Pillow Talk

by Freya North

  She goes back into her bedroom and gets back into bed, sliding her hand under the mattress for her tanzanite, her touchstone, perhaps today her crystal ball. She tries to lose herself in its mesmeric colours and facets but she sees only its pure beauty which lifts her spirits but gives her no answers. What it does do, though, is transport her back in her mind's eye to peaceful afternoons spent in the company of this tanzanite's original owner. What succour was to be found with Lillian McNeil.

  Petra at just-turned sixteen. Having a tough old time of it at home and a crap time at school because mocks loomed after half-term and she hated maths and didn't understand why it was compulsory at O level when she felt sure she'd fail anyway. Plus, she wasn't picked for the first or second netball teams and she'd rather not play at all than be a reserve. And her dad has gone away on his second honeymoon and her mum needed to sort her head out so she's gone to a Tibetan centre in Scotland.

  ‘Bizarrely, the climate and the soil in Tibet are similar to areas of Scotland and they share many indigenous plants and herbs,’ Lillian McNeil said carefully because she had yet to ascertain who was looking after the child.

  ‘Oh. Did you ever live there? In Tibet or in areas of Scotland?’

  ‘I am Scottish but I haven't been back for years – and I've never been to Tibet.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘How is your revision going, Petra?’

  ‘Well, I revise hard at the stuff I find easy – at the expense of the stuff I find hard.’

  ‘I'm sure your mother will be helping you?’

  ‘She's in Scotland.’

  ‘Silly me. You did say. Well, who do you have to test your French vocab instead?’

  ‘Well, you could, if you like. I could bring a list along next visit? Shall I come back tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, do – but I mean, I'm sure whoever's house-sitting could help you with maths this evening?’

  And from Petra's embarrassed smile, Lillian McNeil had her answer: the child was alone.

  ‘When is your mother back?’

  ‘When her head is sorted, she said.’

  The elderly lady and the schoolgirl looked at each other, aware that the dynamic had swung completely. The point of Pensioners' Link was that Petra could pass on any concerns from or for Mrs McNeil. Just then, her pensioner was wondering whom she could contact on Petra's behalf.

  ‘Please don't tell,’ Petra pre-empted. ‘Please.’

  Mrs McNeil lowered her voice. ‘Do you have money and food?’

  Petra nodded and Lillian thought, What on earth is the value of money and food when there's no parent to nourish the child?

  ‘My mum said it was a credit to me that she felt she could go.’

  ‘If you have a sleeping bag, you are welcome to stay with me, Petra.’

  ‘Oh, I'm fine. Thank you. If anything, I get more revision done without my mum doing her chanting or getting me to henna her hair.’

  ‘And you feel safe?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And not too lonely?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Well, do come and visit me tomorrow. I'd like that. Will you buy me a quarter of ground coffee from Carwardines in Swiss Cottage – my usual? And bring some French vocab with you.’

  ‘I will. I'll come in the morning.’

  ‘And stay for lunch.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  You always knew what to do, Mrs McNeil, you knew what I needed. When I came in that following day with that bump on my head and a bruised elbow because I must have sleepwalked into a wall, you had a bottle of distilled witch hazel and you dabbed it on and it worked. You also had a little chore for me, every day during that half-term, and that worked too. And when my mum came back, magically there were no more chores. You knew what to do because you knew about everything. From Tibet to Tanzania. From French vocab to witch hazel. You had a remedy for any situation. You were wise and kind and sensible. What would you say to me today? If you were here? What would you have me do?

  ‘I would say, Petra, my dear, you ought to have a jolly good look at yourself in the mirror. Don't give yourself a talking-to. Just stand and see yourself from the inside out, from beyond the reddened surface of your cried-out eyes.’

  I'm looking, I'm looking and I look like shit. I feel ten times worse than I look.

  ‘If you think of Rob, do you glow? What does the thought of him do to your eyes?’

  I'm looking. I'm thinking. I'm seeing how my eyes dull down and I look anxious.

  ‘A man should release your sparkle, not deflate your bounce.’

  I'm very good at putting on a brave face.

  ‘From necessity. That's nothing to be proud of. It's a little sad.’

  I don't want to be alone.

  ‘None of us does. You want to believe in happy-ever-after.’

  What's wrong with that?

  ‘Nothing at all. But you have to be happy with the person involved for the concept to be workable.’

  Do you think he's as wrong for me as Lucy and my Studio Three seem to think?

  ‘Only you can know that. And there's no point kidding yourself. No point at all. It'll take you further away from happy-ever-after and that would be a daft place to end up.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Petra doesn't inform Rob that she's on her way. He never goes out on a Sunday morning anyway. He wears boxer shorts and his old university rugby shirt until lunch-time and drinks a lot of strong coffee. He sprawls around with all the papers spread about and Radio 4 as background sound. Petra could never get him to change his schedule no matter how appealing her suggestions: a trip to the farmer's market off Marylebone High Street, a visit to the Huguenot house in Folgate Street, a day out at Hampton Court, a picnic on Hampstead Heath as a change from his de rigueur brunch at the same crowded Islington brasserie. Today, this finally irks her. Sitting on the top deck of an empty bus, Petra really resents Rob and it feels quite liberating. Ten months' worth of Sundays when she hasn't had her say. Just before her stop, she briskly scoops up her hair into a pony-tail. The natural twists and tumbles of her hair give a lively bounce every time she moves her head.

  But it seems she can't take her empowerment with her as she disembarks the bus. By the time she's jaywalked across Upper Street, she's taunting herself that she's probably five minutes away from coming across Rob in flagrante again. She can almost hear him at it. The sod. The domineering, controlling, adulterous sod who's been telling her what to do with her Sundays while he does what he wants behind her back. And she's within a stone's throw of finally being able to tell him what he can do with his bloody Sundays.

  Every corner she turns, a new mood sweeps over her. Anger. Reluctance. Trepidation. Foreboding. Only when she finally turns into his street do the negative but determined feelings subside, replaced outside the front door to his building with rushes of adrenalin carrying surges of hope and delusion. She releases her pony-tail and hides behind a screen of ringlets.

  She has keys but she daren't use them so she rings the bell and wonders if he's in or out. A moment's wait feels like an hour.

  He must be out. So I think I'll just go.

  Oh God, he's in. So I think I'll just go.

  He looks tired and wan, which is a good sign, isn't it – he's suffering, he's atoning, he does love me after all.

  ‘Babe,’ he says, his voice hoarse; he opens the door wide but they stand still, on either side of the threshold, worlds apart. He shrugs. Petra waits. Their eyes dart across each other's faces for reasons and answers and who's going to speak first and say what.

  ‘Tell me I was sleepwalking,’ Petra whispers, locking in on eye contact like a torpedo to its target. ‘I was only sleepwalking, wasn't I?’

  Rob looks pained and says nothing and won't meet Petra's gaze and she can't misread this so now she has her answer.

  ‘Wake me up?’ she says in a meek, final bid. And she wonders whether to hit him, to see if he's real – and if he is real, she'll really want to hit him a
gain.

  But Rob has walked into his flat and she shuffles in after him. His flat is really tidy, apart from the surface detritus of the Sunday papers. Petra was hoping for a hovel; that he'd have turned his world upside down in his remorse, in his search for life-changing answers. Actually, his life is personified by this flat. Swank and gadgets and gloss and a little mess on the surface that can be dumped at the end of the day. He stands, turned away from her, clasping his hands behind his head as if he's trying to stretch away the stress of it all. She can't see his face, she can't read his expression. She can only guess. And it's that which decides her. Without even seeing his face she realizes she'll always guess wrong with Rob. She wants him to be wearing an expression of torment and repentance. However, when he turns around he just looks harassed. But though he looks like shit and though it hits her in the gut, she is able to force herself to see that there's no love in his eyes for her.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He pinches the bridge of his nose. It's something that he does when he's hassled. Petra has seen him do it often; when the Japs are giving him gyp or when dealing with the Yanks is a total wank. He pinches his nose when something or someone is getting right on his bloody nerves.

  ‘I wasn't sleepwalking, was I?’

  Rob shakes his head and regards her blankly, his gaze so level it hurts her all the more. ‘I know I can tell you that Laura is no big deal – that we're just fuck-buddies. But you won't get it, Petra. We're too different, you and me. I like living as I do. It's a shame you have a problem with it.’

  Is he actually implying that this is Petra's failing?

  Petra is desperate for something to say. But while she is silently mulling soliloquies, her instinct takes over and suddenly she hears her voice and it's strong and cutting and it's out in the open, loud and clear, slashing across the detachment on Rob's face.

  ‘Actually, I only came for my bucket and my tin foil, you cunt.’

  And as she walks purposefully away from Rob, strides from his flat and out into Islington, she doesn't know whether to sob or giggle, only she's all cried out and she can't quite summon the energy to laugh just yet. But she does know how proud everyone who loves her will be when she tells them what she did and what she said. They'll make her repeat her final coup de grâce again and again. They'll shriek with laughter and punch the air and hug her close. And they will all give her special dispensation for using the ‘C’ word. They'll think she's a star, they'll know she's going to be just fine. They'll know that great times are her due. But it'll take a while before she nods and says I know that too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  On any given night there are 26,000 people sleepwalking in the United Kingdom. A child will walk in on her parents' dinner party and hold an engaging conversation of total gibberish before tottering off. A grown man in Sheffield will eat gravy granules and take a block of butter back to bed with him. A businesswoman will wake up to find soil under her fingernails and twigs in her bed. A fifteen-year-old girl will wake up in her nightie on top of a crane in east London and her story will make it into the newspapers.

  Some somnambulists will shuffle around their homes mistaking the kitchen chair for the toilet seat. Some will take the pictures from the walls or ornaments from window sills and pile them up. Some will rummage through their wardrobes and quite willingly explain that they're looking for Tony Blair or Madonna or the Queen. Some will take off all their night-clothes, others will get fully dressed ten times over. Some will leave their homes: one or two will climb out of a window and make it onto a roof, one or two may even get into their cars and drive off. Some will sleepwalk vividly through a building that they are actually not in and will consequently be in danger of harming themselves.

  Petra was one of those.

  She thought she was at home.

  Not home as in her rented flat in North Finchley.

  Not home as in the student digs in Camberwell which she shared for four years with Eric.

  Not the flat she lived in with her mum in West Hampstead once her dad had decamped to Watford.

  Not Mrs McNeil's cramped quarters.

  But through her childhood home. This is where Petra sleepwalked. The 1930s detached house in the outer reaches of Cricklewood, the house with the bay window and the part-glazed porch leading to the red front door. The house with the kitchen with the serving hatch into the dining room and the archway going from the dining room into the lounge. The fancy fireplace with marble surround and polished brass grate purely for display. Magnolia walls above the dado and restrained Anaglypta one shade darker below. The large cheese plant whose leaves were given a weekly wipe, on its own fancy stand next to the coat rack. Parquet in the hallway. 80/20 wool mix everywhere else. Brass stair treads that were a bugger to keep gleaming. On the first floor, the bedrooms off the corridor. Petra's little room overlooking the neighbours' garden. Then the spare room. The family bathroom. Finally, surveying the driveway and the Rover, her parents' room.

  Go in. No, don't. Back up. The spare room. What's going on in there? Go in, no don't, go in, no don't. The door's ajar. What is that? Who is that? What are you doing? Why are you doing that? Turn and run. Run back to your room. Quickly. Don't let anyone know you're awake. Your bedroom door is open and you can dive into your bed. Quickly, just hide under the duvet and scrunch your eyes tight shut. Quick! Before anyone sees you, before anyone notices that you saw what you saw.

  But you can't do this if you are Petra at thirty-two who hasn't lived in that house for over half her life. You can't do this if you are Petra who now lives in a rented flat in North Finchley. You can't do this because there isn't a door just there. There's a wall. If you try and run through that open door in Cricklewood, you find that you run hard into the wall in North Finchley. So hard that you'll actually knock yourself out and you'll wake up with hair encrusted with blood and a cracking headache. You'll have to go to Barnet General and wait four hours in A&E for butterfly stitches.

  As Petra did.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Jesus Christ, Petra. What happened? Did you sleepwalk again?’

  ‘I'm OK, Eric. It's just a bump. Stop making a fuss.’

  ‘Oh yes, you're just fine and dandy for someone with stitches in her head and a right shiner over her left eye.’

  ‘Kitty—’

  ‘And you're limping.’

  ‘Gina—’

  Petra, they say together, this is not good. We're worried. It's been two weeks of this.

  ‘It's always worse at times like this.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay with you for a couple of nights?’

  ‘Thanks, Eric – but no.’

  ‘How about I come? I'll bring a bundle of sage to burn – it's very cleansing. We'll do a release ritual.’

  ‘It's tempting, Kitty. But not just yet.’

  ‘Darling, I have bags of room – in fact, I have rooms and rooms. I'll pad out one for you, I'll put duvets on the walls and lock the door.’

  ‘Gina, you're really kind and I am so tired. But if I can't sleep on my own, where can I sleep?’

  ‘At mine,’ says Charlton Squire. Despite his bulk, he's been standing unseen at the back of the studio for a few minutes. ‘You can sleep at mine.’

  They all look up at him, towering in black butter-soft leather, a silk shirt expensively crinkled, blackout sunglasses, hair coiffured camply like Tintin. They've heard all about Charlton Squire's house. It's in Holland Park and very grand, apparently. Ten years ago, when he was at the height of his flamboyance, he used to host parties there. The stuff of legend: Bacchanalian romps with a jaw-dropping guest list of louche celebrities.

  ‘Not in London,’ Charlton qualifies, ‘in North Yorkshire. I have a place there. A cottage. It's not really a cottage, really, it's single storey.’

  ‘Bungalow?’ Eric asks, unable to prevent it sounding snide.

  ‘Converted eighteenth
-century stone stables,’ Charlton says, not bothering with eye contact.

  ‘I meant – good – no stairs to fall down,’ Eric backtracks meekly because no one in the jewellery industry ought to rankle Charlton Squire. ‘Petra once fell down the stairs when she sleepwalked at a friend's house and lost her hearing for over a month.’

  ‘No stairs,’ says Charlton.

  ‘I've offered to pad out one of my spare rooms,’ Gina says.

  ‘And I've suggested a sage-clearing at her flat,’ says Kitty.

  Petra hears them all. Their well-meaning concern as they compete with each other's suggestions. Suddenly she thinks how they're exacerbating her headache too. She wonders if taking time off work and time away from London might not be a very good idea.

  ‘Really? Could I?’

  They all look at her.

  ‘Of course,’ says Charlton. ‘The keys are at the gallery. Pick them up whenever you like – there's also some money for you, two of your necklaces sold. You can work there too, if you feel like it – there's a shed at the back of the garden with a bench and a skin and some tools. It's where I started out. It's a happy place, Pet.’