Etta stared into the mess. She read the text. Ola:
No, what flowers? Stuck at drinks do with bad reception. Will call tomorrow. xx
Unable to stomach cleaning the tiles just yet, knowing that some unwanted darkness from outside was encroaching, she drew the blind down on the kitchen window; they never did that. She took a can from the cupboard and sat it on the stool barricading the back door; an early warning system, a booby-trap of butter beans. She checked each door once more and, working hard not to crack and call Ola again, threw a tea towel over the mess.
Surely the oozing remains of flowers had to be a gift gone bad. Had it been sitting at a wrong address for days, unnoticed until it was past saving? A neighbour might have gone on holiday, come back to find the mistake and dropped it on her doorstep, all too late. But who was it from? It was not her birthday and she had received precious little good news of late, nothing bouquet-worthy. Her mum would have called the second the blooms had been due to arrive. Colleagues sent her nothing, ever. Friends, including Joyce, would have rung the bell. Who then?
Etta turned the box all around once more. There was no date stamp. It had been hand-delivered. No one sent flowers hand-packed like this, anyway, with water and in that weird jar.
No stamp or sender’s name. No note. No quirky misspelled scrawl and no newspaper cut-outs: no exhortations to ‘Die, bitch’. Nothing except one fetid truth: someone hated her. The noxious gift had not been handled by a delivery man, so the warning sticker was for her, and it hit home:
FRAGILE
Etta took gin from the counter, poured it high into her glass and downed one hefty hit of it, relishing the cathartic shudder. She took another sip, another to drain the glass, then refilled it with gin. No tonic. The spirit heated and numbed her whole being, down to her feet; she would go upstairs, rather than run to Joyce. Police? No, for what? The present was sinister, her unease was real, but that did not add up to a crime. In any case, there would be nothing for them to come out to see: in the morning, this rank filth – crisp petals, dank stems, broken glass, the tea towel too – would go straight into the bin. She would not dump this nastiness on their foot-deep attempt at a compost heap: she did not want the revolting mess rotting down over months, to pollute their tomatoes, or to nourish nascent onions, ending up months later in an unassuming stew and then inside them. She was chucking the lot, box and all. It would be gone, destroyed tomorrow. For now, though, her hands would not approach.
She left the box on the kitchen table and went upstairs, checked every room on that floor, leaving another light on in the bathroom, and then crept into to her bedroom, locked the door and checked the windows and wardrobe. Only then did she climb, fully clothed, into her bed.
In the morning, Etta’s first thought was of money. Her second thought sliced through the first: cut, dead flowers on her doorstep.
Ugly, but stunning in its daring. The cracked jar, that vicious gift. Who knew she would be alone? Who was watching her?
Tiredness was leaching from her bones, slowing her blood. She had tried to stay up and listen for the flower-bringer, but found herself waking at gone 3 a.m., no Ola beside her, lamp still on, charging phone in her hand. She had not dared move.
Now she jumped up and opened the door wide – what a brave friend was daylight! – and ran down to the kitchen. The box was where she had left it, the detritus still on the floor. She mopped, brushed, took the waste out to the wheelie bin and ran back inside. Unbearable: the rotting smell still hung in the kitchen and the hall. She fought down a tremor of nausea. Another essence, harsher and sharper but every bit as rotten, now seemed to be hanging around the whole house. She suspected that it emanated from the spare room.
Above the stench, a screaming from within: You deserve this, skank!
It was not OK to help herself to their joint money as if it were all hers for the taking. This was bad.
Her penance was waiting: the First Welcome Project. She worked there two Thursdays a month if she could; if not, then one. She pulled that day’s sackcloth out of the wardrobe: a lilac shirt, fitted jeans and plimsolls.
She would immerse herself in the lives of others. People mostly poorer, and better, than her. She would solve their problems: do all the right things, at all the right times, and slap a goddamn smile on it. She would be useful. Then, she would return home and cook as she had not cooked since she discovered Cozee. No microwave-thawed sausages tonight.
The line was out of the door of Seacole Community Hall today. Etta walked past the elderly woman folded into her sari, the pregnant teen with pink ends to her hair, the man with dreads standing still and stoic, a couple of friends in their twenties, one pouty and one underdressed, speaking Russian, the woman in a cheap suit wearing earphones … all the beating hearts of Rilton coming to her door.
‘Hi! Everyone OK?’
She smiled as she walked past the queue into the civic centre. The new posters looked half-decent, with the First Welcome Project fresh again in purples and greens, not the bleached-out hues of the past year. Kim, a new volunteer, was a graphic designer in her day-job.
Etta was looking out for Janie, that five-foot-high maelstrom of efficiency and kindness topped with a shock of bright copper. There: she bustled out from the broom-cupboard kitchen, holding a mug.
‘If it isn’t Ms Etta Oladipo!’
‘Janie McJanieface!’
The women wrapped arms around each other for a moment. Etta felt a warmth envelop her: a small bloom of renewal, resolve and relief.
‘Five minutes, OK?’ said Janie. ‘Then we’ll get them in. Sit!’
Etta’s supervisor brought her up to speed on the past month: this new scheme to steer clients towards, and that improved leaflet to give the most needy, and this mind-blowing injustice to break to your heart and that heart-breaking case to blow your mind.
After five minutes Etta felt, as she did on her Thursdays, ready to take on the whole goddamn world just to help her fellow humans who were queueing at the door.
She was sitting at the trestle table nearest the kitchen, her usual spot.
‘Hi Tunde, hi Felicia, hi Kim!’
Etta’s first client was sitting on the chair opposite before she had put down her handbag. It was the teen girl with pink hair, hunched over her baby bump.
‘Hi, how can I help you?’ asked Etta.
‘Hi,’ said the girl. ‘I’m in a massive mess. I’m panicking …’
‘OK, don’t worry,’ said Etta. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Cally.’
‘Hi Cally. Let me pour you some water.’ Etta filled a glass for her. ‘Right, what’s gone on?’
‘Basically, Dad kicked me out ’cos I’m pregnant.’
‘Right. So sorry. Where are you living now?’
‘I’m staying at my mate Taz’s. But she lives with her mum so … I can only stay a few more days … God!’
The girl started to cry. ‘It’s not like I wanted to get knocked up.’
‘And where’s the father?’ asked Etta, feeling about a hundred years old and predicting the answer.
‘I don’t know. He ghosted me straight off.’ The tears were coming harder now. ‘It’s doing my head in.’
As the girl went to scuff the tears away with the heel of her palm, Etta noticed a criss-cross of razor scars up her forearm.
The girl went on. ‘Not like I ever even wanted kids. Still don’t.’
Etta leaned to pass her tissues from the box she always kept close to hand.
‘OK, Cally. Here’s what we can do.’
Etta went through the leaflets, explained about a benefit amendment, then made a phone call as Cally texted, one hand resting on her bump.
‘So yeah, great news. Spoke to Sandra over at Fitzgerald House and they have a room for you. Here’s their address …’
Etta would not let Cally get broken, not on her watch.
The next one in the hot seat, Ray, fifty-seven, only needed help filling out a benefits form an
d details about the food bank. He eyed Etta with suspicion as she explained the paperwork, as if confused.
‘All OK, Ray?’
‘Yeah. Just wondering why a sort like you would be doing this to help. You lot have enough on your plate, don’t you, being coloured and that.’
Etta did not scowl or smile. She did not correct him, did not say ‘I’m black’, because Ray had enough on his plate being Ray. She simply put Xs where he needed to sign the forms and pushed it over to him.
He looked down, then up again.
‘Actually … I did read a little bit, inside, but …’
‘Give it here,’ said Etta and read the details aloud.
Ray gave her a respectful bob of his head as he left. It was something.
A two-minute breather before the pair of Russians came to her table. The mousy one in a playsuit stood and played on her phone while her friend with cascading black curls sat and pouted darkly at Etta.
‘I must have indefinite leave to remain. Or be citizen,’ she said.
‘OK. What’s your name?’
‘Medina. Čeliković.’
‘When did you arrive from—’
The friend muttered a place name that could have been ‘Neatrinik’ or ‘near Trahvnik’ or ‘new Trivnik’.
‘Sorry, I don’t … is that in Russia?’
Both young women laughed. Etta bit her lip; never assume, this was not a FrameTech meeting, she needed to re-engage with her sensitivity. She let them slowly unpack the who, what and how, while she did paperwork.
‘How did you get here?’ she asked at one point.
‘Oh God, I cannot tell you.’ The friend dug the client with her elbow, said something fast in their language. ‘OK! This friend, Nadia, she helped me.’
‘How?’ asked Etta.
The friend looked down. Medina shook her head.
‘With paperwork. Just like you.’
Etta nodded, knowing not to venture further. As usual, the client answered some questions, evaded others. Etta tamped down her suspicions.
‘OK, so, what do you need right now?’
‘I must stay in the UK.’
‘OK. Do you have family here?’
‘I have a husband. Fiancé, we marry soon.’
‘OK, good. Then you might well be eligible for indefinite leave to remain.’
The friend started talking fast in their language, gesticulating as if frustrated.
‘OK, I know,’ said the client, followed by some more foreign words. The friend walked away to sit in the waiting area.
‘All OK?’ asked Etta.
‘She worry about me. What happens if … he changes his mind?’
‘What do you mean? If you don’t get married?’
‘Yes.’ She looked Etta in the eye, almost vibrating with the need to share. ‘I had an illness. Cannot have babies.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Hm, yes.’ Now she lowered her gaze. ‘It is hard.’
‘It’s good that you have your fiancé’s support.’
The client bit her lip, her face pale and intense, mouth twisting as if torn between laughter and tears. She burst out:
‘He does not know! And he wants them, soon.’
‘Ah, OK,’ said Etta.
‘It is why I need everything to be secure.’
Etta gave a few gentle nods to mask how dumbstruck she was by the great unfairness of life. How much fairer might the world feel if, illness aside, the situations of this client and pregnant Cally could be swapped? But as a volunteer, her job was not to decide suitable fates, it was to chip away at the unfairness, one problem at a time.
She straightened in her seat and smiled.
‘OK! Let’s see if you’re eligible for a Form SET(M).’
‘Thank you. Must stay in England. I will do anything … oh!’
The young woman reeled back, touching her hand to her nose. Blood trickled through her fingers.
‘It’s OK, relax, pinch there. No, higher,’ said Etta. ‘Nosebleed. I get them myself from time to time. You’re fine.’
‘God,’ said the friend, wandering back towards the desk. ‘So nasty.’
‘What?’ snapped the client. ‘At least it’s not broken.’
‘True,’ said Etta, pulling tissues out once again. ‘OK. Take five, while I look through the eligibility requirements.’
After a good bit of digging, her client was sent away with a clutch of papers and renewed hope.
The next five clients who came in, all needing, all broke, none yet broken, were given encouragement and advice and addresses and vouchers and sympathy and cups of tea and water, and forms. It was a great result when she was able to give them a form.
No one would get broken here. Not at Seacole Community Hall. At least not on one of her Thursdays. Not on her watch.
By the time Ola walked into their kitchen that evening, setting down his briefcase and pulling her into a tight embrace, there was a festive feast of a suya starter, followed by A-grade rice and stew, with a teetering side of plantain on the table, and Etta was ready to confess all.
‘Good seminar?’ Etta asked as they sat down.
‘Yup.’
‘I’m glad you’re home.’
‘So am I. Oh my heavens, this food! I swear, you say you’re half Jamaican but, deep down, you are all Nigerian woman!’
‘Go back far enough and yeah, I probably am!’
‘Hehe!’ Pleased, he leaned closer. ‘We should try to spend a bit more time together, Teetee. You are working too hard most evenings now. You must not let them start taking advantage of you.’
‘I won’t.’
‘And which man is bringing flowers to my woman, heh? What nonsense is this?’
They laughed.
‘There were just these flowers, at least I think they were. They were horrible, all slimy and gone bad. Must have been a raffle prize, or something else that I’ve forgotten about. Anyway, I chucked them.’
‘Good!’
Raffle prize. Etta pressed her head into the nook where his arm met his chest and where he could not see her eyes. That devastating musk: he could not be replaced. She had to tell him.
‘Ola—’
‘I know, work is work, but tonight you’re all mine. Come, may we chop? Then early to bed, heh?’
She smiled up at his generous black face, the light sheen of a day’s effort on it. He gleamed. His attractiveness to her towered above all else, unassailable as Chappal Waddi mountain. She wanted to be his good woman once more. Perhaps no words were needed. She would lean against him until she melted into his form where he stood. She would press her lips to his chest, smooth his brow, make fresh chin chin for him, undo all the untruths. In that moment, he was everything.
‘OK, darling.’
They went to bed sated. But in her sleep a weighty itch settled upon her, more than too much pepper and undigested rice. During the night, the shadows danced and shifted; her priorities did much the same. She had coughed her eyes open at 4.53 a.m. and crept away from the heavily sleeping Ola to go to the spare room.
Her winnings had tipped into her bank account in the night and now she could think of nothing but winning more.
Etta powered up. She reached into the top drawer for the headphones and pushed away the haunting thought: that this was more than bad, this was not normal behaviour. She had turned an entire room of their home into a lie. But she had no choice! How else could she bring on their sluggish nest egg; how else to transform their cash into the windfall their futures demanded?
She was not addicted, she knew that; she took strict precautions against that specific eventuality. She took breaks, held back, maintained her Cozee spreadsheet, controlled herself.
And so, she played.
Etta managed to creep from spare room to bathroom and turn on the shower minutes before Ola’s alarm went off.
Chapter Five
TUESDAY, 29 MAY 2018
On the last Tuesday in May, following a lazy Ban
k Holiday weekend, Ola had to take the train north and would not be back until late that night: a new scientific facility in Leeds required his presence. He viewed this as professional validation; she was not clear why. Etta moved around her own working sphere in a torpor of indifference, the FrameTech office a mere waiting room for an appointment with destiny. Life would spark into being when she got home.
By the afternoon, her apathy was arousing interest.
‘You OK, sweetness?’ asked Winston. ‘Maybe you need another coffee, ’my right?’
Etta made a small coffee, then downed a large water.
Minutes later, Dana said. ‘We do actually need those docs today. Jean’s asked for them.’
‘Joy. Thanks, Jean.’
Dana laughed. ‘Can you do them by close of play?’
‘Sure.’
‘That’s if you can raise your head from the desk. You OK, hon?’
‘Fine.’
‘Do you want me to get you some water? I know all that caffeine crap is tempting but most tiredness is caused by dehydration.’
Etta had made that one mid-afternoon coffee; a third of it had been left to go cold and her water glass was still on her desk.
‘You see, you probably don’t realise how bad caffeine is for you,’ Dana went on. ‘You think it gives you a boost, but it actually works against your body so that—’
‘Stop whitesplaining,’ she muttered, louder than planned.
‘You what?’ asked Dana.
‘Never mind,’ said Etta, simulating typing: a gunfire of adshjklrwqyisn on her screen. ‘I don’t need water. Thank you, though.’
Dana walked off.
Stares and sharp smiles came at her from all directions; the sickly artificial light seemed to dip further, darkening shadows across faces. Were they all watching her, monitoring her?
Jean was walking over to her from the corner where Accounts tended to huddle. As she neared, a tide of panic began rising in her chest: what work did she owe? What wrong had she done? Why was that bird-like grey head craning her way?
‘Hullo,’ said Jean. A lift of tufted lip, a wobble of neck as she appeared to swallow an urge to spit out something kinder. ‘You don’t look too good, missy … Feeling fragile?’
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