She was startled from her thoughts by a muffled crash. She was sure the sound came from the rubbish storage area, but it wasn’t due to be collected until tomorrow, and she had just passed Alec the caretaker. Kids? She didn’t not understand why anyone would want to be in there. She looked at the double doors that clearly instructed ‘NO ENTRY’. Her movements became cautious and quiet as she approached them.
She eased one open and peered in. Warm air assaulted her with the pungent smell of rotting food and waste baked by the heat wave. She put the back of her hand to her mouth and wrinkled up her nose against the smell as she stepped in to the darkness. She plucked the large torch from her belt and snapped it on. The torch light plucked a grizzled face from the dark to startle her. Grime and dirt masked the pale and aged flesh, his hair dishevelled and matted with thick grease.
“Harry!” she chastised. “Harry Crabb, come on out of there. You know you aren’t meant to be in here.” She walked over to him and took the old man gently by the arm. Harry was a resident of the tower, known for his eccentric dementia. She looked down at a black plastic sack that was ripped open with its contents strewn about and picked through. Slivers of greasy meat hung from his hand. “Oh, Harry!” She clumsily brushed the slimy waste from his fingers as if cleaning a messy child. “You have a home you know? It’s not like when you were on the street. You get meals on wheels. You don’t have to keep doing this. Come on. I’ll take you.” She hooked her hand under his arm and ignored the feeling of grime, trying not to think about his unsanitary state. She looked about the large room, which was full of bags from the chute opening in the lobby; the damp-blackened concrete gave the ceiling a cavernous depth that conspired with the dark. “How did you manage to see a thing in here?” she mumbled incredulously.
Kelly got him to the doors and he turned awkwardly in her grip.
“Goodbye…” he called over his shoulder into the room.
Kelly frowned and scanned her torch through the darkness of the room and then back into his face, his lower jaw was masked in thick stubble that was stained and crusted in places. She was able to ignore the morsels of food nestled at the sides of his mouth because his strange expression of warm nostalgia was so distracting. She gave one last hesitant and puzzled look into the void. “Harry, there’s nothing there but bags of rubbish,” – and a terrible stench, although she decided that Harry would be contributing to the ripe air himself. “Come on, Harry.”
She closed the door on the rank smell. The dark rushed in on the shrinking rectangle of light falling through the doorway except for a dull green glow on the far wall. Odd, she didn’t remember seeing a green light bulb or anything that would have cast that light. Harry squirmed in her grip. “Alright, Harry let’s get you home.”
Craig reached the door to his flat in the east block of The Heights, but before he could enter it his neighbour called out to him. Virtue Kafar sauntered along the corridor from the lift behind a pram. Craig faced the slender young woman and said a quiet hello to her, his face flushing. Her boyfriend had died six months previously. Craig had seen her soon after, in passing as they were now, and he had blurted out his condolences to which she gave him a flicker of a smile in thanks before scurrying away with tears in her eyes. Since then he had only given her sheepish smiles of acknowledgement and had retreated hastily. “How are you?”
“Okay…” She wrinkled her petite nose and tilted her head from side to side as if considered the question. “…ish. You?”
“The same.” He inwardly cringed and thought he could kick himself – it wasn’t the same at all. Her boyfriend had died. She was only a few years older than him and had lost so much. He searched her face for a reaction to his comment. Although her long black hair looked tired and was roughly tied back from her face, the sallow appearance from her grief had gone and the rich dark colour of her skin had returned, the weight from her maternity had been lost and she was her slender shapely self again. However, her dead boyfriend got in the way of him finding her attractive.
She looked distracted, fortunately because he would have hated for her to catch his appraisal of her. It felt wrong. She went through the actions of retrieving her keys from a pocket in her sweatshirt and pushing a stray band of hair behind her ear, but she was clearly hesitating around saying something. He made the same play of retrieving his keys.
“Craig, when you ask how I am, you mean, how am I coping with Will not being around, don’t you?”
Craig was caught by her candidness. “I guess so…”
She smiled around perfect teeth. “That’s nice of you, that’s nice of everyone, but can I ask you a favour?”
He would be more than happy to do anything for her. When Craig had first moved in he couldn’t work out how to use the heating and had decided to call on his neighbours for advice. Harry Crabb, Craig’s other neighbour, had given him an absent stare then closed the door on him – that was the first and last time Craig had called on Harry. Calling on his other neighbour had been completely different. He had received a warm hello from both Virtue and Will. Will had even come in and showed him how to use it. He had told Craig that he was welcome to join him and a few of his mates for a kick around on the common ground on Sundays, Virtue had picked up that he lived alone and offered him round for dinner. Craig had never taken their offers up, but it was a kindness he had needed being so far from home. Now Will was gone. He felt a twinge in his chest like an old wound. “Sure.” He nodded eagerly, hoping to move the conversation back to casual and shallow pleasantries.
“When you ask me if I am okay,” she winced. “Can it be about me, about my day, or how Billy is, or bypass that and just pass on the gossip of the block? I don’t get as much of that as I used to since Will died and Billy was born. Just get sympathy. Spend most of my day in the parks or at home with Billy.”
“Er, yeah…” He was relieved to be let off from having to figure out how to approach the elephant-in-the-room-boyfriend.
“I’m glad you didn’t take offence. I am not blocking out what happened, just trying to move on from it and I don’t think I am going to do that if everyone’s point of reference for me is Will.”
“I understand.”
“That was a bit heavy for a casual hello, wasn’t it?” Her eyes flitted between his face and various locations in the corridor.
“A bit, but if it helped…” His face reddened and he shrugged, mirroring her fleeting eye contact.
“I think it did.”
“If you don’t ask me how work is then we have a deal.”
“That bad?” She winced.
“Yup.” He didn’t make eye contact at all now as he found it uncomfortable on top of their new level of familiarity.
“Sorry, hope it improves for you. And that’s the last you will hear on the subject from me.” She plugged her keys in the door but left them there. “I have seen that you’re around a bit during the day, so if you ever fancy a cuppa and giving me some adult company and conversation then feel free to give me a knock.”
“Ok, I will,” he lied. “Cheers.” He keyed his door open. They said goodbye to each other and he entered his flat and stabbed the play message button of his answer machine.
“Er, ’ello this is mum.” Silence. “This did go beep, didn’t it? Er, how are you? Me and your dad were wondering how you were. How’s your job?” Dull and unfulfilling. “Taken any arty pictures?” Too busy earning. “Have you heard from any of your friends from school or university?” Sporadic emails and vague plans – none of them live in the area, but thanks for the reminder, you nearly have a full list of my shortcomings there, Mum. “Met a girl or anything?” Bingo! Cheers, Mum, yep – don’t think you have missed out any sensitive area. “Your brother tells us you ’ave ’ad a few problems with cash.” My mistake, you had one last nail to hammer home. Craig cursed; he had told Darren in confidence. Bastard! “Now don’t moan at ’im!” she continued with her jovial west-country brogue that he missed so much, yet he still couldn’t b
ring himself to call home on a regular basis. “He’s just worried for his younger brother, that’s all. Not gloating, so don’t get on your ’igh ’orse. If you can’t afford to keep yerself, you can’t afford an ’igh ’orse.” Thanks for that pearl of wisdom Mum. There was a heavy breath forced by her plumpness then she continued. “’Enry, I mean your dad, said he’s got some cash put aside for you. And there’s always a place at ’ome. Just ’ow you left it – but tidier.” He could imagine the sharp twinkle in her eye and the slant of her smile, and it forced him to grin too. “Love you, darlin’. Call me back. Er… Bye, son.” A pause. “I ’ope that bloody machine works…” she tailed off as she hung up.
Thanks mum. Amused by her tightness with her ‘H’s’ but irritated by the reminder of the things that depressed him.
The machine clicked and clunked again.
“Hiya, Craig, you reprobate! It’s Vicki. I know you’re off taking pictures of little girls, you perve. But, I just thought I should return your call. Sorry, there hasn’t been much work to go round the past week. Don’t lose heart. You can count on me!”
Craig sank into his armchair dejectedly with the heavy reminder of the lack of work. He exhaled a deep breath as the reality of his life crushed down on him.
“Fuck.”
Chapter Two
Cat Thorn struggled out of her bed and ran her hands down her slim body, smoothing the creases out of her tee-shirt nightie. It was three in the afternoon and she had been in bed since she had tried to rise that morning. She steadied herself against what felt like a hangover, her head feeling over-sized as her vision swam and swirled. Her surroundings seemed unanchored, yet she hadn’t been drinking. Her legs were weak at the knees and she was cold inside, as if her body was hollowed out.
She staggered over to the full-length dress mirror, dresses and tops hung from each side of it like curtains at a window. She brushed her feathered auburn hair from her face and leaned close to the glass. Her eyes showed little sign of illness. She looked pale, but then her creamy complexion had never had much colour. The storm had woken her up with its violence, and had left her with a distracting pressure in her head that forced itself between her eyes, creating a disorientating headiness. Her face had all the signs of disturbed sleep. She shuffled to the lounge, gripping the doorframes and then her sideboard for support. She couldn’t understand the feeling in her head and the sluggishness that clung to her limbs.
Part of her experience of last night seemed absent from her mind. The symptoms had come on too quick to be viral. She checked her watch. She was due to cover the end of Ryan’s shift at the clothes shop she worked at. She could make it to the railway arches in Camden market where the shop was, but there was no way she felt fit enough. She would have to call him and tell him that she wouldn’t be able to make it in today.
Her memory of the night before was suddenly unlocked as something came through the air at her. She couldn’t see anything but she knew it was there. Just as she had experienced in the night, as if the storm that had raged outside had torn into her flat. Her terror took hold of her again as it came like a wind blasting through her flat from a great change in air pressure. It raked her hair into the air around her face like wild flames that forced her to clench her eyes closed, yet a brilliant green light washed over her with a brilliance that filtered through her lids. She dare not open her eyes, even as her feet began to tread the air as she was swept from the floor, she didn’t want to see what raced around her body yet pressed against every millimetre of her body as it held her and lifted her.
Cat cupped her hands over her ears as a tortuous screech lanced through the current and into her head with the sound of a hundred infantile screams. Her instinct was to call for her mother – but her mother was dead. The pressure from the air pressed against her body and held her in place while a throbbing pain pounded in her head as the lengthy wail seemed to crack her skull and press deep into her mind. Her cry of pain joined the chorus as she called for the only person who claimed to care for her – “RACHEL!”
Rachel Williams stood at the butcher’s window and stared. The sweet musty smell of meat carried from the shop on the warm air. It never smelt like that at the meat counter in the large metal Sainsbury’s she worked in on Camden Road, it was too clinical there – just like the service; they were discouraged from chatting to customers. Checkout staff were told it affected the scan rate and delayed shoppers through the queues it made. She preferred the independent retailers for her shopping; the service was more personal and friendly. You could have a good banter, you got to know people. You need that in a city the size of London and you relied upon the people you saw in your travels for company.
She found that her gaze was no longer on the succulent sides of meat but her reflection. She realised her tights were sagging and pulled at them as discretely as she could. Sadly it wasn’t only her tights that had subsidence, like the loose skin at the top of her arms that her friends down Mecca also had and called ‘bingo wings’ due to the way it hung and wobbled when you thrust your hand in the air and shouted “House!” if you won, or her belly button which was no longer a hole punched in a taut navel but an eye squinting out of a puffy socket, or her rear that had gotten dimpled and a little closer to the ground. At least her breasts were still full, even if they no longer stared ahead of her. What was it Linda at work had said about her own breasts? More of an averted gaze. She laughed to herself, being a bit of mutton staring in at the fresh meat, some of which boasted about only being twenty-one days old. Twenty-one was forty years ago now, when her hair had been long and a rich chest-nut brown, not dull greying and forced into curls and waves through a tired perm.
When she laughed and smiled her cheeks bunched up and the lines around her eyes and lips smoothed out a little. accentuated her expression. Shame she couldn’t claim they were laughter lines, just age. In one of these rare moments of self-examination like this she marvelled at how easily she could present a smile despite the pain that never seemed much further away than the background. Her eyes were cast in shadow in the reflection, but she had been told they shimmered like grey opals. But that was a long time ago and she wouldn’t hear that voice again.
She may be heading for the twilight years, she decided, but at least she kept her eye on the fashion trends and tried to keep of with whatever her age decided she could get away with. She hadn’t let herself go. The heavy bottle in her shopping bag glanced off her shin in a sharp accusation. Well, not entirely.
Reflected movement in the window attracted her and she saw a small fluffy black and white kitten. It meowed gently at her from its small pink mouth and sniffed her shopping bag gingerly before nuzzling its head against the smooth plastic. Her face bloomed. “Aren’t you a cutie?” her pleasure at the sight faltered when she looked from the reflection and saw that there was no cat sitting at her feet. The stark image of the Royal Free hospital came to her mind. She knew that place too well. She looked back at the window and found the cat’s reflection had also gone. “Hello, there – I wonder where you’re going to come into things…”
Rachel arrived home, rattled her key in the lock and dragged herself and the shopping bags through the door of her flat. She was greeted by Simon, a builder acquaintance who quickly apprised her of the jobs he had managed to do for her while she was out. She thanked him and ensured he had taken the money she had left him as he squeezed past her and out onto the street.
“Got to dash, see you in church Saturday night.” He climbed into his white van marked “M.I. Foreman & Son” and sat next to the old man, Simon’s father; the father that only Rachel could see.
“Oh, by the way;” he called out the window as he started his engine. “I’ve had the front door open to get bits from me van, and what with the floorboards being up I shut your cat in the lounge.”
Rachel frowned. “But, I don’t have a cat!” she called after him as he drove away. Puzzled, she closed the door behind her and sat her shopping down on the battered bu
rgundy chaise longue nestled amongst the clutter of the gloomy hallway. She moved to the lounge and stood before the door thoughtfully. She opened it. No cat.
There was a faint drumming sound on the floor and a familiar black and white kitten trotted hesitantly up to her from behind her armchair and rubbed its cold wet nose on her legs. She knelt down and ran her hands through its soft fur, feeling the rapid beat of its little heart and its reverberating purr. She beamed down at the fragile animal. “Hello there, my little one! Looking for a home, are you?”
Jason Thompson lay on the floor with his control pad, sending his character through to the next level on the X-box, when his mum burst into the room. “Come on, honey. We better get a move on. Claire and the twins are waiting.”
Jason leapt to his feet and shut the game down. They may be girls but he was bored. Since his parents had separated, Jason and his mum regularly went round to Claire’s for tea; they took it in turns to cook for each other some nights. Claire and Jason’s mum were old school friends. He hoped he would get a friend like that one day. Most of the friends he had didn’t know how to be around him since his parents had split, even though it was an uncommon situation for a class mate to be in, they didn’t want a share of the bullying he received either.
Jason let his mum take him by the hand as they went out the front door, a habit she had gone back to since his dad had left them. He knew his hand had replaced his dad’s. All through the storm the night before last he wanted to run into his mum’s room, so he understood the need for comfort, but it created uncomfortably deep feelings in him where he felt sorry for his mum and missed his dad. Mischief welled up within him and he used it as an excuse to shake loose from his mum’s grip. He dashed to the stairs, calling after him, “Race you!” He heard his mum’s feet skuffle into action as she flew after him.
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