The hell there would be to pay.
Marina shifted in the hard seat of the plastic chair. She crossed her legs, uncrossed them again. She held on to the sides of the chair.
Philip was looking up at her from the front row of the auditorium. ‘This exercise is called the “hot seat”,’ he said. ‘It’s about staying in character, no matter what’s thrown at you … but it’s also about using what’s inside you, tapping into your own feelings so that you can pass them on to your character. You OK with that?’
Marina said that she was.
‘I’ve been working on a character for you—’
‘What’s she called?’
He waved the question away. ‘We’ll find out. It’s who she is that matters, what she’s feeling. The way things are shaping up in my head, there’s definitely going to be a sadness in her and maybe that’s because of something I see in you, and that’s what I want to get to this afternoon. You ready? You clear how this works?’
She nodded.
Philip took a few seconds, then sat back and folded his arms. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Kelly,’ Marina said, quickly.
‘You live round here?’
‘Camberwell.’
‘And what do you do for a living?’
‘I’m a sex worker,’ she said. She gave her character a far more pronounced London accent than she had herself. She thought it sounded pretty good. ‘A prostitute.’
He nodded, thought about it. ‘Are you happy doing that?’
‘Happy as you can be.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘What does “happy” mean anyway?’
‘I think I’m pretty happy …’
‘Well, I wouldn’t still be tossing off old men if I won the lottery tomorrow, put it that way.’ She was thrilled to see him smile at that and had to control the urge to smile herself.
‘You got any kids?’
‘A boy and a girl.’ She was trying to think of names when he asked the next question.
‘You doing this for them, Kelly?’
‘Yeah, and to pay for what I need.’
‘You mean drugs.’
‘Would you do this unless you were completely out of it?’
He smiled again and held up his hand. ‘OK, that’s great, now stay in character please, hold on to that and stay focused, all right.’
She nodded. She was still Kelly. She imagined herself walking up to the side of a car, leaning down to the window. The excitement, the fear …
‘I love the way she’s making jokes to mask the sadness I was talking about,’ he said. ‘That’s great. But I want to go deeper. I want to expose it. Once we’ve done that we can put it back in its box, but we need to bring it out into the light and see it for what it is …’
She had a short leather skirt on, a denim jacket, fuck-me heels.
‘Just close your eyes and get centred,’ Philip said. ‘I want you to think of something that makes you sad … maybe it makes you angry … just focus on whatever that is. If it’s a person, focus on his face, on every detail you can remember …’
She shook her head, but her very reluctance seemed to make Philip even more excited. He stood up and his voice moved from a quasi-hypnotic drone to something rather harsher.
‘Focus on it. Use it …’
It was easy. Uncle Ian. Her dad’s best friend who was not really an uncle and who was not the man her father thought he was. The smell of fags and barley wine on him and the turn of her stomach and the blankets pulled up tight to her chin when the door squeaked and the light spilled into her bedroom and Uncle Ian stepped inside.
Her breath caught.
Philip said something but she couldn’t make it out. He raised his voice and said, ‘Tell me where you are?’
Light blue wallpaper with small yellow flowers on it. The lamp with a tear in its shade. A shelf above her bed with all her books and animals and a metal money-bank like a miniature red pillar box.
She said, ‘I don’t want to.’
‘Tell me who’s there, Kelly.’
She wasn’t Kelly and she couldn’t do this. Why was he making her do this? What was wrong with what she’d been doing? Making things up and thinking about how she looked and doing the London accent. That was good, wasn’t it? That felt like acting.
She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t do this …
Dave was the only person she had ever told. It was what had brought them together in the first place. That shared experience. She remembered him finding her crying in the corner at that stupid party. Thinking she was drunk until they’d started talking and it had all come pouring out of her. He’d made it clear that he understood, that he knew what she had gone through. He’d told her that none of it was her fault, none of it.
They had talked all night and then, as usual, she’d fucked the pain away.
She opened her eyes. Philip was walking towards the stage and rummaging in his pocket.
He thrust a tissue towards her and said, ‘Let it out, OK. It’s all useful. Come on, let’s go and talk about it.’
*
In the dressing room, Philip produced a tobacco tin and took out a ready-rolled joint. ‘Do you want some of this?’ he asked.
‘People will smell it,’ she said.
He lit the joint. ‘I’m not scared of a few geriatric tap dancers.’
It was strong stuff – skunk, he told her – and her head was starting to spin after just a couple of tokes. Philip was waving his arms and talking about the play he was writing for them all, how the part he had in mind for her was definitely the most important.
She nodded along and tried to follow what he was saying.
At some point he started talking about his wife and kids. He said something about how his students were like children, like older children and how he hated to see them upset.
Then he leaned in to kiss her, and she let him.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Barry had started to lose it from the moment his ex-wife picked up the phone. Something to do with just hearing her voice, like those dogs in that experiment, didn’t matter what sort of mood she was in. Still, better her than that arsehole accountant she was shacked up with, who cycled everywhere and had bought his son a fucking Chelsea strip for crying out loud. Now he really knew how to wind Barry up.
Hiya, Barry. How’s it hanging, mate? Let me put her on …
Not that winding him up was particularly difficult these days. He wasn’t stupid, he knew he’d been flying off the handle a lot lately, that almost anything was liable to set him off.
Like walking on eggshells, Angie kept saying.
Two minutes, that’s all the time the miserable bitch had given him on the phone with Nick. Barely time to get beyond hello, for Christ’s sake. ‘Why d’you keep doing this?’ he asked. ‘Why can’t I talk to my own son on the phone for more than two bloody minutes?’
‘He’s got homework to do,’ she said.
‘Come on, it’s Saturday.’ She said nothing. ‘I’ve got rights.’
‘You’ve got no rights,’ she said.
He recognised the signs, but as per usual, by the time he did it was too late to do anything about it. The prickle of sweat across his chest, the ache in his jaw from grinding his teeth.
He had all but ground the buggers to dust that night on the piss with Ed the smartarse and Dave the dickhead. It was general things, like the fact that he was actually younger than Ed Dunning but somehow felt years older. The way Ed and Dave had shared looks, like he wasn’t quite bright enough to appreciate their double act as much as he should. More specific stuff too, like Ed’s pathetic leering at anything with knockers and thinking he was Mr Entertainment, or Dave sucking up to him like the weedy kid in the playground and talking about what had happened back in Florida when he really didn’t know the first thing about it.
Neither of them would know a solid piece of four-by-two from the holes in their arses. Neither of them knew how smart he was and neith
er of them had the first idea what had happened to that girl.
His ex-wife was talking. Lecturing him. He had to concentrate to make it out above the hiss that might have been on the line or in his head.
‘I need to talk to you about maintenance,’ she said.
The prickle of sweat was spreading. ‘Look, I know.’
‘You’re behind and I don’t want to go to my solicitor about it, but I will if I have to.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘So, don’t make me.’
Why the hell was she being like this? Why was everybody doing their level best to screw his life up? He felt like he was being punched and punched.
‘We’ve lost a couple of big jobs lately,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
‘Not my problem, Barry.’
‘Things’ll pick up.’ He was squeezing the phone so hard that his knuckles had whitened and his arm was locked solid. ‘I just need—’
‘You could get a loan,’ she said.
‘Come on.’
‘Borrow some cash off your brother.’
‘Why don’t you—?’
‘He’s always been better than you at managing his money.’
‘… just go and fuck yourself!’
She hung up and he shouted out the last two words again as he smashed the phone back on to its cradle.
Angie had called up to tell him that tea was ready and was just setting his Arsenal mug on the counter when Barry came into the kitchen.
‘What the hell have you done to yourself?’ she asked.
He looked down at his fist and tightened the bloodied wad of toilet paper that was wrapped around it. ‘Stupid,’ he said. ‘I broke one of the windows in the bedroom.’
‘You all right, love?’
‘I cut myself trying to board it up, that’s all.’
Angie passed Barry his tea and told him it didn’t matter. She did not need to listen to some half-arsed explanation. She knew that he had gone upstairs to phone his ex.
‘I’ll get one of the lads to come round and sort it out tomorrow,’ he said.
They sat at the island and drank their tea. Angie fetched the biscuit barrel and they both dug in.
‘I’ve still got a good mind not to go tonight,’ Angie said.
Barry dunked his biscuit. ‘Suits me.’
‘I mean, I almost certainly wouldn’t have gone for that stupid drink anyway, I’ve got too much to do with the kids, but it’s nice to be asked, isn’t it? Especially when I was the one that got the ball rolling, when it was me that got everyone together in the first place. Plain bloody rude, that’s what it is.’
‘Maybe you missed an email or something,’ Barry suggested.
She shook her head. She hadn’t missed anything. It was no great mystery to her because she’d been through the same thing plenty of times at school and knew exactly what was going on. The cool, skinny bitches who did not want to be seen hanging around with the fat girl. Even back then, much as she had cried about it and wished that things were different, she had felt a small, warm glow of satisfaction, sitting on her own in the corner of the playground or playing on her own. She knew that she was better than them because she was nicer. She would not grow up and hate herself because of the way she had behaved.
She had comforted herself with that thought back then, sitting at the edge of the playing field or bouncing a ball alone and thinking of all the horrible things she wanted to do to them.
‘Well, stuff them,’ she said.
Barry let out a long sigh. ‘I wish I hadn’t mentioned it now …’
‘No. Stuff them because we are going to go and we’ll be the ones with the moral high ground, right, love? We can sit there and look at their smug faces and they won’t know that we know.’
‘Well, they’ll probably work out that I’ve told you.’
‘They won’t know for certain though, will they?’ Angie said, smiling. ‘And it suits me just fine to let them think they’ve got away with it.’
‘Whatever,’ Barry said.
When the tea was finished, Angie told Barry to put the biscuit tin away, to ‘put a padlock on the bloody thing’. She watched him slouch across to the cupboard; the small steps and the rounded shoulders like he was carrying the weight of the world, and said, ‘You really don’t want to go tonight, do you?’
‘They’re not our sort, are they, Ange? Or at least … they don’t think we’re their sort.’
‘I thought you had an OK time,’ Angie said. ‘When you went out with Ed and Dave. I mean, I know Ed can be a bit of a pillock …’
‘It’s Dave I really can’t work out,’ Barry said. ‘Who the hell he is, I mean.’ He came back to the central island and sat down. ‘It’s like he’s just trying to please everyone or something, like he … adapts. He’s Jack the Lad with Ed, talking about birds or whatever, “I’ll have what he’s having,” all that. Then with his missus he’s all meek and sensitive. Like whatever you call it … a new man.’
Angie nodded. She had noticed something similar herself, thought Marina was exactly the same, that the two of them were probably very well matched. ‘I know, but isn’t everyone a bit like that? Trying to fit in.’
‘Not me, mate,’ Barry said. He slapped his hand on the granite. ‘What you see is what you get.’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘What?’
‘I’m joking,’ Angie said, reaching across to rub the back of his hand.
And she was. She knew that her silly sod of an old man would do almost anything for a quiet life and yes, there were certainly things she would change, top of the list being lengthening that short fuse of his. But as much as she believed anything, Angie believed that Barry was fundamentally honest and decent.
Whatever that stupid cow of a copper might have thought.
THE SECOND DINNER
THIRTY-EIGHT
There were the usual pleasantries exchanged at the Dunnings’ front door. Kisses were given, some of which actually made contact with skin. Wine and flowers were handed over and gratefully received. The visitors made admiring comments about the hallway’s original features: the black and white Victorian tiles on the floor; the elaborate coving; the dado rail.
Barry nodded and said, ‘You’d be amazed how many times people have paid me to rip stuff like this out.’
‘People are idiots,’ Ed said.
‘Barry’s got a nice little sideline selling that stuff on to reclamation yards,’ Angie said. ‘Haven’t you, love?’
They moved through to a sitting room that was actually two rooms divided by floor-to-ceiling doors, which had been opened for the evening. The dining table had been laid at the end of the room that was nearest the garden.
‘This is gorgeous,’ Marina said.
Sue shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I’d love to have a kitchen that was big enough to eat in,’ she said. ‘One of these days we might be able to get something like Barry and Angie have got.’
‘Well you know where to come,’ Angie said, nudging Barry.
Dave looked at Ed. ‘I reckon you need to sell a few more books.’
Ed said nothing and instead made a show of opening a bottle of Cava while Sue fetched glasses. Angie did not see the label and said, ‘Blimey, champagne. Someone’s pushing the boat out.’
Marina poked Dave in the side and said, ‘You’re driving …’
While the glasses were filled, they talked about their respective journeys to Southgate. Though the M23 had been busy, Angie and Barry had still managed to get there from Crawley in about the same time as Marina and Dave had driven up from Forest Hill.
‘I don’t get into London very often,’ Angie said. She exchanged a look with Barry. ‘I always forget how bad the traffic is.’
They moaned about London for a while. It was dirty and expensive and the crime had reached ridiculous proportions. Sue and Ed tried to defend their decision to live where they did, but admitted to having been burgled three times in five years. Mari
na and Dave had only been done once, but it had been messy, Marina said, pulling a face.
‘Why do people do that?’ Ed asked. ‘Why don’t they just take what they want then bugger off and buy their drugs? Why do they have to piss on your bed, or whatever?’
‘Maybe they’re on drugs when they do it,’ Marina said.
‘Still, not as bad as in America,’ Angie said. ‘All that shooting and what have you.’
They all nodded, looked at their glasses.
What have you …
‘To good friends,’ Ed said, raising his glass.
They drank and there were a few seconds of awkward silence afterwards.
‘So, what’s the latest?’ Sue asked.
Angie saw that Sue was looking at her and pointed at herself. ‘Me?’
‘I just thought you were looking out for news on the internet. We count on you to keep us up to date.’
‘Oh … well, nothing new,’ Angie said.
‘And we’ve not heard any more from that woman,’ Dave said. ‘Have you? What was her name?’
Angie, Barry and Sue shook their heads.
‘Quinlan,’ Ed said.
‘Oh well, it looks like we’re all off the hook,’ Angie said, laughing.
Marina had drifted across to the built-in bookshelves either side of the fireplace and was scanning the titles, her head cocked. ‘Dave and I would love to get somewhere a bit more like this,’ she said. She turned back to Sue with a cheeky grin. ‘Any chance we could see the rest of the place?’
‘Help yourself,’ Sue said. ‘I just need to keep an eye on dinner.’
‘You sure?’
‘It’s nothing fancy by the way. Not in Angie’s league.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be lovely,’ Angie said.
‘I’ll do it,’ Ed said. His hand was on Sue’s backside. ‘Even I can manage to chuck some spaghetti in a pan.’ He gave her a little push towards the door. ‘You show Marina and Angie upstairs.’
In the kitchen, Dave and Barry stood with their drinks watching Ed grate cheese and chop bacon.
‘We’ll make a new man of you yet,’ Dave said.
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