Best Served Cold, page 8
‘I think the fact that I secured my first children’s book commission before my mum died. She got to see the finished book and passed a month later.’
‘I’m sorry to hear about your mum. That’s a lovely story and she must have been so proud of you.’
‘She was. I hope she still is.’
‘She must have been young.’ He sounds sad.
‘Yeah, she was only fifty-two. An aggressive cancer. One minute she was here, strong as an ox, and then the next, she was gone. Still can’t believe it.’ I need to change the subject, as I know I will cry. The pain has worsened over the last six years, not lessened, as I suppose the realisation that I will never see her again has finally hit home. And then what happened straight after, which I know I haven’t processed properly. That crushing pain. That imagined guilt.
‘That’s dreadful. Dare I ask about your dad?’
‘He’s in a grandad flat at my sister’s, although he’s not exactly grandad material as he’s only fifty-eight. They live in Bristol. I think he’s out on the town more than she is.’
‘Top bloke. Who is your publisher? Or do you have many?’
‘My main one is New Renaissance Books, but I have worked for a number now.’
‘Woo, New Renaissance Books? Patrons of the arts?’
‘That’s them,’ I nod. ‘It all has to be tasteful, traditional. And very, very nice.’
‘So, no rabid rats or axe-wielding badgers, then?’
‘I think the MD would have to be overthrown before that ever happens. What about you? You work in engineering. What does that entail?’
‘A respectable job that can be very repetitive and sometimes tedious, which pays the rent and allows me to have fun.’
‘Mum and dad? I know you don’t have any brothers or sisters…’ I see something in his eyes, a reflection, but it doesn’t seem to be of anything here in this room. Have I upset him?’
‘Sorry.’ He sucks on his bottom lip. ‘I always wished for a brother, you know, someone to play with. As to Mum and Dad, they both died in a car accident when I was twenty-six.’
‘Oh, God! I’m so sorry—’
‘You didn’t know. It was a shock at the time, but I’ve compartmentalised it. It still hurts, of course, though I can deal with it better now.’
I know all about that, except he’s lost both parents simultaneously. What must that feel like? Quick! What can we talk about now? ‘Okay, changing the subject, what is your most bizarre talent or quirk?’ I close my eyes briefly. Should have thought that through a bit more and saved it for at least the third or fourth date. Maybe we won’t get that far now. Me and my big mouth! Still, if it takes his mind off the dreadful death of his parents, then job done.
His eyes roll upward to the left, and I feel he is really thinking about this. ‘Talent? Hmmm. What can I do? Not sure if this fits the bill but here goes. My body is classed medically as an ultra-rapid metaboliser. This basically means my liver produces very active enzymes, breaking down drugs before they can have any effect. I haven’t taken many drugs in my life, though when it has been needed, the doctors had to give me a much higher dose for the drugs to work properly.’
I’m taken aback, and it must show. ‘Wow! That must have been tricky on occasions?’ I think. ‘So, if you take painkillers, they don’t work?’
‘Nope. Just pain all the way, as I’ve been told not to mess with opioids or whatever in case I destroy vital organs. I can’t self-medicate for this reason. I have to be in a safe situation with medically trained staff. It can get pretty annoying.’
‘I’ve never heard of anything like that.’
‘No worries. Just means I have to be especially careful.’
Our plates of food arrive. The salad is fresh and crispy, and the quesadillas are toasted and smell deliciously cheesy.
‘What about you? Talent or quirk?’
It’s now my turn to consider. ‘I can write with both hands at the same time, and they are identical.’
‘What? Crazy! That must have come in handy for school?’
‘Not really, as it has to be the same words. I can’t do two different sets of words, or I think my head would explode.’
‘No shit!’ he mumbles, and we both laugh.
Jack’s body is an ultra-rapid metaboliser? Drugs don’t work on him? The mention of drugs pings me back. Drugs. Hmm…
My bedsit was snug for one and became very intimate for two, and Harry and I were beginning to trip over each other. The months passed, and we were midway through our second year. We regularly returned to Harry’s place in his multiple shared house in Hackney and crashed at mine when it got too much. Poor Alice had to live there permanently, and I sometimes wondered how she managed it. It wasn’t the place so much as the people in it. I know we were all students but really! It made me wonder if some of them had been brought up by feral dogs.
Everyone in the household heaved a collective sigh of relief when Mad Scottish Jane decided to take her miniature Doberman, Buddha, and herself back to Glasgow. Jane had doted so much on Buddha, they’d even shared the same dog food, taking turns to eat a spoonful from the tin.
Harry and I had just made it through the front door when we saw Jane sitting at the bottom of the stairs, and she was holding the spoon out for him to lick. She then stabbed it back into the tin for another mouthful, which she ate with gusto.
‘Should you be eating that stuff?’ I unthinkingly asked the two of them and was greeted by a withering look, either from Jane or, more likely, Buddha.
‘What’s good enough fer me is good enough fer Buddha,’ Jane snapped back and proceeded to ram another spoonful into Buddha’s mouth. She then licked the spoon. The thought of where he’d recently been licking made me gag. Was that one of the spoons we all shared? Oh, yuck!
Later that day, Harry and I sat with Alice in the communal living room on the badly sprung sofa, eating Pot Noodles as no one wanted to venture into the kitchen for long. I had always thought it was an unwritten rule that if you lived with other people, you shared the chores, washed up after yourself, cleaned the communal areas in turn, and a real biggie, you kept your music down after midnight. It appeared the others in this house had never heard of this. Well, what a shocker! The kitchen was so filthy, we’d all stopped using it. Nagging wasn’t working and seemed to have the opposite effect, as did going on strike, as neither Jane nor their other flatmate, Big Tone, noticed. The plates would pile up, the floor would suck you down, and the heavy rock blared continuously.
‘Who thought it was a good idea to share with her?’ I motioned at Harry and Alice.
‘Er, she was here first.’ Alice looked rueful. ‘We moved in with her and Big Tone.’
‘Anyway,’ said Harry, ‘she’ll be gone in a few days—’
‘You mean in a few very, very long days,’ Alice put her head in her hands and made a groaning sound.
‘Then,’ continued Harry, ‘we must be cautious who we choose to replace her. (Famous last words!)
‘Harry?’ I said.
‘Yes, Lily?’
‘I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I honestly don’t like it here. It’s kind of strange and unnatural. I think I must have lived a truly sheltered life.’
‘What?’ He drained his Pot Noodle and grinned at me. ‘Not brought up with people who eat dog food with their dog? Is that not normal where you come from?’
‘More like, not brought up with people who use the same spoon as the dog. I seem to remember horrible tales of worms and stuff.’ I thought for a moment. ‘We should make sure we clean the utensils well. And I mean really well!’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Alice. ‘I know someone said that if you get worms, it keeps you thin, though I think using this method isn’t the way to go.’
‘Weight loss by worms.’ Harry made a face. ‘It has a certain ring to it.’
‘That’s so gross,’ I said. ‘Can we change the subject now?’
Big Tone, tall, with huge hands and feet and a large, shaved rectangular head, was the other flatmate, and lived in the small back room of the shared house. He had at least three degrees under his belt and was likely the most intelligent person we knew. A perennial student who never wanted to engage with real life, jobs and mortgages. I could understand that. He also did gardening in the backyard, and at the far end I noticed a different variety of plants growing tall and strong.
‘Tone?’ I queried one day. ‘Are those dope plants in the garden?’ I had spent a while examining the leaves and then looked them up on Google.
‘Absolutely,’ he beamed. ‘Picked up all the seeds at a party I went to last year. Marvellous, aren’t they?’
‘Aren’t they illegal?’
‘Only in some people’s minds.’
‘Um, I think that covers the police, the government, any law enforcement group—’
‘Yeah? And?’
‘Then why are you growing them? What if someone notices?’
‘Lily.’ Big Tone lowered his voice, bent down and looked pityingly at me. ‘This is Hackney. It’s taken for granted we grow our own. Have you not noticed what is in everyone else’s gardens? And in all the window boxes?’
I sucked on my teeth for a moment. ‘Ah!’ I rushed upstairs and hung out of Harry’s bedroom window. It all came into focus, and now I saw marijuana being grown in any space available all along the row of terraces. There even seemed to be a small plant struggling for life in a Wellington boot.
Now Big Tone was a quiet, unassuming man who constantly thought about the state of the world and, terrified by his conclusions, turned to whatever could console him. There’s a lot of stuff out there that can be used to numb the mind, and he seemingly had access to all of it.
This time, Alice, Harry and I were sitting on Harry’s bed, watching Netflix, though our focus was patchy as we were talking about Big Tone.
‘I can’t understand how someone so intelligent can be so frightened all the time,’ said Alice.
Harry clambered off the bed to butter some more bread. We were now making toasted sandwiches in Harry’s bedroom as the mess in the kitchen was crawling out of the door down the hallway.
‘I think,’ said Harry, ‘his coping mechanism is to take a disproportionate amount of illegal substances, so reality takes a step away from him—’
‘Dearest God!’ I turned to Alice. ‘I think by now reality is running so fast in the opposite direction, he’d be hard pushed to ever catch up!’
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Alice laughed so much she nearly fell off the bed.
‘Yeah, well,’ said Harry, ‘unfortunately, he doesn’t take any one substance by itself, does he? He’s on uppers, downers and inside-outers!’
‘And let’s not even mention the huge dope plants in the back garden…’ I rolled my eyes at them.
‘Ha!’ said Alice. ‘Lily, you are so innocent!’
‘Isn’t it illegal?’
‘No worries. They’re great, aren’t they?’ said Alice. ‘They’re pretty big now, and I sit in their shade and read. He told me his next idea is to paint lots of ping-pong balls red and gently hang them all over the bushes, so if any busybody was suspicious, they would assume they were tomato plants.’
I persisted. ‘But it’s all illegal! We can go to jail for drug offences, can’t we?’
‘Only if we’re caught doing it.’ Alice looked perplexed.
‘Oh! That’s okay, then.’
‘Lily,’ Harry held out his hands and shook his head ‘come on. We’re not exactly some Mexican cartel, now, are we?’
It was possibly at this point I realised I might, indeed, be a little bit innocent in the ways of the world.
Relationships are tricky. Both past and present, it appears.
Possibly spending time in that shared house with Harry and Alice was where my need to clean first started. There’s nothing like the thought of getting worms to galvanise you into becoming OCD about cleaning! That was Alice’s hypothesis, anyway.
As to the six-foot dope plants in the garden, I hoped we’d never get busted, and my parents find out their daughter lived in a drug den. We nearly did, when Jane moved out and Bernie moved in. So much for being careful who they chose to live with next.
Chapter Seven
GOODNIGHT, LADIES
It feels easier to chat with Jack now, and the flow back and forth is fluid. We have a margarita to finish the meal. Time has crept away from us. The light outside leaches until the sky merges with the sea. The thinnest silver line, a thread, separates them now.
‘I love winter afternoons,’ I say.
‘I thought you said your favourite season was spring?’
At least now I know he read my details.
‘It is. Look at that view and those wonderful, washed-out colours.’
‘Yes, it is gorgeous,’ he says, though I notice he is not looking out the window but is staring straight at me. A tickle of apprehension slides down my back. Is he expecting to come back to my place? Am I expecting him to come back? I’m not sure I want this, although part of me does. Oh, contradictions galore.
He continues, ‘Shall we go for another drink? You can show me some of the sites a normal tourist doesn’t get to see.’ He reaches for my hand. ‘Listen, don’t worry. I mean just another drink, as I don’t want this afternoon to end, then I’ll be back on the train to London. I don’t want to rush things with you.’
‘Okay. It’s just I’m very rusty at this. I’ve been out of the game for quite a while.’ Six years, I want to shout. Six bloody long years full of creeps and weirdos!
‘We all have baggage, Lily, but it’s got to be water under the bridge, or we never move on.’
‘Thanks, I needed to hear that.’ I wave for the bill. ‘This is on me, as you paid to get here. If that’s all right?’
‘Indeed, it is. I’m not some macho bloke who can’t or won’t let a woman pay. Everything’s equal in my book.’ He grins. ‘And I appreciate it. The next drinks are on me, though, and no quibbling.’
Gathering our stuff, I glance out of the window. There’s a figure who has ducked behind one of the old-quaint fishing huts, and for one second, I think it is Rose. I stumble, but he reaches out to hold me up.
‘Oopsy,’ I say. ‘A bit too much wine. I should be careful what I have next.’ That couldn’t have been Rose, surely? Is she checking up on me? Making sure nothing untoward happens to me – as she so aptly put it, it’s her fault I’m here in the first place. I need to ask her, although now isn’t the time. I’m stepping with care behind Jack down the stairs (as I don’t want to trip and send us both crashing down) and then the cold outside hits us at the exact time as the realisation. Oh, stupid me. I didn’t tell either Rose or Alice where we were going, so it must have been a trick of the light.
I haul my scarf tighter around my neck. ‘Brr. Blimey, that’s cold!’
Jack puts his arm around me, and I don’t resist. We huddle into each other and walk against the ever-increasing wind along the beachfront, turning to go through the underpass that takes us back to West Street.
‘I was here a few weeks ago,’ I say, ‘as I had a launch for my latest fairy tale book. I get so nervous beforehand I have a blow across the beach to settle me. I even take off my shoes and walk barefoot to feel, I mean really feel, what I’m walking on.’
‘To connect yourself?’
I like the way he understood without me having to explain more. ‘Yes, that’s it. Sometimes I feel a little disconnected, so it’s a restorative of some sort.’
‘I get that, although my go-to restorative might be a good quality whisky.’
‘I get that, too. Except it would be red wine for me.’
Pulling him up a street, I lead him down the side roads, off the beaten track, down Zion Gardens and up around into Kew Street.
‘It’s nice getting off the main drag,’ Jack says. ‘What’s the name of the place we’re going to?’
‘The Mulberry Tree. It’s just up here in North Gardens.’ And close to the station. I need my options open.
The pub comes into view, painted grey with black window frames and doors. A chalkboard is set outside, advertising tasty morsels to eat. Straggly winter plants survive in pots on either side of a bench by the inset board displaying the opening times. There are hints of blue and purple.
‘Come and have a look at this.’ I tug him by the arm to the other side of the street, where the façade is clearer to see. A graffiti image of a heavily tattooed Amy Winehouse picks up on the blues and purples, even though the main image is black and white.
‘That’s special.’ Jack looks down. ‘I couldn’t believe it when she died, and you know what I felt more than anything? Anger.’ He makes a sound that reminds me of Alice when she does her snorts. ‘Anger that someone so talented and beautiful could die in that way. She was younger than you are now. Imagine that. Such a waste. It hit me hard. I still listen to her albums, and it makes me sad.’ He glances at me. There must be a look on my face because his changes in that second from deeply troubled to laughing. ‘Sorry, and I know we said we wouldn’t use that word. I didn’t mean to bring you down.’
He takes my elbow, and we push in through the door. A semi-circular opening in a wall divides two large rooms to allow customers in both to access the bar. The colour scheme has followed us in; the walls are a smoky grey, and the beams and wooden details are black with tiny fairy lights strung along them. It has an olde-worlde look about it. A black-painted cast-iron Victorian fireplace is unlit, though it looks the part. Next to it are bookcases filled with books and games.
‘I’ve been told,’ I say, ‘most of these are travel books from all over the world.’ I can’t get close enough to see the titles. I spot a group in the corner playing cards. It’s good to see most punters are enjoying their drop of ale without needing to be fixated on their phones.
‘God forbid,’ I breathe. ‘Unbelievable, there are people in here talking to each other!’
