Scraps of the lives I ghosted: a bedsit room in Earl’s Court, the orange shower curtain getting stuck in the fridge door, the Chilean with the guitar singing “Eleanor Rigby” late at night in the next-door room; a basement flat in Finsbury Park, barelegged women on the Seven Sisters Road cadging cigarettes on winter mornings; Brixton, Tufnell Park, Mornington Crescent, Clapham North, Bounds Green; a month’s rent as deposit and a month in advance, a current CV, a jar of ten-pence pieces for the hall phone, a packet of Marlboro Lights, extra-long Rizla, Coco Pops two meals a day; Friday nights given to the dance floor, the teeth grind, sweat drenched with my top tied round my waist, going back to parties in Tower Hamlets one week and Chelsea the next; walking back on Sunday morning, the city empty, baked beans in a caf, the tea like treacle, phone numbers thrown in the Thames from London Bridge.
“Is Peter there, Mrs. White?”
“Is that Andrea? I’m sorry he’s not, dear. He’s spending Christmas in New York. How are you? London, isn’t it? Rather you than me, dear.”
“Do you have a number for him?”
“I don’t, but he calls us every Sunday after Evensong.”
“I’ve a new number. Can you pass it on?”
“A new number? Another?” Her voice rising a little. “Are you all right, dear? Richard and I worry about you, you know, you and Peter. The world’s just so very big, isn’t it? But I suppose you like it. London, all the shows and exhibitions, so much to offer a young person … You will wear a warm coat, won’t you? Don’t be going out without one.”
Two cans of Stella and a £1 pizza for tea. London with everything to offer and nothing to spare. Unrelenting in its teachings, the bank letting you go over your overdraft, then charging you 16 quid for it, so when your rent fell you went over again and they charged you again. Caught and fined when you jumped the barrier on the underground because you were a quid short of the fare and you didn’t want to be late and lose another job.
Life a national insurance number, a golden reference from Uncle Darren, and the long weekends spent in dark clubs, the black-haired, blank-faced girl dancing on the podium; weekends spent like coins thumbed hard into slots machines, which paid out with blaring jingles and a dazzle of lights, three-day comedowns, strangers’ bodies, the grasped-for moments of self-forgetting always just beyond reach. Moving from one circle of people to the next. Two weeks is how long it takes to shrug a friend, unless you owe them money, of course.
I owed everybody money. I didn’t wear a warm coat. I was a knife, a blade. I cut. I was cut. I didn’t know the difference. A new address, a new agency, a new SIM card. A set of friends abandoned. Another adopted. Rinse and repeat.
Coke and pills, drinks, a smoke, a vally, then a fit of some kind on the bathroom floor of a stranger’s house. Like the old lady who swallowed a fly, I wriggled and jiggled. Em was standing in the doorway, in a black dress, holding a black phone. “Not possible, Andy,” she said into the receiver. “Not possible.”
But it wasn’t even that that did it. I missed her. Peter too, but Em most of all. I’d have kept at it if I got to see her again. Truth is, I only ever followed in my mother’s footsteps as far as the foothills of the Appetites. Never scaled her heights. It wasn’t in me. It wasn’t moral strength. I just didn’t have the stamina.
So I shaped up. Got serious. I stuck at jobs, invested carefully in the right kind of friendships. But still, always something holding me back from going all in. A sense of loyalty to the past perhaps. I was a good sixth-best friend. The kind of friend, it turned out, who you invited to your child’s christening but didn’t ask to be your child’s godmother, the kind of friend who—when life became a juggling act between work, parenthood, and aging family members—got squeezed out.
I reached the station and took the Circle Line west. Others were on their way out, all done up, made up, turned out for the evening, their faces fresh and full of anticipation. I no longer feared an episode; the odd spell was broken for now. Idly, I thought how funny it was that Rob had asked me about my transformation. Transformation. Such a magic word. It made me think of the stories Peter and I had read as children, in which frogs became princes, ugly ducklings swans, scullery girls elegant ladies; from there my thoughts skipped to makeover shows, then to the articles I was partial to, the ones about women who, via weight loss or surgery or both, remade themselves entirely. Grown-up versions of Cinderella. I had spent most of my life waiting for the magic transformation, the transfiguring, unlocking moment. I suppose everybody did in one way or another—children waiting to become adults, the young to be transformed by love. Tonight Matthew … I’m going to be … How strange that Rob thought it had already happened, when I knew I was still waiting.
CHAPTER 15
TRANSFORMATION/FORGETTING
In Selfridges, I got trapped in a dress. It was too small, and trying to get it off over my head, I found myself stuck, sat there in my bra and pants, my hearing muffled by the layers of material swathing my head as I wriggled this way and that, the dress cutting cruelly into my armpits and the teeth of the zipper biting my side. I couldn’t get it off and I couldn’t get it back on, and suddenly it seemed a realistic possibility that I would have a panic attack there in the fancy changing rooms, would either have to call for help or stagger out of the cubicle waving my arms like the animated carcass of a headless chicken.
My chest tightened, but I held on and found, instead of panic, a limpness, the animal-who-has-given-up limpness, and I rested my head against the wall and let my toes dig into the soft carpeting, listening to the sounds of the women coming and going, complimenting one another, complaining that sizes were wrong, and whispering about prices.
Friends shopping together. Mothers and daughters. Laughter.
“You’ve my hips, that’s the problem.”
“But what will she be wearing? God forbid we turn up looking like twins.”
The outfit I was trying to buy was for Alice. The summons had arrived; I would see her Friday. Today was Thursday. I had taken both days off, much to Oliver’s surprise. It was satisfying to use up some leave. The more I had banked, the more uneasy it made me—all those empty days stacking up, waiting to be filled.
My phone rang, but I couldn’t reach it. I sat there listening as it went to voicemail, sweat beading my lip.
When clothes became important, going shopping used to mean nicking. I went with Em to Swindon on the bus. It was best to wait till the shops were about to close and the staff had their eyes on the clock.
“You ready?”
“Yup.”
I went in first. Flicking glances at the security guards, drawing the eye with my curled lip, boots, and shifty truculent look.
“Can I help you?” The sales assistant fixed me with a stare and bared her teeth.
“Just browsing.”
In the corner of my eye, I saw Em moving swiftly toward the lingerie section, a small, polite smile on her face. I ducked half out of sight behind a pillar clutching a couple of tops. The sales assistant shared a meaningful nod with the security guard.
Em would have to find the right sizes: 34B for her, 34D for me, plus the knickers. I grabbed up a few more items, hanging them over my arm and heading toward the changing rooms.
“No more than six, Madam.”
Turning, I glimpsed Em making for the exit. I waited till she was safely through, then dumped my haul on the desk.
“I won’t bother then.”
Later on, we’d glory over the spoils back in Em’s bedroom, swigging from a bottle of whatever we’d managed to get our hands on. Diamond White. Cooking sherry. Mad Dog 20/20. There was a certain amount of necessity to my thieving. Em did it for me, to be close to me.
I missed her again. I missed her all afresh. If she had lived, what would she have become? An artist like she hoped, an art teacher like she expected? I saw her in a plastic apron leading the potato painting. I saw her with kids of her own.
Fuck! The dress tore loudly. I got it of
f, panting, and threw on the next one, stumbling out into the shared space with the big mirrors. Not a teenage face anymore, not a teenage body.
From what Rob had told me, Alice was rich and married and had two children. I had brought up an aerial view of her house on Maps; it seemed large, not quite large enough to have what you would call grounds, but there was a wide drive, and a substantial lawn bordered on all three sides by fields. It was not on a par with the manor, but even without seeing it up close, I could tell it was worth a couple of mil.
The last time I’d seen Alice I was tempting her to run me over in a car park. What did I want to say to her now? Was this dress going to say it? Or did I need a cashmere knit, designer jeans, and a handbag that cost a couple of grand?
I see your house and husband and family and raise you—with what?
I switched this way and that, wondering how many times in my life I had stood like this, presenting myself to the mirror. Legs. Arse. Stomach. Tits. Those worrying upper arms. There was something archetypal about it. All those women, all across the world—women in Paris and Moscow, Lagos and Sydney—women throughout time—at the court of Louis XIV, in Weimar Berlin, in sixties San Francisco—and all of them, having that moment, the moment of self-appraisal before their reflection. If the clothes parsed the right code, if they accentuated what you had, if they disguised what you lacked: beauty, money, class, confidence, youth.
I wondered how many women had felt as I was now feeling, and then I wondered if Alice had ever felt like this, and then if Alice had loved David and how badly she had been hurt by what we’d done, whether it had stopped her sleeping and made her heartsick; if I had broken something she valued and made her feel small and not said sorry.
* * *
After I made my purchases, I went down to the brightly lit displays and cosmetic stands on the ground floor. Handbags were set on pedestals like statuary. One was encrusted with diamonds and had its own security guard.
The message on my phone was from Mr. Hutchinson. His contact at the phone company was on leave, but he should have something for me the following day. In the meantime, he would look into Peter’s credit rating, try and turn up more about his employment record, and make a few calls.
The light filtering in from outside was weak; I lingered in front of a makeup stand, painting my lips and making fish faces in the mirror. The makeup girl sidled over.
“Just looking,” I said, before she could get anything out.
“Well, let me know if you need any help.” She gave me the once-over and I must have passed, because she swooped down on someone else, getting them up in the chair and bringing out the makeup brushes. On impulse, I put the lipstick in my pocket. In the mirror, a look flitted across my face, alert and predatory. In my head, Peter said, In a society that worships individuality and elevates consumer commodities to the highest form of personal expression, appropriating the means to make such an expression possible can only be a virtue, dear Andy.
And Em, Have it! Forty fucking quid? Serves them right.
A ripple ran through me, a quickening, and I tore my eyes from the mirror and strode off. Just before I got to the automatic doors, I slowed down and flipped over the price tag on a black leather wallet, a display of unhurried innocence. Once outside, I took off feeling both foolish and alive. The rain ran down my neck. My heels clicked merrily along the pavement as I dodged the tourists and shoppers, nipping across the road in front of a big red bus so that the driver blared his horn.
It made me aware of how dormant I was most of the time. How my life—my job, my screens—made it easy to be occupied every waking moment, hurrying, distracted, and equally, on some level almost entirely asleep, comforted by dreams of effortless transformation.
But I was not Cinderella. Instead, there was another story Peter and I had often found in the books of our childhood. It came in different disguises. It was the one about the traveler who arrives at an island, or a castle, or a secret door into the side of a mountain. There, welcomed, the traveler stays, perhaps against their instincts. Often they eat or drink—strange fruit, or wine from a goblet. There is always something they should be doing, an important task for them to fulfill, but they forget it, they are waylaid, and if they ever remember, their companions, if there are any, distract them with promises, or songs, or riddles to ponder.
Often the traveler sleeps, sometimes they dream, always they are nagged by the sense that there is something they are forgetting, something they must do. Their true love is waiting, or their aged parents. There is a sick child they must bring herbs to, a kingdom for them to inherit. But they do nothing; they are paralyzed. And when they wake, if they ever get away, once back in the world they find that centuries have passed, that they are too late, too late for everything, and that all that they loved, everything that truly mattered, is lost forever.
To sleep on? Or to wake? This was the question facing me. To sleep, or to wake and face the reckoning, to find out what had been lost.
CHAPTER 16
NO WONDER ALICE
The house was Cotswold stone with climbing roses in beds at the front that were not yet in bud. I’d made a deal with the cabby. He would wait down the road, out of sight, but within reach if I had to flee. Alice must have heard us. As I got out, she was already standing in the open doorway. A smile on her face, barefoot, in jeans and a pale knit. Unlike her brother, Alice had kept off the booze and out of the sun. She had not put on weight or cut off her hair.
“Andy.” Her tone was familiar, fond even. Nearing, I noted the delicate fan of lines at the outer corner of each eye, but she stepped back as I came in so there was no cheek to kiss or hand to shake. “I’ve got the kettle on.” Already she was walking away from me and with barely a hesitation I crossed the threshold and followed her inside.
The air was fragrant with baking; the whole rear of the house was taken up by a huge open-plan kitchen and living room and some little cakes were cooling on a wire rack. Through the glass wall that ran the length of the room, you could see the garden and beyond it a patchwork of fields and, in the nearest, a handful of sodden-looking sheep. We were a little over an hour’s drive from the manor, but the countryside here was flatter and on a smaller scale. There was a stream further away; you couldn’t quite see it, only the long and lovely willows bordering its banks.
I had what Alice was having, so we both had green tea and a little cake that fell into ruins the moment I touched it. Alice offered me a conspiratorial smile.
“I’m not much of a baker. Usually I buy. The boys are just as happy. It doesn’t even touch the sides. I swear you could throw a load of fat and sugar in a trough and it’d be all the same to them. These are gluten free, no dairy either.”
“How old?”
“Nine and six.”
There was a bit more of that. Alice’s husband commuted to London for work. Her eldest boy boarded but came home at weekends. The younger one was at the school in the village and Alice would pick him up later. “He likes to walk back. He’s convinced there’s a troll living under the bridge. He tries to feed it cheese. So what can I help you with? Rob was very mysterious. Childish man, my brother. I don’t blame his ex-wife for divorcing him. Childishness is fine until you have kids of your own.”
I told her; she dabbed at the crumbs on her plate with a fingertip, nodding as though I had confirmed her suspicions.
“I thought this would be about David.”
“It’s Peter I’m looking for, only he did say he’d seen him, David that is.”
“Peter who played piano.”
“He did.” And I remembered again the stuttering melody—all sharps, all discord—that Peter had been playing on the morning we found Em. Alice cocked her head on one side and looked at me as though she knew where my thoughts had led.
“So what you’d like is for me to tell you where David is because you hope that will lead you to your friend.” A pause. “Did you see much of him? Peter, I mean, before he disappeared.”
<
br /> “Now and again.”
“But how often?”
“Couple of times a year, or so.”
“And yet you’re both in London.”
I said something about it being normal not to see old friends all the time. About my work and his work being so busy. Late nights. Weekends. “We were friends as children. He was my oldest friend.” And I told her a few things about us, old stories, the slowworm through the letterbox, the games, the looking out for one another. Alice listened carefully.
“I thought he didn’t like you very much. Perhaps he doesn’t like his parents either. Or perhaps you’ve made this all up.”
“No.”
“No? None of you seemed prone to telling the truth. All that sneaking around. Em and Marcus. You and David. Peter, your dearest, bestest old friend looking like he hated you when he wasn’t whispering to David in corners.”
First Rob, now Alice saying Peter didn’t like me. I bit my lip. If I lost my temper, she’d have won. Besides, wasn’t it true that once you knew someone through and through, and they knew you through and through, love was always mixed with antipathy? Antipathy because you knew the worst of them, all their flaws, even the things they hid from themselves. Even more antipathy because the reverse was true. Didn’t they understand that?
Something else occurred to me.
“What do you mean Em and Marcus? You hate me for what happened. David and I—”
Alice shrugged. “People move on, Andy. I am sure you, yourself, have moved on. I wasn’t happy at the time. When someone cheats on you, it’s a blow, isn’t it? That suggestion that you’re not enough, lacking in some way. You must know yourself. Your friend Em was in love with Marcus. Always talking to each other with their eyes.”
Before the Ruins Page 18