Summer in the City

by Fiona Collins

  Fiona Collins

  * * *

  SUMMER IN THE CITY

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Three Months Later

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Fiona Collins grew up in an Essex village and after stints in Hong Kong and London returned to the Essex countryside where she lives with her husband and three children. She has a degree in Film and Literature and has had many former careers including TV presenting in Hong Kong, traffic and weather presenter for BBC local radio and film/TV extra. Her first novel, You, Me and the Movies, is also published by Corgi.

  You can find her on Twitter @FionaJaneBooks.

  www.penguin.co.uk

  Also by Fiona Collins

  YOU, ME AND THE MOVIES

  and published by Corgi

  To my lovely Dad

  CHAPTER 1

  Summer 2018

  ‘Did you see it?’

  A woman in the recognizable navy and red polyester uniform of a London Underground worker is staring at me. She is so close to my face I can see myself reflected in her tortoiseshell glasses. I look slightly confused; she looks concerned. I press my overheated body against warm, pale green tiles, away from her searching eyes.

  I’m leaning against the wall inside Warren Street station. A busker is in full flow at the bottom of the escalator to my right, strumming on a guitar and murdering ‘Streets of London’. My sister Angela used to love that song but it never had me convinced – it’s a lovely thought, it really is, but I doubt someone’s troubles can really be erased by traipsing the capital’s streets, hand in hand with some earnest do-gooder, gawping at the homeless … Anyway, this bloke’s really going for it; people are chucking coins and the odd note into his guitar case – perhaps they’re hoping if they give him enough, he’ll call it quits, pack up his guitar and go. I know if my dad were here, he’d happily sacrifice another sense to not have to listen to it.

  ‘Have you just come from Platform One, Northbound?’ asks the London Underground worker with the tortoiseshell glasses. ‘Are you OK? Do you need to sit down?’

  It’s really hot. We’re a couple of weeks into a God-knows-how-long London heatwave. I came over a little peculiar further down the tunnel and am catching my breath before I tackle the escalator and the crowds again, but I don’t think I need to sit down. I’m not that old, am I? I know I’m not far off fifty, but does she think I’m about to keel over?

  I look at her and she looks at me. Her face is kind. My face, in her glasses, and under its thick layer of foundation, is a bumpy and sweaty moonscape.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I say, in the clipped tones of a woman in a 1950s public service announcement. ‘I’m perfectly all right.’

  I’ve been to the dentist. Only an unavoidable appointment gets me out of the flat these days. Sometimes, it’s taking Dad two doors down to the eye clinic on Adelaide Road for one of his check-ups, when they nod at him and say, ‘Yes, Mr Alberta, you’re still blind’, and we go home again. Sometimes it’s for me – smear test, eye test (just to make sure I’m not going blind, too – joke!) – general things, to keep me tip-top. I’m Dad’s only carer. Well, I’m not really a carer at all; I’m more of a silent companion – but I don’t want to go under. Sometimes I go and see someone to ask if new technologies mean my birthmark can be lasered off me, at last, but the answer is always ‘no’. Not in my case. After they’ve told me, ‘Sorry, you’re staying ugly for ever’, sometimes I pop into the dress agency next door to the clinic and flick through – and sometimes buy – other people’s beautiful cast-offs, but I never wear them.

  I don’t like my dentist. When he stuck that needle into my gum to numb me for my filling, he tutted at me for wriggling in the chair and I had an overwhelming urge to bite his thumb. Before that, I’d attempted to make small talk with him, but he wasn’t interested. Gruff bastard. As he did the filling, I lay back in the Smurf-coloured dentist chair and concentrated on a row of thank-you cards on the windowsill and the fly flitting lazily between them. The dental nurse sipped from a ‘Get ready for a great smile’ mug and leant forward to make one of the cards into a ramp for a crossing plump ladybird, then plopped her unceremoniously out of the open window.

  After my own escape, I walked to the tube with my lips like sausages, extended three feet from my face. The tube was stifling and I successfully avoided the eye of every single person wedged like sweating anchovies – brackish and intermittently hairy – in the carriage. An old lady dropped a book on the floor, from her seat, and I bent forward, from mine, to give it back to her. She smiled at me and I smiled back, then I quickly looked down again. I don’t like to be on any sort of radar, even if her smile was friendly and her eyes gentle.

  When I got off at Warren Street to change for the Northern Line, there was suddenly a fleet of us, hot and sticky, going nowhere on the lower concourse.

  ‘What on earth’s going on?’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘It’s too hot for this!’

  There was a problem. Platform One, Northbound to Edgware, was inaccessible. I found myself in a wedged funnel of people all wanting to turn left on to the platform but unable to budge. We were not happy. We swore a bit under our breaths; we scratched at the back of our necks; we sighed theatrically and competitively. As we desperately tried not to touch each other’s body parts, we were distracted by a bright red balloon with ‘Happy 30th’ printed on it, its string tied into a small bow at the end, which bounced and bobbed above our heads. I decided it belonged to some pretty young thing; that right after someone told her just how pretty she was, she giggled and lost her grip on it before rushing off to an early rush-hour drink in some swanky bar, where she would be admired and fussed over.

  ‘Sorry.’ A man jostled against me. His hand accidentally landed on my right shoulder, just above my breast. Me too, I wanted to say, as a joke, but I could see he was terrified, and that joke has already been played on me too many times. (Yeah, Me Too …) Instead, I said, ‘It’s OK,’ and he smiled sheepishly at me and moved away through the stiffened crowd. He didn’t get very far. The balloon bobbed and mocked overhead.

  It was my birthday last week. My forty-eighth; one toe in the grave … It was a small affair: a few close friends, some finger sandwiches and a three-tiered hand-piped chocolate cake sliced to much delight, as Stevie Wonder sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me from a pub’s stereo … No, not really, it was just Dad and me, eating some shop-bought Battenberg in front of Countdown, although I�
��d splashed out on a bottle of Shloer. We know how to live it up, Dad and I. They could probably hear the whooping all the way down at Dingwalls.

  I decided to head the other way, for the exit. I’d walk to Euston and pick up the Northern Line there. I walked quickly; I was feeling a bit claustrophobic. Sweat was beginning to drip off me; I knew my mask was melting and I would be exposed. I also wanted to get home for A Place in the Sun. People were queuing to get on the escalator. The busker at the bottom was earnestly singing ‘Streets of London’, his fretting at the guitar vibrating through the heavy air. There was no air. My lips still felt weird. I stopped and leant against a tiled wall. Tried to take a deep breath of airless atmosphere. Then the transport worker came up to me.

  ‘People react in different ways, you know?’ she says. She sounds Welsh. She’s soft-spoken and has really nice blue eyes, behind her lenses. ‘It’s hard to predict, you know?’

  No, I don’t know, I’m afraid, as I have no idea what she’s talking about. Her glasses have a smear on one of the lenses; I have the urge to take the hem of my oversized T-shirt and wipe it clean for her.

  ‘Here, take this. Call the number on the back if you want to speak to someone.’ She hands me a card and I take it. TFL Counselling Service, it says. It’s yellow and red, with a London number underneath.

  ‘You get two or three free sessions. I think it could really help you, if you, you know, needed help. Someone to talk to.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I look back at her; her blue eyes are warm, sympathetic.

  ‘And can I take your name and number please? I think they have enough witnesses, but just in case?’

  Now I really don’t know what she’s talking about. Has the heat gone to my head? Am I hallucinating? I mutter a fake name and an even faker mobile number. I thank her again, adding a couple of ‘sorrys’ for incomprehensible measure, and head for the escalator. The busker stares at me as I walk past. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘Difficult Roads Often Lead to Beautiful Destinations’. I’m trying to focus on something other than the strange encounter I’ve just had, so I stare back at him until he looks away. Inspirational quotes. I’m not sold on them. In fact, they make me snappy. In my eyes, things don’t happen for a reason, they just happen. I don’t like lemons and I don’t want to make lemonade. I won’t dance like nobody’s watching. And I won’t live, laugh, love, in that or any other order. In fact, you know people have those giant letters in their houses spelling ‘Live, laugh, love’? I’ve just put a display on the windowsill at home that says, ‘Live, laugh, bollocks’. I know any day soon Dad will suss it when he’s dusting, but until then …

  I don’t find the world that inspirational, I’m afraid. And everyone is not beautiful in their own way – another one trotted out on Instagram, I should imagine, over a photo of a very beautiful person gazing out over a glassy lake.

  I should know that better than anyone.

  A disembodied voice comes over the Tannoy – crackly and empathetic as a disembodied London Underground voice can be – apologizing for the closure of Platform One, and the suspension of the Northern Line ‘… due to a person on the tracks’.

  Ah, I get it. The transport woman. The card. Was that what I was supposed to have seen? A jumper? Someone throwing themselves under a London tube on a Wednesday afternoon? Oh God, how horrible. I’m glad I didn’t see what that tube worker thought I had. I’m sorry I was a case of mistaken identity and wasted time and – self-centredly – that I looked so terrible she thought I needed help. I feel sad. I let a long sigh escape me at the thought of wasted life. And I put the card in my canvas shopper and I stand still on the right-hand lane of the escalator as it slowly carries me to the noise and light of the city above.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  People always look at me oddly when I walk up to the brown double doors halfway along the Haverstock Hill flank of Chalk Farm tube station, place a key in the rusting lock and step inside. Well, a little more oddly than usual, anyway, and if Dad’s with me then it’s quite the party.

  ‘Afternoon.’

  The man who has wished me ‘Good afternoon’ is wearing a panama hat and a headache-inducing paisley shirt. He’s stopped on the pavement beside me, a little too close. He hasn’t seen me put my key in the lock yet: I can’t find the sodding thing in my bag – its contents are one huge, shifting mass; a haystack for many needles. He has seen me knock on one of the doors, but Dad never comes down if somebody knocks, going conveniently deaf as well as blind on such occasions.

  ‘What’s in there, then?’ the man asks.

  I have my back turned so the late-afternoon sunlight can bucket into my enormous bag and aid the search for my key. ‘My purse, a box of Tampax and Estée Lauder’s Double Wear foundation,’ I retort. ‘Amongst a million other things.’

  ‘No, behind the doors,’ he adds. He looks cross with me and I have no idea why.

  ‘I live here,’ I say.

  He looks up at the windows. ‘Unusual.’

  ‘Yes.’

  It is unusual, I’ll give him that: Dad and I live in a flat above Chalk Farm tube station. The Palladian, as it’s known, is one of a kind – the only residence to actually form part of an underground station in the whole of London.

  The man looks from me to one of the arched, small-paned windows above us, then back to me again. I’m still rummaging in my useless bag.

  ‘Seen enough?’ I ask. The man just shrugs.

  It’s a handsome station, Chalk Farm – one of several original Victorian underground stations in the city. A curved wedge of a building under glazed oxblood tiles undimmed by time, with a rounded prow overlooking the intersection of two busy north-west London streets: Adelaide Road and Haverstock Hill. Our flat, The Palladian, a conversion done in Edwardian times, starts four semicircular Diocletian windows back on each side (I’m not sure what’s behind the further two, nothing now, but I imagine they once housed dusty offices full of typewriters and men in green visors) and extends into the apex, fronted by a magnificent Palladian window – a large central arch with two rectangular side panels – which presides rather grandly over the streets below.

  Found it! I unlock the doors and step inside. The man looks disappointed. Did he want me to invite him in and take him up the winding iron stairs with me? Point out to him the metallic green jangle of incomprehensible spaghetti pipes below them, the old Victorian framed poster leaning against the peeling wall to the left, which says, ‘Avoid all Anxiety! Take the Two Penny Tube’? Show him to the plain white front door of The Palladian, with its absence of knocker and bell and letter box (there’s a narrow letter box at the base of one of the double doors; I’ve shoved the two envelopes that were waiting on the mat in my bag), but with a brass handle more suited to an interior door – where I insert my second key?

  ‘I’m back, Dad!’ I call, as I open the door. Our small hall is bright, white and has sweet touches like Bakelite light switches and tiny alcove shelves. Our flat has intricate cornicing, deep skirting boards and a honeyed-oak parquet floor throughout. Behind its plain white door, it has charm and character and panelled doors and ceiling roses. It’s pretty; in fact, this quirky Grade II listed flat is far too pretty for us two dull misfits – blind father, disfigured daughter. There should be a glamorous woman of a certain age called Gloria living here, who alternates her hours lying decorously on a faded chaise longue in a palm-print kaftan and wafting into the West End to truffle for goodies at the Harrods Food Hall.

  ‘OK!’ Dad calls from the sitting room at the front of the flat. I know exactly where he’ll be: sitting in his armchair with his feet up on the footstool.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I got on?’

  I slip off my flip-flops, leaving them on the front doormat – a very flat, rubber variety, so that whenever I do take Dad out, he doesn’t trip and headbutt the inside of the door before he’s even stepped outside. Our whole flat is blind-proof; it was done before we moved in. And
the layout here is perfect for Dad. Off to the right is a door that leads to his bedroom, beyond that is the bathroom; on the left is my bedroom, then the cosy spare bedroom where we keep our clothes now, then our galley kitchen. And the tiny hall opens out into the sitting room, where the grand Palladian window proudly flares its curved nose over the street below.

  ‘How did you get on?’ Vince Alberta, former architect, current recluse, sits in his faithful chair several feet back from the window. The chair is a modern lazy boy with a steel base. Dad’s feet, in Union Jack socks, rest on a Moroccan leather pouffe. He’s wearing stay-press trousers and a white Fred Perry T-shirt.

  My dad is not that old. He had me young, very young: he’s sixty-four.

  ‘Well, I’m all sorted,’ I say, resting my hand briefly on his slight but firm upper arm. ‘Apparently the tooth is saved.’

  Dad looks up at me and gives me a short smile. You wouldn’t, at first glance, think he is blind. One eye looks slightly narrower than the other, nothing else is remarkable; but your second glance, and definitely your third, would tell you those eyes are unseeing – that they are slightly milky-looking and without focus.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure I could have put up with all the howling.’

  ‘Well, no.’

  Dad doesn’t like any noise – really, any sounds, particularly words, especially my words. He returns, as ever, to his iPad with the connected Braille reader, a nifty device the size of a small keyboard that converts text to Braille, courtesy of rounded pins on its surface. He’s currently reading the biography of famous architect Norman Foster – again.

  ‘What are we having for dinner tonight?’ I ask him.

  ‘Carbonara,’ he says, without looking up.

  ‘Lovely.’

  Dad cooks. He’s Italian, and as well as retaining the rhythm and inflection of the accent, he has both inherited and perpetuated my grandmother’s utter brilliance in the kitchen. I am a terrible cook – you could have grouted a shower with the last creamy pasta sauce I attempted, and the drop scones I made at school were literal – and a very bad tea maker, but I wash up. I have some uses.