The Girl Below (10 page)

At this fresh insult, Caleb stood up again. “I said I’d come here, but you can get stuffed if you think I’m going to hang around listening to this patronizing shit.” His voice careened so wildly from low and gruff to choirboy that I couldn’t help grinning.

“Fuck off,” he said to my smiling face, and to Pippa: “Seriously, Mum, this is totally fucked.”

Pippa handed me a twenty-pound note. “Well, I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. Have what you like. The food here is delicious.”

I sat down for as long as it took Pippa to walk out of the café, then I got up. “Do you want anything? Coffee, tea, a good smack?”

That got his attention. “Shut up,” he said. “I’m not allowed coffee.”

“Do you want one or not?”

“Okay.”

“Cappuccino or latte?”

“Latte.”

“I thought so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. But if you’re a good boy, you can have a treat as well.”

He was so cross he actually snarled—his mood a good match for my hangover.

Since my last visit many years ago, the Holland Park Café had been refurbished, and as I waited in line at the counter I wanted to bulldoze its clean Scandinavian makeover. Back in the old days, an Italian family had run the place, treating their customers as though they ought to be grateful to be getting served at all. But their spaghetti Bolognese alone had been worth the abuse—rich, salty, and piping hot. Just remembering the taste of that sauce made me salivate, and I scanned the new menu of organic, gluten-free follies with growing dismay. No grease—nothing that’d come close to soaking up a hangover. In the end I plumped for what was most filling: a carnivorous ploughman’s with organic grass-fed beef.

When I arrived back at the table with two coffees, a chocolate brownie, and a nobby-looking stick with a number on it, Caleb scrutinized me as though I were an enemy warship that had just appeared on his radar screen. “So how do you know Mum and Dad?” he said.

“Your grandma lived upstairs from us when I was a kid. So did your mum. She used to babysit me sometimes.”

“But you’re old,” he said.

“And your mum is even older. When she was the same age as you, I was four.”

He laughed. “I bet she was a loser.”

“Not at all. She was very cool, a New Romantic.”

He curled up his nose in disgust. “What a sap.”

“Actually, it was very cutting edge. She had spiky black hair and wore lots of eyeliner. So did all the boys.”

“What?” he said, incredulous. “That sounds like bollocks.” He said the word clumsily, as though trying it out for the first time.

“Google it when you get home if you don’t believe me.”

He shot me a withering look, but when I pushed the brownie over to his side of the table, he accidentally said, “Thanks,” like a little boy drilled to have good manners. The brownie didn’t last long, but he savored every sip of his coffee as though it were a rare Cuban cigar. Looking at his pupils, I saw that he was miles away, staring at a faraway tree. I remembered feeling like that at his age, so absorbed by my own mood that other humans were invisible.

My ploughman’s was taking forever, and I considered dabbing up the brownie crumbs from Caleb’s plate before realizing how gross that was. “When did you turn sixteen?” I said.

“A few weeks ago.”

“Did you have a party?”

“No.” He rolled his eyes. “Parties are for dicks.”

“And what do cool people do instead?”

“They definitely don’t say ‘cool.’ ”

I’d encountered surly teenagers before, but he was taking things to a whole new level. “Look, I know your mum thinks I’m going to give you all this great advice, but I don’t have any, so we may as well just skip the lecture and have something nice to eat.”

Caleb had been picking at the Formica table with his thumbnail, and where he’d been working, there was now a hole. “Suits me,” he said, with a shrug.

I rummaged in my bag for a book. A few days earlier, on the bookshelf in Willesden Green, next to a hopeless selection of microwave cookbooks and empty CD cases, I’d found a dog-eared copy of
Lolita
. I’d read it before, but years ago, and had forgotten how funny it was. Even better, I couldn’t remember what happened at the end.

After blurring through half a dozen pages—reading hungover was like driving through heavy rain—I became dimly aware that Caleb had been twisting his head to see the book’s cover, but every time I looked up, he turned away and pretended to be draining the dregs of his already empty cup. I held up the book so he could take a proper look. “Have you read it?”

“I’ve heard of it. Isn’t it about a perv?”

“You mean a pedophile?”

“I don’t know. He’s like a creep or something.”

“Would you like to borrow it? Then you can find out.”

“No.” His answer was too quick, too emphatic.

“Well, you can’t anyway,” I said, determined to make the situation as difficult for him as he was making it for me. “It doesn’t belong to me.”

I resumed reading. When my ploughman’s arrived, it was predictably weedy and didn’t go far in soaking up either stomach acid or my revolting mood. I put down the novel while I ate and sensed Caleb’s continuing interest in it, as well as the pride or stubbornness that prevented him from admitting it. He eyed my food too, but when I asked him if he wanted any, he said he wasn’t hungry. I didn’t see how that was possible—seeing as his hips were so thin they barely held up his pants.

We sat like that, in unhappy companionship, for another half hour or so, long enough for me to pseudo-read ten pages, and spend Pippa’s change on a gluten-free rubber ball masquerading as a muffin, washed down with a second coffee. Caleb ate nothing, did nothing except destroy the tabletop, and mostly, I ignored him. But toward the end of the hour I remembered Pippa’s anxious tone on the phone, and felt guilty for spending her money and not at least trying to help her son. “So what do you do when you bunk off school?”

Caleb looked surprised that I’d spoken. “Nothing much.”

“In my day, the cool kids used to hang out on some church steps near the school, smoking. They always went to the same place, and always came back to school chewing gum to hide the smell. About once a week, they got caught.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Well, nothing, because you’re obviously not that stupid.”

His mouth rippled with a smile before he remembered to scowl.

“On the other side of it, if you were mostly a geek and did all your homework on time, you could get away with bunking because the teachers didn’t have time to come down hard on everyone—only the ones who were failing.”

“I’m not a geek,” said Caleb.

“I know, but you might get away with more if you at least did your homework.”

He thought this over for a moment. “That sounds naff.”

“It worked for me,” I said, and shrugged.

I glanced away and saw Pippa bustling across the café toward us. She looked happy—perhaps surprised to see that Caleb was still there. “I see you two have been getting along famously,” she said, eyeing the two empty cups on the table. “Caleb, you didn’t have a coffee, did you?”

“She had two,” Caleb said, with haste. “And an enormous ploughman’s lunch and a muffin.”

“Well, good for you,” said Pippa, smiling broadly at me. “Told you the food here was delicious.”

Caleb stood up. “Can we go now? All the new games will be gone.”

“What kind of games?” I asked, curious.

Caleb looked at his mother—clearly warning her not to say anything.

“There’s this one with a cute purple dragon,” said Pippa. “It flies around a castle, rescuing princesses and collecting treasure. What’s it called again, darling?” She glanced at Caleb, who was giving her a dark look.

“I haven’t played that for about five years,” he said.

“Well,” she continued, “whatever it is, we have to restrict his use or he’ll play it twenty-four hours a day—no toilet breaks or even dinner.” She patted Caleb’s slim torso and laughed. “If he ate any less, he’d disappear.”

“Mum! Can we please just go?” His petulance made him seem younger, still a child. He didn’t even have chin fluff yet, I noticed.

“Wait for me outside,” said Pippa, and once he’d gone, added, “I’m sorry he was such a little shit.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ve all been there.”

“Well, I’m really very grateful to you, and I wanted to ask if you’re still sleeping on your friend’s couch?”

“It’s getting to be a bit of a problem,” I said, tired of pretending.

“Splendid,” said Pippa. “Because I have a proposition for you.”

Before she even told me what it was, I started to feel uneasy.

“We got our dates muddled up and Peggy’s nurse, Amanda, has booked to go on leave right before our holiday. It took us so long to find someone Peggy likes that I can’t bear the thought of trying to find a temp. I visit every day, of course, but she needs someone there the rest of the time to make sure she doesn’t get into any bother. She’s still very frail, and can’t do everything for herself.”

I saw where this was going and was filled with dread—mainly because of Madeline, and what had happened on my last visit to Peggy’s apartment. But Pippa misread my thoughts, and added, hastily, “We wouldn’t expect you to do any of the messy stuff—changing sheets and all that. It’s more that she needs companionship. She gets lonely, especially at night.”

“You want me to stay over with her? In her flat?” Just saying the words sent a chill through me.

“Well, yes. You’d have your own room. Either her old one or Harold’s, seeing as she’s moved into mine.”

It didn’t matter which room I was in—I was never going to spend the night there. “Can I think it over?” I said.

“Sure.” Pippa seemed surprised that I hadn’t accepted. “It’s only for a week. We’re all going to Greece after that. Peggy too.”

I glanced over at the café door and saw Caleb scowling in at us. “I’ll call you,” I said. “I think I have a temping assignment next week.”

“Of course,” said Pippa, clearly disappointed. “You’ve got my number.”

After they left, I went for a walk through the Holland Park woods, where I’d often played as a child. My prep school had been nearby, behind a church, and we had walked to the park in crocodile formation, two by two, holding hands, in every sort of weather. The park had been the scene of some of my greatest humiliations, and, when I thought about it, absolutely none of my triumphs. The worst had been my attempt, in front of the entire class, to scale the six-foot-high metal fence that ran down the middle of the park, separating the sports fields from the cycle lane. At the top of the fence, I’d balanced for a moment between two metal spikes, then jumped, only to be snagged by the hem of my gray gabardine skirt. I had hung upside down from the fence, flailing and screaming, for just long enough to wet my pants before the fabric ripped from arse to hem and I fell.

Peeing my pants had been my standard response to any great fear or surprise, and the last and only time I had ever stayed at Peggy’s, at age seven, I’d wet the bed. I had woken in the night, desperate for the loo, but had not been able to leave the room for fear of crossing Madeline’s path. Peggy had been really nice about it, had even said I could stay over again one night, but I wouldn’t even consider it. Even now, I found it abhorrent.

When I got back to Willesden Green, the place was empty, the flatmates all still at work. That morning I’d been in such a rush to get to the park that I’d left my cell phone behind, and it was beeping incessantly, telling me I had two new messages and three missed calls. They were all from the same number, the texts banal: “It’s Mike. Let me know if you get this text,” and because I hadn’t let him know: “It’s Mike. Is this your number? Let me know.” Finally, a voice message inviting me to dinner then changing his mind and downgrading to drinks.

Reasoning that any other action would be false encouragement, I deleted the lot.

I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea before the flatmates got home from work, which was generally when I made myself scarce. Lately, I’d been running out of things to do at night, but a few libraries were open late, and I’d found a local park where you could watch people play floodlit tennis. As I heated water and rummaged for a tea bag I considered where I could go tonight—not too far, in my hungover state. And then I found The Note.

It was in Belinda’s handwriting, but someone else had added to it, and I imagined the flatmates writing it together, perhaps over breakfast. They’d left it propped up behind the kitchen taps, where I’d be sure to see it if I got a drink of water or filled the kettle—except that I hadn’t gone into the kitchen before leaving that morning, there hadn’t been time. I was familiar with these kinds of notes; they were how people in flats communicated with each other when things had become really septic, usually over unwashed dishes or unpaid rent. In block capitals, this one said: “Suki, too fucking much”—an arrow pointed to the sink, where someone had left her dirty clothes to soak—“You have to leave. Today.” The word “today” had been written in such a rage that in places the ballpoint went right through the piece of paper.

With horror, I realized what was in the kitchen sink: the jeans and top I had been wearing the night before. I must have put them in there to soak, although I didn’t remember doing it. The water around them was rust colored, and what looked like a few twigs had risen to the surface. Above it floated the now familiar stench of mold.

Under the circumstances, the note was diplomatic.

By half past four I had packed my suitcases, thrown out the jeans and top, and removed all traces of myself from the flat. Before leaving, I returned the note to its shelf behind the tap, and placed my front-door key on the kitchen table. Then I called my friend Alana, who answered on the third ring.

“I need a place to stay,” I said after we had exchanged greetings.

“I’m at work,” she said, flatly.

“I meant after work.”

“What? Tonight?”

“I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“Are you sure?” Her resistance troubled me, but I could not afford to analyze it.