by Nicci French
‘We’re running out of the good ones,’ said Davy. ‘Owen can be Sneezy.’
‘Why?’
Davy looked at me. ‘Which leaves you and me fighting over Bashful and Happy,’ he said. ‘And you, Astrid Bell, are not bashful. Unless you want to be Snow White.’
‘I want to be the Wicked Queen. There’s a real woman.’
‘You’re spoiling the game,’ said Dario. ‘You’re Happy.’
Happy. And groggy. And relaxed. I sat back in my chair. I looked round the people at the table: a motley collection who were, just at the moment, the closest I had to family. There were only three of us left who had been here from the beginning, or perhaps the real beginning was before that, when we were at university together. Miles had bought the house when he was still a post-graduate student who wanted to change the world, paying a ridiculously small amount for this rambling, run-down place at the rougher end of Hackney. Then, he had had no beard and his hair was long, often tied back in a ponytail. Now he had a closely trimmed dark blond beard and no hair at all. If I ran my hand over his head I could feel all the bumps of his velvety skull. Pippa was the other long-termer. In fact, she and I had met in my first term at university and we’d shared a house in our final year, so by the time we moved in with Miles I already knew her domestic habits well. She was tall and willowy, and had a delicate kind of beauty that could mislead people.
So we were the original trio and we’d survived, even though for a year of that time Miles and I had been sort of a couple and for another six awful months had been sort of not a couple and then definitely not a couple. Now Miles had a proper new girlfriend, Leah, and that felt good, like a fence between us. ‘Good fences make good neighbours,’ someone had said.
Around us, there had been various others, and the current seven was bound to change sooner or later. Mick was older than the rest of us, and carried his years as if they were a burden that weighed on his broad shoulders. He was stocky and short. He stood with his legs apart as if on the deck of a ship in stormy weather. His eyes were pale blue in a face creased by the sun and wind. He had spent years travelling restlessly round the world. I didn’t know if he’d been searching for something, or even if he had found it. He never talked about it. Now he worked, doing odd jobs, and had drifted to a temporary halt in Maitland Road. When he was at home, he spent much of his time in his small room at the top of the house, though I never knew what he did up there and I’d rarely visited him. None of the doors have locks on them, but some are more firmly closed than others. Sometimes I went downstairs in the middle of the night because I couldn’t sleep, and he was there, sitting quite still at the kitchen table with the steam from a mug of tea curling round his face.
We were never quite sure how Dario had come to be living here. His previous girlfriend (who I suspected was the only real girlfriend he had ever had) had rented a room for a year so he had often stayed over. Then we blinked and she was gone and somehow he was still there, digging himself into the smallest room, which was on the second floor, then gradually colonizing the empty room next door. Although he had no job and couldn’t pay the rent, no one had the heart or the necessary steel to throw him out – perhaps because he didn’t look much like a Dario. He had untidy ginger hair and thick freckles; his teeth were slightly crooked and when he smiled he seemed like a goofy little boy. In the end, Miles came to an agreement with him: that he should renovate the house, top to bottom, in return for living there. I don’t think it was such a good deal for Miles. As far as I could tell, Dario spent most of his time smoking weed, reading astrology columns, watching daytime TV, playing games on other people’s computers and doodling on walls with stiff-bristled paintbrushes that he wasn’t scrupulous enough about cleaning or replacing.
Davy was the most recent member of the household, being here just a couple of months, along with Owen. He was a carpenter and builder. A real one, not like Dario. Despite the disadvantage of not being Polish, he had plenty of work. Enough of it was outside so that he was lightly tanned. He had light-coloured hair, which fell thickly over his shoulders, and grey eyes. He was good-looking, but he didn’t seem to know he was, which I found charming. He had the anxious manner of a new boy in the house, but also a nice smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, and when he arrived I had let myself think, Perhaps? and then decided probably not. Sex in the house felt like a taboo, and my experience with Miles was an awful warning.
And then there was Owen Sullivan, sitting across from me right now. With his pale skin, his straight, shoulder-length dark hair, and his wide-set, almost-black eyes, he had a faintly Oriental air, though as far as I knew all his ancestors had been Welsh. He was a photographer. He hawked his portfolio round magazines and got the occasional commission. But what he really wanted was to do his own stuff. He had once said he hated magazine work. I had giggled and said then it was lucky he got so little of it. He hadn’t replied but he had given me such a sharp look that I had realized you couldn’t safely tease him where his work was concerned. He used to watch people as if he was sizing them up for a photograph, checking the light, framing them. I sometimes wondered if he really saw, really listened to what they had to say.
‘Seven ages of man,’ said Dario, dreamily. ‘Seven seas, seven continents…’
‘That’s not right.’
‘Listen,’ said Miles. ‘I hate to break into this, but it’s very rare that we’re all together like this. Just the seven of us. Don’t you dare start again, Dario.’
‘You’re right, it is rare,’ said Davy. ‘Why don’t we have a group photo to mark it?’
‘We even have an official photographer.’
‘I don’t do snaps,’ said Owen, with finality.
‘Let’s not forget he’s an artist,’ I said sarcastically.
Davy just smiled. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said.
‘My camera’s in the drawer over there,’ said Miles, wearily.
Davy stood up and pulled it open. ‘It’s not here. You must have moved it.’
‘Someone’s nabbed it, more like, and forgotten to put it back.’
‘I’ve got one upstairs,’ said Davy.
‘Let’s just forget it,’ Mick was starting to say, but Davy was out of the room and bounding up the stairs two at a time.
A silence settled over us. Outside, a car horn blared several times and then we heard footsteps running down the road. A door slammed upstairs.
‘Who else thinks this lamb tastes like dogfood?’ said Dario.
‘What does dogfood taste like?’
‘Like this.’
Dogfood or not, there was the sound of chewing and plates being scraped. There was little conversation. Everybody seemed distracted. Then Davy returned, breathless and slightly flushed, but triumphantly brandishing his camera. ‘It wasn’t where I thought. Now, all squash together. No, you don’t have to move, Astrid. Everyone can stand round you. Owen, you’re out of the picture like that. I still can’t see you.’
‘Good.’
‘Dario, your face is hidden by Pippa’s shoulder. Mick, you look a bit weird with that smile. Scary, actually. OK, ten seconds. Are you ready?’
‘What about you?’ said Pippa.
‘Just wait.’
Davy pressed a button and ran round to join us. His foot hit the table leg so he stumbled and half fell on to the tightly massed, scowling, smiling group as the light flashed. That was how the camera caught us, a blur of flailing arms and legs, and me in the centre, mouth open in surprise in my grazed and swollen face, like the victim of a drunken attack.
‘Look at us!’ screamed Pippa in delight: she came out the best of us all, of course – dainty and gorgeous in the scrum.
‘My eyes are shut,’ groaned Dario. ‘Why does that always happen?’
‘Right,’ said Miles, once we’d sat down again. He pushed away his plate of congealing orange curry. ‘I want to say something.’
‘Yes?’
‘This isn’t easy, but I’m giving you ple
nty of warning.’
‘It’s about the state of the bathroom, I know it.’
‘Leah and I have decided to live together.’
Pippa gave a little whoop.
I frowned. ‘So why the solemn face?’ I asked.
‘She’s moving in here.’
‘We can cope,’ said Dario. ‘Can she, though? That’s the real question.’
‘I mean,’ said Miles, ‘it will be just Leah and me.’
For a moment, nobody spoke: we stared at him while his sentence hung in the air.
‘Oh,’ said Mick at last.
‘Fuck,’ said Pippa.
‘You’re chucking us out?’
‘Not like that,’ said Miles. ‘Not at once.’
‘How long?’ I asked. My face was starting to throb.
‘A few months. Three. That’s all right, isn’t it? It’ll give you time to settle in somewhere else.’
‘I was just settling in here,’ said Davy, ruefully. ‘Oh, well.’
‘You couldn’t all stay here for ever,’ said Miles.
‘Why not?’ Dario looked stricken. His freckles stood out in blotches.
‘Because things change,’ said Miles. ‘Time passes.’
‘Are you all right, Astrid?’ Davy asked. ‘You’ve gone a bit pale.’
‘I need to go to bed,’ I said. ‘Or at least lie down for a bit. I feel odd.’
Pippa and Davy levered me to my feet, hands under my elbows, making tutting noises.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Miles, wretchedly. ‘Maybe it was the wrong time.’
‘There’s never a right time for things like this,’ said Pippa. ‘Come on, Astrid, come into mine for a while. It’s one less flight of stairs to manage. I can rub Deep Heat into you, if you want.’
I shuffled up the stairs, taking them one at a time, and edged my way into Pippa’s room, which was thick with the smell of perfume. It was a large room at the front of the house. When we had first moved in, it was the designated sitting room, and didn’t seem to have been decorated since the fifties. Pippa had done nothing to change that, just filled the space with the frippery and clutter of her life. The effect was peculiarly jarring. Two walls were a grubby mustardy yellow, and another was covered with flowery wallpaper busy enough to make your head ache and peeling at the joins. The lightbulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling had a brown paper shade, split along one side. A large bay window gave out on to the street, but Pippa kept the shutters half closed so the room was in permanent shadow.
In my woozy state, the mess she had created took on an unsettling, almost hallucinatory aspect. There was a metal bed – a large single, which was particularly inappropriate to her lifestyle – with a lusciously crimson velvet bedspread; a small divan that her grandfather had left her, which was heaped with clothes, both clean and dirty; a chest with every drawer open and underwear and shirts spilling out on to the floor; a wardrobe, similarly open, in which hung her gorgeous dresses, suits, skirts and jackets; a flimsy desk buckling under the weight of papers and files. A full-length gilt mirror was propped against one wall, and at its base were piles of makeup, bottles of body lotion and tubs of face cream, ropes of necklaces, scattered earrings, a couple of belts. Yet out of this room Pippa emerged every morning fresh and immaculate, not a hair out of place, smelling of soap and Chanel No. 5.
I pushed aside a pair of knickers and lowered myself cautiously on to the bed.
‘Paracetamol?’ She reached under the bed and plucked out a box of pills. ‘With whisky?’ Like a magician, she produced a bottle from beneath the pile of clothes on the divan and brandished it.
‘Maybe not the whisky tonight.’
‘Go on.’
She shook two white tablets into my hand, then poured a couple of fingers into a tumbler and handed it across. I swallowed the paracetamol and took a sip of whisky to chase them down.
‘Shall I rub your shoulders?’ she asked.
‘I think that might hurt too much.’
‘You’re not making nearly enough fuss.’
‘Strange day,’ I said.
I could hear voices from downstairs, then the unmistakable heavy trudge of Mick making his way to his room.
‘For you, mainly,’ Pippa said. She took the tumbler from me, poured herself a generous slug of whisky and tossed it expertly down her throat. ‘Bastard,’ she added loudly.
‘Miles?’
‘Who else?’
‘I don’t know, Pippa. It had to happen some time.’
‘Bah!’
‘And if he and Leah want to live on their own together…’
‘She’s the one behind it.’
‘You make it sound like a conspiracy.’
‘Of course it’s a conspiracy. So we’re going to have to be the counter-conspiracy.’
She went on talking, saying something about the bump on my head making me too reasonable. But I didn’t really hear the words, or make out their sense. I was feeling crashingly tired. The room swam in and out of focus. I lay back against the pillows and closed my leaden lids. ‘Perhaps I’ll go to sleep here tonight,’ I said thickly.
Pippa grabbed my arm and pulled me into a sitting position. ‘Oh, no, you don’t. Not tonight, darling.’
I went crabwise up the second set of stairs, into my own room, which was white and empty after the garish mess of Pippa’s: just a small double bed, a narrow wardrobe, a chest on whose surface stood all the objects I’d dug from the garden, and a big wooden rocking-chair Dario had picked out of a skip for me and I’d covered with cushions I’d bought at Camden Market. I tugged off my tracksuit trousers, then wriggled under the duvet. But I stung and throbbed, and although I was so tired, it took me a long time to sleep. I heard sounds: the front door opening and closing; voices; someone laughing; water in the tank; footsteps on the stairs; an old house breathing.
Chapter Three
I twisted and turned and slept and fretted and twisted and turned some more, and slept and woke and saw the bright sunlight shining through the curtains and gave up the fight. Besides, my body and my bike both needed checking.
In the shower – hot, this time – I examined myself. I flexed my knees and elbows. They ached but there were no cracking or scraping sounds. I needed to get moving. I also suspected this would be a fine day to be absent from the house.
Meanwhile it was good to be on my own in the kitchen. I made myself coffee and cut a grapefruit into segments. While my porridge was cooking, I went into the garden and looked at my vegetable patch. I’d never grown anything before, except maybe mustard and cress on blotting-paper when I was small, but this year I’d suddenly decided we should grow our own food. I’d gone to a car-boot sale and bought a spade, a trowel and a watering-can so nice and bright, almost new, and cheap they had clearly been stolen from someone who had forgotten to lock their garden shed. What else are car-boot sales for in Hackney? But I’d made good use of the stolen goods, measuring out a long rectangle of overgrown land, and digging it into a well-tilled plot, whose earth was loamy and rich, and studded with old coins and bits of pottery, which I collected and put on the chest in my bedroom. It was surprisingly satisfying. I relished the ache in my back, the blisters on my palms and the dirt under my fingernails. Davy offered to help with the heavy digging but I wanted it to be all my own work. I’d planted courgettes, broad beans, lettuces, beetroot and rocket – even potatoes in their own raised bed. Everyone else in the house teased me about it, but already sturdy shoots were appearing. Almost every morning and evening, I went to look at them. This morning, I had been thinking that next year I should plant sweetcorn as well, and maybe some butternut squash for soups – until I remembered that next year I wouldn’t be here. It was only then I realized that I wouldn’t be here this year, either, to harvest the vegetables I had tended so carefully. Miles and Leah would be picking them instead, enjoying the fruits of my labour.
I was on my second mug when Pippa came into the kitchen. She was dressed for the office in a soft
grey suit and a white shirt. And she wasn’t alone. A man in black trousers, a flowery shirt and leather jacket came in with the familiar mixture of sheepishness and pride you see in men in the morning. She introduced him as Jeff. He sat across the table from me and, asking if it was all right, helped himself to coffee.
I was too dumbfounded to answer. Pippa was amazing. How had she done it? Where had she produced him from? I had left her at whatever time it was last night, sitting in her room. And yet somewhere, somehow, in the middle of the night, she had found this man and smuggled him into her bed.
‘Hi, Jeff,’ I said, and disintegrated into a sort of stammer. ‘How… where did you…?’
‘We’d arranged to meet for a drink,’ said Pippa, cheerfully, ‘so I said he might as well come over here. And by then it was so late that, well, you know…’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Pippa, I wanted to ask you a professional question.’
‘What?’
‘Can Miles actually, legally, throw us out? Aren’t we sitting tenants?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Aren’t you a lawyer?’
‘Are you a lawyer?’ said Jeff.
‘Yes, sweetie,’ said Pippa. ‘Hurry and finish your coffee.’ She glanced back at me. ‘That doesn’t mean I know anything. I’ll look it up or ask someone. But don’t get lawyers involved. That’s the only thing I’ve learned.’
I nodded to Pippa and said goodbye politely to Jeff, suspecting I would never see him again. I rang Campbell at the office, and he said there would be no problem in borrowing a bike for a few days. I’d just have to pick it up from the office in Clerkenwell. Consequently, that morning I must have been the only bike messenger in London who didn’t go to work on a bike. Instead I sat on the tube in tight Lycra shorts and my fluorescent yellow top, with my helmet on my lap. I couldn’t have looked more ludicrous if I’d been dressed in jodhpurs and a scarlet coat.
