not enough to go round and everyone's hungry."

There was some truth in that, she mused on her reluctant way back to the dressing rooms. Only who were the vultures and what was the carcass? Fame and fortune was the simple answer. But what about Shona who had achieved it? She had stood in front of thousands of screaming, applauding fans and yet she still needed Anna's few distracted words. And now the fans themselves needed to be noticed. Look at me, look at me, no - look at me, seemed to be the cry in every throat. I could look like that if I had the right make-up . . . I could do that, if only someone'd notice me. Fame and fortune were only by-products in the universal need to be seen.

Head Case by Liza Cody (Bantam Books 1985)

"Were you supposed to teach her to paint - as well as the history stuff?"

"That was the general idea." Lynne frowned, remembering. "It was quite ridiculous. The poor girl simply froze the minute I put a pencil in her hand. She didn't do a thing, so finally I showed her slides instead. A waste of time, as in the end we both agreed."

"Why did she freeze?"

"She didn't say. But after watching her a while I thought it was because she didn't know how to get it right."

"But, surely," Anna said curiously, "that's what you were there to show her."

"Ah, well . . . " Lynne smiled. "Perhaps that's where she knows more about it than you or I do. You see, I can show her something: how to look, or how to use a line, or how to catch reflected light, but I can't show her how to get it right. There's no such thing really. You can break every rule in the book and still, if you're lucky, make something beautiful. The only thing you can't do is get it right. Well, you can, but it's such a subjective right that it hardly exists."

"Which might be exciting or scary, depending on your point of view," Anna suggested.

"It's a funny business, this" Lynne said, nodding. "You can get really old people, in their eighties say, who the rest of the world would call great and you can see they're still learning: still trying and failing at things they couldn't master when they were eighteen. You have to be very persistent or very passionate or maybe a bit dim. I don't know."

"Thea isn't dim."

"No." Lynne agreed. "But I thought she was frightened."

"What of?"

"She didn't say. Maybe nothing specific. I was just rather sorry for her."

"That's funny," Anna said thoughtfully. "Everyone else seems to envy her."

Stalker by Liza Cody (Bantam Books 1984)

Later, Anna dreamt of a flood. A body floated by, turning lazily, until one arm rose above the surface. The hand had fingers like the antlers of a stag. Olsen said, 'He isn't dead, he's only in love,' and she flew effortlessly up above the water and sailed away over green fields and under warm sunshine all the way to London.

It only became a nightmare when she found she could not land. Selwyn said, 'Stop messing around up there with your head in the clouds. Supper's on the table.' But try as she would, Anna could not get her feet on the ground. Just as she was about to touch earth an upcurrent took her soaring away again. 'Come back,' Selwyn shouted. 'The air's too rich for you.' It grew colder and colder. Anna woke up with all the blankets on the floor. A dog was barking.

Bad Company by Liza Cody (Charles Scribners Sons 1982)

Mrs Fourie promised and they parted warmly, but Anna did not look back as she drove away. She felt she had been thoroughly unprofessional, but at least she had made some attempt to redeem Claire. Her failure with Verity still hurt; there was nothing to be done about that. But with a much lighter heart she set out to find a chicken tikka and some live music.

Dupe by Liza Cody (Charles Scribner's Sons 1980)

'I don't know that thieving's ever classy,' Anna said. It was wonderful to be able to talk without feeling her lips puff flatulently in thin air.

'All I'm saying is that London had to be a better place to live in when even the villains had style,' the driver said looking disgustedly at the Knightsbridge clutter. 'Look at it now. I ask you. It's all sand in your shoes and out for the easy bunce. No wonder there's no standards no more.'

'You can't blame foreigners for that.'

'Don't get me wrong,' the driver said, 'I'm not saying they ain't colourful. Me, I wouldn't give a monkey's who came here as long as they went home again after. But they don't, see? Makes you feel a tourist in your own home. Some of 'em spend money like there was no tomorrow and buy up property or what-not. And there's others just live on the state. I mean, what does it look like to a young bloke just married and can't get a council house?'

It sounded like a favourite grudge, a well-rehearsed routine that the driver liked to launch into at the slightest opportunity.

'It's what the young people see as worries me,' he went on. 'Other people getting what should be theirs by rights. And without lifting a finger. That's what gets me. It's a wrong example. Makes 'em think they should have a bit of the cream, too, without having to work for it.

'Makes 'em want to take advantage,' he added elliptically. 'That's why there's so much crime about today.'

Anna didn't want to argue, although most of what he said offended her own creed of self-determination. He was obviously well-practised in his own argument, and besides, taxi-drivers, she thought, were all too dogmatic. It was something about the nature of their jobs that led them to half-cocked theories. They saw too much out of the front window and too little of the people they were talking to behind them.