‘It’s really hot today. Thirty-two degrees.’
‘Same here,’ I say.
‘Oh yes, the heatwave. I can’t imagine London is very pleasant in it. It’s going to be beautiful here. We’re going to the jetty later, off to do some fishing.’
‘Fabulous.’ Angela seems to go fishing a lot, which amuses me. Another part of her wonderful Canadian life. I notice there’s been no ‘Thank you’, for WhatsApping that crabbing photo … ‘Actually, Dad and I have been out a couple of times ourselves,’ I say, after all.
‘Have you? You never go anywhere these days! Out where?’
‘Covent Garden today. We went to Camden the other morning, too. And we’ve been to Primrose Hill, Little Venice and St Dunstan in the East, as well.’ Egg that pudding, why not? I think. She always does. ‘I’ve been Dad’s guide, I’ve become his eyes,’ I say, mimicking Verity Holmes.
‘Dunstan in the what?’
‘The East. It’s kind of a secret.’
‘Oh, right, whatever. So, you’ve been out to places. This is astonishing. Has he been OK?’
‘Up and down,’ I say. ‘But we seem to be heading in the right direction. This morning was fun.’
‘Fun? Wow. Well, that’s great. Really great. And so surprising!’ There’s a beat. She is obviously digesting this incredible news. ‘So, where’s next?’
‘Liberty,’ I say, thinking of the list. We might go in the next few days.
‘Oh, right. He used to love that building. He went there with Nonna, or something, one day as a little boy – he told me. And he took me there once. I was only about three. One Saturday morning. I got told off by a man for running around.’
‘Where was I?’
‘Doing something with Mum.’
When was I ever doing something just with Mum? It was Angela who was thick as thieves with Mum, until she left. Angela who cried for her all the time, after she’d left. When she went to Janice’s. When she went on her tour.
When she moved abroad to Sweden, where she’s been since 1984 …
‘Do you miss her?’ asks Angela. She asks me this occasionally. I always say the same thing.
‘No.’
‘Do you ever wonder what she’s doing, over there in Stockholm? How she’s living her life?’
‘No.’
‘I do.’
‘You shouldn’t,’ I say.
1984 was Mum’s first and only visit to The Palladian, but she didn’t come in. She slouched in the doorway unironically wearing her own, brand-new ‘Choose Life’ T-shirt belted over cycling shorts, topped by a curly perm. She’d brought half a packet of Opal Fruits and two Panda Pops and told us she was moving to Sweden, her ancestral home. That she was going to live with her cousin Torge, in Stockholm, the one who sold margarine for a living; that she was going to get a job and try to be a responsible adult.
I was fourteen at the time. I was soon to meet my friend Georgina and go to the fair at Finsbury Park. I had done my spiked hair and high-street make-up but was still in my dressing gown. Dad and I had been dancing to his Roxy Music album, when she rang on the doorbell, my bare feet planted on his slippers and my hands on his shoulders as we danced to ‘Avalon’ in that familiar father–daughter silhouette, although I was far too big for that, really. I answered the door and she said our old neighbours in Clerkenwell had told her where we’d moved to. That she’d come to tell us her news. I invited her in, but I didn’t care that she only slouched in the doorway. I wasn’t interested in her grand plans or her fresh start. I was pretty much over her by then – my heart, weary of her absence, had already formed its crust. Angela came and hugged her, she asked if she would write and Mum said ‘yes’. Then she said she had to go. She had to make preparations; she had to pack. She asked if she could hug me and I said ‘no’, then she adjusted her belt, the buckle of which had swivelled round to the right, patted at her counterfeit curls and left.
‘Definitely take him to Liberty,’ Angela says, as though she hasn’t just thrown the ‘Do you miss her?’ curveball into the conversation, and as though I hadn’t told her Liberty was already on the list. ‘And what about the gates of the Globe Theatre? Or St Paul’s?’ OK, now she was taking over. Why didn’t she come back and do it?
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Oh, you should!’ entreats Angela. ‘Do make the effort! “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore,”’ she adds. ‘Some French person said that.’
‘Fascinating.’ Who needs Verity Holmes? I think. Who needs a sister like Angela? My prickles are up. Dad and I both have them, but we’re like cogs in a grumpy wheel: our prickles fit between each other’s and somehow the cogs keep turning. With Angela, she’s so smooth, so sunny, so bossy, I get the urge to dig my prickles right into her, but she’s so infuriatingly resistant, and probably wouldn’t even notice. Isn’t it strange how once, a very long time ago, I would have done anything for my younger sibling, but now I want to put the phone down on her and give it the V sign?
Angela started writing to Mum a couple of weeks after she left for Stockholm. We found an address for cousin Torge in Mum’s old address book and Angela bought airmail letters from the post office and she wrote long, long letters to her, giving all her news, but Mum never replied. So, after a while, I intercepted Angela’s letters, pretending to post them for her, and I replied. I got myself a Swedish pen pal from Smash Hits (I specified), I sent Sven a traveller’s cheque I bought from Thomas Cook in Islington, so he would send me a stack of ‘Stockholm’ postcards and some stamps to England and for a year or so I sent Angela a series of postcards in a better approximation of Mum’s handwriting but in a similar vein to the previous fake ones I’d engineered: ‘I miss you!’ ‘Stockholm is great!’ I couldn’t risk longer missives, nor did I have the time. By the time she was thirteen, when she got fed up of the sub-standard responses and stopped doing it, Angela had written twenty letters Mum never answered and I had sent twelve rotten postcards.
‘Can I speak to Dad, then?’ Angela asks. ‘Is he there?’
‘Of course he’s here.’
I walk over to Dad with the phone. ‘Hey … Rip Van Winkle, Angela’s on the phone,’ I say, gently touching his arm. His hair is all ruffled. He stirs and looks up at me.
‘Ah. Thanks, love.’ I hand the phone to him.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I whisper.
He smiles. ‘Are you making it?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, thanks, then.’ He grins. On the small table between our chairs, my phone starts ringing. Dad puts the house phone to his ear.
‘Hi, Dad!’ I hear Angela cry. My golden sister, sunny and light from far away. I let my phone ring to a missed call; a mobile number I don’t recognize has called me. The phone rings again. I wait a little, heart pounding, then I answer it.
‘Hello?’ Oops, I forget to adjust my tone. I sound as flat as I sounded to Angela. Maybe I need to fashion a big old boot out of the clay Angela made a man with and kick myself up my own arse.
‘Hi!’ Oh God, I didn’t dare hope it was him, but it’s Salvi. He’s phoning me, like he said he would. ‘So, it’s the crazy street performer guy here! How are you doing?’
‘I’m doing good.’ Salvi’s tone is upbeat – he’s an Angela not a Prudence, isn’t he? I try to sound more perky, to match him, but I am nervous. Really nervous. ‘Thank you.’
‘You got home OK?’
‘Yes, we did.’ I like the sound of his voice, through the phone. I like that he is talking to me.
‘Good, good. So, let’s go out? I’m free Wednesday night. Can you get into the West End? Soho? There’s a bar on Hopkins Street called the Dickensian – do you know it? Dickens himself drank in there when he was writing Hard Times.’
‘No, but I’m sure I can find it.’ Oh, I’m so cool, I think. I could at least have pretended I have something else going on. A diary to check, maybe. A life.
‘Great! See you there, eight
o’clock? I’ll look forward to it, Pruey.’
Did he say Pruey? Despite myself and my nervousness and my indignation at this liberty, I smile. Despite the fact he hasn’t actually asked me if I want to go to this bar or given me the chance to say ‘no’, I find myself saying, ‘Yes, me too, see you then,’ before hanging up and placing my phone back on the table.
I stare at it, as though it’s going to ring again and he’ll laugh a cruel laugh, whilst lighting a cigarette and blowing smoke coolly out of an open window, or something, and say the whole thing has been a joke. If it doesn’t, I’m going on a date for the first time in well, ever. I’m going to a bar called the Dickensian on Wednesday night with a complete stranger. I have to make myself look decent, I have to be witty and engaging. I have to be someone who might be of vague interest or attraction to another human being. I’m not sure I can do this! It’s all well and good heading off on jolly day trips with my father; any mistakes we make – any stumbles, any falls – are just for us. On Wednesday, if I go, I’ll be on my own. Exposed. I’ll have to sit opposite someone and have him stare into my face like I’m a bloody show poodle and I don’t know if I can.
He’s a stranger, a stranger. Things with strangers haven’t worked out too well for me in the past, especially those I felt attracted to and who took an interest in me. I met a man once on another very hot sunny day, in another country, and it didn’t work out well at all.
Dad is still talking to Angela but a voice of my own is whispering in my ear, cold and rasping, ‘Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember what happened in Tenerife?’ I don’t want to remember. I want to forget. Because it wasn’t the first bad thing that happened to me … But I’ll remember enough to be very careful with Salvi. I won’t open the door too wide for him, in case he steps in too far; I won’t drink too much or get too excited or let my guard drop to a dangerous level.
I pick up my phone again to start looking up the bar he mentioned.
CHAPTER 17
Salvi is not here. I’ve been stood up and it’s no big surprise. Perhaps the whole thing has been a wind-up. I’ve heard of pigging; I’ve read about it on the internet – the girl who flew to Amsterdam to meet a man who’d courted her for weeks, only to be stood up for over two hours and eventually sent a text telling her it was all a joke, as apparently she was hideously ugly. I check my phone for a taunting text, confirmation I am a pig who is the butt of someone’s enormous, ugly joke, but there’s nothing.
I’m standing in front of what looks like a disused shop entrance in an outfit Maya helped me choose yesterday morning at Loved Before, which was very kind of her as it was crazy busy in there and she was dashing between rails and the back room like a beguiling bluebottle, in a silky sapphire midi dress. The outfit is a pair of grey skinny jeans and a glittery sort of drapey top – plus a pair of wedges I’ve had for yonks. The look I’m going for is not-trying-too-hard glam. Carefree-first-date smart-casual. It’s a look I’ve never attempted before. I’m no Claudia Schiffer but I look OK.
This place is very Dickensian already. I half expect a fingerless-gloved Fagin type to haul up the shutters and scowl at me, or Bill Sikes and Bullseye to come lurking round the cobbled corner, in sudden fog. There is no plaque here saying anything about Dickens or Hard Times, though. Wasn’t that the book when he referred to school children as ‘empty vessels’? The one with the horrible headmaster? I should have a plaque above my head: ‘Here stands a terrified woman’. Because I am.
My phone chimes with a text. Salvi? He’s going to be late, isn’t he? Or he’s not coming at all. Disappointment stabs at me. I hurriedly check my phone but it’s not Salvi, it’s Kemp.
Hi, is this still your number or am I texting a complete stranger?
I stare at the text for a few seconds then bash out a reply. Well, I might as well reply, while I’m waiting. What does he want now?
Hi, yes it is.
Good! I finally upgraded from the Nokia, you’ll be pleased to know!
Well thank god for that! That thing was an embarrassment!
Lots of my things were, according to you. My hat, my taste in music.
Well, that was dreadful, I think. Rock ballads and Sade.
My batik wall hanging …
He adds a smiling-face emoji.
Ha! I respond. I’m not feeling very Ha!, actually. I’m being stood up, probably.
Anyway, let me know if you want to catch up properly.
There’s a rattle and a loud clank behind me and the door next to the shutters slowly opens and a man hurries out, a hipster type: huge beard. I shove my phone back in my bag. The door hangs open, creaking on its Dickensian hinges. Do I carry on standing out here or do I go in? Is Salvi actually already in there, even though I was five minutes early?
I decide to go in and wait for him. I open the door and enter a short dark corridor, more like a tunnel, with moist walls and a weird smell: a combination of beer and beard oil, probably. At the end of the tunnel are six stone steps down to an archway and a podium with a stunningly beautiful girl standing behind it.
‘Sorry, love.’
Someone pushes past me, a man in skinny jeans and a tight royal-blue jacket. His eyes alight on me fleetingly, then look away. I step up to the podium and find a list that’s being checked with the tapping of a shell-pink nail is far more worthy of attention than I am. I haven’t even been stood up yet but I can already feel my self-esteem scuttling back up the tunnel and into the light of the evening, like a rat. Eventually, ‘Can I help you?’ asks the beautiful girl. She looks like a brunette Bridget Bardot and has eyes like sapphires and smooth, smooth cheeks. She also looks like she has a gone-off haddock under her nose. Am I not the right look for this place? Too Dickensian for the aesthetics, despite the thick make-up I thought I was safe behind …? Am I Smike?
‘Well, I’m waiting for someone, but I’d like to wait inside, if that’s OK.’
‘Is there a table booked?’
‘I don’t know, maybe.’
‘Name? Who are you meeting?’
‘Salvi Russo?’
‘Oh, Salvi,’ she says breezily. ‘He booked a table. You can go inside and wait.’
She turns, showing me her immaculately pert arse in her tight black dress, and leads me through the archway into a cramped and tiny low-ceilinged brick vault, damp and dusty and cobwebbed, but it’s beautiful. There’s a small bar set into the open brickwork at the end like a jewel, its optics glinting opal and amber. There are thick stubby candles in alcoves, fairy lights strung from the squat domed ceiling and oil lamps on each rough-hewn table. It’s hot down here; womb-like. Romantic and seductive and perfect for assignations between spies and lovers, getting up to all sorts in the glow and the dark.
The beautiful girl shows me to a table.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘Someone will be over shortly to take your drinks order.’
She glides off through the vault, watched by a thousand hungry eyes. I perch on a stool and place my bag under it. I have purposely chosen the stool facing away from the room, like I always do, and, as I read the menu, I turn my head every few seconds to check if Salvi’s coming in.
It’s a young crowd in here tonight. The hipster men are all accompanied by young beauties – giggling and chatting, twiddling strands of hair around their fingers, huddling together for selfies. I see one being taken by two young women and a man in the corner, the phone held high. One of the women has hair like spun vanilla and sooty eyebrows like overfed tadpoles. On her mate’s phone she probably has bunny ears and a curtain of exploding love hearts raining down on her. I hate selfies. I have never knowingly been involved in one.
On my fifth head turn, with massive relief, I spot Salvi in the archway. He gives the beautiful girl at the podium a devilish smile and then he is laughing his way into the bar, touching arms and shoulders as he moves through the confined space, charming strangers with what look like gems of banter; gifts bestowed. He’s wearing jeans, a tight w
hite T-shirt with some kind of silky scarf tied loosely round his neck. He diverts suddenly and bounds to the corner where he hugs Vanilla Selfie Girl, who beams from the folds of his scarf. She knows him? Then he is off again, making his torch-lit way to me, the middle-aged woman hiding in plain candlelight.
‘I’m not late, am I?’ His hair is smoothed and parted, his face looks like it has seen moisturizer; he smells of lemons and musk and warm Italian nights.
‘Well, technically you are,’ I say, looking at the watch I’m not wearing with a bravado I’m not feeling. ‘By ten minutes.’
He sits down, draws his stool up close to the table. Examines me. It’s only the second time he’s seen me. I must look better than that first time, when all my make-up was washed away. Now it is painstakingly applied, covering all my sins. So why does it seem like he is looking directly at my birthmark, like some men look at breasts? It’s always been the face, with me. Curiosity. Trying to see what lies beneath. Their eyes stripping off all my layers one by one. Scraping off my skin. Gouging a track in it with a jagged nail …
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘Nervous?’
Our faces are about three feet apart. I am on a date, on show, on audition: every single thing I say or do will be noted and calibrated, judged against Salvi’s internal guide of what he’s looking for.
‘No,’ I lie. ‘I go on dates with virtual strangers virtually every night of the week.’
He laughs, his lips so soft-looking I wonder if I will get the chance to kiss them. Highly unlikely. ‘Have you ordered anything yet? A drink?’ He notes the empty table.
‘No, not yet. I hadn’t decided. I googled this place,’ I add, trying to sound light and sparky. ‘I couldn’t find anything about Dickens writing Hard Times in here.’
‘Of course he did! It’s common knowledge.’
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