Читать книгу Looking For Alex - Marian Dillon - Страница 10

Chapter Two

15^th May 2013

‘Come round for dinner,’ Dan had said to me as he walked with me to the tube that first evening. ‘I’ll get Fitz round too. It’ll be good fun.’

Which wasn’t quite the word to describe how I felt now.

The journey here had spun me into a trance of recollections: love in a dusty bedroom; punks on the streets of London; a wild, perfect garden; space and the cold sea in Wales. And a house smashed open and turned upside down. I explored them gingerly, like hunting through a cobwebby loft where spiders lurked. Don’t look in that box. Mind that dark corner.

When I stepped out onto Islington High Street and suddenly Fitz was just ten minutes away an underlying anxiety surfaced, crawled onto my skin. I worried that the older me would disappoint Fitz. I worried that he would disappoint me. I feared being treated like one of the complicated women Dan had alluded to, greeted with an undercurrent of embarrassment, shuffled off with relief.

And underneath all of that was the fear of finding Fitz like a stranger, that we’d have nothing to say to each other.

Dan lived in a Georgian terrace, a tiny Play School house, with squared windows on the ground floor, arched ones on the first, and a postbox-red front door. It looked inviting, the sort of house that would curl up around you, but at the door I hesitated, summoning the courage to ring the doorbell and enter the surreal moment when I would see Fitz, the man who inhabited my dreams for many years after he so briefly inhabited my life.

Finally, anticipation overcoming nerves, I put my finger on the smooth, brass button and pressed.

‘Beth, hi! Come in, come in.’

Dan drew me into the house, introducing me to Martin along the way, a slightly plump, teddy-bearish sort of man. We went through to a kitchen-diner at the back, where French windows led out to a small London garden, paved and gravelled and scattered with pot-plants. The barbecue was lit.

‘Fitz just rang,’ Dan called from the kitchen, fetching white wine from the fridge. ‘He’s going to be late.’

‘Oh.’

‘Something about something he had to do before tomorrow.’

Martin smiled sympathetically, which left me wondering if that was a ‘wouldn’t you know it, he’s always late’ sort of smile, or if it was more sinister, as in, ‘he didn’t really want to come’. Dan handed me a glass of wine and said to make myself at home. On the table there were smoky pistachios and plump green olives to nibble. I picked at them absently, gulped back wine, answered questions, fretted about Fitz. Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty, and Martin said he thought he should start cooking while the coals were hot.

‘We can keep things warm in the oven,’ Dan agreed. ‘He’ll be here soon.’

Humiliation crept through me; I covered it with smiles and seamless conversation. When the doorbell finally rang Martin was flipping burgers, his forehead glowing with sweat, and Dan busy ferrying trays of hot food to the oven.

‘Can you get it, Beth?’

I walked through the hallway, darkening now and cool, and pulled open the heavy door.

‘Hello, Fitz.’

‘Beth.’ He had one hand stuffed into his jeans pocket; the other held a bottle of wine; I saw his eyes taking me in, re-learning my features like a map. I brushed back my hair, smoothed down my dress, sucked in my stomach. Fitz shook his head. ‘Wow. Look at you.’

He’d lost none of his Irish accent, and I could see that Dan was right; I was looking at the same old Fitz. He might have put on a little weight but it would be measured in pounds, not stones. There were the requisite lines around the eyes and mouth, a slight jowly look settling onto his face, hair colour fading, but the essential ingredients were the same.

The only photos I’d ever had of Fitz were some we took in a booth at Victoria station, a strip of four grainy black and white prints, us crouched close, my cheek pressed to his, that slightly mad look that you got when you were trying not to laugh. We’d cut them in half and kept two each. I’d had mine for years but they finally got lost in some clear-out or other. Then I had to keep his face in my imperfect memory. Here was the older version of it. The thin nose that leant to the left, the twist to the lips when he smiled, eyes that creased like Dan’s, the tilt of his head as he stood and looked at me, hair not grey but with that salt and pepper look.

Fitz came up the steps, apologising for being late, said there’d been some school report he’d forgotten to do. He stood still in the hallway beside me, looking uncertain now, and the space between us crackled with tension. I was remembering the last time I’d seen him, in the kitchen of Empire Road with my father glowering at us both. Then, we hadn’t been able to say goodbye properly; now we hardly know knew how to say hello, frozen into this smiling moment.

‘You look good,’ I said.

‘You stole my line.’ He grinned. ‘Actually you look amazing. How many years is it?’

I shrugged, although I knew precisely. ‘Too many. But thanks.’

‘Okay, enough of the compliments.’ He was looking at me keenly now, as though peering through layers of time. ‘How are you?’ It wasn’t a throwaway line but there was no time to give the answer it required.

‘Fine, thanks. Yes. And you?’

He said yes, good, and I noticed how one hand strayed up to the back of his neck as he contemplated what came next, that old gesture.

‘It’s great to see you.’ He stepped forward then and lightly kissed my cheek, one hand grazing the small of my back.

Then Dan called from the kitchen, ‘Get the fuck down here, Fitz, before this food is incinerated,’ and we laughed, relieved.

Over more wine and spare ribs that Martin heaped onto a plate in front of us, we exchanged information. I discovered that Fitz lived in Finsbury Park, in a flat that was small, cheap, and comfortable; that he had an allotment and still loves cooking, and had once thought about opening a restaurant; that instead he’d found work as a learning mentor in a behaviour-support unit, and had got used to being sworn at by angry, sad kids; that when it wasn’t filthy weather he cycled to work. He didn’t mention the woman in Cornwall. I asked was he still into music and he told me he’d never got rid of a single piece of vinyl, that his collection lined three walls of one room.

‘You’ll be like one of those nerds who has to reinforce the floor soon,’ Dan said. ‘And then you’ll start making lists, like the guy in High Fidelity.’

‘John Cusack,’ I said. ‘I love that film. I’ve seen it three times.’

‘That guy is Fitz to a T.’

‘Well, it would be, if I was twenty years younger and had a stunning girlfriend like…what was her name?’

‘It’s Danish, unpronounceable,’ Dan said.

I was trying to picture the two of them from before, and got an image of Fitz mending Dan’s bike in the yard, patiently answering a hundred and one questions from the young cousin who worshipped him.

‘How’s your mum?’ Fitz asked him.

‘Oh, fine, you know, still worrying about us all, but when she stops, that’s when we’ll start to worry about her.’

‘She’ll be missing your dad.’

‘Yeah, cat and dog and all that but they loved each other really.’

Dan poured some more wine in both our glasses.

‘How’s your tribe?’ he asked Fitz.

‘All okay, as far as I know. Marie’s pregnant again.’

‘Christ, that’s four, isn’t it? Is she trying to outdo your mother?’

‘My mum thinks she’s mad — can’t understand why she wants any more. Says these days there’s no need. Marie gets the hump on then, as though Mum thinks it was a mistake.’

After a pause Dan said, ‘Was it?’ Fitz shrugged, and they both laughed.

The wine was going to my head, so that when Dan got up to help Martin I was seized with the desire to ask Fitz the questions that really mattered. How much did you miss me? How long did it take to get over me?

I said, ‘I never saw Alex again, you know.’

His head shot up. ‘Never? She never got in touch?’

‘No.’

‘But I thought she—’ He broke off, with a deep frown on his face. ‘I mean, you two were so close, I always assumed she would contact you somehow.’

‘It wouldn’t have been hard to find me, if she’d really wanted to.’

Dan placed a dish of kebabs on the table. ‘Have you tried Googling her name?’

‘No.’ I looked up at him, surprised that I never had, it was so obvious. ‘But, if what she wanted was to be invisible she wouldn’t exactly advertise herself, would she?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s not always in someone’s control. Names get onto the web in all sorts of weird ways.’ He went back to the barbecue. ‘Worth a try.’

‘It’s a common name,’ Fitz said, to me. ‘There could be hundreds of entries.’

‘Yes. Well… I’m not sure. We didn’t part on the best of terms, did we?’

He was about to say something, then stopped, changed his mind. Dan and Martin sat down, passed dishes around, and the conversation moved on. We ate home-made burgers and kebabs, grilled vegetables and salads, watching shadows lengthen as the sun disappeared behind a hawthorn two gardens down. When a sharp breeze started to cool the air we went inside for pudding — flaky strawberry tart with thick cream. Their kitchen was cosy and subdued, and outside the darkening garden glowed with pinpricks of light, along the path and around the edge. Solar lamps, Dan said. Light pollution, said Fitz. All right, all right, Dan sighed, we can’t all be eco-warriors. He got up to fetch whisky, poured a glass each.

‘To our reunion,’ he said. I thought of Alex then; I pictured her outside, watching us, unseen.

It was peaceful in that kitchen, seeing our reflections loom up out of the dark and holding easy conversation. I could have sat there all night, tempted for the first time for years to go on drinking into the small hours, listening to Fitz and Dan’s stories. But I had work in the morning, and an early start. When finally I said I should be going Fitz stood up too, said he’d walk along to the tube with me. Looking back to wave to Dan, I thought I caught a slightly wicked smile on his face as he rested a hand on Martin’s shoulder and watched us walk away.

*

It was both remarkable and unremarkable to be walking along a London street beside Fitz, as though the years had rolled away, as though we’d just got up that morning from the mattress on the floor in Empire Road, on our way to the market, and that afterwards we’d go back home and lie on his bed, listening to Pink Floyd, in his room that smelt of candles and crumbling walls, and sex.

That was if I ignored the skyline ahead, where glass and chrome reared up above Georgian brick and seventies concrete. That and the disturbing fact that we seemed to have run out of conversation, something we would never have done before. We went for some distance without speaking while I searched my mind for a topic that hadn’t been exhausted or that wouldn’t assume an intimacy we no longer had.

When we reached the junction with Islington High Street Fitz said, ‘You haven’t told me much, you know.’

‘I haven’t?’

‘No. You let me and Dan do all the talking. I know Dan can talk for England, but…’ He shrugged. ‘All I know, I mean of your personal life, is that you’re divorced and have one son who’s at university.’

‘So what else do you want to know?’ I teased. ‘You want to know if I’m with anyone?’

He laughed. ‘You can tell me to fuck off.’

‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that. Okay. So there is someone, but it’s…difficult. He might be moving. To Ireland.’

‘Right. Right.’ He waited for me to go on but pride stopped me from revealing I was involved with a married man. ‘And what happens if he does?’

‘That’s what I don’t know. He wants me to go. I haven’t decided.’

‘Which part of Ireland?’

‘Near Waterford.’

‘Is that so? Not too far from my family.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘You do?’

‘Of course I do. I remember—’ I was going to say everything. ‘I remember you talking about your holidays there, as if it was the land of milk and honey.’

‘Sure. It is gorgeous. You’d love it. But I suppose there are other things to consider.’

He was fishing. ‘Right, your turn,’ I said. ‘You might have talked a lot but it was all football, family and politics. What about you?’

‘What? Oh. Yeah.’ He sounded pointedly vague. ‘Her name’s Kirsty. We met at a party here in London, just over a year ago, but she lives in Cornwall. She’d like me to move down there, but I’m not sure. She lives in this tiny village, miles from anywhere. Well, miles from a cinema, or anything like that. It’d be better if she came up to London, but she’s got two boys, both still in school, so that isn’t going to happen.’

‘Do you have children?’

‘Me? No. I was never with anyone long enough.’

I let that hang. ‘You’d like Cornwall. You loved it on Jenny’s farm.’

‘Yeah, but for ever?’ Behind us a siren started and a police car raced down the street, weaving around cars that slewed into the kerb. Fitz neatly changed the subject. ‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘did you ever get to drama school? Did you try?’

‘No. I didn’t actually get back to school, after that summer.’

His head turned. ‘You left school?’

‘Uh-huh. I think I went for about three weeks, something like that. But I was in a bit of a state. Couldn’t concentrate. Didn’t see the point of anything.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘This and that. Some work in a record shop first. Then nannying, in Madrid.’ I didn’t tell him why, that I was chasing a sighting of Alex; I didn’t want to sound too hopeless. ‘I stayed away for a few years after that, went to Athens, some of the Greek islands, Paris. I worked in bars and restaurants.’

We turned onto a busy road and stopped at a crossing. Fitz was gazing at me with frank and utter surprise. Then he said, with his old habit of peeling away the layers, ‘So you did your own running away?’

‘I suppose you could say that.’

He went quiet, hands thrust deep into pockets, eyes fixed on the ground. We crossed the road, the tube station now visible, a few hundred yards away. We walked in silence and I was back in the awkwardness I’d felt earlier, unsure what to say and hating that, anxious that the evening shouldn’t finish this way. As if that matters, I told myself. You’re nothing to each other now, just two polite strangers. But then at the entrance Fitz began talking, out of the blue and a bit desperately, as though answerable to an accusation I hadn’t made.

‘One day, you know, after you left, I had this crazy idea about getting on a train to Sheffield and trying to track you down but I had no idea how. All I knew was you lived near a park. And then I thought I might make things worse for you. Your father was so angry I thought he’d go mad if… I just thought I should let you get on with your life.’

It was as if I couldn’t breathe, as if there were something sucking all the air out of me. I couldn’t possibly tell Fitz how much I’d lost the plot after that summer; it would seem too extreme. It did to me, now. ‘You were probably right,’ I said. ‘Either that or we’d have got bored with each other.’

He smiled, shrugged. ‘Young love. It wouldn’t have lasted.’ I thought he sounded relieved, as though he’d got what he needed from me. He stepped back a little.

‘I should go,’ I said, looking at my watch.

‘Sure,’ he said, and I cursed myself for bringing the conversation to an end, but there was also this urgency to run away from a tension that was tearing me up. It was as though I wanted to grasp Fitz and hold him to me but at the same time needed to push him away, put some space between us, so that I could breathe again. Just go, just go, I willed him, and as though I’d pushed a button I watched him lean in to give me a quick hug, and we said things like how good it had been to see each other, and how bizarre this was. There was an awkward pause after that, in the space which would normally be filled with assurances to meet up again. But then as Fitz made to leave he hesitated, touched my arm. ‘Let me know,’ he said, ‘if you do find Alex. If you go looking, that is.’

I nodded, then watched him walk away. Just as I judged he might look back I turned and went into the station.

The journey went by in a blur, the conversation with Fitz replaying itself, fragments of remembered words and phrases against a backdrop of much older memories and images, all on a loop in my head. It was only later, lying in my hotel bed, wide awake on alcohol and a burning curiosity, that I found time to examine something that was niggling me, scratching away at the back of my mind. Actually two things. One was that Fitz had been so shocked about Alex. She never got in touch? And his next words, But I thought she— As though he knew something about her that I didn’t.

Then there was all the unsaid. For example, he didn’t say, I wonder what happened to her.

I drifted off to sleep, a heavy, deep sleep, which was interrupted at seven-thirty in the morning by a text. From Dan.

Could this be Alex?

*

24th July 1977

I’ve come to London with two objectives: I want Alex to explain everything, and then I want her to come home, because without her life isn’t the same. But seeing her with Pete makes it clear that whatever happens Alex and I are never going to be the same again.

My first impression of Pete is how thin and pale he is: a long streak of fair skin, blond hair, and baby-blue eyes in a narrow face. He is older than us, dressed like a hippy, in patched, flared jeans with Jesus sandals and leather thongs around his neck and bony wrists.

‘Hi, Beth,’ he says. His arm slides down from Alex’s waist to the curve of her hips. He may as well hang a sign round his neck saying ‘we are having sex’. I know it’s intentional, setting out the parameters. There’s a moment’s pause while each of the three of us observes the other two.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you. Alex has missed you,’ he continues, in an unexpectedly deep, resonant voice and an accent cut from glass. He holds up crossed fingers. ‘I know how you two were like this.’

As if he knows anything about us.

‘I’ve missed her,’ I manage to say, with my eyes on Alex, not him.

‘I’ll make some tea,’ she says.

She hooks her jacket round the back of a chair and tosses her beret onto a big, square table that overflows with dirty dishes and back copies of Socialist Worker. Then she moves over to the cooker, lifts a kettle — the whistling sort — and takes it to the sink. This is an old pot thing, with sit-up-and-beg taps, a wooden draining board and a check curtain on a wire underneath. A window above looks out onto the overgrown garden, lush green framed by peeling paint. As the tap sputters and spurts water, hitting the empty kettle with a metallic ring before water absorbs the sound, I take in the rest of the kitchen.

It’s bare and old-fashioned, four walls with objects hunkered up to them, each in their own little space. The floor is covered with black-and-white squared lino, so that the kitchen seems to resemble a giant chessboard with pieces ranged round four sides instead of two. These are: a filthy and ancient cooker that stands on arched legs and has thick, flat keys to turn on the gas; a low coffee table that crouches next to it, piled with pots and pans; a tall cupboard like my nan’s, with ridged-glass doors and a flap that lets down for a work-surface; a rust-pitted fridge, tilting alarmingly on an uneven floor; the squat, scuffed table and four hard-backed chairs.

‘I’ll make the tea.’ Pete takes the kettle from Alex’s hands. ‘I’m better at it.’

Alex turns to me. ‘He’s obsessed with tea. It’s like a ritual.’ She speaks playfully but sounds a little nervous, it seems to me. ‘It has to be leaves not bags and the teapot has to be warmed and the tea has to brew for exactly five minutes. Then you have to pour it through a strainer thingy and you have to do that just right, lifting the teapot up and down while you pour. Oh, and you must put a little in each cup first then top them up in the same order so everyone gets the same strength tea. Then, if you’re lucky, you might get to drink it.’

I have no way of replying to this; it’s as if she’s talking in a foreign language. Luckily Pete fills the gap, speaking over his shoulder as he strikes a match and lights the gas. ‘You forgot to say milk first, not last. Like you said, I’m better at tea.’

He sounds completely serious.

Alex says, ‘Let’s take your bags up.’

She shows me round downstairs first. A small room next to the kitchen is used for storing almost anything, it seems; wallpaper hangs off the walls, and a grey army blanket covers the window so that it’s hard to make out exactly what the piles of things on the floor might be. The room at the front is filled with an odd assortment of sagging sofas, grubby armchairs and beanbags that leak little pearls of polystyrene. At the windows hang curtains of a sort, what look like cotton bed throws, sugary pink, looped over the rail and bunched to the sides. The fraying carpet is patched with stains and smells of dogs, and damp. As I stand and take this all in my own home seems utterly desirable and very far away.

‘Whose house is this?’ I ask.

‘No one’s,’ Alex replies, perching on the arm of a chair. ‘Well, it was Pete who first laid claim to it, so technically it’s his, I suppose. He gets to say who lives here.’

‘But it must belong to someone,’ I insist.

‘Beth, it’s a squat.’ A squat. Something unknown. My guts play loop-the-loop. ‘It’s an empty house that no one’s lived in for years and no one cares about. We’re not doing any harm. It would be full of rats probably if we weren’t here.’ She sees my face stiffen. ‘Stupid, there aren’t rats really.’ Grabbing my arm, she spins me round towards the door. ‘Come on, I’ll show you where you’re going to sleep.’

Upstairs the smell of damp gives way to something sweeter, the scent I’d caught on her when we hugged, a musky perfume maybe?

‘This is where I sleep,’ Alex says, and throws open the door to a room with a double mattress, covered with two zipped-together sleeping bags and scattered with assorted clothes. On the bed a pair of Alex’s pants lies tangled up with some black Y-fronts. Neither of us says anything, me trying desperately not to appear shocked and uncool in front of this strange person that was my Alex. She whisks me off along the landing and points out a heavy green curtain that drapes onto the bottom step of another staircase. ‘Celia sleeps in the attic. She doesn’t like people going in her room when she’s out. Well, not at all really. Here, this is the bathroom.’

I peer in at bare boards clogged with dust, a rusty claw-foot bath and a toilet with no seat. There’s a rank, fusty smell in the room. Alex walks over to the sash window and pulls down the top half.

‘I keep telling them to leave this open.’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘It’s the drains.’

I suppress my need for the toilet, decide to come back later.

‘You’re going to sleep here.’ She flings open the next door along. ‘Oh.’ A young guy is kneeling on the floor by the window, flicking through a stack of LPs. ‘Fitz! I thought you were out,’ Alex says, a little thrown. ‘It was so quiet.’ She turns to me. ‘Fitz can’t exist without music.’ To him she says, ‘This is my friend, Beth.’

Fitz peers up at me above a pair of shades that perch on the end of his nose. ‘Hi, Beth,’ he says, and goes back to his search.

Alex wanders over to a mattress on the floor, plonks herself down. There’s another jumble of records there and she begins to sort through them. I put my bag down on the floor but remain resolutely standing. The room is small and stark: more floorboards, one hessian rug, a mattress on the floor, two blue milk-crates with clothes neatly folded into them, and the stereo. This takes up some space, with its smoked-glass deck, an amp that looks like the control desk of a plane, and giant speakers. The walls have been partly stripped and have become a mosaic of two or three different patterns. They give off a distinctive smell, an earthy scent of crumbling plaster, torn paper and dried paste. In one corner stands a little army of candles melted onto saucers.

‘Where’s that one you were playing yesterday?’ Alex asks.

‘Which one was that?’ He has a soft, Irish accent.

‘You know, the one about a storm.’

‘You mean The Doors?’

‘Yeah. I loved that. Go on, play it, Fitz.’

I’m not entirely focusing on this exchange, too busy trying to contain a rising, cold anxiety. What did Alex mean, you’re going to sleep here? Does she expect me to roll out my sleeping bag on a complete stranger’s floor?

I watch Fitz as he selects a record and places it lovingly on the turntable, with a careful wipe of his sleeve. He is dressed all in black but somehow I get the impression he always wears black and it’s nothing to do with how everyone else is dressing right now. His body is lean and wiry and I think he can’t be very tall, although it’s hard to say when I haven’t yet seen him standing. He has short hair that curls a little wildly; it shines coppery in the sun as he leans over the turntable, positioning the stylus above the last track. I can see all the bumps along his spine, under stretched cotton. The stylus lands scratchily onto plastic and he rocks back on his heels. He takes off his shades and now I can see his face more clearly, although with the sun behind him his eyes are in shadow. He has a thin, bird-like nose that has taken a hit at some point; it’s skewed to the left. You wouldn’t have said he was handsome but there’s something that draws me to watch him, covertly, as he stands and goes to the window.

Crackling settles into a rhythmic hiss and it takes a second to realise that the sound of the stylus on plastic has become the shush of rain falling on tarmac, which in turn gives way to a soft crash of thunder. The music that follows — drum and bass stepping out together, then the cool, rippling descent of keyboard — churns something up inside me, a sense of ‘something’s about to happen and I don’t know what it is but I can’t stop it now’. Thunder rolls and the song slides into the room. It seems oddly exciting and calming at the same time.

Pete brings the tea up on a tray and sets it down on the floor. The tray is all nicely set out, with teapot, milk jug, sugar-bowl and a plastic strainer in a dish. There are four proper cups and saucers, which he begins pairing up, and an old biscuit tin next to them. It’s all quite unreal — a little fancy tea party in this half-derelict house.

‘Don’t mind me,’ Fitz says, watching Pete lay things out. The way he speaks, there’s an edge to it. I feel somehow responsible — that it’s because of me his room is being invaded. Pete ignores him, leaning forward to take the lid off the tin. I see little cakes inside.

‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it, Pete?’ Alex says. She sounds nervous again but I can’t see why.

‘In honour of Beth,’ he replies, beginning the business of pouring milk then tea into each cup. Wispy strands of hair hide his face; he loops it back behind his ears.

‘Not for Beth, not yet,’ she says, and it’s as if they’re talking in code.

‘Who are you to speak for Beth?’ he says and she frowns, as though he’s caught her out.

I glance over at Fitz. He’s standing by the window with his eyes closed and appears to be listening intently to the last bars of the song. Sunlight slants over his shoulder but the room is filled with the fading sound of rain and thunder. Anxiety catches in my throat.

Pete finishes pouring the tea and hands everyone a cup. Then he holds out the tin of cakes, offering me one first. They are fairy cakes in paper cases and as I lean over to look I breathe in a sweet, smoky aroma. Now I think I can place it.

‘Um, Beth—’ Alex begins, but then Fitz cuts her off.

‘I wouldn’t, Beth. They’re hash cakes.’

I look up. He stares right back. Pete tuts.

‘Hey, Fitz, don’t spoil the fun. Go on, Beth. I baked them myself.’

‘Pete, Beth’s never even smoked weed.’ Alex sounds defensive. ‘Don’t make her.’

I’m suddenly annoyed with Alex, that she’s let me walk into this with no warning. I’m torn between not wanting to seem boring or naïve, and the risk of feeling even more out of control.

‘That’s not true, Alex. I’ve had dope before.’

‘Where? You mean at Bestie’s party? Like two drags?’

‘Beth, if you want some I’ll roll a joint later.’ Fitz comes and sits on the floor with us and I see now that his eyes are green, cat’s eyes. ‘And then afterwards you can go to bed and sleep it off. The way Pete bakes cakes there’s no way of knowing how much is in each one. It’s unpredictable.’

‘But it’s much more fun,’ Pete drawls, unwrapping one of the cakes. He takes a large bite, then picks another out of the tin and tosses it over to Alex. She catches it and lets it lie in her lap.

‘I’ll have it later,’ she says, and her attempt at compromise makes Pete smile.

‘Well, you’ll have some catching up to do,’ he says, stuffing the last of the cake into his mouth.

Alex shrugs, peels the cake’s wrapper, and eats it.

The afternoon wears on into early evening. Its rambling conversation — from how to cook Bolognaise sauce to is there any such thing as ‘free love’ since someone always ends up paying — is punctuated only by more pots of tea and the flipping of LPs on the turntable. I take little part in it, still shy, but Fitz, who does not have one of the cakes, becomes quite animated and seems to forget his earlier irritation. At some point my need for the bathroom overcomes my caution. While I’m in there I hear footsteps going up the attic stairs; if it’s Celia she obviously doesn’t want to join the party. Pete eats another cake and as he grows more stoned he drops the faintly mocking superiority and becomes kinder to Alex. They lie side by side on Fitz’s bed, hands entwined, like a medieval stone knight and his lady.

Fitz and I seem unable to find anything to say to each other then and the growing silence between us unnerves me. We listen to the whole of Dark Side of the Moon without speaking at all. Fitz lies on the floor and I sit very quietly, not moving, knees drawn up to my chin and my hands clasped around them. I have no idea what’s going to happen next and feel further apart from Alex than ever.

At about seven Alex and Pete go off to their own room. ‘Back in a bit,’ says Alex, vaguely.

Fitz looks over at me then, his head on one side, considering. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he says.

‘I’m not,’ I lie as panic creeps icily through me. ‘It’s just all weird. I want to talk to Alex and I can’t get near her.’

‘She won’t go home, you know.’

I ignore that and brave the question that’s bothering me. ‘Why did Alex say I was sleeping in here?’

‘Because I’m going to sleep downstairs.’ There’s no way of telling whether he minds.

‘I could go downstairs,’ I say. ‘You don’t have to give up your room.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m used to sleeping in odd places. You might get spooked down there on your own.’

There’s some truth in that.

‘Are you hungry?’ Fitz asks, and I realise that breakfast at home is the last meal I had. My stomach growls in response and we both grin.

‘Starving.’

‘Come on, Beth. Let’s go eat.’

I follow him down to the kitchen, hugely cheered at the thought of food — and a room to which I can later escape.

*

25th July 1977

Somewhere outside music jangles: Greensleeves. Mr Whippy music. Is this Sunday? Turning onto my back, I stare up blearily, trying to make sense of the strange angles and shapes of the room, none of which add up to my bedroom. Then I see my bag in the corner, slung down next to a pile of LPs, and my eyes snap open. This isn’t home. I’m in London. I’m in a squat with a bunch of strangers.

The house is eerily silent. Sunshine filters weakly through the thin cotton sheet over the window, casting pale shadows, but it could be any time of the day to me, not knowing east from west in this house. I lift one arm to peer at my watch, which tells me two things: that it’s past midday, and that my head is going to hurt like hell when I raise it properly off the pillow. Well, not pillow — grubby, thread-pulled cushion. I try to swallow and find that my tongue is stuck like sandpaper to the roof of my mouth, which makes me long for ice-cold water; this nudges a vague memory of someone saying, ‘Here, you’ll be needing this.’ Fitz. I turn my head towards the side of the bed, see a pint glass of water and sit up to drink it down in one go. Tepid, not ice-cold, but bliss. I slump back in the sleeping bag and close my eyes, waiting for the banging in my skull to subside and letting all yesterday’s events filter through my mind.

Things come back to me in a jumble of images: Alex squealing excitedly at the bus station; Fitz peering up from his stack of albums; the fantastic garden glimpsed through a ramshackle wooden door; Pete, smiling lazily at me, his arm around Alex. And then the bizarre tea party in this room, where I’d felt like Alice in Wonderland, huge and misplaced. After that there’d been helping Fitz make some food before Alex and Pete came down.

I peeled and chopped vegetables for him to scoop into a big pan, to be made into curry. As he cooked so he talked, in his London-Irish lilt. And as he talked he seemed to warm to me, open up a bit. I found out he was the eldest of six children and that his proper name was John Fitzallen. He was born in Waterford but his family came to England when he was five. They live in a crowded flat in a tower block in Bethnal Green and on turning sixteen he was turned out.

‘Not literally, not quite, but it’s what was expected. The place was bursting at the seams and there were too many arguments.’ He’d got a job in a hotel kitchen and a room that went with it. Two years later he was one of a few staff laid off. ‘I was on the streets,’ he said. ‘Didn’t have enough money for a deposit on a room and couldn’t claim dole ‘cos I didn’t have an address. The old benefit trap. Spent a few weeks sleeping rough, the odd night in a hostel. It wasn’t nice.’

I liked the effortless way he moved between cooker, cupboard and table, watched him sprinkle spices out of recycled jam-jars, judging it all by eye. Sometimes, thinking about something I’d asked, he’d stand still, one hand rubbing the back of his neck as he searched for what he wanted to say.

‘Couldn’t you have gone back home?’

‘Nah. My space had been filled — there were no beds left. I didn’t ever tell them. I just…well, I just didn’t. I was lucky though — someone told me about this place, took me along to meet Pete and I’ve been here ever since. It’s okay, a good squat. Pete keeps a tight rein on it, won’t let just anyone doss here.’

‘But what do you do for money? I mean, how do you buy food?’

‘I’ve got some work now, hotel down the road, twenty hours a week, more if I want.’

‘And Pete? Does he work?’

Fitz looked round from stirring the curry. ‘You don’t ask questions like that.’

There was no time to say any more, because right then Pete and Alex came down. Alex was wrapped in a vintage, print dressing gown, the sort you could buy cheap in Oxfam. With her wild hair and dark lips she looked vampish, like a silent-movie star. Someone produced a bottle of Hirondelle and I gulped the first glass down quickly; Pete gave me more. A second bottle was drunk with the curry, which tasted fantastic and exotic; up to then my experience of Indian food had been a Beef Vesta, which was like one of my mother’s stews with sultanas and too much pepper.

After eating we went into the room at the front and sat round on cushions and beanbags. Fitz brought down his stereo and some albums, and when that was all set up he rolled a joint and passed it round. I took a couple of drags and Alex giggled, threw one comradely arm round my shoulders. At first I felt nothing. Second time round I had some more, and slowly my head began to unravel; thoughts lost their shape, all crowded somewhere just out of reach. I felt blissfully connected to Alex and the others yet strangely far away from them. That part of me, the observer, was only faintly shocked now at how proficiently Alex rolled a second joint. No one spoke much, we just listened to music and smoked and drank more wine and then some of Pete’s tea. Fitz sat slightly apart, retreating into himself, listening to one record after another with his eyes closed, mostly stuff I’d never heard before, a jumble of soul and rock and punk. Eventually I stopped trying to think about anything and gave into drifting on a tide of music and dope.

Now, trying to remember how last night ended, I realise I have no clear memory of going to bed. I look around me, frowning as I try to picture things, but all I can remember is Fitz setting the glass of water down by the bed. Fitz in my room. Shit. Shifting slightly in the sleeping bag, I put one hand down and explore myself gingerly. I have no experience of what I’ll find if anything happened, just a vague idea that I would feel sore, or tender, or maybe there will be blood. I find nothing.

I’m trying to ignore the fact that I need to pee, not wanting to be the first one up, not wanting to leave the security of this room, but when my bladder feels about to burst I emerge and scoot along to the bathroom in T-shirt and knickers. My head throbs sickeningly and a thin needle of pain keeps shooting into my right eye. I find I can suppress that slightly by pressing two fingers onto the skin just above it; I sit on the toilet like that for ages, and begin to think longingly of a hot bath. When I peer into the tub I see how pitted and stained it is, with a tidemark of grime, and chalky lime-scale where the taps are left dripping. Not exactly inviting, but I could live with it. Should I take a bath though, without asking? Maybe it won’t matter, while everyone is still asleep.

However the taps then fail to give up any hot water so I make do with a cold wash at the sink. Back in my room, easing a pair of jeans over my hips, I hear someone go along to the bathroom; peering round the door, I catch a glimpse of Alex’s robe.

‘Alex!’ I hiss.

She whispers back. ‘What?’

‘I need to talk to you, now!’

Squinting at me through mascara-smeared eyes, Alex nods. Even with her hair all flattened and messy she still looks cute, a tiny thing wrapped in her silky print robe that billows all around her.

‘Okay. But I need a pee. And tea, and food. I’ll be back.’

While she’s gone I fix my hair so that it will look more banshee than hedgehog, with the aid of some backcombing and my mother’s old compact mirror that I stole out of the drawer at home. I put eye-liner and mascara on, feeling naked without them.

Alex reappears in a while, carrying a tray of tea and a plate piled high with toast. We sit on the bed to eat it, me propped up against one wall, Alex on the other, her legs stretched out over mine. It’s how we always sat on my bed at home and there’s a moment of comfortable silence while we munch on toast.

‘This toast is the best ever, Alex. I’m so hungry.’

‘Yeah, hash does that.’ Her voice is still sleepy. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I feel shit. But the food’s helping. You look all right. You’re used to it, I suppose.’

‘Beth…’

‘Alex, look, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care. I just wish you’d tell me what’s going on.’ I stare down at my plate and chase crumbs around it. ‘I mean, home wasn’t that bad, was it?’

She doesn’t answer at first. I hear music start up downstairs; Fitz is awake.

‘Beth, have you ever noticed anything about my parents?’ I look up to find her staring at me, her eyes dark and intent. ‘Like my dad looks nothing like me?’

The image that swims into my mind is of her father stepping out of his car one day, just as I was leaving. Tall, big, heavy-set. Blond hair. Blue-eyed. Everything that Alex is not.

‘You’re joking.’

‘No, I’m not.’

I sit up straight. ‘Your dad’s not your dad?’

‘Hey, mastermind!’

I picture the rest of her family. Her mother, petite like Alex. And her brother, David. Fair, chunky.

‘But…he is David’s dad?’

‘There’s no mistaking that little blood bond, is there?’

‘And—’ I want to be really clear now ‘—your mum’s your mum. I mean, you’re not adopted?’

‘You got it.’

‘So…’

‘So who is my dad? Good question. I’ve never met him.’

‘Never? You don’t know him?’

‘Beth, if I did, and if I thought he was halfway interested in me, I’d have been out of that house a long time before this. All my mother’s ever told me is that he left when I was six months old and she’s no idea where he is.’

‘Christ! Could you find out? Don’t you know his name?’

‘Yes, I know, but I’m not bothered. Why go looking for him now? Greg’s been a shit stepdad, and I guess my dad’s a shit dad. He left us to fend for ourselves, Mum told me, living in a crappy little flat that was always freezing in winter. He never sent us any money.’

‘Bloody hell.’

I stand up, step off the marshmallow mattress and cross over to the window. It looks down onto the garden at the back. From here you can see those on either side. One is bare and functional, with a rough patch of grass littered with children’s toys; the other is completely overgrown. The richness of Fitz’s garden seems even more miraculous.

I whirl round; Alex is fiddling with the tie on her wrap, winding it round and round one finger. ‘Why did you never tell me?’

She looks surprised. ‘Because when I came to your house I could forget it all. Your family is so…normal. I just wanted to be part of it. I didn’t want to spoil things by going on about mine.’

It’s probably the first time ever that I’ve seen my life through someone else’s eyes and now I wish I’d had the imagination to picture Alex’s more clearly.

‘What did you mean, Greg’s been a shit stepdad?’

She shrugs. ‘Greg’s a bully, I’ve told you. You never saw because he made sure not to do it in front of people. He used to get mad at something I’d done — like leaving butter out instead of putting it in the fridge, you know, really bad stuff — then he’d rant and rave and tell me what a useless piece of shit I am.’

‘Jesus, Alex.’

‘And if he wasn’t bullying me he was ignoring me, and then my mum had to choose whether to talk to me and if she did she’d get the silent treatment as well.’

Fitz’s music stops. Somewhere outside a solitary bird sings, echoed by another, further away.

‘What about David?’

‘David can’t put a foot wrong. David’s his and I’m the cuckoo in the nest, aren’t I?’

I walk back over to the bed and flop down next to Alex. I take hold of one of her hands, gripping it tightly. ‘I feel so bad.’

She wrinkles her nose. ‘Why?’

‘That all that was going on and I didn’t know!’

‘How could you have known?’

‘You should have told me, Alex. I can’t believe you didn’t.’

‘Well…I nearly did, once or twice, but it was hard to know where to start.’ She stares at me, thinking. ‘If I’m really honest, I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to see me any different from to anyone else.’

‘Alex,’ I say, ‘you’ve always been different from to everyone else.’

She grins. ‘Fuck off!’ But I can see she knows I mean in a good way. ‘Anyway, one day he hit me when Mum wasn’t around and after that I just had to get out.’

‘So how—?’

I was going to ask about Pete, and how she’d met him, but there’s a knock at the door and his voice outside.

‘Alex?’

She looks at me and I nod. ‘You can come in,’ she calls, slipping her hand out of mine.

He pushes the door open and stands leaning against the frame. He has on the same patched jeans, with a black T-shirt and paisley waistcoat. His hair is greasy, tied back in a ponytail with a rubber-band.

‘We have somewhere to go today. Remember?’

‘Yeah. It’s still early.’

‘We need to go.’

‘Right now?’

His answer is to push himself off the wall and disappear; we hear his footsteps on the stairs. There’s a heavy silence after he’s gone.

‘Sorry, Beth. I gotta go but we’ll be back in a couple of hours.’ She scrambles up from the bed. Her eyes are hidden from mine as she loads our used plates and mugs onto the tray. ‘See you soon. Fitz’ll take care of you.’

I’m left staring at the half-open door, startled by her rapid exit. Is this how it is here, how it will be? Will Alex jump every time Pete clicks his fingers, and will I always be left waiting for scraps of time with her?

I close my eyes and lean my head against the wall, trying not to feel second best but already aware that the balance of our friendship shifted weeks ago, when Alex ran away; some of the old certainties, the old familiarities have gone. For a moment I almost wish that I’ll get found out, that the parental hand of authority will reach out and whisk both of us back to Sheffield, where everything would get sorted out in a comforting, adult way.

But I know that isn’t going to happen.