The Fall (19 page)

‘Dunno about that.’ Keisha looked alarmed.

‘That’s why you told me, isn’t it? So we can do something about it?’

Keisha smiled a bit, maybe at the
we
. ‘Mostly so you could know that maybe he wasn’t bad. Your fella.’

Charlotte felt this for the gift it was, how much it took for Keisha to say it. ‘I’ll never be able to thank you enough.’

‘Aw, come off it.’

Charlotte was nearly tearful again, she so much didn’t want this girl to walk out the door, even though she was a stranger and she wiped smeary handprints all over the glass table. ‘Just for a few days. Till you get settled, maybe?’

Keisha sighed deeply, and set her bag down. ‘Put the kettle on, then.’

And so Keisha was installed in the box room, a girl with the rangy build of an East African runner, hostile eyes, hair straightened and treated into a substance as far from natural as Teflon. She ate bags of Wotsits, the lurid dust gritting itself into the cream wool of the sofa. She left her size nine trainers, cheesy as the crisps, always in places where Charlotte would trip over them. She seemed to have access to no money but the few pound coins in her market-stall purse, saying there was an envelope waiting for her at the nursing home where she did nights – apparently this was how she got paid and thought it was
normal
. But she couldn’t go to collect this envelope yet because
he
might find her there. She was absolutely insistent on this point. He would know if she went anywhere she normally went. Look what had happened to her mum, after all.

Sometimes she would burst out laughing. On the second night, after another day of rehashing their mashed-up stories and eating biscuits, Charlotte was standing outside the bathroom waiting to brush her teeth, as Keisha gurgled and hocked up minty spit everywhere. Both their faces were reflected in the cabinet mirror.

‘What’s so funny?’ Charlotte was getting irritated having someone so strange in her house, even though she’d begged her to stay.

‘Look at the fucking state of us, Char. Black eyes, busted teeth. It’s like fucking Women’s Aid round here.’

Charlotte surprised herself by letting out a huge belly-laugh. She covered her mouth. How could she laugh when everything was so unbelievably fucked up?

‘S’OK,’ said Keisha, rinsing her toothbrush. ‘You gotta laugh, don’t you.’

That night Charlotte woke up again, tense as a board in her bed, heart thudding. Voices, again, outside. They were back.

She opened the door to the living room and nearly jumped out of her skin, before realising the long pale shadow by the window was Keisha.

‘They’re back.’

‘Mm. You got a torch, like a big one?’

‘A torch? Er, I think so.’ Trying to breathe and slow her heart, Charlotte rummaged in the kitchen drawers till she found Dan’s big camping torch. Remembered in a flash cold nights, wrapping him round her like a blanket, seeing the dawn through sweaty canvas. He’d been happy, camping. But not for a long time. ‘Here.’

Keisha flicked it on, nodding as if she approved. Then she flung open the window and shone it down. ‘Fuck off, you little fuckers. Who’s that? Michael Rutonwe, that you? Don’t think I won’t tell your mum what you’re up to.’

‘And who the fuck’re you?’ one called up.

A stone hit the wall but Keisha didn’t flinch. ‘Can’t see me, can ya? But I see you little shits and I know you all. So you better fuck off sharpish.’

There was a moment when they squared up to her. Then the black shadows peeled off from the dark and, miraculously, they started to leave. ‘Stupid cunt,’ one shouted back.

Charlotte was shaking. ‘Oh, God. You did it. Did you really know them all?’

‘Nah, just that one kid. Everyone knows him round my way, little fucker.’ Keisha switched off the torch and looked at Charlotte, pale in Dan’s rugby shirt. ‘You look like you need a cuppa.’

How was she to talk to this girl, so different to her, so full of angry energy that she hummed with it? They’d gone over their stories until holes were worn in them.

Charlotte would say – ‘And then they just bust in and they took him away, and I was so upset, I couldn’t believe it when they said no bail, I was about to be sick, and then they whacked my head into the sink . . .’

Keisha – ‘Then I see his shoes all red, and I say, What’s going on? and next thing I know there’s his fist coming up, and when I wake up he’s locked me in . . .’

Charlotte – ‘So my mum just up and arrived and all she could talk about was cancelling the florist, like I don’t feel bad enough, and there were reporters on my doorstep, and it was meant to be my wedding but my dad thinks I need a lecture on the banking system . . .’

Keisha – ‘My mum, she always hated Chris, since day one. Drove me mad. Couldn’t believe it, I just went in the ward and she’s not there, and I’m like, where the fuck is she . . .’

It was as if they both had a suitcase full of troubles that had to be upended. There were things Charlotte was afraid to ask, too. ‘But what I don’t get, right,’ she was saying later over microwaved supernoodles from the corner shop, full of salt and soy sauce and strange, powdery residue that rang with flavour. ‘Why was Ruby in care in the first place? I mean, it’s always on the news that Social Services won’t take kids away, then they end up dead and . . . Oh, sorry.’

Keisha got a look on her face between shame and fury. ‘Mum took her, didn’t she. After – what happened – she called the Social on him. Chris.’ She said the name in a tiny voice. ‘And they asked Ruby – kid said she always went to Nana’s at nights anyway.’ She fiddled with her fork. ‘See, I been doing nights at the nursing home, and he couldn’t stay home with her, could he. He had business and . . . stuff.’

Charlotte couldn’t look at her. She’d never known anyone as proud as Keisha, and here she was explaining how she’d lost her child, loving a bad man. It could happen to anyone.

Everything Charlotte bought in the corner shop had to have a receipt to be added to the IOU pile for when Keisha got her envelope, and if she forgot, Keisha would badger her for the price of everything. How much were Pot Noodles? Doritos? When Charlotte admitted she had no idea, she could see herself slide down even further in Keisha’s estimation. You had to know the price of things. How else could you know the value of anything? How else would you know what you’d gained, and what you’d lost?

The third day slid round, sleeping and eating, talking themselves hoarse, the coffee table littered with crisp dust, slimy spilled noodles, stained mugs.

‘We were supposed to be in Jamaica now,’ Charlotte half-laughed, rattling the dregs of a bag of Doritos. ‘I keep thinking about it. I had this image, you know, all candlelit dinners on the sand, and the sun going down, cocktails . . .’ She tailed off, seeing Keisha’s expression. ‘You know how it is with holidays. I always have, like, this picture in my head of what it’ll be like, all blue water, white sand. Then in real life it’s too hot or I get mosquito bites or something.’

‘Never been on holiday.’ Keisha shrugged, digging at a knot in her hair.

Charlotte was so shocked she blurted out, ‘What? I mean, really never?’

‘No.’ Keisha eyeballed her. ‘My mum was from Jamaica, you know. Came on the boat, but after that she wouldn’t travel, not even on the tube. The school were gonna take us down Southend one time but I got kicked out, didn’t I?’

‘Oh.’ Once again Charlotte felt she was in at the deep end, scrabbling to get a hold on some common ground between her and the other girl.

‘Guess we’re in the same boat now,’ Keisha said, hoisting her large feet onto the sofa, toenails poking out. ‘No boat at all, ha ha.’

It was true, Charlotte thought. It wasn’t what she had expected, but for the moment there was nothing else on offer.

Eventually, all the adding up of receipts and dividing by two was getting right on Charlotte’s nerves. ‘Why don’t you just go to the nursing home, get your pay?’

Keisha stiffened. ‘Dunno.’

‘Come on, he won’t be there. What, you think he can be everywhere at once?’ When she said it she worried she’d gone too far. Even though she barely knew Keisha, the other girl’s cynical bantering style had set her off talking like that too.

Keisha muttered, ‘I know that. Not thick, am I?’

‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. But – don’t you think we should go? You said he’d been evicted, didn’t you?’

‘That’s what Jonny said. Can’t trust him s’far as you can throw him.’

‘Look, I’ll come with you. Won’t you be pleased to get the money?’ She knew by then how proud Keisha was.

‘All right, leave it out.’

So now they were on a clanking, puffing bus – Christ, before all this Charlotte hadn’t been on a bus since she was at school – and lurching slowly up Finchley Road. Charlotte fidgeted with her Ugg boots; too hot. An awkward silence had settled between them. ‘Far, isn’t it?’

Keisha was snapping her chewing gum. ‘Normally walk this every night. And back, four in the morning.’

Once again Charlotte was silenced.

As they got near they both became nervous. Charlotte was getting a bit freaked about going into the Home, and she noticed that Keisha was fidgety, looking about her as if Chris might be hiding in the bushes. Inside, Charlotte was hit in the face by the smell of bleach and what it was covering – human crap. She must have gagged because Keisha gave her that look that was fast becoming annoying.

Keisha barged her way in through swing doors, her trainers squeaking off the floor. ‘Wait here a sec, will ya.’

Charlotte waited awkwardly in the hall. Through an open door she could see old people in chairs, vacant faces, and a whole room full of beige, beige cardigans, beige slacks, beige skin. She saw a woman loose a long stream of drool onto her chest, and shuddered. What was she doing here? She barely even knew places like this existed, just up the road from where she and Dan had been buying the
Guardian
and eating fresh croissants. The floor, she noticed, was exactly that same speckled blue plastic as the toilets she’d passed out in at the courthouse. She shuddered, remembering.

The door slammed back again and Keisha came out. She looked pissed off but Charlotte knew by now that didn’t mean much. ‘Well?’

‘Come on.’ Still looking round themselves, they headed back to the bus stop. Keisha sighed and fiddled with the pocket of her denim jacket.

‘Did you – you got it?’

Keisha inclined her shoulders;
yes
. ‘He gave it me, but he said don’t come back, ’cos I never showed up this week. Bastard.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t care. S’a shit job anyway. I’ll see about something else, agency work, waitressin’. Whatever.’

Charlotte sighed. ‘I’d better look for something too. We spent so much on the wedding.’ It still hurt so much she could hardly think about it. ‘I had a look round the PR firms but there’s nothing about, with the recession. Christ, I was lucky to have that job. What a dumbass. I really, really am in no fit state to job-hunt. I’m still crying at least ten times a day.’

As the bus drew in, they pulled out their Oyster cards and Keisha squinted at her. ‘You want this job here?’

‘Huh? Me?’

She shrugged. ‘S’easy work, just make the tea and that. He can’t be arsed advertising, tight-arse that he is.’

Charlotte almost laughed. To go from PR in Soho, all shiny hair and statement shoes, to a nursing home full of blank-faced old people! ‘Do you have to like . . . wipe them, or anything?’

‘Their arses? Sometimes, if they’re short-staffed. But everyone shits, Char.’

‘Oh.’

Keisha swung herself up into the bus by the pole. ‘Things are different now, yeah? You gotta do what you can. Sign up to my agency too. Bunch of bastards, but they pay OK. Not cash in hand like that bloody home.’

When they got home, Charlotte had to have a shower to wash away the smell of poo and bleach, and when she came out Keisha was watching TV. There was a pile of money on the table, notes and coins. Beside it was a sheet of printer paper with a long column of figures scrawled onto it. ‘You added the receipts up?’

‘Yeah, I can do sums.’

Again she was embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean . . . Thanks. You didn’t have to do that.’

Keisha got up and came over to the kitchen table. ‘Listen, Char, we need to talk money. How much is the mortgage on this here place?’

Charlotte wasn’t used to being so upfront about money. Vulgar, her mother always said. ‘I’m not sure.’ Keisha gave her that look again. ‘Oh wait, it was in Dan’s letter.’ She fished it out from the fruit bowl. ‘Here. Two thousand a month.’

‘Two grand, fucking hell.’

‘Well, it’s classed as a two-bed, and, you know, the area . . . And then there’s the bills, and the gym, and the cleaning lady usually comes – she thinks we’re in Jamaica now.’ And now that Charlotte looked around her, the place was already a tip in just two weeks without Maria’s expert touch, cooking spatter up the wall, the bin overflowing. Charlotte didn’t dare look at Keisha when she said about the cleaner.

‘Listen, I do a week of nights in that place, and I get two hundred and fifty quid. So, if you want me to share this place for a bit, I can’t pay half. See?’

‘Neither can I, not even on my old salary. Dan paid it.’ Dan earned over two hundred pounds for just an hour at his work.

‘And now you’ve nothing coming in. Plus, you’ve all that wedding shit to pay off.’

Charlotte bristled: what was so shit about her wedding? ‘So you’re saying I need to take the nursing-home job?’ Or something else crap.

‘That won’t be enough, even. You could move.’

As if she hadn’t thought of that. ‘Well, I can’t, actually. It’d never sell, not in this market. And Dan loves this flat; I have to keep it for him. Imagine, he gets out, and I’ve lost our home as well as everything else. He
will
get out – I know he will.’

Keisha paused. ‘OK. But then you need more cash. His work – they sacked him already, yeah?’

‘Yes.’ Charlotte slumped forward on her elbows. ‘It’s probably their fault anyway, making him so stressed. I mean, Christ, did they have to stop his card? I know he lost his temper, but they really screwed him over.’

Keisha was scribbling on the piece of paper. ‘In the news all the time, innit, these City twats get fired, sue for stress or whatever. Get millions, sometimes.’