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‘What you looking for?’ she asks as he rummages around her collection of multi-buy discount cleaning products, fifty pack of sponges and long abandoned, but not yet disposed of, cutlery holders and soap dishes.
‘You need to oil your window.’ He twists the nozzle on a rusty can of WD-40.
‘Don’t worry about my window.’
He stops and looks down at her. His almond-shaped eyes search for something.
‘What?’ She touches her face, wondering if a stray Rice Krispie is stuck on her cheek.
‘You’re saying I look tired. You all right? You look a bit … frazzled.’
‘I worked forty-eight hours already this week – what do you expect me to look like? Imelda Marcos?’
Malachi blesses her with one of his rare smiles and then positions his knees into the two small free spots on the worktop. He seems more sullen than usual.
‘Are you okay?’ Mary asks as he squirts the window frame.
‘Yep. I’m always okay. Just hot and this smog, it plays havoc with my asthma.’ He jumps down and stares blankly across the kitchen.
Mary knows he’s still hung up on the blonde girl from upstairs. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re not still sad about whatshername.’
‘I have a hundred other things to think about,’ he snaps.
She was the first girl of Malachi’s Mary had ever met. He even brought her over for dinner once, one wet afternoon where they sat, with plates on their laps, eating chicken bistek.
‘Some things are not meant to be. I could see it from the start,’ Mary lies, for all she saw that afternoon was Malachi buzzing around the girl like she was the best thing since they started slicing bread. ‘I always know when couples don’t match. I even said it about Charles and Diana, but did anyone listen to me?’
‘I really don’t want to talk about this.’
Mary throws her arms up. ‘Me neither. Goodbye, Blondie. Plenty more pussy in the cattery.’
He wipes his face to hide his embarrassment and she’s pleased to see the tiniest of smiles emerge on his sad face.
‘Why’d you make so much food?’ he asks.
‘I told you, I need to work every day next week so I’m stockpiling. Like a squirrel.’ She wraps an old washed out ice-cream tub with cling film and hands it to him. ‘This is for your tutor.’ She had been sending food parcels to anyone related to Malachi’s education since his first semester of university. Anything to boost the boy’s chances. ‘The rest is for your freezer.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’
‘And I appreciate if you put on some weight. What is this?’ She pinches the flesh of his side.
‘Ow.’
‘Heroin chic!’ she announces. ‘I saw it on GMTV. Teenagers with bodies like this.’ Mary holds up her pinkie finger. ‘No woman wants that, Malachi. You need to eat properly.’
She had looked in Malachi’s and Tristan’s fridge a few days ago and saw nothing but a loaf of value bread and jar of lemon curd. The freezer was even worse: a half empty box of fish fingers and two frosty bottles of Hooch, which Tristan explained were ‘for the ladies’. If their nan knew they were eating so poorly under Mary’s watch there would be murder.
‘Freezer, you hear me? Tell your brother he can’t eat, eat, eat all in one sitting. And why has he got zigzags shaved in his hair? Does he think he’s a pop star or something?’
‘You know what he’s like. He’s a little wild.’
‘He can’t afford to be wild.’ Mary tries to put the word in air quotes but uses eight fingers and makes a baby waving motion. ‘Too many riffraffs around here going wild like this.’ She makes a stabbing gesture and tries to look menacing, but her only reference point is West Side Story and she makes a dance of it.
Malachi puts a hand under a piece of kitchen roll and drags out a bamboo skewer of prawns. Mary slaps him.
‘Did you hear me say help yourself? Does this look like the Pizza Hut buffet to you?’
‘You just told me I need to eat.’
‘Not prawn. Too early for prawn.’ She turns her back to him as she rewraps the skewers. His eyes burn her; she must explain her snappy mood. ‘I need to leave my spare keys with you in case David gets in early. He’s on standby for a flight so could be here tonight, tomorrow or next week. Oh God.’ The reality of him arriving hits her again. It sends her elbow into overdrive.
‘David?’
‘Yes, David, my husband. Remember him?’ There’s a hysterical edge to her voice. She puts a hand on her forehead to save herself as Oprah has taught her. ‘I don’t even want to talk about it.’
‘I didn’t know David was coming back.’
‘No. But we didn’t know Jesus was coming back either.’
Mary takes her nurse fob watch from her pocket – a present from David on one of his rare jaunts back home. An obscure-looking Virgin Mary with oversized arms ticks around the clock, hung on a thick, gold link chain. Well, it was gold once, now it’s more silver, the shine, like everything else to do with David, rubbed away by the sweat and grime of real life. Quarter to twelve.
‘Mary?’ Malachi waves his arms to get her attention. ‘Hand me these keys then. I need to get back home.’
Mary nods as she looks in the junk drawer, rifling through papers, wires and replacement batteries for the smoke alarm until she finds the spare keys. Tristan had once attached a plastic marijuana leaf to them thinking it was funny. Mary had given him a lecture about the dangers of drugs but never bothered to remove the key ring.
She fusses with the catch on the watch as she pins it to her uniform, swearing to get it fixed. ‘You want some tea before you go?’ she asks Malachi.
He spins the keys around a long finger. ‘No, thanks. Too hot.’
‘You call this hot? It’s thirty-five degrees in Manila today.’ She lifts the kettle and gives it a shake before she flicks the switch.
‘Right,’ Malachi says. ‘I better get back to my books.’
He sulks off and she rolls her eyes at his constant grumpiness. But as she hears the front door close she stops cold. The twitch becomes a scratch. Something is wrong, for her feelings never are. Today, something horrible will happen.
CHAPTER THREE
Chapter Three ,Pamela
There is not a stitch of breeze on the roof of Nightingale Point. Today, up here is just as suffocating as being in the flat with Dad. Pamela places her new running shoes on the ground and holds onto the metal railing; her long rope of blonde hair falls forward and dangles over the edge. The sunrays hit the nape of her neck and she feels her skin, so dangerously pale and thin, begin to burn. She shifts her body into the shade of the vast grey water tanks and imagines the water as it rolls between them and into the maze of pipes around the block’s fifty-six flats. Pamela loves the roof. Since she returned to London a few days ago it’s become the only space Dad does not watch over her. Sometimes she wishes she was back in Portishead with her mum, just for the freedom from his eyes. But in a way being there was worse, because it meant Malachi was over a hundred miles away rather than two floors. At least here there is a chance she will see him, run into him in the lift, or bump into him in the stairwell.
Blood runs into her face as she leans further over the railings. Her head feels heavy. She wonders, not for the first time, how it would feel to fall from this spot, to flail past all fourteen floors and land at the bottom among the cars and bins. It would probably feel like running the 200 metres. Air hitting your face and taking your hair, your lungs shocked into working harder than you ever knew they could. Pink and yellow splodges dance in front of her eyes as she lifts her head. It’s coming up to noon, only halfway through another monotonous, never-ending day.
She assumes it’s other teenagers that repeatedly bust the locks on the door that leads up to the roof. They leave their crushed cans of Special Brew and ketchup-smeared fish and chip papers across the floor as evidence that they are having a life. She often fantasizes about coming up here at night, catching them in the throes of their late-night parties, tasting beer and throwing fag butts among the pigeon shit with them. If only Dad would let her out of the flat past 6 p.m. No chance.
The sky appears endless. Unnaturally blue today, almost unworldly, not a blemish on it apart from the single white smear of a plane.
Does she need to run back? Has it already been twenty minutes? She doesn’t care. What does time matter if you’re all alone? What difference does any of it make if you’re about to throw yourself from the top of a tower block? She takes three deep breaths but knows that she doesn’t have the confidence to do it. But the thought alone makes her feel like she has some edge on Dad, something that she can do without his permission.
In front of the estate people are living their lives: a child runs, the drunks drink, some girls sunbathe in pink bras and denim shorts, and a lone large figure in billowing purple crosses the grass at speed. Pamela tries to picture who the bodies are, how they would feel if they witnessed a girl fall from the building, their faces upon discovering her body bashed at the bottom. They would be traumatised, she thinks, for a while at least, and then her death would become another estate anecdote. The tale of the broken-hearted teenager with the strict dad. It would become just another story to get passed around the swing park and across balconies, along with tales of who is screwing who and which flat plays host to the biggest number of squatters.
Pamela wishes she could go for a run. She needs to clear her head. Surely Dad will let her out.
‘Please, one hour out,’ she rehearses. It sounds so feeble out loud, so knowing of a negative answer.
Her running shoes swing by her sides as she pads across the greyness in her socks. She steps over the glossy ripped pages of a magazine; a girl in a peephole leather catsuit stares back at her. The door bounces against its splintered frame as Pamela enters the building. Her world starts to shrink. With each step down to the eleventh floor the brightness of the unending blue sky disappears and the stairwell begins to close in on her. The concrete walls suck the air away until there is only the suffocating stink of other people’s lives.
‘Do you think it will be okay if I went out today? Maybe. Perhaps.’ Her voice echoes eerily; she feels even more alone. ‘I’m thinking of going out today.’ This time with more confidence. But what’s the point? He will say no. He will never trust her again.
She opens the door onto the puke-coloured hallway and the shouts and music of her neighbours. Outside flat forty-one she stops and rests her head on the security gate, takes a few breaths and then pulls it open. She looks down at the letterbox and for a moment feels like she has a choice. She could still go back to the roof. But, as always, the choice is taken away from her as the lock clicks from within and the front door swings open.
Dad fills the doorway; a fag hangs from the corner of his mouth. ‘You’re pushing your luck, girl.’ Patches of psoriasis flame red on his expressionless face. He’s put back on the same sweat-stained yellow T-shirt and army combat trousers from yesterday.
‘I was getting some air.’ She pushes past him into the dim, smoky living room.
He follows her, sits on the sofa and pulls his black boots on. ‘Air?’ He methodically ties up each of the long mustard laces. The woven burgundy throw falls from the back of the sofa to reveal the holes and poverty beneath it. ‘We got a balcony for that. I don’t wanna start locking the gate, Pamela, but if you’re gonna be running off every opportunity—’
‘I didn’t run off. It’s a nice day. I was on the roof.’
‘Well, I’ve heard that before. You can’t blame me for not trusting you.’
She rearranges the throw and stands back. She only wants an hour outside, just enough time to clear her head. So much can change in that time; like the day she first met Malachi. Dad had given her an hour then too, explained how grateful she should be for it. ‘More than enough time to go round the field and straight back home.’ She grabbed that time, and even though he was watching her from the window, she felt free as she ran loops around the frosty field.
The drunks, immune to the freezing temperatures of the morning, watched from their bench as she ran past them several times that hour. ‘You should be running this way, blondie,’ one called, while shaping his hands in a V towards his crotch on her last lap. They all laughed and she ran faster. She could always go faster and with time ticking she needed to get home before Dad came out for her. She cut onto the grass, slipped and fell awkwardly. It hurt straight away. Her ponytail caught the side of her face as she turned to check if the drunks were still laughing at her, but they hadn’t even noticed her fall. The dew began to seep through her leggings and she tried to stand, but buckled immediately with the pain.
‘Hey,’ someone called. ‘You okay?’ A tall man came running towards her and put out a gloved hand. ‘You really went down hard there.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Here, let me help you.’
As he helped her to a bench she tried to concentrate on the hole in his glove to stop herself from blushing.
‘You really do run out here in all weathers, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘I live up in Nightingale Point. I always see you out here.’
He had seen her before. How had she never seen him? She tried not to stare, or lean into his arms too much.
Tristan Roberts came over too. He was from her school, one of those loud, obnoxious boys everyone seemed to know.
‘Oh, shit, did you break your leg?’
‘No, she ain’t broken her leg. This is my brother.’
They looked nothing alike.
‘Ain’t you cold?’ Tristan pulled the drawstrings on his hoodie tighter. ‘Running round out here? That’s long.’
She could see Dad coming across the field now, his face red from fatigue and panic.
‘I’m fine, really. Thanks. I need to get home.’ She tried to rise but the pain shot through and she winced. He grabbed her again; the pain was almost worth it.
‘Get off her. Pam.’ Dad was closer. ‘Pam, Pam.’ He pushed past Tristan and put his hands either side of her face. ‘I knew I should have been watching you. What happened?’
‘She’s all right, man, she just tripped, innit,’ Tristan said.
‘Who are you? Why are you two even near my girl?’
‘Dad, stop it. Tristan goes to my school.’
Tristan looked confused. He obviously didn’t recognise her. It confirmed she had no presence at her new school; she was nobody.
‘I’m Malachi. We live in the same block. We were making sure she was all right. That’s all.’
‘Well, she’s fine ’cause I’m here now, ain’t I?’ Dad snapped. ‘Come on. Let’s get you home.’ His grip on her arm was tighter than it needed to be. She could see Malachi noticed it too.
‘This looks bad, Pam. Don’t think you’ll be running again for a while.’ Dad looked relieved, happy because injuries meant she had no reason to go out.
Even now, with the injury long healed, he still won’t let her out, but then he has other reasons for wanting to keep her inside the flat these days. She pulls the curtains open and the room brightens, but even the sun’s glare is not enough to chase the perpetual gloom out.
Dad inspects his roll-up for life before roughly squeezing it onto a saucer. It’s from her nan’s set, cream with tiny brown corgis around the edge, once used for special occasions but now reduced to holding ash.
‘I’m going to the bookies,’ he says. ‘Will be back for dinner. We’ll heat up that corned beef.’
‘They’re fighting again,’ she says.
‘Who?’
‘Next door. Can’t you hear them?’
They stop for a moment to listen to the searing soap opera from flat forty-two that plays itself out so regularly. It sounds particularly theatrical today. What is the woman shrieking about this time? She always seems to be arguing with her teenage daughter over something. Pamela longs for that kind of relationship, one so freely volatile that you could scream and shout at a parent, rather than stand there and soak up their disappointment.
‘They been at it all morning,’ he huffs. ‘Their voices go right through me.’
Pamela tries to block out the domestic so she can focus on Dad, her own situation. She tries to assess his mood by the way he clears his throat and collects his wallet. She wonders at her chances of success and waits to pick her moment.
He looks straight at her. ‘Why you dragging those about?’ He nods towards the pair of pink and lilac trainers in her hands.
The tip of her ponytail tastes chemically; he always buys the cheapest shampoo.
‘I won’t go anywhere other than around the field. I promise.’
‘You’ve only been home a few days. You expect me to let you start running wild again?’ He holds his anger in so well, but she can see it behind his eyes, ready to pop like glass. ‘No chance. You’re staying in.’
‘You know it rained the whole month I was at Mum’s. I haven’t been out running in ages.’
He shakes his head again.
‘I want to go round the field a few times. It’s the middle of the day,’ she tries. ‘You can watch me from here.’
‘Told you. I’m going out.’ His keys jangle as he taps his pockets and walks away, her chances dissipating.
‘What about swimming? Can I go to the pool?’
He laughs. ‘Yeah, right, the pool. Why? You arranged to meet someone there, have you?’
‘No. Dad, please.’ She follows him into the hallway, not content to let it end there. She knows she’s already in trouble anyway. ‘So you expect me to stay in all day listening to that?’
The walls leak more cries from the quarrelling neighbours.
He checks the handle on his bedroom door: locked. ‘You can use the phone. Call one of your mates for a chat.’
‘I don’t want to chat. I want to go out. I want to run.’
He stops by the front door and gently takes her plait in one of his hands. ‘No.’ So calm. So fixed. ‘I don’t trust you out the flat. In fact, I don’t even know if I trust you to be alone in the flat.’ He lets the long plait fall and kisses her on the head.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, how can I be sure that the minute I go out your little boyfriend won’t come running up?’
‘Because I don’t have a boyfriend anymore. Remember?’
He holds her gaze but what can he say? He knows he ruined it for her; he ruined everything.
‘Dad?’
He turns to face her, keys now in his hands as he opens the front door. ‘Yeah? Come on, Pam, what you wanting now?’
I hate you. ‘Nothing.’
The door closes and she listens for the Chubb lock, but hears no footsteps. He’s still outside; maybe he will change his mind and give her permission to start living again. But then, seconds later, there is the distinct clank of the security gate and the crunch of it being locked: the confirmation that she will spend today locked inside her home. Trapped.
CHAPTER FOUR
Chapter Four ,Tristan
Tristan had already picked the clothes from the floor, stacked the videotapes and lined up his and Malachi’s trainers by the front door. He now sits on the window ledge, his place of choice, observing the world nine floors below him. He is wearing white shorts today, white T-shirt, white socks, white trainers, and a large cubic zirconia stud in his left ear. It’s a good look. He feels pristine. He wonders if he should hoover but decides against it, as nothing will make the carpet, so full of cigarette burns and bleach stains, look any better.
Malachi walks in and slumps himself back into the Malachi-shaped dent on the sofa.
‘So what’s wrong with Mary’s TV?’ Tristan asks his brother.
‘Nothing. One of her grandkids must have unplugged the aerial.’
Tristan laughs, once again glad that Mary never asked him to fix stuff around her flat. It’s one of the perks of having a brother like Malachi, who is not only the clever one, the tall one and the ‘traditionally handsome’ one, but also the one that can ‘fix stuff’.
‘Did she make you watch Ricki Lake with her?’ Tristan laughs. ‘Girlfriend, you need to get a new man, get a man with a job,’ he mimics in an American accent.
Malachi shakes his head and pulls a pile of books onto his lap.
‘Mal, you all right?’
‘I’m always all right.’ He holds his book in front of his face.
‘You’re proper squinting. You need glasses, man, stop denying it. Specs will complete this whole student look you’ve gone for.’
Malachi puts the book down and pulls some keys from his pocket. ‘Mary’s spare keys,’ he says as they slide across the table into a pile of papers. ‘Tris, if you drop out that window I can’t save you.’
‘You don’t always need to save me,’ Tristan snaps. ‘I’m almost sixteen – old enough to vote and go to war.’
‘You need to be eighteen to vote.’
‘Whatever. Don’t need my big brother saving me.’
Malachi always thinks he needs to play the hero, but looking at his outfit today he’s the one that needs saving. Where did he even buy a pair of green trousers? No wonder he can’t keep a girl.
Malachi starts writing a shopping list, like Nan used to, except Nan wouldn’t have subjected them to pasta five nights out of seven.
‘What?’ Malachi looks up from his list of cheap meals. ‘Why’d you keep staring at me?’
‘Nothing. Was thinking, we should go West End, man. Get some new clothes for summer and that.’
‘New clothes? Cool, right after I figure out how to stretch my last money over our meals for the week.’
‘You were a lot more generous with the old purse strings when you were getting some action.’ Tristan is fed up of Malachi’s sulking. It’s been going on for ages now. All over some girl. She wasn’t even that fit. Proper Plain Jane. No need to get so upset over her. Tristan would never let a girl mess up his head the way Pamela messed up Malachi’s.
He starts tapping a beat on the window and runs through his latest lyrics. ‘It’s Saturday, I’m out to play. Girls get ready ’cause I’m gonna pay, pay your way, so you can stay, in my bed, but I ain’t gonna stay. Yes. You like that one, Mal? I was born to do this, man.’
But there’s no applause from the one-man audience on the sofa, only another huff.
‘Pay your way, so you can stay, in my bed, we do it hard all day. So what you saying, Mal?’
Malachi raises his eyebrow. ‘Keep working on it.’
‘Ha. You coming out later?’ Tristan asks hopefully.
‘No.’
‘How comes?’
‘Busy.’
‘Ah, don’t give me that, it’s bank holiday weekend.’ He picks up one of Malachi’s plastic-wrapped library books. ‘The History of the Urban Environment. Hmm, looks like a riveting read. But I’m sure it can wait. Come on, come out with me.’
‘No.’
‘You seriously telling me you can’t take one day off from studying? Your brain gonna get stretch marks if you carry on like this.’ How long is Malachi planning on hiding out behind his books? It’s getting ridiculous. ‘You gotta get back to normal sometime. Whole estate’s gonna be at this fair up at the Heath. Plenty girls, Mal, plenty girls. Gonna keep me busy. Don’t expect me home early. Don’t expect me home at all. You can have the place to yourself, bring someone over if you want. Get a little study relief.’ He pumps his hips.
Malachi rubs his eyes and groans. ‘Tris, stop going on.’