‘I have just told you some of my innermost thoughts and motivations for taking one of the biggest steps in my life and all you can do is make a quip about being able to read a book?’ Maybe more than bridle a little, actually. It hurts. That is my pride talking, though. My ego. Since I left my life of holy orders I have noticed how hard it is sometimes to live in and with humility.
‘What else do you want me to say?’ Her laugh is gentle and lights up her face. She isn’t mocking me, she is trying to deal with what I have said. ‘What am I supposed to say? I asked you a question and you answered, that’s how conversations work.’
‘All right then, Miss Conversation, where did you disappear to when you left that man you were going to marry? Todd, that was his name, wasn’t it? One minute you were all over the magazines, being snapped going into wedding boutiques, and the next you’d dropped off the face of the Earth. What happened?’ I’m not going to tell her that I used to keep track of her because I liked being able to watch her life without intruding – she might take it the wrong way. She might think I relished in any way that she seemed to behave like I had a few years earlier.
She smirks, but not nastily. She smirks as though I won’t believe her if she tells me. ‘I slept rough for a few years. Bought a car and lived in that for a while. Met a guy, lived with him for about three-and-a-half years, probably about three years longer than I should have because it was nice sleeping inside night after night. After that ended I started sleeping rough again and in another car, and in various hostels before I was finally able to get a room in a homeless hostel. Then I moved to Brighton and came to this flat after a very short stint lodging in a person’s house.’
I look around the room again: I understand now the bare surfaces, the lack of ‘stuff’, the functionality of everything. She had nothing for many years and that is a hard habit to break. At my parents’ house, in my temporary room, I have nothing that isn’t essential, either. Poverty was one of our vows and that is another habit that is hard to break.
‘You were homeless?’ I ask.
‘I was homeless,’ she confirms.
I ministered with homeless people over the years: worked in soup kitchens, sometimes carrying out late-night meal runs where we went around giving food and hot drinks to the people who were sleeping out. Some years, when the temperatures dropped particularly low, we would open up the local church hall so people could sleep inside. There were so many sad stories that I heard, so many damaged people who ended up alone and frightened with nowhere to go. I hate to think of Nika living like that. She must have been in so much pain, she must have been so scared half the time. Maybe that is why there’s a hard edge to her. I can’t imagine you’d survive very long being homeless if you were as giving and generous as she used to be. Anything could have happened to her and it probably did. The things I saw … the young girls who fell into prostitution, the men whose mental illness drove them out of their family homes, the women who had lost their children after leaving an abusive relationship, the young women with anxiety and depression unable to get recognition for their silent, hidden conditions. The physical, mental and emotional toll it took on the people I met was overwhelming and difficult to observe. No matter how long I did it for, how experienced I became at helping the homeless, I would go back to my cell and sob with the pain I had witnessed. I would pray for peace for the people who I had been with. I would ask the Lord to watch over them, to ease their suffering. I would pray for her, too: every night Nika was in my prayers and I had no idea she was one of the homeless people I cried for. She was out there.
‘What are you crying for?’ she asks me while rubbing her eyes with her forefinger and thumb.
‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I tell her. I don’t want to keep crying in front of her. I don’t want to make this all about me. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘Please stop saying that. You didn’t make me homeless.’
We both know that’s not true. If we retrace our steps, skittle backwards along the winding, rocky path of our lives, I know the point where the most significant fork in the road is. Where our lives diverged, and where she probably began on that path to meeting Todd, leaving him, becoming homeless. Spending years and years out in the cold, all alone, doing all sorts to get herself through. She probably took drugs. She probably prostituted herself. All because of what I did.
I can’t stop sobbing and because I’m shaking so much, I’m spilling coffee all over her one duvet. I wanted to make it right, but how can I? How can I atone for what I did when this was the consequence of my actions?
‘Urgh! Stop it!’ Angrily, she flings back the duvet, slams her coffee cup on to the bedside table and slips out of the bed. ‘Stop it. I didn’t let you in here for this. I don’t need or want any of this.’
She doesn’t manage to leave the room, which is what I think she was meaning to do. I think she was removing herself from me so she could compose herself, she could put away all that she has told me and all I have reminded her of, like folding away clothes into a suitcase, then slamming shut the lid and putting that suitcase of memories far away out of reach. Instead, I watch her make it to the door, where she stops and rests her head against it. Slowly she bashes her head against the white many-panelled door. There’s no sound so I know she’s not hitting her head hard, but she does it all the same. Bash, bash, bash, bash, until her legs give way and she is a heap on the floor, her face is in her hands and she is sobbing. I want to go over and comfort her by putting my arms around her but I’m frozen by my own sobs.
And anyway, why would she want me to comfort her when I was the one who did it to her in the first place?
London, 1995
The policeman stared at us like the stupid, fanciful little schoolgirls we were. We sat in front of him in the small, dark room with a tape recorder on the table between us. He was angry-looking: red in the face, a nose like a bumpy, funny-shaped potato, and small, mean blue eyes. I was scared of him, more scared of him than I was of why we were there.
Nika looked scared, she was trembling, but she was still talking, she was telling him everything. He wasn’t taking notes even though he had a pad of paper and black biro in front of him.
‘You know what you’re saying, don’t you?’ the policeman asked when she stopped talking.
She nodded.
‘You could ruin a man’s life by making up something like this.’ His voice was stern, angry even. I was quivering on the inside, shaking on the outside. He would scream at me if I told him the truth.
‘I’m not making it up,’ Nika said. ‘I’m not, I’m really not.’
‘Now you listen.’ The policeman slammed his finger down on to the notepad in front of him. ‘Good men’s lives are ruined because of silly little girls like you making up terrible lies like this. Come on, what’s the real reason you’re here? What did he do? Did he tell you off, let you know you weren’t as good a ballerina as you thought, so you’ve cooked up this little plan to get back at him?’
‘No. I wouldn’t do that,’ Nika said. ‘He does it to her, too, doesn’t he, Roni?’
His small, mean eyes were glaring through me all of a sudden. He was going to shout at me, he was going to tell my parents and then everything would come out. They would have to know about the drinking, the drugs, the unsafe sex with all those different, nameless men. If I told the truth, everyone would know the truth about me and they would all hate me. They would all think I was a slag and dirty.
‘Well?’ His voice was harsh, rough.
I glanced at Nika, she was holding my hand, willing me to do it, to tell the truth. She’d already told her parents and they hadn’t believed her. She’d said they would if she got the police involved. They would believe us and then it would all stop.
‘Does he “do it to you too”?’ The policeman was being nasty. That was nothing, I knew, compared to what everyone else was going to be like when they found out.
I shook my head. ‘No. No, he doesn?
??t.’
I felt her hand slip away from mine as she broke our connection.
I couldn’t look at her, couldn’t see what her face was saying.
‘Roni?’ she asked, desperately.
‘We made it all up,’ I said.
‘Roni, just tell him the truth. It’ll be all right if you tell the truth.’ She didn’t know about the other stuff so how could she know it’d be all right? She thought because she was often there when some guy was fucking me, or when I smoked pot or snorted cocaine or was falling down drunk, that she knew everything. She didn’t know the half of it.
For the first time since Nika had started talking, the policeman looked happy. He sat back and nodded his head, all the while sneering at Nika. That was how other people were going to look at me if they knew: like I was dirt, like I was a piece of crap he’d bin his shoe if he stepped in.
‘You girls, you’re all the same. Can’t take a little banter, make small things into something more than they are. A good man’s life could have been ruined tonight.’
‘I’m not lying,’ Nika said quietly.
‘Now you wait there, I’m going to call your parents. I think they need to know what you’ve done.’
‘Please don’t call our parents,’ I said in desperation. They couldn’t know about this. ‘We’re sorry, we’re really sorry. We won’t do it again.’
‘I’m not lying,’ Nika said again. ‘And I don’t care if you call my parents because I’m not lying.’
‘Please, please. Don’t call our parents. We honestly won’t do it again.’
‘You’re lucky I don’t fingerprint you and arrest you for wasting police time,’ the policeman stated. ‘Now get out of here before I change my mind.’
‘I’m not lying,’ Nika said. ‘Why won’t anyone believe me? I’m not lying.’
‘Get out of here. Now.’
‘I’m sorry, Nika. I just couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t.’
She stared at me as though I wasn’t there. Her eyes had glazed over and she looked like she wasn’t here any more. Her body was still in this world but whatever essence there was inside that made her Nika was gone. She looked how I felt most of the time – my body was always there but the person I was inside was mostly elsewhere.
‘They won’t let me stop. They think he’s so wonderful and that he’s doing so much for me to make my dream come true. And for free, too.’ She was talking to the air. ‘While I’m under their roof, I have to do what they tell me. I have nowhere to go, and no one believes me. I have to get out of this place. I have to leave.’
‘I’m sorry, Nika. I’m sure the policeman will go and speak to him anyway, and he’ll tell him that they know. And I’m sure he’ll stop.’
She didn’t speak to me. Not another word after that. We carried on sitting next to each other at school until our exams were finished. Every ballet lesson after that we would sit next to each other and not speak. I would hold her hand and she would act as if I wasn’t there. She hardly spoke to anyone – she kept herself to herself. She came to school and did her work. I found out that she had two jobs (three if you counted the paper round she did first thing in the morning), and I saw her at ballet twice a week – for the class lessons and then for the individual lessons. She barely spoke and I knew what she was doing. She was making herself invisible. Because when she did what she did next, when she finally left, she wanted no one to really notice.
Nika
Brighton, 2016
I’m not even sure why I’m crying. I’m not a crier. Crying gets you nowhere.
I learnt that at an early age, when Mummy used to shout at me to stop being a baby.
Crying gets you nowhere, I know that. Except to be told you’re making the man you love feel guilty after you have finally seen his true form.
Crying gets you nowhere, I know that. Except to let out some of the horror that lives inside.
I’m not even sure why I’m crying. I wasn’t meant to. I was meant to exit the room, compose myself, come back and tell her to stop it or to leave. To let her know that she is the first person I have willingly invited into my home – my home – and I don’t need her acting out like this. No one needs her to be acting out like this. Now, I’m scrunched up on the floor, sobbing and not knowing if I’m ever going to be able to stop.
14
Roni
Brighton, 2016
‘Town Called Malice’ is bouncing out from Nika’s portable CD player.
We’re on the duvet on the floor in her living room, with the tops of our heads touching, staring at the ceiling. I should be at church. It’s Sunday and I should be at church, but I haven’t been able to leave this place. We can’t physically leave this place. She’s called in sick and we’ve lain on this floor for hours, listening to music and talking every now and again about stuff like our favourite jelly bean flavours and when we last tried to count all the stars in the sky.
It’s almost like last night never happened. That we didn’t sit and cry in her bedroom, then she didn’t get back into her bed and the two of us didn’t lie at opposite ends, crying ourselves to sleep. Almost, but not quite, because we don’t talk about anything to do with our lives before now. We have found stuff, by which I mean safe stuff, to talk about, but not the other stuff, the real stuff. That stuff we shy away from like it’s a tiger that will overpower and devour us.
‘What’s the song you’ve written the notes to on your trainers?’ I ask her. That seems a safe question, nowhere near the tiger.
It isn’t – safe, that is. She sits bolt upright suddenly. I roll over to look at what she’s up to and find her staring at the opposite wall. I don’t need to see her face to know she has that vacant look back. To know that she has suddenly checked out. ‘I’m going to the loo,’ she says and is up and away before I can properly react.
Knock-knock! Comes from her front door and I’m not sure what to do. Answer it? Pretend there’s no one in? The quite loud music won’t let us get away with that, I don’t think. Maybe that’s why they’ve come round – the music might be too loud. I turn it down a couple of notches and hope they go away.
Knock-knock! Comes again. I go to the corridor, look in the direction of the bathroom, which has its door firmly closed, then at the front door. I have to answer it, don’t I? Don’t I? What else can I do?
A tall, well-built man with the most beautiful dark brown skin and large dark eyes stands on the other side of it. He’s shocked for a second and does a double-take before his rather handsome face settles into a frown. ‘You’re not Nika.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m the other Veronica Harper.’
‘I don’t know what that means, sorry.’
‘I went to school with Nika, or Veronika with a k, as she was called, and I’m Veronica with a c, as I was called. We have the same first name and surname. So she became Nika and I was Roni.’
‘That was about as clear as mud, to be honest. Sorry, that sounded rude and I didn’t mean to be. I think I’m easily confused. Is Nika in?’
‘Yes, she’s in the bathroom at the moment. Would you like to come in and wait?’
‘I’m not sure I should. I’m not sure she wants to speak to me, really.’
‘Why, what have you done?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Are you her boyfriend?’
‘No, he’s not,’ Nika says from behind me. The frostiness in her voice tells me that I’ve done the wrong thing by quizzing him in the way I have. I’ve most likely done the wrong thing by even answering the door when it’s not my home.
‘Hi, Marshall,’ she says. ‘What can I do for you?’
He stares at her like he wants to grab her and kiss her, like he wants to hold her and never let her go. I look down at my bare feet because the depth of emotion and desire between them is so barely concealed it’s practically naked. It’s exposed, virtually tangible.
‘You want to do this here, on the doorstep and in front of your friend?’ he asks. r />
She inhales slowly, exhales even more slowly. ‘Come in,’ she says.
‘Sure?’
‘Yes. Come in.’
We all end up in the living room and I dash to pick up the duvet and return the cushions to the sofa, while picking up the coffee cups we’ve left on the floor, too. I return the cups to the kitchen area and lurk about for a few seconds. I don’t know what to do. Do I stay here? Do I go into the bedroom out of the way? Do I leave?
He’s clearly comfortable talking in front of me, because he begins: ‘I thought we had a really good thing going and then you’ve given me the brush-off and I haven’t seen you in over three weeks, you’re not answering my texts. What’s going on?’
And she’s clearly comfortable talking in front of me, too, because she replies: ‘It wasn’t exactly love’s young dream, was it? Both of us knew it wasn’t going to last long.’
‘I didn’t know that at all! Yes, it was mainly physical, but I genuinely thought it was more as well.’
I turn my back to them to try to pretend I’m not there. This is mortifying. I don’t want to listen to this stuff. On public transport, people would often talk about this stuff when I was sitting right in front of them because I was invisible in my nun’s habit. They thought I wasn’t listening, or they believed if I was listening, anything I heard would be kept secret until the day I die. This man, this Marshall, has no idea that I used to be a nun, and he’s having this frank conversation with me there.
‘Marshall, it was good sex, but I thought we both knew it was just that.’
He remembers I’m there then, and glances in my direction. Even though I have my back to them, I know this because Nika says: ‘Oh, don’t mind her, she used to be a nun. Or a Sister. Or a nun. Both, I think. She won’t tell anyone what we’re talking about.’