Nightingale Point
Luan Goldie
** THE DEBUT NOVEL FROM THE WINNER OF THE COSTA SHORT STORY AWARD **One ordinary day. One extraordinary event. Their lives changed forever.On an ordinary Saturday morning in 1996, the residents of Nightingale Point wake up to their normal lives and worries.Mary has a secret life that no one knows about, not even Malachi and Tristan, the brothers she vowed to look after.Malachi had to grow up too quickly. Between looking after Tristan and nursing a broken heart, he feels older than his twenty-one years.Tristan wishes Malachi would stop pining for Pamela. No wonder he's falling in with the wrong crowd, without Malachi to keep him straight.Elvis is trying hard to remember to the instructions his care worker gave him, but sometimes he gets confused and forgets things.Pamela wants to run back to Malachi but her overprotective father has locked her in and there's no way out.It's a day like any other, until something extraordinary happens. When the sun sets, Nightingale Point is irrevocably changed and somehow, through the darkness, the residents must find a way back to lightness, and back to each other.
LUAN GOLDIE is a primary school teacher, and formerly a business journalist. She has written several short stories and is the winner of the Costa Short Story Award 2017 for her short story ‘Two Steak Bakes and Two Chelsea Buns’. She was also shortlisted for the London Short Story Prize in 2018 and the Grazia/Orange First Chapter competition in 2012, and was chosen to take part in the Almasi League, an Arts Council-funded mentorship programme for emerging writers of colour. Nightingale Point is her debut novel.
Nightingale Point
Luan Goldie
ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES
Copyright (#ulink_3efc00a2-06e3-5605-9956-8295c6b6d3c8)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Luan Goldie 2019
Alyson Rudd asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008314460
Note to Readers (#ubd41a0c9-1819-55b1-82c1-f2985e4bc529)
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008314484
For Patrick
Contents
Cover (#u120d0596-211d-5201-af87-17ae0290b976)
About the Author (#ub8d3e6db-95ac-5b2c-bcd6-f83a3f794bec)
Title Page (#udfb4a90d-f8d9-57c0-b98b-89b5adbb094e)
Copyright (#ulink_795d8fe2-81f3-523c-b346-24c0a34b6e26)
Note to Readers
Dedication (#u9dd6da2e-193b-51d4-8eb6-669b67e946fa)
SATURDAY, 4 MAY 1996 (#ulink_ac0fd861-6259-5c1d-9280-0c744b951ea8)
CHAPTER ONE: Elvis (#ulink_b23bc850-a19b-5978-a2c3-c86b2bb8b042)
CHAPTER TWO: Mary (#ulink_5f60ccef-effc-5597-a786-9b2361066fc6)
CHAPTER THREE: Pamela (#ulink_31b00a79-2377-512f-89c2-993dbd3deab8)
CHAPTER FOUR: Tristan (#ulink_6fdcd4b1-9a50-540b-817b-91e0b3dc91db)
CHAPTER FIVE: Mary (#ulink_7a9e81e5-9319-5d66-90c0-81e554283935)
CHAPTER SIX: Pamela (#ulink_3f6c2683-b49a-5584-bed9-aec92d5ed8f5)
CHAPTER SEVEN: Malachi (#ulink_e3ef7457-e0b5-5ed1-9cc0-5ed8644b3b28)
CHAPTER EIGHT: Elvis (#ulink_ad149b40-e91c-5174-b41d-40a8df11ec51)
CHAPTER NINE: Tristan (#ulink_e24e2bae-6b96-5086-bcc7-7ef7cdc9a380)
CHAPTER TEN: Mary (#ulink_05505fb1-7a95-5bd8-96fc-ccbbca5577ca)
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Elvis (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE: Pamela (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Tristan (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Malachi (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Elvis (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Tristan (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Elvis (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Pamela (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY: Elvis (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Malachi (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
AFTER (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Elvis (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Malachi (#litres_trial_promo)
TEN DAYS LATER (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Tristan (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Malachi (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY: Tristan (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Malachi (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Elvis (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE MONTH LATER (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Tristan (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Malachi (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: Elvis (#litres_trial_promo)
THREE MONTHS LATER (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Malachi (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: Tristan (#litres_trial_promo)
SIX MONTHS LATER (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY: Malachi (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: Elvis (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: Tristan (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
FIVE YEARS LATER (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: Jay (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: Malachi (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: Tristan (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: Elvis (#litres_trial_promo)
AUTHOR’S NOTE (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
Saturday, 4 May 1996 (#ulink_fb1a1b40-2b96-54bd-838e-c569b00c1365)
The evacuation began this morning. No sooner had the bins been collected than the hundreds of residents from the three blocks that make up Morpeth Estate began streaming away in their droves.
Bob the caretaker sat in his cubbyhole on the ground floor, telling anyone who would listen that ‘it’s only a heatwave if it goes on ten days’. But no one listened, instead they asked when the intercom was getting fixed, if he knew the lifts were out and what he was planning on doing about the woman on the third floor who kept sticking a chair out on the landing. Moan, moan, moan.
Bob stubs out his cigarette and looks up at the grey face of Nightingale Point, smiling at the way the sun illuminates each balcony, every single one a little personal gallery, showcasing lines of washing, surplus furniture, bikes, scooters, and pushchairs. Towards the top a balcony glints with CDs held by pieces of string; a few of the residents have started doing it and Bob doesn’t have a clue why. He must ask someone.
Mary is amazed at how well it works. Who would believe that hanging a few CDs on the balcony stops pigeons from shitting on your washing? She had seen the tip on GMTV and immediately rushed to the flat next door to ask Tristan for any old discs. His music was no good anyway, all that gangbanging West Coast, East Coast stuff.
Mary wraps a towel around her hair. Her husband could show up any minute and the least she can do for him, after being apart for over a year, is not smell of fried fish. She switches on the TV, but the picture bounces and fuzzes. She doesn’t even try to understand technology these days, but heads next door to get Malachi.
Malachi sits behind a pile of overdue library books and tries to think of a thesis statement for his Design and the Environment essay that is due next Friday, but instead he thinks about Pamela. If only he could talk to her, explain, apologise, grab her by the hand and run away. No, it’s over. He has to stop this.
Distraction, he needs a distraction.
On cue, Tristan walks over with The Sun and opens it to Emma, 22, from Bournemouth.
‘Your type?’ he asks, grinning.
But Malachi’s not in the mood to see Bournemouth Emma, or talk to Tristan, or write a thesis. He only wants Pamela.
Tristan sulks back out to the balcony to read his newspaper cover to cover, just as any fifteen-year-old, with a keen interest in current affairs, would. After this he will continue with his mission to help Malachi get over Pamela, and the only way to do it is to get under someone else. Tristan once heard some sixth-former girls describe his brother as ‘dark and brooding’, which apparently doesn’t just mean that he’s black and grumpy, women actually find him attractive. So it shouldn’t be that hard to get him laid.
There’s a smashing sound from the foot of the block and Tristan looks over the balcony.
The jar of chocolate spread has smashed everywhere and Lina doesn’t have a clue how to clean up such a thing, so she walks off and hopes no one saw her.
Inside the cool, tiled ground floor of Nightingale Point, the caretaker shakes his head at the mess. ‘Don’t worry, dear, I’ll get that cleaned up. Don’t you worry a bit.’
‘Thanks,’ Lina says. A small blessing in the sea of shit that is her day so far. She hits the call button for the lift but nothing. ‘Please tell me they’re working?’
The caretaker cups his ear at her. ‘What’s that, dear?’
‘The lifts,’ she says.
He fills his travel kettle and shrugs. ‘I’ve logged a call but it’s bank holiday, innit.’
Lina pushes on the heavy door to the stairwell and sighs as she looks at the first of ten flights of stairs. ‘By the way,’ she calls back at the caretaker, ‘I think there’s kids on the roof again.’
Pamela loves being on the roof, for the solitude, for the freedom, and for the small possibility that she might spot, walking across the field below, Malachi. She has to see him today and they have to talk. Today’s the day; it has to be.
At the foot of the block the caretaker tips a kettle of water over a dark splodge on the floor and gets his mop out. Just another mess to clean up at Nightingale Point.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_55305665-6bc3-501f-a956-dcd3dd43acf8)
Chapter One ,Elvis (#ulink_55305665-6bc3-501f-a956-dcd3dd43acf8)
Elvis hates to leave his flat, as it is so full of perfect things. Like the sparkly grey lino in the bathroom, the television, and the laminated pictures tacked up everywhere reminding him how to lock the door securely and use the grill.
‘Elvis?’ Lina calls. ‘You want curried chicken or steak and kidney?’
Elvis does not answer; he is too busy hiding behind the sliding door that separates the kitchen and living room, watching Lina unpack the Weetabix, bread and strawberry jam. She unscrews the jar and puts one of her fingers inside, which is a bad thing to do because of germs, but Elvis understands because strawberry jam can be so tasty.
This is the nineteenth day of Lina being Elvis’s nurse. He knows this as he marked her first day on the calendar with a big smiley face. There are fourteen smiley faces on the calendar and five sad faces because this is when Lina was late.
She puts the jar of jam in the cupboard and returns to the shopping bags, taking out a net of oranges. Elvis hates oranges; they are sticky and smelly. He had asked for tomatoes but Lina said that tomatoes are an ingredient not a snack and that oranges are full of the kind of vitamins Elvis needed to make his brain work better and stop him from being a pest.
Lina’s face disappears behind a cupboard door and Elvis watches as her pink coloured nails rap on the outside. He likes Lina’s shiny pink nails, especially when her hair is pink too.
‘Elllviiiis?’ she sings.
He puts a big hand over his mouth to muffle the laughter, but then sees Lina has removed the red tin from the shopping bag – the curried chicken pie. He gasps as he realises he wants steak and kidney.
‘Bloody hell!’ She jumps and raises the tinned pie above her head, as if ready to throw it. ‘What the hell you doing? You spying on me?’
‘No, no, no.’
‘Elvis, why are you wearing a sweatshirt? It’s too hot for that.’ She slams the tin down on the counter.
‘Steak and kidney pie,’ he tells her. ‘I want steak and kidney pie. It’s the blue tin.’
‘Yeah, all right, all right.’
‘Can I have two?’ he tries, knowing his food has been limited. He is unsure why.
‘No, Elvis, that’s greedy. Now go. Get changed. You’re sweating.’
‘Get changed into what?’ he asks.
‘A T-shirt, Elvis. It’s bloody baking out; go put on a T-shirt.’
Elvis goes through to his bedroom and removes his sweatshirt. He stands for a moment and looks over his round belly in the mirror, moisture glistening among the curly ginger hairs that cover his whole front. When he takes off his glasses his reflection looks watery, like one of his dreams. He then pulls on his favourite new T-shirt, which is bright blue and has a picture of the King on it. It also has the words The King in gold swirly writing. He smiles at himself before going to the living room to sit on his new squashy sofa.
Elvis listens carefully to the steps Lina takes to make the pie: the flick of the ignition, the slam of a pot on the gas ring. Then, the sound he likes best, the click of her pearly plastic nails on the worktops. He loves all the flavours the tinned pies come in and he likes the curried chicken pie most days, but today he really does want steak and kidney.
‘Right, master, your pie is on the boil,’ Lina says as she walks into the living room. ‘Nice,’ she says, acknowledging his T-shirt.
‘Are we going to the bank holiday fair?’ He had seen posters for it Sellotaped up on bus shelters and in the windows of off-licences: Wilson and Sons Fairground on the Heath, 3–6 May. Helter Skelter, Dodgems, Ghost Train! He really wants to go.
‘Yeah, maybe when it cools down a bit.’ Lina flops on the sofa next to him and picks up the phone. ‘Go.’ She waves him away. ‘Why you sitting so close to me? I am entitled to a break.’
But Elvis is comfy on the sofa and he has already sorted the stickers from his Merlin’s Premier League sticker book and watered his tomato plants on the windowsills. He has already carefully used his razor to remove the wispy orange hairs from his face as George, his care worker, had taught him, and rubbed the coconut suntan lotion into his skin as he knows to do on hot days. This morning Elvis has already done everything he was meant to and now he wants to eat his steak and kidney pie and go to the fair.
Lina has his new special phone in her hand. Elvis loves his phone; it is his favourite thing in his new living room, after the television. The phone is so special that you can only make a call when you put money inside and you can only get the money out with a special key that George looks after. Beside the phone sits a laminated sheet with all the numbers Elvis will ever need: a little drawing of a policeman – 999; a photograph of Elvis’s mum wearing the purple hat she reserves for church and having her photograph taken – 018 566 1641; and a photograph of George behind his desk – 018 522 7573. Elvis is trying to learn all the numbers by heart but sometimes when he tries, he gets distracted by the fantastic noise the laminated sheet makes if you wave it in the air fast. Next to the phone is a ceramic dish shaped like a boat that says Margate on it. The dish is kept filled with change for when Elvis needs to make a call.
He watches carefully as Lina feeds the phone with his change and starts to dial, her lovely pink nails hitting the dial pad: 018 557.
‘Go and sit somewhere else,’ she snaps.
But there is nowhere else to sit apart from the perfect squashy sofa, so Elvis goes into the kitchen where he can watch and listen to Lina from behind the door. In secret.
‘Hi … I’m at work. Elvis is driving me nuts today,’ she says into the phone. ‘He keeps bloody staring at me … Yeah I know … Tell me about it … Ha ha. Yeah, true true …’ She slides off her plimsolls and pulls the coffee table closer, putting her little feet up on it. ‘But you know what my mum’s like, always busting my arse over something: look after your baby, wash the dishes, get more shifts. I thought the whole point of having a baby was that you didn’t have to go work no more … Exactly … Especially on a day like this. Bloody roasting out.’
Even from behind the door Elvis can see that the nails on Lina’s toes are the same colour as those on her fingers, but shorter. The colour looks like the insides of the seashells Elvis collected at Margate last summer. He likes Lina’s toes; this is the first time he has ever seen Lina’s toes. He likes them but knows he is not allowed to touch them.
‘Can I have a biscuit?’ Elvis asks as he comes out from behind the door, now peckish and unable to wait for the pie to boil.
‘Hang on. What?’ Lina rests the phone under her chin like one of the office girls at the Waterside Centre, the place where Elvis used to live before he was clever enough to live by himself in Nightingale Point.
‘Can I have a biscuit?’ he asks again.
‘I’m on the phone, leave me in peace.’ She tuts then returns to her call. ‘But look, yeah, I’m coming to the fair later. Soon as I’m done with the dumb giant here I’ll be down … I’ll get it; pay me later.’ Lina slides the rest of the money from the ceramic boat into her pocket.
Elvis pictures the laminated sheet of Golden Rules that hangs in his bedroom. Rule Number One: Do not let strangers into your flat. Rule Number Two: Do not let anybody touch your private swimming costume parts. Rule Number Three: Do not let anyone take your things. Lina is breaking one of the Golden Rules. Elvis must call George and report her immediately.
Lina picks up the laminated sheet of phone numbers and uses it to fan herself. It makes her pink fringe flap up and down, and Elvis wants to watch it but he also knows that he must report her rule break. George once told him that if he could not get to the house phone and it was an emergency, he could go outside to the phone box to make a call. The phone box, on the other side of the little field in front of the estate, is the second emergency phone. Elvis must now go there. He leaves the living room and slips on his sandals at the door. Jesus sandals, Lina calls them, but Elvis does not think Jesus would have worn such stylish footwear in the olden days. He opens the front door gently, quietly enough that Lina will not hear. Then, and only because he knows he is allowed to leave the flat to use the second phone for when he cannot use the first phone, Elvis steps out of flat thirty-seven and heads into the hallway of the tenth floor.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d0fe831f-ff2c-57f5-9336-14b07fc21f5b)
Chapter Two ,Mary (#ulink_d0fe831f-ff2c-57f5-9336-14b07fc21f5b)
Ever since Mary woke up she has been feeling uneasy. And as the mother of two, grandmother of four, nurse of thirty-three years and wife to a fame-chasing husband, Mary knows what uneasy feels like. Her elbow has been twitching and she can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Something is coming.
She opens the pink plastic banana clip and allows her long greying hair to fall about her shoulders. Everything is cooked and cooling but she now needs something else to occupy her mind, to stop herself from worrying.
She covers the last plate – vegetable spring rolls – and stands within the tiny space of bulging cupboards and greasy appliances as she looks for a place to lay them. The worktops are already loaded with plates of food; each one gives off a different fried smell from under sweating pieces of kitchen roll.
‘Ah, too small, too small,’ she mutters. But no one could accuse Mary of failing to make the best use of her space. In each corner of the lino two-litre bottles of Coke are stacked like bowling pins; on tops of cupboards tins upon tins are stashed, heading slowly towards their expiry date; and on a small shelf above the fridge sits no less than seven boxes of brightly branded breakfast cereals. She buys them for her grandbabies. Though after a long shift on the ward she loves nothing more than to peel off her tights and eat two bowls of Frosties while lying on the sofa listening to The Hour of Inspiration on Filipino radio. Mary shuffles around some things, swears to finally get rid of the dusty sandwich maker and to stop buying five-kilo bags of long grain rice.
Her elbow. Twitch twitch twitch.
‘Stupid old woman,’ she mumbles. She knows she is being ridiculous, worrying too much about everything and nothing. She makes a mental list of her worries and tries to remember what the doctor on The Oprah Winfrey Show said to do with them.
‘You think of a worry, you cross the street,’ she says as she pictures the studio audience of determined, applauding, crying American women.
Mary thinks of each worry: talk that teenagers are gathering in the swing park at night to watch dogs fight; the cockroaches that continuously plague her kitchen; the smell of gas that sometimes lingers on the ninth floor; the woman from the top floor who was robbed of her shopping money last week as she got in the lift. It’s a long list.
‘Cross the street, cross the street.’ Mary waves her arms as she imagines each worry float off behind her. But then larger worries, those that are more likely to happen, these are things she can’t dismiss as easily, namely the imminent arrival of her estranged husband, David. Fifteen months he had been gone and then a call from Manila Aquino Airport two days ago: ‘My love, I am coming home, but I am on standby. You know what these airlines are like: locals back of the queue.’ She has heard this from him before, claims of him booking a ticket, being at the airport, getting on the next flight. Even once a call to say he had been diverted to Birmingham and would arrive the next day. She had wrung her fingers with anxiety for almost a week until he finally landed on her doorstep – their doorstep – with an excuse she now struggles to remember. For David, there is always some excuse, some distraction, some offer of money he can’t turn down. Whenever he is due to return home the world is full of people desperate for a poor Johnny Cash tribute act. Or maybe he is with one of his many floozies. Mary has never gotten over her own brother’s accusation that David had ‘a floozy waiting at the side of each stage’.
‘Cross the street,’ she says more weakly as she pictures David’s travel-weary face, greasy rise of hair and fake Louis Vuitton suitcase. ‘Cross the street.’ She cringes as she imagines David pulling her in for an obligatory married couple kiss. ‘Cross the street.’
‘Talking to yourself again, Mary?’ Malachi waves a hand as he enters the kitchen.
She felt bad for pulling him away from his studies, but also pleased for an excuse to check in on him and his younger brother Tristan. When had she turned into such a meddling old woman?
‘I’ve fixed the TV,’ Malachi says.
Mary takes the two small steps needed to cross the kitchen and throws her arms around his middle.
‘It wasn’t even broken.’ He shakes free from her arms and wipes the small beads of sweat on his dark brown skin. ‘Your aerial was unplugged. Tell the kids to stop playing behind the TV.’
Mary nods, knowing she will never tell her grandbabies any such thing – those perfect little girls would have to throw the TV out of the window before she dare aim a cross word at them. Each time they come to stay they leave her exhausted, and the small flat trashed, yet she can’t wait till they come again.
‘Why don’t you open a window in here? It’s twenty-four degrees already.’ Malachi leans over the sink and pushes on the condensation-streaked glass. It screeches loudly as it gives way, allowing the heat from outside to do battle with the steam from Mary’s cooking.
‘I have the vent on, see.’ She indicates the tiny, spinning, dust-covered fan. ‘You look tired,’ she says gently, keen not to nag the boy. ‘Too much study, study, study.’
He looks up at the window and undoes the top button on his shirt. Mary does not like the way he has taken to wearing collarless shirts; she watches MTV sometimes, and knows this is not a fashion among young people. She notices too, as he goes under the sink, that his trousers – muted green cotton with a sharp crease down the middle – are for a much older man.
‘What you looking for?’ she asks as he rummages around her collection of multi-buy discount cleaning products, fifty pack of sponges and long abandoned, but not yet disposed of, cutlery holders and soap dishes.
‘You need to oil your window.’ He twists the nozzle on a rusty can of WD-40.
‘Don’t worry about my window.’
He stops and looks down at her. His almond-shaped eyes search for something.
‘What?’ She touches her face, wondering if a stray Rice Krispie is stuck on her cheek.
‘You’re saying I look tired. You all right? You look a bit … frazzled.’
‘I worked forty-eight hours already this week – what do you expect me to look like? Imelda Marcos?’
Malachi blesses her with one of his rare smiles and then positions his knees into the two small free spots on the worktop. He seems more sullen than usual.
‘Are you okay?’ Mary asks as he squirts the window frame.
‘Yep. I’m always okay. Just hot and this smog, it plays havoc with my asthma.’ He jumps down and stares blankly across the kitchen.
Mary knows he’s still hung up on the blonde girl from upstairs. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re not still sad about whatshername.’
‘I have a hundred other things to think about,’ he snaps.
She was the first girl of Malachi’s Mary had ever met. He even brought her over for dinner once, one wet afternoon where they sat, with plates on their laps, eating chicken bistek.
‘Some things are not meant to be. I could see it from the start,’ Mary lies, for all she saw that afternoon was Malachi buzzing around the girl like she was the best thing since they started slicing bread. ‘I always know when couples don’t match. I even said it about Charles and Diana, but did anyone listen to me?’
‘I really don’t want to talk about this.’
Mary throws her arms up. ‘Me neither. Goodbye, Blondie. Plenty more pussy in the cattery.’
He wipes his face to hide his embarrassment and she’s pleased to see the tiniest of smiles emerge on his sad face.
‘Why’d you make so much food?’ he asks.
‘I told you, I need to work every day next week so I’m stockpiling. Like a squirrel.’ She wraps an old washed out ice-cream tub with cling film and hands it to him. ‘This is for your tutor.’ She had been sending food parcels to anyone related to Malachi’s education since his first semester of university. Anything to boost the boy’s chances. ‘The rest is for your freezer.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’
‘And I appreciate if you put on some weight. What is this?’ She pinches the flesh of his side.
‘Ow.’
‘Heroin chic!’ she announces. ‘I saw it on GMTV. Teenagers with bodies like this.’ Mary holds up her pinkie finger. ‘No woman wants that, Malachi. You need to eat properly.’
She had looked in Malachi’s and Tristan’s fridge a few days ago and saw nothing but a loaf of value bread and jar of lemon curd. The freezer was even worse: a half empty box of fish fingers and two frosty bottles of Hooch, which Tristan explained were ‘for the ladies’. If their nan knew they were eating so poorly under Mary’s watch there would be murder.
‘Freezer, you hear me? Tell your brother he can’t eat, eat, eat all in one sitting. And why has he got zigzags shaved in his hair? Does he think he’s a pop star or something?’
‘You know what he’s like. He’s a little wild.’
‘He can’t afford to be wild.’ Mary tries to put the word in air quotes but uses eight fingers and makes a baby waving motion. ‘Too many riffraffs around here going wild like this.’ She makes a stabbing gesture and tries to look menacing, but her only reference point is West Side Story and she makes a dance of it.
Malachi puts a hand under a piece of kitchen roll and drags out a bamboo skewer of prawns. Mary slaps him.
‘Did you hear me say help yourself? Does this look like the Pizza Hut buffet to you?’
‘You just told me I need to eat.’
‘Not prawn. Too early for prawn.’ She turns her back to him as she rewraps the skewers. His eyes burn her; she must explain her snappy mood. ‘I need to leave my spare keys with you in case David gets in early. He’s on standby for a flight so could be here tonight, tomorrow or next week. Oh God.’ The reality of him arriving hits her again. It sends her elbow into overdrive.
‘David?’
‘Yes, David, my husband. Remember him?’ There’s a hysterical edge to her voice. She puts a hand on her forehead to save herself as Oprah has taught her. ‘I don’t even want to talk about it.’
‘I didn’t know David was coming back.’
‘No. But we didn’t know Jesus was coming back either.’
Mary takes her nurse fob watch from her pocket – a present from David on one of his rare jaunts back home. An obscure-looking Virgin Mary with oversized arms ticks around the clock, hung on a thick, gold link chain. Well, it was gold once, now it’s more silver, the shine, like everything else to do with David, rubbed away by the sweat and grime of real life. Quarter to twelve.
‘Mary?’ Malachi waves his arms to get her attention. ‘Hand me these keys then. I need to get back home.’
Mary nods as she looks in the junk drawer, rifling through papers, wires and replacement batteries for the smoke alarm until she finds the spare keys. Tristan had once attached a plastic marijuana leaf to them thinking it was funny. Mary had given him a lecture about the dangers of drugs but never bothered to remove the key ring.
She fusses with the catch on the watch as she pins it to her uniform, swearing to get it fixed. ‘You want some tea before you go?’ she asks Malachi.
He spins the keys around a long finger. ‘No, thanks. Too hot.’
‘You call this hot? It’s thirty-five degrees in Manila today.’ She lifts the kettle and gives it a shake before she flicks the switch.
‘Right,’ Malachi says. ‘I better get back to my books.’
He sulks off and she rolls her eyes at his constant grumpiness. But as she hears the front door close she stops cold. The twitch becomes a scratch. Something is wrong, for her feelings never are. Today, something horrible will happen.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_1e184b71-c8fe-5e7d-b394-477536d7899e)
Chapter Three ,Pamela (#ulink_1e184b71-c8fe-5e7d-b394-477536d7899e)
There is not a stitch of breeze on the roof of Nightingale Point. Today, up here is just as suffocating as being in the flat with Dad. Pamela places her new running shoes on the ground and holds onto the metal railing; her long rope of blonde hair falls forward and dangles over the edge. The sunrays hit the nape of her neck and she feels her skin, so dangerously pale and thin, begin to burn. She shifts her body into the shade of the vast grey water tanks and imagines the water as it rolls between them and into the maze of pipes around the block’s fifty-six flats. Pamela loves the roof. Since she returned to London a few days ago it’s become the only space Dad does not watch over her. Sometimes she wishes she was back in Portishead with her mum, just for the freedom from his eyes. But in a way being there was worse, because it meant Malachi was over a hundred miles away rather than two floors. At least here there is a chance she will see him, run into him in the lift, or bump into him in the stairwell.
Blood runs into her face as she leans further over the railings. Her head feels heavy. She wonders, not for the first time, how it would feel to fall from this spot, to flail past all fourteen floors and land at the bottom among the cars and bins. It would probably feel like running the 200 metres. Air hitting your face and taking your hair, your lungs shocked into working harder than you ever knew they could. Pink and yellow splodges dance in front of her eyes as she lifts her head. It’s coming up to noon, only halfway through another monotonous, never-ending day.
She assumes it’s other teenagers that repeatedly bust the locks on the door that leads up to the roof. They leave their crushed cans of Special Brew and ketchup-smeared fish and chip papers across the floor as evidence that they are having a life. She often fantasizes about coming up here at night, catching them in the throes of their late-night parties, tasting beer and throwing fag butts among the pigeon shit with them. If only Dad would let her out of the flat past 6 p.m. No chance.
The sky appears endless. Unnaturally blue today, almost unworldly, not a blemish on it apart from the single white smear of a plane.
Does she need to run back? Has it already been twenty minutes? She doesn’t care. What does time matter if you’re all alone? What difference does any of it make if you’re about to throw yourself from the top of a tower block? She takes three deep breaths but knows that she doesn’t have the confidence to do it. But the thought alone makes her feel like she has some edge on Dad, something that she can do without his permission.
In front of the estate people are living their lives: a child runs, the drunks drink, some girls sunbathe in pink bras and denim shorts, and a lone large figure in billowing purple crosses the grass at speed. Pamela tries to picture who the bodies are, how they would feel if they witnessed a girl fall from the building, their faces upon discovering her body bashed at the bottom. They would be traumatised, she thinks, for a while at least, and then her death would become another estate anecdote. The tale of the broken-hearted teenager with the strict dad. It would become just another story to get passed around the swing park and across balconies, along with tales of who is screwing who and which flat plays host to the biggest number of squatters.
Pamela wishes she could go for a run. She needs to clear her head. Surely Dad will let her out.
‘Please, one hour out,’ she rehearses. It sounds so feeble out loud, so knowing of a negative answer.
Her running shoes swing by her sides as she pads across the greyness in her socks. She steps over the glossy ripped pages of a magazine; a girl in a peephole leather catsuit stares back at her. The door bounces against its splintered frame as Pamela enters the building. Her world starts to shrink. With each step down to the eleventh floor the brightness of the unending blue sky disappears and the stairwell begins to close in on her. The concrete walls suck the air away until there is only the suffocating stink of other people’s lives.
‘Do you think it will be okay if I went out today? Maybe. Perhaps.’ Her voice echoes eerily; she feels even more alone. ‘I’m thinking of going out today.’ This time with more confidence. But what’s the point? He will say no. He will never trust her again.
She opens the door onto the puke-coloured hallway and the shouts and music of her neighbours. Outside flat forty-one she stops and rests her head on the security gate, takes a few breaths and then pulls it open. She looks down at the letterbox and for a moment feels like she has a choice. She could still go back to the roof. But, as always, the choice is taken away from her as the lock clicks from within and the front door swings open.
Dad fills the doorway; a fag hangs from the corner of his mouth. ‘You’re pushing your luck, girl.’ Patches of psoriasis flame red on his expressionless face. He’s put back on the same sweat-stained yellow T-shirt and army combat trousers from yesterday.
‘I was getting some air.’ She pushes past him into the dim, smoky living room.
He follows her, sits on the sofa and pulls his black boots on. ‘Air?’ He methodically ties up each of the long mustard laces. The woven burgundy throw falls from the back of the sofa to reveal the holes and poverty beneath it. ‘We got a balcony for that. I don’t wanna start locking the gate, Pamela, but if you’re gonna be running off every opportunity—’
‘I didn’t run off. It’s a nice day. I was on the roof.’
‘Well, I’ve heard that before. You can’t blame me for not trusting you.’
She rearranges the throw and stands back. She only wants an hour outside, just enough time to clear her head. So much can change in that time; like the day she first met Malachi. Dad had given her an hour then too, explained how grateful she should be for it. ‘More than enough time to go round the field and straight back home.’ She grabbed that time, and even though he was watching her from the window, she felt free as she ran loops around the frosty field.
The drunks, immune to the freezing temperatures of the morning, watched from their bench as she ran past them several times that hour. ‘You should be running this way, blondie,’ one called, while shaping his hands in a V towards his crotch on her last lap. They all laughed and she ran faster. She could always go faster and with time ticking she needed to get home before Dad came out for her. She cut onto the grass, slipped and fell awkwardly. It hurt straight away. Her ponytail caught the side of her face as she turned to check if the drunks were still laughing at her, but they hadn’t even noticed her fall. The dew began to seep through her leggings and she tried to stand, but buckled immediately with the pain.
‘Hey,’ someone called. ‘You okay?’ A tall man came running towards her and put out a gloved hand. ‘You really went down hard there.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Here, let me help you.’
As he helped her to a bench she tried to concentrate on the hole in his glove to stop herself from blushing.
‘You really do run out here in all weathers, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘I live up in Nightingale Point. I always see you out here.’
He had seen her before. How had she never seen him? She tried not to stare, or lean into his arms too much.
Tristan Roberts came over too. He was from her school, one of those loud, obnoxious boys everyone seemed to know.
‘Oh, shit, did you break your leg?’
‘No, she ain’t broken her leg. This is my brother.’
They looked nothing alike.
‘Ain’t you cold?’ Tristan pulled the drawstrings on his hoodie tighter. ‘Running round out here? That’s long.’
She could see Dad coming across the field now, his face red from fatigue and panic.
‘I’m fine, really. Thanks. I need to get home.’ She tried to rise but the pain shot through and she winced. He grabbed her again; the pain was almost worth it.
‘Get off her. Pam.’ Dad was closer. ‘Pam, Pam.’ He pushed past Tristan and put his hands either side of her face. ‘I knew I should have been watching you. What happened?’
‘She’s all right, man, she just tripped, innit,’ Tristan said.
‘Who are you? Why are you two even near my girl?’
‘Dad, stop it. Tristan goes to my school.’
Tristan looked confused. He obviously didn’t recognise her. It confirmed she had no presence at her new school; she was nobody.
‘I’m Malachi. We live in the same block. We were making sure she was all right. That’s all.’
‘Well, she’s fine ’cause I’m here now, ain’t I?’ Dad snapped. ‘Come on. Let’s get you home.’ His grip on her arm was tighter than it needed to be. She could see Malachi noticed it too.
‘This looks bad, Pam. Don’t think you’ll be running again for a while.’ Dad looked relieved, happy because injuries meant she had no reason to go out.
Even now, with the injury long healed, he still won’t let her out, but then he has other reasons for wanting to keep her inside the flat these days. She pulls the curtains open and the room brightens, but even the sun’s glare is not enough to chase the perpetual gloom out.
Dad inspects his roll-up for life before roughly squeezing it onto a saucer. It’s from her nan’s set, cream with tiny brown corgis around the edge, once used for special occasions but now reduced to holding ash.
‘I’m going to the bookies,’ he says. ‘Will be back for dinner. We’ll heat up that corned beef.’
‘They’re fighting again,’ she says.
‘Who?’
‘Next door. Can’t you hear them?’
They stop for a moment to listen to the searing soap opera from flat forty-two that plays itself out so regularly. It sounds particularly theatrical today. What is the woman shrieking about this time? She always seems to be arguing with her teenage daughter over something. Pamela longs for that kind of relationship, one so freely volatile that you could scream and shout at a parent, rather than stand there and soak up their disappointment.
‘They been at it all morning,’ he huffs. ‘Their voices go right through me.’
Pamela tries to block out the domestic so she can focus on Dad, her own situation. She tries to assess his mood by the way he clears his throat and collects his wallet. She wonders at her chances of success and waits to pick her moment.
He looks straight at her. ‘Why you dragging those about?’ He nods towards the pair of pink and lilac trainers in her hands.
The tip of her ponytail tastes chemically; he always buys the cheapest shampoo.
‘I won’t go anywhere other than around the field. I promise.’
‘You’ve only been home a few days. You expect me to let you start running wild again?’ He holds his anger in so well, but she can see it behind his eyes, ready to pop like glass. ‘No chance. You’re staying in.’
‘You know it rained the whole month I was at Mum’s. I haven’t been out running in ages.’
He shakes his head again.
‘I want to go round the field a few times. It’s the middle of the day,’ she tries. ‘You can watch me from here.’
‘Told you. I’m going out.’ His keys jangle as he taps his pockets and walks away, her chances dissipating.
‘What about swimming? Can I go to the pool?’
He laughs. ‘Yeah, right, the pool. Why? You arranged to meet someone there, have you?’
‘No. Dad, please.’ She follows him into the hallway, not content to let it end there. She knows she’s already in trouble anyway. ‘So you expect me to stay in all day listening to that?’
The walls leak more cries from the quarrelling neighbours.
He checks the handle on his bedroom door: locked. ‘You can use the phone. Call one of your mates for a chat.’
‘I don’t want to chat. I want to go out. I want to run.’
He stops by the front door and gently takes her plait in one of his hands. ‘No.’ So calm. So fixed. ‘I don’t trust you out the flat. In fact, I don’t even know if I trust you to be alone in the flat.’ He lets the long plait fall and kisses her on the head.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, how can I be sure that the minute I go out your little boyfriend won’t come running up?’
‘Because I don’t have a boyfriend anymore. Remember?’
He holds her gaze but what can he say? He knows he ruined it for her; he ruined everything.
‘Dad?’
He turns to face her, keys now in his hands as he opens the front door. ‘Yeah? Come on, Pam, what you wanting now?’
I hate you. ‘Nothing.’
The door closes and she listens for the Chubb lock, but hears no footsteps. He’s still outside; maybe he will change his mind and give her permission to start living again. But then, seconds later, there is the distinct clank of the security gate and the crunch of it being locked: the confirmation that she will spend today locked inside her home. Trapped.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_53004b07-ff22-5f9f-8abd-807260a9789a)
Chapter Four ,Tristan (#ulink_53004b07-ff22-5f9f-8abd-807260a9789a)
Tristan had already picked the clothes from the floor, stacked the videotapes and lined up his and Malachi’s trainers by the front door. He now sits on the window ledge, his place of choice, observing the world nine floors below him. He is wearing white shorts today, white T-shirt, white socks, white trainers, and a large cubic zirconia stud in his left ear. It’s a good look. He feels pristine. He wonders if he should hoover but decides against it, as nothing will make the carpet, so full of cigarette burns and bleach stains, look any better.
Malachi walks in and slumps himself back into the Malachi-shaped dent on the sofa.
‘So what’s wrong with Mary’s TV?’ Tristan asks his brother.
‘Nothing. One of her grandkids must have unplugged the aerial.’
Tristan laughs, once again glad that Mary never asked him to fix stuff around her flat. It’s one of the perks of having a brother like Malachi, who is not only the clever one, the tall one and the ‘traditionally handsome’ one, but also the one that can ‘fix stuff’.
‘Did she make you watch Ricki Lake with her?’ Tristan laughs. ‘Girlfriend, you need to get a new man, get a man with a job,’ he mimics in an American accent.
Malachi shakes his head and pulls a pile of books onto his lap.
‘Mal, you all right?’
‘I’m always all right.’ He holds his book in front of his face.
‘You’re proper squinting. You need glasses, man, stop denying it. Specs will complete this whole student look you’ve gone for.’
Malachi puts the book down and pulls some keys from his pocket. ‘Mary’s spare keys,’ he says as they slide across the table into a pile of papers. ‘Tris, if you drop out that window I can’t save you.’
‘You don’t always need to save me,’ Tristan snaps. ‘I’m almost sixteen – old enough to vote and go to war.’
‘You need to be eighteen to vote.’
‘Whatever. Don’t need my big brother saving me.’
Malachi always thinks he needs to play the hero, but looking at his outfit today he’s the one that needs saving. Where did he even buy a pair of green trousers? No wonder he can’t keep a girl.
Malachi starts writing a shopping list, like Nan used to, except Nan wouldn’t have subjected them to pasta five nights out of seven.
‘What?’ Malachi looks up from his list of cheap meals. ‘Why’d you keep staring at me?’
‘Nothing. Was thinking, we should go West End, man. Get some new clothes for summer and that.’
‘New clothes? Cool, right after I figure out how to stretch my last money over our meals for the week.’
‘You were a lot more generous with the old purse strings when you were getting some action.’ Tristan is fed up of Malachi’s sulking. It’s been going on for ages now. All over some girl. She wasn’t even that fit. Proper Plain Jane. No need to get so upset over her. Tristan would never let a girl mess up his head the way Pamela messed up Malachi’s.
He starts tapping a beat on the window and runs through his latest lyrics. ‘It’s Saturday, I’m out to play. Girls get ready ’cause I’m gonna pay, pay your way, so you can stay, in my bed, but I ain’t gonna stay. Yes. You like that one, Mal? I was born to do this, man.’
But there’s no applause from the one-man audience on the sofa, only another huff.
‘Pay your way, so you can stay, in my bed, we do it hard all day. So what you saying, Mal?’
Malachi raises his eyebrow. ‘Keep working on it.’
‘Ha. You coming out later?’ Tristan asks hopefully.
‘No.’
‘How comes?’
‘Busy.’
‘Ah, don’t give me that, it’s bank holiday weekend.’ He picks up one of Malachi’s plastic-wrapped library books. ‘The History of the Urban Environment. Hmm, looks like a riveting read. But I’m sure it can wait. Come on, come out with me.’
‘No.’
‘You seriously telling me you can’t take one day off from studying? Your brain gonna get stretch marks if you carry on like this.’ How long is Malachi planning on hiding out behind his books? It’s getting ridiculous. ‘You gotta get back to normal sometime. Whole estate’s gonna be at this fair up at the Heath. Plenty girls, Mal, plenty girls. Gonna keep me busy. Don’t expect me home early. Don’t expect me home at all. You can have the place to yourself, bring someone over if you want. Get a little study relief.’ He pumps his hips.
Malachi rubs his eyes and groans. ‘Tris, stop going on.’
‘Calm down, bruv. I’m talking about girls in general. I wasn’t gonna bring up Blondie.’
‘You just did,’ he snaps. ‘You and Mary are doing my head in with this.’
‘What?’
‘You’re both telling me to move on, yet you’re bringing her up every minute. Why can’t you both drop it?’
‘’Cause everyone’s fed up with you sulking about Pamela. Time to get over it. It’s time for a next girl. It’s time, bruv, I’m telling you. That’s why you need to come fair. You need to watch me in action.’ He stands up and performs his lyrics just as he would on stage. ‘Me settle down? You’re having a laugh. A pocket full of Durex, girl meet me in the car park.’
Malachi throws his books on the table. ‘Don’t you have somewhere to go?’
‘Nah, not yet. I’m tryna cheer your long face up. I even put up that hotness for you.’ Tristan nods over to the wall. Earlier he had taped up an A3 poster of Lil’ Kim lying spread-eagle across an animal fur rug. Now that’s the kind of girl worth having a broken heart over, not some skinny little blonde from the flats.
Tristan pushes the window open further, in need of air after working himself up with all his talent. Now relaxed, he takes his Rizla from his pocket and what’s left of his weed.
‘Quickest way to get over one girl is to move on to a next.’
‘Outside with that.’ Malachi jabs a thumb towards the front door.
‘You serious? The window’s wide open. You can’t smell it if I sit here,’ Tristan says, demonstrating how carefully he will blow smoke out of the window.
‘I don’t care. Take it out.’
‘Just ’cause you ain’t smoking no more. Why should I have to go out?’
‘Out.’ Malachi repeats as he begins flicking through his books.
‘Whatever.’ Tristan rubs his brother’s head roughly as he passes the sofa on his way out of the flat. Surely one of the benefits of having a twenty-one year old as your guardian should be that you can openly smoke a bit of weed at home. But no such luck with Malachi and that stick up his arse. Still, Tristan doesn’t mind getting out, jogging down to his much-loved spot, between the sixth and fifth floor, where he selects the middle step.
‘I’m more than a thug, girl get to know me, king of the block, T.H.U.G.’
He likes the echo of his voice in the stairwell and imagines how it would sound on a real microphone. He pictures himself in a recording booth, one headphone on, one headphone off, like the rappers in the videos, all his boys drinking in the studio, some girls dancing about.
‘Gimme a kiss, I’ll light up a spliff, take you to Oxford Street, buy you nice shit. Nah, don’t sound right.’ He looks again at his stingy stash. ‘Hard times, hard times,’ he mumbles.
Then he hears something, someone coming down the stairs. It stops. He cranes his neck to look up and down. Nothing. But there’s someone breathing. It feels like he’s being watched, maybe by one of those crazy girls from the youth club. He had stopped going after he got involved with one too many of them. Some even know where he lives; they’re probably stalking him. Though he wouldn’t mind being stalked by the girl with the red weave – she looked like the kind of trouble he could enjoy.
Again, the shuffle of feet, heavy, though, not like a girl. Footsteps. He looks up and down but can’t see anyone. He’s being paranoid, but it pays to be paranoid living around here. Last week some woman got her handbag nicked as she was getting out of the lift.
‘I’ll give that ghetto ghetto love, weed and sex, and some crazy drugs.’
‘No smoking in the stairwell.’
Tristan is startled. His papers flutter to the floor.
‘What the fuck?’ he shouts.
A man stands at the top of the stairs. He looks down at Tristan. He is tall and chubby, and has crazy bright ginger hair.
‘No smoking in the stairwell,’ he commands.
‘You what? You spying on me?’
‘No smoking in the stairwell,’ the man repeats, and his face breaks out into high red blotches. ‘It’s a rule. You cannot break the rules of Nightingale Point.’
‘Fuck off. Go. Go past.’
But the man stands there, straight-faced. ‘No smoking in the stairwell.’
There is definitely something off about him; he’s wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Elvis Presley on it, for a start.
‘Rule breaker. Rule breaker,’ the man chants.
Tristan pounces up the stairs and grabs the idiot by the sleeve of his T-shirt. The man is bigger than Tristan but unsteady on his feet and he topples down easily with a tug. He lets out a small cry as he falls, then grabs the bannister and pulls himself back to his feet.
‘Stop looking at me!’ Tristan shouts. ‘Move. Go before I chuck you down the next five flights.’
The man bends over to pick up his glasses. His grey shorts are too big for him and he gives Tristan an eyeful of his white fleshly arse cheeks before he runs off down the stairs.
‘Fucking retard.’ Tristan picks up his papers and returns to making the spliff. He empties his tobacco in and sprinkles the little weed he has left on the top. But he’s pissed off now. He has nowhere peaceful to call his own, except for this place in the stairwell, and now some dumb fucker wants to talk to him about rules and try to kill his vibe.
Tristan lights up and waits a few moments to enjoy his first puff. It takes him a while to chill out again but finally he relaxes into his familiar routine, lounging back on the step and listening to the muffled sounds of the block.
‘Oh, look who it’s not.’ Mary’s voice echoes from above.
‘Fuck,’ he mutters and rubs the spliff against the steps. ‘Didn’t hear you, Mary. Boy, you’re so silent. Like a ninja.’
‘What you doing, sunshine?’ Her little plimsolled feet patter down the steps till she reaches him. ‘I was looking for you yesterday. Malachi tells me you’re not going kiddie club anymore.’
‘What?’ He laughs and fans the air between them. ‘Youth club? Nah, nah. I’m too old for that, man.’
‘Don’t man me. What is this?’ She pulls the spliff from behind his ear and he awaits the lecture. Mary’s got a lecture for everything these days. It’s almost like when Nan left last summer she handed Mary some kind of oracle of lectures, one for every minor deviance.
‘It’s Saturday. I’m allowed a little relief from life.’
‘Why not go and relieve yourself with a book?’ Mary rolls her head around like the African American women she’s always watching on TV. She leans towards him and sniffs his T-shirt till he moves away self-consciously.
‘What you doing? I’m clean. You know me, fresh like daisies.’
‘You stink like drugs.’
He laughs. ‘Oh my days. Leave me alone. It’s bank holiday weekend.’
‘You don’t work. Every day is bank holiday weekend for you. This is no good, Tristan.’ She holds the spliff in her hands. ‘If you smoke too much wacky backy you’ll get voices in your head.’
‘Is that a fact? Is that what the NHS is training you nurses to tell people nowadays?’
It’s obvious how hard she’s trying to hold a look of disappointment in her creased face, so he hits her with his biggest smile. ‘Come on, Mary, marijuana is a natural product. It’s grows alongside roses and shit.’
‘Don’t shit me.’
Her lips soften into a smile as Tristan laughs. She reaches up and puts the white roll-up back behind his ear. Such a pushover.
‘You come with me,’ she demands.
‘What?’
‘Walk me to the bus stop.’
He groans, knowing this will be Mary’s time to grill him on school, smoking, girls and anything else that needs to be filled in for her regular report back to Nan.
‘I can’t walk you, Mary. I’m busy. Meeting friends and going fair later, innit.’
‘You don’t have a choice. Come.’
She takes him by the arm and they walk down the stairs in silence. The ground floor is filled with the smell of the caretaker’s lunch – egg salad – and the sound of football on his radio.
‘Why you wearing so much white?’ Mary asks as they emerge into the heat and light of day.
‘’Cause it makes me look like an angel.’
‘Angel, ha. That earring makes you look like George Michael.’
‘Boy, you’re giving me a hard time.’
She snorts then let’s go of his arm as something hard and metallic falls to the ground in front of them. It’s her nurse’s fob watch.
Tristan picks it up and hands it back. ‘It’s broke. Why you still dragging this about? It looks so old.’
‘Because it is old.’
‘Get a new one. Get a digital.’
‘I don’t need new anything,’ she snaps while trying to re-pin it. ‘David gave it to me.’
A woman in hot pants and a bright red halter top, covering very little, walks past. She’s too old for both Tristan and her choice of outfit. Just his type.
‘It’s hot out here,’ he calls in an attempt to get her attention.
Mary grabs his arm again and pulls him away from the woman. ‘This temperature would be like winter in Manila. It is thirty-five degrees there. Where you going today?’
‘Told you. There’s a funfair over on the Heath.’
She stops and grabs her elbows in that nervous way she often does. ‘I hate funfairs. There’s always trouble at funfairs. Always someone getting robbed or getting their head broken on a ride.’
‘Yeah, that’s why I don’t get involved with rides. Those gypsies don’t do health and safety checks. I’m going to check a few gal and that.’
Mary reaches up and takes hold of one of his cheeks. ‘Eh, sunshine, put a sock on it. Don’t want any babies running around here.’
‘Oh my days, you’re tryna embarrass me. As if I would have a baby with any of these mad estate girls.’
They both turn to face the car park where a few boys cycle about in circles, shouting at each other. Tristan hadn’t even noticed them coming round. Behind them, on the wall, sit three older boys: Ben Munday, who has been able to grow a full beard since he was thirteen, and two others, who wear red bandanas around their heads like rap superstars. Tristan still owes Ben Munday twenty quid. Shit.
‘You know them ragamuffins?’ Mary asks.
He shrugs. ‘Nope. Not really.’
‘But they’re looking at you.’ She scratches at her left elbow and inspects it, as if she has been bitten by something.
Tristan really doesn’t have twenty quid right now, his own cash depleted weeks ago, and Malachi is being tighter than usual with the student grants and carer benefits that keep them both ticking over. He considers asking Mary but something about the way she frowns and fidgets tells him she’s not in the most giving of moods.
‘Tristan Roberts,’ Ben Munday calls.
Mary widens her eyes. ‘You don’t know them? Liar. They look like crack dealers, like Bloods and Crisps.’
He laughs so hard he needs to use her little shoulder to support himself, ‘It’s Bloods and Crips. Where you getting this stuff from?’
‘Don’t make fun of me.’ She shakes him off. ‘I see it on Oprah. I know all about gangbanging.’
‘Please, never say gangbanging again. And stop being so judgey. They’re kids from my school.’ Though they both know the wall boys are long past school age.
‘Eh, Tristan?’ Ben Munday calls again.
This time Tristan knows there’s no escape. ‘I better go check them out, all right?’ He nods at her as he walks off slowly, already thinking of how to downplay knowing a ‘gang’ when his nan next asks him about it. ‘And Mary, get rid of that nasty old watch.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_58664019-fc5b-5f8b-8890-12d7140e8640)
Chapter Five ,Mary (#ulink_58664019-fc5b-5f8b-8890-12d7140e8640)
She watches Tristan walk over to the ragamuffins that line the wall. He touches fists with each of them, and Mary catches a glimpse of the big Cheshire cat smile that makes him so endearing. She doesn’t want to think anything bad of Tristan, who deserves a million chances to get it right, but he’s smoking too much marijuana and surrounding himself with too many bad influences.
When Mary promised the boys’ nan she would keep a close eye on them, she thought it would be an easy job. She had known them since they were babies and, despite their chaotic upbringing, they were mostly good boys. But Tristan worries her at the moment. It’s no longer as easy as telling him to stay off the streets and he stays off the streets. She can’t fool herself: she has no real control over him. It’s like what you see on Oprah. Boy listens to rap music telling him to go shoot a policeman. Next day boy goes and shoots a policeman. She worries about him. All the time she worries about him.
Again it comes: twitch, twitch, twitch. She pushes her short blunt nails into her bony elbow in an effort to stop the tic.
Right now, there is a worry bigger and more urgent than Tristan. Mary’s husband, David, will descend on her any day and she is sure her guilt will shine through like a firefly in a jar. She will slip up somehow, maybe smell differently or perhaps refer to something only a woman in love would know. He will watch her and he will realise: his wife is an adulteress. When he came last, just over a year ago, she had started seeing Harris Jones outside of their nurse and patient relationship. Nothing more than long walks around the Jewish graveyard behind his house. A place safe from the prying eyes of others, somewhere they could be together to look at the bluebells and put the world to rights. An innocent friendship. But now, now things were so different.
‘Hot enough for you?’ the big ginger man who lives in her block asks as he stands outside the phone box, his glasses sitting lopsided across his babyish face. He is new to the area, one of those care-in-the-community patients. He runs his hands down the front of his T-shirt; it has a print of a young Elvis Presley on it, all hair and curled lip. When Mary first met David he was working as an Elvis impersonator at The Manila Peninsula Hotel. Mary hates Elvis. She smiles politely at the man as she spots the number 53 pulling into the bus stop.
She flashes her bus pass and rubs her arms discreetly against her polyester white uniform. The door closes behind her and traps in the heat and smells of the passengers. Mary thinks of how she is breaking the vows she took all those years ago in the local church with the baskets of sun-bleached plastic flowers and the priest with the lisp. She falls into that awkward middle seat at the back of the bus and feels the woman to her right tighten her grip on a battered library book so their arms don’t touch. Mary can just about make out the title: Broken Homes Make Broken Children. An omen? It’s like the world is conspiring to tell her something about her own wrongness, her dishonesty. But broken children? Her twins were hardly children anymore, thirty-five this year, and with careers and families of their own. Mary can’t imagine John’s or Julia’s life being affected by her having an affair or finally divorcing David. Divorce. As the word enters her mind the scratch becomes a searing itch and she tries to distract herself. She pulls a tissue from her bag and dabs her clammy face; the sun catches her wedding ring and it glints sadly, as if to mock her failure as a wife.
The bus picks up speed and a welcome breeze flows through the narrow windows. The woman with the cursed book gives Mary a sideways glance, their eyes meet and she adjusts herself to face out of the window. No one wants to deal with a crying nurse on public transport. As the bus nears Vanbrugh Close, Mary stands and presses the bell. She squeezes herself past the other sweaty passengers, towards the exit, ready to get off and face her second life. The doors hiss open and she steps into the full force of the sun. Immediately, her state of guilt gives way to something like joy, for although her affair is sordid and secret it is also satisfying, and her heart thumps with schoolgirl excitement at the prospect of seeing him again.
The walk towards the close of bungalows fills her with a feeling she remembers first having when she was nineteen and on the cusp of marrying David. A feeling she enjoys but knows she should not have in relation to a man other than her husband. Pop music plays from a stereo; a father and teenage daughter wash down a car together. They both glance up and smile at her. They look like a television advert: perfect and happy. On the other side of the road an elderly lady in a straw hat and pink gardening gloves picks at a blooming brood of hydrangeas. Vanbrugh Close is a world away from Nightingale Point and its smelly stairwell, blinking strip lights and cockroaches. And as Mary turns into the small neat drive of Harris’s home, she realises the life she has created with this man is a world away from herself, from the woman she has grown to be: the mother of two, grandmother of four, nurse of thirty-three years and wife to a fame-chasing husband.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_b61acfbb-7b41-5345-bac0-7f76f7e44af9)
Chapter Six ,Pamela (#ulink_b61acfbb-7b41-5345-bac0-7f76f7e44af9)
She lies on the sofa listening to the neighbours’ argument as it sinks through the wall. The mother–daughter screaming matches have become an almost weekly occurrence, both of them going back and forth at each other in their matching catty voices. Pamela closes her eyes and imagines what it would feel like to scream and shout at Dad the way the girl next door does with her mum. Pamela could never; she would be too scared to say all the things she really thinks about him. She jumps at the sound of a door slamming in the neighbours’ flat, the sound that usually signals the end of the row. And now there’s nothing to distract her. She stretches each leg out above her head. She misses running so much. How long will this go on for?
On the train back from Portishead Dad had told her not to expect to return to London and fall back into her normal routines, but she never expected this, for him to actually lock her in the flat, to put a complete ban on her going out. There was only ever a slim chance of him letting her take up running again, but it was him that pushed her to start swimming after her injury, so why rule that out as well? There’s no way he could have found out how little she actually swam.
‘I’ve circled the ladies-only sessions for you,’ he had said as he handed her the pool timetable. He even went out and bought her a costume.
She knew she wasn’t going to like swimming as soon as she got into the cold changing rooms. Most of the locks on the cubicles were broken and women of all shapes and sizes roamed about naked. Pamela looked the other way as old ladies stood with their swimming costumes half hanging down, applying deodorant and chatting to friends. There were used cotton buds left on the wooden slat bench, the floor dusty with talc. Quickly, she changed into the overly modest costume and made her way out to the pool, her eyes already stinging from the chlorine.
As she waded through the water her fingers caught long strands of black hair. She couldn’t get a rhythm going, the pool was too small and crowded, and she found herself gripping the scaly tiles at the far end, waiting for someone to complete a lap so she could have a turn. There was no freedom, no clearing of the mind and no possibility of losing herself in the monotony of the movement. It was the opposite of everything she loved about running.
She flipped her collar up while she stood under the awning outside, watching the bus home pull away. If she ran she could be home in fifteen minutes, but there was no rush to get back there, to sit in the dreary living room alone.
Two people came towards her with their hoods up. One went through the sliding doors but the other one stopped.
‘Hey.’ It was Malachi. He removed his hood and wiped the rain from his face.
‘Hi.’ She wanted to smile back but instead looked around cautiously in case Dad appeared from somewhere.
‘How’s your leg?’
‘Fine. Well, no, it’s sprained, so I’m giving it a bit of a break from running.’
The sliding doors kept opening and closing until Tristan stepped out from them. ‘Mal, we’re not allowed in.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, it’s a women-only swim session,’ Pamela said.
Tristan stood between the two of them. ‘What kind of sexist nonsense is that? I bet they don’t run men-only sessions, do they?’
Malachi rolled his eyes.
‘Let’s go gym instead?’ Tristan said.
‘I told you, you’re too young for it.’
‘Come on, swimming never gave anybody a six-pack. Ain’t that right, Blondie?’ He nudged her side.
‘Maybe you should take up running?’ she suggested, still looking at Malachi.
‘I’d like that.’ Malachi smiled and held her gaze.
Tristan laughed. ‘Yeah, running is a great choice of sport for a chronic asthmatic.’
‘Tristan, I’m going to meet you back home, all right?’
‘For real?’ Tristan looked at Pamela like he wanted to laugh. But of course, it didn’t make sense that someone like Malachi, who was tall and perfect, would want to spend time with a girl like Pamela, who was plain and invisible.
Malachi dug in a pocket and pulled out a crumpled fiver. ‘Here, go cinema or something. I’ll see you later.’
Tristan kissed his teeth as he took the note. ‘All right, see you back home. Laters, Blondie.’ He threw up his hood and sulked off into the rain.
They stood and faced the road, the rain coming down heavier now.
She wanted to wait for him to speak first, but couldn’t hold it in. ‘You know it’s too wet to run, right?’
He looked at her. He had amazing eyes. ‘I know. And you’ve been swimming already. You hungry?’
She shook her head. She didn’t have money to eat out anywhere.
‘What about a drink then? There’s a greasy spoon over there, it does good milkshakes. I’ll race you.’
It was awkward as they ran to the café together, as if they both knew straight away there was something more happening. The smell of burnt onions hit her as they stepped inside. They sat opposite each other in metal chairs and he picked up the laminated menu and held it closely to his face, studying it for way too long. Frowning, his forehead wrinkling, he looked so serious, so utterly different from every other boy she came across at school.
‘How old are you?’ She felt embarrassed straight after asking it.
‘Twenty-one.’ He put the menu down and folded his arms. ‘Twenty-one going on sixty.’
She smiled at him. ‘I know the feeling.’
He looked at her for a beat too long.
‘I’m almost seventeen. I’m the oldest in my year group at school,’ she said, trying to justify their age gap. ‘Seventeen in September. If I was born one day earlier I would already be in college.’ She paused. ‘You and Tristan don’t look very much alike.’
‘No. We’re not alike in lots of ways.’
‘Do you have the same dad?’ she asked.
‘What kind of question is that?’
The milkshakes came and she felt she had blown it, asked a stupid question and revealed herself to be a stupid schoolgirl after all.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy.’
‘He’s my brother. That’s all there is to it.’
She nodded and mixed the milkshake with the end of the straw.
‘Tristan said he’s never seen you at school before.’
‘No one sees me at school. No one sees me anywhere.’
‘I see you.’ Malachi smiled.
As they came out of the café, back into the real world, Pamela felt cautious again. ‘Do you mind if we walk back separately?’ she asked.
‘But we’re going to the same place.’
‘You met my dad – he’s quite strict about who I hang out with. He doesn’t really let me see boys.’
The word ‘see’ almost implied that she thought they had started a relationship.
‘I understand.’
How could this work? Could she really see him again? She wanted to. But there were lots of things she wanted to do but wasn’t allowed.
‘I don’t really have time to, you know … do stuff outside of school and sport. My timetable is quite packed.’
He straightened up and rubbed his face.
School and sport, that’s all her life was. Surely she could take the risk of having something else going on?
‘My dad wants me to go swimming every Tuesday and Thursday between six and eight. But I hate swimming.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘That I’m free every Tuesday and Thursday between six and eight.’
He nodded. ‘Got it.’
They separated as they reached the field in front of the estate. He sat on a bench and she walked off, trying her best not to keep looking back at him. She pulled her hair in front of her face, smelling its mix of chlorine and fried food, and knew she would never set foot in the pool again.
Pamela paces the flat like the caged animal she is, stopping each time to look at the front door. She misses Malachi so much. She doesn’t want to chase him, but he needs to know the truth. That she didn’t want things to end the way they did and hopes they can work out a way to still be together. But first, there’s something else she needs to tell him.
What can she do? She doesn’t want to talk over the phone; he’s always awkward on the phone. Half the time his phone is cut off anyway. But what choice does she have?
She picks up the phone and dials.
Thank God, it rings.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_6d27704b-ee1d-5ad9-aac6-c7020584b7a2)
Chapter Seven ,Malachi (#ulink_6d27704b-ee1d-5ad9-aac6-c7020584b7a2)
Malachi pulls his books back onto his lap and tries again. He’s behind on his reading and hasn’t even made a start on the essay. There’s no way they will let him have an extension on the deadline again. The tutor won’t understand that he’s behind because he has a broken heart. It’s pathetic.
His eyes hurt and so does his head. Maybe Tristan’s right about the eyesight thing. He can’t concentrate. He sifts through the morning’s post. Junk mail and another bill. Where does all the money go anyway? He’s only just managed to clear the rent arrears and get the phone put back on. The electric bill looks steeper than usual this time, probably because of Tristan’s habit of running the hoover every day and putting on a wash for one or two T-shirts. Their mum never taught them anything about keeping home. They were learning as they went; they didn’t have a choice.
Malachi allows his head to fall back onto the beaten sofa, the plush long gone from previous owners, and puts his hands over his face. There’s got to be an easier way to get by than this.
‘Get it together,’ he says to himself. He wonders if there’s anything he can do to get some cash in. Well, there are things: someone had talked about selling knock-off TVs, and he’d also heard rumblings about single men with British passports being paid for taking part in bogus marriages. But both these things seem to come with a lot of risk. And Malachi has a lot to lose if things go wrong.
There’s no other option; it’s time to call Nan. The last thing he wants to do is stress her, or make her feel like she’s made a bad decision leaving him in charge here, but what choice does he have? He needs to watch the money more closely this month. He wishes he never bought that pair of pink and lilac running shoes for Pamela – they were so expensive. But her old ones were almost worn through and she seemed serious about taking up running again once she recovered from her injury. He wonders if she’s allowed out to run in Portishead. She’s probably not allowed to do anything there. Anyway, after what happened between them Pamela probably threw the trainers off the roof. She must hate him after what he did, how he denied her. It hurts to imagine her feeling this way; it’s so far from how she was at the start, back when she was completely into him. He misses those early days with her, when her dad worked long hours and she had freedom. Back when being in this flat, in his bedroom, felt like they were a million miles off the estate and away from all their problems. They would lie in bed and allow themselves to believe it would all work out, that her dad would relax and let go of whatever his prejudice against Malachi was.
He wishes he could stop thinking about her, stop using his memories of them together as a place to escape to. But how can he? When everything here and now is so challenging, so dull and so lifeless without her? He wants her back, back here in the flat with him, talking to him and making him laugh. He can’t stop thinking about those wintery afternoons; he can’t stop imagining he is there again.
‘It’s so cold. What time does your heating come on?’ Pamela had asked as she came back into the bedroom.
‘It doesn’t.’ He didn’t want to weigh her down with money problems, to soil their time together by talking about a situation he felt was drowning him.
She jumped back in the bed next to him and shivered. ‘Your brother’s home. He didn’t seem too pleased to see me here. Asked if I had permission from my dad to have a sleepover.’
Idiot. Malachi laughed. ‘He’s a wind-up. Ignore him.’
‘He doesn’t like me.’
Malachi was never quite able to work out what his brother’s problem with Pamela was. Especially as Tristan was always going on about Malachi having a girl and now he had one.
‘I try with Tristan. I really do. But he openly yawns every time I speak to him,’ she said. ‘He does it on purpose.’
Malachi stifled a laugh. It did sound like the kind of thing Tristan would do. ‘He’s not used to someone other than himself getting attention, that’s all.’ Malachi put his arm around her and twisted a lock of her hair around his finger.
‘You’re not scared of my dad, are you?’ she asked suddenly.
‘It depends. What did he do to your last boyfriend?’
‘I told you, I’ve not had boyfriends.’ She moved away from him then, as far as the single bed would allow, and he braced himself to hear bad news. ‘But when I first moved to London one of the youth coaches from running club called my house to ask me out.’
‘And?’
‘Well, Dad answered. He went nuts because the coach was twenty-one.’
‘So you do like older guys then?’
She picked up the pillow and hit his shoulder with it. She was constantly trying to play down their age gap, it embarrassed her, but to him it wasn’t an issue, she felt so much older, more mature than most of the girls he met at university.
‘Dad accused the guy of being a predator, almost got him fired. He said if I saw him again he would send me back to Portishead. That’s always the threat, sending me back.’
‘The coach thing is a bit dodgy, though. It’s like that teacher and student barrier. It’s not meant to be crossed. Let’s wait till you’re out of school, then you can tell your dad.’
Malachi pictured it often, the first time he would meet her dad, Jay, properly. How it would be awkward at the start but eventually Jay would be won over by the fact that his daughter was with someone about to gain a university degree, someone with goals and ambitions, someone who would look after Pamela and make sure she was always happy.
She shook her head. ‘He never needs to know. It’s not worth the aggro.’
This issue, it was the only thing that ever annoyed him about her, this feeling that he needed to be kept hidden. It didn’t make any sense, especially when they talked about long-term plans, the trips they would take, the cities they would work in and the home he would design for them in some perfect location far from the city. But none of that stuff could happen if their relationship was to remain a secret.
Malachi hated to give a voice to the thing in his head, but it was there and wouldn’t go away. ‘So apart from my age, there isn’t anything else your dad would have a problem with about me, is there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean, Pam. Don’t make me ask you outright.’
She pulled her hair up into a ponytail and looked away. ‘Mal, I’ve told you already, he’s not like that. He doesn’t like me seeing anyone. Black, white, purple, green.’
‘You say that, but have you ever heard him say that?’
‘He hates everyone and everything. He wants me sitting in the living room, right under his nose, where he can see me. I’m all he’s got.’
Malachi nodded. It wasn’t a conversation worth ruining their afternoon for. ‘So, you wouldn’t want to live with your mum again?’
‘She doesn’t want me. She’s got her new life now, new husband, new job. Why would she want her teenage daughter messing it all up? She always made Dad out to be the bad one, but he’s the one who looks after me. He’s a little over-protective sometimes, that’s all.’
Malachi pictured her dad waiting at the front door for her to return home each evening, ready with his interrogation about where she had been and who she had been with.
‘A little over-protective?’ he says.
‘Dad’s sister got pregnant at fifteen and it ruined her life. He doesn’t want me going the same way.’
‘That would never happen with us.’
She rolled back into the bed next to him. ‘Boys are troublesome.’
‘Except me. I’m the least troublesome boy you could have found.’
‘Really? We’ll see.’
Why did he allow himself to mess up so badly with her? How could he let her dad get the better of him?
He needs some air, some perspective. He scribbles a note for Tristan: Gone out for a walk. Need to clear head and goes out. As he walks down the stairs he hears humming on the third floor. Shit, Beryl must be tending to her plastic garden again. He could do without being caught up listening to her go on today.
‘Hello, Mr Long Legs,’ she calls.
‘Hi Beryl, can’t stop.’ He catches her disappointment as he runs past and immediately feels guilty; swears to pop by later. Beryl, like most women in the block of a certain age, seems to have a certain fondness for him. Tristan says it’s sometimes like Nan has them all on payroll for interfering.
He takes the steps two at a time till he reaches the ground floor.
‘Your lifts are out again?’ he shouts towards the open door of the caretaker’s cubbyhole.
A grey head pops out, mop in hand. ‘What did you say, son?’
‘The lifts are out.’
‘Yep. Both on the blink.’ The caretaker smiles, as if having announced some welcome news. ‘And you’re not the first person today to point that out to me either.’
The sun is searing, it’s full summer already and Malachi’s clothes feel too heavy and warm for the day. He hadn’t even registered the seasons change.
There’s a crack of laughter from by the car park. He spots Tristan, glowing in his white shorts and T-shirt, with the local hoods. Malachi doesn’t want to be called over to touch fists with them like he is part of their group, like he won’t, later on today, have a go at Tristan for associating with them. He jogs off quickly across Sandford Road and out onto the green. He looks back at Nightingale Point and counts up the floors to Pamela’s flat, half expecting to see her on the balcony, chewing her ponytail and observing the world below. But of course she’s not there, she’s gone. He didn’t expect to still feel this way, a month on. He thought being without her would have gotten easier, that he would have stopped missing her. But every day it seems to get worse.
There are more people than usual on the grass. Some look prepared for the weather, with supermarket food, blankets and sunglasses. Though most, like him, are caught off guard and look uncomfortable in their dark colours and too-warm clothes. Malachi used to love summer; him and Tristan would sit out on the balcony and suck on the coloured chunks of ice they would make themselves by pouring diluted juice into ice cube trays. Mum loved the summer too; it made her want to get out of the house. He can’t remember her depression ever taking hold during the summer months. But then he tries not to remember too much about her.
It wasn’t planned but when he looks up he realises he’s walked all the way to the swimming pool, the place he and Pamela first started talking, and across from it the café where they spent so much time together. He walks in alone and sits at the usual table, hidden near the back. With Pamela it was always a milkshake each and a plate of chips to share – his one extravagance.
The waitress comes and buries a hand in her thick curly hair. ‘Hey, honey,’ she says overly familiar, ‘ain’t seen you in ages.’
Pamela used to tease Malachi about the waitress having a crush on him.
‘Where’s your girlfriend today?’
‘Oh.’ His head falls to the side and he feels an overwhelming desire to confess all to her, just for someone to talk to, but it’s not in him to do that. ‘She’s around. You know.’ He pulls his gaze away from her face to the blue evil eye at her neck.
The woman smiles and wipes the table. ‘Trouble in paradise?’ She asks so gently he feels he might break.
‘Ah, actually … Well, we broke up.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ The crumbs fly from the table onto his lap as she pushes about a blue cloth. ‘Well, it won’t take you long to find someone else. I’m sure they’re lining up.’
But he doesn’t want anyone else, he wants to sit here with Pamela and share a plate of chips and laugh about last week’s episode of Father Ted. It hurts being here, reliving all those times they sat in this very booth, getting to know each other and making plans.
He puts his head in his hands.
The waitress comes back over and puts a milkshake on the table. ‘On the house,’ she says, tapping his shoulder. The kindness of it, of her and the way she looks at him, reminds him of all those teachers and social workers who would give him extra attention when they knew his mum was having a turn for the worse. It’s not empathy, it’s pity, and it still breaks his heart.
He can’t bear to see the pink glob of powder at the bottom of the glass so he drinks it to the halfway point. He misses Pamela so much. He’s not going to be able to concentrate on studying this afternoon. He can’t imagine being able to concentrate on anything ever again. Not without her.
‘Get it together,’ he mumbles. ‘Get it together.’
He knows he can’t speak to Pamela now; she surely wouldn’t want to hear anything he’s got to say. But maybe, just maybe, he can speak to her dad.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_6808bc5e-647e-58bd-ad0d-2a4a8ccf7362)
Chapter Eight ,Elvis (#ulink_6808bc5e-647e-58bd-ad0d-2a4a8ccf7362)
Elvis runs across the field to the other side. On his way he passes some girls who are sunbathing with not a lot of clothes on, some friendly drunk men, and an old man who walks a giant, scary dog, which he does not stop to pet. He pulls open the door of the phone box and shields his eyes from the photo cards of women with their breasts exposed.
He cannot remember George’s phone number and Elvis wishes he had spent more time trying to learn it and less time flapping the laminated sheet in the air. He takes his notepad from the pocket of his grey shorts and flicks through the pages to see if the number is written down in there. It isn’t. Instead, the notepad is filled with other important information, such as what takeaway dish is best from Express Burger (quarter pounder with chilli sauce and salad) and what time the postman arrives on his floor (8.57 a.m.).
It is too hot inside the phone box and it smells of wee, so he steps back outside. Elvis wonders if Archie, his friend from the Waterside Centre, was telling him the truth when he said that teenage black boys were dangerous. Archie had warned, ‘You can’t live on a council estate. It’s full of bad black boys that will try to stab you.’ Archie is Elvis’s best friend. Elvis misses Archie. He also misses the Waterside Centre. He misses the small bathroom attached to his bedroom, the paintings of lily ponds in the hallways and Tuesday night bingo with Bill.
As he stands outside the second emergency phone and looks across the green he sees the Filipina nurse he knows coming towards him. This makes him smile again. She lives in his block. Elvis likes her as once, when they were in the lift together, she told him a long but nice story about storms in the Philippines. The Filipina nurse is so small and Elvis always has an urge to pick her up, but he knows you cannot do that to strangers as it will scare them and some short people do not like to be reminded that they are short.
‘Hot enough for you?’ he asks as she walks quickly towards the bus stop. But she is in a rush today and has no time to stop and chat about storms. She needs to catch the number 53 bus because that goes to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital where she works. Elvis hates the Queen Elizabeth Hospital as it is where he went when his arm was broken by the car that time and it hurt so badly and he screamed and cried. Then, worst of all, he bit a nurse, which made him scream and cry all over again because he had done something so terrible.
Elvis’s leg hurts now from where he bashed it on the stairs. He looks down at the purple bruise on his glowing white skin and wishes the Filipina nurse had time to look at it for him, but the 53 now pulls away with her on it.
If Elvis tells George, his care worker, all the things that have happened today, maybe he will make him go back into assisted living. Elvis does not want to go back into assisted living. He has only been living alone six weeks, which he knows for sure because he puts a red dot on his calendar each morning.
His glasses will not balance on his face correctly because the left arm is all bent, so he puts them in his pocket along with the packet of Euro ’96 stickers he bought yesterday, then he slowly walks back across the green. He likes the way Nightingale Point gets bigger and bigger the closer you get. He looks up a few times to feel the sun hit his face. It feels lovely. But because he is a ginger he should not get too much of it. One summer Elvis had fallen asleep in the sunshine without his coconut suntan lotion on and his skin had burnt red raw, even his eyelids.
He crosses Sandford Road carefully, after looking both ways and listening for traffic, then heads into the estate. A group of teenage boys sit on the wall that lines the car park; one has a very impressive beard and Elvis wonders if he has a special little brown comb for it like his Sikh friend Mandeep. Some other boys cycle about and laugh loudly, and one sings a song Elvis does not know but would like to. In the middle of the group he notices the bad black boy from the stairs again, the one with the zigzags in his hair who pushed Elvis earlier and made his glasses all bent.
The boy has a bright blue ice pole hanging from his mouth, the kind Lina bought Elvis last week when she was in a happy mood. Elvis has an idea. He stops and gets out his notepad. This is his chance. He will make a description of the boy so that he can report him to George and then maybe even to the police. He sketches the boy’s white trainers, white shorts, white T-shirt, and shiny diamond earring. The trainers are very difficult to draw correctly. He scribbles them out and tries again. He looks up to check what the laces look like and it is then he sees that all the boys are staring at him.
Rumbled.
He tries to place his notepad back in his pocket inconspicuously and pretends to be very busy kicking the stones from the path into a neat pile. Which is a very valid job.
‘What were you drawing there, fatty?’ a voice from the wall calls.
Elvis says nothing, just concentrates on making the path straight. Of course he knows it is rude to ignore someone, but then it is also very rude to call someone ‘fatty’.
‘Oi, I’m chatting to you,’ the voice calls again.
Elvis feels a little bit scared now and no longer wants to kick the stones back into place. He wants to go home. Two of the boys cycle over. One of the bikes has colourful spokes that go click clack click.
‘What you drawing?’
Elvis tries to remember what is best: to ignore or to lie. He chooses to ignore and tries to squeeze himself between the two bikes and off towards home, but he is not as small as he thinks and his T-shirt gets stuck on one of the handlebars. Maybe he is a fatty. He wriggles free and starts to walk away fast.
‘Why you walking off? I’m talking to you, brer.’
He feels someone grab him and pull at his shorts. His notepad is pulled from the pocket. The biker, who Elvis really does not like and is very scared of, now holds the notepad and flicks through all the pages of Elvis’s important information about what takeaway dish is best and what time the postman comes. Then he stops and begins to laugh. He shows his friend, who laughs as well and shouts, ‘Oi, Tris, is this man your bum chum? Didn’t know you were into gingers.’
The notepad is cycled back to the wall, where each of the boys has a look and a laugh.
‘Please,’ Elvis says, ‘can I have it back?’
The boy with the impressive beard lets out a laugh, which sounds like the little girl who lives next door. He then stuffs his free hand down the front of his jogging bottoms, which is not socially acceptable no matter how much your penis needs to be adjusted.
‘Please, can I have it back?’ Elvis repeats, this time slightly louder than the last. He really does want it back.
But the bearded boy ignores him and hands it to the bad black boy from the stairs, who looks at it, then shouts, ‘Is this meant to be me?’
Elvis does not want to look at the boy’s very angry face, so instead focuses on the shiny diamond earring and the bright blue stain across the – otherwise – very white T-shirt.
‘What’s your problem, man? First you’re spying on me in the stairs and now you’re drawing pictures of me.’
The other boys gasp; some laugh quietly.
‘Eh, Tris, this is proper creepy. This brer been stalking you?’ one of them says. ‘That’s some gay bunny boiler shit.’
Elvis plans to grab the notepad very quickly, then run into Nightingale Point and up all the stairs and back into his perfect flat with all his perfect things, but as he reaches out the bad black boy grabs his fingers and twists them. It hurts. Elvis screams. He breaks free and tries to run away but two of the boys on bikes block his path. The bad black boy comes forward and starts to rip each page from the notepad and scrunch them up. Finally, he flicks the notepad over into the car park. The boys all laugh and the bad black boy hoots with them.
‘Sicko,’ he shouts.
‘Don’t let him get away with it, Tris,’ says the bearded one.
Elvis is very frightened of being hurt again. He wraps his arms around his head and squeezes his shoulders up to his ears. The bad black boy takes a step closer but instead of pain Elvis feels a glob of wet spit cover his lips and chin.
The boys all laugh and the bad black boy shouts, ‘Stay away from me, you fucking retard.’
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_6a4a92ac-7acf-577a-9344-17b7ba78fcfa)
Chapter Nine ,Tristan (#ulink_6a4a92ac-7acf-577a-9344-17b7ba78fcfa)
The boys hover around the wall in order of importance, headed by Ben Munday, who sits in the shade offered by Nightingale Point, pride of place. He’s got on the latest Air Jordans, the type of footwear Tristan can only dream of owning.
‘What’s up, Tris? You look nuff prang,’ asks one of the younger boys from his bike.
‘Aw, it’s this heat.’ Tristan wipes his brow with a flourish but is embarrassed when he discovers the back of his hand glistening. ‘What you lot saying then?’
‘Chilling,’ answers the boy.
‘Yeah, yeah. Chilling.’ Tristan relaxes a little, allows his shoulders to drop. What’s twenty quid anyway? Ben Munday probably has so much money he doesn’t even remember lending it. Now that’s the kind of flex Tristan needs to be on. This relying on your big brother for handouts thing is getting long. Really tedious.
‘Here.’ One of the older boys hands Tristan a blue ice pole from a striped off-licence bag.
Ben Munday stands up and fusses with his hands down the front of his joggers, then pulls out a small washing powder net filled with £10 bags of cannabis. Tristan swears he can smell the weed, heated up by this boy’s groin. The thought is kind of repulsive.
‘Eh,’ one of the cycling boys says, ‘you seen Mustafa from Barton Point about? I’m gonna get him today, y’know.’ He punches one fist into the other.
‘For real?’ Tristan feigns interest, distracted by the tightness of the wrapper on the ice pole. He puts it between his teeth and tries to rip it.
‘He tried to chat up my sister. Man needs to be taught a lesson. You know me, how I protect my family and that.’
‘Yeah, yeah, get him good,’ Tristan says as he battles with the plastic seal. It bursts open and a blue juice sprays across his T-shirt. ‘Shit.’
The boys laugh.
‘You look like a sanitary towel advert.’
‘For fuck’s sake, man.’ Tristan is furious. ‘This is clean on.’
‘You were asking for it wearing that much white,’ Ben Munday says.
The toxic-looking blue colours the pavement as Tristan throws it to the floor. He leans down to wipe the bright drips off the trainers he takes so much pride in keeping spotless.
‘Eh, Tris, you know him?’
‘Who?’ He licks a finger and scrubs it along the stain. As he looks up he spots the man in the Elvis T-shirt from earlier in the stairwell. But this time he’s got a book out, a notepad or something, and is scribbling away. The boys cycle over and take it from him. Then they burst out laughing. Tristan tries to work out what’s going on.
‘Oi, Tris,’ one of the boys shouts back, ‘is this man your bum chum? Didn’t know you were into gingers.’
‘What’s he on about?’
The notepad flaps by their sides as they cycle back and then pass it along the group. Each face breaks into laughter as they see whatever is written and Tristan waits for his turn to get in on the joke.
Elvis T-shirt follows. ‘Please,’ he says, ‘can I have it back?’
Ben Munday shoves a hand back down his pants before letting out his one uncool trait: his high-pitched laugh.
‘Please, can I have it back?’ Elvis T-shirt reaches out for the notepad but it’s finally passed to Tristan. The pencilled figure has lines shaved across its hair, a star in its ear and two skinny legs sticking out of a pair of big shorts. Tristan isn’t sure what he’s most annoyed about: that he’s been spied on again or the unflattering portrayal of his physique, especially as he’s been putting in up to sixty push-ups a night.
‘Is this meant to be me?’ It’s humiliating, especially in front of Ben Munday. The heat creeps up behind his ears like a siren signalling the imminent loss of his temper.
The boys cackle and their energy builds behind him.
‘What’s your problem, man? First you’re spying on me in the stairs and now you’re drawing pictures of me.’
He hears a gasp.
‘Eh, Tris, this is proper creepy,’ says one of the boys on the bike, the spokes on his wheels click-clacking as he rocks back and forth. ‘This brer been stalking you?’
Stalking. That’s exactly what this is. Elvis T-shirt tries to grab the notepad but Tristan gets hold of his fingers and twists them tightly. He doesn’t really want to break the guy’s fingers, but this needs to hurt. He hopes he will know when to stop. Thankfully, the fingers are slippery with some kind of grease and slip from his grip. Elvis T-shirt looks proper scared now, huffing and almost in tears. He tries to run but the bikes block him, as if holding him for Tristan. For what? Not like Tristan is gonna fight this big idiot here in front of everyone. Ben Munday nods towards the notepad, as if giving the go-ahead. Tristan begins to rip out the pages, tearing at the little illustrations of postmen and bowls of food that appear alongside the scruffy handwriting. Then he flicks the notepad over into the car park. He laughs with the boys and shouts: ‘Sicko’.
But Ben Munday isn’t smiling; he’s shaking his head like he’s witnessed something substandard rather than business being taken care of. ‘Don’t let him get away with it, Tris,’ he says.
Elvis T-shirt now has his arms wrapped around his head. Despite being scrunched up, he still has a few inches on Tristan. He takes a step closer and isn’t sure what to do, how to make the biggest impact. Then it comes to him. He closes his eyes as he launches the spit. The boys gasp, someone snickers, there’s even the slap of palms. He’s done the right thing.
‘Stay away from me, you fucking retard,’ he shouts, and Elvis T-shirt wipes his face, then takes off in the direction of Nightingale Point.
‘That’s how to do it,’ Ben Munday says, smiling. ‘You gotta watch yourself with them care-in-the-community people.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Tristan agrees. He looks up at the flats and hopes no one saw what happened. Malachi would kill him. ‘Well, man, I need to go get changed – can’t be walking about like some tramp. Not my style.’ He knocks fists with each of the boys. Ben Munday grabs Tristan by the shoulder and shakes him playfully; a proud smile breaks through his thick, curly beard.
Nightingale Point feels hotter than when Tristan left it, so as well as a blue ice pole stain, he feels the sweat seep into the cotton at his armpits. Nastiness.
‘You again? Up, down, up, down,’ the old biddie on the third floor says. She sits on a dining table chair out on the landing, surrounded by a mess of plastic plants and flowers. The sight of her dentures makes Tristan queasy as she smiles at him. ‘No wonder you’re so skinny.’ She tuts. ‘Get yourself outside. Too hot to stay in. Bet your lot are used to it, though, ain’t ya?’
He pauses and retraces his steps back down. ‘What?’
‘The heat. You know.’
Is she serious? Old people have no filter whatsoever.
‘I tell you, young man, once it got so hot here I could have fried an egg on the floor.’ She points down to the narrow strip of grey concrete in front of her and sways. ‘Szzzz.’ She laughs. ‘I sat out here with your nan that day. If she was here now, she’d be sitting out here with me. A lickle tipple of rum.’ The woman mimics what he thinks is meant to be a Jamaican accent and laughs like a schoolgirl.
He rolls his eyes, trying to remember a time when his church-going, twin-set wearing nan would ever have sat out with his woman. There’s no chance. Between working at the library five days a week, running around after Tristan and Malachi, and ferrying their mum back and forth to her hospital appointments, Nan had no time for anything other than standing in Mary’s kitchen and complaining about life. That’s Tristan’s overriding image of her: tired, shoes off, tights in all weathers, holding a mug of tea and giving Mary a rundown of her ailments.
‘When’s your nan coming back?’ the woman asks.
‘Nan ain’t coming back for a while.’ Nan stuck out life in London for over forty years; she damn near swam back to the island the day she felt Malachi was old enough to look after things. Nan always said life in the city was ‘nothing but bad luck and bad weather’. Guess she had more than her fair share of both.
‘Well, tell her I’ve got the rum in the cupboard for when she does, hee hee.’ The woman giggles again.
He waves off her comments, then carries on up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Once home, the flat is stifling, the windows all closed. He pulls off his T-shirt and starts to fill the sink, adding a bit of bleach, before spotting a note on Malachi’s abandoned pile of books. If it’s the shopping list, Tristan’s definitely going to add a few meal ideas of his own. Instead he feels inspired to write and rap.
‘Baby come and get this champagne and lobster, you’re dining with the mobster, some curry goat to finish, and I know you’re gonna want more. Hmm, don’t quite rhyme.’ He crosses it out. ‘I need to handle business, get this money, you see, before Mal turns me into fucking fusilli.’ He sighs. ‘I’m getting worse. Off my game today.’ On the back of the paper there’s a note from Mal.
Gone out for a walk. Need to clear head.
When did he leave the flat? Tristan hopes Mal didn’t see him with the wall boys. Or with Elvis T-shirt. Tristan will properly be in the shit if that’s the case.
‘Who goes for walks round here anyway?’
He goes to the mirror and takes in his profile. Yeah, he looks good, but that pigeon-legged depiction was kind of hurtful. Working out at home isn’t enough to get the kind of Tupac body he’s aiming for. Only a gym membership will do the trick.
‘Check out my abs, built to last, come rub my chest, let me feel your arse.’
Tristan drops to the ground and starts doing push-ups. He’s hitting his flow when the door knocks. He jumps up, then tiptoes over, half expecting the police to be standing on the other side. Surely spitting at someone isn’t a crime? He’s not too sure. But on the other side of the spyhole is Mary’s husband, David Tuazon.
‘Smooth motherfucker,’ Tristan says as he unlocks the door.
‘Hello.’
‘Hey, man.’ Tristan can’t remember David ever shaking his hand before. Up until he was about twelve he can’t remember David even acknowledging him directly. Only ever through Mary, and this often took the form of a questioning murmur about what those kids were doing in his home again.
Tristan gives a proper firm handshake, to which David pulls away and laughs. ‘My, how you have grown.’
‘Yeah.’ Tristan puffs out his chest and taps it. ‘I’ve had my Weetabix, innit.’
‘Either you’re hot or I am interrupting something?’
Tristan, so used to his own nakedness, shrugs his shoulders. ‘Hot,’ he explains. ‘I ain’t seen you in over a year, man.’ There’s a fake-looking Louis Vuitton suitcase in the hall.
‘I’m looking for my wife. She’s not home.’
‘She gone work, innit. Saturday late shift.’
‘Ah. So.’ He runs his hand over one side of his hair; he has so much of it. ‘I’ve had a long journey. I am keen to get home and get some rest. I can never sleep on planes. You know how it is, so uncomfortable.’
Tristan nods like he understands, despite never having been on a plane. His own passport, ordered for a school day trip to France that he couldn’t afford, still sits expectantly in his chest of drawers, each page pristine and unstamped.
‘I need the spare keys. I assume you have them?’
The keys, yes, he remembers vaguely, but can’t remember anyone saying David would be back. He fears he’s losing his memory at fifteen and vows to give up smoking weed after the bank holiday weekend.
‘Oh yeah. Course. I mustn’t have been listening ’cause I really didn’t catch Mary say you were here.’
‘That’s because she doesn’t know. Well, she knows I’m on my way but I didn’t say when. I wanted to surprise her.’
Tristan leaves the front door wide as he looks around for the keys on the coffee table; the cool green leaf key ring he added makes them visible among the dullness of Malachi’s architecture books.
David inspects the key ring. ‘Thanks. See you later. Say hello to your brother.’
Tristan pulls a tight smile as he shuts the door.
‘Dickhead.’
He takes the windows off the safety latches and pushes them all wide open. The phone rings, startling him. Month to month it gets cut off so he’s always shocked when the thing actually works.
‘Hallo?’
‘Tristan?’
‘Yup.’
‘It’s Pamela.’
‘What is this? All the old ghosts are popping up today.’ He untwists the phone cord and walks back over to the mirror. ‘What you want?’
‘I need to speak to Mal.’ She has a desperate edge to her voice. It reminds Tristan of all the times he walked in on her and Malachi holding hands, knee-deep in a conversation about how much they loved each other. They were so intense.
‘He ain’t here. He’s gone out.’
‘Don’t lie to me. He never goes out.’
‘Well, you been gone a month; people change.’
She sighs into the phone. ‘I really, really need to talk to him.’
‘For what? Can’t you find some mug in Portsmouth to buy you trainers?’
‘It wasn’t like that. And I’m from Portishead. But I’m not there anymore. I’m upstairs. Got back a few days ago. Is he really not there?’
Tristan huffs.
‘Okay, listen. I need you to give him a letter from me. Will you come up in about fifteen minutes?’
‘Do I look like Royal Mail to you? Post it!’ Tristan doesn’t want to go back to being the third wheel in their relationship. He’s only just got his brother back.
‘Please. You don’t understand what these last few weeks have been like.’
She rabbits on, blah blah blah. He rubs his lower abs and wonders how much it would cost to get a tattoo across them. Maybe some scripture or something. Some Chinese writing.
Pamela is now crying down the other end. He has better things to do with his bank holiday.
‘Look,’ he cuts her off mid-sentence, ‘why you giving me this breakdown of your relationship? I ain’t Martin Bashir. What do you want from me?’
‘My dad’s locked me in,’ she says. ‘So, please, come up and take the letter.’
He flops down on the sofa, wondering if he should help. Pamela did make Malachi happy while it lasted. It was good for him to get his lanky leg over something, even if it was her. But the drama of them was exhausting, all the crying and the constant threat of her crazy dad hanging over everything. Tristan used to get proper paranoid whenever she was in the flat and the door would knock; he was almost waiting for her dad to bust in and kick Mal’s arse. Or worse. So when Pamela up and left for Plymouth it was sort of a relief.
‘Tris? Will you help me?’
‘I’m busy,’ he says, and it’s true. Who has the time to go running about, trying to fix up other people’s love lives? Tristan’s not sure if the whole thing was even worth it. He knows plenty of hotter girls that would give it up for less than Pamela. A lot less. We’re talking a bag of chips here.
‘Tristan, please, come on. It’s not going to kill you to leave your flat for five minutes.’
He purses his lips and remembers how Mal pestered him to find out who Pamela was after seeing her run around the field like a hamster in a wheel. It was unusual that he took an interest in any girl, but then he’d been so busy since Nan left, trying to juggle studying and ‘playing dad’. Tristan was glad when Mal gave that up. Finally they started up their Donkey Kong tournament again in the evenings. Except for the times when he would be sneaking about with Pam, probably kissing around the back of the bins or something, or sharing a milkshake in that nasty little café near the swimming pool.
‘Why won’t you help me?’ she pleads.
So pathetic. But they did kind of like each other and it was rare of Malachi to do anything other than frown most days.
‘Tris, I’m begging you.’
‘Okay,’ Tristan finally says. ‘I’ll think about it.’
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_3bdfce84-e00f-5126-9f02-baff99967caa)
Chapter Ten ,Mary (#ulink_3bdfce84-e00f-5126-9f02-baff99967caa)
‘Mary, I didn’t know we were seeing each other today.’
Mary gives Harris a weak smile as she steps over the threshold and kicks her plimsolls onto either side of the stripy woven mat.
‘I’ve just got in.’ He closes the front door from the prying eyes of neighbours before kissing her. ‘I had a union meeting about next year’s exams. Can you believe it? On a Saturday? Went on and on.’ He walks quickly into the large room that makes up the living space of the bungalow and over to the hob, where he fiddles with the knobs and stops the hiss of gas.
‘I was trying out a new recipe – cannellini bean mash – but it doesn’t quite look edible.’ He laughs and wipes his hands on the tea towel that hangs over his shoulder. ‘Sorry, I’m rambling. Are you okay, Mary? I really wasn’t expecting you.’
‘Harris, I need to talk with you.’ She takes a deep breath but already feels her resolve waver. Something about the smell of lemons, Harris’s frequent failed attempts to cook, and his thin, perpetually tanned arms make her want to change her mind, to not end the affair, to divorce David, to marry Harris and to be with him always.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she says. ‘I keep thinking about what we are doing. How wrong it is.’
‘Oh, not this again.’ He turns away.
‘Yes, Harris. We need to stop. I am having nightmares. All week, these horrible dreams waking me up.’ She does not want to say anymore, for speaking her visions out loud somehow makes them more real.
‘You are stressed. Overworked again. I told you, stop taking on so many double shifts.’ Harris sits down next to her; the smell of tobacco on his skin ignites a craving for a cigarette. She takes the fob watch from her pocket and passes it from hand to hand.
‘Oh, your watch broke?’
‘I’ve had it twelve years.’ David had set the time eight hours ahead when he gave it to her. ‘Now you always know what time it is where I am,’ he said, but she immediately reset it to show her time.
‘Here, let me see if I can fix it.’ Harris takes the watch into his speckled hands.
‘No.’ She snatches it back. ‘David’s coming home.’
‘When?’
Mary shrugs. ‘He’s on standby for a flight. I’m not sure if he’s coming here directly or stopping by somewhere else. His brother is in Amsterdam – maybe he will go there first. What? Why are you laughing?’
‘Typical. So he’s going to show up anytime in the next few weeks and you will accommodate him?’
‘He’s my husband.’
‘Yes, but he doesn’t have to be,’ Harris says with a raised voice.
As he turns away the heaviness of what is not being said fills the room: the weight of the question she’s refused to answer, the unworn engagement ring studded with rubies as pink as the hibiscuses back home.
‘We need a break, Harris. Please.’ But she doesn’t act on it. Instead, she sits on the sofa and pulls one of the Indian elephant cushions onto her lap for comfort. ‘There is too much going on. I am stressed. My daughter is going back to work and I said I would help out with the kids.’
He groans. ‘She’s taking advantage. She only works two days a week.’
‘Yes, but she needs my help. I’m her mother.’
‘I know, but what’s this got to do with us? With what I asked you last week? Why can’t we talk about it, Mary?’
She taps the face of the fob watch with her short nails. ‘I need to call my work. I’m going to be late.’
It rings for a long time before being finally answered. ‘Hedley Ward, Nurses’ Station.’
‘Hello, it’s Mary Tuazon. I’m running late for shift.’
‘Okay, I’ll let the sister know.’
Mary recognizes the voice as one of the latest in a long line of lazy ward interns.
‘Tuazon? Hang on.’ Papers rustle, machines purr and a metal spoon clinks against something ceramic. ‘There’s a message here for you. Your husband called.’
‘My husband?’
Harris straightens his back, like a cat ready to pounce.
‘That’s what it says.’ The girl’s disinterest seeps through the line. ‘Says: In Hong Kong. Got direct flight to Heathrow.’ She pauses. ‘That’s all.’
‘You are sure? When did he leave this?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Well, is there a time on the message?’ Mary asks.
‘Look, I didn’t write this down, all right?’ She tuts. ‘It’s busy here.’
‘Okay, thank you.’ Mary puts down the phone and smiles at Harris. ‘Stupid girl got the message wrong. There’s no way he got a flight so fast.’
Harris appears to puff up his chest; his body, still frail, seems flooded with energy. ‘So he’s on his way? I feel as if this is it, Mary. You need to tell him. We can do it together.’ Harris uses a tone of voice Mary imagines he rolls out for his students with low self-esteem.
‘I’m not ready.’
‘You will never be ready. But you need to move on with your life.’
‘I took vows.’
The tea towel slaps against the coffee table as Harris walks off through the net curtains onto the patio.
Mary waits. How long it will take David to notice the spring in her step, the smell on her skin? She lies back on the sofa and tries to imagine the two alternate versions of her life: one where she goes back on her vows and becomes a shameful divorcée, and another where she continues to be David’s unhappy, waiting wife.
How can she make that decision?
Harris sits at the white wrought-iron table under the cherry blossom tree, which hangs over from the neighbour’s garden, his bare feet surrounded by a smattering of rotten pink petals. Mary stoops to rub a fleshy pink flower between her fingers and he scrapes the chair towards the edge of the wooden decking to bask fully in the sun he worships so much, while lighting his cigarette.
‘For olden time sake?’ she asks.
He hands her one and furiously flicks at the lighter as she takes the other seat. They both face out onto the messy garden, much of it claimed by the growth of wild flowers and overflowing planters. Mary watches two bees as they make double loops around the struggling zebra plants and moss roses he planted for her after she told him about her childhood garden. How could she even consider saying goodbye to Harris? To this secret life she has been building with him for the last year? She would miss him too much. They had spent the winter smoking on the patio among the dead plants, watching as the foxes brazenly entered to hunt around the composting bins Harris keeps at the bottom of the garden. She blushes as she thinks of all the times she has cheated on her husband with Harris. How self-conscious she was the first time, her body covered with fake tanning lotion, which stained her loose flesh a sickly yellow, making it look like the skin of the outdoor-reared chickens on the street markets back home. But after that first time, she never again felt the need to hide herself from him. Just last week as she lay in his bed, the windows open, the curtains billowing, she felt as she had all those years ago when she first met David. She was confident then too, but over the years she began to worry she was ageing faster than him, and that, as she took off her clothes, he was comparing her naked body to those of the girls he was picking up while on tour. Those floozies at the side of the stage.
Mary smokes slowly and waits for the threat of tears to pass before she speaks again.
‘He will not stay for long. He never does. A month, maybe. I will phone you when he leaves.’
‘So you have made your decision then? Another decision that does not include me?’ Petulantly, Harris uncrosses his legs and slides away from her, before crossing them again in the opposite direction.
She looks down at her uniform, at the fat white stitching in the wide hem below her knees.
‘You don’t have to choose him,’ he says.
‘I already did. He does not come home often; I owe him my time.’
‘You’ve already given him so many years, years in which you’ve waited and waited. And now you want to pretend that I don’t exist for a month.’ He shrugs. ‘So go ahead, imagine that I’m dead so you can get on with playing husband and wife.’
Why can’t he understand? It’s only a month. She pushes the nets aside as she storms through to the bathroom, where she rolls a large ball of tissue in her hand to help her get through the bus journey.
Harris waits by the front door.
‘Let me at least drive you to work.’ His eyes appear watery, but he does not look emotional, only annoyed, probably from having to go up against a man much lesser than himself, of competing against vows made in another time and anxieties that manifest themselves in the form of twitching elbows and bad dreams.
‘Okay.’
He slides his feet into his brown sandals and picks up the keys from the slim wooden side table. As they set off towards the hospital, Mary tries to distract herself from the silence between them. His car is messier than usual: mud-caked walking boots and some shrivelled orange peelings on the floor, a pile of his students’ workbooks on the backseat. He fusses with the tape player as the car slows at the traffic lights, pushing in the Simply Red album she bought him at Christmas. The first song is their song: ‘You Make Me Believe’. They look at each other and smile.
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