When I Was Invisible (33 page)

‘And what do you think?'

She shrugs at me, continues to stare into her drink, removed from what she is saying, set apart from who she is saying it to.

‘Do your brothers like him?' I ask.

‘I dunno, do I? I hardly ever see them.'

‘So it's you and your stepfather alone in the house most of the time?' I ask. Is that a prod too far? Is she ready to admit anything?

Her gaze travels up from her cup, over my body until it hits my face. Her eyes are slightly narrowed, her lips a little twisted with scorn. ‘If you've got something to ask me, just ask it,' she says. Right now, right this second, gone is the vulnerable girl who was going to drink some more and probably take drugs and let herself get screwed by a pervert, while pretending it was all her idea. In
that
girl's place is a defensive fourteen-year-old who has ‘bitch' written all over her face.

‘The thing is, Gail, I know that if I ask you, you're very likely to shout at me, or call me sick and twisted, and you're more than likely to leave. And then you'll have no one to talk to or – worse – you'll leave here and go find someone else to finish what you started with Just Some Guy earlier. So, no, I don't think I will ask you that question, actually.'

She sits back in her seat, shakes her head at me. ‘Wouldn't God tell you to be brave and ask me anyway, no matter what the consequences are?' Gail has a real way about her, a way to make snarky things sound even snider, nastier. She is wrapped in a layer of so many prickles it would be impossible to get close to her without being hurt in many, many ways. She really is the younger version of me.

‘No, God wouldn't tell me to do that or to do anything at all,' I tell her calmly. ‘God doesn't actually speak to me directly. I thought you knew that? And even if He did actually speak to me directly, I have free will so I could do whatever I wanted no matter what He told me. We all have free will.'

Gail's hard face hasn't slackened at all.

‘I mean, you have free will, Gail. You could choose to tell me what question you thought I was going to ask and you could answer it. That would be your choice.' I want to look away, to concede to the challenge her look is throwing at me, but that would lose her. She would think I am weak and can't handle it. That another person has entered her life, offered her something only to not deliver. ‘I sense choice is important to you, Gail. And you can choose to tell me or you can choose not to tell me. That would be up to you. And if you do choose to tell me, I will believe you.'

We sit in silence for a few minutes. Neither of us is going to give in at this juncture, we both have too much face to lose.

‘If I told you something,' she eventually says, still with ‘the face' on her, ‘you'd have to keep it a secret, wouldn't you? You wouldn't be allowed to tell anyone, would you?'

‘I would, actually, because I'm not a nun any more. And even when I was a nun, I wasn't authorised to administer the sacrament of confession so whatever was said to me wouldn't have the sanctity of the confessional booth. But even though I
could
tell, I never did. I never would. If someone tells me something in confidence, I keep it. Always.'
I am excellent at keeping secrets
. Shamefully, I realise I have taken pride in that. Pride is a deadly sin.

‘All right, I'll tell you,' she says. She drops ‘the face' and stares at the table, gulping quickly but silently, obviously building herself up. Her eyes fly up to my face. ‘And you won't tell anyone? You promise you'll keep it a secret for the rest of your life?'

‘I promise.'

‘This is really hard for me to say, you know?' she says, her face pensive and her hands knitted together as she plays with her thumbnails.

‘I know,' I say gently.

Gail's large, brown, well-made-up eyes fill with tears as she continues to gather her courage.

I almost reach across the table to take her hand and reassure her, but decide against it. Any sudden movements may scare her, put her off.

After two more gulps, she looks directly at me, and I can see the agony and burden in every line of her features. She looks so much older and so much younger at the same time. ‘When I was about nine or ten,' she says in a tone so low I have to lean forwards to hear her properly, ‘I-I said “fuck” in church and I wasn't even sorry.'

Her grin is beatific, her brief ‘got ya' eyebrow raise precisely delivered. Slowly I sit back in my seat and allow her to revel in getting one over on me.
This
is what is known as the fall after a moment of pride.

Of course I didn't see my parents.

Who was I trying to kid with
that
thought process? I was high on the fact I'd faced Todd and hadn't crumbled, so I thought I could do anything, take on anyone. I got right up to their door then reality came pouring into my head. These were the people who had let their seventeen-year-old daughter walk out instead of just considering if, for one moment, what she'd told them years ago and had kept telling them ever since was true – that there was a trusted person hurting her and she wanted them to make it stop.

The Todds of the world I could take on after ten years on the streets, but my parents? The people I'd always instinctively love no matter how badly they hurt me? No. Just no. I'd never be brave enough to do that. I almost ran back to the bus stop so I could get a Tube to Victoria and then a train back to Brighton. Now here I sit in the dark with my guitar on my lap, lightly running my fingers over the strings, touching them so gently they barely make a sound. I stare at the mantelpiece and decide to buy myself a small CD player to go just there so I can listen to music in the flat.

I wonder what Reese is doing, right now. Is he high? Is he still needing regular medical treatment? Is he clean after his stint in hospital? Is he having to take more beatings from Judge because he doesn't know where I am?

I think about Lori. Is she safe after everything that happened, after what I had to force her to do to get away from Judge?

I wonder about Mama Meachen, who came on to the streets five years ago and who cried and cried for her children. If I saw her, I would buy her coffee at Bernie's and would sit with her while she cried and told me her story as many times as I was willing to listen. She'd had no money, she hadn't wanted to be a benefits scrounger, she'd seen how people looked down on
them
. She'd only taken on that extra cleaning job but hadn't declared it to make ends meet and then she was being taken in for questioning, then the police were involved, then she was doing a little stretch of time. But during that ‘time', her children had been taken into care, and she'd had a breakdown and she'd lost her flat. And now no one would listen to her, no one would help. She was only allowed to write to her children, and her world was so small and everything so bleak. She cried and talked and constantly retold her story because, I knew, she hoped that when she got to the end of that particular retelling everything would be different and she would be explaining how she was with her children again.

I think about Crazy Doug, who'd called himself that since university when he was at the top of his game. He said he used to work in the City, doing deals that would make your eyes water, until he'd started hearing voices one day and couldn't shut them out with the booze any more. He had started missing time at work, trying to shut out the voices. Everyone else had started to call him Crazy Doug, in mean, nasty ways, until he'd woken up one day and hadn't known which voice wasn't real and which was his own, and nothing had been the same since. I liked the stories Doug used to tell about the high-flying people he worked with and how utterly irredeemable they all seemed.

I wonder about Melvin, the wannabe street hustler who tried to act like Huggy Bear from
Starksy and Hutch
, but couldn't seem to get rid of his posh Etonian accent.

I think of Aimee, two e's no y, who would tell a different story to everyone she met about the life she'd had before the streets, and you could be sure each new tale was more plausible than the last.

I think of Tessa, who had fled an abusive relationship and had been diagnosed with anxiety and depression – diseases no one could see. She'd tried to keep going but it had all got too much, the tablets hadn't worked fast enough, the waiting list for therapy had been so long and when she hadn't been able to work, her landlord, unable to see her condition, how devastating it was to her life, had moved her on. Out on to the streets, out of his sight, out of his mind.

I think of how I used to be one of them. I used to fit right into that world. I loved it when they called me Ace, when they talked to me because I was their friend. When we'd sit and plot about taking over the world, or what we would do if the ‘normals' recognised us as people.

I think of all those people I met over the years, who lived on the streets, who lived in the shelters, who would seem to appear one day and not be around the next, who were all part of that world where we would step through that divide that made us invisible. I think of them and I want to be back with them. I fitted there. I belonged there. I still feel sometimes that I'm playing at all this, that tomorrow I'm going to wake up and I'll be back in my room at the hostel, or I'll be round the back of the supermarket, and needing to go to the library for a wash and a wee.

That policeman had asked me if
that
was the life I was meant to live and I had thought no, I had thought that this – sleeping in a bed, eating in a small kitchen, having my days mapped out by the hours and rules of working life – was the life I was meant to live. What if it isn't like that after all? What if the life I am meant to live is not here, but out there, being Grace ‘Ace' Carter with all those people I know, and all the people whose lives I heard about and can relate to? What if my life is meant to be lived as an invisible?

I reach over my guitar and pick up my mobile. I have two numbers programmed into it – Sasha's and the hotel. Maybe part of the problem of feeling like this life isn't my real life is that I have no connections, no real links to anyone. Maybe part of the problem is that Nika Harper needs to reach out and make as many connections as she can.

Hi Marshall. Do you fancy trying that kissing thing again? Nika

I press send before I change my mind, before I start to convince myself that I'd really like to live my life as Grace Carter again, forgetting all the people who'll be in danger if I go back to that life.

Absolutely. 15 mins? x

More like 5.

Your place or mine? M x

Yours. See you soon. N

Of course, his. I lay aside the guitar, pick up my keys, slip on my glasses. I might be trying to reach out, make connections, but I'm not ready to let him in completely.

Reese was waiting for me outside my workplace, which meant something serious had happened. He'd been sober and straight for a while now, he was daily going to the day centre and searching through options on what he could do next. He was looking much better, too. He'd taken to staying in a halfway house, so he had access to washing facilities, and his clothes were clean for longer periods, his face was clean, he'd even started to grow his hair in, and was flirting with the idea of shaving off his beard. He was often telling me while staring right into my eyes that he wanted to do something with his life, to maybe settle down with someone. When I saw him standing across the street, his manner tense, his face barely masking the terror, I knew it was serious.

‘Who is it?' I asked him. I was expecting to hear of an accidental overdose, an arrest, a person who'd simply decided enough was enough and whited out. (I was secretly shoring myself up for the day when Reese would decide that, when he fell into the hole again with no intention of waking up again after a huge hit.)

‘Oh, God,' I replied when he told me. ‘Oh, God, oh, God, oh,
God
!' This was probably the worst one. I'd actually forgotten. In four short weeks I'd turned my thoughts in on myself and I'd forgotten. ‘You'd better show me.'

Lori sat on a torn piece of cardboard under the arches down by the canal. If she was in hiding it wasn't a very good place to hide, since everyone who lived on the street came down here at some point, but Reese probably took her there to make her feel safe. The solidity of the bricks, and the sheltering nature of the arches, made it feel secure. You could see light at either end, but you could have your back to the wall, use it to prop yourself up, and have the tranquil sound of water flowing beside you, too. I used to come here a lot, when I first lived outside. I never slept here because too many other people did, but I liked to be here when I needed to be alone and feel safe.

‘I'm sorry I didn't listen to you,' she said when I sat down beside her. ‘I'm sorry I thought I knew everything and it'd be different for me.'

‘Tell me what's happened.'

‘He says I've got to pay him back for everything he's subbed me. Everything, with interest. Judge. I thought he really meant it when he said he'd look out for me and everything seemed so much easier. And he was so, so nice to me. I didn't think he'd do this. I just want to go home. But I can't. He said if I don't pay him eight hundred pounds by Friday, I'm going to have to work for him. He said it'd only be for a little while, and he'd pick really nice men for me, but if he doesn't get his eight hundred then that's what I've got to do.'

Eight hundred. Judge was a bastard. I knew it, I'd always known it, but at moments like that, it was a stark reminder of exactly how evil he was. He knew she was little more than fourteen or fifteen, he knew this would break a person's soul, and he probably got off on it. Breaking someone, making them his to use, was what he liked best, I think. Making money from that simply added to his pleasure.