When I Was Invisible (24 page)

‘Marshall must find it very comforting to know there's someone like you looking out for him,' I say. I drain my orange juice from my glass. I've bought the drinks all night – wine for her, orange juice for me. I stand up, pull on my coat. ‘I have to go,' I say to her.

‘What? I thought we were going to stay out for a bit, have something to eat? Maybe go back to yours and crack open that bottle I got you?'

‘Eliza, do you know what Marshall is doing tonight?' I ask her.

‘Erm, it's Friday, and his son isn't coming over this weekend so he's probably out with friends. Why do you want to know?' she asks.

‘I was just double-checking,' I say. I hook my bag on to my shoulder. ‘Thanks for the drink. Don't worry about rushing your drink to leave with me. On my way out I'll let Marshall know you're over here. I'm sure he'll be thrilled to see you.'

She spins in her seat, and feigns surprise when she sees him over at the bar, having just arrived with his group of friends.
Poor man. Poor, poor man
. Without another word to her, I walk over to him to let him know that his ‘friend' is sitting over in the corner. I don't need to add that she's blatantly brought me along to stalk him on a night out.

My favourite place to wash and rest during the day became the library. I needed the day centre, and it was helpful being there, but being in the library made me feel normal. Every morning I would ring the three agencies I had signed up with from one of the payphones in Birmingham New Street station, would find out if I had any work that day. If I didn't have any cleaning work, I would walk down to the library, go into the toilets the moment it opened and have a wash. People rarely came into the library toilets first thing, so I had a few minutes of privacy to clean up as much as I could, to get changed. Then I would sit and read the newspapers and magazines, find out what was happening in the world.

I would read the local papers, see if there were any jobs suitable for me, then I would indulge myself, read a large chunk of whichever book I was working my way through. At midday I would ring the agencies again, find out if I had work. If I did, I would stay in a hostel that night so I could shower and be in work clean and on time. I rationed how much I ate, how much I spent on food. The reduced-price sandwiches in the supermarket, the squashier fruit on the market stalls, water bottles I could fill up from fountains.

It was an odd existence, but no more odd than the one I'd had before if I thought about it. At least, with this one, I had no one to answer to at the end of the day. Earlier, when I had gone into a newsagent's, I'd seen the news on the front of paper I'd been hoping to see: ‘
TODD CHAMBERS TO MARRY
'.

It'd been two years. Two years it had taken for him to get over his ‘broken heart' and move on with someone who had become a very dear friend to him in the light of Nikky Harper's disappearance from his life. I assumed it had taken him a year to stop looking for me. He'd given a couple of interviews – I'd never been able to read the full things because I was always turfed out of the newsagent's before I could reach the end, but the gist of what he'd been putting out there was that we'd been having problems, he'd suspected I was back on drugs, he'd wanted to support me, but I had rejected all help. He feared and suspected I was living in a hovel somewhere with someone who I could take drugs with. One of the stories had even heavily hinted that one of the reasons I'd split with him was because I'd tried and failed to get him into drugs, too.

It was all water off a duck's back. I was Grace Carter now. I didn't even know who Nikky Harper was, not really. The woman with her knickers on show, with her hair messily covering her face, with her large black sunglasses, was a stranger to me. It was hard to imagine what it was like to be in her skin, to see the world through her eyes.

All the while, of course, Todd would have been grooming someone else, finding another woman to fill the hole I had left in his perfectly constructed life. I couldn't be sure, of course, that he had stopped looking for me, but this headline had given me hope. He'd trashed my reputation, he was marrying someone else. Maybe I could go back to London and reclaim the life I'd had.

I thought this often as I worked, as I managed to spend more nights in hostels and off the streets. I was managing to save more money and I had a locker at Birmingham New Street where I stored stuff and kept some of my money rolled up inside a tampon box I'd resealed. If I kept on as I was, I would have the money to pay for at least three months in a house share soon. Or even a bedsit somewhere. Just a bit longer and I could make Birmingham my home.

I sat at Bernie's waiting for Reese. He was late. It was 1.30 a.m. and the only other times he'd been this late before, he'd been to score and had blown me off, had told me to do one when I'd gone to find him. I couldn't face that today. The news about Todd was what I wanted, was what I had been waiting for – although I'd thought it would have happened a lot earlier – but it had shaken me. I thought about him, the distance making me see him clearer. I had loved him so much. So much. I used to feel empty when he wasn't there, alive when he was. I'd hung on so long, I realised now, because I'd been convinced that I knew who he could be and I'd wanted that version of him back. I'd been certain that if I did what he wanted, made him realise he could rely on me, he would be the man I could trust with my secrets again.

From the moment he opened the café door, I knew Reese had been to score. He could barely stand up, his eyes were hooded, his reactions and movements slow. I reached into my pocket, pulled my headphones out and slipped them into my ears. I couldn't deal with this today. I couldn't hear the drug infecting his voice, wrapping up each word to leave his mouth in nasty, vicious spikes. I loved Reese – he had probably saved my life those first few nights and weeks up here – but when he got like this, it reminded me of the worst moments of my life. I would hear the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' in my head, and all that came with it would tumble out into my mind. I loved Reese, but he was too damaged to be around at times like this.

When I'd first met him, he'd told me when he fell down the hole he had no friends and he hated everyone. I hadn't believed him until six months later when he did fall and he turned on me. Saying the most awful things, trying to get money off me, berating me for caring about him. When Reese fell down the hole of heroin, he knew it would be a long way back up and no one could help him climb.

‘Ah, waiting for me, I see, just like the good little girl you are,' Reese said, sauntering over to the table. Gilly, a woman who worked at the day centre, would put songs on my player for me from her CD collection and she had recently loaded on a few more, but I didn't have time to look through them right then. I hit play, and Katrina and the Waves, singing about walking on sunshine, burst into life in my ears. That song took me back to the days I would walk to and from school, and it would sneak out of the open windows at the start of summer, the words bringing a smile to my face, the rhythm filling my body with pure joy.

Reese slumped in the chair opposite me, and my thumb moved over the jagged-edged dial of the music player, turning the volume right up so I couldn't hear him. He continued, though, his pale face creating ugly shapes as he spilled out the bile inside himself at me. He was saying to me what he wanted to say to himself, forcing out the things he kept inside – like he used to say, talking to me was like talking to himself sometimes. After a few seconds, I stopped watching, stared down into my coffee because I didn't need to hear his words or see them being formed.

In the moments between songs, I heard his voice, tried to ignore his words, my mind reaching forwards to grab the opening notes of the song that would drown out the pain of my best friend. ‘Addicted to Love', the guitar chords played by Robert Palmer, started up.
I'm going to get a guitar
, I decided.
I will find some money and buy myself a guitar and teach myself to play.
It would be one more thing to carry with me, but I would probably keep it in my locker, and I would teach myself.

Movement beside our table made me glance up with my face still lowered. A man I had seen several times before in here and around the streets, coming out of pubs, driving past in a variety of expensive cars, was now standing beside our table. He was a bald, thickset, tall white man, who towered over us. Over Reese. With my head still down, I watched the exchange: Reese noticing him, staring at him for a few seconds, sizing him up, Reese suddenly remembering who he was, Reese pushing back his chair, getting to his feet.

The man who stood beside us wasn't like the other people I lived with on the streets. All his clothes were good quality, new, regularly washed, probably ironed by someone else. Not washed every two weeks in a laundrette and washed through every week in the sink of whichever hostel I was staying at. He wore a lot of jewellery, chunky pieces that were there to make a statement. Rumour had it that he'd had a ruby embedded in one of his front teeth to look like a drop of blood, so that people would know his bite was worse than his bark. This man ate well, lived well – it was obvious from every movement he made.

Under the attention of this man, my thin, wiry, out-of-it friend lowered his gaze and closed his mouth. Reese smiled at me and I saw all the sadness, the betrayal that had blighted both our lives, sitting there on his shoulders. I wanted to reach out and hug him, but he didn't want me right now. He wanted to be someone else and that someone was a person I could not help, or love.

Reese stumbled out of the café and the man took his place in the seat opposite me. My thumb hovered over the volume dial, but didn't make contact to turn it down. If I didn't engage, kept my music turned up and my head lowered, this man, Judge, he was called, would leave me alone. Like most of the bad, bad people Reese had warned me about a couple of years ago, they didn't like to hassle you into their fold, they wanted you to come to them. If I ignored him, he would go away, simple as that, until he found another way ‘in'. I'd noticed him notice me a few times, but he had never approached me. Other bad, bad people had approached me before, and I had ignored them, just like I could do now.

I wanted, sometimes, only sometimes, what Reese had: escape. That was why he wasn't always on smack: he didn't need to be out of it all the time, only when it became too much and he needed to press the escape button. I wanted escape sometimes. When I was sleeping out and it was cold, it was wet, it was nearly Christmas, it was nearly New Year, it was nearly Valentine's Day, it was nearly Veronika Harper's birthday, I would want an escape. Sometimes, only sometimes, when I would look at Reese and how removed he was from everyday reality when he was drugged up, I would wonder about it. Often, very, very often, when the flashbacks and the insomnia were out of control, I would wish to be like Reese; I would long for a way to check out of the world and not have to deal with reality. The man in front of me, I was pretty sure, would offer me an escape in one way or another if I turned my music off and engaged with him.

I'd finally left Todd behind – it seemed like he had finally given up on me. It didn't change anything, really. I was still who I was, the person who had been taken in by him in the first place. The woman who now often went to sleep with the stench of whichever hidden sleeping location I'd chosen that night filling my nostrils. I washed in public toilets because more than anything I had to wash every day. I ate on-date food. I walked everywhere. I often couldn't speak to my best friend because he was out of his head on drugs. I was lonely. Especially in the day centre, when I would see people older than me and know that was what my future held. Especially when I saw women like me walking down the street, dressed in normal clothes, going to their normal jobs, sleeping in their normal beds. I saw them and I wanted some of that, or I wanted to not notice them.

If I turned off my music and talked to this man called Judge, that would all change. Maybe I would find a way to escape like Reese had. Maybe I would find my line in the sand and I would be forced to return to London and my old name. Or, I could carry on as I was. Maybe this man would be the reason my life changed again.

I clicked off the music player, took the headphones out of my ears, and watched the grin spread across Judge's face, while the ruby embedded into his tooth, that fake spot of blood, glinted at the centre of his smile.

‘Well, if it isn't my barista buddy,' the guy from earlier says as I approach him.

‘Tea or coffee?' I say to him. In my hand I hold one of each in a paper cup.

‘What if I want both?' he asks with a sideways grin.

‘You can have both,' I say.

‘Both it is, Barista Buddy.' He grins, and his laugh is chased up by a cough. It rattles through his body, shaking his thin form in violent ways. I almost reach out to steady him, and the need to help him is overwhelming. I want to ask him up to my flat, offer him a hot shower, some hot food, a place to sleep for the night. Of course I want to. Reese would be bawling me out about that right about now. He'd be reminding me that I care more about other people than myself, that what I would be doing would be dangerous. I know nothing about this man – why would I let him into my home just because he reminds me of someone?
‘You've got a death wish, ain't ya?'
Reese snarled at me the last time I saw him. He had bawled me out, told me he'd had enough of me and didn't want to be around me any more because of that death wish.

I'd tried to argue with him, but I didn't have a leg to stand on – he was right. I did have a death wish. Since years before I left my parents' house I'd had a death wish, I had essentially wanted to end my life but not to die. It didn't make sense but it was basically what Reese had told me: I had a death wish that was playing itself out slowly, slowly, slowly, and was putting everyone I knew in danger.