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to be put out with her recycled items. From the smell of urine that wafted in Anna’s face, they hadn’t been put out for a while. She secured the lid and inched it farther away from her stool.
    The iron hissed steam as Emerald pressed pillowcases. She was fast, far more adept than Anna. “I got a babysitter helping me out of an evenin’.” The woman continued ironing while she lit a cigarette from a packet taken out of her tracksuit pocket. “And I don’t smoke in front of the kids.”
    Anna smiled, “I’m not with Social Services. As I said, I am on the inquiry relating to Margaret Potts’s murder.”
    “I’ve not read anythin’ more about her,” Emerald commented. “Shame, ’cause she was a real nice woman. In fact, this is her tracksuit. She left a suitcase full of her gear with me, you see. Well, she wouldn’t know I’m wearin’ her things, would she, but I think of her often.”
    “I know what she did for a living,” Anna said quietly.
    “In which case you probably know what I do. I got a bloke that takes good care of me, not like Maggie. She had it rough due to her age, but she was a good person and didn’t deserve to end up the way she did.”
    Emerald smoked and continued ironing as Anna asked if she could explain how Margaret worked.
    “She’d sort of got her own patch out at the London Gateway Services. She’d travel there by bus or sometimes thumb a lift, then she’d chat to her regulars—truckers, mostly—but sometimes she’d pick up a punter in a car.”
    “Did she do her business in the car parks?”
    “She had to be careful, you know—the security blokes could give her a real hard time. I think she’d bung them cash to lay off her, and then she’d just either do it in the lorries’ cabs or travel up to the next service station—the one at Toddington, ’cause that has a bridge over the north-and southbound services, then she’d do the same thing there, coming back on the opposite side.”
    “Always at night?”
    “Not always. Sometimes she worked a day shift, but she didn’t like it. Well, you know—it was a bit obvious what she was doin’, and they’d move her on or call out the cops.”
    “Did she ever talk about any of her clients?”
    At this, Emerald laughed. “Nah. I doubt that’d be a popular topic of conversation. She was always knackered and slept late. One time we shared a place, but she got behind in the rent, so I left. She’d turn up sometimes wherever I was and kip down, but to be honest, I never really liked it, and these housing associations think you’re renting out a room if you got anyone stayin’.”
    “But you liked her?”
    “Yeah, I liked her—but I used to find it depressing, like I was lookin’ at what could happen to me all the time, know what I mean? And then I had a spot of trouble—the bloke I was with at the time was doin’ drugs and they took me kids off me, but I never done crack or brown. Maybe smoked the odd spliff—who doesn’t?—but I left the hard stuff alone.”
    “What about Margaret?”
    “Yeah, she’d take whatever she could lay her hands on—coke, mostly—and she’d drink. Can’t blame her, really, having to drag her arse out to the friggin’ M1 most nights, and sometimes it was freezing cold. She got knocked ’round a couple of times as well.” Emerald sighed and dug into her laundry basket.
    “Did she ever report it?”
    “Nah. She was on the game—you get used to it, but you know, some of them wouldn’t want to pay. Some bastard chucked her out of his cab once.”
    “Did she tell you about it, like who had done it?”
    “No, just waited until her black eyes healed up.” Emerald sighed more loudly. “I said all this before, you know. I’m just repeatin’ myself.”
    “Did she have a pimp? Someone looking out for her, maybe?”
    “No, she was a loner. Like I said, she wasn’t young and knew all the tricks, so why shell out her hard-earned cash?”
    “But you do.”
    Emerald’s face