Drowning Rose (22 page)

I stepped out on to the corner of the high street and turned left without looking, so I didn’t notice the long jeans-clad legs stretched out on the pavement until I stumbled over them. I steadied myself and looked down. The legs belonged to a teenage girl slumped across the doorway of an art gallery, a grubby rucksack and a can of Red Bull next to her. I muttered an apology, stepping round. She didn’t reply and I was about to walk on when it struck me she might not be stoned or drunk, but unwell, in need of medical attention. I might walk on by only to wake in the morning to the news, no doubt delivered by Archie, that a young woman had been found dead in the comfortable heart of the Village. There would be the comments by the police, made more in sorrow than in anger, that it appeared that the poor young girl had been lying there dead, or at the very least dying, and no one did anything to help. In fact one person, a woman, early middle age, grey dress, brownish reddish hair, actually stepped right over her yet did not bother to check if the girl needed assistance . . .

So what could I do but kneel down by the slumped figure and put my hand, lightly, on the sleeve of her arm. The girl gave me a hazy look under half-closed eyelids. I asked her if she was all right. Which was a pretty stupid question when directed to someone slumped in a doorway in the middle of the night. ‘I mean, do you need help? Are you sick?’

The girl didn’t reply.

‘Are you hurt? Shall I call an ambulance?’

The girl’s eyes snapped wide open. ‘No. I’m fine.’

I wanted to walk away. But she didn’t look fine. She didn’t smell fine either.

‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ I said. I was about to get back on to my feet when my wrist was grabbed by a grubby hand. ‘I said no. If you do I’ll only walk away.’ All at once she was crying. ‘I’m all right,’ she said again, in between sobs.

‘I can help you to get home?’

‘No. I had a fight with my boyfriend. He threw me out.’

‘Have you nowhere else to go? What about your parents? How old are you?’

The expression in her eyes as she looked back at me said I was just as clueless as she had expected me to be. ‘Seventeen. And that was my home.’

‘Oh.’ I shifted my weight from one knee to the other. ‘What about your parents?’ I asked again. ‘Are they not around?’

‘Ha,’ she said. ‘Ha’, and nothing more.

‘How about a hostel? We can call the police and ask them where the nearest hostel is?’

‘Just go away, will you. Leave me alone. Go home.’ The word ‘home’ sounded like a reproach. As well it might. I had a home. She didn’t. I didn’t deserve mine. I expect she didn’t deserve not to have one. I got to my feet and then I reached down and took her by the wrist. ‘Come on. You can stay the night with me and then we’ll see what to do in the morning.’

I regretted it the moment I had said it. But it was too late to take it back. The girl was looking at me now, and she was actually smiling. The smile made her look about twelve. ‘You mean that?’

I nodded. ‘Absolutely. I live just around the corner.’ I had to force the words from my mouth because by now all I wanted to do was run off. I mean, what was I thinking of, asking a stranger into my home at night?

‘Nice place,’ the girl said. She had dropped the rucksack on the hall floor and was looking around her.

‘I’m very lucky. It’s a bit of a mess still, though. The builders have only just finished.’ I switched the light on and smiled at her. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

‘Chloe,’ the girl said.

‘I’m Eliza. Would you like something to eat?’

I scrambled some eggs as Chloe slumped on the kitchen chair. It felt quite normal; the kind of thing people did, scrambling eggs for a monosyllabic teenager in the middle of the night. In fact it felt great. I thought of the J.B. Priestley play,
An Inspector Calls
. I thought about no man being an island. I thought of the Big Society. The more I thought, as I scrambled the eggs, the more pleased I felt.

‘What do you do?’ Chloe asked me as I put the eggs and toast in front of her.

I joined her at the table. ‘I’m a ceramic restorer.’

‘Right. What about your husband?’

‘I’m not married.’

Chloe looked around her, chewing on her food. ‘Right,’ she said again. ‘Boyfriend?’

I knew the answer should be ‘that’s personal’ but it would sound rude. I just shook my head.

‘So you live here alone.’

What was I doing telling her these things? I shouldn’t have said anything. I most certainly shouldn’t have told her I lived alone. I wondered if it were too late to invent a housemate. A man. A man who played rugby. Or practised karate. I could slip it in. I could look at my watch and say, ‘Steve should be home from karate any minute now. I’m so proud of him now he’s a black belt.’ Chloe interrupted my thoughts. ‘Do you have anything to drink?’

I got to my feet. ‘Of course. Sorry. What would you like?’

‘Orange juice or milk or something like that?’

I hurried across to the fridge, feeling shabby and cross with myself. I was being prejudiced, judgemental, instantly assuming that this poor girl was up to no good just because she was on the streets. I was being the kind of person who was lampooned in television satire and possibly even beheaded come the revolution. ‘Here you are.’ I smiled as I handed her a large glass of orange juice.

‘Thanks,’ she smiled back and her pale drawn features lifted, making her almost pretty. Her gaze was clearer too. If she had been stoned, she was coming down. ‘You’re pretty amazing, asking me in like this?’

I felt ridiculously pleased. ‘Oh, I’m only doing what anyone would have done.’

‘I’ve been on the streets before. This is the first time anyone’s bothered.’

‘Really. That’s too bad.’ I was beginning to warm to this helping business. ‘Well, if one’s lucky enough to have a lovely home,’ I gesticulated round the kitchen. I was pleased with how it had turned out. The walls were the colour of crème anglaise (not custard, as I had explained to Uncle Ian, custard being too yellow, but the soft sunshine-on-cream colour of its French cousin) and the wooden kitchen units painted in two shades of fresh green that might have clashed as one contained yellow pigment and the other blue, but somehow didn’t.

‘It’s really pretty. Colourful,’ Chloe said.

This was cosy, the two of us at the kitchen table talking interior decor.

I lent Chloe a pair of pyjamas and made sure she had a glass of water by her bedside. Once I was in bed myself I lay staring at the birds flying free across the tattered yellow wallpaper of my room and I felt happy. Who knows what might have happened to that girl out there on the streets, if it hadn’t been for me.

A little later I got out of bed and walked up to the door, turning the key in the lock. Just in case. After a few minutes I got up once more and unlocked it.

Twenty-four

I was woken by the insistent ringing of the doorbell. I checked the time. It was half past six but somehow I still felt perky. Half past six, I thought, glancing out of the window, and a sunny day in North London. The doorbell rang again; two short bursts and one long one, the kind where the ringer had a finger pressed hard against the bell and a pissed-off look on his or her face. I threw on my dressing-gown and hurried downstairs. I was halfway down when I remembered the guest in my spare room. The din must have woken her but being a teenager she had most probably just rolled over and gone back to sleep. I’d check on her in a moment, perhaps even bring her a cup of tea in bed. She was most likely not used to being spoilt.

Bang bang bang!

‘Who is it?’ I shouted through the door.

‘It’s Archie from Number 4.’

‘It’s six thirty in the morning, Archie,’ I said as I opened up.

‘You take a look outside.’ He flung his arm out, gesticulating towards his house and the two either side.

I looked. It took me a moment to take it in but then I saw it, the graffiti scrawls across the doors and brickwork. I turned back to him. ‘Goodness.’ I was about to step outside to check the damage done to my own place when Archie held his hand up in a policeman’s stop. ‘Nothing on yours.’ He looked severe. ‘For obvious reasons.’

‘What do you mean?’ I pulled the dressing-gown closer round my neck. Spring was dragging its heels and it was a chilly morning.

‘Seeing it’s the handiwork of that young guest of yours? I saw you both coming back last night as I was closing my shutters.’

Again? I thought. That man was always closing his shutters. I frowned at him, disappointed by his attitude. ‘Why on earth should that,’ it was my turn to gesticulate, ‘be her handiwork? Did you see her do it? Anyway, even if she had managed to sneak out without me noticing she wouldn’t have been able to get back in without a key. The poor girl is asleep upstairs. Exhausted, no doubt, from having been thrown out on the streets by an abusive boyfriend.’ My voice was rising with my mounting outrage. What chance did young people like Chloe have when everywhere they went they were treated with suspicion? I myself had been guilty of it last night. Why should misfortune make someone more prone to bad behaviour, I wanted to know.

Archie was pointing a thick finger over my shoulder at my hall and I turned round. ‘What?’ Then I saw my bag on the floor, some of its contents spilt. ‘Oh. It must have got knocked off the chair.’ I went back inside, leaving Archie in the doorway, and picked the bag up. Looking inside, I saw that my wallet and keys as well as my phone were all missing, so I took another look around the floor, but all I could find were my lipstick, a hairclip and a tampon. I quickly put my foot on the tampon as I searched inside the bag once more but it was empty bar a blister pack of ibuprofen. ‘Excuse me.’ I closed the door in Archie’s face. Then I walked into the kitchen, slowly. Looking around me, and even with one eye closed, as if that would help, I realised that my friend, my beloved laptop, was gone as was the television and, of course, my tin of pound coins. I opened both eyes, as it couldn’t really be much worse. And at least the place was still clean and tidy. No vandalism, no graffiti here. I had another thought and with a little yelp I ran out into my workshop. Thankfully, nothing in there had been touched.

I ran upstairs and knocked on the spare room door. There was no answer so I knocked again. Still no reply, so I turned the black iron doorknob and opened the door. Chloe was gone as was the small silver button box that used to sit on the dressing-table. On the bed lay a note scrawled on a scrap of paper.
Sorry but my boyf need money. Thanks
.

I sank down on the bed. Then I started to laugh. The doorbell rang again. I expected it to be Archie and much as I didn’t want to see him right then I owed him and pretty well everyone else in the square an apology.

‘Since brick and stucco are porous and the pores tend to catch and hold the dirt,’ I was telling Archie, ‘they are the most difficult surfaces to clean.’ I had achieved a good result with the front doors using Graffsolve liquid. It was biodegradable and non-toxic, thereby avoiding the need to block off windows and doors, although I had placed a special mat on top of the storm drain. For the brickwork I was using Graffsolve gel and a pressure washer and I had ensured that Archie, Jenny Howell and Terry Neil, the neighbour on the other side of Archie, kept at a safe distance. I myself was wearing protective goggles and heavy-duty rubber gloves. I applied the gel to the affected areas and agitated the surfaces with a stiff brush. Stepping back approximately three feet, I pressed the trigger. I kept the water pressure low as I worked the hose from top to bottom in overlapping strokes.

The paint washed off reasonably well although it was too early to tell if some repainting might be needed. Once I had achieved as good a result as was possible with the equipment to hand, I went back into my studio to put my materials away and to take off my overalls. Archie had told me he wanted a little word when I had finished but I was in no hurry to speak to him. It was a strange thing but in my experience ‘little words’ were exactly the ones that spelt trouble. People who had something disagreeable to say never began with, ‘I’d like to have some really big words with you.’

No, it was always ‘little’ words.

As it happened I got a mug of weak tea with my words. I don’t know which I minded most. I really dislike weak tea.

‘I’ve had a little word with some of the neighbours.’ There it was again, the L word. ‘And it was agreed that I should be the person to speak to you, seeing as we already know each other.’

I sipped the tea and tried to look nonchalant.

‘We understand that your intentions in taking this young woman in were good, but here’s the thing, with the privilege of living in a place like our little square comes – well – certain responsibilities.’ He paused, looking expectantly at me. A passage from the Bible would have come in handy right now, I thought, something about Samaritans, for example, but my knowledge of Scripture was sketchy.

‘In short, and to be blunt, we all hope you’re not going to make a habit of bringing young undesirables into the neighbourhood.’

‘I’ll try not to. Although if one just attaches herself to me and won’t let go, then I can’t be held responsible.’

Archie looked confused. ‘Surely that’s not likely to happen.’