by cass green
Todd regarded me for a second and then gestured at the seated area.
Three chairs in pale leather circled a round table, each one a triumph of style over comfort. They were the kind that tipped you backwards when you sat down and always killed my spine. I perched on the end in a way that must have looked prim and weird and tried to ignore the thrum of anxiety that Todd’s strange expression was causing in my stomach.
‘Elliott,’ said Todd, much in the way of a man who is about to deliver difficult news. ‘We didn’t know that Anya was feeling up to coming in, so I’m a bit surprised to see you.’ We gawped at each other before he coughed into his closed fist, neatly, and continued. ‘We were very sorry to hear about your recent bereavement and had hoped to assure Anya that she could have longer off for compassionate leave, if needed.’
My heart was fluttering in my chest and I desperately wanted some water, partly to ease my suddenly parched throat, but partly also to give me something to do while my mind whirred and buzzed and attempted to come up with a coherent sentence.
Bereavement? What bereavement? Why on earth had Anya told her boss that? If I let on that I had no idea what he was talking about I was clearly going to get Anya into trouble.
Todd helped me out by filling the gap. But what he said turned the heat of my awkwardness into something that felt like a cold stone dropping into my guts.
‘… so if she needs another few days on top of the week she’s had, I’m sure we can get round her absence.’
A week. She hadn’t been to work for a week.
I forced words through lips that felt tight and dry. ‘Thanks, Todd, I really appreciate it. I think we got crossed wires this morning and maybe she wasn’t as up to coming in as she thought.’ The words felt like they were choking me.
We made our awkward goodbyes and I went back out into the bright sunshine. I didn’t notice a cyclist who was dismounting right next to me and almost walked into them, barely registering their complaints as I walked across the road.
I felt as though there might be eyes on me from the building I’d just left, so I hurried down a side street, jabbing at my phone and dialling my mysteriously disappeared, bereaved wife.
It went straight to voicemail and I swore viciously, making a woman passing me quicken her step.
‘Anya,’ I said, in a voice that trembled with anger. ‘What the fuck is going on? I went to surprise you at work and I hear you haven’t been in for a week. What the hell is this crap about a bereavement? Ring me back.’
I started walking, fast, not really paying attention to where I was going. My mind was turning over and over with the same questions.
What was going on with Anya? What was she playing at? And the worst one of all: was she leaving me?
A terrible foreboding settled on me then like a great weight and I checked my phone, pointlessly. I couldn’t stop myself from ringing her again, then again, but it kept going to voicemail. I jabbed out a message, just to give myself something to do with all the pent-up feelings.
Where RU? Call me.
No ‘x’ now. It wasn’t the time for kisses. The humiliation of not knowing where she was still cut. I tried not to remember the pity on Todd’s face. I was angry at myself now that my first instinct had been to worry about getting her into trouble over her lie. If she was going to cut me out like this, what the hell did she expect? I never even found out who this mythical dead relative was, I thought bitterly.
I looked up, barely aware of my surroundings, to see that I had made my way back towards Angel and Upper Street. I had no idea what to do with myself as I stood by the entrance to the tube station, throngs of purposeful people passing me. I felt entirely lost. I didn’t really belong here any more. And I didn’t want to go home.
It felt as though my muscles made the decision before my brain as I began to walk back to the crossing and over the main road at the lights.
I walked quickly down Upper Street, hands in my pockets and my gaze cast down, heading for Holloway Road.
Towards, I guess, home. Maybe I never really left.
ELLIOTT
Mrs Mack’s money felt like something radioactive, pulsing out signals from the pocket of my jeans. Dirty little thief … I could almost picture Mrs Mack hissing the words in her crisp, Scottish accent.
When she went to the toilet, I had the opportunity to run back into her room and return the cash. But even though my heart seemed to throb with fear and guilt, I didn’t do it.
I didn’t move.
If I’d only had the guts, it would have saved her life.
I mumbled excuses to go, the scones like rocks in my guts, and headed towards the shop on the estate.
Despite the bars on the windows and the baseball bat that Mr Ghosh, the owner, kept under the counter, Minimart Food and Wine was regularly robbed.
I’d done it myself on a small scale.
I perhaps haven’t mentioned that Mrs Mack’s cupboard wasn’t the first thieving that I had done, by a very long way. But it had never been personal before. Pocketing a couple of Yorkies and a can of Fanta now and then wasn’t the same as taking an old lady’s money. Those minor acts of dishonesty had given me an excited buzz, but this, now, was something very different; like the world was spinning too fast around me and I needed to get off.
I grabbed a jumbo bag of crisps, a 1.5 litre bottle of Fanta and two Snickers bars, then made a last-minute decision to include a Peperami. I wasn’t even hungry, but I had to spend some of the money to get it away from me.
‘You last of the big spenders today, heh?’ said Mr Ghosh, in unusually friendly form, but I was too sick with myself to reply.
Outside again, it was raining now, and Robbie Williams’s ‘Angels’ was blasting from someone’s open window. To this day I loathe that song.
I walked through the estate and down to where there was a small park. It was a sorry excuse for one, with double swings, one of which was broken, and a roundabout that was so peeled and rusty it would scour the skin off your legs. Dog shit studded the grass and it was often a place where deals were made, and worse. I didn’t know where else to go, though. Because the weather was turning bad, at least no one was there.
I sat on a wet bench, hunched against the rain, which was beginning to come down in earnest now. But I welcomed the miserable wet metal under my legs and the chill seeping through me. It felt like a punishment I deserved.
I opened the packet of crisps with hands that shook from cold and forced them into my mouth, feeling one of them scratch my dry throat as it went down. I tried to picture him, Mark Little, lying on the floor of a hospital cell, dying, and I ground the toe of my trainer into a tuft of dirt and grass in front of me, fighting unshed tears that burned and clogged my sinuses.
‘What the fuck have we got here then?’ said a voice. I looked up, startled, because I hadn’t heard anyone coming. There were three of them, all much older than me, probably close to twenty. I recognized Kieran from next door as one of them, a hood pulled high over his head. The third bloke was a black kid I only knew as King. I never found out whether it was his actual name or not.
I gathered up my tragic picnic stuff and hurried to my feet. But I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and looked up into the face of the one who had spoken the first time. I thought he was called Jason. He had short white-blond hair and very dark eyes that were all pupil. His face was cratered with acne scars and, although he wasn’t heavily built, he had the bouncy, wired energy of a man who was smacked up.
‘Hey,’ he said, and his voice was oily with fake concern. ‘Bit damp here, innit? What you doing, sitting with your sad little fucking crisps?’
I shrugged and tried to get up again, but he pressed on my shoulder and then slid onto the seat next to me. He reached for the bag of crisps, which I willingly relinquished, and then began to stuff them into his mouth with an intense focus until they were gone, and he emptied the shards of what was left into his open mouth. I watched his pale throat working as he swallow
ed, his teeth yellow and spotted with decay.
I had a powerful urge to run away but knew, if I did, I would turn a bit of mild sport into something with more purpose, so I found myself fumbling to offer him the chocolate bars. He looked at the Snickers in my outstretched hands and turned to look at his guys. All three of them started laughing at once.
‘You’re a right little fucking Willy Wonka,’ said King.
Jason ruffled my hair. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ He ripped the paper off one of the Snickers and threw the other to King, who laughed and put it in his pocket. Jason ate the Snickers in two or three bites, while I sat silently, not sure where to look or what to do.
The rain stopped and a smear of evening sunshine appeared above the flats.
Jason reached into the pocket of his oversized trackie top and pulled out a bottle of supermarket vodka. He took a mouthful that puffed his cheeks out and then offered it to me.
‘Here you go, Willy Wonka, you shared your picnic with me, least I can do.’
I was about to shake my head then stopped. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I reached for the bottle and forced myself to take a swig, which burned viciously all the way down and brought on an explosive coughing fit that made the three men laugh uproariously.
I grinned after I’d recovered, eyes streaming, to show that I was in on the joke.
Then Kieran was sitting on the other side of me, harvesting papers and a baggy from his pocket and beginning to skin up on his leg. King sat on the edge of the next bench along and smoked a rollie. There was a weird air of respect as they all waited for Kieran to finish his work.
The joint was passed around and then inevitably came to me. I’d had one toke before now, just the one. It had made me feel sick and I hadn’t liked it at all.
But my head was messed up from what had happened today, and I wanted to forget. Maybe this would help me do that. So, I took a drag like a pro, proud that I didn’t choke on it. Jason clapped me on the back and said, ‘That’s the fucking way, Willy Wonka.’
I had one more swig from the bottle and then it was gone, to much swearing and discussion about who had cash. And that was when I reached into my pocket and produced the notes that suddenly seemed meant to be. I held them out to Jason and said, ‘I’ve got this. You can have it if you like.’
Kieran had hooted with laughter and said, ‘Fuck me,’ as Jason reached out and took the money from my hands.
It had taken me half an hour to walk to my old estate but, lost in toxic memory, I hadn’t been paying much attention to my surroundings. A homing pigeon muscle memory had sent me the right way, taking a wrong turning only once, and now I found myself standing opposite the estate and gazing across at a small group of kids playing football outside.
A woman in a burqa pushing a smiling, chatty toddler in a buggy passed me, peering through the mesh grille over her face.
I leaned against the wall behind me and, for the first time in a few years, I could feel my fingers twitching for a cigarette. I’d stopped when I met Anya because all it had taken was the thought of one tiny wrinkle of her nose at my breath for the urge to miraculously pass.
Morningside House looked exactly the same, but the white paint on the windows might have been spruced up in recent times. I couldn’t see my old flat from this spot; I’d have had to go into the quadrant to do so. This was close enough. Washing hung outside one of the flats on the walkway; grey limp garments dangled limply, looking like solid masses, as though they had been drying since I was last here, despite a breeze that was whipping up now. An old woman, as round as she was tall, with a weathered Mediterranean face and a black scarf around her hair, was leaning on a balcony and gazing out, but didn’t seem aware of my presence. Maybe she was seeing an azure sea and olive groves instead of this concrete wasteland.
I shivered and pinched my canvas jacket closer around the neck, which didn’t help much. The air now had a vicious nip to it and the stone-grey sky was heavy with imminent rain. In Casterbourne, the poor weather days still carried their own beauty; silvery sea and gunmetal smudges of cloud suddenly parting to showcase bright blue patches of promise.
Here, though, the slate sky seemed to touch the tops of the faded redbrick buildings; an oppressive blanket that only highlighted the grimness and poverty below.
I got out my phone again to check if Anya had responded, even though I had the volume on its highest setting and would have heard if she had. As I put it back into my pocket, I noticed a boy of about ten, of Somalian heritage perhaps, staring at me.
He was holding onto a bike that looked far too small for him and wearing trainers that, conversely, were far too big.
‘Hey, fam, you got an iPhone X?’ he said in a reedy little voice. My lips tweaked with amusement, despite my gloomy state.
I waggled my phone at him. ‘Nah, mate,’ I said, ‘only a regular old 6, sorry.’
He looked genuinely crestfallen and I wondered what had made him think I was the sort of high roller who’d have an eight-hundred-pound phone. I didn’t look like a drug dealer. Maybe I just looked like I didn’t belong here. This was an odd, confusing thought.
‘I got an iPhone X,’ he said, but his eyes shifted as he spoke. I’d been around enough small children to recognize baseless swagger when I saw it, but I kept my face impassive.
‘Wow,’ I said, ‘you sound like a player.’ He jabbed a suspicious look at me, then a slight flush of pleasure darkened his cheeks. I suddenly felt the need to keep the conversation going.
‘I used to live here, a long time ago.’
I had an urge to tell him that, once, this place had been the start and end of my world, and that I hadn’t felt any hope of escaping it. But I did, and I wanted to tell him that he would too. But how could I possibly promise that?
He didn’t look much interested, anyway, and began to pick his nose, eyes darting around as though searching for a better source of conversation.
‘Where you at now then, fam?’ he said, after a moment.
‘I live by the seaside,’ I said. ‘In Kent.’ This information was met without much comprehension, as though I’d said I lived in Antarctica, or Jupiter.
The boy kicked down on the bike pedal then and cycled away without another word, my company evidently not coming up to scratch. I was oddly disappointed to see him go.
I dragged my gaze back to the entrance to the quadrant and pushed off against the wall. Now I’d come all this way, I couldn’t keep putting it off.
Seconds later, I was looking over my old walkway. An elderly man, right-angled with scoliosis, made painfully slow process to a flat a couple of doors down from where me and mum had lived. Two black teenage girls were talking in high, excited voices as they exited the one on the far end.
‘And she says to me, I ain’t doing you no fucking favours, and I go, you don’t do nuffing for me, you know what I’m saying?’
A dull ache began to spread beneath my sternum and for a minute I wondered whether I was having a heart attack. There would have been a certain justice if I had.
But I wasn’t going to be let off that easily. This pain was one I’d carry for the rest of my life.
I sat there as though my legs were made from concrete, my shoulders bowed with grief; for Mrs Mack, for Mum.
For me.
The buzzing in my pocket at that moment was a welcome distraction. I fumbled for my phone.
Anya.
ELLIOTT
I stabbed at the screen to unlock it, so I could read the full message.
E, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know where to even start so I’m going to try and do it my own way, okay? Mum and dad have a flat. I know I haven’t mentioned it before. Sorry. (Again!)
But if you can come to this address Flat 1, 54 Coleton Crescent, N1 1LR everything can be explained properly.
Please come. xxxxA
The final sign off – Please come – sent ice water up the back of my neck. Was she frightened? Had she had some sort of breakdown because of th
e stress of what had been going on with Bennett?
I turned and hurried back to Caledonian Road, frantically searching for Coleton Crescent on Google Maps. A black cab appeared with a shining yellow welcome as though someone was looking out for me and, a few minutes later, I was sitting in the back, gazing at the streets but not really taking anything in, my heart racing. Why had Anya never mentioned that her parents had a flat in Islington before?
Coleton Crescent was tucked into one of the streets the other side of Highbury station. While geographically it was not that far from Morningside House, it might as well have been in another country.
A white stuccoed Victorian terrace, each house was at least three storeys high, with freshly painted wrought iron fences that shone like black tar. Plants I wasn’t able to identify tumbled out of window boxes. There was even the gentle tinkling of a piano streaming from a window.
A massive Porsche SUV parked two doors down from number 54. The doors opened and several small, blonde children, in the old-fashioned, neat school uniforms that certain parents pay very good money for, spilled out noisily. An East Asian woman, a nanny perhaps, began to herd them inside the property, reprimanding one of them in a loud voice.
I walked up the white stone steps at the front of the building.
I didn’t know what I was going to find in the flat. And that was terrifying.
There was a metal entry system with flats numbered 1 to 3.
I pressed the button for Flat 1 and then stood back, gazing up at the building. There was no response the first time, and my head instantly filled with images of Anya lying in a pool of sick, or in a bath full of bloody water. I pressed again, harder, and this time could hear the sound of it chiming inside.
A loud buzz told me the door was open and I pushed it, entering a black and white tiled hallway. I ran up the three flights of stairs, barely taking a breath, and at the top of the house saw the black painted door of Flat 1.
The door was partly open and, heart beating from worry and exertion, I pressed it to enter another small hallway, painted in the sort of Farrow and Ball colour that was no doubt called something stupid like Sad Pigeon. The same colour as the one in Julia and Patrick’s house in Lathebridge.