‘What kind of dancing?’ he asks, eyebrows raised.
‘I don’t know. Something very physical, without many rules.’ He frowns. ‘I don’t live in my body enough,’ I tell him. ‘You know? I want something that takes me out of my head and brings me back into myself.’ He looks at me blankly. He cannot understand. His mind and his body are so united that he can’t imagine ever having to bring them back together. He has never felt that fracture inside.
31
Every morning before work at the fish market, my grandmother sat at the kitchen table in front of her magnified mirror. She drank a strong cup of tea and smoked three cigarettes, pulling them from the packet with coral-coloured fingernails, her hands raw with bleach. Steam and smoke mingled and the kitchen glimmered silver. She rubbed Leichner foundation into her face, thick and greasy like stage make-up. She used her Esteé Lauder lipstick as a blusher, pulling it across her cheeks in thick lines and rubbing it in with her fingers. She sprayed her hair with lacquer until it set, crisp as cardboard, ready to withstand the day.
32
When I worked in Jay’s pub, I turned up to every shift in bright red lipstick. It wore off during the night as I pursed my lips in irritation or sipped secret gin and tonics from a shelf beneath the bar. I nipped off to the toilets to reapply it, squinting in the blurry mirror. It was a barrier between me and the drunken punters, their eyes grazing my body as they complained about the prices. It let me seem bold during a time when I felt my skin wearing away.
33
I loved checking the little blue letter box in the reception of my student halls. My mother sent me a steady stream of postcards and my friends posted letters filled with sand and shells from the beaches back home. One day I found an invitation in gold gilded lettering.
‘His Royal Highness of Saudi Arabia cordially invites you to his 21st birthday celebration’, it read. I showed it to my flatmates bemusedly.
‘He’s in our year,’ I explained. ‘Crazy, eh?’
I bought a minidress encrusted with silver diamanté and resolved to be on my best behaviour. He lived in a big white house in South Kensington and I took my flatmate Carly as my date. We were let in by a member of staff in a white blouse, who frowned at my old leather jacket and whisked us into a mirrored room where a table quivered with piles of canapés and pastries. We were handed a bottle of champagne to share between us and we polished it off quickly, lurking in corners and feeling awkward.
We were given free rein of the house, including a balcony crowded with plants and water features, a lit-up square of blue in the centre. We made tipsy conversation with illustrious French girls clutching expensive handbags. No one seemed interested in us, not even the sleazy boys with sticky eyes and pressed chinos.
At midnight, someone came around with a pile of cigars on a silver platter. We took one each and lighters were passed around the group.
‘I have smoked these once before, with my father,’ a girl said to no one in particular, perched on the edge of the white leather sofa. ‘They cost at least thirty pounds each.’
‘They are from Persia,’ the man with the tray said, smiling grandly at us. I sneaked an extra one into my dirty tote bag for my flatmates to marvel at later.
There was a room with a dance floor but everyone seemed too prudish to get involved. Bottles of champagne kept appearing. The prince himself didn’t drink for religious reasons, but he was anxious for his guests to have a good time.
I started talking to an older man in the queue for the bathroom. I asked him what his connection to the family was.
‘I am the prince’s tutor.’ He smiled at me earnestly. ‘I help him with all of his schoolwork.’
‘He writes his essays,’ Carly hissed in my ear. It turned out you could buy anything in Kensington, even a degree.
I lost Carly somewhere in the lights and the heavy curtains and wandered around the vast house on my own, growing drunker and drunker. I hadn’t eaten all day and nipped into the canapé room. I smiled graciously at the guests mingling in there and popped an array of canapés and some foil-wrapped chocolates into my bag to eat on the way home.
I bumped into Carly on the landing, caught in an awkward entanglement with a floppy-haired boy in an open shirt.
‘Carly?’ I tugged her elbow. She looked at me gratefully.
‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
‘I think I need to go,’ I said to her, ignoring the boy as he wound his arm around her waist. ‘I feel too weird.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, looking at the boy. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
As we made to leave, my heel skidded on the top of the marble staircase. I was always drunk or running late and I tripped over so often that I had permanent scabs on my knees. They never had a chance to heal before I knocked them off again.
I went flying down the stairs. My bag pirouetted spectacularly over the bannister and stray coins and gold chocolates rained onto the heads of the staff below, like sweets thrown into the crowd at a pantomime. They rushed to clear away my contraband collection of canapés and cigars, splayed all over the floor.
‘I think it is time for you to leave,’ the tutor said to me curtly, once everyone had realised that I was miraculously okay. ‘There are cars waiting outside. Come on.’ He led me to the door. I turned around to look for Carly and caught her halfway between hilarity and horror.
‘We were doing so well,’ I said to her. She shook her head at me with twitching lips. I saw the marble staircase behind her, grand and white and streaked with my blood.
34
Is history bound to repeat itself? There are tremors of my grandfather’s life running through mine, in his cups and bowls that I use in the mornings. There is a dirt path in the garden where the grass still doesn’t grow, marked by years of his feet treading forwards and backwards. I am here because of the past; because of the ghosts who lived and died in this house. Do I owe them anything?
35
As soon as I saw the pub I felt a heavy sickness. I hated the smiles of the people outside, the smell of the beer and the stench of money, the too-loud voices and the same Fleetwood Mac song that played over and over, night after night.
I came in one day and flung my bag onto the bar with a sigh.
‘What you doing here, Lucy babe?’ asked Astrid. ‘You’re not on the rota.’ I frowned at her.
‘What are you on about? It’s Friday. I always work Fridays.’
She grabbed the rota from a hook on the wall and flicked through it. ‘Not tonight, babe. You’ve got the night off. Lucky you. Go out! Have fun. Relax.’
I felt hot behind my eyes. ‘But I’ve only done one shift this week. I have to work tonight. I won’t be able to eat.’ I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped to find Jay standing behind me.
‘Go home, Lucy,’ he said, blankly. ‘We don’t need you tonight.’
‘But Jay—’
‘If you’re going to act like a child I’m going to treat you like one, Lucy.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That shift you booked off for the party. You think you can get anything you want in this world with that pretty little face of yours. And I’m so sorry to be the one to break it to you, baby, but that’s not the way life works.’
I trembled with anger. I picked up my things and left, without saying a word. I saw Astrid’s pale face out of the corner of my eye, looking at Jay uncertainly.
As I stood at the bus stop trying not to cry, something pink and fluttery caught my eye. I stepped on it and bent down to pick it up. It was a fifty-pound note. Maybe the streets were paved with gold, after all.
36
I have been feeling wild lately. There is a huge amount of energy building beneath my skin. I am reckless and angry and I cannot expel it. I go running through the forest and down to the sea. I cycle in the wind listening to punk and sing along at the top of my voice. I write and I walk and I run and I cycle and I even scream into my pillow but still it is t
here, rippling in my chest.
This feeling coincides with the appearance of dogs. They chase me everywhere I go. They run after my bike, barking and yacking, jumping up onto the tops of walls as I walk past. I have been chased by at least seven dogs in the past week. I think they can sense the madness. There is something canine or wolfish about me and they are threatened.
37
I took advantage of the time off and got the Megabus home for a few days. It took seven hours, including a stop at the services so people could grab Burger Kings and oversized bags of Thai Sweet Chilli Sensations. The sky grew greyer the further north we drove.
My mother’s house looked small and strange. It was familiar and melancholy all at once, tinged with nostalgia like an old photograph tucked unexpectedly inside of a book. I felt nervous as I walked through the gate. The changes taking place inside of me would be reflected in the eyes of my family.
I went out with Lauren and everything felt wrong. All of the pubs had toilet seats. I wore tights and boots under my dress and she seemed small next to me, shivering in her little dress without a coat.
‘You sound proper posh!’ said a group of lads from school as we squished into their booth with our treble vodka mixers. ‘Too good for us now.’ I made a face at them and downed my drink.
The smell of smoke machines and sick didn’t make me tingle the way it used to. It was as though there was a perspex wall running through the middle of the club and all of the fun was happening on the other side. I could see it and hear it and even taste it, but there was no way that I could get through. I had given all of it up for something else. I chose to go but I didn’t realise I would have to leave so much of myself behind.
My old life was raw and exposed and it felt meaningful. I couldn’t compete with other people at university in terms of money or knowledge or intelligent witticisms, but the music and dancing were absolutely mine.
I felt nervous as I passed through the doorways of pubs and clubs, knowing my old boyfriend was out there somewhere in the dark. People who had once been friends seemed cold. I understood that it was his city and not mine any more.
Before I went back to London, my mother pressed an address book onto me with the addresses of relatives and family friends printed in her familiar handwriting.
‘You seem a bit distant, Lucy love,’ she said, as she drove me to the train station. ‘Everything alright?’
I smiled at her. ‘Yeah, you know. Just a bit stressed with essays and stuff.’
‘Don’t stress, sweetheart. That stuff isn’t worth getting all het up about.’ She pressed a twenty-pound note into my fist. ‘These are the good times, you know.’
I breathed her in hungrily. ‘Thanks for the address book.’
‘I know it’s a bit daft but you’ve been hard to get hold of. I don’t want you to lose touch with people. Everyone really cares about you, you know? It wouldn’t hurt to send a card from time to time, would it?’ I felt guilty then, for stretching myself out.
38
Some days there is so much static I don’t know what to do with it. It builds in my toes in the mornings and makes its way through my body, popping through my veins and crackling in my joints. When it reaches my chest I get on my bike and cycle into town. I listen to the Slits and pedal as fast as I possibly can. The feeling dissipates a little and comes out of my mouth and my nose in clouds of hot breath.
One day as I turn a corner, I am confronted by the ache of the sea and feel struck by a strange sensation. It is something to do with the clear, sharp quality of the light and the faint trace of salt in the air. It is related to the movement of the tyres over the potholes and the parts of myself in my peripheral vision; the ends of my hair streaming around my head, my long, pale arms and my thighs strong and curved with cycling muscles. A blue joy seeps into my stomach at the sight of the sea and for a moment I am my ten-year-old self again, hurtling down a hill without holding onto the handlebars, wild and tough. It is comforting to know she is inside of me. I sometimes fear that the primary parts of myself have been lost forever, rotting on roundabouts and moulding in cul-de-sacs.
39
I sat on the train and watched the terraced houses and the cathedral and the cobbles and the soft pink shape of my mother blur into the past. I sensed relief as the train pulled out into open fields. Perhaps Sunderland would never belong to me again but I had a different world now, one that I had built myself from scratch. It was a difficult place but I had chosen it. I opened my book and ignored the sky flashing by on my way back into it.
40
Spring blossomed into summer and we lay in parks making daisy chains and drinking cider. The streets were thick with the smell of jerk chicken and sunlight hitting the pavements. I bought a bike and cycled around the Elephant and Castle roundabout with one hand holding my skirt, the hot air from the lorries sending a shiver down my bare legs and into my sandals, books crammed in my basket. Everything felt like a celebration. People lounged on windowsills outside of pubs and we left the library to smoke cigarettes and then headed out to dance with grass in our hair, our laptops shoved in a corner.
I wanted to put down roots in the city beyond university. The transient feeling of the chequered moving bags shoved under my bed made me seasick. I hated the thought of finishing my degree and having to go back home. I made friends over the bar at work and went to parties and art openings with them. I went for coffees and to gigs and bars and nightclubs and for long walks in the afternoons with all kinds of people. I went out with anyone who asked.
‘You remind me of someone I went to school with,’ an American boy with floppy hair told me one night as we sat on the railings of a balcony at a house party.
‘Oh. How come?’
‘You seem like you get carried away with things. Like you’re searching for something. Looking for your next trip.’
41
My mother comes to visit. We sit in front of the fire and I tell her I bumped into Patrick a couple of times. She gives me a look.
‘That was a strange time in my life, you know, Lucy,’ she says, reaching out to touch my arm. ‘I made a lot of mistakes but I was learning how to laugh again. I hope I didn’t damage you in any way.’
I smile at her, caught off guard by the sudden intimacy. ‘I understand, Mam,’ I tell her. She looks into the fire.
‘I hope so,’ she says, uncertainly. I bite the ends of my hair and taste the peat smoke caught in it.
42
I am wrong again and I will never be right. I am burning in a cold way, like ice when it sticks to the skin. The other girls seem smoother, thin wrists cool and marbled, whereas I am sticky and hungry and soiled. I want to be harder and cleaner and better. I don’t want to be made from blood and breakable bones, like you.
43
I fell in with a Hackney Wick crowd and spent weekends dancing in warehouses, dangling my feet in the dirty canal as people passed pills to each other with their tongues and the sun rose peach above the tower blocks. We slept naked on the roof covered in glitter and smiled serenely at the factory workers and the couples in encroaching luxury flats who looked down on our playground.
There were rails of costumes and bikes lining the corridors. Someone was always building or taking down a wall or an installation. Everything was in flux. It felt like the kind of world I had dreamed about during those lunchtimes in the sixth form library, forcing my pen into shapes.
One weekend there was a festival. I turned circles on a chimney pot as the sky lightened, then I passed out on a mattress in the corner of someone’s bedroom. When I woke up I had a text from my dad.
‘Love you, Lucy,’ it read. It was unusual. He rarely sent me messages.
My mother called me in tears. She said she hadn’t heard from him for a while and she had grown concerned. She went to his house and found him crouched in a corner muttering to himself. He had taped silver gaffer tape all over the walls and scrawled strange poems across it in capital letters.
�
��Tom,’ she said, crouching down beside him. ‘Tom. Come on. We need to go to hospital.’
‘Go away, Susie,’ he groaned. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was worried about you, Tom. How long have you been here? What about work?’ He put his hands over his face and pulled invisible cobwebs from his hair.
‘I need to go to the barbers, Susie.’
‘What?’
‘My hair! Can you not see it? It’s so long. All the way down to my bum. When did it get so long, Susie? How did this happen?’ She looked at his short curls.
‘I’m not coming, Susie,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’
My mother didn’t know what to do so she called an ambulance and they both got in it. My father had a panic attack when they got onto the motorway and screamed for them to stop.
‘My heart!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got pains in my heart.’ My mother took his hand. ‘I’m dying, Susie. I’m dying. Make them stop.’ He fumbled for his phone.
‘My kids,’ he said. ‘Our kids.’ The ‘love you’ text I was too busy dancing to read was what he supposed to be his last words to me. I felt dazed as my mother told me this on the phone.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked her.
‘I’m okay. Are you?’
‘Yeah.’ I tore a piece of skin from my finger with my teeth. ‘I’m fine.’
Everything was fuzzy. The architect lived in one of the warehouses and I had a bag of clothes in his room. I rooted through it for my little sailor dress and changed and went back to the party. Everyone there was older and cooler than me. I clutched the architect’s hand and gratefully accepted the mug of wine he passed me. I always felt guilty when I was having a good time, as though something bad would have to happen to restore the balance.
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