by Lesley Kara
I’ve almost reached the shop now, but, oh no, I’m too late. Tears of frustration stream down my cheeks as I stare at the dirty grey shutters. It’s fate, I know it is. I should be relieved. I am relieved. Because the decision has been taken out of my hands. There’s nothing for it but to go back home and ride the yearning out. Drink coffee and smoke. Eat biscuits. Bang my head against the wall and scream if I have to. Smoke some more. I should never have left the house in the first place.
I’m walking home when a memory worms its way into my head. Helen in M&S, placing bottles of red wine in her basket. My stomach twists and churns. I glance over my shoulder towards her apartment block at the end of the street, on the verge of heading straight for it, but now another memory pushes through. Mum’s face, saying goodbye to me before she left. The worry in her eyes. The knowledge that she was taking a huge risk by leaving me on my own. And I know that I can’t let it happen. I can’t let her down all over again. There’ll be no going back if I do.
With a sickening sense of inevitability I realize that there’s only one person who truly understands what I’m going through right now. All those times she’s tried to reach out and help me and I pushed her away. All those warnings she gave me about Helen still drinking, and what did I do? I ignored every one.
The Oxfam shop is closed, of course, as I knew it would be. I peer into the darkened interior, hoping by some miracle I’ll see her inside, but I don’t. Of course I don’t. If only I’d kept hold of her number. It was stupid of me to throw it away. Stupid and arrogant.
But what about the sleeping bag and torch I saw in her cloth bag that day I tried the dress on? Is it possible that she really is sleeping in the shop overnight? Maybe she’s there right now, all alone in that smelly back room, huddled down on the floor. It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Okay, so she’s annoying as hell, but she’s managed to stay sober for eight long years. She must be doing something right. And it’s not as if I have any other options, not now I’ve remembered what’s in Helen’s flat. If I take one look at a glass of wine tonight, I’ll be all over it.
I dart down the alleyway that leads to the access road behind the shops. I’ve never been down here before and it takes me a while to work out which is the right door. For all I know, she won’t even be here. She might have found somewhere else to stay by now.
I squeeze past the Paladin bins, bracing myself for the sight of a rat, scavenging for food. I’ve seen a fair few in my time, especially when I stayed in squats, but I never got used to it. They always freak me out.
I raise my fist and rap sharply on the door with my knuckles. I wait, then rap again. Louder this time.
If anyone can help me stay off the booze tonight, it’s Rosie.
41
At last, I hear a shuffling noise from inside, then the sound of bolts being drawn back and the rattling of keys. The door opens a fraction of an inch and two suspicious eyes peer out through the gap. When she sees it’s me, her eyes soften and something akin to pleasure passes across her face. She knows she’s got me and, for once, I don’t care. I need to be saved. From myself.
The door opens a little more, wide enough for me to edge sideways into a cramped, dark space full of boxes. She sticks her head out of the door and scans the street in both directions before closing and locking it behind us.
‘How did you know where to find me?’
I follow her into the back room. ‘I saw your sleeping bag. I guessed.’
The inner door that leads through into the shop is closed and there’s a paraffin lamp on the table. Of course. That’s the smell I recognized before but couldn’t identify. Her red sleeping bag is unfurled on top of a makeshift mattress of old curtains and blankets piled on top of each other. It makes me think of the fairy story I loved as a child. ‘The Princess and the Pea’.
Rosie leans across the table to adjust the wick of the lamp and dim yellow light expands in the windowless room. Shadows dance on her face. She looks grotesque. As far removed from a fairy-tale princess as it’s possible to be.
‘I’m trying not to use too much electricity,’ she says. ‘In case they notice the bill’s higher than usual.’
She gestures to a chair. ‘You can shove that stuff on the floor and sit down if you want.’
She takes hold of a kettle and disappears with it into a recess. I hear her filling it up.
‘I thought Helen was your go-to friend in times of trouble.’ She sounds defensive, as well she might. I’ve spurned her advances too many times.
‘I don’t think she’s very well.’
‘Hmm.’
Rosie comes back into the main space of the room and goes over to a stained Formica shelf that passes as a kitchen area. An assortment of chipped and dirty mugs is stacked up next to a large box of value teabags and a catering-size jar of cheap instant coffee. A small pyramid of used teabags congeals on a saucer.
‘Tea or coffee?’ she says.
‘Coffee, please. Black.’
‘Don’t worry, it will be. I’ve used the last of the milk.’
I shiver. It might be warm outside, but in here it’s distinctly chilly. Rosie grabs a cable-knit sweater from the top of one of the donation bags and tosses it towards me. I catch it by the sleeve and give it a quick sniff. Time was I wouldn’t have cared less about putting someone’s dirty jumper on, but with sobriety comes a more refined sense of smell. I’m more discerning all round now I’m not permanently shit-faced. Rosie watches me with interest.
‘You’ve been crying,’ she says.
‘No shit, Sherlock.’
Rosie laughs through her nose. She turns her attention back to the kettle and soon she’s sloshing hot water into two mugs.
‘Sugar?’
‘No, thanks.’
She spoons three heaped teaspoonfuls into her own mug and hands me the other. Then she crosses her ankles and sinks, effortlessly, on to her sleeping bag.
I sniff. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?’
Rosie smiles. There’s a smugness about her that infuriates me. I’d get up and leave right now if I didn’t know for sure what I’d do if I did.
She holds her mug close to her chin so that steam rises up in front of her face. ‘I knew you’d show up, one of these days. It was just a matter of waiting.’
A tear rolls out of the corner of my right eye. I don’t want to break down in front of her because I know, as soon as I do, I’ll tell her everything, just like she wants me to. Like she’s wanted me to from the very beginning. And yet there’s something about the way she’s sitting there, that patient, resigned expression on her face, as if she’ll sit there for ever until I do, that acts like a valve inside me, and the words judder out.
‘My boyfriend died. He killed himself and it’s my fault and now I’ve got his suicide note and I can’t read it. I just can’t. Not without a drink.’
Rosie puts her mug on to the floor. She’s looking at some place I can’t see, some private region inside herself. In a terrible flash of insight, I see in her a future version of me, or how I might end up, eking out my interminably dry days sifting through other people’s rubbish, squatting in a shop that smells of death and decay.
Rosie returns from wherever it is she’s been. ‘A letter? From Simon?’
I’m amazed she knows his name. I don’t even remember telling her. I must have let it slip during one of my shares. ‘Yes. I only got it tonight.’
She narrows her eyes. ‘How come?’
‘His ex-girlfriend gave it to me.’
Her eyebrows flicker. ‘I thought you were his ex-girlfriend.’
‘I am. I mean, I was. It’s a long story.’
‘You’ve got a new boyfriend now, haven’t you?’
I shake my head. ‘Not any more. I finally did the right thing and told him the truth, and now he doesn’t want anything to do with me.’ I stare at my feet. ‘I should never have allowed myself to get involved with him in the first place. It was too soon after Simon. But I am
involved. I’ve fallen in love with him.’
Rosie tugs at her sleeves and pulls them over her knuckles. ‘Tell me about him.’
‘He’s here for the summer. Helping his dad renovate an old house.’
‘No. Not him. Simon.’
I stare at her. She’s got a really weird expression on her face, as if she’s trying to bore into my mind and extract my thoughts. But she’s right. I do need to talk about him. Exorcize his ghost once and for all.
‘I used to think he was the only man I could ever love. The only man who understood what it was like to be me.’
Tears flow down my face. Sitting in the back room of an Oxfam shop with a mug of revolting instant coffee and baring my soul to an AA zealot like Rosie is the very last thing I want to be doing. Is this really my last refuge? Because I know what’s going to happen if I stay. She’ll start talking about God and how I need to surrender to His will. How I need to go back to Step 1 and start all over again. We’ll probably end up praying together.
‘And yet now you feel the same way about this new man?’
‘Yes, but it’s different now. Because I’m not drinking any more. When I’m with Josh I feel safe. He’s uncomplicated. Kind, responsible.’
‘And Simon wasn’t?’
Rosie’s stare is intense. All these questions about Simon! She’s probably done a counselling course or something. Still, it sounds as if she knows what she’s doing, as if all this is leading me somewhere I need to be.
‘Well, he was kind when he wasn’t off his head. But uncomplicated? Responsible? Those aren’t words you associate with addicts. You of all people should know that.’ I close my eyes. ‘I can’t explain why I loved him. I just did. It was an intense kind of love. It was … visceral.’
Rosie shifts her sit bones. She gazes at a point beyond my right shoulder and frowns. ‘When someone we love dies before their time, it’s so much harder to bear, isn’t it?’ she says.
I nod. It’s hard to tell in this light, but I think there are tears in her eyes. Maybe she’s thinking of her mother. I drain the last of my coffee. It might be foul, but it’s warm and wet and drinking it gives me something to do.
‘I don’t suppose we can smoke in here, can we?’
Rosie shakes her head. ‘It’ll set off the smoke alarm. You can stand on the lav and stick your head out the window if you want.’ She laughs. A deep, throaty chuckle I’ve never heard before. ‘I’ve managed to cut right down since I’ve been dossing here.’
She’s not so bad, really. If we’d met each other when we were both soaks, we’d have had a right old laugh. Christ, just thinking about that makes me want a drink. I get my fags out of my pocket and go and lock myself in the loo before I start blubbing again. I don’t want to end up like Rosie, pushing sixty and squatting in a charity shop, having to balance on a toilet seat with my head shoved up next to a fanlight every time I want a smoke. What would Josh think if he could see me now? What would Richard?
When I’ve smoked it down to the butt, I pinch it out between my fingers and drop it out the window. Then I do a wee. I unlock the cubicle door and, just as I’m about to wash my hands in the basin, something catches my eye. The familiar face of Dolores O’Riordan staring up at me from the top of Rosie’s cloth bag.
A chill runs through me. I look over my shoulder, but Rosie can’t see me from here. I run the tap, then slowly, carefully, I lift the Cranberries T-shirt out and hold it up in front of me. My stomach knots in dread. It’s the same one I saw on the mannequin. The one I thought I must have imagined. The one Rosie denied all knowledge of. Except I didn’t imagine it. Because here it is, in my hands. Tentatively, hardly daring to breathe, I work my fingers round the edge of the hem till I find it. The small, round bleach stain that tells me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it’s Simon’s.
42
With trembling hands, I refold the T-shirt and replace it in the bag. As I do this, I catch sight of some paper folded in half and stuffed down the side.
‘Astrid? Are you okay?’ Rosie’s voice makes me flinch. I whip the paper out and stuff it into my back pocket.
‘I’m fine, yeah, just drying my hands.’ At least, that’s what I try to say. What actually comes out is a strange little croaking noise.
‘Did you turn the light off in the loo?’ Her voice is right behind me now. I spin round to see her looming in the doorway. Her eyes flick towards the bag on the floor. The swiftest, most subtle of glances, but I saw it. I saw it.
I nod, barely trusting myself to speak. She knows I’ve seen it. The space between us prickles with tension.
‘You lied to me.’ My voice is high and squeaky. I clear my throat and try for something on a lower register, something that carries more weight. But the same reed-thin warble betrays me. ‘You said it must have been sold.’
She shrugs, as if it’s nothing.
‘Okay, so I lied. I had a feeling it might be worth something. Special-edition T-shirts often are. So I looked it up and one just like it was sold on eBay for eighty quid.’
She steps forward and plucks the shirt from the bag, shakes it out in front of her and stares at it, as if she can’t quite believe what she’s saying. Of course she can’t. Because she’s lying through her teeth.
‘We’re not supposed to siphon stuff off for ourselves. Things that might fetch a bit more for the charity are auctioned online. But as you can probably tell, I’m not exactly flush at the moment.’ She tilts her chin back and gives me a defiant stare. ‘But I changed my mind. I wasn’t going to do it.’
I nod as if I believe her. Until I know for sure what I’m dealing with here, I need to tread softly, let her think she’s fooled me.
‘Simon came close to selling it once,’ I say.
Her fingers tighten round the fabric.
‘The Cranberries were playing the night we met. Not that he was particularly sentimental, but …’
She’s still clutching the T-shirt, as if she daren’t let it go, as if she suddenly needs it to be as close to her skin as possible.
With trembling fingers, I reach into my back pocket and pull out the piece of paper. My palms are damp with sweat. Rosie tenses as I unfold it. It’s a photocopy of a story in a newspaper with one small paragraph ringed in red. It’s headed ‘Young man commits suicide at Seaford Head, West Sussex’.
I’ve been a fool. An idiot. Ever since Laura gave me Simon’s suicide note, I’ve convinced myself that the only thing tormenting me is myself. My inner addict struggling to get out. But what if it wasn’t Laura sending those messages? She apologized for scaring me, yes, but what if she just meant following me around and coming to the house under false pretences? Lying to Mum? She never actually admitted to sending them. I just assumed it was her.
The memory of Rosie reaching for his gold juggling ball when I emptied my pockets that time flashes into my mind. The way she squeezed it into the palm of her hand and went into that semi-trance. It makes me think of how I used to hold it close to my chest at night and draw comfort from it, as only a lover could.
A lover … or a mother.
My legs turn to jelly. A tide of nausea swells up inside me and black spots swim before my eyes.
She moves as if to touch me, but I step aside, out of reach, move back into the storage room. My brain struggles to compute. I remember Simon once telling me his mother had ‘issues’, that she hated him having a life of his own. But he never said she was an alcoholic. How can she be here, in Flinstead? It doesn’t make any sense. Unless he told her about me. But they were estranged, weren’t they? Had been for years. I must have it wrong. Yet how else would she have his T-shirt?
If I hold my nerve, I can make a dash for the back door and get away from her. I need to work out what this means. Panic rushes through me in an icy flood. Rosie locked the door behind me. I saw her do it. Didn’t even question her motives.
My eyes roam the room for a set of keys, but I can’t see any. What I do see is the PC, and my mind picks at a memo
ry, sees it open on the Windows template screen when I was trying that dress on. I think of the fake flyer wrapped round the bottle of vodka. She must have created it in here. Used the shop’s printer to run off a copy.
Then I catch sight of the keys. She’s slung them on to her sleeping bag. Rosie sees me looking at them and her jaw tightens.
‘I’m sorry, Astrid, but I can’t let you leave.’
Strategies charge through my head. She wants to talk, so we’ll talk. It’s what she’s wanted all along, isn’t it? Sidling up to me at every opportunity, trying to engage me in conversation, pressing her phone number into my pocket. And to think I thought Helen and a couple of bottles of red wine might be a danger to me tonight.
‘Sit,’ she says, inclining her head towards the chair I was sitting on before.
Fear roots me to the spot.
‘Sit,’ she says again, and I find myself obeying, because what else can I do?
Think, Astrid. Think!
I lower myself on to the chair.
Rosie picks up my empty mug. ‘I’ll make you another one,’ she says.
Still holding the T-shirt, Rosie moves towards the recess we’ve just come out of. I consider making a dash for the front of the shop and hammering on the glass door to attract a passer-by’s attention, but no sooner does this idea come into my head than I dismiss it. The chances of anyone walking by at this time of night are slim. I need to get hold of those keys and make it to the back door.
I wait till I hear the sound of her rinsing my mug in the sink before getting up as quietly as I can and enclosing the entire bunch of keys in the palm of my hand so they don’t jangle. Then I creep as fast as I can to the door at the back. The top bolt slides across smoothly and noiselessly. So far so good. But the bottom one is stuck fast. I pinch the barrel between my thumb and forefinger and yank it across with all my strength. The metal gouges into my flesh as it shoots back with a loud clank.