But the dealing was only ever meant to be a stopgap. A quick money-earner to enable me to do the things I wanted to do in my life.
I’d just have to work out what those were.
I was the kid who’d always had nothing. And I was stockpiling money till I decided what I wanted to have.
I’d always shied away from banks and bank accounts, but it was becoming increasingly hard to keep an eye on bucketloads of money when I didn’t have a roof over my head. One of my BMX lads, Fridgehead – no idea why he was called that, he just was – it was his job to keep an eye on the money all the time, and it kind of messed with his head. So one day when the figures were getting ridiculous, I decided action needed to be taken.
I realized it was best not to arouse suspicions, so using Framboise’s address, I opened five different Abbey National accounts in different local branches in suburbs of London that were easy to get to on the tube. And I started depositing the cash we were earning in them each day.
Sometimes I’d think that all I wanted to do was splurge the money on travelling the world. The idea of eking out the rest of my days on some sun-drenched beach really appealed to me. Not that I’d ever experienced that before. But the freedom of not having to live on your wits, one eye behind your back – that seemed to be summed up in the fantasy of a hot beach where you couldn’t keep either eye open, as you dozed in the sun.
The other fantasy I had was: buy a massive fuck-off mansion in the countryside, and just ride around it all day on my BMX. I’d have shiny floors, roaring fires, loads of land. And it would all be mine, every last inch of it.
It was these fantasies that kept me warm at night. All day long, my mind would be racing. On the go. Looking here and there. Looking for any sign of danger. At night, the stars above me, wrapped like a worm in my sleeping bag, I’d fend off nightmares, or anything that might make me anxious, with the dreams of where I’d one day be.
The marathon begins
The Green Lady, my Kinky Gerlinky girl, came back into my life one night when I went to a party put on by a mate of Declan’s.
Life was so different in the eighties. You didn’t have mobile phones. There was no such thing as the internet, never mind social networking. So it was really hard to stalk your prey if you fancied someone. You just had to take pot luck, and hope incredibly hard that one day you’d bump into the woman of your dreams again. Coincidence was the name of the game. And it was a very welcome coincidence that Natalie and I found ourselves in the same room on the same night. An even more welcome bit of news was that she had recently split up with her DJ boyfriend.
I don’t remember everything about that evening. I’ve had a few haircuts since then. But these are the bits I do recall – I want to say like it was yesterday, but it doesn’t feel like that at all. It feels centuries ago. Like I’m looking at the memory through an upside-down telescope. It’s locked away in a glass cabinet. I can’t touch it. But it’s there. Maybe the glass needs cleaning, but it’s there. Somewhere.
I remember her hair. Long and brown. Shiny. Good hair. Poker-straight. A fringe. Right across the eyes. Smoky eyes. At the time women used to have massive hair, blow-dried to fuck. Her bucking of that trend made me think she was cool.
I remember her clothes. She was wearing this weirdly patterned black and white stretchy catsuit thing that had holes cut out in it – on the knees, side of the chest. It showed off her figure brilliantly – also a good thing, I decided – and one of her mates said it was a Bodymap outfit. I had no idea what this meant, but I knew I was meant to be impressed, so practically gave it a round of applause.
When she smoked she twirled the cigarette round between her fingers deftly and quickly, like a mini baton being twirled by a cheerleader. I thought this was achingly beautiful.
I was too embarrassed to speak to her. I just watched from a distance, like it was the school play and she wasn’t just living, she was performing. She’d see me looking, and I’d smile. But I never ventured to the stage and joined her. Everyone else was on it. Or getting off it. I, for some reason, had brought a bag of my favourite sweets with me. She probably thought I was chewing coz I was off my tits on pills. Instead the only E’s I was on were E numbers.
I liked her laugh. She would tell me later that she’d been exaggerating her laugh to try and get my attention. I knew she’d seen me, but I guessed, wrongly, that I’d been dismissed: the lad who blended into the background. But when she laughed, she threw her head back and grabbed the arm of the girl next to her.
Look at me. I’m having a great time. I’m having such a laugh.
At one point her and her mates were walking out of the room. I stepped aside to let them out of the door. As she passed she flashed me a smile, so I held out my bag of sweets. She peered inside, all quizzical, but didn’t take one. She said, We’re going on the roof. Wanna come?
I did. On the way up, she took a sweet.
We were in a block of flats in Westbourne Park. I want to call it Herpes Point, but I think it was Hermes. The outside of the flats was white. I remember the windows were like the windows you get on a train. Probably someone’s idea of cool in the sixties, when they were probably built, but they made you feel like you were travelling somewhere. Wouldn’t have done for me. If you’re going to live in a flat, isn’t that where you want to chill out? Rather than feeling like you’re always on the move.
We went up in a silver lift and Natalie explained that her and her mates all lived in this block. Apparently they’d been on the news recently coz the place had been found to have been built with asbestos. She also told me she’d had her car parked outside the flats one night, and when she woke up the next morning the council had painted double yellow lines round the block and she’d looked out of the window to see her motor being towed away.
We got to the top floor and then one of them used a key to a door which led to a small staircase, and the next thing I knew, we were on the roof.
I remember the view. The image has never left me. The streetlamps lighting the local streets gave the impression they were on fire: they were streams of molten lava out of which the black block buildings rose, trying to escape the danger. The Westway was a scribble of red and white lines, the cars zooming up and down it. In the distance was the skyline of London. I knew this city from the bottom looking up – to see it from the opposite angle blew me away.
As did she.
We talked. And talked. I only had eyes for the view, and ears for Natalie. After a while I realized her mates had left us, gone back down. Did they say goodbye and I didn’t hear?
I didn’t care.
All I kept thinking was, I’m so glad she’s not a twat.
She was funny. And sarcastic. But she really listened when I spoke. And really smiled, and really . . . oh, she was just heaven on earth. I might’ve been homeless, but that night it felt like I’d come home. I saw forever in her eyes. My instinct screamed at me, this is it. This is what and who you’ve been waiting for.
We talked for ages up there on the roof.
As we did, it started to rain.
As we headed inside, I told her You’re the kinda girl I could fall in love with.
It was so unlike me. Mr Cautious. Mr Keep-it-all-in. Mr Stay-under-the-radar.
And she’d laughed. And she was like, It’s a marathon, Danny, not a sprint. Get back to me in a few years.
When we got back to the party it became clear that Declan was off his tits. He was rabbiting away to no one in particular about the future of clubs. He kept going on about how he was ‘in the know’. About his contacts. Making out he was on first-name terms with some very powerful people. Natalie said what this boiled down to was that he was in a long-term affair with a policeman who was quite high up in the Met. The bloke was still married, but shared enough pillow talk with Declan to substantiate his claims. Thinking about it, this was probably how he’d stopped me from being arrested that time. He’d had a word with someone so that when my name was flagged up i
n the system I was deemed untouchable, or something. A great quality to have!
He was going on about the government. And how Thatcher didn’t want the West End full of people staggering round at night, off their faces. She wanted to close all the clubs in Soho and make Vauxhall a leisure destination, send the clubs there. The bars. That’s the future, he said, and we thought he was nuts.
The future
I kept on seeing Natalie, hanging out as mates. After two years – the longest wait and marathon of my life – she said she was ready. She also issued me an ultimatum:
Stop selling the drugs and we’ve got a future. Keep on, and we haven’t.
I stopped overnight. I’d saved enough to pay off the lads who’d helped me with some severance pay and still have enough dosh to live on for a couple of years or so. I was glad of the change, actually. I was glad I didn’t have to keep watching my back.
I moved in with her. It was weird sleeping under a roof again and not the stars, or in squats or on a series of mates’ sofas. She was starting to get fed up with being a door bitch and fancied a new adventure. She reckoned she could have a go at running her own club night. With the money I’d saved from dealing, I reckoned we should go for it. So far in my career I’d sold sex, and I’d sold drugs – now I was gonna sell parties.
Sam, Sam, the piper’s son
I’d often wondered what had happened to Sam since I’d seen him last. I used to lie in that sleeping bag, staring up at the black sky, and think of a rhyme we learned at nursery school. My mammy had called our nursery ‘play school’. So when she’d said I was going to play school, I’d got confused. There was a kids’ TV programme on called Play School, so I assumed I was going to be on the telly. I wasn’t.
Anyway, at play school we learned this rhyme:
Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,
Stole a pig, and away did run;
The pig was eat
And Tom was beat,
And Tom went howling down the street.
In my head, I don’t know why, but that always came into my head when I tried to picture him. I’d change the words to Sam, Sam and hear the rhyme, picturing him running down the street with a pig under his arms. Don’t ask me why.
And then I’d think . . . I hope he isn’t running. I hope he hasn’t nicked a pig. I hope wherever he is, he’s safe. And happy. And doing all right for himself. I hope he’s back at Hansbury, getting on with his shit, being left alone by the weirdos.
But the longer I kept hanging out with Natalie, the more everything else faded away. And with it, too, my thoughts of Sam. I’d not seen him in so long. I wanted him to know I was thinking of him. It felt like a real need that was building up in me. So one day I went down to Piccadilly and went in the souvenir shop we’d both gone into, after we’d stopped staying at his sister’s. I bought a small snowglobe. It had a little model of St Paul’s in it. I then put it in a padded envelope and wrote on the front, Sam Korniskey, Hansbury Vale, Mustard Lane, Culcheth, Warrington.
Stuck a stamp on it.
Wrote on the envelope, PLEASE FORWARD TO WHEREVER HE IS.
Bam. Over the counter at the post office. It was like saying goodbye. I just assumed I’d never see him again. I just assumed he’d never get it, that I may as well have been sending it on a rocket into the ether.
How wrong I was.
Natalie, 2014
Well, I wasn’t expecting this. Here I am, sitting minding my own business, feeling cut off from the world in an empty house, again. Eating myself up with bitterness about what a mess I’ve made of my life, again. Sat in a house that’s too big for me. Alone. Scared. Not even sure what I’m scared of. Fighting off a rising sense of panic. Again.
My phone keeps ringing. I ignore it. Again.
I don’t want to speak to anyone today. Again.
There are too many agains in my life for my liking.
I look in the fridge. It’s full. There’s far too much in there for one person. Another thing I’m crap at. Half of it will be put out for the birds, or thrown away. I toy with ripping the wrapper off a chicken and mushroom pie and eating it cold, but there is too much bile in my stomach to digest. I shut the fridge door.
Stupid pie!
I feel sick.
I can’t stop thinking about the neighbours. Cally was right. We should never have moved here.
I keep hating them for their crass insensitivity, wishing I was more vindictive, wishing I could target them all on social media with cutting observations about their tawdry little lives. You see people in the papers, online, ugly trolls in woolly hats who’ve made people’s lives a misery with their online hate campaigns. And suddenly I empathize with them. I’m wondering whether to fashion dolls of each of my neighbours from soap and then spend the day sporadically sticking pins in them.
To try and cheer myself up, distract myself, I read the postcard that has arrived from Cally this morning.
Dear Mum
I miss you. It’s really weird being so far away. Sure I’ll Skype or Facetime before you get this but just wanted you to get something through the post. All good here. Ish. The modelling is going well if a bit boring. Hotel lush. Got telly in bathroom. Result.
Love you
C xx
Lush. Her hotel is lush. I wouldn’t mind a bit of lush at the moment.
But hang on. The modelling is going well. Does that mean other stuff isn’t?
Before I have too much time to think about this, my doorbell rings. Sensing it’s one of them – come to, what? Apologize? Antagonize me even more? – I rush to the front door and yank it open, ready for battle. Bring it on! Natalie Bioletti is ready for battle!
But before I can say anything or see who it is, a hand darts in, faster than lightning, and slaps me round the face.
It doesn’t hurt at first. It’s not even a very good hit.
But as the hand retreats, I see for the first time who has hit me.
Lucy.
‘What the . . .’
‘How COULD YOU?!’ she screams, and pushes past me into the house. ‘Is he here now? Where is he?! I’ll kill him! He said he was off to a conference, but you can’t fool me! Said he was delivering a paper! I bet he fucking is!’
‘Lucy, what the fuck’s going on?!’
‘Don’t you fucking swear at me!’
‘You’ve just fucking hit me! Lucy, what is it?’
She’s prowling the rooms downstairs. Whatever she’s looking for clearly isn’t here. She pushes past me again to go up the stairs, so I grab her arm and scream,
‘What’s going on? Who? Who you looking for?’
‘DYLAN! Duh!’
What?! I stand there, agog, as she pushes me away then runs up the stairs. I make to follow her, then decide against it. Why the hell would Dylan be here?
What does she think?
She is exhibiting the behaviour of a woman scorned.
She thinks me and Dylan have . . .
What on earth would make her think that?
I hear the heavy thud of doors slamming and pacing about as she satisfies herself that her blessed husband isn’t there.
Her. With her perfect marriage.
Her. With her couples’ counselling.
Her. The epitome of calm, rational understanding.
She’s lost it.
I go in the kitchen and get my phone. I take a photograph of myself, then check it to see how my cheek is looking, as it’s stinging now. It is disappointingly unimpressive. It just looks like I’ve put some blusher on in the dark. I sit at the kitchen table when I realize I am shaking. I have no idea what is going on, but she is bound to calm down sooner or later and explain.
If I felt sick before, I feel even sicker now. And I’ve not even done anything wrong.
I hear her hurtling down the stairs. She bounds into the kitchen and hurls something at me.
It misses. It goes skidding across the floor, making a tiny, tinny, scratchy noise. I look at the floor.
It’s
a necklace.
I pick it up.
It’s one of the necklaces I had made for the millennium. I have one, the kids have one, Danny . . .
‘I found it . . .’ she spits, ‘. . . when I was changing the sheets in the spare room. It was all caught up in the bedding. How could you?!’
I turn and look at her, feeling myself starting to boil with rage.
‘You think I’ve been having an affair? With Dylan?!’
‘Well, it all makes sense doesn’t it?’
The sanctimony in her voice is incredibly bloody annoying. She may as well be sticking to a story that . . . that . . . the world is flat.
‘Does it?!’
‘You’ve been all het up about Danny doing the dirty . . .’
‘What, so I go and bang your husband? That’s really my style? And, what, Dylan’s confirmed this?!’
‘And he’s working all the hours God sends. How could you, Natalie?’
‘And he’s confirmed this?!’ I repeat, exasperated.
‘He’s claiming innocence! Says he’s no idea how it got there! Says I must be mad!’
‘This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever!’
‘Oh, it’s always the woman who’s mad, isn’t it? Well, I’m not daft, Natalie!’
‘Well, you must be!’
‘It’s your bloody necklace!’
I pull the neckline down on my jumper, and practically snap my own chain from my neck.
‘That’s mine! There! Round my bloody neck, where it always is! Or what? There’s a spare? I’ve got two? One for each of my two faces?!’
Now she looks bewildered. She leans against the draining board like the life is draining out of her.
I place the necklace carefully on the table, like it’s an exhibit in a museum, a precious piece of evidence in a trial. A thought is pushing into my head, but I push it away.
The Secrets We Keep Page 26
