Don't Get Me Wrong (11 page)

Jake looked at his watch. “Perhaps we ought to move on?”

“I'm Steve,” said the large man sitting next to Brian. He had a film of sweat across his forehead. “Communications manager.”

“And why did you want to work here?”

Jake's taken over, thought Kim. He must be one of those people who like meetings.

“It seemed like something I could get my teeth into. A good opportunity. Career progression—”

“So, Kim,” said Jake, cutting him off. “Over to you.”

Everyone was looking at her. She took a deep breath. “I'm Kim. Research assistant. I wanted to work here because I believe it's wrong that people should be homeless in Britain in 2006. A home is not just a roof over your head. It's the place where you feel safe and secure, where you can put down roots and feel part of your community. I want to make a difference. I want to stick up for people who don't have a voice.”

She was conscious of everyone staring at her. Oh no, she thought, her heart sinking. I've done it again. Misjudged the mood. Played
Hamlet
when everyone wanted
Wallace & Gromit
.

“And the interesting fact?” said Jake.

Kim looked at him, her expression desperate.

Jake smiled. “We'll come back to you when you're ready. I'm Jake. Head of research. I joined the charity some years ago. But these are exciting times. With Louisa as CEO, we're going to change the way we view homelessness in this country.”

What a brilliant answer, thought Kim, wishing she'd said something similar.

“And what's your interesting fact?” said Alisha.

“Catherine Zeta-Jones,” said Jake casually, “is my cousin.”

After the meeting had broken up and the others had gone back to their desks, Kim said, with some surprise, “I had no idea.”

“What?”

“That you were related to Catherine Zeta-Jones.”

Jake shot her quick glance from his pale blue eyes. “Oh,” he said, “were we supposed to be telling the truth?”

•  •  •

Sitting in the stalls at the Royal Opera House—the first night of a new production of Bizet's
Carmen
—Harry checked his phone was on vibrate. It was too early, obviously. A month too early. But these days he didn't want to be out of contact. She hadn't asked for him to be at the birth. But he wanted to be on hand, in case.

In case of what? He didn't know. Which made it worse. Sometimes the thought of Eva facing a danger he didn't understand made him light-headed with fear.

He glanced sideways. This particular client—a fund manager who regularly gave him a lot of business and always voted him best analyst in the Extel and
Institutional Investor
surveys—liked
culture. So Harry had done his homework. Over drinks beforehand, they'd discussed Tomma Abts winning the Turner Prize and the forthcoming production of
Giselle
at the Coliseum. Should they book tickets for Gilbert and George at the Tate in February? I will be whoever you want me to be, thought Harry. I will discuss Italian sopranos, prima ballerinas, and career retrospectives. I will be as educated, cultivated, and sophisticated as you are.

“You are a complete fraud,” Eva had said, her eyes full of affection.

“You could think of it another way. I'm like your best-ever reflection in a mirror. Making you feel good about yourself. Giving you hope. Who knows? I might be the invisible angel of the City. The little ray of sunshine that keeps people going.”

“You? A little ray of sunshine?”

“Some people quite like me, you know,” said Harry, pretending to be offended.

In the seat next to him, his client settled back with an air of excited anticipation. “I think we might be in for a treat, you know.”

“I'm looking forward to hearing Anna Caterina Antonacci,” said Harry. “Such an incredibly versatile voice.”

“Power, passion, and sensuality.”

As the lights went down, Harry curled his fingers round his phone.

•  •  •

“That's it, then,” said Jake. “Checked, referenced, and legaled. In print and online. The London Homelessness Report.”

“Ready for the media launch.”

“Which our esteemed patron will deliver next month.”

Kim leant back in her chair. “Will we be allowed to go?”

“To the House of Commons? You bet.”

“I've never been to the House of Commons. I mean, not inside it.”

Jake smiled. “It's not as grand as you'd think. Just big rooms with nice stone windows. And you have to queue for hours to get past security.”

“I don't look like a terrorist, do I?”

“Nobody looks like a terrorist,” said Jake. “That's the point.”

He stopped smiling. For a moment, neither could look away.

Jake turned back to his screen. “Right. Enough. Let's close up and get out of here.”

It was eight o'clock. The offices were deserted. Kim, keeping her voice light, said, “Do you have time for a drink?”

“A drink?” Jake was looking at his keyboard.

“If you're not busy.”

“Don't you have to get back to that hugely pregnant sister of yours?”

“She's fine. She's got a friend over for supper.” She's got Harry over for supper. “I don't live with her, anyway. I live with Izzie.”

“Ah, yes,” said Jake. “The one with the secret love life.”

“Well, I don't know she's got a secret love life. She's just never at home.” Home? Who am I kidding? It's a smelly bedsit.

“I bet he's gorgeous,” said Jake, peering round the screen. “Brad Pitt meets Will Smith.”

Kim laughed.

“What about you?” His voice rose out of the darkness somewhere behind the monitor.

“What?”

“Do you have a secret love life?”

She heard the sound of a drawer shutting. After a while, she said, “I don't have any kind of love life.”

Jake pushed back his chair so that he sat in the pool of light from the desk lamp. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It's true.”

“Someone pretty like you.”

Her heart gave a little skip of delight. People called her tough. People called her uncompromising. No one had ever called her pretty. “I find most men very boring.”

After a long pause, during which they both carefully examined each other's expression, Jake said, “Including me?”

“Oh no,” said Kim, in a clear voice, “I don't find you boring at all.”

•  •  •

“You sit down here now, Eva,” said Christine. “There's plenty of room.”

This was a lie. It was always a lie. There was never any room in Christine's kitchen. She had four children and nine grandchildren, as well as cousins, second cousins, and family friends all over southeast London, and she believed it was her duty to feed them all. Jamaican food, of course—jerk chicken, rice and peas, saltfish with cabbage. But she was equally at home with roast beef, sweet and sour pork, spaghetti bolognese, and Thai curry.
Christine was always at the stove. She moved the pans around from ring to ring like a juggler spinning plates, admonishing those that failed to boil and congratulating those that were simmering just nicely. She coaxed her food. She urged it to excel. She did the same with people. Stand in Christine's kitchen long enough and you found yourself with goals you didn't even know existed. Work in a shop? No, you want to own a shop. Own a shop? No, you want a nationwide chain. A nationwide chain? What's wrong with you? There's a whole world out there. All you need is hard work and determination. Haven't you heard of Lady Scotland? Andrea Levy? Sir Trevor McDonald?

So far, Christine had produced an IT consultant, a teacher, a social worker, and a junior doctor. If everything went to plan, she had in the pipeline a barrister, a bishop, and the first black prime minister. She excused the smallest grandchildren. But the youngest member of the family, just six months old, had hands big enough for a concert pianist.

“So how are you, Eva? Ready for that baby to be born?”

“Oh yes,” said Eva, with feeling. It was hard to believe that someone so slight was managing to carry such an enormous bump. The huge mound of her stomach stuck out at right angles. It looked as if only willpower was keeping her upright. “Nature's very clever. Towards the end, you don't even worry about the pain. You're so desperate for the baby to come out that you'd hang upside down from the ceiling if someone told you to.”

The noise in the kitchen was incredible. It was the afternoon of Christmas Eve and Christine was minding some of her grandchildren while she peeled potatoes, made bread sauce, and stuffed the turkey for lunch the next day. While she clattered
about with pans and knives, a small boy was racing a fire engine with a high-pitched siren round the table legs, a baby in a high chair was banging the fridge door with a metal spoon, and someone in the hallway was playing the recorder. By the back door, apparently oblivious to the pandemonium, sat Lewis, reading the paper. Once, years ago, Kim had asked Damaris—her best friend at school and Christine's youngest—whether her dad minded living in a house that was always packed full of people. Damaris, frowning, had said she didn't think he even noticed.

Kim had never heard Lewis speak. He was, as Christine always said, a man of few words. But when Damaris got her letter accepting her into medical school, and Kim had danced her round the kitchen shouting, “You did it! You did it!,” he had looked up from his paper and smiled.

“So are you girls ready for Christmas?”

We would never have managed without Christine, thought Kim. In the early days after Dad left, when Mum was out somewhere drinking cocktails, Christine would appear at the front door—small, round, and fierce, glasses falling down her nose—and somehow, with a few disapproving tuts, would usher us from our cold and empty house to the chaos of family life next door. After supper, Damaris and I would be packed upstairs to do our homework, and Eva would stay at the kitchen table, gradually thawing in the warmth of Christine's concern.

Eva pulled a face. “Not really. I can't face the crowds.”

The baby threw the spoon to the floor. It's not shopping we can't face, thought Kim, bending down to pick it up. It's Christmas itself. It will be the first one we won't be spending next door
to Christine. Although Eva's flat in Peckham Rye looked quite festive with its red tinsel and white fairy lights.

“And when's your mother coming?”

Kim and Eva looked at each other.

“She isn't,” said Kim. “It'll just be us.”

Christine had never once criticized Grace, not even in the early days when she realized that Kim and Eva had been left alone with no food in the house. But Kim could see now, from the tightening round her mouth, that Christine was struggling to understand. “She's not coming home for Christmas?”

The small boy, to everyone's intense relief, picked up his flashing fire engine and ran down the hall to the front room.

“She's been invited to spend it with friends.”

One friend, to be more specific. A widower called Jean-Marc. Who lived in a villa with olive and lemon and oleander trees.

“So come here tomorrow,” said Christine, “on Christmas Day. There's plenty of room.”

“We've already bought the turkey,” said Kim hastily. This wasn't completely true. But she'd remembered, on her way home from work, to buy a small chicken, a bag of potatoes, and a box of mince pies. And there was no way—even though it was a genuine invitation, and somehow everyone always fitted in—that she and Eva wanted to make Christine's guests even more squashed than usual.

Christine peered at them both over the top of her glasses. “But she'll be here for the baby?”

“Oh yes,” said Kim, even though she knew her mother wouldn't be here for the birth either.

I'm not good with babies, darling. They're just so—unpleasant.

There was a ring on the doorbell.

“That will be Damaris,” said Christine proudly. “Back from the hospital.”

They listened to a hubbub of voices in the hall. Kim, who'd been standing in the kitchen doorway, turned round with a smile. And found herself face-to-face with Harry.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, leaning down to kiss her.

She dodged.

“Harry!” said Christine, waving a wooden spoon at him. “You get more handsome every time I see you.”

“Here,” he said, handing her a bottle in a twist of red tissue paper. “Something for tomorrow.”

“What do you think, Eva? Isn't he a good-looking man?”

“If I didn't know you better,” said Harry, “I might think you were trying to get us together.”

“I wouldn't dare. You young people will make up your own minds.”

Harry grinned. “That's not what you really think.”

“What I think is that no one understands what's going on with you two.”

“I'm amazed they've allowed you the day off,” said Kim, anxious to change the subject. “Doesn't the stock market grind to a halt without you?”

“Built any flats recently?”

“We're a campaigning charity,” said Kim coldly. “We get central government to commit funds nationally to the crisis of homelessness.”

“Give me five minutes,” said Harry, “and I could raise all the money you need for the next five years.”

Kim, pink with fury, was opening her mouth to retaliate when Eva said, “Have you heard, Harry? Kim's got a new boyfriend.”

The baby threw the spoon on the floor again.

Oh, Eva, wailed Kim inside. You weren't supposed to tell anyone. “He's not a boyfriend.”

“Really?” said Harry, bending down to pick up the spoon. “What's his name?”

“Jake,” said Eva.

“You must bring him here,” said Christine, “so we can meet him.”