by Lisa Jewell
‘So—obviously I’m straight in there, straight in the water, but I’m not a very good swimmer, as you might remember, I’m a doggy-paddler, and it’s taking me ages to get to her, and the tide’s quite strong, and I’m flailing around, calling her name, swallowing loads of this rancid disgusting water, and she just seems to be floating away from me—the closer I get, the further she gets—and I’m choking by now, I’ve got so much water in my pipes and I’m getting really tired. But I keep on swimming towards her, I can still see this white blob, and it’s not moving, and I feel like I’ve been in the water for hours now. Then suddenly this boat appears, it’s a speedboat and there’s some posh people on it, sunning themselves and drinking champagne, and I can hear the engine being turned off and the boat slowing down, and then someone’s dragging me out of the water and I’m saying “Mandy. Get Mandy.” “There’s no one there,” they’re saying. “She’s wearing a white dress,” I tell them. But we went round and round in circles looking for her, all round that part of the river, for about an hour, and she wasn’t there. She was gone.’ Phil fell silent again.
‘Her body washed up in Rotherhithe, three days later.’
Nadine gasped.
‘We still don’t know why she did it. Nobody knows why she did it. Everyone who knew her said she was happy, everyone said she really loved me, that she was so excited about the wedding, about the future. It doesn’t make any sense. You know, that was nearly a year ago, and every day that goes by I want to talk to her, even if it’s only for a minute, just so I can ask her why. It’s the worst thing in the world not to know why. I know how, I know where and I know when—I just need to know why. That’s all.’
‘Oh God. Phil. I couldn’t imagine…how can you…it must have been just awful…I mean…’
‘It’s all right,’ he smiled, ‘you’re not supposed to know what to say. Don’t worry. No one knows what to say. There’s nothing anyone can say…That was a year ago. Then, like I told you, a couple of months later, my parents died. I was a bit of a mess for a while, as you can probably imagine, didn’t really have much faith in anything, nearly lost my job, messed up a lot of friendships, a lot of drinking, drugs, self-pitying, you know. I was wallowing in it, really.
‘And then one morning, earlier this year, I woke up and the sun was shining and I could hear kids playing outside in the street, and I thought, Phil, you’re nearly forty years old and what have you got? Nothing, I thought, nothing except this house and this body. That’s all you’ve got. So I decided to take more care of them, and I started doing up my parents’ house and looking after my body. No drugs, booze only at the weekends, a healthy diet. I bought myself a recipe book and I learned to cook—you know, Indian veg stuff, pasta, stir-fries—healthy stuff. I bet you can’t believe that, eh! And I spent a fortune on my folks’ house, every penny I earned went into that house. I put central heating in, a new bathroom, I knocked through from the front room to the back room and put these big adjoining doors in between. I chucked out all their old furniture and bought all new, stripped off all the wallpaper, painted the whole house, every room, every door. I replaced the door-handles with these really expensive brass ones, pulled up the carpets and polished the floorboards. It took me six months but it was the most rewarding thing I’d ever done. And it took my mind off the…bad stuff. When it was finished I put on my best clothes and I just sort of walked around it for ages, you know, imagining that it was somebody else’s house, trying to imagine it through somebody else’s eyes. And it looked fantastic! You should have seen it, Nadine. It was immaculate.
‘So. I start feeling better about myself, you know, I’m getting back some self-respect, and there’s this girl at work, a secretary at the office, called Fiona. I’ve always thought she was really nice but I’d never have done anything about it before, would have been too scared she’d turn me down, humiliate me. But one day I’m in the office, talking to Payroll about something that’s gone wrong with my overtime, and on my way out I bump into Fiona, and I suddenly find myself asking her out and she’s saying yes! Just like that. So we arrange to have a drink on the Friday night. It’s the first time I’ve been out for six months, and I’m in a bit of a state getting ready, you know, not being able to decide what to wear, that sort of thing. So I’m running around, I’m scared I’m going to be late, and I just kind of run out the front door and slam it behind me.
‘So anyway. Me and Fiona, we’re drinking and chatting, and I’m not doing what I’m doing here with you, I’m not telling her about everything that’s happened, I’m keeping it light-hearted, keeping it lively, making her laugh, asking her all about herself. You know, being the other Phil. And it’s going really well. We go off and have dinner and I order some champagne, and she’s really impressed, and for the first time in months I’m feeling like a human being again. This girl, this Fiona, she really likes me, and I start feeling like I like myself, too. Before we know it, it’s one in the morning and we’re both a bit pissed, so I suggest that she comes back to mine to order a cab. I really want her to see my house, I want her to be the first person to see how beautiful it looks, how hard I’ve worked. So she says, yeah, that would be lovely and then she says maybe she could stay the night, and I’m thinking, Christ, what a result, and I’m so excited I’m almost running home. We’re laughing and we’re chatting and we’re holding hands, and as we get towards the house, there’s this smell in the air, it’s acrid, it catches in the back of the throat. And then’—he stopped and pointed at Nadine’s empty glass—‘d’you want another drink, by the way?’
Nadine shook her head vigorously. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no thanks. I’m fine. Carry on.’
He nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Yeah. So. There’s this smell in the air, and as we get closer to home there’s smoke, too. Thick, thick clouds of black smoke. We turn the corner into my road and the street’s wall-to-wall fire engines—dozens of them—and I start walking faster now, really fast, and Fiona’s running behind me in these high heels, saying, “It’s not your house, is it, Phil, it’s not your house?” And you know what? It was my house. It was my fucking house, man. Gutted, from top to bottom. All the windows gone, all the furniture, fixtures, fittings, everything. Gone. It was a shell.’
‘Oh my God,’ cried Nadine. ‘How? What happened?’
‘Huh.’ He shrugged. ‘It was my fault. I left a fag burning, didn’t I? Can you believe it? One fag, one measly little fag.’ He took one out of the packet in front of him and held it under Nadine’s gaze. ‘Something that small, that puny, it’s hard to believe. If you’d seen what it did to my house—to three storeys and four bedrooms, and the way it just ate up all those months of hard work. It’s frightening,’ he said.
‘What did you do?’
‘Well, that’s the thing, right. I don’t know what happened after that. Not really. Only what other people have told me. I think I must have gone into some sort of shock. Fiona took me to the hospital, and they treated the shock, and then she took me home with her and got in touch with my grandparents, who came and picked me up and took me back with them to Bournemouth. I don’t really remember any of this. I was there for three weeks apparently—it was summer, I can remember vague things like the beach and the seagulls, the fat people with sunburn, the smell of frying onions, the sound of fruit machines, but I can’t remember any events, I can’t remember what I was actually doing there. I reckon I had some kind of breakdown because I became quite unmanageable apparently, talking to myself, disappearing for hours on end, not washing, not eating. I was a bit of a nutter by all accounts and eventually my grandparents couldn’t take it any more, so they sent me to a hospital.
‘I was there for three months and they gave me pills and they gave me psychotherapy and they gave me counselling, all that bollocks, and then they sent me home. My grandparents kicked another tenant out of their old Peabody flat and got it ready for me. I’ve been there for a couple of months, you know, trying to live a normal life, getting to know people.’
‘What about Fiona?’ asked Nadine. ‘What happened to Fiona?’
Phil shrugged. ‘Never heard from her again. I got my job back at the marquee company, but she wasn’t working there any more. Got a job in the City or something.’
‘So, you’re all alone?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I met this girl called Jo a couple of weeks ago, down the pub with all her mates, and we got talking. Turns out she was a student, and her and all her student mates ended up coming back to mine because most of that lot live with their parents or in tiny rented flats with no living rooms. They come round most nights now—all of them, just for a drink and a smoke and somewhere to hang out. It’s nice for them to have somewhere to come and I like having them around. It makes me feel like I’m not all alone, even though none of them really talk to me or anything. I think they think I’m a bit boring, you know?’ he smiled. ‘A bit of a weird old fart. But I don’t mind, really. The company’s nice. I feel safe. I don’t feel safe when I’m on my own. Not really. Not any more. When I’m on my own I feel like if I look out the window the streets could be deserted and everyone could have disappeared and I’d be the only person left in the whole world, d’you know what I mean? The only person left…
‘Everything feels so—so—ephemeral sometimes. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. It’s like, I wasn’t expecting you to come tonight, not really. I thought maybe I’d imagined your phone call, imagined you. But you came! You’re here, man. And it’s so great. D’you know something?’ he continued happily. ‘I don’t care what we do tonight. I don’t care what we talk about, and I don’t care where we talk about it. Just so long as you’re actually here, in front of me, where I can see you. That’s all. That’s all I want.’
Phil fell into another silence then and Nadine fished her purse out of her bag. ‘Let me get you a drink,’ she said, resting her hand on his shoulder, her heart close to bursting with sympathy and pity. Poor, poor Phil.
‘Great,’ he said, ‘thanks.’
At the bar, Murdo leaned towards Nadine. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked in his Highland growl.
‘Yes,’ said Nadine lightly, ‘of course.’
‘You better be careful with that lad,’ he said, swivelling his eyes in the direction of Phil’s slouched figure, ‘he’s had a hard life, you know?’
‘Yes. I know. He’s just been telling me.’
‘He’s trouble, that one, so you better look out for him. He dis’nae need any more trouble in his life than he’s already had. Anyway, what’ll it be?’
Nadine took the drinks back to their table and Phil looked up at her gratefully. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘thank you, Nadine Kite.’
And Nadine smiled back at him nervously and thought to herself that she was not just walking but positively sprinting up a path in her life that she was never, ever supposed to take, and then she thought to herself how even if she tried to turn around now, this very minute, and get off the path, it was already too late, far too late to ever find her way back.
EIGHTEEN
Delilah hadn’t arrived at Dig’s empty handed. As well as her tiny and unattractive dog, she had produced from somewhere, God knows where, a pair of enormous and ominously bulging suitcases.
‘You going somewhere?’ Dig asked, eyeing the cases with deep suspicion.
Delilah smiled and shrugged. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s the thing. It’s not really working out for us at Marina’s. I’ve…er…I’ve just had a huge row with her.’
‘With Marina? What about?’
‘Oh God. Nothing. Nothing, really. She’s just such a pious, sanctimonious old cow. I don’t know why I ever thought it would be a good idea to stay with her. I’d have stayed in a hotel, you know, but I can’t because of the dog. And then she threatened to tell my mum I was back in town, so I just told her to fuck off, packed a bag and walked.
‘You should have seen her face. It was as if she’d never heard the word “fuck” before. I tell you, there’s little in life worse than a frustrated nun, there really isn’t…’
There was a brief silence as Dig absorbed this information, waiting tensely for the inevitable.
‘So, anyway, I—er—was sort of hoping that me and Digby could maybe crash here for a while. We won’t be any trouble, I promise you and we’ll be gone as soon as we can find somewhere else to go. It’s just that there’s no one else for me to turn to right now, what with me not talking to my mum and my brothers all with houses full of children and everything, and it would only be for a few days. And Digby’s fully house-trained and very quiet.’
The tiny creature suddenly threw himself on to Dig’s corduroy sofa and began yapping incredibly loudly.
‘…Well, usually he’s quiet. He’s just excited to be somewhere new. I’ll cook for you and keep the place tidy. Not,’ she said, peering around the door-way into Dig’s spotless flat, ‘that it actually needs it. So. What do you think?’ She beamed at him.
Dig was speechless for a second, his head telling him that there wasn’t enough room in his flat for a girl and a dog and two suitcases full of their belongings, while his heart told him that there was a devastatingly beautiful woman who he might well be in love with on his doorstep begging most appealingly for a place to stay and of course he should invite her in. As he grappled with his dilemma, the awkward silence was broken by the buzz of the doorbell.
‘Takeaway, ’ said a muffled Indian voice.
‘Top floor,’ said Dig, suddenly flustered by the preponderance of issues bearing down on him all at once and the thought of so many people, animals and large objects jostling for space on his tiny landing. Something would have to give.
‘Right,’ he said, turning back to Delilah, ‘I’d better give you a hand with these cases.’
‘Oh,’ squeaked Delilah, ‘really? I can stay? Oh thank you! Thank you so much.’ And then she threw her arms around Dig’s neck and hugged him hard.
Dig’s arms crept slowly around her waist and through the dampness of her coat he could feel the shape of her backbone, the softness of the flesh that covered her hips, the squashiness of her breasts against his chest and the heat of her body emanating through her clothes and as her lips found his cheek and pressed themselves against his flushed skin, Dig decided that this arrangement could actually work out after all.
NINETEEN
Nadine is on at least her fifth large tumbler of vodka.
And they’ve been extremely large. Equivalent to two or three pub measures. She started off drinking them with some lime cordial she found in the kitchen but gave up on the mixer after the first couple. Since then, she’s been drinking them neat—without ice. She can’t actually taste the vodka any more.
She’d said no, at first, when Phil had invited her back to his flat after the pub closed. Despite the fact that they’d ended up having a fairly pleasant evening together, helped along considerably by the four pints of Theakstones she’d consumed, the weight of the dreadful unfolding of events in Phil’s life had started to make itself felt around her temples and she wanted to get away before things got any heavier.
But he’d looked so deflated by her refusal, almost like he was going to cry, and all of a sudden she’d thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s an orphan, he’s got no one.’ And before she knew what was happening she was agreeing to come back for a smoke, just to assuage her conscience.
Phil’s flat was in the Peabody estate off the Holloway Road, up three flights of echoing concrete stairs, and very strangely decorated, like an old people’s home. ‘I haven’t done anything with it since I moved in. You can probably guess why.’ He smiled ironically.
There were about half a dozen people already in his draughty living room when they walked in, listening to Gomez and sitting under a thick fleece of smoke. None of them looked up when Phil walked in, except for one tall, skinny girl with waist-length hair and enormous breasts straining beneath a child’s T–shirt who unfolded herself from a cushion on the floor to greet him.
>
‘Nadine, this is Jo. Jo, this is Nadine. Me and Nadine used to live together at university.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Jo, handing Phil the bum end of a spliff and lowering herself back on to her cushion, ‘didn’t know you went to university.’
Nadine looked around her. Everyone in this room was so young and so distant, she felt almost as if she didn’t exist in their eyes, as if she was of no consequence—which was ridiculous considering the fact that they were a bunch of students and she was a successful photographer with a sports car, a flat and a £40,000 commission. But if she was going to stand even the slightest chance of enjoying herself with these people, then she was going to have to get a lot more drunk than she was right now.
Phil led her to the kitchen and fixed her what would be the first of many vodkas.
An hour and five large vodkas later and Nadine is suddenly feeling very brave and self-confident, and all the incredibly strong spliff she’s smoked has given her surroundings a slightly surreal edge. She feels like she’s in some kind of lovely floaty dream, and now Phil feels like one of those strange characters who wander in and out of your dreams sometimes, pretend-people who you don’t know in real life—made-up people.
She’s been using Phil as a sounding-board for the last half an hour, chewing his ear off about Dig and Delilah and what a mistake Dig’s making and how he won’t pay any attention to what Nadine has been trying to tell him for his own good, and how he’s going to end up getting his heart broken all over again, and Phil, despite having so many problems of his own, real problems, big problems, has turned out to be a great, great listener, agreeing wholeheartedly with everything Nadine says and endearing himself to her more than he could possibly imagine in the process. He met Dig a few times in London during holidays, so Nadine respects his opinion. He also has a large personal supply of grass and is being very generous with it, letting Nadine roll spliff after spliff while they chat.