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‘Calm down, bruv. I’m talking about girls in general. I wasn’t gonna bring up Blondie.’
‘You just did,’ he snaps. ‘You and Mary are doing my head in with this.’
‘What?’
‘You’re both telling me to move on, yet you’re bringing her up every minute. Why can’t you both drop it?’
‘’Cause everyone’s fed up with you sulking about Pamela. Time to get over it. It’s time for a next girl. It’s time, bruv, I’m telling you. That’s why you need to come fair. You need to watch me in action.’ He stands up and performs his lyrics just as he would on stage. ‘Me settle down? You’re having a laugh. A pocket full of Durex, girl meet me in the car park.’
Malachi throws his books on the table. ‘Don’t you have somewhere to go?’
‘Nah, not yet. I’m tryna cheer your long face up. I even put up that hotness for you.’ Tristan nods over to the wall. Earlier he had taped up an A3 poster of Lil’ Kim lying spread-eagle across an animal fur rug. Now that’s the kind of girl worth having a broken heart over, not some skinny little blonde from the flats.
Tristan pushes the window open further, in need of air after working himself up with all his talent. Now relaxed, he takes his Rizla from his pocket and what’s left of his weed.
‘Quickest way to get over one girl is to move on to a next.’
‘Outside with that.’ Malachi jabs a thumb towards the front door.
‘You serious? The window’s wide open. You can’t smell it if I sit here,’ Tristan says, demonstrating how carefully he will blow smoke out of the window.
‘I don’t care. Take it out.’
‘Just ’cause you ain’t smoking no more. Why should I have to go out?’
‘Out.’ Malachi repeats as he begins flicking through his books.
‘Whatever.’ Tristan rubs his brother’s head roughly as he passes the sofa on his way out of the flat. Surely one of the benefits of having a twenty-one year old as your guardian should be that you can openly smoke a bit of weed at home. But no such luck with Malachi and that stick up his arse. Still, Tristan doesn’t mind getting out, jogging down to his much-loved spot, between the sixth and fifth floor, where he selects the middle step.
‘I’m more than a thug, girl get to know me, king of the block, T.H.U.G.’
He likes the echo of his voice in the stairwell and imagines how it would sound on a real microphone. He pictures himself in a recording booth, one headphone on, one headphone off, like the rappers in the videos, all his boys drinking in the studio, some girls dancing about.
‘Gimme a kiss, I’ll light up a spliff, take you to Oxford Street, buy you nice shit. Nah, don’t sound right.’ He looks again at his stingy stash. ‘Hard times, hard times,’ he mumbles.
Then he hears something, someone coming down the stairs. It stops. He cranes his neck to look up and down. Nothing. But there’s someone breathing. It feels like he’s being watched, maybe by one of those crazy girls from the youth club. He had stopped going after he got involved with one too many of them. Some even know where he lives; they’re probably stalking him. Though he wouldn’t mind being stalked by the girl with the red weave – she looked like the kind of trouble he could enjoy.
Again, the shuffle of feet, heavy, though, not like a girl. Footsteps. He looks up and down but can’t see anyone. He’s being paranoid, but it pays to be paranoid living around here. Last week some woman got her handbag nicked as she was getting out of the lift.
‘I’ll give that ghetto ghetto love, weed and sex, and some crazy drugs.’
‘No smoking in the stairwell.’
Tristan is startled. His papers flutter to the floor.
‘What the fuck?’ he shouts.
A man stands at the top of the stairs. He looks down at Tristan. He is tall and chubby, and has crazy bright ginger hair.
‘No smoking in the stairwell,’ he commands.
‘You what? You spying on me?’
‘No smoking in the stairwell,’ the man repeats, and his face breaks out into high red blotches. ‘It’s a rule. You cannot break the rules of Nightingale Point.’
‘Fuck off. Go. Go past.’
But the man stands there, straight-faced. ‘No smoking in the stairwell.’
There is definitely something off about him; he’s wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Elvis Presley on it, for a start.
‘Rule breaker. Rule breaker,’ the man chants.
Tristan pounces up the stairs and grabs the idiot by the sleeve of his T-shirt. The man is bigger than Tristan but unsteady on his feet and he topples down easily with a tug. He lets out a small cry as he falls, then grabs the bannister and pulls himself back to his feet.
‘Stop looking at me!’ Tristan shouts. ‘Move. Go before I chuck you down the next five flights.’
The man bends over to pick up his glasses. His grey shorts are too big for him and he gives Tristan an eyeful of his white fleshly arse cheeks before he runs off down the stairs.
‘Fucking retard.’ Tristan picks up his papers and returns to making the spliff. He empties his tobacco in and sprinkles the little weed he has left on the top. But he’s pissed off now. He has nowhere peaceful to call his own, except for this place in the stairwell, and now some dumb fucker wants to talk to him about rules and try to kill his vibe.
Tristan lights up and waits a few moments to enjoy his first puff. It takes him a while to chill out again but finally he relaxes into his familiar routine, lounging back on the step and listening to the muffled sounds of the block.
‘Oh, look who it’s not.’ Mary’s voice echoes from above.
‘Fuck,’ he mutters and rubs the spliff against the steps. ‘Didn’t hear you, Mary. Boy, you’re so silent. Like a ninja.’
‘What you doing, sunshine?’ Her little plimsolled feet patter down the steps till she reaches him. ‘I was looking for you yesterday. Malachi tells me you’re not going kiddie club anymore.’
‘What?’ He laughs and fans the air between them. ‘Youth club? Nah, nah. I’m too old for that, man.’
‘Don’t man me. What is this?’ She pulls the spliff from behind his ear and he awaits the lecture. Mary’s got a lecture for everything these days. It’s almost like when Nan left last summer she handed Mary some kind of oracle of lectures, one for every minor deviance.
‘It’s Saturday. I’m allowed a little relief from life.’
‘Why not go and relieve yourself with a book?’ Mary rolls her head around like the African American women she’s always watching on TV. She leans towards him and sniffs his T-shirt till he moves away self-consciously.
‘What you doing? I’m clean. You know me, fresh like daisies.’
‘You stink like drugs.’
He laughs. ‘Oh my days. Leave me alone. It’s bank holiday weekend.’
‘You don’t work. Every day is bank holiday weekend for you. This is no good, Tristan.’ She holds the spliff in her hands. ‘If you smoke too much wacky backy you’ll get voices in your head.’
‘Is that a fact? Is that what the NHS is training you nurses to tell people nowadays?’
It’s obvious how hard she’s trying to hold a look of disappointment in her creased face, so he hits her with his biggest smile. ‘Come on, Mary, marijuana is a natural product. It’s grows alongside roses and shit.’
‘Don’t shit me.’
Her lips soften into a smile as Tristan laughs. She reaches up and puts the white roll-up back behind his ear. Such a pushover.
‘You come with me,’ she demands.
‘What?’
‘Walk me to the bus stop.’
He groans, knowing this will be Mary’s time to grill him on school, smoking, girls and anything else that needs to be filled in for her regular report back to Nan.
‘I can’t walk you, Mary. I’m busy. Meeting friends and going fair later, innit.’
‘You don’t have a choice. Come.’
She takes him by the arm and they walk down the stairs in silence. The ground floor is filled with the smell of the caretaker’s lunch – egg salad – and the sound of football on his radio.
‘Why you wearing so much white?’ Mary asks as they emerge into the heat and light of day.
‘’Cause it makes me look like an angel.’
‘Angel, ha. That earring makes you look like George Michael.’
‘Boy, you’re giving me a hard time.’
She snorts then let’s go of his arm as something hard and metallic falls to the ground in front of them. It’s her nurse’s fob watch.
Tristan picks it up and hands it back. ‘It’s broke. Why you still dragging this about? It looks so old.’
‘Because it is old.’
‘Get a new one. Get a digital.’
‘I don’t need new anything,’ she snaps while trying to re-pin it. ‘David gave it to me.’
A woman in hot pants and a bright red halter top, covering very little, walks past. She’s too old for both Tristan and her choice of outfit. Just his type.
‘It’s hot out here,’ he calls in an attempt to get her attention.
Mary grabs his arm again and pulls him away from the woman. ‘This temperature would be like winter in Manila. It is thirty-five degrees there. Where you going today?’
‘Told you. There’s a funfair over on the Heath.’
She stops and grabs her elbows in that nervous way she often does. ‘I hate funfairs. There’s always trouble at funfairs. Always someone getting robbed or getting their head broken on a ride.’
‘Yeah, that’s why I don’t get involved with rides. Those gypsies don’t do health and safety checks. I’m going to check a few gal and that.’
Mary reaches up and takes hold of one of his cheeks. ‘Eh, sunshine, put a sock on it. Don’t want any babies running around here.’
‘Oh my days, you’re tryna embarrass me. As if I would have a baby with any of these mad estate girls.’
They both turn to face the car park where a few boys cycle about in circles, shouting at each other. Tristan hadn’t even noticed them coming round. Behind them, on the wall, sit three older boys: Ben Munday, who has been able to grow a full beard since he was thirteen, and two others, who wear red bandanas around their heads like rap superstars. Tristan still owes Ben Munday twenty quid. Shit.
‘You know them ragamuffins?’ Mary asks.
He shrugs. ‘Nope. Not really.’
‘But they’re looking at you.’ She scratches at her left elbow and inspects it, as if she has been bitten by something.
Tristan really doesn’t have twenty quid right now, his own cash depleted weeks ago, and Malachi is being tighter than usual with the student grants and carer benefits that keep them both ticking over. He considers asking Mary but something about the way she frowns and fidgets tells him she’s not in the most giving of moods.
‘Tristan Roberts,’ Ben Munday calls.
Mary widens her eyes. ‘You don’t know them? Liar. They look like crack dealers, like Bloods and Crisps.’
He laughs so hard he needs to use her little shoulder to support himself, ‘It’s Bloods and Crips. Where you getting this stuff from?’
‘Don’t make fun of me.’ She shakes him off. ‘I see it on Oprah. I know all about gangbanging.’
‘Please, never say gangbanging again. And stop being so judgey. They’re kids from my school.’ Though they both know the wall boys are long past school age.
‘Eh, Tristan?’ Ben Munday calls again.
This time Tristan knows there’s no escape. ‘I better go check them out, all right?’ He nods at her as he walks off slowly, already thinking of how to downplay knowing a ‘gang’ when his nan next asks him about it. ‘And Mary, get rid of that nasty old watch.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Chapter Five ,Mary
She watches Tristan walk over to the ragamuffins that line the wall. He touches fists with each of them, and Mary catches a glimpse of the big Cheshire cat smile that makes him so endearing. She doesn’t want to think anything bad of Tristan, who deserves a million chances to get it right, but he’s smoking too much marijuana and surrounding himself with too many bad influences.
When Mary promised the boys’ nan she would keep a close eye on them, she thought it would be an easy job. She had known them since they were babies and, despite their chaotic upbringing, they were mostly good boys. But Tristan worries her at the moment. It’s no longer as easy as telling him to stay off the streets and he stays off the streets. She can’t fool herself: she has no real control over him. It’s like what you see on Oprah. Boy listens to rap music telling him to go shoot a policeman. Next day boy goes and shoots a policeman. She worries about him. All the time she worries about him.
Again it comes: twitch, twitch, twitch. She pushes her short blunt nails into her bony elbow in an effort to stop the tic.
Right now, there is a worry bigger and more urgent than Tristan. Mary’s husband, David, will descend on her any day and she is sure her guilt will shine through like a firefly in a jar. She will slip up somehow, maybe smell differently or perhaps refer to something only a woman in love would know. He will watch her and he will realise: his wife is an adulteress. When he came last, just over a year ago, she had started seeing Harris Jones outside of their nurse and patient relationship. Nothing more than long walks around the Jewish graveyard behind his house. A place safe from the prying eyes of others, somewhere they could be together to look at the bluebells and put the world to rights. An innocent friendship. But now, now things were so different.
‘Hot enough for you?’ the big ginger man who lives in her block asks as he stands outside the phone box, his glasses sitting lopsided across his babyish face. He is new to the area, one of those care-in-the-community patients. He runs his hands down the front of his T-shirt; it has a print of a young Elvis Presley on it, all hair and curled lip. When Mary first met David he was working as an Elvis impersonator at The Manila Peninsula Hotel. Mary hates Elvis. She smiles politely at the man as she spots the number 53 pulling into the bus stop.
She flashes her bus pass and rubs her arms discreetly against her polyester white uniform. The door closes behind her and traps in the heat and smells of the passengers. Mary thinks of how she is breaking the vows she took all those years ago in the local church with the baskets of sun-bleached plastic flowers and the priest with the lisp. She falls into that awkward middle seat at the back of the bus and feels the woman to her right tighten her grip on a battered library book so their arms don’t touch. Mary can just about make out the title: Broken Homes Make Broken Children. An omen? It’s like the world is conspiring to tell her something about her own wrongness, her dishonesty. But broken children? Her twins were hardly children anymore, thirty-five this year, and with careers and families of their own. Mary can’t imagine John’s or Julia’s life being affected by her having an affair or finally divorcing David. Divorce. As the word enters her mind the scratch becomes a searing itch and she tries to distract herself. She pulls a tissue from her bag and dabs her clammy face; the sun catches her wedding ring and it glints sadly, as if to mock her failure as a wife.
The bus picks up speed and a welcome breeze flows through the narrow windows. The woman with the cursed book gives Mary a sideways glance, their eyes meet and she adjusts herself to face out of the window. No one wants to deal with a crying nurse on public transport. As the bus nears Vanbrugh Close, Mary stands and presses the bell. She squeezes herself past the other sweaty passengers, towards the exit, ready to get off and face her second life. The doors hiss open and she steps into the full force of the sun. Immediately, her state of guilt gives way to something like joy, for although her affair is sordid and secret it is also satisfying, and her heart thumps with schoolgirl excitement at the prospect of seeing him again.
The walk towards the close of bungalows fills her with a feeling she remembers first having when she was nineteen and on the cusp of marrying David. A feeling she enjoys but knows she should not have in relation to a man other than her husband. Pop music plays from a stereo; a father and teenage daughter wash down a car together. They both glance up and smile at her. They look like a television advert: perfect and happy. On the other side of the road an elderly lady in a straw hat and pink gardening gloves picks at a blooming brood of hydrangeas. Vanbrugh Close is a world away from Nightingale Point and its smelly stairwell, blinking strip lights and cockroaches. And as Mary turns into the small neat drive of Harris’s home, she realises the life she has created with this man is a world away from herself, from the woman she has grown to be: the mother of two, grandmother of four, nurse of thirty-three years and wife to a fame-chasing husband.
CHAPTER SIX
Chapter Six ,Pamela
She lies on the sofa listening to the neighbours’ argument as it sinks through the wall. The mother–daughter screaming matches have become an almost weekly occurrence, both of them going back and forth at each other in their matching catty voices. Pamela closes her eyes and imagines what it would feel like to scream and shout at Dad the way the girl next door does with her mum. Pamela could never; she would be too scared to say all the things she really thinks about him. She jumps at the sound of a door slamming in the neighbours’ flat, the sound that usually signals the end of the row. And now there’s nothing to distract her. She stretches each leg out above her head. She misses running so much. How long will this go on for?
On the train back from Portishead Dad had told her not to expect to return to London and fall back into her normal routines, but she never expected this, for him to actually lock her in the flat, to put a complete ban on her going out. There was only ever a slim chance of him letting her take up running again, but it was him that pushed her to start swimming after her injury, so why rule that out as well? There’s no way he could have found out how little she actually swam.
‘I’ve circled the ladies-only sessions for you,’ he had said as he handed her the pool timetable. He even went out and bought her a costume.
She knew she wasn’t going to like swimming as soon as she got into the cold changing rooms. Most of the locks on the cubicles were broken and women of all shapes and sizes roamed about naked. Pamela looked the other way as old ladies stood with their swimming costumes half hanging down, applying deodorant and chatting to friends. There were used cotton buds left on the wooden slat bench, the floor dusty with talc. Quickly, she changed into the overly modest costume and made her way out to the pool, her eyes already stinging from the chlorine.
As she waded through the water her fingers caught long strands of black hair. She couldn’t get a rhythm going, the pool was too small and crowded, and she found herself gripping the scaly tiles at the far end, waiting for someone to complete a lap so she could have a turn. There was no freedom, no clearing of the mind and no possibility of losing herself in the monotony of the movement. It was the opposite of everything she loved about running.
She flipped her collar up while she stood under the awning outside, watching the bus home pull away. If she ran she could be home in fifteen minutes, but there was no rush to get back there, to sit in the dreary living room alone.
Two people came towards her with their hoods up. One went through the sliding doors but the other one stopped.
‘Hey.’ It was Malachi. He removed his hood and wiped the rain from his face.
‘Hi.’ She wanted to smile back but instead looked around cautiously in case Dad appeared from somewhere.
‘How’s your leg?’
‘Fine. Well, no, it’s sprained, so I’m giving it a bit of a break from running.’
The sliding doors kept opening and closing until Tristan stepped out from them. ‘Mal, we’re not allowed in.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, it’s a women-only swim session,’ Pamela said.
Tristan stood between the two of them. ‘What kind of sexist nonsense is that? I bet they don’t run men-only sessions, do they?’
Malachi rolled his eyes.
‘Let’s go gym instead?’ Tristan said.
‘I told you, you’re too young for it.’
‘Come on, swimming never gave anybody a six-pack. Ain’t that right, Blondie?’ He nudged her side.
‘Maybe you should take up running?’ she suggested, still looking at Malachi.
‘I’d like that.’ Malachi smiled and held her gaze.
Tristan laughed. ‘Yeah, running is a great choice of sport for a chronic asthmatic.’
‘Tristan, I’m going to meet you back home, all right?’
‘For real?’ Tristan looked at Pamela like he wanted to laugh. But of course, it didn’t make sense that someone like Malachi, who was tall and perfect, would want to spend time with a girl like Pamela, who was plain and invisible.
Malachi dug in a pocket and pulled out a crumpled fiver. ‘Here, go cinema or something. I’ll see you later.’
Tristan kissed his teeth as he took the note. ‘All right, see you back home. Laters, Blondie.’ He threw up his hood and sulked off into the rain.
They stood and faced the road, the rain coming down heavier now.
She wanted to wait for him to speak first, but couldn’t hold it in. ‘You know it’s too wet to run, right?’
He looked at her. He had amazing eyes. ‘I know. And you’ve been swimming already. You hungry?’
She shook her head. She didn’t have money to eat out anywhere.
‘What about a drink then? There’s a greasy spoon over there, it does good milkshakes. I’ll race you.’
It was awkward as they ran to the café together, as if they both knew straight away there was something more happening. The smell of burnt onions hit her as they stepped inside. They sat opposite each other in metal chairs and he picked up the laminated menu and held it closely to his face, studying it for way too long. Frowning, his forehead wrinkling, he looked so serious, so utterly different from every other boy she came across at school.
‘How old are you?’ She felt embarrassed straight after asking it.
‘Twenty-one.’ He put the menu down and folded his arms. ‘Twenty-one going on sixty.’
She smiled at him. ‘I know the feeling.’
He looked at her for a beat too long.
‘I’m almost seventeen. I’m the oldest in my year group at school,’ she said, trying to justify their age gap. ‘Seventeen in September. If I was born one day earlier I would already be in college.’ She paused. ‘You and Tristan don’t look very much alike.’
‘No. We’re not alike in lots of ways.’
‘Do you have the same dad?’ she asked.
‘What kind of question is that?’
The milkshakes came and she felt she had blown it, asked a stupid question and revealed herself to be a stupid schoolgirl after all.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy.’
‘He’s my brother. That’s all there is to it.’
She nodded and mixed the milkshake with the end of the straw.
‘Tristan said he’s never seen you at school before.’
‘No one sees me at school. No one sees me anywhere.’
‘I see you.’ Malachi smiled.
As they came out of the café, back into the real world, Pamela felt cautious again. ‘Do you mind if we walk back separately?’ she asked.
‘But we’re going to the same place.’
‘You met my dad – he’s quite strict about who I hang out with. He doesn’t really let me see boys.’
The word ‘see’ almost implied that she thought they had started a relationship.