Summer in the City

by Fiona Collins

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘So he could see you. See who you were.’

  ‘Why? Have you been talking about me? All good, I hope?’

  Salvi smirks. Dino nods. He stares at me as though I am a curiosity behind glass. A museum piece. I get the uneasy sensation I’ve met him before. That he already knows me, somehow.

  ‘Let’s go on the ghost train,’ says Salvi. ‘Thoroughly spook ourselves.’ He places his hand on my right shoulder. Presses down. Steers me past loud stalls and gathered bald blokes holding beers; threads me through excited coiffed and gelled teenagers, half-running to the next ride. Dino trails behind.

  ‘Get in the back, Dino.’

  Salvi and I sit in the front of the first black-and-silver carriage of the ghost train. Dino folds his long limbs into the one behind. A toothless ghoul clamps the bar down on us. Salvi presses his hand down on my left thigh.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ he asks me, close to my face.

  ‘Of course not,’ I laugh, but this is not entirely true.

  It’s an old-fashioned ride, a bit crap. It involves bashing through several sets of black double doors, a lot of wooing and cackling from recorded witches, skeletons hanging from the ceiling. I get water sprayed at me at one point. Something tickles my face and I have a horrible feeling it’s Dino’s hand. Salvi and Dino are both laughing, when I whip my head round, their faces green and mocking in the fluorescent gloaming.

  When we get off, Salvi clamps his arm down on my shoulders, just like the bar on our carriage. He weighs on me, as we walk – Dino behind – claiming ownership, bearing down. I’m reminded of the arguing couple outside the pub on the way to the Roundhouse, but that man at least showed affection in his gesture. This feels like a statement of intent. Am I Salvi’s girlfriend? Do I want to be? I love you. That’s what Kemp said. I can see his face now. I also said once I saw Salvi’s face I would know. I glance at him as we walk. I try to appraise him carefully. Sometimes he looks so cold, like he just turns on warmth when he thinks he needs to. When it suits him. I worry I could badly cut myself on his edge, that sharp glittering side to him he has shown me so many times. What did Dad say? If he shows you who he is, see it. Has he shown me? Have I just not been looking properly?

  ‘All right, darling?’ asks Salvi, pressing my body into the ground with his arm.

  ‘Great!’ I smile.

  ‘Even though you don’t like fairs?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  I get the sudden impression he has brought me here on purpose, to a place I said I didn’t care for. That he wants me to feel and admit to some sort of fear. I look at him again. This is a man who doesn’t shake hands or say ‘sorry’. This is a man who runs out on me all the time, who sometimes looks at me with contempt, who has told me I should be ‘fucking grateful’. Who has picked me up and dropped me whenever he feels like it. Push and pull, that’s how it’s been with him. Push and pull. This is not the man who has told me that he loves me, on the street. That I am ‘home’ for him. This is a man who I believe, suddenly, enjoys manipulating people. I’ve been focusing on the wrong man, haven’t I? I have had tunnel vision down absolutely the wrong tunnel. I’ve made a mistake.

  ‘My father’s here somewhere,’ I fib, ‘I need to go and find him.’

  Salvi is not my destiny. He may have been set on the path I walk on, but I don’t have to walk on that path. I can get off, and I can walk away from this man who is not my miracle and towards the one I never dared believe could be the best thing in my life. I need to find my father and Kemp and tell them both how much they mean to me. I need to get away.

  ‘Not just yet,’ says the manipulative boyfriend with the weighing-down arm. It grips me tighter; it holds me fast. ‘Let’s have a go on the Hook-a-Duck. And then how about the Crooked House? Someone got locked in one of those things once. They weren’t discovered for fifteen hours. Dino likes the Crooked House, don’t you, Dino?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Dino. ‘I like a lot of things.’ He flashes me a charming smile.

  ‘Are you a barrister, too?’ I ask him weakly. I feel if I attempt conversation, I won’t feel so panicked – so trapped.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m a driver. For a soft-drinks company.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  Salvi’s grip bears on me like an anchor. We keep walking. Salvi steers me towards the stall with the giant yellow ducks, with hooks in their heads. I see those two boys again, over by the peeling and chipped fortune teller’s head in the glass box – the boys in the white trainers and basketball vests. I wish I had the strength to struggle free of Salvi’s grasp and break away. I wish I could shake off the fourteen-year-old girl inside.

  Salvi hands the man – a grinning bulldog in a retro Dukes of Hazzard T-shirt – a twenty-pound note.

  ‘No change, mate; I’ll have to go and get you some.’

  Salvi dismisses him with a wave of the hand. ‘Play on, good fellow. We’ll sort that after.’

  Dino and I step back and watch as Salvi expertly hooks three ducks and claims his prize.

  ‘Cuddly Shrek, blow-up Sponge Bob or a balloon?’ grunts the man.

  ‘Balloon,’ says Salvi, and he points to a huge hot-pink one, heart shaped, high up on the stuffed hanging rack. It has ‘Kiss me’ on it, in a pair of red lips. I don’t want this balloon. I don’t want Salvi to kiss me. I want to escape and go to my dad, and to Kemp. But I feel strangely powerless.

  The bulldog hooks down the balloon and hands it to Salvi. He immediately steps forward and bonks Dino on the head with it, then Dino grabs it, pulls it to his chest, laughing. ‘Kiss me,’ he says to me, in a saliva-y lisp.

  ‘I need to go now,’ I say weakly.

  ‘Hang on,’ says Salvi. He takes the end of the string and ties it into a small bow, double knot. ‘Just prettying it up,’ he says and he takes the balloon from Dino by the string and hands it to me, while my spinning world stops.

  CHAPTER 46

  ‘Philippa,’ I say, trying hard to catch my breath.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Philippa’s balloon.’

  I stare at the balloon I’m holding. Hers was the one with ‘Happy 30th’ on it; the one she had on the tube. The one abandoned and bobbing over everyone’s heads, its string trailing across people’s shoulders. Salvi bought her that balloon and he tied a bow in the end to ‘pretty it up’ and he gave it to her, didn’t he? He knew Philippa. Why did he lie about it? He saw her that day. He saw her and gave her that balloon. And then she died.

  ‘You did know Philippa Helens, didn’t you?’

  ‘Who?’ He’s looking at me all innocent, all incredulous. As though I’m crazy.

  ‘Philippa Helens. She died on the underground. She jumped under a train. You were out with her the afternoon she died.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  My mind is whirring. Was she his girlfriend? Had he been to her birthday celebrations that day? She was young and pretty, not quite thirty; I am forty-eight with a huge birthmark. If she was his last romantic interest before me, then why me next?

  ‘You knew Philippa Helens. Was she your girlfriend?’

  ‘Hey, mate! I’ve got your change here.’ It’s the bulldog, from the corner of the stall. Salvi wanders over to him, looking as unconcerned as I’ve ever seen him. He’s always like that, isn’t he? Unconcerned. So unconcerned he didn’t care his girlfriend went under a train, if she was that. Maybe she was just a friend. Something is nagging at me at the edges of my brain. Something that connects us. Me and Philippa.

  ‘I’m going, mate!’ Dino calls out to Salvi. He obviously doesn’t like where this conversation is going. ‘See you around. Look out for my post on the club later,’ he adds, with a wink. ‘I got nice and close.’

  ‘All right, mate,’ Salvi calls back, but there’s a warning look in his eyes, directed at his friend. Post on the club. Nice and close. What does that mean? And if he means The Profilo Club – that card I found – why would Dino be a membe
r? He’s not Italian or a professional. What kind of a club actually is it?

  Dino lopes off and Salvi turns away to banter with the bulldog, laughing about goldfish in plastic bags on buses, or something. Delaying coming back to me because of what I might say? Philippa and me, Philippa and me. What is it? I think of the other two women I have seen Salvi interact with, the women I have fretted over. The woman with the overly shiny red hair flopping over one eye; the colleague he kissed, with the oversized sunglasses. I turn my back on the stall. I take my phone from my pocket and check the photos of Philippa I have saved. The one from the news report … Philippa with her friends and cocktails … I go to the last one, the only close-up picture of her, the black-and-white photo where she has the shadows of branches on her face, like lace. I look and look at this photo, while Kylie is ‘Spinning Around’ and the smell of candyfloss burns my nostrils, until I realize one of the shadows of the branches is not a branch at all, but a long, searing scar.

  There is a laugh behind me. I turn and Bulldog is laughing heartily and slapping Salvi on the back while Salvi grins like the cat that got the cream. Salvi has certain tastes, doesn’t he? I think I know what they are. He has a taste for the scarred and the ugly. Philippa had a scar on her face. I have a birthmark on mine. Is that woman’s floppy red hair hiding a scar or facial disfigurement, too? And the colleague outside the Old Bailey. She has something too, doesn’t she, under those huge sunglasses? Something that caught Salvi’s eye and put her in his gaze. A gaze with a smile that is actually a taunt. I realize now why Philippa moved down two carriages. Someone was staring at her, weren’t they? Making her feel uncomfortable. And I realize exactly how Salvi could have gone from her to me: because he was moving to his next victim, project, item of curiosity. I was the next bearded lady. The next freak. The next woman with the kind of face Salvi really likes.

  ‘You knew Philippa,’ I say, when Salvi finally makes his way back. I am shaking and grip my hands together, fingers entwined, so he won’t notice. ‘And you were with her the afternoon she died. What happened, Salvi? Were you in a relationship with her?’

  He rams his change into his front jeans pocket. Checks his watch. ‘Anyone who jumps under a train is nothing to do with me,’ he says cheerily. ‘Stupid cow.’

  ‘So you knew her?’

  He sighs, looks inconvenienced. ‘Come out of the way,’ he says. There’s a straggly group of teenagers trying to weave past us. Salvi sweeps me by the shoulder down the side of the stall, into the shaded grass channel between Hook-a-Duck and Tin Can Alley. ‘Yes, I knew her. A few randoms went out for her birthday lunch and I was one of them.’

  ‘You were dating her.’

  A smirk. ‘I might have been.’

  ‘You were dating her because of how she looked.’ I clasp my fingers tighter, try to steady my voice. Salvi’s face is in shadow.

  He laughs. ‘Doesn’t everyone date everyone because of how they look?’

  ‘She had a scar on her face? A really big one. The approximate length of my birthmark, I’d guess. You date women with facial disfigurements, don’t you? That’s why you’re with me. That’s why you asked me out in the first place.’ Damn, my voice is all trembly. My face is probably bright red. But I have to get these words out.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But Salvi grins, and that smirk tells me everything. He looks proud of himself. He is still performing; but now the performance is owning his evil and displaying it like a trophy.

  ‘Yes, you do. You date people with facial imperfections – it makes you feel, what, powerful? That you can pick them up whenever you feel like it because they’re so grateful and desperate? Or do they make you feel less ugly? Less ugly on the inside.’

  I see it now: how ugly he is. It’s not an edge he has, it’s a gaping black hole. He collects trophies, doesn’t he? Profilo is Italian for profiles. Faces. Salvi runs a website for him and Dino and God knows who else, to look at photos of scarred and facially disfigured women. It is far from a club for gentlemen. And I am on there. Dino will post the photo he took of me today, but I am already on there, I know it.

  I am pretty certain Salvi took photos of my face while I was sleeping.

  ‘What happened on that lunch? For her birthday. Did you do something? Did you upset her?’

  ‘Not that I know of. You’re ridiculous!’ says Salvi, still grinning, still laughing. ‘Hey, what’s wrong with you?’ He steps towards me, hand raised, and I know he is going to stroke my cheek.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ I say, still trying to steady my voice. I feel hemmed in here, between the stalls. ‘I can see you for exactly who you are. Did you say something to her on the day she died? To Philippa? After you bought her that balloon?’

  ‘You’re ridiculous,’ Salvi repeats. ‘If only you could see yourself! Who knows why she topped herself? It’s nothing to do with me. People shouldn’t be so sensitive.’

  I know that he said something to her, or that she found out something, maybe about The Profilo. I can feel it; I can taste it. I can see it on his face and in his eyes.

  ‘I think you need help,’ I whisper.

  He laughs again. He laughs like he has done many times before; just now, and in the bar, in the restaurant, at The Monastery and, just like that, his mask drops and the laugh turns into a snarl. He grabs me by the throat and shoves me against the side of Tin Can Alley, on to bright yellow studded metal where rows of rounded peaks dig into my back.

  ‘I don’t need any help,’ he spits. ‘I’m a barrister. I’m rich. I have women lined up. You’re the one who needs help. You’re the freak. Did you think what we had was real?’ He says this with utter scorn. ‘That we would stay together, trot off into the sunset holding hands. Life is uglier than that, darling, much uglier.’

  He’s really hurting me. I’m struggling to breathe. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. ‘You are nothing,’ I wheeze. ‘You are no kind of man at all. You don’t have any power over me.’ But he does, doesn’t he? He has his hands round my throat. He has reeled me in; seduced me – thrown me up in the air like one of his street performer batons, and then left me to fall. He has hurt me, like the others. He has power.

  He squeezes a little harder. ‘What are you going to do, dear Prudence? Kill yourself? Go and throw yourself under the Waltzer or something? Who would miss you? Your pathetic blind father? That sap, Kemp? He won’t stick around, will he, not for you. Who would, freak?’

  There’s a girl, suddenly walking past us, down this untrodden space between stalls; too close. She stops dead in front of us, surprised and horrified; her face coming into hyper-vivid focus, like a cartoon: coppery frizzy hair, a round face pocked with acne scars, thick milk-bottle glasses. Salvi, brazen, raises his eyebrows at her, in both challenge and a kind of twisted seduction, then, piercing her with his gaze – her eyes caught in his look terrified, yet strangely captivated – he releases me.

  I take a large gulping breath and clutch at my throat, rubbing it. Salvi seems breathless too, his own eyes bulging, his neck red.

  ‘All right, darlin’?’ he says to the girl with the glasses, frozen before us.

  ‘Piss off!’ she shouts – his spell broken – and she rushes past, from shade into sunlight, and is gone. Salvi and I stare at each other for a few noiseless seconds, our eyes locked on each other’s faces. I see now exactly how he looks at me. Exactly how he always has. I see disgust and objectification. I see fetishizing and displacement. I don’t need anyone looking at me like that. I don’t want anyone looking at me like that ever again. With the blood pounding in my veins and my heart yearning for refuge, I turn from him and I flee into the jangling music and the lights and the excited screams of those enjoying the safe danger of a summer funfair in London.

  CHAPTER 47

  I am in a flat area of the park, which borders Seven Sisters Road and is surrounded by trees, heading for the children’s playground. The entrance to the reservoir is somewhere around here; Dad talked me through a map he bro
ught up on his iPad a few days ago, when I pretended to be interested, but I remember enough.

  I search for the hatch, while furiously dispatching hot smarting tears from my eyes. Somewhere behind me, in the distant hum and clang and blaze of the fair, Salvi lurks among neon and noise. He wouldn’t follow me, surely? He is done with me? The grass is dry and parched here; cut very short and patchy in places, long and tufty in others. Those same two boys are at the playground – basketball vests – one of them is on the swings; the other is lolling against one of the posts, smoking. What are they doing here? Perhaps they are following me. Not letting me forget my ugliness; my freakdom. There is no sign of Dad. He is not sitting in a hatch at the entrance to the reservoir, his legs dangling down, his back angled so his face catches the last of the day’s sun. I can’t even see the hatch. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be looking. I feel exposed, foolish and fearful, here in this field, searching like a hunchback for a square-foot hole in the ground among the piebald grass.

  The two boys have moved to the see-saw now; they are flicking something at each other, laughing, but their eyes are on me. I wipe the tears from my face with the back of my hand. There’s a shout of laughter from one of them – over-exaggerated and ultra-loud. The other one yells, ‘Yeah, bro!’

  I refuse to look over. I can’t catch their eye. Right now, I just want to see the hatch. There’s something orange in the grass – I step forward to take a look. Dad’s headphones. Perhaps he and Kemp have been and gone already and Dad dropped them. No, here is the entrance, behind a bank of tufty grass, an open oblong in the ground bordered with a flat concrete frame; its thick metal hatch lying on the grass beside it. If Dad and Kemp had left, the hatch wouldn’t be open. Are they down there? I drop on to my knees and peer over the top rung of a metal ladder – a series of rusty orange bars set like staples into the peachy-amber brickwork below the hatch. At the base of the ladder I can see four or five descending concrete steps, then there is darkness. I call.