by Nuala Casey
Kerstin doesn’t reply. She is mesmerised by the view of the street; of the expressions of the people passing by below, they look so carefree and relaxed. It’s like looking at visitors in a zoo; and she is the caged animal.
‘Grubs up.’
She turns from the window and sees that Cal has placed two plates of food on the table. He has also placed tea lights in the centre and Kerstin suddenly feels uneasy.
‘Where is your bathroom?’
‘Oh,’ says Cal. He has already sat down at the table and jumps up immediately to direct Kerstin to the bathroom.
He takes her wine and puts it next to her plate then puts his hand on her lower back and guides her out of the open plan room into a dark, narrow hallway.
‘First on the left,’ he says. ‘You might need to give the door a shove, it’s a bit stiff.’
Kerstin stares at the wooden door. It is the same as the one at her flat and her skin starts to prickle as she remembers the series of rituals she has to undertake before she can even enter her home. She reaches out to turn the handle but some invisible force holds her back. She cannot touch it. So, instead she places her elbow on the top of the handle and pushes it until the door yields.
She feels Cal’s presence behind her. He is watching her; probably wondering what the hell she is doing. Her neck prickles as she enters the bathroom and closes the door with her foot.
She hears Cal’s footsteps disappearing down the hall as she approaches the sink. She counts to seven then runs the tap until the water is steaming hot, then plunges her hand under the water, scrubbing and scrubbing until her fingers resemble swollen pink sausages. Once satisfied that her hands are completely clean, she looks up and sees her reflection in the huge oval mirror. Her face is pale and her eyes look dark and hollow.
‘What have I done?’ she whimpers. And suddenly she doesn’t want to be alone; she needs to be near another human being, even if he is the most annoying man in the world. At least the noise of Cal’s incessant chatter will drown out the white noise inside her head.
When she comes back into the kitchen, Cal has already started eating his meal.
‘Sorry Kerst,’ he says, talking with his mouth full. ‘I was so hungry I couldn’t wait. Don’t mind me, I’ve got the manners of an alley cat, I have. Do sit down, won’t you. And tell me if you need me to warm yours up.’
Kerstin stands by the chair and counts to seven and back before sitting down. Cal looks up and goes to say something but then seems to change his mind.
Kerstin sits down and looks at the gloopy red mass on her plate.
‘What is it?’ She looks up at Cal, his plate is almost clean.
‘Chilli con carne,’ he says. ‘I got the recipe off the Jamie Oliver app. Tuck in.’
She picks up her fork and tries to scoop some of the food onto it but there is no way she can put it into her mouth.
‘I’m really sorry, Cal, but I’m just not hungry.’
‘That’s my cooking for you,’ says Cal. He laughs as he picks up his empty plate and Kerstin’s untouched one and takes them over to the work surface. ‘Can I get you anything else? Cheese on toast? Ham sandwich?’
‘No thanks, Cal,’ says Kerstin. ‘I’m fine, just really tired that’s all.’
‘That’s cool,’ says Cal, as he scrapes Kerstin’s chilli into a metal pedal bin. ‘Have a drink of your wine and I’ll show you to your room.’
Kerstin picks up the wine glass by the stem. She is thirsty and the wine is dry and cold and though she means to just take a sip, she ends up drinking half the glass.
‘Woah, steady,’ says Cal, as he sits down at the table. ‘It’ll go straight to your head if you haven’t lined your stomach.’
But the wine has made Kerstin feel better. It has been a long time since she drank alcohol and it feels good; her mind relaxes and the sharpness of the day, though still there, is blunted. She takes another long sip and drains the glass.
‘So, then,’ says Cal, folding his arms. ‘What do you fancy doing? We could watch a DVD or go and have another drink – on me of course. You can pay me back when you find your wallet.’ He laughs and the noise makes Kerstin jump. Of course she can’t go out. The police are out there, right now looking for her. She just needs to lie down; she needs to sleep.
‘I think it might be best if I go to bed, Cal,’ she says.
‘No worries,’ says Cal, standing up quickly. ‘I’ll show you to the room. I thought you could take my bed tonight – it’s nice and clean, I just changed the sheets – and I’ll take John’s room.’
Kerstin nods. Clean sheets. There is no such thing anymore. As she follows Cal down the hallway, the image of Clarissa flashes in front of her: the thin papery skin, the hands dotted with brown liver spots and bulging blue veins; the blood smearing the floor.
‘Here you go,’ says Cal as they reach the small bedroom. ‘There’s a bedside lamp if you need it. I’ll shut the curtains too, it gets really bright with all the neon from the street. But it shouldn’t be too noisy. It’s double glazed and we’re on the top floor, so you should manage to get some kip. Right then it’s all yours.’
Kerstin stands at the door, looking at the bed: someone else’s bed, with someone else’s germs saturating it. There are a hundred rituals she would need to attend to just to touch that bed let alone climb into it. She counts to seven and steps into the room.
‘Kerstin, you know there are people you can go to who can help.’
Cal’s face is suddenly serious and he sits down on the bed and looks up at her.
What is he talking about? He knows; he has figured it out or else he has heard something on the news. Kerstin turns to run, but he stands up and touches her arm gently.
‘It’s okay, Kerst,’ he says. ‘It’s a very common condition, OCD. My cousin had it. She couldn’t stop cleaning, morning till night, you should have seen her hands, they were like sandpaper. But she got help. CBT, they call it: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I can ask her to talk to you about it if you like, give you some phone numbers.’
He’s talking about the counting. Thank God, she thinks, yet still she feels exposed; as though he has seen her naked. She didn’t think people noticed the counting; in the office she always did it under her breath.
‘Honestly, Cal, I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Just tired and I get more uptight when I’m tired. Thank you again for letting me stay. You’ve been a great help.’
He lets go of her arm and smiles. ‘Okay, Kerst, I’ll leave you to it.’
He walks to the door then turns.
‘Night night. Sleep well, yeah? Oh, and if you get cold, there’s some extra blankets on the top shelf of the cupboard there.’
‘Thanks, Cal,’ she says and she watches him close the door.
She hears him cough as he walks away. With tentative steps she goes towards the bed. She holds out her hand, but it’s impossible; she cannot touch it, let alone sleep in it. But her body feels like it is closing down; her eyes are heavier than she can ever remember. It feels like she hasn’t slept for days though it has only been a few hours since she fled Old Church Street. She looks at the floor; it is wooden. She could sleep on that; hadn’t Cal said there was a blanket in the cupboard; a washed blanket, she can lay it over her feet so it doesn’t touch her face; so she can’t smell it.
She pulls her sleeve over her hand and turns the metal handle of the cupboard. Inside it is half wardrobe/half shelves. Cal’s suits are lined up neatly on the right hand side; on the left are various sweaters and tops, again neatly folded. Kerstin is surprised at the order; Cal is always so chaotic at work. Maybe he has a cleaner. She reaches up to the top shelf and feels thick wool under her fingertips. This must be it, she thinks as she pulls it down. But something else comes with it, clattering to the floor with a loud smash. Kerstin looks down at the heavy wooden box, lying at her feet and the scattered objects it has released and she can’t believe her eyes.
Her things.
She looks at her posse
ssions and can’t work out what they are doing in Cal’s cupboard: her memory stick, she knows it is hers because she had written her initials on it in black permanent marker; a bottle of Aveda shampoo for dry hair – the one that had gone missing from her bathroom cabinet; and a set of keys attached to a square, white key-ring with the words ‘Elizabeth Lord Estate Agent’ printed in red lettering. Her keys.
He has been in the flat; her flat. He has taken her things, moved them around. She thinks about her ripped purse; the unsaved reports. She has to get out of here now. But before she can move, she hears his footsteps outside the door; her head starts to pound and it feels like she is going to be sick. She hears the click of the door opening but it is a fuzzy shape that enters the room and before she can work out who or what it is, everything goes black.
*
As they step out onto Old Compton Street, Mark puts his hand in his pocket, making sure, for the fifth time that the invitation is still there. As his fingers touch the embossed lettering, he smiles. It couldn’t have been easier.
The air is warm and sticky and as he and Liv make their way through the crowded street Mark feels a dull pain in his chest. Crowded places always make his asthma worse; he just wants to get out of here, get back to the room and lie on the bed. He breathes out slowly as they continue up the street. He can’t sense Zoe in this place, she won’t have been here, he can tell. The alley way was full of her, he could hear her voice, smell her perfume, she had permeated that space. Don’t think, don’t think, his sober voice intercepts his thoughts. Just one night without thinking about it, one night in seven years is allowed.
He can hear Liv chattering beside him, pointing out various bars and landmarks she thinks he should be aware of, and he nods his head, makes encouraging noises, but really he just wants to get out of here. He wants to be alone; to scrutinise the invitation and plan his next move in peace. But he can’t get rid of Liv yet, he will just have to go along with it for another hour or so, then turf her out.
They turn right at the top of the street, Liv leading the way, and then take a left onto a wider road. Mark reads the names of the neon-lit shop fronts: Soho Original Bookstore; Madame JoJo’s; Soho DVD. It’s a worn, shabby street, he thinks, dated and decaying. It smells like rotten eggs, like sour breath and old food. His army mate, Tony, had told him about the deserted villages in Afghanistan; the army would come in and check for signs of life, a flutter of curtain, smoke from a fire, cooking smells. They would step across the remnants of a community, a place where life once flourished, where bonds were made and broken, children were born and raised, marriages were sanctified, funerals conducted, the whole spectrum of a life. And when you went to these places, Tony said, it was like stepping into a graveyard; everything that made it vital, that gave it purpose and energy had been eliminated, its inhabitants had gone, dispersed like migrating birds, and only the husk, the discarded shell remained. This is what this street feels like to Mark; like the end of the line, the end of the world.
They stop at a side street and as they go to cross, he feels Liv’s arm tighten.
‘I hate that place,’ she whispers.
Mark looks at her and she nods her head towards the street they are about to cross. He turns his head and sees a dark, narrow lane, lit with muted neon signs: Floor Show; XXX; Models.
‘Really, it’s more like a pantomime now,’ says Liv, her voice low and serious. ‘There’s even a nightclub down there that celebrities go to – play-acting prostitution, what fun! It’s out there on the street for all to see but what about the ones you can’t see, the ones outside of Soho, across London, the trafficked girls who get picked up at Victoria Station with the promise of work. I wonder if the celebs would still see it all as a big laugh if they saw where those girls ended up.’
Mark stares down the street. The red neon ‘Model’ sign is flashing on and off; there are a couple of women standing underneath the sign. They are smoking and the smoke rises above their heads like a ghostly veil. One of them is wearing a hood pulled up over her head, hiding her face and in the half-light she looks like some medieval monk. Mark shivers. The place is giving him the creeps but he can’t draw himself away from it; its revoltingness seems to be enticing him, pulling him into its folds.
‘Over the border,’ he mutters as they stand rigid at the edge of the kerb.
‘What’s that?’ asks Liv. He feels her hands wrap around his arm. They are cold.
‘It’s the place where the prozzies stand in Middlesbrough,’ he replies. ‘When me and my mates first learned to drive, we’d pile into a car and drive past them for a laugh. They were a right bunch of skanks; crack whores the lot of them. You’d have to be desperate to want to shag one of them.’
‘Drug addiction leaves a lot of women vulnerable to prostitution,’ says Liv. ‘That, and abuse in childhood …’
Mark isn’t really listening to her; he is staring at the back of the hooded woman, willing her to turn around. The red light blinks on and off, on and off, casting a sickly red halo about her head. Model; hooker; model; hooker, it seems to say.
‘We should go,’ says Liv, taking his arm.
He nods but still he can’t take his eyes off the shrouded figure and he continues to look as they cross the road. When they reach the other side he turns round and sees that the girl has gone, leaving in her wake a blurry flash of neon and a cloud of smoke.
‘Girls disappear all the time,’ says Liv, as they quicken their pace up the street. ‘When I get back to Canada I’m going to train as a counsellor. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but even more so after travelling, after hearing so many stories. Big cities swallow people up, vulnerable people, and unless you have family or money or support you’re easy prey.’
Mark nods. He is thinking of the girl in the hood, a faceless girl, nameless, no past, no future. A few streets away from here is Sebastian Bailey’s restaurant with its pretty lights, its potted plants and candles. It’s all bullshit, thinks Mark, as they reach the end of Brewer Street and cross the road towards Piccadilly. The Rose Garden – they should have called it The Sewer because that’s what it is; a rancid, putrefying cesspit built on the bones and dreams of dead girls; dying girls; girls with death in their eyes and a pock-marked client between their legs. You can scatter rose petals over it; you can spray expensive perfume into the air; come up with swanky menus and poncey food and fragrant herbs and spices but nothing can mask the stench that permeates this place; nothing can stop the decay.
As they approach Piccadilly Circus, Mark’s chest feels tight, he puts one foot in front of the other but some invisible hand seems to be pressing down on him, blocking his way. The garish advertising boards that make this place such a landmark shine their spotlight on him as he passes, illuminating his face, picking him out of the crowd like some contestant on a daytime quiz show. He feels conspicuous, as though his face is up there on the hoardings on some great big ‘wanted’ poster, flashing on and off amid the Coca Cola signs.
‘Come on, let’s get back,’ he says to Liv, as they turn into the little side street and walk towards the hostel. He feels the beer rising through his bloodstream like a mist as he follows Liv up the steps, watching the curve of her behind press against the thin fabric of her shorts. He wants to get back to the quiet of the room and bury himself deep inside this girl, so deep that he can pretend, for one night, he does not exist.
WEDNESDAY, 29 AUGUST
21
Seb is dreaming of sunshine; thick, hazy sun, like honey dripping down from the skies, smothering his skin in its thick opacity. It is a sepia-tinted world; like the summers of the past, an endless road movie with cheap motels, palm trees and filmy pools, mirages, white skies, RayBans, polka-dot bikinis, tanned limbs, languid moves and a Neil Young soundtrack. He stands by the edge of the pool and its colour makes him shade his eyes, it is the brightest blue, cyan blue with ripples of silver and gold, like Hockney’s ‘A Bigger Splash’, and he holds his breath as he jumps into it, pu
ncturing the milky surface, ripping the canvas, diving down, down to the bottom where the blue begins to fade and white light as dazzling as the moon on a clear night fills the empty space, illuminating the way to the deepest part. He feels leathery hands touch his feet, soft fingertips caress his arms as he floats down with the current. Then a voice, a familiar voice, calls his name:
‘Seb!’
He opens his eyes to a fractured world; the room dances in front of him as though split into atoms, like an abstract picture, its disjointed parts hang in the air, random and scattered like pieces of broken glass.
‘Seb!’
As he comes to he realises that it is Yasmine’s voice calling him. He feels a dull ache rising up his spine and he sits up, trying to stretch the pain away. He must have fallen asleep on the sofa last night with Yasmine. Yasmine … The restaurant launch … His mind comes back into consciousness with a jolt and he pulls himself off the sofa and walks in the direction of his wife’s voice.
She is in the hallway bent over her bag. As he approaches she straightens up and turns round. Her face is hard and serious.
‘Seb. Why the hell did you let me go to sleep on the sofa? My back is killing me … and I’ve overslept.’
Seb rubs his eyes and supresses a yawn. ‘I’m sorry, Yas. I fell asleep. If it’s any consolation, my back’s killing me too.’
She shakes her head. ‘Look, I’ve got to go, it’s almost seven and the first of the deliveries will be arriving at eight.’
‘Are you okay?’ Seb puts his hands onto her shoulders. It’s supposed to be a reassuring gesture but his arms are heavy and it ends up feeling like an aggressive one.
‘I’m fine,’ she says, brusquely. ‘I just didn’t want to start today feeling like this. Honestly I …’ She stops and shakes her head as though shaking away whatever she was about to say.