by Tina Seskis
6
When Ben woke early and Emily wasn’t there beside him, he assumed she’d had another of her sleepless nights, and would be found downstairs on the couch, reading. She seemed to be re-reading all the old classics lately, Ben had noticed, absolutely ripping through them, and he wondered whether it was a way for her to escape out of herself, into a world so familiar (whether it be the American South or Hardy’s Wessex or the Yorkshire moors) that she didn’t need to think about her life, here, now. There were many different ways to block pain, Ben realised, and he felt it was best to leave Emily to it for now, to be there quietly in the background, helping take care of Charlie, until she was ready to come back to them both.
Ben shifted onto his side and managed to find his way into sleep again, a fidgety, disturbed, damp slumber under the heat of the winter duvet they hadn’t yet swapped for the summer one, even though it was late July. That used to be Emily’s job, and she was normally vigilant in her timing, providing a soft cashmere throw at the foot of the bed for those in between days when the lighter duvet was not quite protection enough from the cold. It was these small slippages that seemed to add to their pain – to the feeling that nothing was quite right nor ever would be again. The lack of clean shirts, the running out of breakfast cereals, butter, bleach, bread, the unopened post, the weeds in the window boxes. All these things Emily had taken care of, before, not because Ben was lazy or she was in any way a martyr, she just always had been the organised one, and Ben had been such a fantastic cook and tidier-upper they had each been happy with the arrangement. Now Emily did nothing, not that he blamed her, of course.
It was only when the alarm went that Ben stirred from these semi-conscious thoughts. He kicked his sweaty legs out from the duvet and lay sprawled there a moment, wondering what to say to his wife when he went downstairs. He decided to have a shower first, he felt so revolting, and then he’d go and get Charlie, and they’d go and say hi to her together. It still gave him a thrill of excitement, the thought of seeing her, despite all this time and all that had happened. He’d make her a cup of tea, and try to get her to eat some toast with heaps of butter and a smear of marmalade, the way she liked it, and then he would kiss her and Charlie goodbye and set off on his four mile cycle to the office. Life must go on, Ben told himself, although he sometimes worried that Emily didn’t agree.
The shower was fierce and Ben had it at maximum temperature despite the weather, it was so hot already outside. He found that standing under the searing stream with his face turned into it helped him forget, for a second or two at a time, as if his brain was being cauterised. Emily never commented on his lengthy showers any more, even though she used to be so conscious about stuff like that. She seemed oblivious to what Ben did these days, as if she’d lost interest in even him now. Ben wondered whether they’d ever get back what they’d had between them, one day far in the future.
It first occurred to Ben that his wife was gone when he opened the stripped oak door to the living room and she wasn’t there. He didn’t need to check the kitchen or the downstairs cloakroom, he could feel the screaming emptiness throughout the house. He didn’t know what to do next – call 999, wail, throw himself out the window? He went back up to their bedroom and opened the packed wardrobe. It looked much the same as usual. Maybe she’s just gone for a walk, it’s a lovely day, he thought. He decided to give Charlie his breakfast and then make himself a proper cappuccino, he could always ring the office and say he was running late, and by then Emily would be back, surely.
When Ben had finished his coffee and Emily was still not home he went back upstairs and knelt on the soft cream rug to look under their bed. Charlie trailed after him, crying now, but Ben ignored him. Good, the big suitcase was still there. He pulled it out and opened it up. The leather holdall they'd bought in Marrakech was gone from inside, where they usually kept it. It must be under there somewhere, Ben told himself, and he lay down flat and wriggled underneath the frame and pulled stuff out, frantically now – a blow up mattress, a small pull-along suitcase, a child’s tent, a proper hiking backpack, a bag of jumble, a long-missing sock. Dust rose and hung suspended in the low shafts of sunlight. When there was nothing left to extract Ben lay quite still on the floor and let out a single defeated sob, and then he sat up and rocked poor Charlie in his arms.
PC Bob Garrison looked sympathetically at Mr Ben Coleman across the desk in the small windowless interview room. It was a sad case, he knew that much, and now he had to break it to the lad that they couldn’t do a great deal to try to find his wife. High risk mispers don’t clean out their bank account, pack a bag full of clothes and take their passport with them. Poor sod’s got to face up to the fact that she’s just left ‘im, PC Garrison thought, but somehow, even though he’d dealt with cases like these a thousand times before, he found it harder to sit opposite this desperate man in his fancy suit and break it to him that, apart from log his wife as a missing person, there wasn’t much else he could do.
7
Angel orders us a pizza and although it’s revolting I devour it and it takes the nausea away. I know she can tell there’s something very wrong with me, but despite her open manner she’s too polite to ask, and I don’t elaborate on the story about splitting up with my boyfriend, in case I’m tempted to venture anywhere near the truth.
Instead, Angel starts to tell me, poignantly, funnily, about herself, and in the past I would have been shocked that someone’s life can be full of so much drama, but now I’m not, because so is mine. I can’t believe that on the very same day that Mrs Emily Coleman left her home in Chorlton, Manchester, the day she left Ben and Charlie, she is sitting here, called Cat Brown now, in her new home with her new friend Angel drinking vodka and eating pizza, in Finsbury Park, which is somewhere in North London. And no-one knows how to find her. No-one knows how to find me. I realise I’m fortunate, at least in this respect: that although my given name is Catherine Emily Brown, for the last five years I’ve been known as Emily Coleman, my married name. The fact that I never got round to changing my passport is now very convenient in terms of getting a job, opening a bank account, living my life in my new persona. And Brown is such a common name there must be hundreds of other Catherine Browns. I'm safely gone.
As Angel and I chat various people get home (from work?) and come in and out of the kitchen paying me varying amounts of attention. First there’s Bev, who I find out later is a roadie from Barnsley, with dreadlocks and a fierce under-bite who walks in, waves hi super-cheerfully, as though I’ve always been there, says, “Fucking hot, isn’t it,” goes to the fridge, rummages around for ages and then in an instant her good mood deserts her and she lets out an anguished roar, like a lioness with a missing cub.
“Where’s my chocolate?” yells Bev. “Who the fuck has eaten my chocolate? Angel, have you eaten my fucking chocolate?”
“Hey cool down Bev, it wasn’t me this time, I promise. Ask him,” Angel says, as a very tall, unwieldy-looking man in dark blue jeans and an Abercrombie sweat-top slouches in. He’s so big all over that his trainers are massive, like paddles, but his legs are too short for his body and with his sweet boyish face he reminds me of an over-grown toddler, and I almost want to hug him.
“Nah, wasn’t me Bev, though you need to get a life,” says Brad, with an Australian accent and an affectionate smile. But Bev is not in the mood to be placated. Instead she stops shouting and sits at the kitchen table and starts to rock to and fro, as though she’s mad. “I’ve had enough of this fucking house. That was my chocolate,” she says, pitifully now. “My fucking chocolate.” The swear word is almost a caress, a seduction, and I mourn Bev her lost chocolate and I don’t know what to say, she seems so sad. I feel like I’m witnessing a bereavement.
Angel stands up and goes over to the iPod to put some music on, loud, I don’t know who it’s by but it repeats over and over, “Where’s your head at?” which I feel is a bit taunting, but Bev doesn’t seem to mind, the anger has passed now. Someo
ne I can only assume is Brad’s girlfriend bounces in. She’s tiny, in a mauve patterned mini-dress, with a perfect little body and a plain face, like she got mismatched in the doll factory. She stops at Brad’s side and looks at me suspiciously. “This is Cat, Erica, she’s moved into Fidel’s room,” says Angel in her friendly easy way, but Erica just looks at me with undisguised hostility.
“Who gave her the room? We didn’t even advertise it yet.” Her voice is as ugly as her face, a brutal Antipodean twang that twinges my over-strung nerves.
“Yeah, well Cat was desperate, weren’t you babe, and it saves us the hassle,” says Angel implacably. I love Angel. She is kind and speechlessly pretty and gets away with everything. I wonder what she’s doing living here. (She should be a super-star, I think, but this is before her fourth vodka and the tales about her crap upbringing with her feckless mother and various “uncles.”)
“Well, does Chanelle know?” asks Erica and I wonder who she’s talking about, until I remember the unfriendly black girl who answered the door to me three vodkas ago. I realise I haven’t seen her since.
“Yeah babe, she knows. It’s all cool.”
Erica looks deeply pissed off and nudges Brad out of the kitchen, as though his trip to the sweetie shop is up and it’s time for him to go home for his nap. Angel snorts. I giggle. I don’t know what it is – the vodka, the new beginning or these wildly eccentric characters, but I’m almost beginning to enjoy myself, for the first time in months. It’s insane. I feel a searing of guilt, and remind myself not to look back, I’m doing the best thing for all of us, in the long run. And I have no other choice now.
The swarthy boy from earlier is back, at the stove this time, cooking his vegetables and he quite impressively manages to make the kitchen smell worse than it did with just the bins. A second boy appears from outside, bike helmet under his arm, yellow lycra body suit hot with sweat, and kisses swarthy boy number one. They say something to each other – in Portuguese I think – and ignore me completely. Angel smiles and pours us another drink.
I feel like I’ve known Angel forever. I think we’ve come into each other’s lives at just the right time, we have a connection of sadness, and even though I can’t tell her my story she doesn’t mind, she somehow understands.
Angel works as a croupier in a West End casino and I don’t know whether that’s terribly glamorous or terribly seedy, I’ve never met anyone with that kind of job before. She’s lived in this shambolic shared house for three months, she tells me in between kitchen interruptions, after her boyfriend beat her up and threatened to kill her and she had to find somewhere to hide. Before that she lived with him at Tower Bridge, and I’ve heard of there, it’s on the river obviously, so I assume it must be posh. It was her friend Jerome who helped her move into this house, where her boyfriend wouldn’t find her, just until she got herself sorted.
Jerome is a bouncer who technically occupies the final room, though it seems he’s at his girlfriend’s in Enfield most of the time. Chanelle is his cousin and she owns the house – she bought it off her parents and according to Angel is proving to be a right little entrepreneur, having turned every room except the kitchen into a bedroom, and what she says goes. Only Angel can get round her, and Angel says that although Chanelle can be a miserable bitch she’s not a bad person, she’s all right once you get to know her. I feel unsure and hope I don’t see Chanelle again today. I’m feeling woozy from the vodka, exhausted suddenly, and I tell Angel I really have to go to bed. It’s half past nine, just getting dark, but the heat is still thick and sickly-smelling.
“Babe, remember I warned you not to expect too much,” Angel says as we go upstairs. The stair carpet is swirly, my head is swirly, the room is horrific. The mattress is foul, the walls are wood chip, painted in peach-coloured egg shell so they gleam in the dim in-between light. There is one empty beige and brown formica wardrobe. The room stinks of old take-away cartons and something unidentifiable, and the carpet is thick with dust and God knows what else. My good humour fades and I feel overwhelmed, desolate, like this is all wrong, I’m in the wrong place, again. I realise I have no bedding. I can’t sleep on that mattress, I’m certain of that, but the floor looks almost as bad. How has my whole life distilled into being right here, right now? How did it go so totally awry?
Angel sees my face. “Look, babe, I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward, but I’m off to work later and I won’t be back ‘til the morning. Why don’t you just use my bed for tonight? It’s OK, I changed the sheets today.” And she ushers me out the door and into a room along the landing that’s messy but clean enough and has a duvet with embroidered daisies on it. I give her a hug and thank her over and over and barely wait for her to leave, I just throw off my jeans and sweat-soaked top and fall into her bed, my handbag full of money lodged safe between the mattress and the wall.
The next morning I wake early and don’t know where I am. I rewind the events of the evening before and remember the vodkas, the cooking smells, the bins... the hovel which is my room. I remember that I’m not in that room, thank God, I’m in Angel’s. That’s right, my own room is uninhabitable. I haul myself out of bed, throw on my clothes from yesterday and go to take another look next door. In the sunlight the room is even more unpleasant than it was last night, if that could be possible, and although I try not to I think briefly of my lovely home in Chorlton, where I lived until yesterday. I decide I have to do something or I really will go certifiably mad. I go downstairs to make a cup of tea – there’ll probably be no-one in the kitchen at this time, I can hopefully just steal someone’s tea bags and milk for now, I’m that desperate. The red plastic kettle is disgusting – furred up on the inside and with grime so thick on the outside you could push your fingernail through to write your name. All the mugs are stained, most are chipped. I fish around in the cupboards above the sink and find a box of teabags. Just as I’m pouring the boiling water into the best mug I could find Chanelle, the girl who owns the house, comes into the room. She’s wearing a short yellow towelling robe that looks threadbare and shows off her long thin marathon runner’s legs.
“Oh,” she says. “It’s you.”
This is awkward, I haven’t seen her since she shut the door in my face yesterday. I feel like a burglar.
“Hi,” I say limply. “Thanks for letting me take the room after all.”
“Thank Angel,” Chanelle humphs. “She fought your corner. I see she’s doing her Good Samaritan gig again, must make her feel better.”
I don’t know what to say to this, so I just smile politely and squash my stolen teabag sheepishly against the side of the mug and pull it out and rest it on top of the overflowing bin.
“That room is a bit of a mess,” continues Chanelle, a bit less hostile now. “Fidel left it in a right state. I was going to sort it out before someone else moved in.”
“I don’t mind doing it,” I say eagerly. “I love doing that kind of thing. I need to get some bedding and stuff anyway, so I could pick up a few other things, and I’d pay of course. Is there an Ikea or something near here?”
Chanelle seems to like the turn the conversation is taking, and she’s almost friendly now. She gives me detailed instructions on how to get to somewhere called Edmonton and even lends me some of her milk, which she’d brought down from the fridge she has in her own room. I consider myself blessed.
Ikea is just opening when I arrive and as it’s a Tuesday morning it’s virtually dead. I feel minuscule and alone as I head up the travelator into the vast blue building, pick up a big yellow shopping bag and head off on my retail adventure, following the arrows, Dorothy-like, past bright space-optimised kitchens, through ingenious storage solutions, skirting cosy inviting sitting rooms, and I’m doing OK, feeling almost normal, like I’m just another shopper – until I turn the next bend in the magical path and find myself suddenly, without warning, in the children’s section. Car-shaped beds and dragon toy chests and pastel-hued wardrobes mock me from every angle
, storage boxes full of cuddly toys are stacked high all around me. A little girl is toddling about, holding a monkey, grinning at her mother who’s telling her to put it down. An image of my boy explodes into my mind, and the pain in my chest reminds me that I am still alive after all, not stuck in a primary coloured dream, and I continue along the path, fully running now, head down, and I don’t look up until I’ve reached the end. I lean facing the wall next to the lifts panting, and yearn in this moment to give up, not be here, melt into nothingness.
It’s all too much.
It seems I can only run away from myself if I keep tighter control, keep every aspect of my previous existence in the past, become immune to children. I stand up straight and square my shoulders and try to breathe deeply. Fortunately no-one has witnessed my panic attack this time, but I must be more careful, I can’t keep acting like a maniac. The cafe’s in front of me and despite the thumping in my heart I find that I’m hungry, so I load up my tray with a full English breakfast, a banana, an apple, a yogurt, some kind of Swedish pastry, a carton of orange juice, a mug of tea, and I sit alone amongst the stretch of tables overlooking the car park and devour the whole lot, every last bite. The concentration of eating helps me cope somehow, helps put things back in the past. When I return to the store it’s busier than before: there are plenty of little children around now, but this time I’m ready. I study the map and head straight to the beds section, ignoring the arrowed path, cutting my own swathe through the sofas, short-cutting behind the mirrors, blanking out everyone. I pick out a cheap white single bed, too solid and stylish for the money, and I write down the code on my pad. I choose a mattress, then I look for wardrobes, and handily they’re just a little further along the path, and I pick a simple rail with a white linen cover. I’ve been to Ikea many times before, so I know the routine, and I whizz through the marketplace filling my yellow bag with home-making essentials, and the more things I pick out the easier it becomes to do this – it’s hypnotic, compulsive, supermarket-sweepish. I carry on to the self-serve warehouse, my codes ready, then head round to the large item pick-up area to get my bed, where a young Asian man with kind liquid eyes helps me load my trolley. I finally reach the checkouts and there’s hardly any queue, it must be still early. My bed, mattress, clothes rail, bedding, cushions, rug, lamp shade, curtains (all in tasteful shades of white or cream), cost under £300. It has taken me a little over an hour and a half, including the breakfast. I feel absurdly pleased with myself. I leave everything, even the small items, to be delivered that afternoon, and catch the bus back to Finsbury Park.