The Fall (2 page)

4.15 p.m. Surreptitiously she opened her table-planning software. Yes, the rebranding of seventy-calorie snack bags was a big deal, and she would definitely buy them herself when they came out, but the wedding was just a week away and her bloody cousin Mary and that drip of a husband of hers still hadn’t RSVPed. Unbelievable! And what about Dan’s rowdy college group, which would include at least one broken-up couple and an ex of his? She pursed her lips, moving little names round the screen, like some very organised goddess.

Chris hadn’t believed her at first, when Ruby arrived. ‘She’s fucking black, that kid,’ he’d said, when the baby was just days old, when you could see her eyes turning all these shades of brown, like stones drowned under water. It was the most gorgeous thing Keisha’d ever seen.

‘I dunno how,’ Keisha had said over and over, her eyes leaking as much as her stupid pregnancy boobs, like a tap she couldn’t turn off. ‘She’s yours. I swear to God, she’s yours.’ Of course the kid was his. There’d been no one else, not since Keisha was twelve and sitting in History and saw him standing in the door with a fag hanging down from that mouth of his. She’d heard it could happen sometimes. And it must have. Only a quarter black in this baby – less, maybe, if Mercy had any white in her – but you could see it in Ruby’s hair, in her nose, in the dark almonds of her eyes. And there was Keisha, nothing like either of them. White, you would say, unless you looked closely.

‘People be sayin’ I stole you,’ Keisha’s mum used to say when they went to mother and toddler group, years ago. But whose fault was that? It was Mercy who’d had it off with some random white guy, got knocked up, and dropped out of her college course. Keisha had spent most of her life wondering about every white guy she saw of the right age; dudes with briefcases and umbrellas, drunks hanging round tube stations. It could be anyone. Mercy had never told her a thing.

Walking away from Sandra’s office in West Hampstead, she decided. She would bring Chris home some nice dinner out of Waitrose, that shiny new Waitrose on Finchley Road, and if he was in a good mood she’d ask him again to help her get their kid back. But when she took out her purse she realised the money from her wages was gone again. ‘You fucker,’ she said out loud, and set off walking home.

With just a week to go to the wedding, Charlotte’s mother’s phone calls were up to four a day. Did she get the message that Auntie Jan was gluten- and dairy-free now? Had she found out the surname of Cousin Lucy’s new boyfriend? Because you couldn’t just put someone’s first name on the place-tag, imagine. And what if the roses weren’t the right shade of pink? They’d clash with the table linens. And now, right at the checkout in Waitrose on Finchley Road, as Charlotte was struggling with her basket of Friday-night groceries, her phone rang.

‘Mum?’

‘Hello? Hello? Goodness, I can hardly hear you.’ Charlotte’s mother only used the phone if she was seated at her special phone table, the message pad and pen at the ready. She didn’t understand that her daughter might pick up while at work, or in the gym, or crossing a busy road.

‘Hang on, Mum, I’m just paying.’

‘Pardon? Oh, you’re in a
shop
.’ Gail considered it extremely impolite to be on the telephone whilst being served in a shop.

Charlotte heaped her groceries up, balancing the phone while stacking the olives, the ciabatta, the good bottle of Prosecco.

‘Hello? Hello? I just had another thought, darling – what if someone’s lactose-intolerant?’

She scrabbled for her debit card. ‘What if someone’s
what
?’

‘The chicken, Charlotte, it’s cooked in cream. Some people don’t eat that. That’s why I wanted to get the salmon. Chicken’s so – well, it’s ordinary, darling, for a wedding.’

Charlotte took a deep breath, as Dan had urged her to do when her mother went off on one. ‘It’s fine. It’s the Mandarin Oriental, Mum. They’ll handle it.’

The girl was waiting for her to pay, and Charlotte heard an impatient sigh behind her from another shopper. She flashed an apologetic smile at the cashier, keyed in her pin, and started dumping the groceries into her eco-friendly cotton bag. ‘Sorry, Mum, can I call you later?’ She hung up with no intention at all of ringing again.

From the Waitrose on Finchley Road it was just two streets to Charlotte and Dan’s flat, the second floor of one of the square, solid Belsize Park townhouses. She fumbled with the keys and shopping, but someone had left the front door ajar again, it was so annoying. She suspected the weird guy from the basement flat.

She bent to pick up the scattered post from the shared hallway – again, no one ever lifted it – flyers, a catalogue from Mothercare (Dan would raise his eyebrows and throw it straight in the recycling), an acceptance card from Tom and Julie. She blanked on the names for a minute, mentally scanning the endless guest list her mother was insisting on. Tom was a friend of Dan’s from Oxford, she thought. Who would RSVP with only a week to go? It was so rude. Dan always shrugged and said, ‘Who cares?’ but he didn’t have a retired mother breathing down his neck every day, and an endless source of worry about everything from bridesmaids’ hair accessories to the ribbon on the favour boxes.

Her phone rang again, as she hefted the shopping up the two flights of stairs to their flat, and she rolled her eyes –
Please, not another Mum call
.

‘Charlotte, it’s Sarah.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’ She juggled her key into the lock of the flat door.

‘What?’

‘I mean, your name comes up – never mind.’

‘Has Gail spoken to you about this shoe issue?’

‘She called before, but not about shoes. I thought it was sorted.’

‘It’s not sorted! I can’t actually
wear
the shoes. I’ve told her again and again, my toe’s broken. I can’t wear strappy sandals when I have a splint on.’

Charlotte vaguely remembered her mother saying something about Sarah breaking her toe on a dry-ski slope, but she’d screened it out.

‘I don’t want to get Dad involved, but really, I know she’s your mum and all, but I really think she’s lost it on this one.’

Charlotte was in the flat now, registering with distant surprise that the lights were on and Dan was home already, standing at the window looking out at the view of Parliament Hill. She tried to focus on her step-sister. ‘Well, I don’t know, can you get a different pair in the same colour?’

Sarah laughed bitterly. ‘You’d think so, but no, that would be far too easy.’

Dan hadn’t turned round as she crab-walked into the kitchen with the bags and started putting things in the fridge, all the while struggling with the phone. ‘Look, I’ll talk to Mum. I’m sorry about your toe. Call you tomorrow maybe?’

‘I’m going to Bangladesh for a week, remember?’

Wondering how she could still travel with a broken toe, Charlotte said goodbye and hung up. Her step-sister Sarah, tall and square, a journalist who skied at weekends, hadn’t responded well to being decked out in Charlotte’s mum’s vision of pink frills.

‘Finally,’ she said to Dan, who still hadn’t turned round. ‘I’m switching this phone off.’ She bustled round the kitchen, looking for the nice plates to put the food on. ‘I got us some little tapas-y bits, I thought we both needed a relaxing night . . .’

Finally he spoke. ‘Can you come here?’

‘Just a sec.’

‘Charlotte – come here.’

She had a tub of olives in one hand and one of marinated anchovies in the other. That was what she remembered afterwards. That for just a moment before he told her, choosing between olives and anchovies was the most difficult thing she thought she’d have to do that night.

It took Keisha a while to trudge back to her flat, down Finchley Road to the Swiss Cottage junction, under the underpass, to one of the grey concrete blocks overlooking the busy road. She could hear their TV three floors below, the stone stairs echoing with it – he was home, watching
The Simpsons
on Sky. He could always find the cash to pay for things he wanted.

The flat was cold when she went in, and it smelled greasy, like an empty McDonald’s wrapper, and no surprise there was a heap of them on the coffee table, scarred with tea-rings and fag burns. He never thought to put the heat or lights on, but he was there, in front of the telly with a joint, a two-litre bottle of Coke open at his feet. The kitchen was a tip. It was so bad she didn’t even notice anything was gone for a while, clearing the dirty dishes and takeaway boxes and fag-ends.

Lifting a crushed can of Carlsberg, she stopped. ‘Where’s the microwave?’

‘Eh?’

‘The microwave – it’s gone.’ Was it? She turned round in the cramped space, thinking maybe she was losing it. But it wouldn’t be the first time she came home and something was gone, like the CD player. Or her GHD hair-straighteners. Both easily found by walking down the road to Cash Converters in Kentish Town.

He didn’t even look round when she went in. ‘You hocked it,’ she said.

‘Needed to pay the Sky. Anyway, it’s mine, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, but . . .’

‘But?’ He tapped out his joint into an empty beer can, still not looking up from the TV.

‘What’re we going to eat?’ There were only ready-meals in the freezer. ‘I was gonna go to the shops, but . . .’ She decided not to mention the cash.

‘Who needs to eat? C’mere.’ He jerked his head at her and, encouraged, she sat down and ran her hand over his shaved hair – like rough velvet.

‘Leave off,’ he said, but not nastily.

‘So I saw her,’ she risked. ‘Earlier.’

‘Who?’ He scratched his eyebrow, where the new ring was still red and swollen.

‘You know. Ruby.’

He said nothing, and she lost her nerve. ‘Yeah, she was OK. They said maybe, soon, if everything’s OK, we can have her back.’

He flicked ash delicately, waiting for her to say more. She didn’t. It was the right thing to do. His arm snaked round her and under her jacket, under her T-shirt. His breath in her ear was of ash and sugar. ‘How’s about we head out, babes? If there’s no dinner. You can get those sexy legs out for me.’ He ran a hand over her thighs.

‘Where?’ She was so knackered. After a week on nights, she’d gotten up early to see Sandra. She was so worried about Ruby. The last thing she wanted to do was go out with high heels blistering her feet and R ’n’ B pounding her head.

‘Well, there’s this guy, yeah, and he’s got this club down in Camden, so I thought I’d do, like, a bit of a business visit . . . What? What’s that fucking look for?’

‘Oh! Nothing.’ What his business was exactly she didn’t ask any more. When Chris got fired from his security job in the recession, he said he wasn’t going crawling to some twat, he’d set up on his own. She wasn’t sure what his work was but it meant going to bars and clubs a lot, never the same one twice, shaking hands with men in cheap suits, ordering bottles of vodka.

His mouth came down on hers, as he threw the spent joint on the table. ‘You and your looks. Drive me mad, them looks.’

She tried one last time, as his hands reached into her jeans. ‘Will you come with me, next time? Maybe?’

‘Maybe.’

Dan said, ‘Did you not even see it? How could you miss it?’ He turned round from the window, still in his crumpled suit, and she saw his face. She should have known something was wrong, because he always took the suit off right away when he came in. It had cost over five grand.

‘Did I see what?’ she said stupidly, still holding the tubs of food in both hands. But when he said it, she knew. She had seen it, yes, on the paper-stand at Waitrose, but flustered and rushed, she hadn’t taken it in. ‘Oh, God. It was your place – your bank.’
HAUSSMANN’S AT THE BRINK
. That was where Dan worked. ‘What does it mean? Are you . . . ?’

‘No.’ He collapsed down on the sofa, running his hands through his hair. ‘Not yet. They sent us home. People were walking out with boxes. You know, in case we don’t open next week.’

‘Christ. Is it really that bad?’ She couldn’t take it in.

‘I don’t know.’ He looked shell-shocked. ‘They won’t tell us if there’s a buyer or not. I swear, people were walking round like a bomb went off. I saw one of the partners crying. Fuck. It’s a mess.’

She sat the olives and anchovies on the table and went over to him. ‘But there could be a buyer?’

‘Maybe. There was talk – I don’t know.’ He was staring at the blank eye of the TV, shoulders rigid with shock.

‘But that’s crazy,’ she soothed, rubbing down his hair. ‘They’d hardly let a whole bank go under, come on. All they’ve done is send you home. I’m sure there’s loads of buyers. It’s a good asset, isn’t it?’

He just shook his head. ‘If anyone goes, it’ll be me.’

‘What? You’re one of the best, aren’t you? Dan? Didn’t you make them tons of money last year?’

She looked at him, all the muscles in his solid back stiff, and a jolt of fear went through her. ‘Dan? Oh God. It can’t be true. The wedding – what will we do?’

He let out a long shaky breath. ‘No, you’re probably right. It’ll be OK.’

Relief flooded her. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Course. I’ll look after you.’ His hand scrabbled for hers, the one with the ring, and pressed it to the side of his face. ‘I’ve been going mad. Why’s your phone always busy?’

‘Well.’ She got up to change. ‘That’s because my mother is crazy. Did you know you were marrying into a family of nutters?’

‘Yeah.’ He put on his wedding look, unsure and slightly afraid, as if he didn’t quite know what of.

‘So you can’t lose your job,’ she said, saying the words out loud, to make them true. ‘We’ve got two hundred people coming for dinner next week – we need that bonus!’

After they did it on the sofa, Chris had a sort of gleam in his eyes. He slapped her on the arse as she cleaned her teeth. ‘Get your kit on, then.’

He was different from most blokes. He noticed what she wore, bought her things. Could be a cheap print dress from the market, and the colour would bleed out in the wash, or could be brand-new Kurt Geiger shoes, fresh from the box. She didn’t ask questions any more.