I push my trolley, loaded with towels, replacement toiletries, bedding and cleaning items, down the corridor to the next room. The person in 413 was actually very tidy and clean. I managed to get the whole room done in ten minutes. I’m always doing that, trying to grab an extra minute or two where I can so I can spend a bit of extra time on the really mucky rooms. These floors have bigger rooms, which take more time to remake.
The left wheel on my trolley squeaks sometimes as I push it, and I make a mental note to have it looked at by the maintenance guys. As I think this, Marshall’s note scrolls through my mind like ticker tape on the bottom of a television screen.
I feel for him. He has no idea what is in store for him. Eliza seems like a good person, but she will do bad things. She probably already has done bad things but there are a plethora of bad things for her to do which she will work her way through. She will do those things and will be horrified that at the end of it people aren’t there for her. That Marshall isn’t there for her. At the moment, he thinks – truly believes – that by being supportive and caring, not calling her out for stealing from him, that it’ll help her; that by being a shoulder to lean on, she will seek help for her problem. He thinks being her rock, the person she can turn to and will have her back when she’s facing it head on, will be what keeps her fighting against her ‘problem’. The reality is, it’ll all be smoke and mirrors, it will all be lies, it will all come to nothing because she does not have a ‘problem’, she has an ‘addiction’. Right now, she only wants her drugs, she only wants her life as it fits in with drugs, she only wants to get away with behaving like scum of the Earth.
Reese behaved like scum sometimes. Real, out-and-out scum. The only way I could stay friends with him, still love him like I did, was by being honest with myself about who he was and what he was willing to do to feed his habit. I did love him, too. I could love him because I saw exactly who he was. When I looked at him I didn’t see the druggie who stole from me and Vinnie whenever I let him into Vinnie’s house. I didn’t even see the man who I had a coffee with after he stopped someone from attacking me. I saw the young boy who had to leave home because his mother didn’t protect him. I’d never seen photos of him from the time before his life as Reese began, but I could picture him in my head. Under the grime, the needle-spackled skin, the dirty clothes, the grey-brown teeth and often his unkempt smell, I only ever saw the boy for whom home was so bad he had to run away. I saw him like that, but I knew what he was capable of.
Reese and I were bad for each other because he could do terrible things, he could screw me over, verbally abuse me, and I would still love him, would still look out for him, would still be his port of call when he needed someone to pretend his life was normal. Reese sometimes needed tough love. We both knew every time he went down into the hole of heroin that he hadn’t fallen in, he had crawled in. He made the choice to do it. Yes, it was a choice made from the physical and psychological craving so strong he often couldn’t stand the pain that came from living without it flowing through his veins, but it was still a choice. My choice wasn’t so much physical, it was psychological, emotional, instinctive – I had to be there for him. I had to show him I believed him because no one else had. We both knew Reese needed tough love sometimes, Reese knew I needed tough love sometimes, but we neither of us were quite brave enough to bring it about.
Marshall has all of this to come: the relapses, the promises, the money, the emotional ringer he will be dragged through while Eliza pretends to him and herself that she wants to get clean. And, addict that I am, I want to be there for him. To help him while he helps her. To feed my habit with his need to help his friend.
I park my trolley outside 415. There is no ‘do not disturb’ sign hanging outside so I raise my hand.
Knock, knock! Wait ten seconds.
Knock, knock! ‘Housekeeping!’ I call. Wait another ten seconds.
Nothing, no response. That doesn’t always mean the person is out, though – they could be in a deep sleep, they could be in the shower, they could have headphones on and can’t hear me … on average I scare the living daylights out of five different people a day.
I swipe the card attached to the loop on my maid’s uniform, slowly open the door. When the door is open, I enter the room but stay by the door, then knock again, call ‘Housekeeping!’ again. No response. The room is darkened because the curtains are drawn, but it doesn’t feel empty. The bathroom light is out, there are no shapes in the bed, but I am not alone in here. Urgh. On average, this happens at least twice a week – someone will ‘accidentally’ treat me to a full-frontal nudie show. I’ve seen far too many naked people – male and female – since I started working here, and none of them has the body that can make it worth my while.
Do I go or do I stay? I’m really not up for being flashed today. My eyes dart around the dimly lit room, taking in the mess, assessing how much time I’ll need when I come back later. A man’s suit jacket has been slung over the back of the chair by the window; on the low padded bench by the door a suitcase stands yawning open, but its contents don’t contain clothes other than underwear, from what I can make out, so I’m guessing the person has hung them up. On the floor by the bed is a pair of trousers, one leg inside the other; a pair of men’s tight underpants is on top of the trousers, and beside them is a white T-shirt. On the bedside table there is an expensive watch, a fancy silver lighter, loose change and keys – car and house. Not too messy – the bathroom may not need too much clearing up, either. Do I go or do I stay? The room is unnaturally silent even though I am not alone. Do I stay or do I go?
The bathroom light flicks on suddenly, and out of nowhere a form appears from the bathroom and pauses, leaning against the frame so their whole body takes up the entire doorway. The person is male, his doughy midsection topped by a toned, muscular chest. He’s naked, of course, brandishing his body like it is necessary viewing for every person who walks the face of the Earth.
Immediately I avert my eyes, but I know he’s probably switching his gaze between checking how embarrassed I am, and admiring himself in the full-length mirror I am standing beside.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I say, averting my eyes. ‘I thought you were out. Housekeeping. I’ll come back later.’
I step back, ready to shut the door behind me. ‘No, no, don’t run away. You can still clean up around me. I really won’t mind.’
His voice. His voice crawls into my ear, then spreads out through my memory, stroking every one of my nightmares awake, causing them to flash through my mind in an uncontrollable torrent.
‘I-I’ll come back,’ I manage. I keep my head lowered, push my glasses back into place. ‘Sorry.’
I step out of the room, swing the door shut. I can’t luxuriate in a moment to steady myself, I have to move on, get into the next room, hide out and hope he didn’t recognise me, hope he doesn’t open his door, stick his head out and say—
‘Nikky? Is that you?’
I keep walking, keep moving, because I am not Nikky. Nikky is a woman he made in his image.
‘All right then, Nika. Nika Harper, you stop right there and talk to me.’
I don’t even know why, but maybe I am, deep down, that twenty-one-year-old who did whatever he told me to do. Maybe I knew I’d always have to have this conversation, this confrontation, and there’s no point trying to avoid it, and that is why I stop my trolley with its sometimes squeaky left wheel and I stop walking.
I can’t keep running away from bits of my past. Some day, somehow, I’m going to have to deal with it.
I turn around to face him. It looks like the part I have to deal with now is the part involving Todd.
‘I almost didn’t recognise you with the hair and the glasses,’ he says. ‘You look really different.’
‘So do you,’ I reply. He’s a little grey around the temples, the sun from his expensive holidays has weathered his skin and he’s older, of course, but essentially he looks the same. But that’s not what I m
ean when I say that. I used to be scared of him – more so after I left him. He was terrifying in my mind, scarier than the thought of sleeping rough. Maybe it was the thought of what he could make me do, how he got me to collude with him to treat me badly, that had sent me out there in the first place and had scared me most. Yet, standing in front of him, the flashbacks that moments ago came rampaging through my mind, trampling over all the good things in my memory when I realised who he was, don’t seem to have been of him, the man leaning out of a doorway so he’s not flashing the corridor. Those nightmares were of someone far more menacing. Someone charming and good-looking; cruel and cunning. That doesn’t seem to be him. He looks completely different.
‘Why don’t you come back into my room so we can talk?’ he says pleasantly.
I shake my head. ‘No, I’d prefer to stay out here.’
‘I haven’t seen you in ten years and you want to talk out here?’ He waves his hand around the corridor, which, as corridors go, is very pleasant. The lighting is low but not grungy, the carpets are clean, the wallpaper is fancy.
‘Why not?’ I ask. ‘It’s as good a place as any.’
‘Come on, Nikky, just step inside for a moment.’ He sounds jovial, like a man humouring his ex, like a controlling man who will turn on the thinnest of edges when the ex doesn’t do what she’s told.
‘No, thank you,’ I state. ‘I can’t talk for long, either, I have to get back to work.’
‘Yeah, work,’ he scoffs. At one point in my life, that scoff would have hurt. I would be hanging on, waiting for the other words that would cover the cut of those words and make me feel all right again. Right now, the smirk bounces off without even touching me. ‘Hang on,’ he says when I don’t reply. He’s gone a few moments, then re-emerges wrapped up in the white dressing gown from his room. ‘I can’t believe how low you’ve sunk, Nikky,’ he says. ‘There was a time when we used to laugh at people like maids in hotels, having to get down on their hands and knees for hours to make enough money for a packet of fags, remember?’
I shake my head. ‘No, I don’t remember because I’ve never laughed at anyone who has to work for a living, Todd. I don’t think of people like that. Never have, never will.’
‘Oh, come on, you know what I mean.’
‘I don’t, I genuinely don’t, because I’ve always had respect for people, no matter what they do. It’s not hard, you know, not thinking you’re better than someone because they can’t afford your lifestyle.’
‘You’ve really changed,’ he says sadly.
‘Have I?’ I reply. ‘You haven’t.’
‘Look, this is silly, we can’t talk properly like this. Let me take you to dinner tonight, we can talk and get to know each other again. Wouldn’t you like that?’
I’m so appalled at that suggestion I have to stop myself screwing my face up like he has let off a very bad smell. I’m even more appalled when I realise he means it. ‘I don’t think so. Thank you, but no.’
‘How can you say no to me?’ he says. ‘You owe me at least a little bit of your time, don’t you? You walked out one day after a silly little spat. I had to deal with the aftermath of cancelling the wedding. Do you know what that was like for me? It was so humiliating. Some of my sponsors were down to come to the wedding, they were planning special celebration products, and you messed that all up for me. I’ve had to rebuild my life since then. Plus I’ve been going to see your family. Bet you didn’t know about that, huh? Because you’re selfish. Your parents said you left them in exactly the same way as you left me and that you’d always been a thoughtless child. I stuck up for you. I told them that the stories in the papers about you using drugs weren’t true and that I had been taking care of you. I did all that even though you’d left me in the lurch.
‘You owe me, Nikky, you owe me. Now, I’m willing to listen to what you have to say for yourself about why you did that to me, but not like this. We have to sit down properly, talk it all through. You need to understand that we can’t pretend none of this has happened, but I’m willing to try.’
Todd has clearly had this moment, this conversation, mapped out in his head for years. He knows what I was meant to have said and when, what he was meant to have said and when, and how the whole thing would resolve itself. Todd speaks like that conversation has happened exactly how it was meant to in his mind, even though I have not said a word.
‘Did Frank get his job back?’ I ask.
‘Frank? Who the hell is Frank?’
Frank is the man I still fretted over, who I felt so guilty about I often thought of breaking my exile to go and beg his employers to think again, who I almost returned to Todd for so he would tell them to re-employ him. ‘Frank is the driver who you had sacked because he was nice to me.’ This is clearly not part of the script he has in his head.
Almost visibly, a thousand thoughts run through his mind as he squints his way through his history. He’s obviously done it since then, he’s obviously had men removed from their positions for being too nice to one of his wives or fiancées. I’d wager he’s had it done so many times he’s genuinely forgotten who Frank is.
‘Goodbye, Todd,’ I say.
‘Don’t walk away from me, Nikky. You don’t get to walk away again.’
Room 417 has a DND sign, so I push on, ignoring the braying man behind me, and stop outside room 419.
‘Nikky, you come back here. Now. You come back here. I’m not finished talking to you.’
Knock, knock! Wait ten seconds.
‘Do you hear me, Nikky? Nikky! Nikky!’
Knock, knock! ‘Housekeeping.’
‘NIKKY!’
I swipe my card, open the door and drag my trolley in with me when I’m sure the room is empty. I don’t usually do that, but I need to shut him out. I need him to stop shouting. This is a nice hotel: the last thing they need is for some man to be stood in the corridor, screaming the name of a woman who does not exist.
Birmingham, 2015
‘I thought you might like a hot chocolate?’ I said to the girl.
I’d noticed her arrive a few days ago, walking into town from the direction of the coach station, and she was set apart from the other people who had arrived because she was shrouded in a new-girl fear that was like a thick, visible blanket. I’d noticed her walking and walking that night when I went to meet Reese. Now, she was sitting on the raised platform outside a closed shoe shop with her bag beside her and an air of hopelessness that had replaced the blanket of fear. That must have been what I’d looked like when I’d first arrived; it was certainly what I remembered feeling like.
I held out the styrofoam cup filled with a frothy hot chocolate to her. She seemed too young for coffee, would probably turn her nose up at tea, and I had no idea where to start with herbal stuff. Hot chocolate seemed a good compromise.
‘If you’re a social worker you can do one,’ she practically spat at me with a slightly curled lip, and narrowed eyes.
‘I’m not a social worker,’ I said.
‘Cop, whatever – I’m not interested.’
‘I’m not a police officer, either. I’m a …’ What was I? ‘I’m like you. I’m homeless, too.’
‘Yeah, right, you look it.’
I sat down beside her, without cleaning off a spot first, and she did a double-take because few ‘normal’ people did that. ‘I don’t sleep on the streets any more, no, but I live in a homeless bedsit-type thing.’
She turned her body, which seemed so fragile, like a bird with delicate wings, towards me, her face curious. ‘You really slept on the streets?’
‘Yeah, and if you’re going to do it, I’ll tell you what a good friend told me: you need to hide, sleep somewhere hidden so you’ll feel a bit safer. But, if you sleep out a few nights in the open, there are people who will help you. Get you a place in a shelter, get you the help you’re entitled to.’
‘They’d just make me go home. I can’t go home.’
‘They won’t, you know. Maybe just
—’
‘I can’t go home!’ she screeched. I wasn’t listening to her, and I should be. I had started this conversation – why bother talking to her if I wasn’t going to listen? She wasn’t ready to get help from someone who might want to talk her into going home.
‘Sorry,’ I said. I uncapped my drink and took a sip. Bought hot chocolate was a luxury I rarely indulged in. Its slightly too-hot temperature flashed over my tongue, leaving a temporary numbness in its wake. The girl hooked a lock of greasy hair behind her ear, revealing a crop of acne on the side of her face. She was probably younger than I thought. At first, from a distance, I’d been thinking sixteen, but now, more like fourteen.
‘I’m Grace. What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Lori,’ she mumbled. She held on to the hot chocolate, using it to warm her fingers. ‘My name’s Lori.’
‘Nice to meet you, Lori.’
She nodded. ‘I really can’t go home. It’s awful at home. I can’t go home.’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘You know, during the day, there are centres open where you can get some food and can sit in the corner and sleep. And at night, like I say, just try to stay hidden. The library’s a good place to visit. I used to try to stay in a youth hostel at least once a week so I could have a shower and wash my clothes. But that’s hard if you don’t have any money.’
She wasn’t really listening to me, she was stuck back in the place where she had made the decision to run away rather than live with whatever was going on at home. ‘Listen, if you change your mind about getting help, just ask a couple of the homeless guys to get a message to Grace, or Ace, as they call me, and I’ll sleep out with you to make you feel less scared.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘I know how scary it can be. But in your own time, when you’re ready, you can get the extra help that’s out there. In the meantime, though, it’s really important that you stay away from people who offer you stuff.’
‘How’d you mean?’
‘I mean, yes, if I’m being strict about it, I shouldn’t have given you that hot chocolate, but really, it’s on me. But if you’re going to live out here for a while, try not to owe anyone anything. You’ll get offered stuff like drink or drugs and you’ll think that person is being generous but really, they’ll want paying back. And sometimes not just with money.’