Girl Seven (13 page)

It didn’t even properly sink in at the time that they were talking about me. It wasn’t until I was older that I attached any significance to the conversation. I just wanted to know why Grandmother hadn’t wanted to see me.

I chewed the skin around my fingernails.

‘She only stopped creeping out when we gave her some­thing,’ my mother said. ‘Not because she knew it was wrong.’

‘Kids do that all the time.’

‘She laughed at me and I didn’t like it! It didn’t seem normal, OK!’

‘You’re just upset. You don’t really believe everything you’re saying—’

‘Do you remember just before that, when her friend came round to play and she broke her dinosaur toy, and... she didn’t even ask for another one, but she said that to make it fair we had to break her friend’s toy as well?’

‘What has that got to do with anything?’

I turned, just to look around the doorframe again, and my mother was staring at him. She always looked really beautiful just after she cried. It was like the tears washed something off her face. Stripped-down and shiny-eyed, she was enchanting.

‘Isn’t that wrong? That’s... not the way a girl thinks.’ She clenched her fists in front of her on the table and spoke down to them. ‘That’s not the way any kid thinks! You break a toy, you ask for a new one, sure, but to... demand, like it makes sense, you break someone else’s. Isn’t that scary to you? That her first thought was to make some other kid cry too?’

‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say. Are you going to sit there and say she is evil too? Just like your mother? No, wait, your batshit-crazy mother, because remember that’s what you used to call her...’

‘No!’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know what I’m trying to say.’

When I was older she did a lot to feed my paranoia, but at this point my eleven-year-old self felt I had nothing more to learn from the conversation and went upstairs. I swatted the insect with the sleeve of my pyjamas and flicked its broken wings on to the floor.

I trained for the first time in weeks, went over sequences of moves and blocks and rolls and kicks and sit-ups and push-ups until I was dehydrated and couldn’t do any more. I hadn’t moved from the floor, meditating in silence, for at least three hours, when the intercom buzzed.

The room had fallen into total darkness.

‘Fuck.’

I assumed it must be the Russians and got up, stretching my stiff and aching limbs before making my way to the front door and buzzing them in. I switched some lights on, squint­ing. My stomach was empty. I poured myself a glass of water and looked at the food in the fridge, weak with hunger, but couldn’t face it. I doubted I could keep anything down after exerting myself that much.

Nic’s photocopied drawing of the man with the comb-over watched me from the kitchen work surface.

There was a knock at the door.

I felt sick as I went to answer it.

But it wasn’t the Russians; it was Noel.

I almost started crying then and it took all my willpower to stop myself, but I wasn’t sure I disguised it very well.

He smiled nervously. ‘Can we talk?’

‘How do you know where I live?’ I asked, my voice shaking a little.

‘I had you followed ages ago. Just so I knew.’

‘Jesus. Overstepping the mark much?’

He just stared at me.

I didn’t have the energy to be indignant without becoming upset, so I waved him in. Against my better sense I was glad to see him.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

I sat down on the sofa and sniffed, hiding my face. ‘Ah... no. No.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing, it’s nothing.’

‘Is it me? It’s me, isn’t it? I know it’s me.’ He sat down next to me and tentatively put his arm around my shoulders, as if he was about to say something monumental. ‘Look, I was coming round here to say I’ve been a massive dickhead, if that’s any help? If you were still pissed off I was really going to ask you... to forgive me and stuff. But if it’s not me... Well, I can have them killed. Really. I’ll have them killed.’

I laughed but it wasn’t proper laughing. It was crying with a smile.

‘No, I don’t think it’s anything to do with you.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. Though I still accept your apology. They’re prac­tically an endangered species, I’ll take them where I can get them.’

‘Want to talk about it?’

‘No.’ I met his eyes and looked away just as quickly. ‘No. I... I’m just going to have to find somewhere else to live with­in the next month, that’s all.’

‘Fuck, is it landlord problems?’ He frowned. ‘Because, seriously, I can sort those out for you.’

‘I don’t think you can.’

His arm suddenly felt heavy across me.

‘I can find you somewhere.’

I sighed. ‘We’ve talked about this before. I don’t want your... charity. I’m not your fucking adult child. I don’t want a trust fund.’

‘Oh come on, that’s unfair.’

The arm fell away and we sat shoulder to shoulder instead.

‘I’ve already told you I don’t want to be kept.’

‘You don’t need to be!’ He stopped himself from rolling his eyes. ‘You don’t need to be if you pay your own rent, albeit a bit lower... if you like. Your name can be on the tenancy agreement. I’ll just...’

‘What? Be my landlord? No thanks. Like I’m going to call you about things like the boiler packing up or something? Come fix a broken washing machine? God, no.’

‘You’re so difficult.’

But he didn’t look pissed off. It was said with affection. He liked difficult women, he’d told me so enough times. He couldn’t be with anyone for too long who didn’t cause friction and tension and challenge him. He actively rebelled against anything like happiness and contentment and I understood it; I was much the same.

‘You can look for a place for me,’ I said, attempting a com­promise. ‘You can help me look. But it can’t be some place you own.’

‘Done.’

He held out a hand to shake mine, and his grip lingered.

I looked away.

‘How is it going with Mark?’ he asked, ignoring the tension. ‘Did you speak to him?’

I nodded.

‘And?’

‘He’s looking; he’s got some leads. He’s a cool guy actually.’

‘Is he confident?’

A shrug. ‘He strikes me as the sort who’s always confident.’

‘And how do you feel about it?’

I was thrown by the question. Noel never asked about feelings. Even the most perfunctory ‘How are you?’ was done begrudgingly, with a little panic in his tone, dreading a real reply. Once he had made the mistake of asking one of the girls how she was three hours after she had broken up with her boyfriend. She had cried all over his suit while he made SOS signals to me over her shoulder. All Daisy and I had done was laugh. Noel didn’t come back into the club for a fortnight.

‘I almost don’t want to know,’ I said, giving him enough credit to think of a serious answer. ‘I’ve got so used to not knowing that I was almost OK with it. It’s the prospect of finding out why that actually makes me feel... sick.’

‘Well, that’s normal, I reckon.’

‘What if I find out something about them that I didn’t want to know? What if my dad really was mixed up in something bad in Japan? I gave Mark shit for asking if he was involved in Yakuza and stuff like that but the truth is... I don’t know. I don’t have a fucking clue. And they were my parents. Isn’t that sad?’

‘They did have lives outside of you, you know. Even though it’s never that nice to think about, is it?’ He snorted. ‘It’s like imagining your parents having sex. Even though it’s obvious it happens...’

I grimaced. ‘Well... that was unnecessary, Noel. Thanks.’

‘Pleasure to help.’ This time he patted me on the back softly.

‘So why are you here?’ I asked, not wanting to let him feel it was this easy to win back my favour. ‘Caroline left again, has she?’

He had the grace to look ashamed. ‘No, she’s still here. I just forgot how much easier it was to talk to you. You know, me and her, we don’t have that much in common. The only thing we do have in common is that I love her... and she loves her, and she loves that I love her. That’s pretty fucked up, right?’

‘This thing with Mark and my... family. You know I never really cried about it, I never did that “stages of grief” thing. Aren’t you meant to feel something?’

There was a long silence.

He put his arms around me and squeezed. ‘You know... you can talk to me.’

I nodded, feeling closer to crying again now that I was in his arms. I detested the effect he had on me, but it reassured me in that it made me feel more like a normal person. I’d rather die than cry for real in front of him.

‘I think half your problem is that you don’t talk.’ He took my scraped hands in his. ‘You’re like me, you don’t talk, you...’

‘Argue.’

‘I was gonna say “drown”.’

Sometimes his eyes became so fucking wise I couldn’t handle them.

I looked at the blank easel in the corner of the room.

‘You seem to be feeling something now,’ Noel said, jogging my shoulder. ‘You just like to bottle things up. Don’t worry, you’re probably just emotionally retarded and repressed, like us blokes.’

I laughed.

He gave me an animated smile. ‘You’ll probably turn to alcoholism or build up some great anger-management issues.’

‘Great, well, that’s made me feel better.’ I wiped my eyes, but I wasn’t lying.

‘Take the next few nights off, if you want. Take as many nights off as you want.’

‘Urgh, no, can’t think of anything worse. I’d rather keep busy. Plus, I need the money.’

He was about to offer to lend me money. I could sense it in his body language and hear the words forming in his mind, but to my surprise he stayed silent on the matter and I was grateful for that. It had only taken several hundred refusals for the message to sink in that I didn’t want anything from him. Tragically, I realized that I didn’t want anything from him except his company and attention.

How weak, I thought.

‘I’m sorry for being a bitch,’ I said, suddenly feeling like shit for everything I had done, for everything I had promised to do.

It wouldn’t hurt him, I kept telling myself. It was just money. I would never hurt him.

‘Don’t worry about it.’

I linked my fingers, turning them around and around each other.

‘Did you come here to fuck me?’ I asked, turning to face him.

He gave his response some thought, which obviously meant yes.

‘If we don’t, I won’t mind.’

I took the side of his face in my hand and kissed him. I didn’t even care if the flat was bugged any more. Let them listen. Let them watch. The calm washed over me like fucking Valium and I’d missed it.

It was always so much easier to do this than it was to say anything else, and at least it was more real than thinking about Seiko.

Noel was sleeping against my back, with one hand on my thigh and an arm wedged under my neck like a flight pillow. He smelt of sweat and sex but it was impossible to get away from him when he was sleeping; he seemed to gravitate towards human contact in his sleep, which meant that I spent most of our nights together awake and overheated.

At about four in the morning I carefully eased my way out of his embrace and out of the bedroom. It was the first time I’d slept there in weeks. I tended to sleep in the living room on the pull-out sofa bed; a habit I’d never been able to break. The bedroom didn’t feel like mine.

I switched on one of the dimmer lamps, red-tinted, and paced naked around the living room, trying to work out where I would be hidden if I was one of those little microchip-sized recording devices.

Maybe they were in multiple rooms? They’d had so many opportunities to plant them if they knew where I lived. They could have been in and out of the flat like ghosts.

I found my mobile on the floor next to the sofa and took it into the kitchen with a packet of cigarettes, shutting the door.

While psyching myself up I ate cereal dry out of a bowl, and then called Alexei.

I listened for a moment to check that Noel was still asleep, but there was no sound. He barely made any noise in the night. Sometimes I couldn’t hear him breathing and thought he was dead.

It rang out the first time but I called again, and again, until Alexei answered. I’d taken the time to devise a semi-script in my head. I couldn’t rely on any of my own courage to carry me through; it would have to be like slipping into a character.

‘Fucking bitch, what?’ His voice was thick with sleep.

‘Morning. Have you got my passport yet? Because, you know, I’m going to want to be seeing that soon.’

I could hear the sound of him sitting up, wiping sleep out of his eyes, standing up and walking out of the room. He muttered something to someone in Russian. Maybe he had a wife? He continued walking, down some stairs, clearing his throat. Maybe he had kids?

‘You put on quite the show earlier,’ he said after he had stopped once again. ‘Were you trying to turn me on?’

I heard him fill a glass of water from a tap.

‘You like what you saw?’ I said, my skin crawling as the words came out.

‘It was like music to my ears. All clever talking girls like you need fucking hard.’

I smiled, revolted by him. At least I now knew there was no video recording in the flat. If it was only audio, I could work with that.

‘Interesting’, he continued, ‘that you think you’re in a pos­ition where you can demand things.’

‘I hardly think you’re in a position to accuse me of making unreasonable demands.’

‘You called for anything else? Or did you just want to piss me off?’

I took a deep breath away from the line. ‘I want to go over a couple of things. The terms of my payment. I need to be clear on what’s in it for me before I do anything more for you.’

He laughed, but it was a better response than anger. ‘And what makes you think we won’t just kill you if you don’t cooperate with us?’

‘Then kill me. As you well know, I’m close enough to Noel to find out anything you want, things you wouldn’t even get a sniff of on your own. Also, your plans will end in fucking disaster without my help and you know it. Either the police will catch you within weeks, with all the evidence you’ll leave all over the place and with all the witnesses who’ll see you, or Noel and Ronnie will. Personally I’d hope for the former. Ronnie would cut your dick off and feed it to you... but I imagine yours would go down easy, wouldn’t it? You could knock the whole thing back like a tiny little oyster, right?’