The man who stood beside us wasn’t like the other people I lived with on the streets. All his clothes were good quality, new, regularly washed, probably ironed by someone else. Not washed every two weeks in a laundrette and washed through every week in the sink of whichever hostel I was staying at. He wore a lot of jewellery, chunky pieces that were there to make a statement. Rumour had it that he’d had a ruby embedded in one of his front teeth to look like a drop of blood, so that people would know his bite was worse than his bark. This man ate well, lived well – it was obvious from every movement he made.
Under the attention of this man, my thin, wiry, out-of-it friend lowered his gaze and closed his mouth. Reese smiled at me and I saw all the sadness, the betrayal that had blighted both our lives, sitting there on his shoulders. I wanted to reach out and hug him, but he didn’t want me right now. He wanted to be someone else and that someone was a person I could not help, or love.
Reese stumbled out of the café and the man took his place in the seat opposite me. My thumb hovered over the volume dial, but didn’t make contact to turn it down. If I didn’t engage, kept my music turned up and my head lowered, this man, Judge, he was called, would leave me alone. Like most of the bad, bad people Reese had warned me about a couple of years ago, they didn’t like to hassle you into their fold, they wanted you to come to them. If I ignored him, he would go away, simple as that, until he found another way ‘in’. I’d noticed him notice me a few times, but he had never approached me. Other bad, bad people had approached me before, and I had ignored them, just like I could do now.
I wanted, sometimes, only sometimes, what Reese had: escape. That was why he wasn’t always on smack: he didn’t need to be out of it all the time, only when it became too much and he needed to press the escape button. I wanted escape sometimes. When I was sleeping out and it was cold, it was wet, it was nearly Christmas, it was nearly New Year, it was nearly Valentine’s Day, it was nearly Veronika Harper’s birthday, I would want an escape. Sometimes, only sometimes, when I would look at Reese and how removed he was from everyday reality when he was drugged up, I would wonder about it. Often, very, very often, when the flashbacks and the insomnia were out of control, I would wish to be like Reese; I would long for a way to check out of the world and not have to deal with reality. The man in front of me, I was pretty sure, would offer me an escape in one way or another if I turned my music off and engaged with him.
I’d finally left Todd behind – it seemed like he had finally given up on me. It didn’t change anything, really. I was still who I was, the person who had been taken in by him in the first place. The woman who now often went to sleep with the stench of whichever hidden sleeping location I’d chosen that night filling my nostrils. I washed in public toilets because more than anything I had to wash every day. I ate on-date food. I walked everywhere. I often couldn’t speak to my best friend because he was out of his head on drugs. I was lonely. Especially in the day centre, when I would see people older than me and know that was what my future held. Especially when I saw women like me walking down the street, dressed in normal clothes, going to their normal jobs, sleeping in their normal beds. I saw them and I wanted some of that, or I wanted to not notice them.
If I turned off my music and talked to this man called Judge, that would all change. Maybe I would find a way to escape like Reese had. Maybe I would find my line in the sand and I would be forced to return to London and my old name. Or, I could carry on as I was. Maybe this man would be the reason my life changed again.
I clicked off the music player, took the headphones out of my ears, and watched the grin spread across Judge’s face, while the ruby embedded into his tooth, that fake spot of blood, glinted at the centre of his smile.
Brighton, 2016
‘Well, if it isn’t my barista buddy,’ the guy from earlier says as I approach him.
‘Tea or coffee?’ I say to him. In my hand I hold one of each in a paper cup.
‘What if I want both?’ he asks with a sideways grin.
‘You can have both,’ I say.
‘Both it is, Barista Buddy.’ He grins, and his laugh is chased up by a cough. It rattles through his body, shaking his thin form in violent ways. I almost reach out to steady him, and the need to help him is overwhelming. I want to ask him up to my flat, offer him a hot shower, some hot food, a place to sleep for the night. Of course I want to. Reese would be bawling me out about that right about now. He’d be reminding me that I care more about other people than myself, that what I would be doing would be dangerous. I know nothing about this man – why would I let him into my home just because he reminds me of someone? ‘You’ve got a death wish, ain’t ya?’ Reese snarled at me the last time I saw him. He had bawled me out, told me he’d had enough of me and didn’t want to be around me any more because of that death wish.
I’d tried to argue with him, but I didn’t have a leg to stand on – he was right. I did have a death wish. Since years before I left my parents’ house I’d had a death wish, I had essentially wanted to end my life but not to die. It didn’t make sense but it was basically what Reese had told me: I had a death wish that was playing itself out slowly, slowly, slowly, and was putting everyone I knew in danger.
I hand the man the two cups, bite my tongue to stop myself offering him more.
‘Thanks, Barista Buddy,’ he says. He turns away from me quickly, and sets off in the direction of the roads leading down to the seafront. I’ve walked down near there, and at night, homeless people hang around where there used to be arches but are now shops. He’s moving quickly because, I know, he’s going to try to sell them while they’re hot. I saw Reese do that dozens of times. This guy is going to sell them to anyone who isn’t desperate for a fix. A posh coffee would sometimes maybe make Reese 30p.
I let myself into my flat, missing Reese, and hating him as well. Why did he have to name it so baldly? Since he said that to me, the reasons why I have that death wish keep coming to me at night, waking me up with nightmares, snatching my thoughts at unexpected moments. I have a good few days, I feel happy and content; blessed to have such a simple life, then it will all come stampeding in again. Because of what Reese said, I know, some time soon, something is going to happen to make me address what I’ve been hiding from about my past.
8
Roni
London, 2016
‘Miss? Miss?’ The boy at the back of the class is bouncing up and down in his seat, his red curls jumping with him each time he makes contact with the seat.
This used to be my classroom. I am teaching at Chiselwick High School until a couple of weeks after the Easter holidays and I am here, in what used to be my and Nika’s old form room. It takes me twenty minutes to walk from home – it used to take hours, literally, when I was the age of my students. Nika and I would stroll home on the nights we didn’t have ballet practice, finding a way to make the journey home encompass Topshop and Warehouse and WH Smith and Waterstone’s and Books etc. on the high street. Then we’d wander down to the café by the train station, where the owner would charge us for one hot chocolate split between two styrofoam cups, and throw in a biscuit free of charge. Those were the best days for walking home. Sometimes Uncle Warren would pick me up from school in his big car and Nika would have to walk or get the bus home alone and I never knew what she got up to on those days.
Every part of this school takes me back to yesteryear. Several times I have had to stop in the corridors, stand aside to watch Nika, tall with her black hair neatly folded into several long plaits, clutching her school books, and Roni, a fraction smaller, with her long brown hair swept back into a ponytail, also clutching her school books to her chest, walking past me. I have watched them chatting, sometimes giggling, always pretending that their existence outside of school life isn’t hard and complicated and full of horrifying secrets. Many times today I have wanted to reach out to them, to her, to me, to us, and place my hands on their shoulders and say, ‘I believe you. I care about you
. I will help you in any way I can.’
‘Miss! Miss!’
It’s been a whole fifteen minutes. I know exactly what he’s going to ask. Every class I have covered this morning has had someone ask me it. Teenagers are as curious as adults, but not as shy.
I glance down at the seating sheet I have in front of me. ‘Yes, Jeremy, is it? How can I help you?’
Now he has my attention, he is shy about asking the question that was burning on the tip of his tongue mere seconds ago. The room becomes a complete hush for the first time since they were told that I was to be their stand-in for the next few days.
‘Erm … Miss …’ His voice peters out.
I’m disappointed. I thought he, this class in general, had a bit more about them. They remind me of the people in my class at school, but maybe only because this used to be my classroom. They are completely different people, growing up in a completely different world. ‘Come on, Jeremy, tell me what was so urgent you made me turn away from writing on the board.’
He positively curls into himself at that, terrified now of speaking. Maybe he thinks he’ll be struck down by the Almighty if he asks.
‘He wants to know if you used to be a nun,’ another boy, Reg, asks. Jeremy turns and glares at him, shooting him an ‘I was going to ask’ look.
‘Yes, Reg,’ I say, ‘I was once a nun. And now I am a supply teacher.’
‘But, Miss, Miss?’ A girl now assumes the ‘I have a question’ bounce in her seat.
‘Yes, Erin,’ I reply, knowing what her question will be. It’s always the second question.
‘Miss, if you used to be a nun, does that mean you’re a really old virgin?’
Titters break out around the class. It’s incredible to me that no matter the age of the person – young, middle-aged or old – their minds immediately go to sex when they think of you being a nun. Despite everything that becoming a nun involves, it comes down to wanting to know how sex fitted in with that lifestyle. If sex fitted into that lifestyle. That is what the man at the recruitment agency who signed me up for supply work all those weeks ago was so desperate to ask but wouldn’t – or couldn’t, considering his job. That is what Cliff wanted to ask on our first – and last – date but hadn’t the courage when he knew I was waiting for the question and wouldn’t be tricked into answering it. Am I a nun and, if so, am I virgin? I’d love to see Nika’s face whenever someone asks me that.
‘What it means is, Erin, that I will pray for all of you tonight before bed, to put a good word in with God, so to speak.’
Above the groans and ahhhs that the thought I will pray for them elicits, a voice at the back says: ‘Yeah, but why would He listen to you? Didn’t you, like, diss Him by up and leaving Him?’
A smattering of nervous tittering rises up from the room, along with a couple of sharp intakes of breath.
My eyes scan over the class layout sheet, to see who it is that spoke and made what could be seen as a startlingly astute assessment of my situation. Gail. No one has said that sort of thing to me before in the last few weeks of teaching. She’s slouched low in her chair, her fingers fiddling with a blue crystal biro, and she hasn’t raised her gaze from the desk connected to her chair.
‘God listens to everyone, loves everyone, no matter what they’ve done to Him,’ I say.
‘Yeah, right,’ she scoffs, with her head lowered. Anger bubbles from her in each letter of those two words. She wants a row, someone to argue with, someone to win against. There was a time, not even that long ago, when I would feel like that: the anger would bubble up inside and I would need someone to vent to, vent at. It was never taken out on teachers, though. I would never dare.
‘I think we should get back to what I am actually meant to be teaching you,’ I say. ‘If you want to debate about the existence and behaviours of God, you can always stay after school. That’s a general invitation to everyone, of course. I would love to discuss God with any of you who are interested?’ I say this to have the effect I know it will have – each of them lowers their head and finds what’s going on in their books far more interesting than me. ‘Well, you know where I am if you change your minds.’
Of course the only person who has now raised their head is Gail, at the back. She looks at me fully then, grins at me. ‘I’ve won,’ she is saying. The breath catches in my chest, and the shock of recognition reverberates through me. She’s the girl I saw in the street the other week when I went out with Cliff, wrapped around a man old enough to be her father; she is the sixteen-year-old girl who reminded me of the me I was when I was younger. And, like me when I was behaving how she was, she is fourteen.
London, 1995
‘Roni, let’s just go, please.’ Nika was tense, as always. She never joined in properly with the partying, she always came with me, but would never drink, never try anything, not even the smallest puff, and even when there was another man who might be interested in her, she wouldn’t even think about kissing him, let alone anything else. I used to think she needed to escape like me but she didn’t.
Earlier, we’d met at the bus stop where we met every morning to go to school. I’d asked her to come out because she’d been so quiet lately, and hadn’t wanted to come out clubbing with me as much. If she didn’t come, I didn’t like to go because I didn’t feel safe any more. When she was there, I felt safer.
I’d arrived at the bus stop after her. She’d been sitting on one of the fold-down seats, staring at the pavement with her arms wrapped around herself. I hadn’t realised how cold it would be when I’d set off; it had been seeping in through my leather jacket, there had been a mist in the air that felt like drizzle, and I’d suddenly realised what a bad idea this had been.
‘I’m really cold,’ I’d said to her.
‘You’re the one who wanted to meet here to talk.’
‘I know, but I’m cold.’
A black car with blacked-out windows, which I’d seen drive past three times, had pulled up in front of the bus stop. The front passenger window had opened and the driver had leaned across, waving me over.
‘Don’t, Roni,’ Nika had warned. ‘It’s Thursday night. Just don’t.’
‘I’m only going to talk to him,’ I’d told her. He’d looked cute, younger than the guys I usually ended up with on a night out. He had really nice blue eyes, and his blond hair was lovely and floppy. He’d told me he had some really good gear back at his flat, and that he’d share it with us if we wanted. He also had some booze. Plus, it’d be a chance to get out of the cold. I’d swung towards Nika, beckoned her over. She’d shaken her head.
‘Come on, he said he’s got some really good gear,’ I had told her, not that she’d have been interested. More than anything, I’d wanted to get out of the cold.
‘No, Roni. No.’
She’d come with me if I went; I knew that about her. She wouldn’t leave me alone. My hand had reached for the handle of the back door and the guy in the front had grinned at Nika. ‘It won’t take long,’ I’d said, already half in the car, ‘and it’s a lot better than sitting out here in the cold.’
She’d got up, looking angry and frustrated, but had marched to the back of the car and got in after me.
We’d been here at his flat over an hour now and she wanted to go.
‘Roni, let’s just go,’ she repeated.
‘Just relax, will you? We’ll be going soon,’ I replied. Nika was sitting in a chair all on her own. Around the room, three friends of Big T, the driver, lay around like pieces of litter left on the beach, puffing too.
Big T sort of sneered at Nika, while the smoke from the spliff gripped tightly between his thumb and forefinger curled up and away. He handed the spliff to me. I slipped it between my lips but before I could inhale, Nika stood up suddenly. I took it out again. ‘I’m going,’ she said. ‘I’m not sitting here any more doing this crap, I’m going. Are you coming?’
Big T sat up suddenly. He was staring down Nika, his eyes hardened and mean. He’d seemed so chille
d out a minute before, but his expression had changed and all of a sudden I was colder than I had been at the bus stop. The three other men, who had seemed comatose before, now all raised their heads and looked hard at Nika. ‘I’m going,’ she said again.
‘Sit down,’ Big T said. ‘I said I’d drive you back and I will. You two just need to earn your ride home, that’s all.’
For the first time, I saw it. It’d probably been there before, but it was such a fleeting thing, something so quick that I must have missed it before – terror. The terror I felt every time we went to a ballet lesson. The absolute fear that must have bolted through her every time I did this. Then it was gone, just as suddenly as it appeared.
Despite that momentary panic, Nika didn’t sit down. She stared right back at Big T. ‘No. I am not earning anything, neither is she. We’re going.’
The men all sat up, staring at her. I couldn’t breathe. I had got us into a bad situation, this was going horribly wrong, and we were going to get very badly hurt, probably even killed.
‘Pretty big mouth on a little thing like you, eh?’ Big T said.
‘We are going. If you lay one finger on me or her, I will go to the police. We are both fifteen years old, just so you know. So if you want to shut me up, you’ll have to kill me. Just so you know, there is CCTV at that bus stop that we were at, so there’ll be videos of us getting into your car with your number plate for the police to see if you do anything to either of us.’
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