by Alex Marwood
‘That’s all right,’ says Cher.
‘Not many young people bother, these days,’ she says, and Cher realises, too late, that she’s befriended a talker. ‘You’re all in such a rush. I’m surprised you bothered to stop – young people are so selfish.’
Her tone has changed from the brief flash of gratitude to one of reproach. Oh, God, thinks Cher, never a good deed goes unpunished.
‘In my day, we respected old people,’ the old lady says, ‘and we got a clip round the ear if we didn’t.’
The urge to roll her eyes is almost overwhelming. ‘You’re not allowed to do that any more. It’s against the law.’
The old woman purses her lips like a cat’s arse. Not a sweet little old lady at all. Not her nanna. She’s always wondered how people manage to believe that old age automatically bestows some sort of saintliness when they are so convinced – if the platitudes she’s heard mouthed at funerals are anything to go by – that only the good die young. ‘And more’s the pity,’ she says.
Cher considers tipping her wheelie bag over, but settles for saying. ‘Never mind, you’re welcome,’ pointedly, and walks on shaking her head. You can’t win if you’re young these days. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. She helps herself to an apple from the display outside the Knossos minimart, turns the corner on to Beechcroft Road and takes off her jacket. It really is hot today. Too hot. She’d like to ditch the wig as well, but she’s too careful for that. Nowhere in England is built for this sort of heat. It’s stupid, having to walk all this way to get back to pretty much where she started. If she could get over that chain link at the station, she’d be home in less than a minute. There’s even a gap in the garden fence that leads straight on to the embankment.
Beechcroft Road is full of skips. There are four along its hundred-yard length, their bricks and laminate-kitchen-cabinet contents bearing witness to the arrival of the home improvers. Cher scans them as she passes for usable gear, but it’s all builders’ rubble and some hideous patterned carpet. She once saw a beautiful Persian rug in a skip off Kensington High Street, but she had no way of getting it home.
A telly, she thinks. That’s what I could really do with. If I had a telly, I wouldn’t need to go out so much. It’s going out that costs the most. You can’t do anything for free in this town, unless you’re ready to pay in other ways.
She crosses over on to the opposite pavement to turn into Beulah Grove. This side of the street basks in full sun, and it’s like stepping into an oven. She hurries round the corner, crosses over into the shade, suddenly aware that her mouth is parched. One of the Poshes’ kids – Celia, Delia, Amelia, whatever – has dumped a pink bicycle at the foot of the steps up to number twenty-one. I could have that, thinks Cher. Probably get twenty quid for it in the Royal Oak. Some people don’t know they’re born. Some people deserve to get ripped off.
She passes by, pauses at the bottom of her steps to find her keys, and glances down to see if the net curtains covering the basement window move. If Vesta is back from her holidays, she’ll be looking out: she’s always looking out, constantly on the watch for life passing by her window. But nothing moves. Cher shrugs. She’ll be back soon, she’s sure. She runs up the steps to the front door.
She smells the Landlord before she hears him. Knows for a fact that he’s been in today, from the aroma he’s left behind: Old Spice and Febreze and, below all that, something cheesy, old and rotten. It’s got worse, lately. The smell of him seems to hang around in the communal parts of the house even when she’s seen no sign of him all day. Bugger, she thinks, and closes the door as quietly as she can. Her rent’s not due till the end of the week, but that’s never stopped him from popping in to ‘check up’ on her, breathing and snuffling and trying to see her nipples.
She hears his voice, and the boards on the upstairs landing creak beneath his weight. He’s talking to Hossein, walking towards the stairs. He’ll corner her by the front door, subject her to his leery flirting, his innuendo, his knowing smirk. Cher looks back towards the front door. She’s almost at the bottom of the stairs, and it’ll take too long to get there and get it open from here. She can see the toes of his trainers on the top step. He’ll see her from halfway down and she won’t be able to get away.
She glances down at her hand and sees that Nikki’s key is still on her keyring. The door to her bedsit is three steps away. Cher tiptoes to it, scrabbles the key into the lock and slips inside the room.
Chapter Five
Collette snaps from her sleep at the sound of a key turning in the door lock. She had only meant to lie down for a few minutes, but those minutes plunged her into the deep, black unconsciousness of exhaustion. And now she’s awake again, head fogged and nerves jangling, kicking her way up this strange bed, coming to rest against the headboard with the bag clutched to her chest as though it will shield her against a bullet. Oh God, oh God, oh God, she thinks, as she’s thought every time she has been surprised in the past three years, they’ve found me! They’ve found me and I’m dead.
A slight figure enters the room. A girl: brassy blonde hair, floral backpack with leather-look straps hanging from one shoulder, skin dyed Egyptian mummy brown, closes the door, turns and gawps as she catches sight of her.
‘Oh,’ she says in a Mersey accent and the high tones of someone who’s barely got used to her hormones. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
Collette can’t find her voice. Her heart is fluttering in her chest and she’s still waiting to breathe.
‘This is Nikki’s room,’ says the girl. ‘Don’t tell me he’s gone and let it already.’
Collette’s heart slows.
‘She’s only been gone two weeks,’ says the girl. ‘Less than that. You’d think he’d have left it a month, anyway.’
She starts forwards, and Collette stiffens, tightens her grip on her bag. The girl stops, widens her eyes and holds her hands up in the air, palms toward her.
‘All right, all right,’ she says, ‘keep your hair on.’
Then suddenly, as if she’s reminded herself by saying it, she reaches up and pulls her own hair off. Stands, blonde mop in hand, and releases a mass of loose curls, bleached so the hair has gone an interesting metallic shade, from the confines of a stocking cap. She runs the fingers of her free hand through it, ruffles up the sweaty roots. Not fake tan at all, thinks Collette. She’s mixed race. Amazing how a change of hair can completely change the way you interpret someone. Don’t I just know that?
‘Phwoar,’ she says, ‘that’s better. I thought my head was going to come off, it’s that hot under there.’
Collette finds her voice at last.
‘What are you doing in my room?’
The girl looks surprised, as though this is an odd question. Then she smiles, and shrugs. ‘Oh, yeah, sorry about that. But to be fair, I didn’t know it was your room, did I? Nikki gave me a copy of her key. So I could come in and watch telly when she was out. I really love Real Housewives. D’you like that? And Judge Judy. Anyway, I heard the Landlord coming down the stairs, and I popped in to get away from him.’
Collette doesn’t say anything, just stares, and waits.
A little frown crosses the girl’s face; the look of someone struggling to make herself understood by a foreigner.
‘You’ve met the Landlord, right?’ She pantomimes waving a hand in front of her face, holding her nose. ‘Yeah, course you have. You’re gorra’ve done, if you rented a room off him. Unless you’re a burglar. Are you a burglar? There’s not much to nick in here, you know. Even the telly’s from a car boot.’
‘No,’ says Collette, ‘I’m not a burglar. Are you?’
The girl bursts out laughing. ‘Only on weekends. You’re all right.’
‘I moved in this morning,’ says Collette.
The girl looks around her, disbelieving. ‘So you’ve just… taken over someone else’s life?’
‘I…’
‘Cause you’ve not exactly put you
r stamp on the place, have you?’
‘My… my stuff’s coming after… I…’ she stammers, then stops. Hang on, she thinks, what are you doing? It’s not like I’ve done anything wrong, is it? ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘I don’t see how it’s any business of yours.’
‘Nikki’s my friend,’ says the girl, ‘I’m looking out for her.’
‘Well, if she comes back, she can have anything she wants,’ says Collette. ‘It’s not like I’m putting it on eBay.’
A silence. They stare each other down. Then the girl drops her bag from her shoulder and says, ‘I’m Cher, anyway. I live upstairs.’
‘Collette,’ says Collette.
Cher puts a finger to her lips and presses her ear against the door. Outside, heavy footfalls plod up the passage and keys jangle in a hand. While the girl’s face is turned away, Collette takes the opportunity to tuck the bag down the side of the bed, get it out of Cher’s sightline. The last thing she wants is for anyone to see its contents.
Chapter Six
It’s a long journey from Ilfracombe to Northbourne by public transport. Vesta’s been on the road for eight hours, hobbling from bus to train to bus again, and is feeling her back and the arthritis in her knee. The walk from the High Street, dragging her suitcase behind her on its wonky wheel, seems to take as long as the trip from Victoria. I’m not sure how many more times I can do this, she thinks mournfully. I feel my age more each year. But, oh – if I didn’t have my two weeks by the sea, what would be the point of any of it? Just Northbourne day after day, the hoodies in the bus shelter and the litter on the common, the rattle of the suburban trains passing by at the end of the garden. Damn you for a coward, Vesta Collins, she chides herself. You always wanted to live by the sea. You should have gone when Mum died, not taken the easy route and tied yourself to a sitting tenancy.
On the corner of Bracken Gardens, she sees Hossein sauntering up the road towards her, dapper in a shirt of cotton brocade, his beard neatly trimmed. She waves, and his face is suddenly wreathed in smiles. He hurries up to her and stretches out a hand to take hold of the handle of her case.
‘You’re home!’ he says. ‘I’ve missed you.’
Vesta laughs, and pushes at his upper arm. ‘Oh, go on, you. You’re all charm.’
He takes the bag and starts pulling it towards the house. ‘What are you doing?’ she protests. ‘You’re on your way out!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, woman. I can go later.’
‘But you —’
‘Enough,’ he barks. ‘Do as you’re told.’
She subsides, content. The magazines she read when she was young, when feminism was a mere glint in Germaine’s eye, were full of warnings about Middle Eastern men and how controlling they were. Never said anything about the gentlemanliness, though, she thinks. Catch an Englishman dropping his trip to the bookies to drag an old lady’s suitcase home.
‘Did you have a good holiday?’ he asks.
‘Oh, lovely, thank you. It’s so beautiful down there. Even with that silly statue they’ve stuck in the middle of it.’
‘So I heard,’ he says.
‘Yes. You should go and see it,’ she says. ‘Silly, being here and not seeing anything of the country.’
‘As soon as I can, I will,’ says Hossein. ‘There are a lot of places I want to see.’
Vesta remembers. ‘Sorry, poppet,’ she says. ‘Mind like a sieve, me.’
Hossein gives her his lovely smile again. ‘It’s okay. I take it as a compliment.’
‘Where were you off to, anyway?’
‘To sign my little book,’ he says, ‘so they know I haven’t run away. Then I’m going to Kensington.’
‘Kensington!’ says Vesta. ‘Posh!’
He laughs. ‘Iranian shops. I’m going to see my cousin. He lives in Ealing.’
‘That’s nice,’ says Vesta. ‘It’s nice to have family. Even if they are in Ealing.’
‘Yes,’ says Hossein. ‘It is. Do you have any family of your own?’
She pauses, sighs. ‘Not any more. I had an auntie in Ilfracombe, but she passed away a few years ago, now.’
‘No brothers or sisters?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
She sees him glance at her from the side of his eye. Don’t look at me like that, she thinks. It’s a fine old day when you feel sorry for me.
‘You don’t miss what you never had, dear,’ she says. ‘It’s not like I don’t have friends, is it?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘You’re good at that.’
Vesta smiles. Such a charmer. But still, she feels warmed by the compliment. ‘So how’s life at the old homestead?’ she asks. ‘Any gossip? How’s that little girl? Not got into any trouble, has she?’
Hossein shrugs. ‘No. She’s okay, I think. No trouble. There’s a new woman, moved into Nikki’s room.’
‘Oh! Nikki didn’t come back, then?’
‘No. Not a sign of her. And her rent’s run out, so boom, she’s history.’
‘That’s weird,’ says Vesta. ‘She was a nice girl. I didn’t think she would be the type.’
Hossein shrugs expansively, as is his habit. ‘I know. But there you go. And you know what he’s like. Not going to leave it a day longer than he needs without getting some money.’
‘Well,’ says Vesta. Then: ‘She just went? I can’t believe it. She didn’t say goodbye? Not even to Cher?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Well,’ says Vesta, again. The itinerant movements of the young never cease to amaze her. ‘Maybe she went back to Glasgow. Did she make up with her folks, did you hear?’
‘Vesta,’ says Hossein, ‘nobody tells me anything. I sometimes think you’re the only one who realises I speak English.’
‘Well,’ says Vesta again. ‘So what’s she like?’
‘Don’t know,’ says Hossein. ‘She only got here today. I heard the Landlord letting her in, so I…’
‘Oh, you big scaredy-cat.’
He shrugs again. She’s right, of course. A man his age shouldn’t be hiding from strangers, even if they do have Roy Preece attached. They reach the steps and he bends to slide the handle back into the case. Picks it up and starts towards the door. ‘Good God, woman. What have you got in here?’
‘Oh, sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t have anywhere to dispose of the bodies. It was only a bed and breakfast.’
‘How many people you killed? Have you no self-control? You’ve only been gone two weeks.’
She starts up the steps behind him, winces as she bends her knee. She can’t wait to have a sit-down and put her feet up, have a cuppa. There’s not much in the flat, but she at least had the foresight to lay in a pint of UHT before she left. Not as good as fresh, but better than nothing, and there’s no way she’s leaving the house again today. There’s a packet of digestives in the tin, she’s pretty sure, and a block of cheddar in the fridge. There are times when the reduced appetite of age is a great convenience.
Hossein opens the front door, and stands by to wait for her to pass. From behind Gerard Bright’s door a piece of music, all piano and sobbing cello, plays on and on as it had done the day she left for Ilfracombe; it’s as though she’d just popped out to the corner shop. She steps in to the hall and notices that the familiar smells of her childhood – dust and impermanence, and a slight whiff of damp – have had another layer added to them. Something… meaty, she thinks; like something’s died under the floorboards and has yet to desiccate. We need to get this place aired out, she thinks. There’s no ventilation on this stairwell, with all the doors shut most of the time.
She stretches, her journey finally over, and leafs through the mail on the hall table. A couple of circulars – the usual stuff, animal charities thinking she’s a sucker, old-people insurers reminding her she’s going to die. ‘Oh, but it’s good to be home,’ she says, and isn’t sure she means it.
‘No place like it,’ says Hossein, but she misses the faint irony in his voice.
&n
bsp; She puffs out her cheeks and drops the letters into her bag, ready for the recycling bin. ‘Can I tempt you to a cuppa?’ she asks Hossein. ‘Before you go out?’
He checks his watch. ‘Sure. I don’t have to hurry.’
She fetches her key from her handbag. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, then.’
She knows the moment she ducks in through her narrow door under the hall stairs that something isn’t right. The air in the flat is too fresh. For a moment, she wonders if she forgot to close a window before she left for Devon, but then she switches on the light at the top of the stairs and sees that her umbrella stand – her mother’s umbrella stand – is lying on its side.
For a moment, her brain freezes. The sight of the unexpected where all is so familiar leaves her grasping for thought. ‘Oh,’ she says. Then, catching sight of The Crying Boy, his frame askew on the wall, she suddenly knows what has happened and her guts lurch. ‘Oh,’ she says again.
She hears Hossein drag the bag in through the door as she feels her way wordlessly down the stairs, clutching on to the banister as soon as it starts, like a proper old person. Her legs are weak, her breath watery. Sixty-nine years she has lived here, the world changing around her and neighbours coming and going, but this has always been her place of safety. No one has ever come in here without invitation. No one has ever invaded.
She reaches the bottom of the steps with a flood of relief and dread as she feels the solid ground beneath her feet. The hall is scattered with umbrellas and walking sticks, her father’s precious books tossed out from their shelf on to the faded Axminster, her coats, her mother’s hats – globes of fake fur and fabric roses she could never bear to give to the charity shop – ripped from the hooks above and trodden into the ground. ‘Oh,’ she says again. Hossein, concentrating on balancing his burden down the steep staircase, has yet to see the chaos, is yet to remark upon it.
She doesn’t want to go any further. Wants to turn tail and run, go back to Ilfracombe, not have to face it. Glancing up the corridor towards her tiny kitchen, she can see light where the outside door should be. It’s hanging open, on its hinges, kicked or jemmied during one of the nights she slept unknowing in her bed and breakfast, lulled by the sounds of gulls and water.