“Shame to dye such naturally beautiful hair,” the lady, Heather says.
I pay the lady and say to Joe, “Let’s get out of here.”
“We’ll go to Mum and Dad’s,” Joe says, “in case your neighbours have dobbed you in.”
“Okay.”
He hands me a hoodie and some shades which I put on. We jump in my car which is parked nearby and soon, we’re at the Jones house.
They don’t treat me any different to normal and that’s exactly what I need right now.
I can’t even think about all those people out there looking at my face.
I can only think about getting through this night, and the next, and the one after that.
I AWAKE ALONE. I know it’s early because the light’s thin through the gaps in the curtains and there’s still a slight chill to the air up here in Joe’s attic room. Since he moved out with me, so to speak (back home within a few days!), it looks like Jules has already made inroads into stripping some of the cupboards of their black paint.
I reach for my phone and discover it’s barely seven on a Sunday morning! I went to bed at ten last night, feeling so tired I could barely hold my head up.
After knotting a robe around my waist from the back of Joe’s door, I enter the kitchen and find Jules dressed similar to me, her hands on the counter, holding her weight against it. She’s watching the birds outside.
“They’ve gone running,” she says.
“Is that normal, or are they…?”
“Joe told his dad last night, Hetty.” Jules turns to me, such devastation in her eyes. I must appear clueless because she expands… “Anna.”
I swallow my stomach acid back. “Fucked up, right?”
“No,” she tells me, “no, not now you’ve got him to open up, not now.”
She comes towards me, puts her arms around my neck, whispering, “Thank you.”
After that she instinctively puts a cup of tea in my hands and we sit at the kitchen table.
“We’ll have breakfast when they get back. The twins never wake before eight on a Sunday.”
Nodding, I murmur, “Fine.”
“You okay?” she asks.
I chew my lip. “Did you always want children?”
She snorts. “No.”
“What made you change your mind?”
Pouting, she admits, “My love for Warrick. It made me want to propagate him.”
I smile. “Fair enough.”
“It’s more though,” she explains, pushing a finger against her lips, “it’s about… being at one with yourself. Going away helped me achieve that.”
I want to tell her what Joe said to me about Warrick being in hell while she was away ‘finding herself’. The thing is, I think I already know myself, and I know I don’t want kids because I will fuck them up. And I know I will.
She sees me looking thoughtful and adds, “But you don’t need to worry about stuff like this for a long time. You’re still so young. Whole life ahead of you.”
I smile. “That’s true.”
Her face changes and she looks tense when she says, “Warrick thinks he knows who did that picture of you.”
I sit forward in my chair, face twisting as I ask her straight. “That man, he’s got like this… I don’t know, way about him, hasn’t he? He seems to know like, everyone.”
“I learnt to accept his mysterious omnipresence long, long ago!!”
“That’s right!” I jab at the air with my finger. “Fucking omnipresent!!”
She chuckles, tucking some of her loose hairs behind her ears.
We look at one another and after a few minutes, she admits, “I never thought you’d ever be sitting in my kitchen like this one day!”
I shake my head. “Feels like we need more vodka.”
“No, no, no! Not after the other night!” She covers her face with her hands.
“Never thought I’d see that either.”
Another pause.
Then she says, “They’ve erected a protective covering… did you know that?”
I frown. “Why? I don’t get it.”
“It’s becoming cult, or something. I don’t know.”
“How did he or she get it done overnight? It’s at least thirty foot high, right?”
“People do strange things when they’ve been inspired. Moreover they’re moved to achieve something they never would’ve done before.”
She’s looking at me as if she knows the very secrets of my soul, and everyone else’s, as though her experience makes her an interpreter of other people’s hearts. I wonder if she knows why this artist drew me – and drew me at such a time of my life – when I’ve just fallen in love.
I’m biting my nail when I think out loud. “Joe wouldn’t let me go abroad to find myself.”
“No.” It’s a flat response, with no other interpretation. But she adds, “Joe would come with you, and that’s the difference. You’re lucky to find each other without the baggage me and Rick both had when we met. It’s a miracle our love survived the wreckage of his past lives.”
“Past lives?” Now she has me intrigued.
“He hasn’t told you much about his achievements?”
“Barely a scrap. Says it’s… classified…”
She smiles, a soft look in her eye, an acute knowledge of her husband’s heart.
“Rick worked undercover.”
“NO SHIT! OH MY GOD!”
“Joe knows,” she explains, “but not enough to sprag about it.”
“Tell me something, at least,” I demand.
She looks at me dead in the eye. “He was a true hero. He took down drug dealers, here and abroad. He took down a bent colleague, too. And that’s something you should never repeat outside this room.”
I hold my cheeks, shaking my head. I can hardly believe our square – our angel of the Avenues – had such an amazing career, achieving things the rest of us can only ever dream of.
She watches it sink into my mind and then when I’m about to ask questions, she says, “Bravery comes with a cost. A big cost. He wouldn’t ever call himself a hero. He would say he did what he had to do, what anyone else would do in the same position. But he’s wrong. He did things most other people wouldn’t have the balls to. But that’s what makes him, him. He’s a true hero, he will offer himself up every time rather than let someone else face the firing squad. That’s what makes an ordinary man or woman a hero.”
“What… cost?”
“Personal demons,” she says, itching her neck, “the breakdown of a marriage which might have worked otherwise. The loss of himself. Addiction. Despair. Memories, sights, smells… deeds… he will never be able to erase from in here.” She points at her head, at the mind.
“You love him, very much, don’t you?”
“More than I could ever express, and I have quite a good handle on language, as you may recall?”
“I recall.” I smile to myself.
“Want my advice?” she asks.
“Go on, then.”
“Live,” she says, hands open in front of her, “just live. It’s why Warrick did the things he did. So that other people can live. So his son can be safe. So we can all be safe. It’s what this country has strived for, for centuries, so its citizens can just live, explore their interests, discover their talents, create, live… just live.”
The front door slams open and shut, their voices in the entrance hall.
She reminds me not to mention anything about what she just told me, shaking her head and pulling an invisible zip across her mouth. I nod and smile when Joe walks in to find us. They’re both muddy and covered in sweat.
“I bagsy the shower!” Joe says after giving me a sweaty kiss good-morning.
After he’s gone from the room, Warrick looks between us, trying to read the scene.
“Who’s this artist, then?” I ask, cutting him off at the pass.
“You can meet him tomorrow, if you like?”
“Yeah, that’d be excel
lent. I can give him a piece of my bloody mind.”
Warrick smirks in that all-knowing way of his. “We’ll see.”
“I want it taking down,” I demand, “I don’t want my image there for everyone to see. It feels like a… an invasion of my privacy. I don’t want it there!”
That horrible anxious feeling hits me again and Jules gives Warrick a little nod. He interprets this as a motion to get out of the room, because he leaves without a word.
I’m holding my forehead in my hands on the table when Jules drops her hand on my shoulder.
“What’s this really all about?” she asks in a soft voice.
“Sometimes I wish you lot weren’t all so fucking nice,” I spit, growling, “excusing people who use other people for their own sodding gain. You’re all sickening sometimes, you know that?”
“When Rick and I bought this place, we said this was our safe place, that no sadness, no shouting, no bad shit would go down here. It’s our haven. Our little palace, and for the sake of Joe and the smaller boys, we’ve mostly managed to keep this a beacon of love and light for our family. Now you’re one of us, suck it up, because this is how we are here.”
I tut her. Then I eye her sarcastic look. And tut her again, scoffing, “Eh, whatever.”
She takes the chair next to me. “You’ve never had to deal with this kind of anxiety before?”
“No. And that’s why I avoid shit like this.”
“Liza told me you’d been scouted before.”
I ignore her.
“Hetty…”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“You’re a six-foot natural blonde, with a very unusual look. Of course people notice you!”
“Jules…! You’re not helping.”
“Look Hetty, I know…”
I turn on her. “With respect, no!”
“The ugly duckling turned good.”
“No.” Is my flat response. She’s wrong about that, too.
“Then, what?”
“You’re as bad as Joe, always fucking agitating me.”
She leaves her chair, takes up her position near the kitchen counter overlooking the garden again, then admits, “I’ve had anxiety forever. It probably started when I was ten.”
“Ten?” What? How? Jules? Anxiety? I don’t get this. She’s the most together person I know.
She goes on… “I had a panic attack right after I met Warrick. It was the happiest time of my life and yet… you can’t predict it. And I don’t remember it now. You don’t remember it afterwards. You only know you don’t want it to happen again… It all went away when I was travelling. For years, nothing. Then I had kids. It started getting bad when I went back to teaching. I’ve never known how to switch off how much I care about the kids I teach. And my own kids, too. Caring for everyone, combined, took me a step back.”
“Jules…”
“Let me get this out.”
She glances at me and I nod.
“I was severely bullied after my mother died,” she whispers, “and that’s why I have the anxiety. Because I still, even now, even after everything, I still suffer with crippling doubts… that I’m not good enough. I fear I don’t have enough, that I can’t give enough, and I want to so badly, I want to give so badly.”
“Jules–”
She turns quickly, tears running down her cheeks. “Hetty, you don’t have to pretend with me. We’re the same. You don’t have to put on that kickass demeanour. You can be weak and I’ll understand. I’ve been there.”
My chin wobbling, I squeak. “But I’m… I’m nothing compared to you! You inspire me so much, do you know that? I’m standing here in one piece because of you and that husband of yours.”
She clenches her fists and shakes her hands out. “Why don’t you want the world to see you? You’re incredible, do you know that? You are!”
“FOR THE SAME REASON YOU DON’T!” I yell, breaking her rule. I’ve smeared her place of peace with my chaos, my turbulence and catastrophe.
“Because you’re scared?”
“Because… because… just because.”
“I see.”
“No, I don’t think you do. Leave it, Jules.”
She taps her foot on the floor, her arms folded, looking cross in her face.
She draws herself a glass of water, drinks back a few large mouthfuls, then looks out of the window as she tells me, “That year I met Warrick, it was The Year, something our elders tell us about when we’re small. We all get one special year, apparently, the same as every dog has its day. Within this meagre 12 months, we’re told everything will fall into place, all loose ends will tie together and it’ll all happen at a million miles an hour. I didn’t believe that then any more than you believe it now.
“Whoever told me that, they were so bloody up themselves… and so bloody right. Some periods in our lives just stand out. God, when I think about mine and Warrick’s first months together, my heart nearly cleaves in two just thinking about how I felt then, how it was, what it was. You don’t realise how special it is at the time, until you look back. Until with hindsight you see how that year changed you beyond all recognition and formed the person you would be for the rest of your life. God, it was a bloody good year. Just thinking about it, even now… I have goosebumps and chills. I can still feel, taste and smell that year. Like it’s cemented in my soul. Well, I guess it is. Music we sang to, danced to, cried to. Moments of silence. Love, just pure love. And everything else that came of that love. Like you, Liza, and eventually, rediscovering my dancing.”
She has me in tears and I want her to stop.
“Not everyone gets their own angel, Jules.” As I say the words, she sighs, shaking her head.
“Hetty, love didn’t save me. In part, yes. But love, it just gave me the courage to reach inside myself and dance.”
I heard the rumours about Jules dancing in assembly at school once, how she raised the roof with a routine to Evanescence’s ‘Bring Me to Life’. It became legend. Almost myth.
“Are we done?” I ask impudently.
“I guess so,” she murmurs, hanging her head.
I don’t want to hear what else she has to say. I’m done.
I storm from the room and find Joe outside the door as I go, having been listening in on us obviously. I scowl at him and say nothing more.
I’ll get my temper and my chaos out of her peaceful haven of love and understanding!
She doesn’t have a clue.
WE arrive home little more than half an hour later. It’s at times like this I wish he hadn’t moved in. I slam the door behind me and my plan is to run a bath and hide out in there for how ever long my skin manages not to disintegrate. But before I can climb the stairs, he pulls me back and pins me to the wall, kissing my face off. Blood rushes through my veins and I sag against him, I can’t help the way I feel, I can’t stop myself reacting to him even at a time like this. My t-shirt’s ripped off over my head and he grasps me harder to him.
“You drive me insane,” he reminds me.
I arch back against the hallway wall as he takes to his knees. Before I know it, he has my fly open on my jeans, kissing my stomach.
“Het?”
“Yes.” I look down to see him looking up.
“Tell me you love me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut as he holds his arms around my hips, his fingers gradually nudging down my jeans.
“I love you so much, it hurts.”
He picks me up, carries me up the stairs, throws me down on the bed and shoves my jeans and his down.
When he’s about to push inside me, he asks, “How do you want me?”
“As you like, stud. Always.”
He starts loving me roughly, knowing that’s exactly what I need, exactly who I am – and exactly how he needs to show me that he loves me madly.
I’M STANDING, LOOKING, from across the street. There’s a journalist waiting outside the community centre, not exactly a sore thumb, but there�
�s never anyone to be found pacing outside the place. It’s just before ten, too. So if they know anything about me, they know I start at ten everyday. Everybody at the centre knows that. I need to find a way of getting around the man. I don’t have blue hair anymore thankfully but what I do have is blue eyes and I’ve always hated the thought of contacts. Anyway, why should I have to hide myself? It’s the fault of that idiot who drew me! These people only want this story because of the manner in which the street art went up overnight.
“Got any change, love?” a voice from behind me asks.
I turn and catch sight of an outline. It’s a homeless man and his dog. I’m digging in my pocket for a few quid when I look up again and recognise the dog and the man. They sleep in the community centre every night courtesy of Warrick.
I’m about to throw down some change when I look at him. “Do you want some food? I’ll go get some if you want. Anything to avoid that tosser over the road.”
He smirks. “Which tosser?”
“Journalist tosser. Thinks he’s sodding Trevor McDonald by the looks of him.”
The dog, a gorgeous Staffordshire bull terrier cross with caramel fur, lifts her weary head and whimpers.
“My dog’s hungry, but I’m all right.”
I look at him more closely. He must be the same age as me but I can tell he’s been weathered and lost weight due to malnutrition, evidenced in the way his neck looks sunken in too many places.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I tell him.
As I walk off I text Warrick: I’m doing a good deed while that tosser out front decides to give up, finally.
Okay, he replies.
In Sainsbury’s I’m looking at dog food, no idea what to get. I’ve never had a pet, not even a canary, or a pet fish. It all looks foreign. I ask one of the shelf stackers which is the best, pointing out a section dedicated to healthy dog food. But I don’t know the age of the dog? I think the bitch looked young but as a street dog, she could be two or two hundred. I go for the middle ground.
I’m about to pay for the dog food when I spot the hot counter. I grab a couple of bacon sandwiches and by the time I’ve decided to add an instant tea to that from the machine, I’m weighed down.
Hetty: An Angel Avenue Spin-Off Page 19
