‘Well, here we are!’ I said, trying to brighten up after the events of the past half-hour.
We looked up at the unimposing black building. It looked tiny, its name written in unlit neon tubes above the entrance – the entrance which looked decidedly closed. I tried the door: locked. A voice behind us called out, ‘Are you here for the video?’
We turned. A pretty black woman stood before us dressed in a silver shift dress and silver pumps. Oh, and a Lisa-Stansfield-style silver cap with mirror badges on it.
‘Only it’s cancelled coz of the disturbance at Trafalgar . . .’
She didn’t finish the sentence.
She recognized us.
And we recognized her.
It was Jocelyn.
London, 2015
My mobile rings. It’s Cissy.
‘Adam? I’ve just had the school on the phone. Denim’s feeling off-colour so I’m going to pick him up.’
I feel a stab of painful paternal empathy. I should be going to pick him up, not the nanny.
‘Right,’ I say, feeling immediately awkward and pissed off that I’ve agreed to do what I’ve agreed to do today. ‘What exactly’s the matter with him? D’you think he’s being bullied? For having two gay dads? Or . . . or he’s got a phobia of one of the teachers?’
‘Adam, I think he’s just a bit off-colour. Relax.’
‘OK.’
But when I hang up, the last thing I want to do is go and sort through Jocelyn’s old bits and pieces. I want to go home and look after my little boy. I want to put daytime telly on and snuggle up with him on the couch, falling asleep to Doctors.
Doctors.
Oh God.
Actually, I’d rather be out of the house.
It’s a sunny day, so I decide to have a mooch round Portobello Road before heading to meet Ross and Kathleen at Jocelyn’s flat. It’s been a while since I’ve spent any considerable time in Notting Hill, and I’m struck by just how gentrified the area has become since we lived nearby all those years ago. The chocolate-box cottages painted every colour under the pastel rainbow, or the rows of white stucco facades, look more higgledy-piggledy than I remember. But the noisy old market still exudes the aura of the underdog, rather than the backdrop for some movie where Hugh Grant spills orange juice on a Hollywood star. The other thing I’m struck by is that wherever I turn, it’s there, looming large on the horizon, like a scary monster from a kids’ story: Jocelyn’s block of flats. It’s a Sixties tower block, the sort of thing Prince Charles would once have described as a carbuncle, but that these days we seem to be just plain used to; and it dominates the sky wherever I look up, staring down, foreboding. What secrets does it keep, I wonder?
And the more oppressive it becomes – literally every turning I take, there it is, glaring ominously – it feels more and more like it’s Jocelyn herself. A giant Jocelyn, perish the thought. Watching over her kingdom, watching over me.
Go on. I dare you. Tell the world my secrets.
I hurry on, ignoring the voice in my head.
What’s the matter, Adam? Cat got your tongue?
Yeah, maybe. Got a problem with that?
Tell them you were there, Adam. And tell them why.
I hurry into a rather garish juice bar and order a ‘Green Goddess, large’ from the laminated menu on the wall, then try to calm myself as the woman behind the counter, who for some reason is wearing a Grotbags fright wig, pushes wheatgrass, limes, kale, spinach, you name it, if it’s green she’s attacking it, pummelling it through some sort of electric mangle thing to provide me with a thick, radioactively neon-green gunge of a drink. Once she’s put a straw in it – it stands bolt upright, as the ‘liquid’ is so thick – she charges me the best part of a tenner, but I grab it gratefully like she’s given me a cure for cancer. I feel so honoured to have been in her shop, and received a health drink from a Notting Hillbilly. I still don’t get the wig, though. Maybe she’s got the wrong weekend for Carnival.
Why did I say I’d do this? Why did I say I’d go to Jocelyn’s flat and go through all her stuff to save her bloody partner a job? I know why: because Kathleen was so gung-ho about it. And, OK, in the heat and the emotion of the funereal moment, I thought it was a good idea for me and her to hang out a bit more and do that catching-up thing. But I’m not sure I want to now. If I really wanted to be friends with her, would I not have found some way of contacting her during these intervening years? Blimey. I’ve seen more of Jocelyn than I have of Kathleen.
And Jocelyn’s told me . . . stuff. Stuff I can never tell Kathleen.
Or could I tell Kathleen?
No. I don’t even know if she was telling the truth. And I don’t think Jocelyn would want me to, somehow.
No, I can’t. If you do something against a dead person’s wishes you probably get struck by lightning, or turn into a pillar of salt. And let’s face it. No-one’s got time to be a pillar of salt these days, right? Oh yeah, I can really see Jay-Jay Velazquez LOVING being represented by a pillar of frigging salt.
‘Hi, guys. This is Adz, my agent.’
‘He’s quite . . .’
‘Salty? I know.’
I’m babbling, mentally. I must stop this.
I return to the street and take a slurp of my green goo before looking up at the sky again. I feel less afraid now. I’ve made a decision. I must never tell Kathleen what Jocelyn said. And now I’ve made that decision, I feel less afraid.
I walk on. I’m just doing a grown-up thing. Going to my old mate’s and doing her old man a favour at a really difficult time. Others have dealt with far worse. Get over yourself, Adam.
It’s weird. If I turned and walked the other way, in about ten minutes or so I’d be by our old flats, Harmony Heights. Long gone, of course, since the homes-for-votes scandal of the nineties, and the clear evidence of asbestos that we’re lucky didn’t kill us all. But to think that that’s where we spent so much time together, and Jocelyn ended up only a stone’s throw away. And in a block of flats. The only difference being, this block is now a Grade 2 listed building, while ours collapsed like . . . like . . . well, like a pillar of salt. I know this about its listing because I Googled it last night. I know so much about Trellick Tower now. And the thing I love most about it is that the Hungarian architect who designed it was called Goldfinger. So apt; Jocelyn loved that song, and would often sing it in the style of La Bassey at parties. You know, for the lolz, as kids today say. Or the shits ’n’ giggles. Back then, we just did things for the plain and simple old laugh.
In the end, even though the tower looks close enough to touch, it seems that no matter how far I walk I’m getting no closer to it. So I take a cab. Kathleen is sitting on some steps outside the block, reading something on her phone.
‘Is Ross not here?’ I ask, as I pay the driver and wait for my change. Kathleen puts her phone away and jumps up.
‘I dunno. I was waiting for you to ring the bell. Didn’t want to do it on my own.’
As the cab drives off, I’m left wondering yet again why I agreed to do this.
In the space of our short exchange, I’ve become infuriated beyond measure. Kathleen is a sap. The follower, never the leader. The sheep. She may as well not talk. She may as well just go BAAAH!
And I’m going to be stuck with her for the rest of the day.
‘Can you remember what number it is?’ I ask, looking at the keyboard next to the door where you punch in numbers for the flats.
‘Er . . .’ Kathleen is staring at them too now, as if they will suddenly light up with our answer.
I check the address on my phone as if A TODDLER COULD BE DOING THIS and soon enough I have it. I punch it in, and Ross buzzes us in.
Before I head inside, I look out at the street in front of the flats and remember what I saw that night.
‘Where d’you think she landed?’ asks Kathleen, seeing me looking.
‘How should I know?’ I say, sounding quite convincing.
‘Maybe there.’
Kathleen says, pointing next to the block. ‘Or there.’ She points further away. ‘Maybe she landed on one of those cars. Though that’s the sort of thing that would make Twitter.’
‘What is this, Kathleen? The ghoulish guided tour?’
‘Sorry.’ But then she continues. ‘If someone landed on your car like that, would they bounce off? I guess you’d have to go to a garage to get the indentation taken out of the roof.’
‘I really wouldn’t know, dear.’
‘Or a Polish car wash place thingy, and have the blood power-jetted off. It’d be very artistic if she’d landed in the trees.’
She seems nervous. And catches me glaring at her.
‘But as you say. We’ll never know.’
I nod.
I’d be crap at killing myself. I’m too much of a coward. Some people say suicide is a coward’s way out, but not in my book. The older I get, the more scared I get about everything. When I was a kid I’d’ve thought nothing of going on the tallest big dipper in the world. These days, I’d stand at the bottom and mind the coats. I watch videos online of young people bungee jumping, and my legs turn to jelly. Is that what it was like for Jocelyn? This building is so high. To throw yourself off takes courage. To know that it’s such a long way down, to know that there’d be a good twenty seconds (at least) to go before hitting the ground. What must that feel like?
My legs once more turn to jelly. I don’t wish to think about that right now.
And I certainly shouldn’t be thinking about that night. It’s not good for my blood pressure.
I head inside. Kathleen follows. Of course she does!
If you stand back from Trellick Tower, it looks like a very busy office block where they still let people smoke; but architecturally what makes it stand out is that it looks also, to me anyway, like an old woman leaning on her walking stick. You have the block itself, and then another tower which houses the lift shaft. And that’s linked to the flats by a series of walkways. Originally it was built this way so that the noise of the lifts didn’t get on everyone’s tits when they were indoors. It makes me think, what would happen if the lift shaft collapsed and fell down, breaking away from the main body of the flats? Would everyone have to be airlifted to safety?
My mind works overtime sometimes. I have a very noisy brain. Sometimes I should learn to do the brain-activity version of shutting the fuck up.
The lift brings memories flooding back of the old flats; even though I’ve never been in this lift before, it feels familiar. And small. A claustrophobe’s nightmare, as it’s one of the narrowest lifts I’ve been in. Any more than me and Kathleen, and you’d be stuffed. Or the lift would be. It’s like standing in a metal coffin.
Apt.
But it’s worth it by the time we hit the twentieth floor, because the first thing you notice about the place when the lift doors open is the light. Light, light and more bloody light. You really are walking through a pavement in the sky. And then again, when we step into Jocelyn’s flat, it’s like we’re exposed to the elements, it’s so light.
Her flat is rather beautiful. And Ross is rather stressed. He’s on a call and tells us to make ourselves at home while he ‘wraps it up with Dubai’. Whatever that means. We go for a nosey around. It’s bigger than I thought, and on two levels. It’s like a proper house in a block of flats. How novel. And the light floods in from both sides of the flat. The floors and walls are white. There are mirrors everywhere. It feels luxurious and floaty and . . .
‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ gasps Kathleen.
I nod.
‘I didn’t think she’d have such good taste.’
I shake my head, though I’m not sure why.
‘Mind you. She did shag Mark Reynolds.’ And with that, Kathleen snorts really unattractively.
There are two balconies. One off the living room, another off the bedroom, and I wonder which one she did it from.
As if reading my mind, Kathleen motions to the one off the living room and whispers, ‘Bet it was this one.’
We open the door and step onto the balcony. It’s only three feet or so wide, but it’s long. I hold onto the low wall that’s there to protect, and realize how easy it would be to hop over. Looking down, I see rows and rows of tall terraced houses backing onto the canal near Paddington. The Westway fingering its way across the horizon, other tower blocks; and in the distance, the nose of Canary Wharf jutting above the sprawl, the London Eye, the Shard. How different from our own view of yesteryear, when London hadn’t got so damn tall. In our day she wore court shoes; now she’s in skyscraper heels.
Peering right over, we see the entrance where we came in to our right, wasteland below. Is that what Jocelyn landed on?
Breaking the moment, Kathleen mutters, ‘Can we not tell the landlord she didn’t die, and I’ll live here? It’s amazing.’
‘It’s a very overused word, amazing,’ I say without thinking. It’s something Jay-Jay says and I agree with. It’s the go-to response for so many people these days, and it stinks.
How was your lasagne? Amazing.
What do you think of Peter Andre? Amazing.
My whole family have been wiped out in a nuclear disaster. Amazing.
But I realize once I’ve said it that this has come across as rude. Which it is. Kathleen looks to me, stung.
‘But you’re right,’ I say, totally rescuing myself, ‘it’s fucking amazing.’
And Kathleen smiles. And I realize I have some sort of power over her, to make her feel like shit. Or to make her feel great.
Again, I remind myself: don’t tell her what Jocelyn told you. Don’t tell her anything.
Concentrate on making her feel great. That’s always better than making someone miserable.
As my old mother used to say, ‘If you can’t say anything nice about someone, say nothing at all.’ Which is a bit like this. Why make someone fed up when you can put a smirky smile on their face?
Mind you, when my mum used to say that she often followed it up with some major gossip about you-know-who from God knows where being caught getting up to all sorts with her from number whatever, and oh my days, would you believe it?! She talked an inordinate amount of shite, my mum.
I don’t half miss her.
I should get back to Liverpool more, hang out with her. She’s seventy-five now, she won’t be around forever. I’m luckier than Kathleen, her nan died years ago. But then, she was getting on. I’ve not yet dared ask her if she’s in contact with her dad. Well, that’s not true. After the funeral I did say, ‘Oh, I was so sorry to hear about your nan.’ To which she’d replied that it was all right etc., and then I’d added, ‘How’s your dad?’ and she’d said yeah, he was great, or something, and then changed the subject. Which led me to believe that she didn’t really know. But I could be wrong. And I’m a coward for not asking her.
Kathleen has gone back into the living room.
‘Ooh, look at this!’ she’s calling. I follow her back in. She’s running her hands up the door from the living room to the lounge, a boring-looking wooden door, with a glass panel above, quite typical of Sixties and Seventies social housing. Except Kathleen is pointing to something. ‘Look! The light switch is in the door!’
And she’s absolutely right. Instead of the usual light switch on the wall, the flat appeared to house its switches in all the door frames.
‘Clearly designed by someone with too much time on their hands,’ chuckles Kathleen. She switches it on, and electric lights zap on. She switches them off again, and I say:
‘What’s your dad up to these days?’
And she says very quickly, ‘Oh yeah, he’s great. Really great. How’s your mum?’
‘Yeah, she’s cool. Bit creaky, but . . .’
‘Aww, give her my love.’
‘Yeah, I will.’
‘Hey, have you noticed . . .’
‘What?’
‘At the funeral, Ross said he recognized us, because she had a photo of us in her living room.’
‘Oh yeah.’ I look around, but can’t see it. ‘Maybe he took it down.’
‘But he’d give it to us, surely?’
I nod. She has a point.
‘Unless he’s lying,’ she continues. Blimey. She’s being a bit suspicious of old Ross here, isn’t she?
‘But why would he lie about . . .’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Just being daft.’
But it is a bit odd. Ross said there was a photo of us in here, and now there isn’t. Maybe he’s taken it down to give to us later. He was so keen to have us over to help him. And now we’re here and the odd but predictable thing is . . . there is no proof here of Jocelyn’s former life. There is nothing to say she was once friends with us. But is that so strange? There is nothing in my house currently that depicts my friendship with Kathleen and Jocelyn. And why should there be? They haven’t been a big part of my life for so long. Do I have to have a memento of every bloody friendship I’ve had, writ large in knick-knacks on the mantelpiece? And if it’s OK for me not to have that evidence on display, why should I expect different from Jocelyn?
Just because I’ve agreed to sort her flat out, doesn’t mean I should have had the fondest of places in Jocelyn’s heart. She probably never gave me and Kathleen that much thought in recent days. And that’s OK. We cannot be all things to all people. She probably went for days and weeks without even remembering we were friends. And that’s fine too.
Kathleen sees me staring in a daze, and offers a meek smile. She doesn’t want to tell me what her dad is up to. Again, it makes me think that she plain doesn’t know. She might be suspicious of Ross – well, I can be suspicious of her. I am about to challenge her on this when Ross returns, rubbing his hands.
‘Boy, am I glad to see you. Who fancies a coffee?’
The moment has passed.
He picks his phone up and makes a call, and ten minutes later a skinny young blonde girl appears with Costa coffees for us. He introduces her as his PA, Finty. Finty is so young she has the look of an embryo, but I can’t help but have a pang of suspicion about her. I am convinced she and Ross are shagging. I look to Kathleen, and I can just tell she thinks the same. Finty slinks off to the living room as Ross talks us through the plan of action in the kitchen. Apparently he and Finty have been through a few things and grabbed some stuff for sentimental and nostalgic reasons, but they have a meeting at twelve and need to leave us to it for a bit. What he wants us to do is to go through all Jocelyn’s stuff and put it into three piles. Bin, charity shop, of interest. These basically meant:
The History of Us Page 13