by Ellie Eaton
“Gosh,” said the Pecks in unison when I told them where I was working. “Bad luck.”
To my dismay the rest of my friends were all going to work for the same travel company—luxury safaris, Galapagos cruises—that belonged to Skipper’s cousin. Despite how they’d been treating me, their cold-shouldering and whispering behind my back, I felt sickened by the thought of them spending the week together without me.
“Where’s Wapping?” asked George.
It might as well have been outer Siberia.
Each day I was signed in by a receptionist at News International who gave me a plastic pouch with the word VISITOR on a tag that I clipped to my white shirt. I dressed like a middle-aged woman in an expensive Jaeger trouser suit my mother had bought for the occasion. The first morning I had waited for a long time, perhaps an hour or more, before my godmother’s friend came out of her meeting and I was summoned into her glass box. She was ferociously intelligent, probably the first truly impressive woman I had ever met. I was utterly out of my depth.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said with a smile.
I had never been asked this before. My mind went blank. I had absolutely no idea who I was outside of the Divine. My godmother, I knew, would have bragged about me being gifted. True, I was more academic than most of my peers, top of my year, but that didn’t say much; the bar was set low. I had a useful knack for remembering facts by rote, regurgitating quotes from books, which is all that is required to do well in exams, but at the age of sixteen I had never had an independent thought, one that wasn’t borrowed from the pages of a set text. Unlike Gerry Lake, I didn’t have any real talents or skills. I had taken five years of piano lessons but wasn’t a natural musician, I couldn’t act or dance or paint, and I had no extracurricular activities to speak of, except, like all Divines, to drink and smoke. My politics, if I even had any, were inherited from my parents.
Perspiring in my suit, I scratched the scar on my forearm through the fabric. I felt the editor scrutinizing me, her shoe tapping with impatience as a high heel swung from her other foot. I recited the A-Levels I planned to take next year, a story-writing prize I would be awarded at Speech Day, a recent holiday with my parents in Rome. I saw the editor’s interest in me instantly extinguish—I was totally unremarkable. Her eyes slid sideways to her computer.
“Great,” she said, barely noticing when I had finished. “Let me know if you need anything.”
I never saw her again except for a curt wave through the glass shield of her office as I passed.
“She sounds like a right stuck-up bitch,” Lauren yawned. “What else have you been doing?”
“Photocopying, checking facts, stuff like that.”
The truth was the newsroom floor was the most thrilling place I had ever been. People moved with urgency between desks, sometimes they even ran; others hunched intently over their computers, like jockeys, fingers galloping on keyboards. Making news. Some of the very same journalists who just two weeks later went on to write about Gerry Lake. Buzzing around the gates, asking Divines questions.
I was in awe of almost everyone I met, particularly the sanguine men at the sports desks who took long boozy lunches and sat for hours, legs spread, gossiping and lobbing balls of paper at metal bins. I began to enjoy the feel of my suit as I walked around, its buttoned crispness that I thought suggested importance, the little pleat in the front of my trousers, which I hung up each night to preserve the fold. Every grown-up I knew back then—my parents and my parents’ friends—they all read the Times. During my Easter holiday in Hong Kong my mother had bragged shamelessly to her friends at the yacht club about my placement, the strings my godmother had pulled to get me there, but I sat dangling my feet in the pool and shrugged as they congratulated me, sulking because I wasn’t working at the travel company with Skipper. But now, describing my week to Lauren, I found myself name-dropping editors I’d met, the morning conference I had attended, the friendly assistant who’d bought me lunch.
“So will your name be in the paper then?” Lauren said, bored.
“No, I mean, it’s not like they’d let me have my own byline.”
I couldn’t stop myself flashing my new vocabulary.
“Oh well, never mind, the money’s all right, I bet.”
I said nothing. Of course I wasn’t getting paid. It was just something to put on my CV. Down the phone line there was a muffled sound as if Lauren was covering the receiver, and I heard the slow thud of a cane as Joan climbed the stairs to bed.
“School night, remember,” Joan said. “Don’t let your dad catch you up.”
“Yeah, all right, night, Mum.”
“Night, Loz.”
There was silence for a while, and I could hear Lauren breathing, then the headset rustled as she switched it to her other cheek. I steeled myself to ask her about Gerry’s hairpin.
“Um,” I said, “I just wondered if you’d found that hairpin yet?”
Lauren clicked her tongue, annoyed.
“You’re not on about that fucking thing again, are you? Give it a rest.”
“Actually, I really . . .” I started to say but Lauren interrupted.
“Coz if you’re going to nag me all weekend about that shite bit of plastic, you can forget about coming round mine.”
My feet slipped off my godmother’s desk. One elbow cracked against the dark oak top, hitting my funny bone. I winced, tears pooled.
“No,” I almost shouted. “I mean, it’s fine. Forget it.”
All I had thought about all week was my night at Lauren’s house. We had planned it meticulously: the train tickets, the sleeping arrangements, the lies to my godmother and the school. I knew that Lauren’s brother often dropped around unannounced to have tea with Joan and thought there was a good chance of running into him. I had sat at my temporary office desk that week, smoking a pencil, rehearsing witty anecdotes about the world of journalism to tell around the kitchen table, deciding what I’d wear. Now I was in danger of being uninvited. I wished I’d never mentioned Gerry’s pin.
“Everything’s fine,” I reassured Lauren.
“Yeah?”
“Totally.”
“Okay, nice one.” Lauren sounded excited now. “I’ll see you Saturday then?”
“Yes, Saturday.”
I took a sip of gin and winced.
“Don’t knock, I’ll meet you on the corner,” Lauren reminded me.
“Brill,” I said.
I heard her laugh, one of those strange openmouthed barks she often made whenever I said something Divine.
“Toodlepip,” she teased and slammed down the phone.
26
My train was late. At the station I stood in a long line for a minicab, anxiously counting the number of people ahead of me, looking at my watch. When I got to the end of Lauren’s road, I sat on the wall where we’d agreed to meet, hugging my leather overnight bag. I was extremely nervous, I remember, continually flicking my hair, checking my armpits for sweat, sucking on a polo mint so my breath wouldn’t smell. It was long past our arranged meeting time and still Lauren wasn’t there. I began to panic. What, I wondered, if she had changed her mind at the last minute or her parents had refused to have me in the house?
I waited for another twenty minutes, wringing my hands, and when she still didn’t come, I walked a few meters up Lauren’s road and loitered outside her house.
All the lights were off.
Next door I saw her neighbor sitting on the doorstep smoking while a toddler circled on a tricycle, ramming it into a line of dustbins, reversing, charging again. The neighbor watched me hovering on the pavement, craning my neck to look up at Lauren’s window.
“They’re out,” she said.
“Oh.” I felt my stomach turn.
“You’re Lauren’s friend, aren’t you? The one from the other week.”
I nodded. I could barely breathe.
“When will they be home, do you think?”
“Joan’s gone t
o stay with her sister for a bit, that’s all I know. They had a right old to-do earlier, her and Kevin.”
This was out of the ordinary. I had never known Lauren’s mother to leave the house. On a good day she sometimes went into the front garden to smoke, leaning against the wall with a mug of tea. As far as I knew, Lauren did the shopping and picked up her prescriptions. A health worker dropped by every other week.
I moved my Mulberry bag from one hand to the other, on the brink of crying. I had nowhere to sleep. I couldn’t go back to school, it was an exeat—one of two weekends per term when Divines were released back into the care of their parents—and nobody except a few lone housemistresses would be there. I had lied to my godmother about returning early for a play rehearsal. It was too late by then to go back to London without it seeming suspicious. I had blown nearly all my allowance on the taxi from the station, I didn’t have enough left in my account for a hotel, nor could I have called my parents even if I wanted to, because it was the middle of the night in Hong Kong.
There was a loud boom as the toddler crashed his bike into the bin again and laughed demonically.
“Paul,” Sue snapped, “give it a rest will you. You’re doing my head in.”
“Um, do you know if Lauren went with her mum by any chance?”
“No idea, love, sorry.”
“And what about Mr. McKibbin, he’s not home?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Back down the pub, I should think. Or the bookies.”
“Right,” I said, squeezing my arm, trying not to sob.
I was completely clueless about what to do next, where to go, how to fend for myself in the world. I was totally naïve. Terrified to be on my own. I pictured myself wandering the canal all night without Lauren, sleeping on a park bench.
The toddler backpedaled, ready for another charge at the bin.
“You could try her brother,” the neighbor suggested, taking pity on me. “Expect Lauren went round there. Like I said, Joan and Kev had a proper barney earlier.”
“Her brother. Okay,” I said, uncertainly.
This at least was something. But I had no idea where Stuart lived. I lifted my bag over my shoulder, staying where I was.
“Round the corner, love.” Sue pointed towards the park.
“They’re in one of those new builds on Charlton. Nasty piece of work if you ask me, that Kerry girl. No manners. I don’t know why Stuart puts up with it.”
I stared in the direction the neighbor was pointing. I didn’t have any real sense of the geography of the town, other than marching to the lacrosse field and back.
Suddenly the toddler, cornering too fast on the tricycle, toppled midattack, the bin rolled sideways, split bags of rubbish emptying into the front garden. There was a moment of silence, then an unearthly howl. Sue tugged the boy up by the wrist and dusted him off with angry swipes.
“I told you, didn’t I? Look what you’ve done. Look at that.”
Inside the house, a baby started crying.
I hopped over the wall, righted the bin, and began tossing what I could into the container. Above the wails my own voice raised in my panic, becoming higher, more Divine.
“So, it’s not far, Stuart’s house?”
Sue hoisted the boy onto her hip, his face greased with snot and tears.
“Left after the post office,” she snapped. “It’s one of the new houses on the right.”
“Thanks so much,” I said.
“Pauly, put a sock in it, will you,” Sue ordered the toddler and carried him inside.
The door slapped shut.
I was on my own.
As I walked towards the housing estate, the weight of my bag seemed heavier than before, cutting into my shoulder; the new shoes I was wearing grated against my heels. When a car slowed to a crawl beside me, the driver rolling down his window—a middle-aged man with a mustache—I let out a yelp of surprise.
“Need a lift, love?” he asked.
I shook my head, walked faster.
“Come on, I won’t bite, get in,” he said, cajoling.
He patted the seat beside him, a chunky gold bracelet jangling on his wrist.
“No,” I said, almost shouting, my voice quavering. “No, thank you.”
He looked me up and down, shrugged.
“Suit yourself.”
The car rolled away.
I started to run. Through the park, past the post office, pausing for breath only once I’d reached the pub, but as soon as I put my bag down two drunk women came tumbling out of the door, slapping each other, clawing and screaming, careering into a table.
By the time Stuart’s girlfriend answered the door I was close to hysteria. Hers was perhaps the third or fourth house I tried. Tiny and very pale with dark eye makeup, she had little black ticks at the corner of each eye, long spiky lashes. Her black hair was pulled back tight. A seam of gold studs ran up her ears.
“Yeah?”
She glared at me. She was wearing a crop top and big baggy trousers with pockets, which hung from angular hips so that I could see the men’s jockey shorts she was wearing beneath. Stuart’s I supposed. Her stomach was concave, a diamond stud in her belly button. It seemed impossible that a baby could have come out of anyone so petite.
“Sorry, are you Kerry?”
“Who wants to know?”
In my new suit I looked like a social worker. Or a Jehovah.
“I’m a friend of Lauren’s.”
“Fuck’s sake,” Kerry said.
She turned and walked along the corridor, leaving me on the doorstep.
“Oy, Lauren,” I heard her yell. “Your girlfriend’s here.”
Kerry turned briefly back to look me up and down.
“The posh one.”
Lauren was there. I was faint with relief. I saw Stuart thumping down the steps in bare feet. I smiled, raised a hand hello. Kerry’s lips pursed.
“Lauren’s taking the piss, Stu,” she hissed.
She pointed to my overnight bag.
“What does your sister think this is, a fucking hotel?”
Stuart’s thumbs were tucked into the waistband of his football shorts.
“All right, Josephine,” he said.
Behind Kerry’s back he quirked his eyebrows at me, an amused smile. He thumbed in the direction of the sitting room.
“Lauren’s in there.”
It didn’t matter to me that we were in his girlfriend’s house, that she was standing right there between us with her hands on her hips, or that he even had a girlfriend at all. He had smiled when he saw me. I felt like I was levitating.
“In there?” I checked.
Stuart slid past his girlfriend and took the Mulberry bag from me.
“Go on.”
Lauren was sitting on the sofa with her knees tucked underneath her, smoking and eating chips. The TV was playing Stars in Their Eyes. Her eyes were swollen, porcine looking, her lashes damp. Her thumbnail picked at something in her fist. She barely looked up from the screen.
“Oh, right,” she said flatly. “I thought you’d bottled it.”
“My train was late. That’s all.”
Lauren didn’t seem to care that I’d been wandering the streets looking for her, that a pervert had tried to lure me into his car, that I’d been caught up in a catfight. She switched the television over to a different channel and then back to the music. She made no indication if she wanted me to stay or go. I’d never seen her like this before. Her thumb picking at the thing in her hand, a fish and chips fork perhaps. She was wearing no makeup, her skin a raw pink color, pale lashes now virtually invisible. I could see a cold sore on her bottom lip. It was like catching her naked. All her guards were down, none of the familiar bravado there.
“Your neighbor, Sue, she thought you might be here,” I said by way of explanation.
“Nosy bitch,” Lauren muttered. “Bet she loved sticking her beak in. She told you about my mum leaving then?”
I didn’t a
nswer.
“Can’t keep her gob shut, that one.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, ta.” She stubbed out her cigarette and picked at a bag of chips by her side. “Happens all the time. My dad went and blew all our disability again.”
“He didn’t, like, hit you or Joan or anything then?”
“No.” Lauren’s head snapped around fast. “Fucking hell, did Sue tell you that?”
I don’t know where I got the idea that her father was abusive. Perhaps I made it up. Mr. McKibbin was a short and wiry man and something of a drinker, but not a drunk. No more than my parents anyway. Though I remember that there had been one incident; when I was shopping in town, I had seen Lauren’s dad coming out of the bookies and another man catching him on the shoulder by accident as he came through the door. Mr. McKibbin’s craggy face reddened, and he had sworn, stabbing the stranger once on the chest with his rolled paper. It left me with the impression that he was a volatile man, prone to bouts of unexpected violence.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know why I said it.”
Through the wall we could hear Kerry’s shrill voice growing louder and Stuart muttering the odd reply. Lauren rolled her eyes.
“Moody cow,” she said.
Then Kerry’s feet pounded down the corridor, the door flung open as if she was trying to catch us out.
“You can stay”—she pointed at Lauren—“but your friend here’s got to go. This isn’t a bloody rave.”
Alarmed, I looked at Lauren, but she ignored Kerry and tapped another cigarette out of her packet. A slight smile curled at the corner of her mouth fleetingly, then evaporated. I was astonished. Once I had told Lauren how we gave Gerry Lake the silent treatment, acting as if she were invisible, pretending not to hear a word she said—putting her in Coventry as we called it, a specialty of the Divine—and Lauren had scrunched her face and accused us of bullying. But now I could see how much she was enjoying using the tactic on Kerry.