by Alex Marwood
Lying is easy. It’s so, so easy once you’ve got into the swing of it. Just say what you’ve got to say confidently, keep it as close to the truth as you can get away with, then look vulnerable and find an excuse to duck out of the conversation as quickly as you can. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, people will just go along with whatever you tell them.
The Landlord looks faintly pleased. He thinks he’s got me, she thinks. Thinks he’s sussed me out. He’d be twirling his moustaches, right now, if he had them. ‘Well,’ he says, his voice full of speculation, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘It’s not your problem,’ she tells him, humbly. ‘I understand that. But it means that I… you know… I don’t really have anything by way of references, because I always lived at home, before I went away.’
‘What were you doing in Spain?’ he asks.
She tells the prepared story, the one that nobody ever wants to hear. ‘I got married. He owned a bar on the Costa del Sol. More fool me… Anyway, here I am now, no husband. Life, isn’t it?’
He eyes her, speculatively. The pound signs are lighting up behind his spectacles. ‘I daresay we can come to an arrangement,’ he says.
Who are you kidding? You’re a cash-in-hand landlord who rents his rooms out through cards in newsagents’ windows. I don’t suppose you’ve checked a reference in your life, as long as the money comes on time. Of course we can come to an arrangement.
‘Maybe if I gave you an extra month’s deposit?’ she offers, as though the idea has only just come to her. ‘I think I could probably manage that. I’ve got a bit put by. At least I managed to salvage that much, even if my dignity’s still in Torremolinos.’
He looks pleased, then wolfish. ‘You know it’s already first, last and damage, don’t you?’
‘I thought it would be,’ she says evenly, and looks at a greasy stain on the wall, at a level with her face. Someone – people – obviously feel their way up here in the dark, the flats of their hands against the wall to steady themselves. I bet none of those light bulbs works.
‘Well, maybe you’d like to see the studio,’ he says.
‘Studio’ is an exaggeration, but she had expected that from the fact that she’d found it advertised on a slightly grubby file card in a newsagent’s window rather than on a glossy photo stand in an estate agent’s. Northbourne is gentrifying fast, but City money has yet to drift this far south, and these Victorian streets still play host to a dwindling number of plasterboard walls and two-burner stoves and halls full of bicycles.
It’s a decent-sized room, at least. At the front of the house, it must have been the drawing room once. But it smells. It’s stale from sitting through a heatwave with the large sash window that overlooks the street firmly closed and her predecessor’s discarded clothes in a heap in the corner. But also, she notices, because there is a small pile of food on the countertop to her left. A bag of potatoes, blackened and liquefying, half an onion, a block of cheese, an open jar of blueish pickle and the stump end of a sliced loaf, barely recognisable beneath blankets of hairy mould. In the sink, a bowl and a mug have been left to soak in water that has taken on the scent of a sewer. There’s the drip, drip, drip of a tap.
The Landlord has the grace to look slightly abashed. ‘Like I say,’ he says, ‘I haven’t had the chance to get it cleaned up.’
Collette puts the Adidas bag down on the floor, relieved to be rid of it after another journey during which she kept hold of it constantly, fearfully, terrified to let it out of her sight. Without it, she’d be sunk, but she’s heartily sick of the sight of it.
‘Where’s the bathroom?’ she asks.
She’d known it was too much to hope that a ‘studio’ in this neck of the woods would have the luxury of an en-suite and she’s glad that she’s always had a strong stomach with a relatively insensitive gag reflex, because she’s tired of running. She tries to persuade herself that it’s not so bad. Once the window’s been open a while and all that stuff’s safely out for the bin man, and I’ve burned a couple of scented candles – it’s not for ever, after all. Just until you’ve done the right thing. God knows what’s in that fridge, though.
‘So the other people…’ she says. ‘Who else lives here at the moment?’
He gives her one of those goggling looks that suggests that the question is somehow impertinent. ‘If I’m going to be sharing a bathroom,’ she adds, ‘I wouldn’t mind knowing who I’ll be sharing it with?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ he says. ‘Nice quiet man, Gerard Bright. Recently divorced, I think. Music teacher. The others are harmless enough. No junkies or anything, if you’re worried about that. And it’s only Mr Bright you’ll be sharing with. The two upstairs have a bathroom between them, too.’
He shuffles over to the window, pushes back the half-closed polyester curtains and throws up the lower sash. She’s pleased to see that it moves easily, as though the groove in which it runs has received a recent application of lubricant. The increased light does little to improve the prospect before her, though. Every surface is covered with dust, and the unchanged bedclothes look grubby and worn.
‘I’ll get someone in to bag it all up,’ he says, and jangles his keys. ‘It shouldn’t take too long.’
Collette perches on the edge of the armchair – she doesn’t want to sit in it fully until she’s given it a proper inspection – and tucks the bag behind her feet. ‘It’s okay. I’ll take it and I’ll sort it out. It’s nothing a few bin liners and a vacuum cleaner won’t fix.’
The Landlord raises his eyebrows.
‘Oh, sorry,’ says Collette. ‘I didn’t think. Unless you… you know…’ she waves a hand over the abandoned junk, the tiny TV, the pile of George at Asda dresses, ‘… yourself…’
He looks so offended that she knows immediately that this was exactly what he had been planning, and that, now the option has been cut off, offence is his only option. She gazes at him innocently. ‘I mean, I… I guess some of it could go to a charity shop or something.’
The Landlord huffs and turns away. ‘I doubt it,’ he says.
‘So.’ The bag is burning a hole in her ankle. She wants some quiet, some space to get her head together, and get it hidden away. ‘How about it, then?’
She sees him startle. Fuck’s sake, he thinks I’m propositioning him! Just look at you, man. It’s astonishing how some men can believe they’re gods among men even when they’re standing next to a mirror. ‘The room?’ she adds, hastily. ‘Can I have it?’
He knows he’s got the upper hand. No one who had any options would be offering to move in on some stranger’s discarded knickers, their unwashed crockery. ‘Depends,’ he says.
No way, she thinks.
‘What with the no references, I’ll need a bigger deposit. You know. For security. I’m not a charity. I’m already out a month on this little…’ He gestures round the room, at the evidence of the hasty departure.
Collette blinks: once, twice. Waits.
‘And no cheques,’ he says. ‘I’ll need it in cash. Like the rent. I’ve done enough bouncing cheques to last me a lifetime.’
‘That’s okay,’ she says. ‘I guessed that would be the case. Is the extra month not enough, then?’
He stands there, pretends to consider the question. She should have held back, earlier. He’s got the measure of how few choices she has available. ‘Six weeks,’ he says, ‘on top of the normal deposit. And the rent’s in advance.’
‘So that’s…’ she says, thinking. She’s got two grand in her bra, counted out from the bag in her hotel room this morning. She didn’t think she could possibly need more, even in this market.
‘Twenty-one hundred,’ he says. ‘And you don’t move in until I’ve got it.’
She takes a deep breath. It’s okay, Collette, she tells herself. He’s not going to mug you. Not in his own house. But, Jesus, he’s making Paris look like a holiday camp.
‘I can give you two grand now. I’ll have to go to the c
ashpoint for the rest tomorrow.’
His tongue runs across his lips and he shifts on the spot. Cash clearly has a near-erotic effect on him. He narrows his eyes at her, and licks his lips again.
She stands up and turns her back. She has no wish to put her hand near her breasts in view of this grubby old lecher. But it’s perfect, the room. It’s off the radar in every way. No one from her old life would look for her here and she needs this place, needs the time to regroup, see to Janine and work out what she’s going to do next.
The cash is warm, slightly damp from contact with her heat-soaked skin. She turns back and holds the money out. The Landlord pinches it between thumb and forefinger, and stares her in the face. I must hold his gaze. I mustn’t be the one to look down first. If I do, he’ll know he’s the boss and I’ll never see the back of him.
‘I’ll need a receipt for that,’ she says.
Collette closes the door, tries to put the snib down on the flimsy Yalelock. It slides, but doesn’t engage. She waits, her ear pressed against a wooden panel, and listens for the sound of his leaving. Hears him hover in the hall outside, feels the weight of his labouring breath. After a minute or so his shuffling tread moves away, starts slowly up the stairs. He lets out a small grunt as he takes each step.
She looks round her new home. Yellowing magnolia walls, thin polyester curtains in a pattern of geometric colour blocks on a field of blue that she recognises from several one-star hotels she’s stayed in over the years, the unmade bed, the armchair, the small Formica table below the window. The previous tenant’s hairbrush lying on the windowsill, a few red hairs caught in the bristles. What sort of person moves on without even taking their hairbrush? she wonders.
Someone like you, she replies. She remembers her last room, in Barcelona: the clothes she will never see again, her make-up scattered across the top of the chest of drawers, her books, the necklaces hanging from panel-pins knocked into the back of the bedroom door, the sounds of café life in the street below. At least, thank God, she’d put the bag in a locker at the station, because once she’d seen Malik in the street outside she could never risk going in there again. She feels tears prick the back of her eyes. Someone will come along, eventually, when the rent runs out, and throw it all away. No one will wonder where she’s gone, why she left in such careless haste. She feels a certain fellow feeling with the vanished tenant. She’s part of the easy-come, easy-go world now and only Tony Stott wants to know where she is.
Collette goes over to the bed and pulls back the bedclothes. They smell of someone else. She saw a big Asda nearby from the window of the train. She’ll head there and buy a couple of sets when she’s had a rest; maybe even treat herself to a new duvet and pillows, too.
You mustn’t spend it all, she thinks, automatically, the way she has each time she’s started again. Don’t go blowing it. It’s all you have, Collette.
She fetches the bag from under the chair. Sits on the bed and checks, as she’s checked every hour since she fled for the station, that the contents are still there, pulls out the small stash of emergency belongings she stored in there and lays them out to mark her territory. A couple of summer dresses, a cardigan, flip-flops, a couple of pairs of knickers, a sponge bag with a toothbrush, a tube of face cream and a small collection of eyeliners from her handbag. All she’s salvaged, this time. Not much to show for nearly forty years, but it’s better than no life at all.
She sits, then lies, on this stranger’s bottom sheet. It’s mercifully free of stains, at least. She can’t face the thin, sad-looking pillows, though. Uses the bag and what remains inside as a rest for her head instead. It’s firm, unyielding. Who’d’ve thought? she wonders, that you could be this uncomfortable lying on a hundred thousand pounds?
Chapter Four
The signs are everywhere that Northbourne is coming up in the world, though it still has a way to go. There are new businesses springing up: a deli that sells sun-dried tomatoes and the sort of cheese that smells of armpit, an estate agent with a one-syllable name that hands out free cappuccino if you look smart and old enough, a dedicated greengrocer and a café with pavement tables and extra-wide aisles to accommodate the buggies. But most of all, Cher has noticed that there are new signs. One has appeared on the lamp-post on the corner of Station Road and the High Street since she passed by this morning. She stops to read her way slowly through it, her lips moving as she does so.
THIEVES OPERATE IN THIS AREA.
TAKE CARE OF YOUR BELONGINGS.
She raises her eyebrows. A sure sign, if ever there was one, that there are people living here now who have something worth stealing. Cher instinctively checks the breast pocket of her denim jacket, where her money is stored. Feels the slight bulge and smiles. It’s been a good week. She’s got the rent, and cash left over, and three days until it’s due. She might even take a couple of days off, do her roots, give herself a manicure. There’s a new range of glitter varnishes in the chemist on the High Street. She might pop in, buy some emery boards and treat herself to one of those while she’s there.
She hoists her floral backpack to her shoulder and turns on to the High Street. It’s the tail end of lunchtime, and the street is relatively busy, filled with savoury scents from the food outlets scattered among the charity shops: curry, fried chicken, Greggs’ sausage rolls, the smell of chips from the greasy spoon.
Cher dawdles along the pavement: no rush to be anywhere; no rush, ever. But her eyes, behind her Primark sunglasses, are watchful, take in everything around her in the search for opportunities. Life can’t be just about making the rent. There needs to be more. It’s hard to remember on a day like today, but winter will be coming – the long dark nights, the days spent mostly sleeping because it’s too cold to get out of bed. She needs to start saving to top up her meter card – there are some things you just can’t get for free.
She scans the road. Wherever there’s a crowd, there’s an opportunity. Today she’s done a circuit of the redemption stores of Tooting, Streatham and Norbury – no need for any great stealth, just confidence and an air of shame, a talent for playing the embarrassed, cash-strapped student who’s spent their loan on tech and run out of food. She rarely works her home patch, though, apart from the occasional foray into the Co-op when she’s forgotten to get cat food for Psycho. The West End, where people are distracted and careless with their tech, and she’s just one of thousands of girls in short skirts, is a richer and safer place in which to work. Only junkies and other people too wasted or desperate or tired to get themselves further afield work their own home patch. But her eye roams, automatically, and logs the chances available.
In front of the Brasserie Julien – one of the new arrivals, all brass and wood and marble table tops – a group of Yummy Mummies has gathered. The new breed of Northbourneite, driven further out by the rising prices of Clapham and Wandsworth and Balham in search of period fixer-uppers with room for a conservatory kitchen extension in the side-return. They’re drinking cappuccinos in the shade of the canopy, designer sunglasses perched on heads like hairbands, a couple of toddlers strapped into jogging buggies beside them, talking loudly about what a joy it is to live in such a multicultural area. Their handbags sit carefully between their feet, but a bag from the White Company hangs from the back of a buggy and all three have lined their iPhones up on the table like badges of identity. That’s £200, right there, she thinks. Just trip over one of their kids, and I’d have all their Apple products before they’d retrieved the organic low-fat apple snacks. Though their prices are going down as they get commoner and commoner, Apple products still have a greater resale value than any other tech because people still think they make them look rich. That’s why she specialises in scrumping.
She walks on, past the dusty display of dead pensioners’ unwanted knick-knacks in the window of the Help the Aged shop, the shuttered Citizens’ Advice, the Asian grocer that only seems to sell cumin and evaporated milk. She pauses at the window of Funky Uncles and sees that
the eternity ring she sold there six weeks ago has gone on sale for three times what they gave her for it. It’s a mug’s game, this, she thinks. When I’m older I’ll have a pawnshop of my own. It’s a licence to print money.
Outside the new deli, a woman her mum’s age – well, the age her mum would have been – pauses and delves in her shoulder bag at the sound of a ringtone. Snatches the phone out, turns away from the street and starts to talk, the flap left hanging, unsecured. It’s like they’re tempting me, thinks Cher, as if they’ve heard my thoughts.
An old lady, auburn wig faded to rusty lilac, drags a wheelie bag past her, a leather wallet bulging from the pocket of the tweed overcoat she wears despite the heat. A sitting duck, thinks Cher; thinks of her nanna, tumbling to the floor in Toxteth, the hip that never really healed, and reaches out to touch her sleeve.
‘’Scuse me, love,’ she says.
The old woman regards her with half-vacant, faded blue eyes. Hairs like fuse wire sprout from her upper lip and chin. Cher smiles, encouragingly. ‘You don’t want to be leaving that sticking out like that,’ she says. ‘Someone’ll have it off you.’
She sees the woman struggle to interpret her accent. Fuck’s sake, she thinks, I’m only a Scouser. It’s not like I’m from Newcastle or something.
She points towards the purse, waits as the woman looks down, sees understanding dawn as she fumbles with knotted old knuckles to ram it deeper into the pocket. I don’t want to get old, thinks Cher. There’s nothing in the world will make me live like that, smelling of piss and my tits round my knees and not even able to keep warm on a day like this.
The woman looks up at her and bestows her with a snaggled smile. ‘Thanks, darling,’ she says, the tones of London almost as impenetrable and jarring to Cher’s ear as those of the Mersey were to her. ‘That was nice of you.’