by P. K . Lynch
‘Cool,’ said Sissy, lightly. ‘Whose?’
Bolt came darting back and dropped the ball at Cam’s feet, bouncing on his back legs ready to sprint again.
‘No one you know,’ said Cam, throwing the ball further than before.
That was the last word on the subject. Sissy understood she was no longer the only girl in Cam’s life. She also knew she had no right to be upset because they’d never had that kind of relationship. Theirs was one fuelled by drink and drugs and familiarity. She was fine. Really fine. She was so fine, she failed to notice how Cam watched her on the way home, and how she missed her chance to let him know that it mattered.
Later, when they’d returned the dogs and had tea and home-made cheesecake, which consisted of digestive biscuits smothered with cream cheese and strawberry jam, Rik came home in a temper, having received a nasty phone call from their letting agent.
‘The rent, Sissy. The fucking rent.’
Bulldozed by the twin assaults of the afternoon, Sissy could only stare open-mouthed as Rik focused months of pent-up frustration into one single, huge issue.
‘How could you not pay the fucking rent?’
‘I don’t know anything about this,’ she sputtered at last.
‘That’s fucking abundantly clear. In fact, do you know anything about anything? Well, do you? All you do is mope about all day like some old lady. You’re about to be eighteen, for fuck’s sake. What the fuck are you doing with your life?’
His words were vicious, but what blindsided her most was the revelation that the events of the day were linked directly to the day her father died. She thought she’d been moving on, but her best friends were giving up on her, and the worst part of it was she knew she deserved it. Her behaviours, her attitudes, had brought them to this, and her behaviours and attitudes were a direct result of the massive sinkhole that opened up in her life months before.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened. I’ll sort it out, I promise.’
‘It’s the rent, Sissy. The fucking rent.’
She knew exactly what had happened. She had all the missed call notifications from her mother to prove it.
Later, she sat in her bedroom feeling a mixture of guilt, embarrassment, a need to punish, and a need to be punished. With nothing else to do, she took out the small pile of letters that had arrived from Glasgow over the past few months, most of them little missives of guilt from Anne – your mother needs you, are you going to church, have you got a job yet, why are you hiding from us – and only a few from Jude. Those were short, often tear-stained and blotchy, clearly written while drunk and, Sissy thought, presumably posted drunk too. She’d replied to none of them, though each had been received with no small sense of satisfaction that while she was making a life in London, those she’d left behind languished after her. Her silence was the price they had to pay for being such crap adults in the aftermath of her father’s death. She flipped through the envelopes until her fingers came to her father’s letter. She separated that from the pile, the rest she bundled up and slipped into an envelope addressed to the inhabitants of 24 Shieldhill Close. She took it to the postbox and dropped it in before she could change her mind.
On Monday morning, Rik’s alarm went off as usual, and, as usual, it woke Sissy up, but instead of blocking out his presence by pulling her pillow over her head, she waited until she heard him leave and then put on the dress she’d worn to her dad’s funeral. It was the only smart thing she owned.
She took the train into town and one hour later was sitting in a small office waiting to speak to Cam’s former boss. Self-conscious in her oh-so-pretty dress, she did her best to ignore the stream of tired, scruffy workers peering in at her through the glass. At last, the corridor outside fell into silence. The only sound was the loud tick of the clock on the wall. It reminded Sissy of school clocks, large, plain, industrial, the seconds hand juddering its way round the clock face. Five minutes passed, then ten, then anxiety gave way to irritation and she had to force herself to calm down. She’d turned up unannounced, after all.
Forty-five minutes later, a sour-looking man with long dark hair strode into the office. He did a double take when he saw her. Clearly, he’d forgotten he’d told her to wait there. Annoyance flickered across his face, but he swept his hair back and sat down opposite her.
She had her speech ready. She planned to throw herself on his mercy – if he saw how desperate she was to work, he couldn’t possibly turn her down – but she needn’t have worried. After a few blunt questions regarding her background, the answers to which she wasn’t convinced he listened to, he slipped a piece of paper across the desk to her.
‘Fill this in. Training normally is a Thursday but lucky for you we have a large survey beginning today. I’ll run you through it this morning. It’s not hard work.’ He sighed, or groaned, and waved his hand dismissively. The lack of difficulty in the task ahead of them appeared to be a source of deep disappointment.
And so began Sissy’s first paid job, calling people at home and running through page after page of questions, inputting data into the oldest-looking computers she’d ever seen, learning how to steer a rambling conversation, and when to adopt a strict tone forbidding waning respondents from hanging up the phone half way through an interview. At the end of her first week, Pascal called her back into his office to tell her how well she was doing. By now she was well exposed to the stupefying nature of the job, but she flushed with pleasure nevertheless. She returned home excited to share her news with the boys, who had been cold with her all week; Rik still furious with her for missing the rent and Cam resentful she had taken his old job.
Even standing on the crowded train with her face squashed against a stranger’s armpit didn’t dampen her enthusiasm. She skipped down the stairs at St James’s Street and took further cheer from the Christmas lights beginning to appear in people’s windows, a sight that previously only deepened her depression, but this afternoon’s events had given her the boost she needed to confirm with herself that she wouldn’t be going home to Glasgow, therefore she didn’t have to face the daddy-shaped hole in her life. She was moving forward. London was home. Everything that came before would soon be only a distant memory.
As she turned into her street, blue flashing lights halfway down slowed her walk. Despite the urge to turn back, she was compelled forward as myriad different futures at once presented themselves and one question loomed larger in her mind than any other: Who’s dead this time?
She broke into a run and arrived at her house breathless, not from exercise but panic. The police car was abandoned in the middle of the road right outside her house. She fumbled the key into the lock, telling herself they might be in any other house; just because they were parked outside hers didn’t mean they’d come to see her. She pushed the door open and her brief hope was extinguished immediately by the presence of a large uniformed body blocking her way into the kitchen.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ashamed to find herself on the brink of tears. The officer turned round and sized her up while keeping his head angled towards the chattering radio clipped to the front of his uniform. He moved aside to reveal another officer, a woman, sitting at the table opposite Cam. It took a few seconds for Sissy’s brain to unscramble what she was seeing and downgrade the situation.
The table was littered with bloodied scruffs of toilet paper. Cam held a clump of paper to his nose. She noticed now the mild discolouration around one eye, how the skin seemed to be closing in around it, and she experienced a simultaneous wave of relief and fresh worry.
‘This is her,’ said Cam. ‘Ask her.’
All eyes focused on Sissy. The female officer took her details and asked her to confirm whether she’d made arrangements to walk her neighbours’ dogs.
‘That’s right,’ said Sissy, her confusion growing.
‘So you agreed with Mr James Thomson that you could enter his property with a view to taking his dogs out for a walk?’ the woman asked, pen poised o
ver her small notebook.
‘Yes, uh, you mean Jimmy? No,’ said Sissy. ‘I agreed it with May. His girlfriend. Why, what’s happened?’
‘I think we’ll be asking the questions, alright?’ the male officer said. ‘Now why don’t you go back to the beginning?’
Sissy explained the arrangement and how she was only supposed to go in when Jimmy wasn’t there. A look passed between the officers.
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Cam, his voice muffled and thick behind another sodden tissue.
‘Are you sure you don’t want us to call an ambulance, Mr Docherty?’ the woman said.
‘What? For a nosebleed? Nah, you’re alright,’ said Cam, picking up the rapidly dwindling toilet roll and wrapping a fresh batch around his hand. ‘So you gonna charge him or what?’
‘Technically speaking you didn’t have permission to be in there, Mr Docherty. Your friend here did; you didn’t.’ The police officer’s tone implied he had far more important matters to deal with.
‘Aye, but I wasn’t in there when he did this, was I? I was in the street.’
He took the tissue away from his face and looked at it with disdain before placing it on the table along with the rest.
The female officer took a conciliatory tone. ‘Look, if you pursue this, then all that’ll happen is he’ll retaliate by trying to bring charges against you for trespass.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Cam. ‘That’s not how it works.’
‘Listen to me,’ the woman said, in a voice that suggested her patience was waning. ‘What it comes down to is you took your neighbour’s dogs by illegally entering his premises. I’d say you’re lucky not to be getting yourself arrested for burglary. Take my advice, keep your head down and stay out of Mr Thomson’s way. If we get called back here, it might be the custody officer you end up dealing with.’
‘Fucking unbelievable,’ said Cam.
She made him sign her pocketbook and turned to leave when the male officer had an afterthought and turned back.
‘Still got the key, sir?’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ muttered Cam, fumbling around in his jacket pocket until he found it and handed it over, the police man assuring him he’d hand it back to its owner. Sissy showed them out and returned to hover in the kitchen doorway, unsure of what to do or say.
‘What are you looking at?’ Cam said, furious and humiliated.
‘I’m sorry, I – ’
‘You get a job,’ he continued, in an accusing voice, ‘and suddenly no one’s walking those poor fucking dogs again. Is that right?’
Sissy shook her head and spoke quietly. ‘It’s not that, Cam. It’s just… if I’d known what you were planning to do, I could have told you about the truck thing.’
‘Wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. The truck was gone when I went in. I’m not stupid, am I? He got me when I came back. Bastard.’ He examined the tissue. The flow appeared to be stemming. He dabbed his nose gently and shook his head with a small, bitter half-laugh. ‘They were barking all fucking day. The key was sitting right there,’ he said, nodding to the small bowl on the table before them. ‘It was just spur of the moment. Bad luck.’
‘You should probably put something on that,’ she said, nodding at his eye. ‘I don’t know. Ice or something?’
She got up and found an empty ice cube tray in the freezer.
‘It’s better than nothing,’ she said, attempting to hold it against his face. He shrugged her off, and the tray clattered to the floor.
‘What’s the fucking point?’ he said. ‘It’s done now.’
He went through to the living room and closed the door. On cue, the dogs began to bark.
The call centre was a fifteen-minute walk from Liverpool Street station and occupied one floor of a six-storey block. The employees were mainly young, scruffy and miserable, with straggly hair, bad skin, and postures so neglected that their necks appeared to have been swallowed by their rounded shoulders. Women were outnumbered three to one. In the air hung a permanent tang, normally attributable to well-worn trainers. An older woman with dyed red hair and thick, green-framed spectacles would periodically do a circuit of the room with a can of air freshener, triggering a cascade of coughing.
‘Pack it in, Hazel!’
‘Wash your bloody feet then!’
Anything to break up the day.
Sissy consistently exceeded her targets, which gained her attention because Pascal had a whiteboard system that announced to the room who was flying and who was failing. She caught people looking at her as if she might have specialist knowledge she was keeping for herself. The truth was she had no idea why people on the other end of a phone line seemed to enjoy speaking to her. Whatever the reason, it made her popular with the management, who quickly moved her from domestic calls to business, which required extra training, and paid marginally more money with the possibility of bonuses.
She was plugged into the world at last, and Rik approved. When the weekend came, they hit it hard, leaving behind the boredom of the week, and also Cam, who hadn’t yet found another job and refused Sissy’s efforts to pay his way.
‘Ignore him,’ Rik said, as Sissy tried once again to persuade Cam to join them. ‘He’s just scared all those fit-as-fuck blokes will want to do things to him. Homophobe.’
‘Fuck you,’ Cam scowled.
‘I don’t understand why you won’t just let me pay. It’s my eighteenth, for fuck sake. It’s only money. I don’t give a shit about it. It just lets you do stuff. Come on,’ she was wheedling now. ‘I want you to. It’s never the same without you. I miss you.’
‘Charming,’ sniffed Rik.
‘Stay here if you miss me so much.’
‘Yeah, very funny.’
‘Don’t see what’s funny about a quiet night chilling,’ Cam shrugged.
‘Cam, it’s my birthday! I can’t not go out on my eighteenth!’
‘Suppose I’m no match for those wee pills you get hold of there, am I?’
Rik raised his hands and headed for the door. ‘I’ll leave you two love birds to it.’
Alone, they stared at each other, before Sissy pulled back a chair from the table and sat down opposite him, determined to clear the air.
‘What you on about?’ she asked. ‘Are you okay?’
He raised his shoulders in approximation of a shrug, but remained hunched over his cigarette papers, unable to look her in the eye.
‘This isn’t like you, Cam. You used to be up for everything. Listen,’ she reached over and placed her hand on his forearm, ‘you’ll get another job. It’s not going to be like this forever. In the meantime, I’ve got money. Let me help you.’
He stared at her hand on his arm, and sat poised with his cigarette half-rolled. He put it on the table, shrugging her off in the process. His arms extended long and knobbly from his T-shirt. She thought she was getting through to him. All she had to do was bring him in.
‘Mind I told you my dad burned a hundred-pound note once?
She was so proud of finding the courage to mention him, she didn’t notice Cam’s sharp intake of breath, or the way his lips curled over his teeth.
‘He did it to prove it didn’t mean anything,’ she continued. ‘So, I swear, I don’t mind giving you money. It doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just a social construct.’
Cam’s hands slapped the kitchen table, causing tea to splash over the rim of his mug. His chair screeched across the floor, knocking against the radiator, causing Sissy to startle.
‘Woah, calm down! What did I say?’
He stood with his head bowed, hair falling across his eyes, unable to voice his feelings or understand how he’d come to the point of loathing his best friend. Except it wasn’t quite as straight forward as that. He’d slept with a couple of different women, none of whom held any real interest for him, despite their experience. The way they cooed over his youth and laughed at themselves because they couldn’t believe they were doing it with someone so young made him feel
like a novelty act. Not to mention the bastard next door. Every time their paths crossed Jimmy puffed out his chest and acted the big guy, just because he’d managed to land a punch on him. Sissy didn’t care about any of it. The fact she didn’t know was irrelevant because she should know and she should care and the fact she was so damn uninterested in him and was moving on, working for that prick of a boss he’d had – well, it made him want to punch something, or himself. And there she was wittering on about money, so fucking clueless about everything that she thought burning money was a heroic act. He wouldn’t say anything, of course, because it was her dad who had burned it and you couldn’t speak ill of the dead. Instead he batted her away with one hand and left the room.
She didn’t understand why he was being so distant until it occurred to her that she was practically begging him to come out and the fact that he wasn’t meant he must have something, or someone else, to do. Swallowing her hurt, she hit the night with a vengeance. She and Rik marched to the tube station each with a single purpose: she to party until she forgot, and, he until he pulled. When that happened he would slink back to his new friend’s flat. His disappearance barely ever registered with Sissy because she would have taken so many pills, and become soulmates with so many people, that by the time she was travelling home on the first tube, she’d be too numb to care very much about anything. And when Wednesday morning arrived, most of her comedown would be gone and she’d be itching for Friday night all over again.
‘You look better,’ Pascal told her one Friday morning. She was alone in the staff room making tea and he caught her by surprise. Pascal rarely made small talk. ‘You’ve been sick, I think,’ he said.
‘Uh, no, not really,’ she replied, confused. He frowned and stepped closer.
‘But you’ve been… low, I think, these past few days. You think I don’t notice?’ he smiled, as she stepped round him to put the milk back in the fridge. ‘I notice everything. It’s my job. I’m the boss. Is everything okay? Anything you need to discuss?’
Sissy found his friendliness a disconcerting contrast to his usual sullen demeanour. Perpetually dressed in black and rarely seen without his coat, Pascal’s shoulder-length dark hair was the only part of him that reflected any light. Sissy had been intrigued by him from day one and his aloofness meant she could watch from a distance. He had a way of repelling people and drawing them in at the same time, particularly the male workers, who gathered in groups to sulk and moan about his seemingly impossible-to-achieve targets, yet whenever he deigned to cast a word in their direction, they fell about in a fawning, joking manner, all boys together, safety in numbers.
