One Step Too Far (8 page)

Angela stopped screaming and pulled herself up into the only chair in the room, a proper dressing table chair, with gold legs and padded arms, covered in faded pink velvet with a single kidney-shaped stain on the seat. She dangled her legs sullenly and stayed silent – she knew not to argue with her mother when she took that tone with her, she didn’t want to get a whack.

Ruth changed out of her evening dress and stood before the mirror in her matching bra and pants, in lacy petrol blue, still wearing her high heels, still sexy. She wiped at her armpits with a damp flannel and sprayed antiperspirant under her arms, across her still-flat stomach and around the tops of her legs. Then she put on plain black Capri trousers and a cap-sleeved tight black top. She left her hair and make-up as it was, and in this light and with the way she walked she could have been a raven-haired Marilyn Monroe. She took Angela's hand, firmly rather than roughly, she obviously wasn’t
too
cross with her this time, and they made their way along the corridor and out into the smoky club, where Ted was waiting for them at the bar. Ted bought Angela a lemonade and a packet of prawn cocktail crisps, and Ruth’s one drink turned to three or four, and Angela finally fell asleep, jack-knifed over a barstool with her head resting between her thin little arms on the beer-sopped counter-top.

11

I sit in the cafe with Angel and I'm surprised at how hungry I am. It’s run by a nice old Greek couple and the coffee is good but the food is great. It’s like I haven’t eaten in months, and I wolf down egg and bacon, mushrooms, beans, fried tomatoes, toast, my stomach telling me there’s more living in store for me yet, even if my heart doesn't believe it. Angel seems tired when you look closer, but she retains that sweetness at the core that only some people have, and it transcends the bags under her eyes.

“What are you up to today, babe?” says Angel.

“I don’t know, I need to go food shopping, maybe get to the bank if I can face it, and then tomorrow I need to start looking for a job.” The tasks seem insurmountable.

I pause, try to lighten the mood. “One thing I must do today though is buy some flip-flops – how the hell d'you cope in that bathroom?”

Angel laughs. “I try to shower at work mostly. And anyway I’m not here for long babe, I just needed somewhere where my bastard ex-boyfriend couldn’t find me. I wouldn’t normally live in such a pit, but needs must and all that.”

“Oh.” I look down.

“What’s your excuse, babe?” says Angel gently. The kindness pricks at my eyes.

“Same as you really, I suppose. And I don’t mean to sound like a weirdo, I know we’ve only just met, but I thought it would be all right in that hideous house, with you there.”

“Don’t worry, babe,” Angel says. “I’m not going just yet.”

I feel ridiculous that I’ve formed such an attachment to Angel, but she doesn’t seem to mind – I get the sense that she’s used to looking after people, that she likes it, likes to feel needed. She seems in some ways more grown up than I’ve ever been, although I must have 10 years on her, and I used to be a wife, a mother.

“Well, we’ll have to keep in touch when you do go,” I say limply.

“Of course we will, babe. Anyway, I’m here now and there’s no-one else in the house I’d want to hang out with.” She smiles at me and there’s wickedness in her eyes. She puts on a terrible American accent. “Don’t you worry Miss Brown. You and me, we’re gonna have us some
fun
.”

I cheer up, like a screaming child who’s been given an ice-cream, and although Angel is done with eating she's happy to stay, and so we sit for longer and order more coffees and chat about everything and nothing, and I finish the buttered toast that’s piled up between us, every last piece.

When we get home, Angel goes straight to bed as she’s been working all night, and as I don’t know what else to do I check out the kitchen, just to see if it’s empty. I haven’t yet sussed out who in the house does what, when or whether they work, who’s going to be in when. As there’s no living room I assumed there’d always be plenty of people in the kitchen, but so far it’s been fairly quiet. I’ve not seen Bev, the girl from Barnsley who had her chocolate stolen, since that first evening, but she’s here now, busy at the sink. It’s too late to not go in, she’s heard me. She turns her head over her shoulder and beams at me. “Morning!” she says. “Fucking dogs, I’ve just stood in fucking dog shit. I don’t know why people have the little fuckers, they could at least pick their crap up but people round here are so fucking IGNORANT.” I realise that Bev has her wooden clog in her hand, and she’s scraping at it with a table knife, over a stack of dirty dishes in the sink. She sees my face.

“Oh, don’t worry, washing up liquid is amazing stuff, it gets rid of 99.9% of germs. I read an article on it, it's all fine.”

I’m at a loss how to respond to this. Australian Erica enters into the pause. She’s wearing an aubergine skirt suit that shows off her incredibly petite figure and her plain face is thick with make-up and her dark hair is pulled up in one of those big hair clamps. I smile at her but she just scowls at me, then she goes over to the sink and sees what Bev’s doing.

“For God’s sake, Bev!” says Erica.

“Oh, get over it Erica, I’m going to clean up afterwards.”

“That is DISGUSTING,” says Erica, and although I don’t much like her I have to agree with her on this.

Bev laughs and carries on cleaning her shoe. Erica turns on her kitten heels and stomps out of the kitchen, slamming the door.

“Good luck with the interview,” calls Bev cheerily, then under her breath mutters, “You sour-faced cunt.” I’m usually offended by that word, but I find myself sympathising in this case, almost wanting to laugh.

I hesitate but she seems friendly. “Bev,” I say. “Do you know where I can buy flip-flops round here, you know, the rubber ones?”

“What? D'you think you’re in fucking Skegness love? D’you want a fucking rubber ring too?” Bev laughs at her own joke, but I don’t mind, I like Bev, with her dreadful language and total disregard for social niceties. It’s refreshing.

“Try down the Nags Head, there’s loads of cheap pound shops, and shoe shops too, you might get something. While you’re there, can you get some bin-liners, big strong ones, we’re always running out.” This is the first profanity-free sentence I’ve heard from Bev. I acquiesce meekly and leave the dog-shit stench of the kitchen.

As Bev predicts, I struggle to find rubber flip-flops in Holloway. I look for a hanging wash bag too but people don’t seem to know what I’m talking about when I ask about that. Once I’ve exhausted my search I don’t know what to do again – what are runaways
meant
to do with their time? I decide to explore, try to get my bearings in my new neighbourhood, take my mind off things. I head off the main road and walk for what feels like miles in vaguely the direction of home, through worn-out streets full of satellite dishes and crumbling stonework and wheelie bins. The odd house has full on bars on the windows and it seems to me like a horrid way to live, they must be in their own private jail too. As I meander aimlessly, I turn left out of another sad street and without warning find myself in a square full of grand well-kept houses with a beautiful garden in the middle, and I sit on the grass and tilt my head to feel the sun on my face and it feels nice, bearable, it’s not quite so hot today. A smartly-dressed mother sits on a bench and spoons a yogurt towards an invisible child somewhere in the depths of a bright red buggy, and her smile is wide and delighted and I find that I’m just about OK with this scene, if I look away quickly. Two hot-looking young men in suit trousers and open shirts eat sandwiches out of thick waxed paper swilled down with cans of Diet Coke. I lie down with my head on my bag and I am so exquisitely tired it feels like I’ll never get up again, it’s like I’m being pulled through the grass to the earth’s core, to the land of forgetting, into endless sleep...

I wake up with a jolt and have no idea what time it is and I'm panicky again. What the hell was I doing sleeping, especially with all this cash on me, how foolish is that? I decide I must try to open a bank account after all, I can't keep walking around with so much money on me, especially round here, so I head back roughly the way I came, through similar unloved streets, past more untaxed cars and scuffed front doors, feeling anxious this time about being mugged. I can’t find a bank anywhere and don’t like the look of anyone to ask, I’m being paranoid now, so I walk quickly, keeping going until finally I find one on the Holloway Road. I think I can open some type of pre-paid account which will be good enough for the time being, and it should be easy enough: I really am Catherine Emily Brown, it says so on my passport. I’m oddly grateful to my mother now for being adamant my names sounded better that way round, as if she didn’t have enough to worry about when she’d just had twins. It makes the practicalities easier at least.

The branch is small and dismal, and I wait for ages watching people come and go until a bustling woman in a black polyester suit comes out from the back and leads me to a dreary little office with a half empty leaflet dispenser drawing the line between me and her across the desk. She’s cordial enough but I can tell she’s suspicious that I have no proof of address and nearly £2,000 in fifty pound notes in my handbag. I tell her this rubbish story even though she doesn’t ask, about how I’ve recently come back from living abroad and I don’t think she believes me but she opens the account anyway, she must have seen all sorts in this branch.

I feel calmer now and carry on with my aimless shopping, drifting in and out of shops, barely noticing what’s for sale, oblivious to the other customers, but in one of the street’s many charity shops I find a dusty old print of those men in New York sat on a crane, dangling their feet high in the sky, nonchalant, God-like. I’m not sure I like the picture much, it’s a bit vertigo-inducing, but it’s only £7 and I think of the blank bumpy wall above the length of my bed, and the proportions are right, so I buy it anyway. I go into the supermarket two doors down and it's busy, full of joyless people buying multi-packs of crisps and jumbo bottles of fizzy drink for their already fat children.
Look after them
, I want to shout.
You’re lucky to have them.
I am officially a nutter.

I hold my nerve for long enough to buy cereal, fruit, salad in a bag, chocolate (will it be safe in the house, dare I?) and several ready meals, I’m not up to cooking from scratch yet. They have paper plates in the supermarket and I’m tempted, but I think that looks a bit weird, to use my own plates, so I try not to think about Bev and her unsavoury habits and resolve to get on with it – she’s probably right about washing up liquid anyway. It’s hard to carry my food shopping as well as the picture, it's heavy, I bought more stuff than I meant to. The plastic handles are digging deep into my wrists and I'm reminded of Caroline. I wonder fleetingly what she’ll think when she finds out I’ve disappeared, whether she’ll be upset, but it seems I don’t care how she feels anymore, not one iota. I sit at the front of the half-empty bus facing backwards, in the seats you’re meant to give up for disabled people. The other passengers look sad and hot, as if they’re melting, and I remind myself that I’m not the only one with a history. The lady opposite me is swelling at the ankle joints and as she shifts in her seat there's a whiff of fresh sweat. She’s wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt, I didn’t think they made them anymore, and then I wonder that I even notice. Maybe it’s another sign, after the laughter with Angel and the thrill of my decorating frenzy, that I’m slowly waking up at last, getting my senses back, rearranging the threads of my personality so I can be Cat Brown now instead of Emily Coleman. I realise that Cat seems to be different from Emily already, brittler, perhaps more like Caroline? I shudder. It’s all too strange. Here I am, Ms Catherine Brown, sat on a bus in Holloway. I officially live in London, it says so on my bank statement. Here I am, out here, alive, unfindable.

12

Emily had warned Ben about her family, and so he was prepared, to an extent. “My mum’s lovely and I adore my dad," she'd said. "Although he does seem a little distant at times, you’ll see what I mean. But I'm afraid Caroline can be a bit difficult if the mood takes her. She’s great once you get to know her though, and I’m sure she’s going to love you.”

Ben found it peculiar that Emily had an identical twin. He found himself thinking weird things like what if he got the two of them mixed up, what if he found Caroline attractive, how can there be two Emilies in the world? As the car pulled up he felt unusually anxious. He knew he was in love with Emily, even knew he wanted to marry her one day – though he hadn’t actually asked her yet, it was still much too soon – so meeting her family was a big deal. He needed them to like him.

The house was a steep-roofed modern house, built in the seventies, with white-washed wood cladding, four bedrooms, a neat front garden and a shiny BMW in the driveway. It was a bit too
ordinary
for someone as special as Emily, he felt, and he thought of his own family’s detached house with crunchy gravel and sweeping front garden, and decided that that was the kind of place they'd have one day – what with him being an accountant and Emily a lawyer, they’d be able to afford it eventually. He found it odd that he was thinking like this, that it had still only been a month since the night he’d paid a fortune for a cab-trip from Manchester to Emily’s place in Chester. But there again the parachute trip had been three months before that, and he’d thought about her pretty much constantly since then. He couldn’t believe they’d never run into each other at work, he’d been on the lookout for her every single day. And then when he had finally bumped into her it had been out on the street and he’d been unprepared and, worse, on the way to a course with Yasmin, his deeply annoying colleague. So all he’d managed in his shock was to say hello – he hadn’t even stopped to ask Emily how she was, whether she’d got over the trauma of her jump, anything to show that he liked her, as friends at least, that would have been a start. Ben smiled, as he remembered how pissed off he’d been all day at his course, how he hadn’t been able to concentrate, how he might as well have not gone at all, he was so angry with himself for blowing it.