by Louise Voss
Next I went into Boots and bought a jar of paracetamol and a Bart Simpson hot-water bottle cover (to try to make the pills look less suspicious). I’d planned to repeat the exercise in every other chemist in Richmond—minus the novelty hot-water bottle covers, of course—but after an hour of walking around, I had failed to locate any other pharmacies at all.
Bugger. I’d have to drive round instead, looking for those big green crosses outside buildings that signified chemists’ shops.
It struck me that buying booze and headache pills, and gathering together my favorite CDs, made it feel more as if I was planning a hen party with a bunch of girlfriends. Not that I had ever gone anywhere with a bunch of girlfriends, though. My girlfriends hadn’t come in bunches, like grapes, but as one perfect piece of fruit. Sam the Starfruit.
My meter was about to run out, so I headed back toward the green, going via W H Smith’s to buy a purple folder for the manuscript. The girl at the till got annoyed with me when I flung the money at her without waiting for my change, but I was paranoid about getting a parking ticket. It was funny how I could still be worried about such trivialities, I thought.
It began to rain again, just as I was circumnavigating the bald muddy patches of grass on Richmond Green, wondering once more why I bothered—I was planning to kill myself, but it was of paramount importance not to get mud on my Patrick Coxes or a parking fine before I did?
Head down, thinking aspirin, I was muttering to myself, “Only one bottle, well, that won’t get me very far, will it? Where else have I seen those big green crosses? Oh yeah, there’s that one in Twickenham, the Maple Leaf, and I’m sure there’s a couple in St. Margarets, too.… ”
“A couple of what?” said a familiar voice from behind my car.
I stood on a loose paving slab, and water squirted up my trouser leg. There appeared to be no escape from Vinnie.
“What are you doing here?” I glared at him as jaws of cold water sank into my left calf.
“Waiting for you, of course. Good thing you got back when you did; only a minute left on your meter, and a soggy, cross-looking traffic warden heading toward us as we speak. I’d hate to see you get a ticket, now.”
Vinnie tutted with mock-concern and leaned on my bonnet. As usual, my shock turned to fury.
“You’re happy to make a few hundred grand by selling pictures of me to the press, but you’d hate to see me get a parking ticket? Just go away, Vinnie. You make me sick.”
“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong—I’m not happy to make money out of you, Helena,” he said, brushing a stray leaf off my windscreen. “That’s why I’m waiting for you. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Well, I don’t want to hear it,” I said shortly, pressing the button on my key ring to unlock the BMW. The little pip it made sounded as grumpy as I did.
“Oh, but you do,” said Vinnie, dancing round the driver’s side and putting his hand over mine as I tried to open the door.
I snatched it away. “Piss off, Vinnie, I’m not in the mood.”
Vinnie delved into a damp backpack and pulled out a hardback brown envelope. He thrust it at me. “There you go.”
“What is that?” I asked wearily.
“Prints and negatives. All there, none missing, I promise you.”
I stared at him. “None missing except the one you sold to the tabloids, right? When’s it coming out, then? I’ve been checking the papers, but I haven’t seen it yet.”
Vinnie laughed. “No, straight up. They’re all in there. I haven’t sold any of them. I’m giving them back to you.”
He dropped suddenly to his knees on the wet road and wrapped his arms around my thighs. “I’ve been a complete arse, Helena, I’m so, so sorry. You have to forgive me. For everything: Miyuki, Natalie, the photos—everything.”
Who’s Natalie? I thought.
“I miss you so much. Please take me back. I swear I’ll never let you down again. Marry me, Helena, please? I love you.”
My jaw dropped so far that even with its recently broken limited movement, it was close to clunking Vinnie on the top of his head as he groveled beseechingly before me.
I didn’t know what to say. No one had ever proposed to me before. Marry him?
It was lashing with rain now. I disengaged his arms and collapsed speechless into the car. Vinnie rushed back around and climbed into the passenger seat. We both sat there, dripping, until he turned and threw the envelope, Frisbee style, onto the backseat.
“What’s the matter with the photos? Were they all blurred or something?”
Vinnie looked hurt, more, I thought, because I was doubting his technical prowess as a photographer than because I was doubting him. He like to excel in all things.
“Of course they weren’t blurred. They’re great, as it happens, crystal clear. I’m telling you, I just feel like a heel for doing something so horrible to you. I was desperate, man. I got into a spot of bother with a dealer friend of mine—you know, I owe him some cash, and he’s not happy with me. That’s why I did it. If I’d been thinking straight, I’d never have done anything to hurt you.”
“But you didn’t sell them?”
“No. Look, I realized I was out of order.”
“So do you still owe him the money?”
Vinnie lit up a Gauloise, but I reached over, extracted it from between his lips, and threw it out my door. We watched it roll away across the tarmac, sparking red, to lie disconsolately in the gutter.
“I can’t stand you smoking in my car,” I said.
“Sorry,” Vinnie replied humbly.
I decided to make a generous gesture. He was obviously in trouble. “Listen. I don’t mind if you want to flog all that equipment I bought you—the computer and stuff—to pay off your debts.”
Vinnie looked away, and I realized that he’d sold them long ago.
“Oh, right, I see. Cheers, then,” I said.
I hadn’t realized he had such a bad drug problem. Or perhaps he owed money because he was dealing? I wouldn’t have put it past him. Either way, I didn’t really want to know.
“I was desperate, H. Please forgive me. You were the only good thing in my life, and I let you down.”
I leaned back against the headrest and watched a little boy heading our way, three or four years old, followed by his mother. The boy was dressed in yellow galoshes and one of those really cute yellow duck raincoats, where the peak of the hood was the duck’s beak. He was carrying a small translucent umbrella decorated with a frieze of tropical fish, which he held down low over his head. I could see his baby breath misting up the inside of the plastic. His mother was carrying car keys and looked harassed.
“Come on, Timmy, hurry up, the car’s parked just across the road,” I heard her say.
Timmy broke away, ran a couple of steps, and jumped with both feet into a deep puddle by the curb, soaking himself and his mother. I waited for her to yell and drag him off to the car, and for a second she looked cross. Then suddenly and unexpectedly she skipped forward two steps, too, and jumped into the same puddle. They stood there laughing with glee, and even in the midst of Vinnie’s machinations, I couldn’t help smiling as well.
Suddenly I wished, with a fierce, fearful yearning, that it was Ruby splashing under a duck’s beak hat in front of me, and Toby clowning around with her. I could have gotten out and joined them, and forgotten all about Vinnie.
“You’ve always let me down, Vinnie,” I said. I’d always thought it was a cliché, when people’s voices were said to sound “very far away,” but mine did. Probably because it was off somewhere with the rest of me, jumping in puddles with Toby.
“Whenever I needed you, you let me down. You’ve cheated on me, taken advantage of me, sponged off me. When Sam was dying, I thought for once you were there for me, but you weren’t. When I had the accident, you never visited me in hospital; you never came near me until you decided that you could make some money out of me. Why on earth would I want to marry you?”
“But I’m always saying that. It’s never stopped you before.”
I grinned very slightly, and Vinnie sensed that I was weakening. I couldn’t help it. I began to remember all the good things about him: his sense of humor and adventure, his amazing prowess in the sack. How he kept me company. How he made art for me.
“Please, Helena, let’s give it one more try. I really want you. I’m so sorry about everything.”
Then I remembered the Plan and snapped back to reality. “Sorry, Vin, no can do,” I said briskly, putting the key into the ignition. “We can’t get back together because I’m leaving in a couple of days. I’m going away, and I’m not coming back.”
“Where? Let me come, too!”
I laughed shortly. “You can’t. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got preparations to make.”
His expression turned from peachy wheedle into purple tantrum. So much for contrition, I thought.
I started the car and put it into gear. If I looked straight ahead, I couldn’t see Vinnie at all, since he was sitting on my blind side.
“Bye, then, Vinnie. This time I can promise you that you won’t be seeing me again.”
Vinnie opened the door, narrowly missing getting it torn off its hinges by a passing car. “Aren’t you even going to thank me for not selling the photos?”
I cackled again. It felt quite liberating. “Er, let me think.… No. Do you really expect me to be grateful to you for that? Now please go. I’m not even going to wish you a nice life this time, because your karma is probably so rotten by now that it’s very unlikely that too many more good things will happen to you.”
I twisted my head so that I could see Vinnie get out of the car, dragging his backpack like a petulant child. Before closing the door, he stuck his head back inside. There was an extremely nasty expression on his face, worse than any I’d seen before.
“I’ve got news for you, Miss ‘I’m a Pop Star,’ ” he said. “You think you’re so fucking famous that you don’t like to go out in case you’re mobbed? Well, that’s just a joke, because I know for a fact that nobody gives a shit anymore. No one cares that you had an accident, no one cares that you lost your job, no one cares if you never work again. Blue Idea are naff eighties has-beens.”
He continued, talking almost to himself. “Of course, I should’ve realized that it was all in your head long ago, but you had me fooled, too. All this talk about paparazzi and stalkers and people hassling you—I went out with you for a year, and I never saw you get hassled for being famous. I never even saw you sign an autograph!”
“You always made us stay in because you were afraid of Miyuki seeing us together!” I protested, half afraid, half amused by Vinnie’s lame attempt to get back at me.
“It’s all in your head, Helena,” he hissed, tapping the side of his forehead with a nicotine-stained finger. “God, I feel sorry for you. You’re living in a fantasy world. I only came near you because you’re rich. Why else would I bother? You’re a loser.”
I noticed that the car parked across the road contained a uniformed child propped up asleep in the backseat, alone, her face compressed and melted in sleep against the window, her school hat slipping off the side of her head like a little clown’s. The front window had been left open for her, just a crack, as if she were a dog on a hot day.
“If you say so, Vinnie. But I think you’re the one who’s imagining things.” I tried to sound bored, but his voice was so scathing and venomous.
“Ah, but that’s just where you’re wrong, Miss Barking Mad. I’ve got proof. When I rang up the Daily Mirror to say I had exclusive photos of you after your accident, know what they said? They laughed in my face. ‘Give you fifty quid for them, mate,’ they said. ‘No one’s interested in her these days. We only ran the shot of her accident because her mate Justin Becker was involved.’ So now do you see? It’s all in your mind. You aren’t famous at all anymore.”
He slammed the door and walked away from me for the last time, whistling a vindictive little tune, which sounded a lot like a Blue Idea song. The sleeping child stirred and stretched out in the backseat of her car, disappearing from my view.
The Sundays
HERE’S WHERE THE STORY ENDS
TWELVE-THIRTY A.M. ON MONDAY THE TWENTY-EIGHTH. I WENT around caressing all the walls of my beloved house, thanking it for its indefatigable support and hospitality over the years. I turned the radiators on low, just in case an unseasonal frost should happen to nip at the gutters before anyone got back to check on it. I emptied the larder of perishable foods, put the rubbish out, switched off the water, made sure all the windows and doors were locked. It was like going on holiday, that silent, dark, creeping-around time before the start of a long journey to a nice, warm, relaxing destination. Yes. That was a good way to look at it.
My carefully assembled props consisted of the following:
Three jars of paracetamol, a half-full jar of Valium, an unopened bottle of gin, and a picnic tumbler in my Kate Spade giraffe-print shoulder bag.
Box of CDs.
Manuscript, with letters and Bluezines and diary entries glued carefully in, sitting proudly in its purple folder on the dining-room table.
Letter to Ron in my coat pocket, addressed and stamped and ready to drop in a post box on the way to the studio: Dear Ron, By the time you read this (etc., etc.). Keys to house under mat (etc., etc.). Please come to house and collect purple folder (etc.). Any advance you receive on publication of manuscript, feel free to keep fifteen percent for yourself. The rest is for my parents, at this address (etc.). Please also forward the enclosed letter to them. Have informed lawyers, all should be in order. Thanks for everything, Helena. P.S. By the way, I’d really like it if you could suggest to publishers that a CD of the songs from the show accompany the book. Kind of a new idea, but why not? (Etc.)
Difficult tearstained letter apologizing to parents, enclosed inside Ron’s envelope.
I was ready. I went to put the CDs into the car, but when I picked up my giraffe-print shoulder bag, the bottle and jars all clinked and rattled together so excessively that I felt compelled to do something about it. I went back into the kitchen, pulled a Ziploc bag from the drawer, unscrewed the tops of the pill bottles, and emptied their contents out into the bag.
Small as it was, this unforeseen hitch threw me, and my hands started to shake. I’d have had a swig of the gin, only I couldn’t take the risk of being stopped by the police while driving to the studio—being thwarted by a Breathalyzer test at this late stage was too terrible to contemplate.
So I remained sober and did some yogic breathing instead. This involves pinching one nostril shut, breathing slowly through the other side to the count of four, holding your breath for the same count, exhaling for eight, then repeating with the other nostril, ad infinitum. I’d always suspected that the reason this actually worked was that you felt such a prat doing it that it took your mind off why you were stressed in the first place.
After several breaths, I did feel better. Everything had begun to feel super-real, like my “revelation” in the car outside Sam’s flat that time, when I was convinced that she was going to be fine. Now I was convinced that I was going to be fine, too. I was going to be free of my one-eyed, less-than-perfect body. It was an ending and a new start, simultaneously.
I arrived at New World and parked the car on a yellow line right outside the building. After climbing out, I retrieved the box of CDs and the giraffe-print bag from the boot, locked the car, and headed slowly toward the studios. It was 1:45 A.M.
I pressed the number pad outside the front door, 8-1-5-7, and the door buzzily invited me to push it open. It sounded so inviting and businesslike, I felt like kicking it. If I come in now, I’m never going to leave—don’t you know that? I thought. The door didn’t care. I barged my way in, all elbows and sharp cardboard corners, and it
shut behind me with a heavy, ominous click.
A security guard I didn’t recognize sat at the front desk. “Name, please?” he said unsmilingly.
“Helena Nicholls.”
“Two o’clock show. Right. Studio One.”
I wasn’t going to thank him, not if he didn’t even know who I was. I walked over to the wall of pigeonholes and looked up to mine to see if there was any post. It was stuffed full of letters, but when I reached up and took them down, the security man said, “That ain’t your box. That’s Millie Myers’s box.”
I peered at the letters, pink, brown, blue, and white envelopes in all shapes and sizes, decorated with stick-on hearts and curly schoolgirl writing or the scruffy hormonal scrawl of the adolescent male, addressed to Millie, Gorgeous Millie, Miss. M. Myers, I Love You, Mills.
None for me. The label on the pigeonhole bearing my name had been peeled off unceremoniously, and a smart new Millie Myers sticker slapped over the top of it.
Crushed, I shoved the fan mail back into the box. Perhaps what Vinnie said had been right. Perhaps I wasn’t half as famous as I thought.
“Where’s mine, then?”
The security guard shrugged. “Try the bottom right. That’s usually where they put stuff for new DJs.”
“I’m not a new DJ.”
“Oh, wait. I remember. Mr. Hadleigh left something for you behind the desk here. This is it.”
He handed me some sheets of printed paper with a memo from Geoff clipped in the top right-hand corner: “Dear Helena, Here’s your show. As per my letter to you, please stick to the format. Speak soon, all the best, Geoff.”
It was a printout from Selector, the computer that programmed all the music and ad breaks and timings of live links for the station. I scanned it frantically, a line jumping out at me here and there: