by Lisa Jewell
‘Fridge here,’ she announced, pulling open the rust-speckled door of a miniature fridge, just large enough to house two pints of milk and a box of eggs. ‘And there’s plenty of storage space.’ She opened and closed a couple of flimsy doors, one of which almost fell off completely as she did so. ‘Having said that, we do find that our tenants in this area tend not to have much need for kitchen space. Why cook, when you can eat out every night at a different restaurant?’
It seemed to Betty that this girl, Marni, had looked neither at her nor in any detail at this flat. If she had, Betty pondered, it would be immediately obvious that she had just stepped off a ferry, that she had all her worldly possessions in a tatty rucksack and was clearly going to be paying so much rent for this tiny unprepossessing toilet cubicle of an apartment that dining out every night was not going to be an option.
‘Where do you live?’ asked Betty.
‘In Pinner,’ Marni replied brightly, in a tone that suggested this ‘Pinner’ to be a most desirable locale. ‘It’s in Middlesex,’ she continued, ‘commuter belt. Metropolitan line. I live with my mum and dad.’
Betty nodded knowingly. This girl knew as much about glamorous Soho lifestyles as she did.
She showed Betty the sleeping area, a mezzanine in the living area, accessed via a wooden stepladder, with a curtained area underneath housing a free-standing clothes rail and cheap chest of drawers.
The bathroom was, in fact, the nicest room in the flat, apparently the recipient of the majority of the redecorating budget, nicely tiled and very modern.
‘Well,’ said Marni, half an hour later, after some form-filling and tea-drinking and the handing over of a cheque for two months’ rent, ‘I’ll leave you to settle in. And remember, anything you need, just shout. My boss has a mobile phone so you should be able to get hold of him twenty-four/seven. Here’s his number, and, well, enjoy!’
Betty watched her leave a moment later, her dark head disappearing into the crowds below. She had a bounce in her step, the bounce of a carefree person, of a girl who had not yet asked herself any meaningful questions about her existence.
Betty watched her from the window until she’d disappeared from view and then her gaze fell upon the market trader, still packing up his stall, hefting the last of the boxes into a small white van. He was chatting to another man. She could hear him laughing, see him smiling. She examined him more closely now that he was at a distance: mid-brown hair, cut shaggy around in his face in that style beloved of modern pop stars. He wore combats, an oversized sweatshirt, a leather jacket. He looked about twenty-eight, she reckoned, with an athletic physique and a strong profile.
Suddenly he looked up at the window and his gaze met hers, and Betty gasped and fell to her knees.
‘Oh shit,’ she whispered angrily to herself, ‘shit.’
She let herself slide slowly to the floor, her back against the wall, shame and embarrassment coursing through her veins. She sighed loudly.
And then, for the first time since she’d rung the doorbell downstairs and realised that there was no one there to let her in, she felt a small wave of excitement building within her. This place was not what she’d imagined it would be, it was not the shadowy high-ceilinged flat in which she would pace around smoking Gauloises and being moody and interesting. But it was clean and it was warm and, more than that, it was in Soho. Right in the middle of Soho. She got to her feet and turned once more to the window. She gazed out at the now-black sky, not a star to be seen in it, and she felt reality hit her, head-on.
She was here.
She was here.
Her real life had finally begun.
8
1919
ARLETTE DE LA Mare adjusted her hat, a grey tweed cloche, ordered in from Paris, especially for her trip, worn at a jaunty angle and down low upon her forehead. She pressed the porcelain doorbell and cleared her throat. A moment later the large red door was opened by a nervous-looking housemaid in a frilled white cap.
‘Good evening, miss, can I help you?’
‘Yes, I am Miss De La Mare. I’m here to visit Mrs Miller.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. They’re expecting you. Do come in.’
She pulled open the door and led Arlette into a large hallway from which arose two ornately carved mahogany staircases and in the centre of which stood a vast marble jardinière holding a vase of oversized Stargazer lilies and red-hot pokers. She followed the housemaid into a small room at the back of the house, which was furnished with two bergère armchairs upholstered in sage velvet, and a large japanned standard lamp. The room looked out onto a long lawned garden, which ended in a small wooded area and a tall wall, curtained in rusty-red Virginia creeper. The housemaid offered Arlette tea and cordial, and left the room.
Arlette’s toes were sore, squeezed for too long inside velvet T-bar slippers, with a small heel. She should not have travelled in heels – her mother had said as much when she saw her off at the port that morning – but the suit she was wearing, a grey linen affair with a lean, almost angular silhouette, had demanded something feminine to soften it. She had not, after all, wanted to appear butch for her first visit to London, especially not to the home of her mother’s best friend, Mrs Leticia Miller.
After a moment she heard a small burst of laughter in the hallway and there was Leticia, all daffodil-coloured curls and ostentatiously blue eyes.
‘Lovely, lovely Arlette, in London at last. First, the blasted war then the blasted ’flu, keeping you from us for so long. So nice to finally have everything back to normal and to finally get you here.’
She clasped Arlette’s hands in hers and stared fondly into her eyes for long enough to make her feel self-conscious. ‘Last time I saw you, you were just a child. What were you, twelve, thirteen years old? Goodness, and now look at you. A woman, a lovely, remarkable woman. Now, tell me, did you have a good trip? How was the crossing? Have you asked for some tea? You must be quite worn out.’
Arlette placed her hands upon her lap and smiled politely. ‘I am, rather, yes. I was awake at four a.m. to make the ferry.’
‘Well, you have made it to your destination, still looking so pretty, and now all you have to do is make yourself at home and do as you wish until you get your energy back. Can I get you something to lift your spirits? A little Americano?’
Arlette smiled. She did not know what an Americano was but assumed it was a cocktail of some description. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Yes, please.’
Leticia got to her feet and opened a cabinet behind her. Arlette admired her silhouette, the way her exquisite clothes fell from her slender, boyish body, not the body of a forty-year-old woman, not the body of her own rather solid and round-shouldered mother; not, in fact, the body of most women Arlette had yet encountered. Her yellow hair fell from a loose bun at the nape of her neck in soft baby-hair curls and her feet were bare. Arlette had never before seen a person in their own home standing without their shoes. She stared at the narrow ridge of bone that ran from Leticia’s slender foot to the back of her ankle. It sent a shiver of pleasure through her, that hint of something new and brave.
She listened to the clinking of bottles, the fizz of bubbles, the chink of ice and Leticia’s plummy chatter, all talk of people she’d never heard of, and plays she really must go and see, and swanky restaurants she’d love to take her to. Arlette nodded and hmmed and mmmed, and tried her hardest to be the sophisticated young lady that Leticia had already decided she must be.
Leticia passed her the Americano and, through sheer thirst – the inside of her mouth was as dry as a desert – she drank it rather too fast and found herself drunk almost immediately. As the tight corners of her mind slackened and billowed, she felt herself strangely cocooned. It was as though this was a place where nothing bad had ever happened, and Leticia was a woman to whom nothing bad had ever happened, and while she was here, in this room, with this woman, all would be well for evermore. She heard footsteps against the tiles in the hallway and more laug
hter.
‘Lilian!’ Leticia called around the half-open door. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes, Mother, what is it?’ The voice sounded sulky but affectionate.
‘Come into the snug. I want you to meet someone.’
Arlette heard a small sigh, and then more footsteps.
‘Lilian, darling, this is Arlette De La Mare. Dolly’s girl.’
A tiny slip of a thing sidled through the door, big blue eyes like her mother, soft blond hair hanging long down her back in a plait. She was unthinkably pretty and wearing a dress that immediately made Arlette feel like a large ungainly man: lace and chiffon, in a shade of faded rose, low-waisted and demure with little pearls and rosettes of lace stitched all across it.
‘Good evening,’ she said, smiling and striding confidently across the room to shake Arlette by the hand, although she was, according to Arlette’s mother, only seventeen years old. ‘How lovely to meet you. Mother has told me all about your mother and her, and their strange childhood in the middle of the English Channel. I believe you are staying with us for a while?’
‘Yes,’ said Arlette, cursing herself for the almost perceptible slur of her words and for allowing herself to feel intimidated by a seventeen-year-old girl. ‘I’m here until I can find appropriate lodgings. I’m hoping to get a job of some description.’
‘Well, don’t feel you need to get a job and lodgings on my account. I’m delighted to have another girl in the house; too many boys as it is.’
Leticia had three boys, apparently. They were aged between sixteen and five. Two of them were at boarding school. The smallest one, Arlette assumed, was in bed.
‘I do hope you’ll be coming to my birthday party. It’s on Saturday night. It’s to be a masked ball.’
‘Oh,’ said Arlette. ‘When is your birthday?’
‘It’s tomorrow, in fact. I shall be eighteen.’
‘Well, what a coincidence. It’s my birthday on Saturday. And I shall be twenty-one.’
‘Oh, well, then, you have completely stolen my thunder.’ She held a delicate hand to her face, dramatically, in a gesture that Arlette could see had been entirely stolen from her mother’s repertoire. ‘Twenty-one,’ she sighed, ‘a grown-up. How utterly glorious. We shall have to make it a joint celebration.’
‘Oh, no need,’ said Arlette. ‘My mother has already thrown me a party. Last weekend.’
‘Well, we shall raise a glass in your direction then, at least. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have somebody else’s birthday party to rush off to. Mother, can I take the paste drop earrings from your stand, the new ones? Please ...?’
Leticia wrinkled her pretty nose at her pretty daughter and then smiled. ‘You may,’ she said, ‘but do not under any circumstances lose them. Your father will be very cross.’
Lilian smiled and winked at Arlette. ‘I have my mother wrapped round my little finger,’ she said in a faux whisper. And then she exited.
‘She’s right,’ sighed Leticia. ‘Seventeen going on twenty-seven. She’s almost out of control. When I was her age it would have been unthinkable – a party, unescorted. But that’s the way things are these days. Apparently, as a parent I’m to take a step back and let her go.’ She sighed again. ‘Ah well, I suppose I must trust that I’ve raised her well and that she won’t do anything to shame me and her father. Now,’ she clapped her hands together, ‘some supper. You must be ravenous. I think Susan has made her famous lamb and mint cutlets. I’ll show you to your room, and then when you’ve had a chance to freshen up, I’ll meet you in the dining hall. Say, in half an hour?’
Arlette’s room was small but very pretty, overlooking the garden square and the street. She rested her bag at her feet and stared for a while through the heavy curtains. She was in Kensington. Near Holland Park. The house was a stucco villa and Leticia was Arlette’s mother’s best friend from home, who’d married an incomer and left the island tout de suite when her husband’s firm had offered him a promotion to their London office. ‘She’s a true one-off,’ her mother had said, with a light in her eye that Arlette only ever saw when her mother talked about people whom she perceived to be somehow ‘better’ than herself. ‘She will show you the world through beautiful eyes.’
Arlette had never been away from home before. But life was different on the island now. The war had ripped the heart out of the place. A thousand men, dead and gone. Including her own father. Before the war the island had been prosperous and growing more prosperous. Now it was a place of tragedy and open wounds. Arlette had felt restless and out of place for months. Then, one afternoon, watching her daughter staring restlessly out to sea, her mother had taken her hands in hers and said, ‘Now. Go now. I don’t need you any more.’
And so she had. On a soft September day, with no idea what on earth she was going to do once she got here. So, she would take it one step at a time. First a wash. Then some lamb and mint. And then, she supposed, somehow or other, the rest of her life would begin to unfurl, as mysterious and unknown as a well-kept secret.
9
1995
‘IT’S BEAUTIFUL,’ BETTY told her mother in a voice full of forced enthusiasm. ‘Really gorgeous. Lovely modern bathroom.’
Her mother sounded unconvinced. ‘I should hope so,’ she said, ‘for that money. And what’s the security like.’
‘The ...?’
‘You know. Locks on the doors? That kind of thing?’
‘It’s fine. Locks and chains and everything.’ She had no idea if there were locks and chains and everything, she hadn’t really been paying any attention.
‘And what are the neighbours like?’
Neighbours? ‘You don’t have neighbours in Soho, Mum.’
‘Well, the area, then, what’s it like? Is it safe?’
She thought of the group of leering long-haired men outside the pub opposite, who’d just shouted, ‘Hello, blondie,’ to her as she left her flat, and the thumping bass of heavy metal emanating from its open door, and she smiled and said, ‘It feels safe, yes. Safe enough.’
Her mother emitted a long, meaningful sigh.
‘Mum!’ snapped Betty.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘it’s just, Soho. Of all the places. You could at least have eased yourself in with a few weeks at Grandma’s. Got a feel for the place.’
‘I’ve just spent the past twelve years of my life living with an old woman. I love my grandma but I do not want to live with her. Not even for a day.’
Her mother sighed again. ‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘But I can’t help worrying.’
‘Mum, I’m twenty-two years old! All my friends have been living away from home since they were teenagers!’
‘Exactly!’ said her mother. ‘Exactly. They’ve had time to find their feet. Student life is not the same as real life.’
‘I actually think I’m safer here than at Arlette’s house. Out there, on that cliff, all alone. Anything could have happened. At least here I’m insulated.’
‘Yes, but you’re also anonymous. Everyone knew you here. Everyone had an eye open for you. There’s no one there to keep an eye on you.’
‘Well, that’s not true actually ...’ She paused to drop another twenty-pence piece into the coin slot. ‘That’s not true. I’ve already made friends with the man who runs the market stall outside my flat. He’ll keep an eye on me. And the girl from the agency, she knows I’m here. That’s two people, and I’ve only been here a couple of hours.’
‘Hmm, well ...’ Her mother sounded tired. ‘Just be careful, that’s all. Just be careful. You’re my special girl. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. I love you so much ...’
‘I know, I know.’ Betty swallowed down her distaste for the words. She didn’t want to be loved by her mother, not right now. ‘Look, I’ve run out of coins. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she said, ‘or maybe the day after.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said her mother. ‘Call me tomorrow.’
‘I’ll try,’ she said.
‘Love to Jolyon. Love to everyone. Bye.’
She hung up as the pips signalled the end of her money.
She exhaled and let herself lean heavily against the wall of the booth. The phone call had been an ordeal. She was not in the mood for having a mother. She wanted to spend a few days, maybe even longer, pretending she didn’t have one, pretending to be rootless and unconnected. She had just left an island and now she wanted to be one.
She pushed her way out of the booth and put her hands into the pockets of the lightweight coat she’d packed into her rucksack in the early hours of that morning. She had ten pounds in her purse and was on a mission for basic provisions: milk, a microwave meal, some cereal and some tea.
The world came towards her like a computer game as she attempted to stroll nonchalantly through the streets. She had not taken a map with her. A map would have marked her out as a day-tripper. She would learn the streets of Soho using her instincts and her internal compass. Yes, she would.
She pushed her chest out and she put her hand into her handbag, feeling for the softness of her tobacco pouch, cursing internally when she realised she had left it in the flat. She needed a cigarette now, she needed a prop, she was walking funny, she could feel it, too much to the left, her right foot was dragging a bit. She cursed as she came off the edge of a kerb, her ankle twisting awkwardly. She had to break her fall with a hand on the pavement and she felt the skin come away from the heel of her hand as she did so. ‘Fuck,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Bollocks.’ She pulled herself upright and rubbed away at the scuffed skin, not daring to look around her to see who might have seen her inelegant tumble. She carried on her way, turning left, turning right, wishing for a cigarette, wishing for a friend, wishing for ... a bowl of Chinese noodles in a tiny scruffy café with scuffed Formica table tops and a dreamy-looking waiter standing with arms crossed, staring through the window into the middle distance.
She hurled herself through the door of the café. It was called, somewhat unimaginatively, Noodle Bar.