Читать книгу Looking For Alex - Marian Dillon - Страница 9
Оглавление13th May 2013
There had been moments like this before. It might be a single word that did it, random words, like disappeared, squalid, bruised. It could be a smell, of bonfires say, or sandalwood. Sometimes it was a song: Suzanne, maybe, or London Calling. The pull that I felt at these times — low in my gut, a complicated yearning — was always transitory, pushed back down or brushed aside. I’d done with reliving all that.
But this time there was no avoiding that trawl into the past; a stranger waited as I gaped like a fish, stunned by his question.
‘Are you the Beth that was a friend of Alex?’
He took a few steps into the room, a tall, loose-limbed man with big glasses and untidy hair. ‘Beth Steele. Right?’
I nodded, dumbly. It didn’t take much working out — Beth Steele Training being plastered all over the material I was sorting into piles — but clearly he knew not just my name, but me. How?
‘You won’t remember me. I would have been about ten. You were older…sixteen, seventeen?’
He stood quite still, smiling, waiting to see if I’d place him. I searched his features for some clue but there was an empty space where a name should have been. He took off his glasses.
‘Is that better?’
Slowly I shook my head. Although, as I took in the narrow, deep-set eyes and a mouth with laughter lines at each end, like a pair of speech brackets, there was now a dim flutter of recognition. Ten years old. The boy who’d lived above the corner shop? The milkman’s son, who’d helped on the rounds in holidays? I began to notice details: a scattering of freckles, a small scar on one cheekbone, the faint smile that seemed to be gently mocking my confusion. The shape of his mouth was somehow familiar, but finally it was the scar that dredged up a distant memory. I saw a falling bike, flailing arms and spinning wheels, a trickle of blood.
‘Not…Dan? Was that you?’
‘Depends — which Dan you mean.’
‘The house in Camden? ‘77?’
‘So it is me you’re thinking of,’ he said, his smile deepening, and something in the crease of his eyes settled it. ‘I work in IT.’ He held out his hand. ‘Dan Walker.’
‘Christ!’
He laughed out loud as I stared rudely now, trying to picture the boy I knew, conjuring up a snapshot image of a cheeky face, long-fringed hair, and a Scooby-Doo T-shirt, a boy in shorts permanently straddling a red Chopper bike.
‘I saw your name on the training schedule,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d come and see if it was the Beth I used to know.’ The speech brackets expanded as he grinned. ‘You look a bit different now.’
My eyes slid away from his, staring down the years at my seventeen-year-old self. I saw Alex and me in front of my old dressing-table mirror, posing in crotch-tight jeans and ripped T-shirts, painting purple lips onto corpse-like faces and coaxing hennaed hair into spikes with an ancient pot of Brylcreem.
‘The blonde hair threw me a bit.’ Dan’s words brought me back. ‘But your face is the same.’
‘Right, if you don’t look too closely.’
‘And your voice. Your voice hasn’t changed.’
‘Well, yours is a bit deeper,’ I joked. ‘I would never have known it was you.’
‘I did have the advantage,’ he said. ‘Back then you only knew me as Dan, I guess, but I knew your full name, Beth Steele. That hasn’t changed.’
Oh, but it did. It became Beth Williams for a while, although I’d never grown used to it. I liked having Steele back in my name, liked the way it gave an edge to the softness of Beth.
‘Fancy you remembering,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘Could be something to do with Fitz once having written it all over a steamed-up window.’
The memory flooded in. It had rained all day without stopping and when Fitz cooked one of his curries the kitchen became a warm little den of steam. He wrote my name in large letters from one side of the window to the other, and it stayed there while we ate until Dan had climbed up onto the draining board and wiped it with his sleeve.
‘Is it going all right?’ Dan asked, with a nod at the circle of chairs, and I said yes, so far, while images of those weeks in London flickered through my mind like an old reel of film. ‘Are you going for coffee? I’ll walk along with you.’
By the time we got there I’d made the connection. ‘You were Fitz’s cousin.’
‘Still am.’
‘Do you—?’
‘See him? Yes. Now and then.’
From inside the hospitality room came the buzz of voices, reminding me that I should be in there, mingling with the group I’m here to train. The HR director looked over, caught my eye, held one hand up to draw me in.
‘I’d love to talk to you,’ I said to Dan, ‘about all that.’
‘Well, let’s go for a drink after work. We can catch up properly.’
‘That would be great.’
Dan glanced at the crowd in the room, then back at me, his eyes bright with curiosity.
‘Fitz never told me very much. Your friend….wasn’t she in some kind of trouble? Run away from home or something?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What happened to her? Was she okay?’
‘I don’t know. She sort of…disappeared.’
‘What, totally?’
‘Yes. I’ve never seen her since.’
‘Good grief.’
I saw his eyes widen, and was touched by the fact that we must have all meant something to him, even though he was just a boy.
‘Now I’m curious,’ he said. ‘Catch you later.’
*
If ever I told anyone the story, of how Alex ran away from home, they would always say, but you must have known, she must have talked about it, you must have known something. And I would think back to those times, looking for clues I might have picked up, convinced I should have. Full of guilt that I hadn’t. But Alex was very good at concealment, and the fact is that I only ever found her entertaining, interesting, and always, always, fun.
We’d been friends since we were eight years old, since the day she moved into my school. She’d scooped me up and rescued me from sitting on the sidelines, where I’d found myself after my best friend had moved away. On the surface we were an unlikely combination — Alex all fiery and quick to quarrel, and me hating rows of any kind — but somehow we hit it off, became best of friends. We operated like oil and water: when Alex sparked up trouble I’d smooth things over; in return she gave my life a nice sheen. Later, at Storrs High, Alex began to push the boundaries more and more, earning a reputation with the teachers. These days she’d be called ‘challenging’, and maybe someone would try talking to her and find that there was hurt behind the bravado. Back then she was just labelled a trouble-maker. Our science teacher, a blunt man, put it succinctly one day when he rudely told her to stop being so bloody-minded. I sometimes worried that she’d get tired of me pulling her back from the edge, that she’d move on to a different crowd, but somehow I retained my status: best friends with the girl who would say what others only thought and was generally regarded as cool.
It was Alex who got me on stage, insisting that we join the drama club after finding out that Ian Wragg was in it. ‘You’d be really good, Beth,’ she said, with her listen-to-me face on. ‘You read so well in English.’ So we did, and I took to acting like a duck to water, amazed at first that I could do it, and then, as I was given bigger parts, by the highs to be got from being someone else. I loved it, and began to think of a career in theatre. Meanwhile Alex got off with Ian Wragg but went off drama after a row with Mrs Bull. People used to say she’d got thrown out; I always defended her and said she’d chosen to leave. There was truth in both versions.
My friendship with Alex led to battles with my parents. As we got older there were times we stayed out too late, when they didn’t know where I was; times I came home from parties reeking of fags and drink; late-night trips to the bathroom to throw up. My parents began to encourage my other friends, but it didn’t work because it was Alex I liked best. We did everything together.
Until the day she left home without me.
*
I could see Dan below, waiting as the glass lift sank smoothly down to the foyer. Outside we were met by a wave of heat. It was the middle of May, unexpectedly warm, and London was basking in twenty-four degrees, a few more than it would be back in Sheffield.
‘I know a nice pub garden,’ Dan said. ‘It’s not too far.’
‘Sounds perfect.’
We turned onto Marylebone High Street, sidestepping a twin buggy with wide-eyed occupants. Dan quizzed me about my company, seven years old this month and doing well, despite these scary times for winning bids. I told him how I won this NHS contract on the back of some work in other London boroughs. It’s a two-week block of training and workshops, and I’d decided to stay over on the week-nights, returning for the middle weekend.
‘Just you?’ Dan asked.
‘No, there’s my colleague, Linda. She’ll travel from Sheffield on a daily basis. She’s juggling some work we have there.’
Dan took my arm briefly to steer me across the road. ‘This is so weird,’ he said. ‘I remember that summer very well. Mainly that I was quite jealous of this girl who suddenly took up so much of my cousin’s time.’
I laughed, told him that the feeling was often mutual. ‘You used to turn up out of the blue and ask Fitz to mend your bike, do you remember?’
‘That old thing, yes. I went everywhere on it, till it fell apart.’
Suddenly I realised I’d started searching for Alex’s face again. Once it was a habitual response any time I was in London, to scan the crowds, straining to catch a glimpse of her — on Oxford Street, in Hyde Park, on the tube, in shops — convinced she would still be here somewhere. And Fitz, of course Fitz. But then the years passed and the two of them became ghosts somewhere in the back of my mind. I’d had no expectation of seeing either of them again, and thinking of Alex only ever brought up old anxieties, which today Dan had stirred, all those ‘what ifs’.
The King’s Head looked unpromising from the front — an ugly red-brick building that sat squashed between two large office blocks — but the garden was a delight, full of colour and scent, and surprisingly peaceful. We found ourselves a table. As Dan went off to get the drinks my phone rang.
‘Hi, Phil.’
‘Hi. Had a good day?’
‘Yes, fine, no problems.’
‘Where are you? Back at the hotel? Sounds noisy.’
‘I’m in a pub garden.’
‘Imagine that,’ he said dryly. ‘Who with?’
I don’t know why I lied. Something to do with not having the energy to start explaining things.
‘Just someone from HR.’
‘Right. The Sylvia woman?’
‘Yes. We’re talking over a few things before I go back to the hotel. How’s your day been?’
‘Well, you know, same old same old. Actually, pretty bad. I had double 9KF today.’
‘Oh, that’s bad.’
‘Then we had a staff meeting about some crap initiative that’s being rolled out so now we’ve all got to rush round inventing hundreds of aims and objectives.’
I made a sympathetic noise, somewhere between ‘poor you’ and ‘bastards’, imagining him sitting in his Ford Focus in the school car park, the car all warm and stuffy in the sun.
‘I wish you were here,’ he said.
‘Well, even if I was you wouldn’t be able to see me, would you? Haven’t you got all sorts of things to take the girls to this week?’
‘I know. But I still wish you were here.’
‘I’ll see you on Saturday?’
‘Should be okay.’ I saw Dan walking towards me, pint in one hand and a large white wine in the other, its glass clouded with condensation. ‘Beth…have you thought any more about Ireland?’
‘I…look, Phil, sorry, it’s difficult to talk now. Could you call back later? I mean, can you?’
‘Okay.’ He was put out. ‘I’ll try, but I can’t promise.’ Dan sat down. ‘I think it’s Sue’s turn to pick the kids up from dance so maybe while she’s out.’ It seemed to me then that Phil were was shouting, his words clear and damning, leaping out of the phone. Dan pointedly studied his beer, intent on not being intent on my conversation. ‘If I can’t manage it I’ll ring tomorrow. She’s got yoga. Or maybe on your lunch—what time do you break?’
‘Around one-thirty.’
‘Okay. I’ll ring you when I can.’ He paused, then added, ‘Love you.’
‘I have to go, Phil, I’ll speak to you later.’ Ringing off, I stowed the phone in my bag and took a large gulp of wine. Only after that did I look up at Dan, who had an apologetic half-smile on his face but said nothing. ‘Sorry,’ I said, feeling exposed, feeling heartless.
Dan waved one hand dismissively. ‘No worries.’
We sat quietly for a moment, until Dan leant forward, hands cupping his pint, furrows of concentration on his brow. ‘The last time I saw you was that day I fell off my bike and Alex’s mother was there and there was a lot of crying and shouting going on. You were trying to calm them down but no one was listening. And then…’
‘And then her mother walked out and Alex turned on me.’
‘Yes. And Fitz told me to make myself scarce — “piss off home, Dan” I think his exact words were. I have no idea what happened next. And then I didn’t see Fitz for a while so my knowledge of where he went after that is a bit patchy.’
‘He went away?’
‘Yeah, to Wales. He knew people there.’
So he went back.
‘He had to leave the squat anyway — the police came and threw everyone out. He dossed on people’s floors and then went to live in Wales and I didn’t see him for about three years.’
‘How long after?’ I heard my voice, calm and level, trying not to betray how this new information had got hold of me like a fist, slowly squeezing the air out of me. Dan looked puzzled.
‘After what?’
‘After that day, the day Alex’s mother was there, how long till they got thrown out?’
‘Oh, about a week, I think.’ One week. Seven days, maybe ten. The fist squeezed tighter. ‘He stayed with us a couple of nights. I even gave up my bed for him.’ Dan’s grin was wide and infectious. I was remembering how he hero-worshipped his cousin and thinking; Fitz never got my letter. That was why he never replied, to the address I gave him, belonging to the one friend I could trust. On good days I’d let myself believe he didn’t want to risk making things worse for me; the rest of the time, which was most of the time, I’d told myself he just hadn’t cared as much as I did.
I had a sudden vision of Fitz as I first saw him, the day I arrived in London, peering up from rifling through his stack of vinyl, annoyed at being disturbed. The image was gone almost as soon as it came, so that when I tried to bring it back all I could summon was a blurred impression of mirror shades, a thin face, and wiry curls.
‘What happened after Wales?’ I asked.
‘Oh, various things. He travelled, he stopped travelling. He married, he stopped being married. He moved back to London and got a job. Works in a school now, as a teaching assistant. He did the last time I saw him anyway.’
‘When was that?’
‘Last November. At my father’s funeral.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He acknowledged this with a nod. ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘Me? Oh, the next morning my parents pitched up and dragged me home. I never saw Fitz after that — there was no way.’
Dan took a drink. He set it down, glanced at me and said, ‘Is that, no way, or just, there wasn’t any way?’
I wiped moisture slowly off the side of the glass.
‘I was in Sheffield, he was in London — or so I thought. And my father would have killed him.’
‘Right. I see your point.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Fitz’s love-life was always complicated. Either that or non-existent. Like now. I mean, he couldn’t just meet someone from the next borough. He has to choose a woman who lives in Cornwall.’
Before I could ask any more he got a text, opened it and replied in a matter of seconds, then raked his hands through straw-coloured hair and smiled. I saw his mouth was like Fitz’s, how it curved up more at one side. Our glasses were nearly empty and I knew if I had another I’d feel very slightly drunk, but we’d hardly started on the past. Quickly I calculated that tomorrow would be an easier day for me as I’d be joined by Linda, who would do most of the delivery. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to turn up with a hangover. Then again, why go back to an empty hotel room when I could talk nostalgia with Dan?
‘Another drink?’ I asked. Dan looked at his watch. ‘Do you have to go?’
‘No. My partner’s out tonight. He’s got some work thing on.’ He saw me digest this new piece of information about him. ‘Not that we live in each other’s pockets. So…yes, to another drink. And then, if you want to eat I know a good Italian near here.’
‘Done,’ I said, and headed for the bar. At the entrance I glanced over to where Dan sat, his back turned, and a thrill coiled through me, a tingling current of energy that ended somewhere in my shoulders as a tight, cold shiver.
Dan, and Fitz, here in London, all this time.
*
11th July 1977
‘You see, Beth, my problem is I’m finding it hard to see this as anything unusual. A little protest is my guess.’ Burton fixes his bleary eyes on mine as my fifth-form tutor used to when he thought I’d got something to hide. I swallow, blink. ‘Do you know what I mean, Beth?’
I look over at my headteacher. Mr Cue is leaning against the window, his bum perched on the sill, hands in pockets. He raises his eyebrows until they form a question mark.
‘I’m not sure,’ I answer, grudgingly. ‘I suppose you mean girls run away from home all the time.’
‘Exactly, exactly, Beth.’
My instinctive dislike of the policeman deepens. ‘Does that mean you don’t have to try and find them? What if someone’s got Alex? What if she’s being hurt?’
The DS gets up from his blue plastic chair that sits facing mine and begins pacing about Mr Cue’s study. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in there on my own — that is without a friend beside me. I notice now how bare it is. Apart from Mr Cue’s heavy wooden desk and chair there’s a set of glass-fronted shelves, full of books and folders, some low cupboards, a small table, and two plastic chairs for parents. We pupils are not usually invited to sit.
DS Burton stops and turns to look at me. ‘The way I’m looking at it, Beth, is like this. Your friend Alex, so I gather, is rather difficult.’ He makes the word difficult sound like an offence. ‘She misses lessons and when she is here she dresses in a way that will get her noticed in the wrong way — all that punk stuff.’
His eyes travel over me, from head to toe. I fold my arms, suddenly self-conscious of my fledgling punk look: black skin-tight jeans under a Stranglers T-shirt, and oversized Doc Martens that sprout, bulbous, from my legs. The T-shirt is cinched with a wide black belt, accentuating my suddenly blossoming breasts; I notice how DS Burton’s eyes linger. With red cropped hair and thick black eyeliner I’m teetering on the edge of what the school consider acceptable. I glance at Mr Cue, who is now looking at me through narrowed eyes. There’s no uniform in the sixth form but there is a limit past which we are not expected to go, and I’m pretty close to that limit. Alex always strays over it provocatively. She wears tiny, tight skirts and fishnet stockings, clingy tops, extreme shoes and multiple earrings that run like a train track up each ear.
‘She’s got a bit of a lip on her, yes?’ Burton looks over at Mr Cue, who confirms this with a nod. ‘Her parents tell me she’s become more and more of a handful at home and the other day you told me she’s taken to hanging out at The Wellington Arms late at night. On her own. Bit of a dive, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t say that. I said she told me she went there once. She’d had a row at home.’
DS Burton looks at me intently. There’s silence in the room, broken only by the sound of balls on racquets from the tennis courts. The air is warm, liquid.
‘Well, all my information tells me that Alex is a bit of a rebel. Are you getting me? It’s almost like, why wouldn’t she run away?’
I stare down at my hands, neatly folded in my lap. They look demure but the palms are warm and sweaty. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ I hear myself say, surprised by my own daring.
‘Oh, is it? Well, tell me, then, Beth, why did Alex get on a bus to London exactly two weeks ago today?’
My head shoots up so fast I feel a sharp pain jab the back of my neck. DS Burton looks faintly gratified at the reaction from both myself and Mr Cue, who pushes sharply away from the window and says, ‘What?’
Out of the corner of my eye I see the woman constable who’s taking notes throw me a sympathetic look. Burton sits down in Mr Cue’s chair and leans over the desk.
‘So you’re telling us the truth, then, Beth. You don’t know any more than we do.’
I can’t speak, can’t form any thoughts that seem to make sense.
‘You know that for certain?’ Mr Cue asks and Burton sticks his chin out, runs one finger round his collar.
‘We found out early this morning. One of the drivers saw the article in The Star and came forward, remembered seeing her on his bus. I kept it back, for obvious reasons, and Beth here has just told me what I wanted to know. So, what we now have is a young girl who’s left home of her own free will and without telling anyone where she’s going.’ He glances at me, sees my face, and maybe my despair. He coughs, and his voice changes, morphs into a ‘giving bad news’ version of itself. ‘It does mean, I’m afraid, that there’s not much else we can do. Alex is seventeen, so legally old enough to live by herself, and she’s not done anything under duress. We have to assume that she’s chosen to leave home. She’ll stay on the missing persons list but…’ he shrugs ‘…that’s all.’
His words jangle uselessly in my head — own free will, she’s chosen to leave home — and the cold chill in my stomach is almost as bad as when I believed something terrible had happened to her.
*
For the next few days, I walk around in a daze, telling myself I should be happy, that now I can stop imagining Alex being dragged into a car and unspeakable things happening to her, that there was no random attack, no sudden blow from a hammer. But although I do feel relief — who wouldn’t? — those sickening thoughts seem to have got swapped for ones that are somehow, in an insidious way, worse. I veer between disbelief and shocked hurt, until all I can think is: how could she do this and not tell me?
My parents, although concerned at how desolate I am, have their own take on things. I see it in their faces and hear it in whispered words. We might have expected something like this; typical of Alex. I even sense a slight relief, once they know she’s not been raped or murdered, that now she’s out of the way I can get on with my studies, get my grades and go to university.
Only I’m not so sure that’s what I want to do.
Two letters arrive for me, both big, fat envelopes. One is a prospectus from Leeds University. The other is a brochure from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London. I’ve been expecting the first — my parents are encouraging me to apply there — but not the second, and it causes a row with my mother.
‘I thought we agreed that you’d go to university, get your language degree, and then do your acting afterwards.’ She’s ironing, her flushed face bobbing up and down.
‘We didn’t agree,’ I say. ‘It’s just what you and Dad think I should do.’ I’m staring at the cover of the brochure, at students in white masks and black cloaks, wondering why this has been posted to me. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘You need something solid behind you, Beth, so that—’
‘Yes, I know, for when I end up as yet another failed actor.’
‘Actress,’ she corrects, always the keeper of correct grammar, and clunks the iron down on its stand as she tugs my dad’s shirt into position.
‘Actor. Actress is patronising.’
She tightens her lips and says nothing more. Watching the iron sweep from left to right, I sense that she’s holding back because of my distress about Alex but I’m too cross with her to be grateful.
‘And anyway, I didn’t even send for this.’ Not yet, although I had intended to. ‘I don’t know why it’s come.’
My mother parks the iron and comes over to pick up the Leeds prospectus. ‘Oh, this looks very good, Beth.’
I flick the pages of the Guildhall brochure, seeing a montage of student life there — rehearsals, dance lessons, mime, productions — and a faint flutter of excitement, like the wings of a moth, begins to stir the gloom that has settled on me. Then something catches my eye, a loose piece of paper. I turn back to find it, a piece of Basildon Bond notepaper Sellotaped in near the end. I recognise Alex’s handwriting and the shock jolts through my entire body, nearly emerging as a sharp squeal. Quickly I snap the pages shut.
‘Let me see,’ my mother says, looking up.
‘No.’ I can think of no good reason why she shouldn’t. ‘You’ll only find something wrong with it.’
‘Don’t be silly, Beth.’ My mother sighs. ‘Look, acting is so hard to get into. It makes sense to get a degree first.’
‘No, it doesn’t. It makes sense to do something that I’ll actually enjoy doing and if that doesn’t work out I’ll think again. It makes sense to try for what I really want.’ My voice is gathering pitch until finally I shout, ‘Just stop going on about it!’ I turn my back on her hurt face and walk out of the room, clutching the brochure tightly to my chest.
Up in my room I sit down on the bed, breathing heavily and listening out for my mother’s footsteps on the stairs. Guilt and anger tumble over each other as I wait for her to follow me and carry the argument on. She doesn’t though, and after a while I hear the renewed clunking of the iron. Hurriedly I thumb through the brochure to find Alex’s short note. Reading it, I think I stop breathing for a few seconds; there’s a sharp tightness in my chest and the soft exhalation of breath when finally I release it.
‘I’m okay. Don’t tell. I’ll ring. 4 o’clock Friday. If you’re not alone say wrong number. I’ll try again Monday.’
Four o’clock Friday. A time that I’m always in the house on my own, which Alex knows. Today is Thursday. I lie down on the bed, staring up at The Stranglers on my wall where David Cassidy used to be. Excitement bubbles up inside, because Alex is back, back in my life, and it’s no longer just me and everyone else. A wide grin of delight splits my face.
Don’t tell. Of course not. How could I?
*
Her voice sounds far away, a small, tinny thing at the end of a wire.
‘Where are you?’ I demand. ‘Are you in London?’
‘Who said that?’
‘The bus driver remembered you.’
‘Oh, him. He kept asking stupid questions.’
‘Is that where you are now?’
There’s a long silence, then, ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Where? Whereabouts? Are you sleeping rough?’
‘No.’
‘Well, where, then?’
‘I can’t say, can I?’
‘But what the hell are you doing? And if you’re not sleeping rough who the hell are you with? I don’t get it, Alex. Why have you done this?’
‘Beth, don’t get mad. I can’t cope with you being mad at me.’
‘Well, what did you expect? “Hi, Alex, how nice to hear from you” — after three sodding weeks? Do you know what it’s been like for me? Do you have any idea how worried everyone is?’
‘Not everyone.’
‘What?’
‘Not everyone will be worried.’
‘Of course they will. Whatever’s gone on they’ll be worried.’
I hear the pips go and then the sharp clang of a coin slammed into the box.
‘Listen, I haven’t got much money. Don’t let’s argue, Beth. I just wanted to talk.’
‘Give me your number.’
‘What? No.’
‘Give me your number — I’ll call you back.’
‘They could trace it.’
I hesitate. ‘Not if I don’t tell anyone.’
‘They’d see it on the bill, all long-distance calls. That’s what…what someone told me.’
‘Who? What someone?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Alex — this is crazy!’ I shout, enraged by all the mystery and my exclusion from it. ‘You should come back and sort things out here. It’s not safe down there on your own.’
‘Who said I’m on my own?’
‘Well, it’s not safe for you to be shacked up with people you don’t know either.’
‘I do know them and they’re okay. And who’s to say I’m safe at home? You don’t know, Beth, you don’t know but I’m telling you there’s no fucking way I’m going home.’ The pips go again. This time no more coins are shoved in and there’s just time for Alex to say, ‘I’ll ring again from another box. Don’t tell anyone, Beth. Promise?’
I sigh. ‘Of course.’
So I keep quiet, ignoring police instructions and putting up with the guilt of knowing that her parents must be, to use my mother’s expression, ‘beside themselves’. I don’t know what else to do, but then I live in fear of her never ringing again and think that if she did turn up dead it would be all my fault. When she phones again the following week I tell her I think it’s not right and that I don’t see why she can’t at least let her parents know she’s safe.
‘You don’t have to tell them where you are,’ I reason. ‘Just a letter, or a postcard, to let them know you’re okay.’
‘No. They can go to hell.’
‘Alex!’
‘Come on, Beth…don’t pretend you like my parents.’
I think of her father, his ice-blond hair and cold eyes; of her mother, small and slight, the way she folds herself into the background. Neither of them ever seem to notice me.
‘I—’
‘Beth, don’t.’
There’s silence for a while; outside I hear the soft drone of a distant lawn mower. ‘Alex…what’s been going on?’
She sucks in her breath. ‘Too much and not enough.’
This strange answer gets to me. ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘why don’t I come down?’
‘What?’
‘I just want to see you. I need to know you’re safe.’
‘How can you? You can’t just take off.’
‘You did.’
‘Yes, but… I don’t know.’ Suddenly she laughs. ‘Okay! Yeah. Why not? That’d be cool. Just get on a bus and come and stay. Hey, it would be amazing.’ I listen, fascinated, to this new Alex, the way she says, hey, and amazing, with its drawn-out middle syllable. ‘You could make up some story, say you’re going on holiday with someone. Hilary will back you up.’
I close my eyes to think better. My parents are going on holiday soon, leaving my older sister Karen in charge. Karen is obsessed with her new boyfriend. She’ll appreciate having the house to herself, won’t ask too many questions.
‘I’m coming down,’ I say to Alex. ‘Ring next week and I’ll have it all worked out.’
*
24th July 1977
The first Sunday of the summer holidays.
I get up early and make my way to Pond Street bus station, where I board a bus to London under a slate-grey sky. I’m carrying a duffle bag, a holdall full of clothes, and a rolled-up sleeping bag tied with an old belt. On the inside I’m carrying a bundle of nerves.
I stare out of the window, half expecting to see DS Burton run up to the bus and haul me off, demanding to know where I’m going. I’m thinking of his last words to me as I’d left the head teacher’s study.
‘You will let us know,’ he said, in his gravelly, forty-a-day voice, ‘if you hear from Alex?’
I nodded. It was easy to say yes, then, when I still knew nothing.
The driver revs up and pulls out of Pond Street onto the Parkway roundabout, heading for the MI, and what’s been almost a game up to now suddenly becomes a reality that lurches into my stomach. I shut the Cosmopolitan I bought — making a mental note to read the ‘100 Tips for a Hot Sex Life’ at a later date, even though a sex life is something I have yet to acquire — but still the queasiness increases with every mile, until bile rises in my throat. A few times I think I’ll have to ask the driver to stop and let me throw up by the side of the road, but somehow, by remembering my father’s mantra — ‘keep your eyes on the horizon’ — I manage. I gaze at fields and factories and pylons, and think about Alex, imagining her on this same journey, how completely alone she must have felt.
But then when I picture her at home I know that alone could just as well describe her there.
It’s a long time since I’ve been to Alex’s house, but it always seemed full of shadows and silence. Set back from the park and surrounded by pine trees, it had a sort of chill, even in the summer. It never felt like a family home, more a collection of rooms where people led their separate lives; I don’t think I ever saw her family all together in one room. Her father was hardly ever there, always at work, or Masonic meetings, or rugby. Her younger brother David, who’s a small, chunky version of his father, plays every sport he can and I would mostly see him running in and out on his way to or from one of them. Alex’s mother was almost always home but still somehow absent; she never seemed to look at me directly. I would glimpse her flitting from one room to another, always busy, never stopping to talk. ‘Hello, er…Beth,’ is all she’d say, even though she’d known me for years. Not like my mother, who brings us biscuits, and Tizer, and asks Alex how’s this, that and the other.
When I first met Alex I accepted her family life in the way that you do, at that age. Then as I got older I did begin to question the lack of communication, the lack of warmth towards each other, but as it never seemed to bother Alex I didn’t let it bother me. Later still, I stopped going there, as Alex was always at ours.
*
When we reach the sprawling suburbs of London my armpits begin to prickle with nervous sweat. For distraction there’s only Radio 1 and the conversation the girl next to me is having with her friends in front. They’re all students, going to some party in London. They sound excited and I wish I were like them, on a coach with a friend, having a laugh. I wish Alex were here but then think that’s stupid, because I’ll be with her soon. Then slowly it begins to dawn on me that I’m not just anxious about the unknown but about the known, about seeing Alex again. Nothing about Alex is obvious any more.
It doesn’t help when she isn’t there to meet me.
I wait at the barrier of Platform 11, Victoria Coach Station, watching the last of the passengers disembark and pick up their luggage. Ten minutes go by and I try not to panic by telling myself that if Alex never turns up I’ll just get on another bus and go home. The burly coach driver notices me as he secures the bus to go for his break, Daily Mirror tucked under one arm and jacket slung over his shoulder. For a few seconds I see what he sees, reflected in the glass of the sliding bus door: a curvy girl in tight black jeans and pumps, skinny white T-shirt, leopard-skin belt, and my old school blazer with a Clash badge on one lapel and Siouxsie in studs on the back. I’ve tried to reproduce Siouxsie’s hair from a photo in NME — backcombed high with a little feathery fringe. The detail of my painstakingly drawn eye make-up is lost in the sheen of glass but the general effect is there — dark wings that wrap round my eyes like a pair of shades.
I surprised myself this morning, when I looked in my parents’ full-length mirror and saw what I could achieve when they weren’t around. You’re dressed to impress, girl, I told myself, grinning at my reflection. And then there was a heart-thumping moment as my gaze switched to the bedroom behind me. I stood quite still, taking it all in: little pots of cream and powder on the drawers; dressing gowns hung side by side on the back of the door; the faint scent of Youth Dew, my mother’s favourite perfume; the quiet ticking of the bedside clock. The room seemed to cling to me and its safe familiarity induced a rush of doubt that set my chest pounding. My eyes switched back to the girl in the mirror. What are you doing?
The driver interrupts my view, coming to stand right in front of me. Sweat trickles down his face and he wipes it away with his sleeve.
‘All right, sweetheart?’ he asks. ‘Someone not turned up?’
‘She’ll be here any minute,’ I say. ‘She’s always late.’
He shrugs. ‘Okay. Need any help the office is over there.’
He sets off across the concourse, unfurling his paper as he walks. A small queue is beginning to form for the next departure and my stomach knots itself a little more. Then I hear a soft whistle from behind and there’s Alex, lolling by a concrete pillar, grinning.
‘You’re bloody late!’ I cry, relief putting an edge on my voice.
‘No, I’m not… I’ve been here for ages. Just making sure.’
I drag my bags over. ‘Sure of what?’
‘That no one was with you.’
‘What? Do you think I’d do that?’
‘No — but I didn’t know if anything had gone wrong, did I? Suppose your parents had found out? You wouldn’t exactly be able to let me know, would you?’
We pause for breath, then Alex moves forwards and we hug the life out of each other, squealing and giggling. She smells of cigarettes and shampoo and something else I don’t recognise. She feels thin, but I’m not sure if that’s new; we’ve never really hugged that much. Stepping back, I look her up and down, noting small changes. She’s wearing her God Save the Queen T-shirt, a red tartan skirt and her Doc Martens, all of which I’ve seen before. But her hair is different — not spiky now, but a wild, tangled halo, on top of which sits a beret that matches the skirt. And although it’s warm she wears a leather jacket that’s crawling with zips and badges. That’s new.
‘Where d’you get this?’ I ask, tweaking it.
‘Camden Market. We’ll get you one. You’re gonna love it here, Beth. It’s so cool, there’s so much second-hand stuff and it’s dirt cheap.’ She nudges me. ‘Come on, we’re getting the tube.’
I let her lead the way, marvelling at her total ease in this huge city — that after a few weeks she knows where she’s going, what she’s doing and how everything works. As I follow her certain things begin to surface from a distant memory of my last visit, when I was just ten years old: the underground’s singular scent of warm dust and hot metal, the jostle of people on the street and the massive buildings that dwarf them, a feeling of ant-like insignificance and yet of being at the centre of the universe. The idea of having to negotiate all this on my own would be scary, but Alex shows no such fear. At times I’m almost running to keep up with her, along crowded pavements that buzz with alien accents and languages, trying not to gawp at the unfamiliar: groups of Japanese tourists with monstrous cameras slung round their necks, or Arabs in full sail, the women’s eyes peeping out from black shrouds, trailing their men like a brood of ducklings.
‘Poor things,’ I say. ‘Imagine living your life in a tent.’
‘I wouldn’t feel too sorry for them,’ Alex throws back at me. ‘They’re filthy rich and they own half of London. They’re part of the established order.’
‘The what?’
‘You know. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. They’re all in it together.’
‘They?’
Alex gives me an amused smile and I feel strangely anxious.
‘The rich. Capitalists. The property owners.’
I can’t remember her being too bothered by this before; our punk sensibilities had only stretched as far as despising songs by David Soul, or Abba, and scorning anything to do with the Silver Jubilee.
‘I don’t suppose the women have much say in anything. And I still wouldn’t want to be treated like I’m owned, like I’m someone’s property.’
We turn into the underground and the conversation gets lost as Alex shows me how to work the ticket machine.
On the tube she keeps up a torrent of questions, wanting to know everything that’s happened after she went. I feed her answers, knowing the questions I need to ask will wait. If it all seems a little narcissistic — What does everyone think of me? What did they say at school? What do people think has happened? — I let that go. She never once mentions her parents. Finally, as we emerge from Camden Town station into weak sunlight she seems to remember that I’m not just an extension of her.
‘Where do your mum and dad think you are?’ she asks.
‘At home.’
‘Huh?’
‘They went to Jersey for two weeks yesterday. After they’d gone I told Karen I was going camping.’ Alex turns her head, stares at me, nearly bumps into someone. We giggle, and I feel suddenly warm, proud of myself, pleased by the glow of admiration in Alex’s eyes. ‘I said if Mum and Dad ring tell them I’m with Hilary and Rachel. They like Hilary and Rachel.’ I realise how that sounds. ‘I mean, they think they’re sensible.’
Alex snorts with laughter. ‘Well, that’s because they are! Thank God for you, Beth.’ She tucks her arm into mine, and I pray that she won’t guess how far my liking for a little excitement is being pushed.
‘So how long have you got?’
I hesitate. ‘I told Karen one week.’ I don’t say that I’ve taken two weeks off from my Woolworths holiday job. If I decide to stay longer I’ll tell her then. ‘Karen’s supposed to be looking out for me, but I think she’s glad to get me out the way.’
‘She still with that Richard guy?’
‘Yeah.’
My head spins as I catch sight of a huge crowd of punks, moving along the road in a swarm of leather and tartan and chains, holding up traffic as they swagger across a busy street, their progress marked by crests of hair. I catch the eye of one of them and there’s a flicker of acknowledgment of my membership of the club, not so much a nod as a tiny tilt of the chin. Compared to them I’m on the margins, but, still, I like that he noticed me.
‘It’s punk city round here,’ Alex says. ‘I love it.’
A crowd of backpackers separate us for a few seconds.
‘Alex, who are you living with?’
‘Beth, look there. That’s the Post Office Tower.’ She grabs my arm, pointing up to where it sits in a gap between buildings. ‘The one with the revolving restaurant — it spins round while you eat.’ She pulls a face. ‘Think I’d be sick. And, Beth, see the Doc Martens shop? The Sex Pistols go there.’ She drags me over and peers in, as though we’ll see Sid Vicious lacing up his boots, winking at us through the window. The shop is full, alive with leather and chains and rainbow hair. ‘We’ll go in one day. Have a look round.’
‘Are you staying near here?’
‘Not far. Come on, let’s go. Give me your bag. I’ll carry it for a bit.’
We tear ourselves away from the window. After walking for another ten minutes we take a left and a right, past a warehouse and some lock-ups, finally turning onto a sorry-for-itself terraced street. Empire Road. The houses are big, four storeys high, with steps down to the basement and more steps up to the wide front doors. I guess they once housed wealthy families, with maids and servants. Now each house has a long strip of buzzers with the names to one side. There are one or two exceptions but mostly the paintwork is peeling, the masonry crumbling, and the tiny scabby gardens are dotted with litter and dog shit. Above our heads reggae spills out and two people argue loudly.
The excitement of being in London gradually recedes, replaced by a quiet dread that feels like a lead weight in my belly. I’m torn between an urgent need for a toilet, desperate to reach somewhere — anywhere — quickly, and a strong desire to turn back and head for home.
‘We’re just down here,’ Alex says. ‘Number twenty-two. The green house.’
I look down the street and see a house that’s distinguishable, not by the colour of the door, but by the bricks themselves, painted a sludgy, olive green.
‘We go round the back.’
I follow her, hesitantly, round the corner of the street and down a back alley that smells of cat pee. On each side are wooden gates that lead into the gardens. Alex pushes against one of them until it gives way reluctantly, scraping the ground, then steps aside to let me go first. I look through and stop, hear myself catch breath. Behind me Alex laughs.
‘Surprised?’
I’m looking at the most perfect garden. Perfect not because it’s orderly, but because it’s bursting with colour, rippling with light and shade. Everything is gloriously wild and overgrown — shrubs, plants, lawn — so that the narrow path snaking through the middle of it all is only just visible. The walls on both sides have tiny ferns sprouting from between the bricks and lean drunkenly in places. To the right of the gate is an apple tree with hard green fruit the size of conkers, and beyond that a large buddleia. I know its name because Karen and I bought one for Mum a few birthdays ago. I recognise its sweet, honeyish smell and pointy flower-heads, the way it hums with insects and quivers with butterflies. In front of them is a small vegetable patch, sprouting rows of baby leaves like rabbits’ ears.
‘Like it?’ Alex’s voice swells with pride.
‘Like it?’ I say. ‘It’s fantastic!’
‘Fitz looks after it mainly — he plants all the vegetables. Celia sometimes helps, but she’s been ill.’ She tugs on my arm. ‘Come on.’
We thread our way down the path, straggly shoots from the nearest plants snagging our ankles as we pass. The back door lets us into a gloomy kitchen. Alex crosses to the hallway and shouts, ‘We’re here!’ She looks back at me. ‘I should tell you, me and Pete, we’re, like, together.’
There’s defiance in the set of her mouth. I just have time to wonder what that’s about and why she’s waited until now to tell me before a man appears at the kitchen door, in jeans and a ban the bomb T-shirt. He snakes one brown, scrawny arm around Alex and pulls her towards him.
