Before I Met You

by Lisa Jewell

  Here, she thought, I’ll start here.

  *

  The skies opened above her as she felt her way cautiously homewards an hour later, using her as yet untested internal compass. The rain fell hard as knitting needles, bouncing off the pavements and all over her cherry-red shoes. She had no umbrella. She had not even packed an umbrella. She would have to buy an umbrella. She could not begin to imagine where in Soho she might be able to buy herself an umbrella. Arlette’s house had had an elephant’s foot in the hallway, trimmed with brass and filled with umbrellas of various sizes. Betty had very much taken umbrellas for granted for the whole of her life until this exact moment.

  Her internal compass took her to most of the streets of Soho over the course of the next hour. The rain obfuscated the world, turned it into one indistinguishable mass of tarmac, brick and glass, and when finally she found herself standing opposite what she now thought of as ‘her’ phone booth, she almost laughed out loud with joyful relief. She’d made it. Against all the odds and without asking anyone for directions, she had found her way back.

  The flat felt unexpectedly welcoming as she turned the key in the lock and let herself in.

  Home, she thought, I’m home.

  She ran herself a deep bath and lay in it for an hour, feeling the water warming her bones. The bathwater sent rippling shadows across the ceiling, and the steam ran down the windows in rivers, and there it was: peace, solitude, Betty Dean, having a bath, in Soho, as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

  Afterwards she poured herself a glass of cider and took three roll-ups and a box of matches onto the fire escape that led off the landing outside her front door. By now the sky was inky dark, but the rain had stopped. The fire escape looked out over the scruffy backs of other buildings. Below her she saw two restaurant workers sitting with their backs to the wall, smoking cigarettes and talking to each other in a language she could not name. She could hear the clank of pots and pans through another open window and smell curry spices toasting. The men below laughed out loud and then made their way back inside. And there, in the diagonal corner, Betty noticed what looked like a proper house: clean brickwork, three storeys, six windows, including one full-length window in the middle, which gave her a view of a funky chandelier and a piece of anarchic art. It warmed her, strangely, to think that among all these pubs and market stalls, restaurants and fabric shops, there lived a human being with nice taste in interiors.

  That night Betty slept fitfully and uncomfortably. The street below was loud and unsleeping. When she woke the following morning she felt haggard and ill. But as she pulled open the curtains she smiled.

  She had not, after all, come to Soho to sleep.

  That morning she decided to find a library. There was no telephone directory in her flat and she wanted to look up Clara Pickle. It was a slim chance, and she was sure that Arlette must have tried directory enquiries over the years, but still, it was worth a bash. As she walked out onto the street she saw the record-seller was putting out his pitch opposite her front door. He was wearing a hat today, a kind of fisherman’s affair, black felt with a small metal badge on the front. Two curls of hair flicked out from either side like dancers’ legs. The silly bits of hair softened his appearance, put Betty at her ease. That and the fact that she suspected that with her hair up, and without Arlette’s incongruous fur, he probably wouldn’t notice her anyway. So she picked up her pace, kept her eyes to the pavement and marched determinedly onwards although she had not a clue where she was supposed to be heading.

  ‘Morning,’ he said.

  She stopped mid-step. Then she turned. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello.’

  ‘How are you settling in?’

  Betty couldn’t speak for a moment, so taken aback was she by his friendly interaction.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Just, er, popping out.’

  He nodded at her and looked as though he were about to end the conversation, but then: ‘I know someone you could sell the fur to,’ he said almost nervously, ‘if you’re interested?’

  ‘Sell it?’

  ‘Yeah. The fur coat. I assume you want to sell it. It being a bit of an obsolescence and all.’

  ‘Oh,’ Betty said. ‘Yes. I hadn’t really thought. But, yes. Maybe I should.’

  ‘It’s my sister. She runs a clothing agency. For TV and film and stuff. She’s always looking for furs. Hard to find these days, apparently.’

  ‘Wow,’ she said, ‘what a brilliant job to have.’

  ‘Well, yeah, our dad’s an antiques dealer, our mum’s an auctioneer – old stuff kind of runs in our blood.’ He smiled and Betty noticed that when he smiled his crow’s-feet fanned out like peacocks’ tails and the groove between his eyebrows completely disappeared. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, his smile straightening out, the crow’s-feet regrouping, the groove resetting, ‘think about it. She’s only up the road. Let me know.’

  ‘I will, thank you. Yes.’ She turned away first, slightly flushed by the encounter. She was about to head on her way when it occurred to her that this man might be a good source of local knowledge. ‘I’m looking for a library,’ she said. ‘Do you know if there’s one round here?’

  He raised a curious eyebrow. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Not much of a reader. Toff,’ he called to the man on the next stall, ‘is there a library round here?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Toff said, ‘of course there is.’ And he gave Betty directions.

  The route to the library took her past the front of the house she’d seen from behind the night before, facing out onto Peter Street. She stopped for a moment and appraised it. Its windows were taped over with opaque film and the front door was painted shocking pink, with the number 9 nailed to it. Betty extinguished a roll-up beneath the heel of her trainer and put her hands into her pockets. She studied the building for a moment or two, trying to gauge its significance. It meant something to her, in some odd way, either from her past – had she seen it when she was in Soho with her mother all those years ago? – or in her future. She was sure she’d seen that door before, seen that oversized ‘9’, those obscured windows.

  She shook her head slightly and carried on her way. In the library she thumbed her way through twelve London telephone directories. In a small notepad she wrote down the numbers of seventeen people called C Pickle. She didn’t even bother with the C Joneses. Then she bought chocolate bars, tobacco and chewing gum in three separate shops, paid for with notes, breaking them up for change.

  When she got home, she came upon a man in logoed polo shirt and a matching fleece doing something to the telephone in the hallway.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello.’

  The man did not return her greeting, just looked up at her and then back again to the wires trailing from the innards of the phone unit.

  ‘Are you fixing it?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said dully, ‘I’m vandalising it.’

  She peered at him through squinted eyes for a second, silently measuring his tone.

  ‘Ha ha,’ she said, ‘but seriously? Are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am attempting to fix your telephone. In fact,’ he plucked a red wire and then plucked a yellow wire and then leaned back and appraised the situation, ‘I’m pretty sure I have just fixed your telephone.’ He pulled a mobile phone from his bag and pressed in a number. The phone in the hallway rang. He smiled. Then he pulled a twenty-pence piece from his pocket, punched a number into the payphone and the phone in his other hand rang.

  ‘Sorted,’ he said. ‘All yours.’

  Betty stared at the phone in some surprise for a moment or two after the engineer had left. She had a phone. And seventeen phone calls to make. What a piece of luck.

  Betty dialled all seventeen numbers for C Pickle that morning. Of the thirteen people who answered not one had ever heard of Clara. The other four numbers were either disconnected or had not replied. But Betty had suspected as much. There was no way it could have been that easy. If it
had been that easy, she mused, then Arlette would have tracked Clara Pickle down years ago. Betty appraised the five twenty-pence pieces left in her hand and called Bella.

  ‘Guess who’s calling you, live, from their Soho penthouse?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Berwick Street. Top floor. Just around the corner from the Raymond Revuebar.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes! I just moved in! Yesterday!’

  ‘Wow! I don’t believe it. Finally!’

  ‘I know, at the ripe old age of twenty-two.’

  ‘So, how is it?’

  ‘It’s ... fine, it’s ...’ Betty was about to say, ‘it’s amazing’ but as she started to form the words in her mouth she felt tears suddenly overwhelm her.

  ‘Oh, Betty, sweetheart, are you OK?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Betty, trying to pull the tears back down inside. ‘Yes! I’m fine. It’s just all a bit, you know ... Arlette dying, the funeral, coming here, everything’s changed so quickly, after being the same for so long.’

  ‘Oh, Bets, of course you’re feeling weird. Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes, just little old me.’

  ‘No flatmate?’

  ‘No,’ she sighed, ‘no. It’s a studio.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Bella, ‘that must be costing you a fortune.’

  ‘Kind of,’ said Betty. ‘I guess. Arlette left me a thousand pounds. This place is four hundred a month. I’ve paid for two months up front ...’

  ‘So you’ll have blown the lot on rent by the summer? And then what?’

  ‘Oh God, I don’t know. I’m going to get a job. And ...’ she paused. She’d been about to say, if I can’t find the woman in Arlette’s will I’ll be getting ten thousand pounds, so I don’t need to worry too much about money, but kept the thought to herself. She would find the woman in the will. She was determined to. ‘I’ll get a job,’ she said.

  ‘No! Betty Dean, getting a job. No way!’

  ‘Well, it’s about time.’

  ‘Good grief, what sort of job?’

  ‘No idea. Maybe an art gallery? A boutique? An auction house? Somewhere I can start at the bottom and work my way up.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Bella said. ‘Have you even got a CV?’

  ‘Ha,’ Betty laughed, ‘and what would it say if I did? “1990–1995: Squeezed an unexceptional B.Tech Diploma in General Art and Design in around caring for crazed old lady. The End.”.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t think I’m really a CV type of a person. I think people will just have to take me as they find me.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Betty groaned. She hated it when people said ‘hmm’. ‘Hmm, what?’

  ‘Nothing. Just, you’re in London now. As amazing as you are, I’m not sure just being “you” is going to be enough to get you the job of your dreams.’

  ‘Urgh, God,’ Betty groaned. ‘You sound just like my mother.’

  ‘I am just like your mother. That’s why you love me so much. And she’s right.’ Bella paused. ‘Well, maybe we’re both wrong and you’re right. But either way I agree with her. It wouldn’t hurt to put something in writing. Talk yourself up a bit. Maybe you could say you were, God, I don’t know, Arlette’s personal assistant?’

  Betty laughed. ‘Not too far from the truth, I suppose.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘I know what you’re saying. But I think I’ll try it my way first.’ Betty smiled.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bella, ‘of course you will. You always, always do.’ They fell quiet for a moment. ‘So,’ said Bella. ‘When are you coming to visit?’

  ‘Was just about to ask you the same thing. Have you got any holiday coming up?’

  ‘Not until next month. Why don’t you come down here?’

  Betty paused and pondered the suggestion. She envisaged Bella’s bleak lodgings in a tumbledown cottage in a remote village just outside the zoo. She thought of cold fingers wrapped around chipped mugs of tea and condensation-covered windows looking out over tangled gardens and cool, flagstoned kitchens and early morning birdsong. She shuddered. She’d only just arrived in the kingdom of sirens and neon and filth and chaos, and double yellow lines as far as the eye could see. She could not yet countenance the prospect of a return to the countryside, even if it was to see her oldest, most-loved friend.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘maybe.’

  10

  THE STALLHOLDER WAS outside when Betty left the house the next morning.

  She glanced at him awkwardly, and was taken aback when he smiled at her. ‘Morning, neighbour,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Hi.’

  ‘Any more thoughts about the coat?’

  ‘Oh. Yes, definitely. Yes. I want to sell it.’

  ‘I mentioned it to my sister. She said to take it round to her studio. Any time.’

  ‘Any time, now?’

  He shrugged. ‘Yeah, now would be OK.’

  Betty hurtled back upstairs to retrieve the coat.

  ‘Here ...’ He was feeling his pockets rather randomly. She watched him as he did so, noticing that his fingers were long and slender, that he had a tattoo on the inside of his wrist and that his eyes were so brown they were almost black. ‘Here.’ He pulled a small card from the inside pocket of his jacket, and handed it to her.

  She glanced at it.

  Alexandra Brightly.

  Betty smiled. ‘Is that your name, too?’ she asked. ‘Brightly?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he smirked. ‘John Brightly. I know. Not exactly fitting. Or maybe,’ he continued, deadpan, ‘I’ve deliberately played against type all my life.’

  Betty laughed. ‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘I like it.’

  He smirked again and then turned, almost abruptly, away from her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to his back. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘No problem,’ he said.

  And that appeared to be the end of their exchange.

  She stood, for a moment, suspended in an air pocket of uncertainty, wondering what she should do next. A propos of nothing she turned left, and then left again. She found herself outside the nice house on Peter Street. As she passed by, she noticed across the street a man with a large camera in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other. He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, although the sky was far from blue. As she watched, another man joined him, also carrying a camera and a cup of coffee. They seemed to know each other, and made a few words of low-key conversation. Then they both turned and faced the house on Peter Street, as though waiting for something to happen. She watched them both for a moment or two, before realising that she now looked as strange as they did and hurrying on her way.

  Alexandra Brightly’s studio was called 20th Century Box and was next to the Oasis Sports Centre in Covent Garden. It was up two flights of scruffy stairs in a soulless building shared with a tailor and a photographer.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi, my name’s Betty, your brother, John, gave me your card. I’ve got a fur to sell.’

  ‘Oh. Cool. OK. Come in! Second floor!’

  The woman greeting Betty at the top of the stairs was tall and painfully thin, with long white-blond hair and a rather beaky nose. She was so pale, the blue of her eyes so watered down, that she almost gave the impression of albinism. She was dressed in a black chiffon shirt, a large crucifix on an overlong chain resting in the wide valley between her small breasts, and baggy jeans held together at her waist with an old leather belt. She held a fake cigarette in her right hand.

  ‘Wow, wow, wow,’ she said as her gaze fell upon the fur held like a slaughtered animal in Betty’s arms. ‘Wow,’ she said again, resting the fake cigarette on a pattern-cutting table and putting an arm out towards the coat, running fingers as long as chopsticks through the fur. ‘This looks fucking awesome. Fuck. I fucking love fur.’

  Her voice was husky and smoky and her accent was half public school, half East End. She smiled at Betty, revealing smoker’s teeth. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I get a bit carried away sometimes. Especial
ly by the fur. It’s so wrong, yet it’s mm,’ she caressed the fur again, ‘sooo right. Let’s have a look then.’ She pulled half-moon glasses from the pattern-cutting table and rested them halfway down her aquiline nose. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, now that the fur was unfolded on the table, ‘oh, yes. This is amazingly good. Where did you say you got it from?’

  ‘It was my grandmother’s.’

  ‘Class act,’ she said, opening it up and feeling the lining. ‘Oh yes, it’s a Gloria Maurice. I thought it would be. They always put an extra couple of animals in, just for the hell of it, you know.’ She peered at Betty over the top of her glasses and smiled. ‘Yeah,’ she said, turning back to the fur. ‘I could definitely buy this from you. Definitely. I’m working with a production company right now, as it happens, on a period drama – nineteen forties – they’ll love this. Let’s have a proper look at it.’ She swivelled an Anglepoise lamp over the coat and began to examine it in minute detail.

  Betty glanced around the studio as she did so. It was jammed full of free-standing clothes rails, each one packed with plastic-wrapped clothes, divided into themes by laminated signs: ‘30s dresses’, ‘Flapper dresses’, ‘50s Cocktail’, ‘70s/Hippy beach-wear’. There were cabinets full of sunglasses and silk scarves, and mannequins in silk ball gowns and bondage punk. There were clutch bags and corsages, stilettos and bovver boots. The walls were hung with framed stills from films and TV series, and there was Alexandra snuggled up against Colin Firth and with her arm around the shoulder of Emilia Fox.

  ‘So,’ said Alexandra, turning the coat over, ‘how do you know my brother?’

  ‘Oh. No. I don’t know him. Not in that way. I live in the flat next to his stall. On the market. He just mentioned you, said you might be interested in the fur. I think it was fairly obvious to him that I’m not really a fur kind of girl.’

  ‘Aw,’ said Alexandra, facetiously, ‘bless.’

  Betty recognised the dynamic; it was the same as the one between Bella and her younger brother, the grudging affection, the condescending praise.