by Holly Seddon
And I didn’t want anyone swooping George & Lili from under my nose. That’s how it starts, one account in crisis is ‘saved’ by some keen, energetic rank-riser and then you’re old news. I did it myself enough times, breezing in to established accounts with my youthful enthusiasm and stealing them from under the noses of more established account managers.
I couldn’t face the morning Tube commute: the seasickness of standing in the crush, the lock-jawed determination needed to bash everyone out of the way. I got a cab and slept all the way again. I was so grateful that the driver had woken me (and not driven me around longer routes to bump up the fare) that I threw an extra note through the slot.
I just about held it together that day, despite my eyelids closing of their own volition and my head thumping. I nodded at the right times, gave the right answers – I thought – and listened as carefully as possible. The cogs of activity soothed me and I felt safer being in my little box, my glass lair. Paul had come to check in on me a couple of times but I shooed him away, embarrassed. I got to the end of the day and practically fell into a cab again without thinking to wait for him.
I struggled to sleep that night too. My lower belly, the scene of the crime, was aching and throbbing around a central pang that shot through me and made me sweat and shake. The site where the supposedly keyhole surgery had taken place was swollen and red, more like a letterbox than a keyhole. The join of skin seemed a little more frayed than it had been, and was oozing a little. A double dose of my painkillers was the only thing that helped me sleep and I woke up drenched with sweat, having slept through my alarm. It was John’s first day back, my timing couldn’t have been worse.
I showered and dressed in a hurry, make-up caked over my pale and clammy face. I staggered into the G&L creative meeting, half an hour after it had started. The direction they were taking was already wrong. It was my job to steer the art director and copywriters to the client’s needs and wishes, to give them the context in which to create. But the ideas everyone was enthusing about were the polar opposites of the initial brief and it all needed a sharp swerve back on track.
‘Hang on,’ I said to Colm, the calm Irish art director who worked closely with Paul. ‘This isn’t what we talked about. Why the change?’
‘John felt that we should go more personality and less utility, Kate. He briefed us from home and Paul’s been working on the new creative.’
Paul nodded at me from his seat next to Colm. I felt anger rising up through my neck and glared at Paul. ‘You didn’t say anything to me,’ I heard myself saying to him, as Colm’s face grew pink under his sandy hair.
‘If you think it’s the wrong way to go, let’s get John in here,’ Colm said, his breezy tone almost hiding his irritation.
‘This just isn’t what G&L wanted, Colm,’ I said. ‘They’ve already rejected a lot of our ideas so I’m concerned that this’ll really piss them off.’ Colm gestured to the conference phone set into the big table and I dialled the familiar extension.
‘Hello?’
‘John, it’s Kate.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m in the G&L creative meeting and I’ve got some concerns.’
‘Oh?’
‘I know you’ve briefed the team but I think I’m missing some background on that because it’s quite a change of direction—’
‘It’s a fix, Kate.’ He cut me off. ‘And I had to make that fucking fix while I was off with my newborn. Thanks for your congratulations, by the way.’
Paul audibly sucked the air and looked at me. I bit my lip and kept my face stony.
‘Congratulations,’ I said.
‘The whole account was headed in the wrong direction and G&L were threatening to walk. I heard about your bullshit in the meeting with them. That certainly didn’t help, so I think you need to sit back on this one and let the team work without interference, alright?’
The click as he disconnected cut through the room like a cough. I saw Paul looking at me uneasily, and no-one spoke until Colm said, ‘Okay, well, if we maybe carry on with these ideas and see where they take us, yeah?’
I nodded, grateful to him for speaking. As I stood up, a surge of pain ran from my belly to my spine and I doubled over. Paul ran over to me and helped me sit down, a huge flower of blood spreading from my operation scar and through my blouse.
‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘Everyone out,’ Colm called. ‘We’ll come back in five.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
1991
In the spring before we took our exams, Paul and I applied to university.
Paul applied to a few universities and a handful of polytechnics. He had been predicted better grades at A-level than me and had a glowing reference from his history tutor. He applied as far as Manchester and as close as Bristol. Like me, he applied for University College London and also King’s College London but didn’t get an offer from either. In the end, from the offers he got, he chose Bristol Polytechnic. It changed to a university in his second year, becoming the University of the West of England but he still has a hang-up about it. I’ve been bored to tears, figuratively anyway, from annual laments about his poly degree and hand-wringing over doing a master’s.
The fact is, education for Paul was sullied by students. If he could take a prestigious MA in a sealed library in isolation, only then he might manage it with a smile on his face.
I always knew I’d apply to university in London. I was never clever enough to consider Oxford or Cambridge. I didn’t really know anything about any other cities, didn’t really have any interest in discovering them. Perhaps because, for so long, London was the place where my parents went. The city swallowed them up and spat them back out, but I never got to see inside that dangerous mouth.
I was deadly bored in Somerset and I wanted to live faster. I wanted to live in my own way, find new faces, new ideas, new music. To throw bloody paint everywhere like a YBA and get drunk on ridiculous kitsch drinks like Snowballs. To wear clothes out of magazines without ridicule. I wanted to become a butterfly, crushing my cocoon on the way out. In other words, I was just like every other eighteen-year-old preparing to leave home in 1991.
We both did well in our A-levels that summer. For me, well enough to meet the offer I’d been given by Central Saint Martins. In truth, having Sunnygrove on my application helped more than Yeovil College or my own abilities ever could. If I hadn’t got in, I would have gone to the City of London Polytechnic. If I hadn’t got in there, I would have gone to anywhere in the city that would have had me.
I’d outgrown Somerset but felt small in my dad’s empty house. He was never home, flying between the newly unified Germany and the newly dismantled USSR. He hated the ideology of the Eastern Bloc but he’d made a fortune selling things to them, and was now salvaging rather than building.
I couldn’t be bothered to salvage anything. I’d burned my bridges with everyone at college. Not dramatically, just a slow crackling flame that turned friendships to ember, eventually cooling to grey.
Paul and I were due to start at uni on the same date and could move into our respective halls in the days running up to it. Mick offered to take me to London first, with Paul and Viv in tow, and then take Paul and Viv to Bristol the next day. I knew the price of all that petrol, not to mention the hassle of so much driving, was a steep cost and a generous gift. I said yes, the kindness choking me a little as I thought of how easily I’d left the Loxtons to themselves after Will.
My father came to see me in my room while I was packing.
‘So,’ he said, making like he would sit on the edge of my bed but then changing his mind at the last minute. ‘All packed?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘And are you feeling. . . are you, how do you feel?’ he asked.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m looking forward to getting out of Somerset,’ I added, a little spitefully.
‘Do you have enough—’
‘Money? Yes,’ I said, ‘I have enough money.
’ My father looked down at his hands, so I added, ‘But thank you.’
‘I’ll have Ted run us up there and then perhaps we could have dinner once you’re settled?’
I sat up and looked at him, trying to understand. ‘Do you mean in London? You’ll come with me?’
‘Well, of course. Unless, you don’t—’
‘Of course,’ I said, so taken aback by the interest that thoughts of the Loxtons and our plans briefly faded away. ‘If you’re sure?’
My father had taken a brief look around the room, the piles of clothes and records ready to be bagged and boxed, the boxes of books and tapes. ‘Yes,’ he nodded, leaving the room.
The next day, I walked to Church Street and knocked on the front door. Through the living-room window, I could see Paul with his arm around Viv, her nodding as he spoke. She’d been so young when she had him, I think now, she’d never really been an adult without him. That day must have loomed like a bottomless pit. And I think he knew it too, more than I did. He and his mum always had that unspoken understanding.
‘Katie,’ Viv said, opening up. ‘Stop knocking, what’s got into you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘I’m only teasing, love. All set for tomorrow? Mick’ll come round here first and get me and Paul, and then we’ll come and load up and—’
‘Viv,’ I said quietly, avoiding her eye. ‘I’m really sorry but my dad wants to take me.’
‘Your dad?’
Viv had always respected that, no matter how shabbily they treated me or how absent they were, my parents were always my parents. She’d taken them to task – more than I knew then – she’d questioned their decisions, but she’d never tried to step on their toes. But this one thing, this thing that really was small compared to everything else she’d shared with me, this was different. She crossed her arms over her chest and fixed her dazzling eyes on mine.
For a moment she didn’t say anything, and I squirmed under the precision of her gaze.
‘How come?’ Paul said, eventually.
‘I don’t know, he just, he seems to think it’s important,’ I said.
‘Well, it is important,’ Viv said sharply. ‘Just like all the other things he should have done, and she should—’
‘Please don’t talk about my mother like that,’ I heard myself say, quietly.
Viv uncrossed her arms, looked briefly at Paul. ‘I’m disappointed,’ she said, as she went into the kitchen and started banging things around.
‘Shall I leave?’ I asked Paul.
‘Yeah,’ he said softly. ‘You probably should.’
Ted had loaded the car when I got back from the Loxtons’, while I nodded dumbly as he asked of each bag, ‘And this one?’
The next day, the morning of the trip, I came downstairs and made toast. The house was quiet, no Mr or Mrs Baker bustling around. No footsteps in distant rooms, no telephone ringing. I took my plate and drink of orange juice to the kitchen table and sat down. In the middle of the rich antique wood was a cheque for £500 dated the previous day and signed by my father.
‘Your dad’s sorry,’ Ted said, appearing from the pantry with an apple. ‘He had to go early this morning, it couldn’t be helped.’
‘Go where?’ I asked, although I had some idea. ‘Will he be long?’
‘He’s on the Aeroflot to Moscow.’ Ted seemed embarrassed, bit into the apple and looked away.
I ran full-speed, the toast lurching around in my stomach. I reached Church Street, head buzzing with my heart beat, dripping in sweat. The car wasn’t there, so perhaps Mick hadn’t arrived yet. Or perhaps he wasn’t coming that day at all now, as there was no London trip planned. I hammered on the front door and peered in the window. Nobody came. I hammered again.
‘Viv!’ I shouted.
‘You’ve missed her,’ came Lorraine’s voice from behind.
I turned around to see her standing in luminous yellow leggings and a bright pink top, glowing in front of the grey stone of The Swan.
She clattered across the road to me.
‘They were all in here last night for a send-off and they’ve taken Paul to Bristol.’
‘Bristol?’
‘The poly,’ Lorraine said, as if I was simple.
‘I know but, they weren’t going until tomorrow.’
She shrugged. ‘Sorry, love. When are you off anyway?’
Before Ted and I left, I took a final look at the house and felt a sting of surprise as my lip wobbled. I slid in next to a box of records and buckled in, as Ted asked what I was going to read at university. ‘Art and textiles,’ I said.
‘Very nice,’ he said. He nodded his head and added, ‘Very nice indeed,’ as the smoked glass slid silently up between the front and the back. I heard the radio crackle on.
I later found out that some of the other students that had seen me pull up in a glossy black Jaguar XJ thought Ted was my dad. I also found out that someone started a rumour that I was Cilla Black’s daughter. Because obviously a well-off redhead girl must be related to the only famous rich redhead at the time.
Ted and I wordlessly carried my stuff into my room, tag teaming. I wondered if he’d done this for his own daughters, whether they had gone to university and if he had sat in their empty bedrooms afterwards, wondering where the time had gone. Remembering how small their hands had once been when they reached for him. Sometimes I imagine Harry’s room emptied out and chilly but I have to stop myself, the black hole in my chest is too much to bear.
When everything was settled in my room at the halls of residence, I thanked Ted.
‘Good luck then, maid,’ he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’m sure your dad’ll visit soon.’
———
My room was on the ground floor and there were bars on the windows. It looked out over Russell Square, incredibly central. God only knows how much that property would be worth now. In the basement there was a huge windowless refectory, where those who paid extra – as I did, or rather my father did – got breakfast and dinner provided.
I stayed in my room, pacing the few square foot of space between items of furniture. I organised my clothes, books, records and tapes. I hung up my David Bowie, Kate Bush and Patti Smith posters. I took them down again. Too childish? I stuck them back up in a different order. I laid my make-up out in front of a mirror and hung my new Christie’s towels from hooks on the back door.
There wasn’t a basin in this room. The shared toilet was down the hall and the showers were on the third floor. I put my toothbrush in a cup on the bookshelf. It looked weird.
Dinner was available from 6 p.m. so I waited until 6.30 p.m., unsure if ‘better to be late’ party rules applied to halls of residence dinnertimes, then made my way down.
The line for food was full of pale, wide-eyed faces. Many eyes were red and stained with wet mascara and there were frequent outbursts of nervous laughter. The strip-lighting and lack of windows made me feel giddy, I wanted to grab someone and shake them and say, ‘Oh my God, we’re all here, we’ve all escaped!’ Instead, I shuffled slowly and then got flummoxed when faced with the options of macaroni cheese, cod and chips, egg salad or chicken curry. I stepped back from the food counter and out of the queue. Instead, I made my way to the corner where a large industrial toaster was rotating aimlessly. It took several tries to find the sweet spot between warm bread and burnt toast but I finally managed it and snuck the plate back up to my room, along with a carton of orange juice that said ‘not for individual sale’ and had a picture of a dancing fruit on it.
London was right outside the window as I nibbled cold toast and drank orange juice through a straw. It was dark already, the late September sun long hidden.
I felt uniquely old and new. And restless. I laid my pyjamas out on my single bed while the city blazed the other side of the window. I picked up my toothbrush and toothpaste from their hall-issued cup, then put them down again. I looked around and decided to leave. As I reached for the door handle, I actuall
y said ‘Fuck it’ out loud.
The breeze whipped my nose and lips as I pushed out through the heavy wooden doors and into the night. Russell Square was dotted with taxis outside the various hotels and I pulled my scarf up over my face like a ninja and fumbled to do the rest of my coat buttons up with chilly fingers as I marched determinedly nowhere in particular because everywhere in London looks like somewhere.
I was in storybook London. Red buses and black taxis slid past me like film props. I had to remind myself that this was real life.
I walked down to Charing Cross Road and all I saw at first were bookshops. I walked over to gaze in the window of one, drawn by their stillness, their longevity. I thought of Paul. His birthday that year was to be the first I’d missed since our ninth. On my birthday, I’d gone to Viv’s for a birthday tea and we’d had a cake, just the three of us. Then I’d gone home to be given a framed photo of my mum to take away to uni with me. The gesture had winded me, until my father told me – almost apologetically – that it was Mrs Baker’s idea. I had taken the photo with me but I hadn’t decided whether to put it out on show or not. Instead, I faffed around with my toothbrush.
And maybe it was feeling like a tiny dot in a huge place, or maybe it was the row upon row of old books, lit up like gems. Maybe it was guilt for dropping them for a crumb of attention from my father, but all I wanted right then was to hear Viv’s voice.
I slipped into the nearest phone box, temporarily agog at the sheer quantity of tart cards offering spankings and pre-op experiences and almost nothing that sounded like common or garden sex. And then I dialled, pressing the cold square buttons, the sequence engraved in my mind.
‘Hello?’ Viv sounded wobbly, older than I remembered.
‘You’re home,’ I said. ‘It’s Katie.’
‘Mick just dropped me off,’ she said, her voice curt.
‘I came to say goodbye,’ I said, ‘this morning. I came to say goodbye before I left.’