‘The careers advisor said I may as well,’ Dawn replied. ‘Keep my options open.’
‘Did the careers advisor tell you where you’re going to find the money from to go to university?’
‘Everyone applies, it’s no big deal,’
‘Well, okay. So you applied. But why did you apply to all those places? I don’t even know where half of them are, but I know they’re far away. You’ll have to move out, and then what am I going to do?’
‘I had to apply where they offered the courses I might want, Mum.’ Dawn said levelly. ‘Just going through the motions.’
Dawn’s mum stubbed out her cigarette and turned back to washing the dishes. ‘Just going through the motions,’ she mumbled into the grease-scummed water.
Dawn set the envelopes down, unopened, and started to eat. For as long as she could remember, life with her mum had been a delicate balancing act. She had explained it to the social worker like this: her mum was sitting at one end of a seesaw, with Depression sitting on the other end (she always thought of the illness like that, capitalised, personified). Dawn needed to run the length of the seesaw, end to end, like a gymnast on a beam, to keep things balanced. Only sometimes she didn’t get it right, and her mum would crash to the ground, crushed by the weight she carried.
Things had been in pretty good balance for nearly a year now. Dawn’s mum was holding down a job, and with Dawn’s part-time work at the coffee shop, they were keeping their heads above water.
‘I’ll take a look at these later,’ she said to her mum now, pushing the envelopes to the far side of the table. ‘How was work today?’
About a month later, Audrey came into the coffee shop again. Just like the first time, she appeared early in the morning, when things were quiet. Dawn chatted to her while the boss was out the back arguing with a delivery guy over the wrong size of cup lids.
‘So, your husband’s still out in Africa then?’
‘Yes, he’ll be there another six months at least. He works at Harefield Hospital normally, but they’ve given him a year’s sabbatical.’
‘Hey,’ said Dawn, ‘my mum works at Harefield.’
‘Really?’ The woman took a small sip of her coffee, eyeing Dawn over the rim of her cup. ‘Which department?’
‘Oh, all of them, really. She’s a cleaner.’
The woman smiled. ‘Oh, well, she probably wouldn’t know my husband, then. I’m Audrey by the way.’
‘Audrey. Nice to meet you. Again.’ Dawn took her hand. She was surprised to find the skin on Audrey’s hand dry and chapped, and there was strong smell of something familiar, something clean yet not clean. It was the smell of industrial strength airport soap.
‘So,’ Dawn said, ‘you’re going out there quite often then? And that’s okay with your work?’
‘I don’t work,’ Audrey said. ‘Haven’t for a long time.’ She said it quietly.
‘Shit, sorry,’ said Dawn. ‘I mean sorry for being so nosey, not sorry you’re not working, unless you want to work, then I’m sorry about that too. Sorry.’
Audrey laughed, and it was a surprising laugh, full and deep, although the tail end of it caught in a soft rasp at the back of her throat. She gave a little cough.
‘Don’t worry about it, Dawn. I don’t mind. It’s nice to have someone take an interest. I spend a lot of time on my own, now that my husband is… away.’
‘So what do you do, if you don’t work?’ Dawn didn’t imagine that Audrey spent her unemployed days like her mum did, under the duvet, or wandering around the flat like a whey-faced wraith, the depression draining her down to a deflated version of her better self.
‘Well, I look after my husband when he’s around. Run the house. His kids come to stay most weekends as well, so I have to deal with that.’
‘His kids?’ Dawn asked.
‘He was married before. I stopped working when we got married. I didn’t mind, because it was a job, you know, not a career. Just a job.’
Dawn thought about her university applications, and nodded. That’s what she wanted: a career, not a job.
‘But you know what, Dawn?’ Audrey leaned forward, making sure Dawn could hear her over the increasing hubbub of the coffee shop, ‘A job, a career, it doesn’t matter, as long as you have something that’s yours, all your own. If I wasn’t Charles’ wife, well, I’m not sure who I’d be. And that’s no good, is it?’
Dawn shrugged, not knowing what to say. She looked over her shoulder and saw the queue building up at the counter and the boss looking daggers at her. She gave the table a quick wipe and lifted Audrey’s empty cup.
‘Gotta get back to work. No rest for the wicked,’ she said. ‘See you around.’
‘Yes,’ said Audrey, reaching around to pull her case from under the chair, ‘see you around.’
Audrey leaves the coffee shop and strides purposefully across the concourse. She wants to make it look like she knows where she’s going, but not too much. She stops every now and then to check the information boards, double-check a sign. She fishes into her handbag and pulls out a dog-eared boarding pass and looks from it to the departure boards and back down again.
Now, she thinks, where to go today? She decides to change terminals, she doesn’t want to risk running into Dawn twice in one day.
Audrey heads down to the Tube. Thank god the transfers are free. Not much cash left in her pocket after she bought that coffee. She gets onto the train that will loop her round to the other terminals. Maybe she’ll stay on for a while, circling. Her own personal holding pattern. It’s quiet on the Tube so she takes a seat. She lifts her case up and holds it to her. It’s a bit too big for her lap, but she doesn’t want to risk losing it. She stares at her reflection in the window opposite, the glass transformed into a shaded mirror by the fast-moving blackness behind. She stares and she wonders how much of what she has told Dawn is a lie. Because sometimes none of it seems real, none of her life before.
‘Isn’t that your friend over there, Dawn?’ the boss asked her. They were in Terminal One, where they’d borrowed some paper cups and filters from the other branch of the coffee shop. The boss liked to get out of Terminal Five every now and again. ‘Time for a field trip!’ he would declare.
Dawn looked to where he was pointing with his elbow, his arms full of slippery stacks of polythene-wrapped filter papers. The woman on the far side of the concourse looked like Audrey from behind, the same black coat (even though it was July) and carry-on case. Audrey had been in the coffee shop four, maybe five times in the past six months. She usually came in when it was quiet, and the boss had started turning a blind eye when Dawn stole ten minutes for a chat.
Dawn thought about calling out, but the woman was too far away. And there was something about the woman over there that didn’t seem like Audrey, something about her body language that was off. Audrey always looked so relaxed, so poised. This woman looked a little hunched, furtive even.
As Dawn watched, the woman cast a quick glance over her shoulder then pushed herself into a lift just as the doors were closing. Two security guards cut across Dawn’s line of sight and hurried over to the lifts, walkie-talkies barking in their hands.
‘Nah, that wasn’t her,’ Dawn said. But in the split second when the woman had looked over her shoulder, Dawn had recognised her. It was Audrey. And now Dawn was lying, covering for her. Which didn’t make any sense.
Dawn and her boss took the shuttle bus back to Terminal Five. They rode in silence, having exhausted the few possibilities for polite conversation on the way over. Dawn was happy to look out the window, watching the cars and buses and concrete go by. There wasn’t a single person walking anywhere, as far as she could see. Everyone was in a vehicle of some sort. It was like some post-apocalyptic world where no one could survive on the outside. As the bus pulled into each terminal in turn, Dawn imagined she felt the tension relaxing on the bus, as safe harbour was reached. Watching people struggling off with their luggage, she speculated about their trips. S
he wondered, not where they were going, but why. Not the business travellers and the holidaymakers, but all those others. People who were running away from something, people who were running to something. Births, deaths, broken hearts. Dawn reckoned they were all good reasons for getting on a plane.
Audrey catches a glimpse of the security guards as the lift doors close. They didn’t usually bother to move people on during the day, there must be some sort of security alert, she thinks. Or someone important coming through the airport. She sees Dawn, too, holding a pillar of stacked paper cups across herself like a ceremonial sword. Standing beside that boss of hers, the one who thinks quoting facts is the same as holding a conversation. She’s a sweet girl, and has a lot on her plate for one so young. Audrey wonders what the date is. Dawn must be getting her A-level results soon. The girl has boxed herself into a corner, applying only to universities that will mean leaving home. As if she need something outside of herself to force her out the door. But Audrey understands why Dawn is afraid to go, afraid to leave her mum alone. Being alone is not good.
Audrey hopes Dawn hasn’t seen her in the wrong terminal. Audrey likes the person she is when she’s with Dawn. These days they talk more about Dawn and her life than about Audrey. Which is good, because Audrey sometimes has trouble remembering when she is. When and who.
There are plenty of people working in the airport who know Audrey, know what she is. You can’t live at the airport twenty-four seven without people getting to know you, and she’s not the only one. Last count, there were about a hundred of them. Audrey doesn’t think of herself as homeless, though. She considers herself to be in transit. It’s just that she doesn’t know where she is going yet.
The day the A-level results came out, Dawn was working. She could have asked to swap shifts, when she saw the rota. She could have gone down to the college in the morning with her friends. But something stopped her, perhaps the wish to let fate take its course one last time. Soon enough she would have to make a decision, actually make a decision. All her life she had been fire-fighting, reacting to what life threw at her, rolling with the punches. The idea of taking control of her own life was more frightening than exhilarating.
She spent the morning making one coffee after another, filling cups, calling names, rarely looking up to check the faces that went with the outstretched hands. Every now and then she peered around to check who was sitting at the tables. She half-expected, half-hoped to see Audrey sitting at her usual table. Dawn hadn’t reminded her mum of the date, there was no point in having them both on tenterhooks. But it would have been nice to have Audrey around. She told herself that Audrey would only be there if she had a flight that day, it wasn’t as if she came to Heathrow just to have coffee in Dawn’s shop. But ever since that day in Terminal One, Dawn had known, deep down, that Audrey’s story didn’t really add up. Which meant that she had been lying to Dawn for months. But it also meant that she came to see Dawn out of choice, which meant she could choose to be here today.
Dawn shook her head, shook herself out of this illogical train of thought. She checked her watch and ducked under the counter to grab her small backpack.
‘Taking my break now,’ she called out and elbowed her way out of the coffee shop without waiting for permission. She headed for the internet terminals in the middle of the concourse. They were arranged in a circle, their screens facing outwards and Dawn felt somehow exposed as she stood with her back to the crowds in the Departures hall. She swiped her cash card in the machine and logged herself on to the college website. Her fingers prickled with nerves as she clicked the link to get her results. Scrolling, going too far, clicking back up the page, slowly, slowly. Her name. Another click. Words and letters on the screen, the keys to her future. Dawn let out the breath she had been holding. She pulled a scrap of paper out of her backpack and wrote down her results, even though there was no chance she would forget them. She stood up, put the piece of paper in her back pocket and logged out of the computer.
Audrey was waiting for her back at the coffee shop. She looked tired. She looked like she had been crying. She was tucked into the corner, her head down. Dawn almost didn’t see her in the crowd.
‘I lost my suitcase,’ she said as soon as she saw Dawn, panic in her voice.
‘You lost it? How?’
‘Someone stole it while I was asleep.’
Dawn looked in Audrey’s eyes and recognised what she saw there. She had seen the same look in her mum’s eyes. Somehow, the loss of her bag was the last straw for Audrey, the thing that upset the precarious balance of whatever life she had. The world had become un-navigable to her and she was folding in on herself.
Dawn squeezed into the seat beside Audrey. Her break wasn’t over yet, she still had five minutes. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.
Audrey sat up straighter in her seat, took a drink of her coffee and smoothed her hair behind her ears. It looked like she was literally pulling herself together, closing over the emotional rip at the seams she had just exposed. Dawn had never seen anything like it.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Audrey said firmly. ‘Never mind that. Did you get your results yet?’
Dawn pulled the paper from her pocket and handed it over. Audrey unfolded it, smoothed it on the table and read it carefully. She looked back up at Dawn and smiled. ‘Good girl,’ she said quietly.
Dawn started to cry.
In her little black suitcase Audrey has a change of clothes, a few books and a photograph of her and Charles on their wedding day. She has some nice toiletries retrieved from the bins near the security gates, and she usually picks up a few bottles of water this way as well. She will be sad if they ever lift the limits on liquids in hand luggage. She gets a hot shower and washes her clothes once a fortnight at the Salvation Army centre. She picks up her dole cheque there too, it’s her registered address for all her benefits. Otherwise she washes in the toilets at the airport. The soap dries out her skin horribly, but it’s better than being dirty.
She takes out the photograph and looks at it every night before she goes to sleep. She looks so like a second wife in that picture. No white gown, no veil, just a nice dress, suitable for her age and a lunchtime registry office wedding. Charles wanted them to be married before he went to work in the hospital in Kampala. Two months later, Charles was dead, shot in the head execution-style. The Ugandan police said it was probably a case of mistaken identity, or a robbery gone wrong.
Charles hadn’t written a will. Everything went to his teenaged children. The first wife swooped in and claimed the house for herself and the kids. Audrey wasn’t going to argue with her. It was their home, they had just lost their dad, what was she supposed to do?
They sent Charles home in a box. She never saw his body. Sometimes Audrey can convince herself that he isn’t really dead, that the police were the ones who had mistaken his identity, that he is still out there, in Uganda, and if she can only get to him, she can bring him home. Home.
On a warm evening in late September, Dawn and her mum took a walk around Little Britain Lake. The Canada geese honked and hooted as they came in to land on the water, sending the ducks and moorhens skittering and flapping away. Dawn and her mum took a seat by the water and started to lob pieces of stale bread out over the water, despite the sign telling them not to feed bread to the birds. Dawn had been feeding bread to the ducks all her life, and they seemed okay.
‘Call me when you get there,’ her mum said after a while, ‘I mean, the minute you arrive, okay?’
Dawn laughed. ‘Okay, mum.’
‘How long does the coach take again?’
‘To Edinburgh? Most of the day.’
‘And everything is sorted with the halls of residence?’
‘Mum, don’t worry. I’m sorted.’
Dawn’s mum took her hand, gave it a squeeze.
‘I know you are, love. More sorted than I’ll ever be.’
‘Mum…’
‘No, it’s true,’ her mum insisted, ‘b
ut at least I know it. And there’s help there when I need it.’
Above their heads, the aeroplanes blinked and bobbed in the dusky sky. Some banked hard, their engines complaining, as they headed out to circle the city one more time. Others, the lucky ones, pulled out of their holding patterns and pointed their noses towards the Heathrow runway. Coming in to land.
HOUNSLOW
A Marriage Made in Hounslow
Rajinder Kaur
There had to be more than this. Fried chicken shops. Kiosks selling sim cards and phone chargers. The pound store. The 99p store. The 98p store. The gamblers. The old mothers clothed in black, baby in one arm, hand outstretched with the other. The clothes shops permanently on sale, the clothes shops permanently closing down. The derelict buildings. The cars with windows open and oversized speakers rumbling along the street. The school kids play fighting, one punch away from assaulting each other. A house that was not quite a home. And a man who was not quite a husband.
Kulvinder gathered her things and said goodbye to her colleagues. She worked part-time as a receptionist in the Civic Centre. Not the most challenging job for an IT graduate but it was better than no job at all. And it gave her some financial freedom from her husband, Arjun. Her husband. It still sounded strange despite the weddings and the protracted form filling, the waiting for her visa to be granted, and the new house on Gresham Road. The idea of having a husband was still alien to her. There were none of the sparks of having a lover, or the tingles of being someone’s girlfriend. There was just him, and his job, and his Audi TT, which he could barely afford.
She decided to sit in Lampton Park for a while. It wasn’t like her mother had said, as she prepped her for her first meeting with Arjun.
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