It doesn’t take long for the canal to take you out and away from the urban fantasy that is the streets of Camden and into an altogether darker and dirtier industrial world, bisected by the rumble of the trains and large empty-looking warehouses overhanging the water. The faint orange glow of the city is reflected in the murky water.
Ben has left me; he’s left me, the dickhead. Or rather I followed him, like I always do. I am the dickhead.
And chances are he could be further along the towpath somewhere in the dark, bleeding to death, stabbed by the mugger, who is lying in wait for me, to do us both in together, then shove us in the canal, where we’d drown before we bled to death, choking on dirty water.
Dramatic, I am. Always have been.
I could turn around and walk back towards the lights of the market.
But it’s Ben. And I still don’t know if he remembers that the night he nearly killed me, he also kissed me. And I would really like to clear that up before one of us dies.
So, thinking of Issy, I say all the worst swears I can think of as I walk into the darkness to find him, and some more besides. I walk slowly and carefully, expecting to see his lifeless corpse sprawled across my way at any moment, but I see nothing, just lengths of the uneven path revealed and concealed by the night as I walk. If someone were watching me from the bridge, they’d have lost sight of me long ago. Unless they were following me, that is. I turn around, darkness behind me, darkness ahead. My heart thuds hard and heavy, my chest heaves, my lungs feel raw and my legs tremble. I’m far from the hospice and my fucking phone is missing. I could kill Ben. If I weren’t almost certain that some crack-crazed knifeman hadn’t killed him first, I would definitely kill him.
But there’s something else; I’m out here. I’m doing it, experiencing life.
I knew it was overrated.
Far ahead of me, a match flares briefly in the dark, so that I know that someone else is there, lurking.
What if it’s the murderer, smoking over Ben’s body as the very life drains out of him? I should turn around and go back, but I don’t. Very, very slowly I find myself walking towards the darkness.
Two people, neither of them Ben, are standing side by side. As I get nearer I see they have their arms around each other – lovers. Kissing and smoking with equal commitment.
‘Excuse me,’ I say, and the guy looks at me suspiciously. His girlfriend sighs.
‘I’ve lost my friend, tall bloke, big coat – he ran this way? After this mugg—’ I stop talking.
‘No one been along here for twenty minutes,’ the man, more of a boy, tells me, slightly warily, probably because he thinks I am a mugger.
‘Oh, right … OK, thank you.’ I turn on my heels and hurry back towards the light, expecting them to pounce on me at any second. Either Ben has already been murdered and tossed in the canal by the world’s most lacklustre Bonnie and Clyde, or they are telling truth and I just scared myself to death for no reason. But it doesn’t seem like a good idea to hang about and find out. The blare and glare of the lock seems surreal as I emerge into it once again, and I turn around and around, catching my breath, looking for Ben, knowing that he wouldn’t just abandon me here. Finally, I hear something over the noise, something calibrated just for me, and turning towards the sound, I see him. He must be standing on something, bellowing out my name over the heavy bass.
‘Where did you go?’ I demand as soon as I reach him.
He leaps off a bench and presents my phone to me with a bow and a smug little smile.
‘You twat!’ I say, pushing him so hard that he drops my phone on the floor, where it skids under the bench.
‘What? You’ll break it, you idiot!’ Ben bends down to retrieve the phone. ‘What is your problem? I just got this back for you. I thought you’d be pleased!’
‘You chased some mugger, who could have had a knife, who could have hurt you over a crappy phone – that’s insured!’ I punch him again, quite hard in the arm, and he yelps, backing away from me.
‘He was only about nine, and I was fairly confident I could have taken him, but he just dropped it, anyway, after about three minutes of me chasing him. Where have you been?’
‘Looking for you!’ I holler at the top of my voice, so loudly that it seems that for a moment the music softens and everyone in the throng stops and looks at me. That doesn’t happen, of course, but it feels that way, just for a second.
‘I thought you’d gone off down the towpath after this potentially murderous killer …’
‘Is there any other kind?’ Ben asks me, and I punch him again.
‘And I went after you, to protect you or drag your bleeding half-dead body out of danger, or die from multiple stab wounds to keep you company in the murky depths of the canal … and it was dark, and scary, and you WEREN’T THERE.’
‘Very rude of me not to be dead in a ditch,’ Ben said, but a little less scandalised than before. He steps forward and catches my hand, pulling me out of the crowd and down the very steps I’d just emerged from, feeling lucky to be alive. ‘You went down there, in the dark, to battle a knifeman, for me?’
‘I thought about not going, but I didn’t know how I’d explain it to your mother,’ I told him. ‘Yes, sorry Mrs D., it was too dark, and he bled to death whilst I was getting a policeman.’
Ben’s smile is warm, and enticing, but not as all-engulfing as his embrace. Suddenly, I’m encased in his arms and his huge black coat, his chest against my cheek, and the smell of the women’s perfume he insists on wearing …
‘You know my mum’s been on tranks for most of my childhood. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have noticed the difference, and my stepdad would have let my room out, first chance he got. He’s been waiting for me to move out since he moved in.’
‘Why don’t you, then?’ I ask him. ‘Why don’t you move out and get away from him?’
‘Because even though my mum might not have got her act together enough to care whether or not I am alive or dead, I still love her,’ he says. ‘And she needs me. My stepdad can’t take care of her; he can barely take care of himself. So as long as she needs me, and I’ve got you to rescue me from maniac knifemen, I’ll be there.’ He holds me even tighter for a moment, burying his face in the cloud of my hair. ‘It matters a lot to me, you know. That you give a shit about me.’
‘Are you sniffing my hair?’ I ask him.
‘A bit. I like it – it’s sort of like Dettol and lavender, all mixed up.’
‘Stop sniffing my hair and hugging me,’ I say into his chest, thinking of the drunken kiss, and his drunken tongue inside my mouth. ‘It’s confusing.’
‘How is a hug confusing?’ he says, releasing me into the night air, with that familiar grin reinstated.
‘You don’t know how a hug is confusing?’ We begin to walk slowly back towards Marie Francis, and I’m grateful to see the familiar dark wooden green door, set into the brick wall.
‘No, I don’t. A hug is one of the world’s few unambiguous gestures. A hug says, you are awesome, I appreciate you. A hug is the one gesture of affection that comes without an agenda.’
‘Unlike a kiss,’ I say, as he opens the door for me to step through. The adrenaline from my not-actual-but-still-feels-like-it brush with death must still be pumping in my veins, because, after fully expecting to spend several years agonising over his drunken kiss and what it means, I’ve just gone and said something verging on the specific.
On the other side of the door, the world is peaceful again, still and calm, almost as if the high brick wall and the green painted door can keep out not only the noise of the city but also the sensation of the heavy press of humanity that rolls ever onward, crushing underfoot anything that gets in its way. Even the sky above seems clearer, and full of starlight.
‘Well, a kiss is quite unambiguous,’ he says. ‘I mean, a kiss on the cheek, on the forehead, a massive great snog …’
‘What about that massive great snog you gave me, the night that I almost c
ertainly caught the bacterial infection that nearly killed me?’ I say. ‘What did that mean?’
Ben stops dead and turns around very slowly to face me.
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I was rather hoping you’d forgotten about that.’
‘And now you see perfectly clearly how a gesture of affection can be confusing,’ I say, walking in through my patio door, which I left unlocked. My room door is open, and there’s something wrong. I know it right away.
Ignoring Ben, I walk out into the corridor. It’s almost too quiet here, and somewhere, from Issy’s room, there is the sound of sobbing.
I stand there, unable to open her door, unable to move. I wait, with Ben at my shoulder, until the door opens and Stella comes out.
She looks at my questioning face and nods.
‘She’s gone,’ she says.
I turn around and walk straight into Ben’s arms, and everything else seems suddenly so unimportant.
Dear Mummy,
I know you will be sad, I know. But please don’t be sad for ever. You aren’t all that old. Forty is the new twenty, someone said on This Morning the other day. You’ve had so many years of being sad, and I don’t want you to have any more. I want you and Katy to be really happy, all of the time.
Give my hats and scarves to the children’s cancer ward at the hospital, and all of my toys and books too. Don’t keep any of them, except for Octopus. I want you to give Octopus to Katy.
Will you tell Lucy, Jem and Alice that they are the best friends ever? They never got bored of me, even though I was too tired to be much fun most of the time. They always came to see me, made me those stupid videos that were so funny and that PowerPoint presentation on why they should be allowed to stay for a sleepover. I’m so glad you said yes – that was the funnest night ever. In my jewellery box, the one with the ballerina that goes round and round, there are three friendship bracelets. Will you give them one each? I used their favourite colours so I know they will know which one is which. There is one for that boy in my science set, Jack Fletcher, too.
I think you should get a dog, I really do. Katy wants one so much, and I know you thought it was too much bother to look after a dog and me and her, but people like dogs. And people with dogs always meet lots of people and makes lots of friends. I think you should get a really hairy dog, and call it Kitty, because that makes me laugh, thinking of you and Katy shouting, ‘Here, Kitty, Kitty,’ at a dog in the park.
I love you, Mummy. You are the best, most kind, most funny, most clever and most brave mummy ever. And you will always be my mummy, even afterwards. Don’t be sad for ever, please. And don’t be lonely.
Love you
Issy x
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HUGH
There’s what looks like a tub of ice cream on my doorstep. It’s hard to tell in the orange light cast by the street light, but I think that’s what it is. I stand at the end of the garden path and look at it, sitting there on the red brick tiles. I approach it with caution and pick it up; something shifts inside. And I notice that, trapped between the lid and base of the tub, there are some sheets of kitchen roll, printed around the edge with blue flowers. The tub once held vanilla ice cream, what’s left of the label tells me.
Just as I am opening my front door, I hear the neighbour’s door open, and I wait, caught in indecision. Running inside now would be extremely obvious, not to mention ridiculous looking. And yet talking to her, well, that would involve talking. To her. I don’t know why the thought unsettles me, because talking to women is something I’m good at, except that normally I don’t care what they think of me – what I say and the way I say it doesn’t matter. And yet it seems to with her. I think it’s because I can see she leads a ‘real’ life – a life that isn’t smooth and worry-free like mine. She tries hard, I can see that – not just at work or over the way she looks. She tries hard at life.
‘You found the cakes, then?’ She appears above the low brick wall that separates our narrow front gardens. Wearing a massive sweatshirt, which looks like it was built for some huge male specimen and hangs down below her knees. The hat is gone, her long hair is ruffled and her smile is anxious.
‘Oh, you left them?’ I say. ‘And they’re cakes, that’s … nice. Thank you.’
Before I can escape, she hops easily over the wall and almost skips on to my front step, and I instinctively back up, one step closer to my door. What on earth it is about a tiny, slight little woman in a massive jumper that intimidates me, I don’t know, but suddenly I feel gawkish and dumb.
‘I was worried we’d got off to a bit of a bad start,’ she says warmly. ‘And the last thing I need is to fall out with my neighbour. I mean, we’ve only just arrived here.’
‘It’s fine, you apologised before, when you didn’t have to,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry at all, please.’
She doesn’t move, which means I can’t move. Several cars swish through the puddles on the road before I realise she wants to ask me something else.
‘The thing is,’ she says, weaving her fingers together anxiously, ‘my boss just called and he wants me to cover a shift in the city, like now, and it would only be four hours, so I’d be back by one, but obviously I can’t leave Mikey on his own. But then again, if I don’t say yes, I think I might lose my job. If I can’t find someone to take care of him, I can’t go to work.’
‘Um.’ My key is in the front door.
‘And I haven’t got any friends round here, not yet, and no time to make any. And my mum … well, we aren’t talking. I’m really at a loss to know what to do, so …’
‘Mrs Catchpole over the road – she’s got grandchildren. Maybe she might …’
‘But I don’t know her and neither does Mikey. I know it’s a lot to ask but, Hugh, please, would you come and sit in with Mikey? He won’t be any bother, and I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Hugh. She said my name out loud. Hugh. I must have heard it spoken recently. I must have heard it today, on the phone. Yesterday, perhaps, at work; in the last week, at least. And yet, to hear someone say it to my face, it’s oddly affecting. Not quite enough to make me want to take on babysitting as a second career, though.
‘I don’t really know how to look after children,’ I tell her, finally taking my hand off the key and taking a step back onto the path to face her. Her eyes look huge in her small face.
‘You don’t even have to look after him, just be in the house,’ she says. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can be, I promise. Just sit with him. He’ll take himself to bed and you can watch TV, kip on the sofa for a bit. Honestly, he won’t be any bother … and it’s just we really need the cash.’
I think about offering her the cash not to go to work, but even I can see that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. She’s working hard to keep her family going – some twat just waving money at her would be worse than insulting, it would be mocking her too. My dad would have said yes; my dad was a kind and gentle man, the sort of man that people instantly liked and trusted – with good reason. It’s just that the idea of talking to a ten-year-old boy terrifies me.
‘It’s just, I haven’t eaten …’
‘Oh, right, well, um … You’ve got cakes now? And there’s toast and beans at mine. You can help yourself.’
‘OK,’ I say, finally, because my dad would have. And I take my key out of the door and clamber over the wall after her, which isn’t quite as low as it seems – or I’m not as nimble as my neighbour – and I scrape my inner thigh on the way. ‘Just one thing: you still haven’t told me your name.’
‘Oh shit. I’m Sarah, Sarah Raynard.’
‘Sarah. I’m Hugh.’
‘Yeah, I know …’ She falters when she sees me extend my hand, but after a moment she takes it and shakes it, quite clearly having to try pretty hard not to giggle.
‘Now we’ve been properly introduced, let’s get on with it.’
Inside Sarah’s house I find a mirror image of my own house, and I realise that I have been in
here before, although not for a long time. For a brief period in the late Nineties, a family lived here with a daughter who was in the same year as me in school, although we were eons apart in terms of sophistication. My dad and her parents kind of threw us together, in that way that parents have of assuming that friendships between young people of a similar age are automatic, and we spent a lot of one long summer holiday together. She was the first girl I kissed, the first girl I did a lot of things with, although she drew the line at sex because, although she liked me and said I was useful for gaining experience, she didn’t actually find me attractive and thought her first time should be with a boy whom she at least fancied a bit. Funny how I remember her, sitting in this very room, delivering those very words, so clearly. I don’t remember feeling upset or hurt by those remarks that I had forgotten for so many years. In fact, I think I thought, fair enough. Sadie Winters, that was her name. Pale ginger eyelashes and almost silver eyes. She smelt of biscuits.
‘Well, Hugh’s here, Mikey.’ Sarah has already got her coat on, the huge hat pulled down on her head, a scarf looped around her neck.
‘You’ll be good, right?’ she says, but Mikey does not reply, gazing steadfastly at the TV where he is obliterating what looks like an army of the undead with quite some gusto and aplomb.
‘He’s annoyed with me,’ Sarah says as I follow her to the front door. ‘Kids, they don’t get what it takes to keep things going, do they?’
As she opens the front door, Jake slinks in and, seeing me, stops in his tracks. Then, realising that, as a cat, he is in no way obliged to suffer from social embarrassment, he walks past me as if we have never met.
We Are All Made of Stars Page 11
