Kiss Me First (15 page)

Throughout the pre-check-out stage I had been practising writing as Tess, under her supervision. Because I had access to her email and Facebook accounts, and looked at them more regularly throughout the day than she did, I would often be the first to see when a message came through for her, or when someone wrote on her wall. So, we had this system set up where I would write a response to the message, as Tess, and save it in her Drafts folder. Then, when she signed in to her account, she would look at my efforts and critique them over Skype that evening, like she was my teacher.

‘Don’t use
yo
as a greeting for Misha Jennings,’ she’d say. ‘I only say that to Daniel Woolly, it’s this little thing we have. For Misha, I usually use
Babe
at the beginning, but sign off
la di da
. It’s a reference to the film
Annie Hall
.
’

Or,

‘Just because I wrote to Alex that Steve’s party was
A.W.E.S.O.M.E.
, doesn’t mean that you should put full stops in every adjective I use. I just do that occasionally for fun, it’s not a habit.’

There were many little things to learn, codes, in-jokes, habits, and although I noted everything in my files I still didn’t feel confident enough to write as her without cross-referencing and double-checking. And, of course, there were still the mysteries which had never been resolved: in 2008, for instance, she made several references to someone she called ‘the Zetty’, but try as I might I couldn’t discover who this person was or why she gave them an unnecessary definite article.

Then there were the photos. I had to find appropriate backgrounds on Flickr, which could pass for Sointula without being too distinctive, which had been taken at the right time of year and showed the current weather for the island and which also suited the poses Tess would adopt in them.

For that first month, then, I left the flat only to stock up on food. Tesco Extra was open twenty-four hours a day, and so once a week I would take a break from work and go in the dead of night, at 4 a.m., when it would only be me, shelf-stackers plugged into earphones and a solitary cashier too drained to attempt chit-chat. Thus, my contact with the ‘real’ world was minimized to the point where I could effectively ignore its existence.

My own life, such as it was, I put to one side. I still checked my Facebook and email each day, the former out of habit and the latter in case there was a message from Adrian. Aside from the weekly quotes he sent me through Red Pill, I hadn’t heard from him since check-out – and actually, for some time before that. His Red Pill address was the only one I had for him, my only means of contact, but he had made it clear that we shouldn’t discuss the subject on there for fear of eavesdropping hackers. I knew he could find my regular email from my registration details on the site and so presumed we would communicate about the project on that.

So far I hadn’t needed his help, and I suspected that he was leaving me alone in order to demonstrate his trust in me. However, it would be good, I thought, if there was a line of communication open for if and when I should require it: after all, on the Heath that day he had stated that if I took the job on he would be there for me every step of the way, always on hand for advice and support.

There was nothing until, one evening, sixteen days into the project, I checked my email expecting nothing more than the usual spam to find a message advising me that I had a Facebook Friend Request.

This was not a common event. It had been several months since I’d received one and that had been a case of mistaken identity, from a man I didn’t know who addressed me as ‘babz’ and said I had been ‘looking fine’ the night before.

This new request was similarly from someone I didn’t recognize: a woman called Ava Root. It was a distinctive name that I was sure I would have remembered, had I come across it before, and I was about to consign her to spam when I saw there was a message attached to the request:
Hey there, how’s it going?

It was an innocuous statement, but there was something about that
hey there
that struck a chord, and it was only a moment before I recalled that it was a phrase Adrian used at the start of each of his podcasts. It was, essentially, his catchphrase, and he would say the words differently each time – sometimes with a flourish, like a game-show host; at other times quickly and quietly, giving them hardly any emphasis at all.

I hadn’t considered that he might contact me through Facebook but that was only because I hadn’t found him, Adrian Dervish, when I had searched for him before. It hadn’t crossed my mind that he might set up a fake account to communicate with me, even though it now made sense: after all, why would any hackers be interested in messages between me and my old friend Ava?

My instincts were confirmed when I accepted the friend request and looked at Ava Root’s profile. It was blank, devoid of any information save her name, and I was her only friend. Even the choice of ‘Ava Root’, it now occurred to me, signalled that it was Adrian behind it: the name had the same amount of letters as, and sounded similar to, that of his heroine, Ayn Rand.

I felt pleased and relieved he had finally initiated contact – even though, as I say, I felt I was handling the situation adequately on my own and had no specific questions or issues to bring up. I replied to his message with a brief summary of the progress of the project so far, using suitably elliptical terms just to be on the safe side. If someone somehow happened to chance upon the message, they wouldn’t have a clue what I was going on about.
The subject’s journey to her destination went smoothly; she is settling in well and exploring the island. Mother: seven email exchanges so far and one request for a phone call, deferred by the subject –
that sort of thing. At the end, I added:
Just to confirm, we are now communicating through this channel, rather than RP?

A reply came a day later:
Good work. Yes, communicate through here.

Then, the following week, came a less welcome intrusion from the wider world. Dozing on the sofa one afternoon, I was rudely awoken by the door buzzer. I couldn’t account for the caller: it was Thursday, and I had already received my money for that week. I answered the door to an Indian man in a stained white shirt, who explained that he was from the restaurant below.

‘There is a problem with water,’ he said.

I didn’t know what he was talking about, so at his urging put my towelling robe on over my pyjamas and followed him down to the restaurant. It was the first time I had been inside. As it was only 3 p.m. and they hadn’t yet opened, there were no customers, the tables bare except for paper tablecloths. Christmas lights were gaffer-taped to the walls and there was a stale, yeasty smell in the air.

The man gesticulated towards the bar area, where another waiter was mopping the counter with wads of kitchen roll. There was a leak coming from my flat, he said – and, indeed, I could see a large damp patch on the ceiling, which would have been beneath my bathroom. He explained that the water had got into the wiring and electronic equipment on the bar and now neither the phone nor the card-reader machine worked, without which they could not operate their business. It was clear they expected me to do something about it.

I will spare you the details of what transpired, but in a nutshell: one of the waiters called a plumber, who revealed that the pipes under my bathroom were leaking. He would need to rip up the floor to fix them. Plus, the waiter told me, I would need to pay for the damage to the restaurant. All in all, it would cost in the region of £600.

‘You’ll be able to get it back on the insurance,’ said the plumber, an overly cheery man with a bumpy, shaven head.

The problem was, I didn’t have any insurance. I hadn’t thought to get any when we bought the flat. I didn’t have any savings, either. The money I got for my Tess work was just enough to cover day to day living expenses; it hadn’t occurred to me that I might need extra for a contingency. I Googled how to get cash quick, and was directed to a number of companies offering private loans. I called the first number and a man agreed to lend me £600 at an absurdly high interest rate.

It was clear that in order to pay off this loan, I would need some extra income. I emailed Damian asking for my job back, and received a curt reply saying that there was no work available for me and, by the way, he had found the manner of my resignation rude and unprofessional. So I searched online for another software-testing job I could do from the flat. But the few jobs on offer were all office-based: besides, they all seemed to require a degree, which I didn’t have, as well as references, which I doubted Damian would give me. I suppose I didn’t appreciate that, dull as it was working for Testers 4 U, it was unusual to be allowed to work from home and choose your own hours.

Getting another, ‘normal’ job was not an option. For a start, I simply didn’t have the time. My work with Tess took up most of the night, and I had to sleep during the day. But even if time were not an issue, previous experiences had proven that I wasn’t suited to working with other people. First, in the summer after my A-levels, I had tried volunteering at the Cats’ Protection League charity shop on Kentish Town Road. One of the other volunteers was an obese man who smoked, and the smell when he came back into the shop after a cigarette, the nicotine mixed with musty old clothes, was so repulsive I couldn’t last longer than a morning.

Then there was the week at Caffè Nero. I was given a hairnet and assigned to the pastries section. A customer would give their coffee order to my colleague on the till, a boy called Ashim, who would ask whether they wanted any pastries; and if they said yes, I had to pick up the specified item with a pair of tongs and put it in a bag or on a plate, depending on whether it was for takeaway or eat in. Sellotaped below the view of the customers was a laminated sheet showing photos of all the different products.

After an hour I was about to tell the supervisor I wasn’t prepared to continue in such a role when she got in there first, telling me off for eating the bits of pastry that had flaked off the croissants – even though, as I pointed out, the flakes were a waste product that couldn’t be sold. She changed me to washing-up duties, which was better because I could have my back to the customers, but before long she found fault with me there, too. To alleviate the tedium I had decided to hum, seeing if I could hold the same note continuously for the time each item took to be washed up, and apparently it was disturbing the customers. I was determined to keep humming, though, and lowered the volume of the hum by degrees until she stopped coming over to complain.

During our fifteen-minute breaks I sat in a back room on a box of paper towels, listening to the boom-boom-boom music coming from Ashim’s headphones as he texted his friends and watching Lucy, the barista, shaking the make-up samples she had just stolen from Superdrug out of the sleeves of her jacket.

When I left, it wasn’t in a big, dramatic rage; I didn’t rip off my hairnet and storm out. One lunchtime, I went out to get my crisps and just didn’t go back. It was a Friday and I was owed that week’s pay, but I didn’t ask for it. Mum understood about me leaving. I think she was pleased to have me back with her.

Tess once used coffee shops to illustrate how her varying moods affected her behaviour. ‘It’s like, when I’m on a high I’ll haggle with the till guy at Starbucks, try and get 50p off my double espresso,’ she had explained. ‘Just for fun, to prove my charm. And when I’m low, I’ll feel like I’m not even worthy of accepting my change.’

Anyway, to get back to my point: it wasn’t possible for me to get a ‘normal’ job. So that’s when I thought about getting a lodger.

I probably needn’t add that the idea of someone else living in the flat was not an enticing one. It wasn’t the fact that I would have to move out of my bedroom and both work and sleep in the front room; I didn’t mind that. But I didn’t relish the thought of having to make idle chitchat and cater to a stranger’s demands. Everything was the way I liked it in the flat, but I acknowledged that the way I lived might not be to everyone’s taste, and that they might desire furniture and curtains and more than two teaspoons. It would also mean being much more careful about my Tess work. As mentioned, up until then I had openly displayed my notes on the wall above my desk. I would have to get a lock for my door for when I was out, and perhaps pin my large
Lord of the Rings
poster up over the notes, for added security, when I was at home.

Nonetheless, a lodger seemed the most logical option – indeed, my only real option. I decided that the best thing to do was advertise the room for a low rent, the minimum I needed to pay off my loan, and make it clear that, in return, the lodger would have to accept certain rules.

I posted an ad in the Room to Rent section on Gumtree.com.

Small bedroom in shared flat in Rotherhithe. It’s essential you have a quiet nature and spend a lot of time out. When you’re in, we “keep out of each other’s hair”. Curry fans will be well catered for. £60 a week.

Within ten minutes of the ad going up I received seven replies. By the end of the day, there were over a hundred. I didn’t realize that cheap accommodation was in such demand in London. I composed a random shortlist of candidates from every tenth email I received and invited them to come and view the flat. I arranged the meetings for 3 p.m., so that the onion smell from the restaurant would be at its peak, in order to avoid any later fuss when they discovered this factor. And indeed, some made their excuses within minutes. For others, the sticking point was the single bed.

Most, though, were not so fussy, even trying to think of positive things to say about the flat. ‘Very minimal-istic!’ one middle-aged man said, and proceeded to tell me at great, unwanted length about how he too was in a ‘transitional phase’ of his life. He asked if it was all right if his four-year-old daughter came to stay every other weekend. I informed him that it was not. One girl from Poland tried to engage me in conversation, asking me what kind of music I liked and so forth, until I realized that she was in effect auditioning
me
to see whether we were going to get on. I had to make it clear to her that I had no need of a friend. I just wanted someone who would pay the rent and be out the majority of the time.