Brighton, 2016
‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’ Marshall asks quietly. He leans across the table, holding his menu against his chest, while his face is a picture of concern.
This restaurant is nice, not too posh, but comfortable, with booths and tables, funky decor, an interesting menu and friendly wait staff. I feel like a fraud, like everyone can see I do not belong here. Since leaving Todd, I could never have afforded to eat somewhere like this, even though it’s not Michelin-starred. Normal becomes posh when you have lived as I have; and after the last few years, posh is not somewhere I fit in. The couple at the next table, they’re well dressed and unruffled and they fit in. They have a bottle of wine on the go, are waiting for their main meals and constantly touch each other across the table – relaxed and happy to be out together. The parents in the booth to my right belong here: they sit with a child beside each of them, encouraging the younger ones to eat, while simultaneously trying to eat their own meals and hold an adult conversation. The people who I can see over Marshall’s shoulder look like old friends catching up over expensive pints and posh pizza – they are obviously used to sitting in places like this. These people, those who are part of the early dinner crowd, are meant to sit in places like this, they belong here. Marshall belongs and so do I. So. Do. I.
‘No, no, it’s fine here. In fact, it’s great here,’ I say to him.
‘You seem really uncomfortable,’ he says, still with his voice lowered. ‘We can honestly go elsewhere if you want.’
‘I haven’t been to a restaurant in a while,’ I say with a smile. ‘I think I’ve forgotten how to behave in one.’ I feel out of place. I feel like there is a neon sign above my head that points out that I was once a homeless person. I glance down at the menu, see the words for the different types of meals. My heart rate starts to increase, the air around us feels very close, and I have to concentrate on drawing in breath. Slowly, carefully, I need to push that breath out again.
What will I order? How will I order? Will the waitress laugh at me if I order the wrong wine with my meal? Will she think I’m odd if I don’t have a starter? If I do have a starter, will she look down on me because I’ve ordered the wrong type of main meal? Will everyone around me listen to me ordering and know that I don’t belong, know what I used to be, how I used to live, what I did to make money, because I so obviously, blatantly don’t belong?
I jump when Marshall’s hand covers mine. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks. My wild eyes find his kind brown ones. ‘You look absolutely terrified. We can honestly go elsewhere if you want.’
I do not want this to defeat me, but I can’t do it. I can’t sit here and pretend I fit in, that I am a normal person who has lived a normal life that involves eating inside restaurants. ‘Actually, do you mind if we leave?’ I say. ‘I, erm, don’t think I can stay here.’
‘Of course, of course,’ he says and calls the waitress over to get our bill for a jug of tap water and his half-drunk glass of beer.
A bag of chips, a wooden spork and too much salt and vinegar. That, that is what I know, what I like, what I feel comfortable with. We come out of the chippie opposite the burnt-out old pier, which stands forlorn and ominous against the navy-blue-grey sky, and we walk slowly to the traffic lights to cross to the sea side of the street.
Saturday night is gearing up in Brighton, swathes of people are moving towards the centre, towards the bars, the restaurants, the neon-lit clubs. We were lucky to get that table in the restaurant, and I feel bad that we gave it up. I couldn’t stay, though. I thought I was ready, that I could restart my life as though nothing has changed. I’m disappointed in myself, thought I had more courage, but clearly not. Marshall hasn’t mentioned it, hasn’t asked what upset me so much, and I’m not sure I can explain it. He was enthusiastic when I suggested we walked down to the sea and got chips. Looking out along the coastline, the road stretches as far as I can see and street lamps on either side look more and more like fairy lights that have been strung up by a kind-hearted giant the further away they get. Brighton is vibrant, full of life, of people. I close my eyes and sniff, relax for a moment into the smell of Brighton, the scent of being by the sea. I used to do that sometimes in Birmingham. When I would be heading towards Bernie’s for a coffee, I would close my eyes for just a moment and inhale the essence of my new city. Brighton smells of salt and vinegar; Birmingham smells of coffee and opportunity.
‘Is it Eliza getting to you?’ Marshall asks. We are slowly walking towards the pier, away from home. ‘Are you maybe thinking you can’t handle it after all?’
‘It’s definitely not Eliza,’ I say. ‘I’m not used to being in nice places any more, that’s all. I’m not really dressed for it, and I felt really out of place. Like everyone was staring at me.’
‘If they were staring at you, it’s because you’re beautiful,’ he says.
I stop walking. It doesn’t sound creepy or forced, like he is trying to flatter me or charm me – he sounds like he means it. Like he thinks I’m beautiful. That he’s looked at me a few times and the thought has crossed his mind enough for him to say it out loud.
My stare makes him shy all of a sudden: he stops walking too and begins to stare very hard into his bag of chips, prodding around with his spork as though testing the chips for firmness. We stand there for a few moments, silent islands in the noisy seas of a Saturday night in a city centre. The sounds, the people, the blackness of the night flow around us, bending themselves around us so we are not touched in any way.
‘Well, that was a conversation-killer,’ he eventually says, raising his gaze to look at me.
In reply, I stand on my toes and press my lips on to his. Briefly, quickly, to see what it’s like to kiss someone. To kiss a man I like, who thinks I’m beautiful. I have never done that – I have never kissed someone first. It has always been someone kissing me, touching me, deciding how they want things to go. Before he can react, I step back. ‘I wanted to see if I could do that,’ I explain to him. ‘It’s been a while since I kissed someone – I wanted to see if I could do it.’
‘You can try out kissing me any time you want,’ he says with a laugh.
I smile at him. I’m about to do it again, to lean in and kiss him, to this time relish and enjoy the feel of his lips under mine, when his mobile sounds in his inside jacket pocket. He pulls back, cursing under his breath. ‘It’s like she’s got an alarm that goes off in her head whenever I do something she wouldn’t like,’ he says. ‘Eliza. That’s her ringtone.’ He rubs his hand over his forehead, clearly pained and frustrated. ‘I bet you anything you like she’ll have been down and knocked on my door. Because I haven’t answered, she will have knocked on a neighbour’s door to find out if they’ve seen me.’ The phone stops ringing during his outburst. He angrily spears his spork into a chip and it stands upright like a bare flagpole, while he reaches into his pocket with his free hand and retrieves his phone. ‘Now she’s ringing. And if I don’t answer …’ He pauses then nods his head at his phone as it trills into life again. ‘She’ll keep ringing until I do.’ He rejects the call. Less than ten seconds later the phone rings again. He stares at the screen for a second or two, then rejects that call with a vicious stab of the finger. Then he turns his phone off. ‘I hate turning my phone off in case my ex needs to get in touch with me about my son, but Eliza’s driving me crazy at the moment. I’ve tried everything – ignoring her, talking to her, letting her down gently – and she won’t leave me alone. I don’t know what I can do about her short of going to the police. I don’t know what her problem is but it’s driving me insane.’
I know what Eliza’s problem is, I suspected when I first met them, but the bottle of wine and her desperation to get into my flat confirmed it. I know what her problem is, but I’m not sure I can tell him. Firstly, he won’t want to know and secondly, I probably shouldn’t get any more involved than I already am. But then, maybe I could get away with not saying anything if I hadn’t kissed him, hadn’t
brought myself closer to him.
‘I know what her problem is,’ I admit, ‘but you’re not going to like it. Actually, you’re not going to like it or believe it.’
‘What, she’s obsessed with me to stalker proportions? Yes, I’d worked that out for myself.’ He’s angry, upset and feeling powerless. I know those feelings, how they slowly erode your confidence, force you to make your world small, and bland and unthreatening. Being told the truth of your situation is supposed to set you free, give you a chance to break out while placing you on the path to forging a new way of living in the world. Unfortunately, being told the truth can also keep you chained to the same point in history, can make you too scared to do anything because suddenly your existence is tainted by something ugly and terrifying and incomprehensible. And sometimes, sometimes the truth can make everything far worse than you thought was possible.
No matter how terrifying, though, the truth in this situation does need to be told.
‘No,’ I say, ‘Eliza’s problem is that she’s a drug addict.’
Marshall laughs in my face, tells me I’m wrong and then stares at me with cold eyes. I shouldn’t have expected anything less, really. Who wants to believe someone they know is a drug addict when they’re relatively normal-looking and ordinary-acting? Who would believe it of a friend when that friend holds down a job and the most you’ve ever seen them out of it is when they’ve had a couple too many at Christmas? No, much easier to ask, ‘Why would you say such a terrible thing?’ to the virtual stranger who has told you this truth.
‘Because she’s a drug addict. I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Admittedly, I’ve only known her a short amount of time, but this is what she is. That’s why she’s obsessed with you: I bet you’re the only person who hasn’t cut her off, you probably still lend her money now and then, and you let her into your flat where she can still steal from you. Yes, she’s obsessed with you, she wants to protect that relationship you have because you’re the only person still helping to fund her habit.’
‘She doesn’t steal from me.’
‘Of course she does. I bet you stuff has regularly gone missing from your flat but you’ve convinced yourself you’ve mislaid those things, or you tell yourself you had thirty quid instead of forty. I’m sure her other friends stopped lending her money an age ago when they weren’t getting it back, stopped inviting her in when things were going missing. She’s obsessed with you anyway, but you’re also her lifeline to thinking she doesn’t have a problem.’
‘She’s not a junkie.’
‘Yes she is. I’ve known loads of drug users and drug addicts, and the addicts are all pretty much like Eliza, even if they don’t have homes and jobs like she does.’
‘I’d know if she was an addict,’ he says sternly.
‘You’d like to think you would,’ I say to him. ‘Look, Marshall …’ I lay a hand on his forearm and speak gently, like I would to anyone who has just had a huge shock. He immediately steps away from me, stops me from touching him. ‘Look, Marshall,’ I say again. I try to keep my voice as gentle as before, but his rejection of me and what I am saying after the moment we shared, stings; is like a poison-tipped arrow stuck fast in my most tender, vulnerable part. Even after everything, I am still desperate for someone to believe me first time. ‘I understand how much of a shock this must be for you. I’m not saying she’s a bad person but she does need help and she’s unlikely to get any lasting help if she doesn’t acknowledge that she has a problem. And I think she’s got a long, long way to go until she even recognises she’s got a problem.’ I scrunch up my bag of chips, my appetite gone. ‘I’m going to head home. I’ll see you around.’
‘Nika,’ Marshall calls at me when I am less than six feet away.
I rotate on the spot, knowing exactly what he’s going to ask.
‘What is it you think she’s addicted to?’
I inhale. ‘I can’t be sure, but from the way she behaves and the deep paranoia, I think she’s got a pretty serious coke habit, she does a huge amount of skunk – hence the heavy perfume to try to mask it – and she possibly does speed.’
He shakes his head. ‘I really think you’re wrong about this.’
I nod at him and turn for home.
‘I really, really think you’re wrong about this,’ he calls again.
Yeah, I think as I walk, that’s what my parents said, too, the first time I told them the truth about something they didn’t want to hear.
Birmingham, 2010
Things got better. After that night that Judge had set up, which had been painful and degrading and humiliating, things got a lot better, for years.
I got a proper job and I worked set hours cleaning offices and I was happy. I met a man in a pub when I was out with some work friends and we started dating. It was almost like I was being paid back for all that had gone before. I moved in with him after three months. By the time I brought my rucksack and guitar to his house to move in, I’d been sleeping in a car I’d bought. I sold the car and saved the money for a rainy day. I moved in with Vinnie with my eyes wide open, I had my own life, my own money, my own control over my body.
We weren’t the next great love affair, Vinnie and I, but we got on. If we went out it was to the local pub and our restaurant meals were takeaways. We mostly watched television together and I could sit on his sofa and look out at the rain teeming down, knowing I didn’t have to be out in that, looking for shelter. Every night I thought of Reese, of all the others out there, and I said what I felt was a prayer for them: hoping they would be OK, that they would somehow stay dry, get some sleep, wake up to a better day in the morning.
Vinnie cheated on me in the end. I came home early one day due to a gas leak outside the building where I worked and sat quietly on the sofa, listening to him screwing her in the bedroom, sounding like he was having much more fun with her than he ever had with me. I knew I should either walk in there and confront him, screaming like a banshee, or walk away with my head held high and my dignity intact, but I was tired. I simply sat and waited for them to finish and smiled at the woman when she nipped out to get a glass of water wearing nothing but a post-coital glow.
‘We gave it a good go, didn’t we, Ace?’ Vinnie said after he’d shown his red-faced companion out.
‘Yup, so we did,’ I agreed. There was no malice there, no anger or hurt. Our relationship had never been that intense or that involved, if both of us were honest. We’d liked each other a hell of a lot at the start and it had sort of dwindled then limped along. Maybe because I knew what would happen when we stopped – I would be out on the street again. I would have to reapply for a long-term homeless hostel, the rain would be falling on me, I would be moving things from locker to locker at Birmingham New Street, I would be meeting Reese more often and sobbing inside for what he was going through. I would probably also see Judge, who was still smarting at me not taking his money. He had a long memory and all the time in the world to hold a grudge, I knew this. When it was over with Vinnie I knew where I would be again, and I accepted it.
It’d been a good three-and-a-half years. They were worth it. All those years of sleeping in a bed, eating regular meals, going to the dentist, not having to find a way to make tampons last for as long as possible because I wasn’t sure if I could afford to buy another box. I’d had the good life with Vinnie, I couldn’t hate him if I tried.
9
Roni
London, 2016
I am getting nowhere with finding Nika. Absolutely nowhere. I have searched the Internet as much as is possible. I have signed up for all those social media things that I had no need for before, and they have yielded no results. Even the electoral roll still has her living at her parents’ address here in Chiselwick. I am torn over the thought of visiting them and asking if they’ve seen her. They were the main reason why she left. Them, and me and what I did.
I am starting to think it will take some kind of miracle to find her. Without the order of convent life, my
insomnia is creeping back in, the noise in my head is slowly being edged up. I’m sure if I find Nika things will become quieter, there might even be a chance to find the silence.
It is Easter Sunday and I am at morning Mass. Yesterday, Mum said at dinner (I had made) that she was going to come with me as she missed Good Friday Mass. I knew she wouldn’t. She said it as though she thought that was what I expected of her. Dad lowered his fork and stared long and hard at her. She pretended that she didn’t know Dad was wondering if she’d had another knock on the head, and carried on eating slowly and deliberately. ‘Shall I wait for you to come down ready to go or shall I meet you there if you’re not ready?’ I asked.
‘I will be ready,’ she replied tartly.
‘Great. It’ll be nice to have some company. I might go and talk to Father Emanuel after Mass. He was so helpful to me when I was considering becoming a nun. It will be nice to see him again.’
‘Perfect.’
This morning I didn’t bother to wait until the very last minute to leave – I knew she wasn’t going to come. Mum likes to mess with me sometimes; I am never sure why, but she does. The church is at the top of a large hill, which is why I didn’t want to wait for Mum. I wanted to arrive calm and ready, not puffed and out of breath. Churches have fallen out of favour in recent years, with people’s busy, secular lives, with the scandals still attached to the Church, but I love Church buildings. I adore the smell, the pervading atmosphere, the constant move towards silence and serenity.