The Crowlands

by T M Creedy

  ‘Oh.’ She sounds startled. ‘Really? You know of somewhere?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, I have a flat in London. I presume you wanted to be in London, otherwise why would you be advertising in a London paper?’ I’m babbling now, because she sounds like she hasn’t found anywhere and she still needs somewhere to stay and I so, so want her money.

  ‘Whereabouts in London are you?’ She sounds cautious now. Rightly so.

  ‘Peckham. Not far from the main high street. I have a one bed flat in a private house. Nothing flash, but quiet. And clean.’ I cross my fingers behind my back as I say this. ‘No one will bother you here. It’s not that type of place. No one will even know you’re here.’

  She exhales down the phone line and breathes heavily several times.

  ‘Peckham. I can do Peckham.’ This she says almost to herself, like she’s forgotten I’m there. ‘I just need to be able to get to Heathrow early on Monday morning.’ Is that possible, from Peckham?’ She talking to me again.

  ‘I’m not far from Peckham Rye Station. You could get a bus to the airport, or the Tube, with only a couple of changes.’

  ‘The Tube is good, changes are better.’ She sounds like she is thinking out loud. ‘Less chance of being followed when you change trains a couple of times.’

  I swallow nervously. This sounds more than dodgy now.

  ‘I’ll give you a thousand pounds if you rent me your place.’ She is becoming more decisive. ‘But you can never tell anyone I was there OK? And I don’t need you asking any questions, so if you think this isn’t for you, then please say so now.’

  A thousand pounds! I do a little dance on the spot.

  ‘That’s fine. I don’t need or want to know – it’s your business. Just one thing….’

  ‘What?’ She asks warily.

  ‘Erm, I’ll be there as well. I mean, you can have the bedroom. I’ll be quite happy on the couch. If you don’t mind. I just don’t have anywhere else to go.’

  ‘No.’ Did she mean no I can’t stay or no she doesn’t mind? ‘That’s fine. Actually, that’s better than fine – you can run some messages for me, get me some food and things, so I don’t need to leave the flat.’

  Was she on the run from the police? A violent lover? Had she robbed a bank and was lying low until she could get a flight out of England? But then, she’d hardly advertise in a paper if she was on the run would she? I didn’t care. She was going to pay me a thousand pounds’ cash and I could dig myself out of this shitpit for once. She was still talking, bringing me back to our phone call.

  ‘…. directions from the station? Or could you meet me off the train tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll meet you. That’ll be better. What time?’

  ‘I have your number now so I’ll call you when I’m on the train but it’ll be around six.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be there. My name’s Sara, by the way.’

  She giggles, a high pitched tinkle of laughter.

  ‘How funny! So is mine!’

  What are the chances? There must be someone above looking out for me, thanks be to God and all his holy angels. Humming happily, I whizz around my tiny flat, washing the best bed linen set ready for tomorrow and setting to with the cleaning sprays and polishes. I couldn’t offer her a palace, but it would at least be clean and welcoming. For a thousand pounds cash I would have laid myself down and let her walk all over me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  She calls, as promised, the next afternoon.

  ‘Hi! Still OK for tonight?’

  I’m putting the finishing touches on the bedroom, smoothing down the covers and plumping up the pillows. God knows what I was going to do for bedcovers for myself, I think I have an old sleeping bag stored here somewhere - that would have to do.

  ‘Hi! Yes, no problem. What time are you expecting to get in?

  ‘Ten minutes. I’m on the train already.’

  Shit, I’ll have to run.

  ‘OK. I’m on my way. Tell me what you look like and I’ll keep an eye out for you.’

  ‘Um. Well. I’m blonde. Small. And I have a giant purple backpack that’s bigger than I am on my back!’ She finished in a breath of laughter.

  ‘Should make you easy to spot. See you soon.’

  I run as fast as I can in the cold air, the freezing temperatures niggling at the fillings in my teeth and my lungs burning. Reaching the station, I stand wheezing, breathing clouds of steam out into the night. A train has just pulled in but I don’t see where it came from, if it’s the one she said she’ll be on. There are loads of commuters getting off and for a minute I don’t find anyone matching her description, but then I see a big purple bag bobbing along in the sea of suits, and a bright pink hat with a furry pompom bouncing along in time with it.

  She stands in front of me, a huge white smile on her face as she stoops a little bit under the weight of her backpack.

  ‘Sara?’ She asks.

  ‘Sara?’ I reply. We grin at each other and I offer to help with her baggage. She has, I notice almost immediately, no handbag but she is carrying a black laptop case that is identical to mine. ‘It’s not far. Do you want to get some food from the supermarket on the way?’ She shakes her head.

  ‘Nah. I just really need to get inside; you know? Maybe you could go and get us something in a bit.’

  It only takes us ten minutes to get back to the relative warmth and welcome of the flat. I show her the bedroom, and where she can put her stuff in the bathroom, and she sinks down onto the bed with a grateful sigh of release when she unclips the straps holding her backpack onto her narrow shoulders.

  ‘This’ll do fine. Do you have Broadband? Sorry, I should have asked you on the phone yesterday but it slipped my mind.’

  ‘I don’t but my neighbours do.’ I grin and point to the ceiling. ‘There’s no password for the network connection.’

  ‘Even better – untraceable.’ She smirks. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask her why she needs to be untraceable but then I remember what she’s paying me for not asking any questions. As if reading my mind, she pulls out a battered padded envelope from her coat pocket.

  ‘Here we are. A grand. Just like I said.’ She throws the envelope at me and I catch it in one hand, feeling the lump of notes inside.

  ‘Cheers.’ I am nonchalant but I can’t wait to go into the kitchen and count out the notes into my hand. ‘I’ll go and get us some food now, if you want to settle in?’

  ‘Mmmm, yeah, actually I‘ve got a bit of a shopping list. Do you mind getting some things for me?’ She pulls out a folded piece of paper torn off from a bigger piece. ‘Most of it you can probably get at the supermarket, but there are some things that you might only find at a chemist. It would really be a big help, if I didn’t have to go out again until I’m ready to leave on Monday’

  ‘Sure. No problem. Anything I can’t get tonight I’ll get tomorrow in my lunchbreak.’ I put my precious envelope safely in my bag and Sara throws a couple of twenty pound notes at me. I wonder where she got so much money, that she can throw it around like pennies.

  ‘Get us some Chinese, for both of us. And a good bottle of wine too. Or two. We’ll make a night of it, celebrate things working out for both of us.’ She eyes me knowingly, as if my desperation and need for her money is wafting off me like a smell.

  It’s a good night, we have a lot of fun and she is good company after being on my own for so long. We both curl up on the couch with the telly on low in the background, eating lukewarm greasy noodles out of foil containers and drinking wine from chipped glass tumblers, as I don’t have any proper wine glasses. We chat, but each of us instinctively knows where to draw the line and not cross over it into dangerous territory. I don’t tell her about my gambling, and she tells me nothing at all, apart from that she is going to Australia on Monday for a year. She does housesitting for a living, she says. She travels all over the world, looking after people’s houses and pets while they go on holiday or are seconded to work abroad for a time. She doe
sn’t get any money for it, but she does live rent and bill free, plus she gets to choose where she wants to go and for how long. It sounds like an ideal life but how does she get by without making any money, I ask?

  ‘I have a private income, so I don’t need to work. I don’t need much anyway, just enough to pay for food and entertainment.’ She shrugs. ‘You should look at getting into housesitting too.’ She tells me.

  ‘I wish.’ I snort. ‘But I don’t have any money to live on.’

  ‘If you get the long term sits you could be in a place for up to two years, then you could get yourself some local part-time work to get by.’

  It does sound tempting but then she goes on to explain how you need to build up a good reputation for housesitting first, by starting small and taking the short-term assignments that no one else wants, until you get enough of a profile to start applying for the real plum jobs. She has worked all over, dog-sitting in Singapore, looking after a parrot in Canada and now, her next job, was caring for two cats in a mansion in the middle of nowhere, Australia.

  ‘It really is the middle of nowhere.’ She scoops up the last of her noodles. ‘Two hundred k’s from Melbourne heading inland. It’s a huge, fuck-off house though, and the owners are chucking in the use of a car while I’m there. Said I wouldn’t even be able to go and get milk if I didn’t have some way of getting around.’

  ‘Sounds a bit…’ I fumble for the right words. ‘Isolated? Lonely?’

  ‘Nah, I don’t get lonely. As long as I’ve got an internet connection and satellite TV I’ll be fine. I need some time on my own anyway, need to get away from…. things.’ She leaves it at that. I daren’t ask what kind of ‘things’ she needs to get away from.

  What a lifestyle. I ponder over it as I lie in my mildew scented sleeping bag later. No boring dead-end job getting you down, living in a nice house in some of the most beautiful parts of the world for free. I might have a look at some of the websites Sara told me about tomorrow, see what I would need to do in order to become a member of this exclusive club. Sounds a bit too good to be true though. If it was really all that great, why aren’t millions of people doing it?

  This is truly the luckiest break I had ever had. I have a grand in my pocket, ready to pay off Mr Benny what I owe. I am going to love seeing his face drop when I hand over the cash on Sunday, no sexual favours necessary. I like Sara’s company too. We’ve had a good laugh over it tonight, our names are the same and we look alike too – both small and blonde – but my hair is longer than hers and much messier. We could easily pass for sisters though, if not twins. I wonder if my Mum and Dad have been keeping a secret sibling from me, or if I was adopted as a baby, and my real family are actually Sara’s family. That would be great. If she had a private income, like a trust fund or something, I could be entitled to some of that money too. For the first time in ages I go to sleep happy, and when I’m on the edge of oblivion it occurs to me that I didn’t gamble at all today. Not a penny. See? I can do it if I want to.

  Morning comes all too soon and I sit up, aching all over from sleeping on the saggy bits of the couch. The door to the bedroom is still firmly shut and I can’t hear any signs of life from within. Creeping into the bathroom I shower quickly, not wanting to disturb my guest, and tiptoe into the kitchen to make some toast, leaving all the lights off and fumbling my way around in the dark. I have to be at work soon. I have split the thousand pounds into two piles. The battered envelope contains the six hundred quid for Mr Benny, the fat prick. The rest of it I will pay into my bank account as soon as I can today. None of that money will go anywhere near a slot machine, I swear it.

  There’s still no sound from the bedroom so I leave Sara a note telling her to text me if she needs anything, and letting her know I’ll be back by half five if she wants me to sort something out for dinner for us both tonight. Leaving the flat as quietly as I can, I send a quick prayer of thanks to whatever divine entity has saved my ass this time. Sara’s luxury nomadic lifestyle has really given me something to think about. I doubt there’s much call for housesitting in Peckham, but if I was living somewhere for free, and could still get to my job every day, I’d be laughing. No rent to pay, no bills to worry about, and when I got a few good reviews I could go for the really good jobs. I wonder if I could find a way to claim the dole at the same time, then I wouldn’t need to work at all.

  Sara texts me just before eleven. She has just woken up, she says, and remembered a few more things she needs me to get for her. Between queuing at the bank to pay in my money, and dashing in and around various shops, there is no time for me to try my luck on the slots at lunchtime. She texts me again a few more times, the last one to ask if she can use my laptop, as she can’t get hers to connect to neighbours Wi-Fi. I text her back that of course she can, and she sends me a smiley face. It feels good to have a friend. I haven’t spent any time with anyone else in a long time. The other girls at work are friendly enough but they all have children, and families, and some work other jobs in the evenings just to get by, so none of them are the type to want to hang out with me and go for a pizza now and again. Pizza sticks in my mind and I text Sara to ask if she fancies a couple of supermarket ones for dinner; I’ve still got some of the extra money she gave me for her shopping so I can treat us both to the fancy, restaurant style ones and get a few extra toppings to throw on them. She replies that it sounds good, but could I get some more wine as well, and she’s starving so could I hurry up please? She softens this last bit with an LOL and a winking emoji, but I don’t mind, honest. It’s nice to be needed. The food and wine shopping takes me a bit longer than I thought and, again, I have no time to duck into the bookies and play twenty quid on the machines. With the money I paid into my account today, I can have a little flutter in the bingo tonight if I feel like it, after Sara’s gone to bed though so she doesn’t see me gambling.

  She is restless when I get in.

  ‘Did you see anyone out there? By the bins at the front? I was just looking through the window to see if I could see you coming and I thought I saw someone hanging around the front of the house.’ She sounds worried.

  ‘Was probably only the landlord, he’s always hanging around. Big bloke, fat, always smoking.’ No one else would want to linger by the wheelie bins and bits of broken crap that litter the front garden. She bites her lip but then shakes herself.

  ‘You’re right. He did look a bit fat, and I think he was smoking too.’

  ‘There you are then. Mystery solved.’ I swing the shopping bags onto the top of the kitchen worktop and start unpacking. ‘I got us one Meat Feast and one Spinach and Chargrilled Vegetable. So it’s a balanced meal, meat and veggies. Oh, and I got some extra mozzarella to put on them.’ I turn and switch the oven on, turning the heat up high. ‘Shall we have a pre-dinner drink before we dine?’ I ask in my best, posh voice.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do, darling!’ She is good at posh voices. In fact, I’ve noticed, she’s good at all kinds of voices. She can swing from posh public school girl to estuary slang, to Australian twang all in one sentence.

  The pizzas are done in no time and we sit on the floor of the lounge eating them with our hands and watching awful Friday night television. It is full of those dire reality shows; singing competitions and that awful one where they stick a lot of beautiful, but thick, young people on a tropical island and watch them cop off with each other.

  ‘It’s good.’ Sara slurps cheese grease from her fingers. ‘Staying here, with you. Feels like I’m staying with my sister or something, you know? I’m so used to being on my own I’ve forgotten how nice it is to do things like this.’

  I am touched. I want to reach out and hug her but something tells me she is not one for affectionate gestures so instead I slap her palm in a high-five.

  ‘You should come out to Oz and stay with me, when I’m settled in.’ she goes on. I snort with laughter; she makes it sound so simple.

  ‘I can’t see how.’ I protest. ‘I don’t have that kind
of money, and I still need to pay my rent, even if I’m not here.’

  ‘Don’t they give you holidays where you work? You could manage a couple of weeks, couldn’t you?’

  It’s a nice idea, but she doesn’t realise how hard it is for me to scrape any money together. I get some and it’s gone. I think I’ve proved that already.

  ‘I’ll give you my email address and we can keep in touch.’ I say, neatly side-stepping her question.

  ‘Oh, that reminds me.’ She starts. ‘I still need to use your laptop for a bit, if that’s alright? I don’t know why I can’t connect to the internet on mine, but you’re welcome to try to see if you have any luck.’

  Damn. I was looking forward to playing bingo later. There’s no way I can use her laptop for that – she’ll see it come up in the browsing history and I don’t want her to know what a loser I really am. I can try and get it connected for her though, then she can go back to using her laptop and leave me to use mine.

  After dinner, we both tidy up a bit and then Sara tells me she needs to do some stuff and shuts herself alone in my bedroom. Her laptop bag is leaning up against the couch so I fire it up. It asks me for a password so I knock on the bedroom door gently and call to her. There is the sound of frantic rustling and the closing of the wardrobe doors before she calls me to come in. She is sitting on the bed, smoothing her hair back from her face, and trying to conceal the panic on her face. Her big backpack is half unpacked on my bed, various travelling accessories scattered around.

  ‘I’m trying to get you connected.’ I indicate the laptop in my hands. There’s no way I can do without my own until Monday. ‘Do you want to put your password in?’

  She comes over and taps a few buttons. I don’t know why I look, but I do, and even looking upside down I can see she types in ‘Sara123’.

  ‘I know.’ She sees the look on my face. ‘It’s a crap password. I keep meaning to change it but I’m rubbish at remembering anything complicated. I tend to use a variation of the same one for everything else as well.’