The Queen of Bloody Everything Read online

  ‘Open the bloody door,’ you demand, hammering on the window, half naked and barefoot.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘You’ll freeze!’ you yell.

  ‘Good,’ I yell back.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ you mutter.

  Jimmy pushes you away, tries the door, then the window, then the boot. He kicks the car, his own car, leaving a dent that will cost hundreds to have beaten out.

  But I do not open the door. Not then. Not at three, when he tries again. Not until five in the morning, when the alcohol and adrenaline have drained away, and I have managed a few minutes of snatched sleep. Then I wipe a circle on the fogged window and see him crouched in the porch, his legs pulled up against the cold, hands plunged between them.

  And the pity I feel is overwhelming.

  I wake him then, tell him we’re leaving, that I’m fine to drive, that I wasn’t drunk, just exhausted. And he cries as he slumps in the passenger seat, buries his head in my lap, tells me he’s sorry, that he loves me, begs me not to leave him.

  I lift his head, snot and salt water stringing onto my skirt, and I kiss him. ‘I won’t,’ I say.

  Then somewhere on the M11, as we leave Essex and your filthy house and fucked-up life far behind, he will take my hand and turn to me and say, ‘I’m your family now.’

  And I will believe him.

  And for that, Edie, and so much else, I am sorry.

  The Chocolate War

  May 1999

  It happens like this. To all of us fool women who love men like him.

  We slide from true romance to torment so slowly, slickly, seamlessly, that when we open our eyes one morning to discover that the rose-tinted glasses have been broken along with our nose, we are astonished to find it is us in the mirror.

  I see it now, of course. I see that I am the woman on the news I used to shout at, sigh at. ‘Just leave him,’ I would intone, exasperated. ‘How many times?’

  But isn’t as easy as one, two, three, is it?

  We let them do it the first time because we are so shocked by the rawness of it. And because they say they are sorry. That they saw red. That it wasn’t them at all, not the real them, anyway.

  Then we let them do it once more, saying this time will be the last.

  Then again, as we move our own goalpost to the next time. And the one after that.

  Until we realize the real them is the one that shouts, throws, threatens; the charming doppelgänger a mirage they manage to conjure for the cameras, for public viewing only. Until we come to expect the sorry, come to cling to tears and make-up sex. Until we come to believe that it is our fault anyway, that we have made mistakes, provoked, goaded with the misplaced look, the wrong word, an ill-timed smile, or sneeze, or cough.

  So that when he refuses to talk to me for two days straight I realize I should never have told him I was too tired for sex, even though I capitulated within seconds, let him do it anyway.

  So that when he walks out on me at dinner in Mezzo I know it is because I should have agreed to dessert. Because it’s his birthday, of course I should eat to bursting. And by saying no, I have spoilt the mood for him.

  So that when he throws a coffee-table biography of Clement Attlee at me, cutting open my lower lip, I tell myself I should have listened to what he said the first time, instead of saying, ‘Pardon?’

  Stupid, stupid girl.

  Our house is so thickly carpeted with eggshells that I learn to walk on permanent tiptoe.

  You beg me to leave him. Phone me to plead for forgiveness, to insist again that you did it for me, to prove to me what he was capable of.

  ‘What you’re capable of,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ you insist. ‘This was about you. I was going to show you—’

  ‘How? What were you going to do? Photograph the evidence with your invisible camera?’

  ‘No. Di, please. Listen to me—’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Because he won’t let you?’

  ‘No. Because you’re drunk.’

  ‘It’s nine o’clock in the bloody morning.’

  ‘Like that’s going to stop you.’

  You pause. ‘Are you pregnant?’

  ‘No,’ I say. And hear – or imagine, maybe – a loosening, a breath of relief. ‘Not yet,’ I add cruelly.

  ‘Di.’

  ‘No. Just . . . no.’

  I cut you off with the same seemingly calm determination with which Tom and Harry exiled me. I hear you blurt out a single word and then, without registering the irony, I hang up, pull the cord out of the socket, until, eventually, Jimmy changes the number. Your letters are returned – also with no sense of irony – unopened, to sender, and, when that fails, consigned to the kitchen bin, used as receptacles for chewed gum, and, once, a desiccated mouse.

  I begin to feel restless, feel a disconnect from this Dick Whittington city that I have come to call home. My concentration slips and I take to wandering. At lunchtime I walk along the Strand, across Fleet Street and into the City, imagining I am Nancy, or Oliver himself, waiting to be rescued by Mr Brownlow. After work I take the bus into Brixton and then the backstreets to Poet’s Corner to search for the squat. Up and down Shakespeare Road, Chaucer, Spenser I traipse, peering in windows, trying to project myself into the picture, into that clotted-cream-painted kitchen, our bare-board bathroom, the tie-dye of Toni’s bed. But all I have is a ragbag of memories and a faded snapshot of a four-year-old me standing sentinel on a gatepost, a disembodied black arm propping me up, protecting me.

  When I get home, Jimmy asks where I’ve been. Was the Tube running late? Why didn’t I call? I have no plausible explanation, none that will placate him, so, in future, I limit my wanderings to his late shifts, or his weekend duties, which have increased in proportion to his stress and my anxiety.

  Until one night. One foolish, fabulous night when a piece of my past comes trip-trapping over a rickety bridge.

  It is fate, I tell myself.

  Fate that I left work early.

  Fate that Charing Cross station is shut and the entrance to Embankment choked with complaining hordes trying to squeeze onto the Northern Line.

  Fate that I don’t walk north to Leicester Square but choose instead to cross Hungerford Bridge, the opening chords of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ striking up in my head as I see the wide, muddy river and, beyond it, the concrete bulk of the South Bank Centre, squatting on its banks.

  I am stalking across, head down against the wind and the crowds, ears filled with Ray Davies, when I hear it. Hear her.

  ‘Dido?’

  I stop, feel shoulders slam into me, hear tuts, sense my heart stutter.

  I know that voice, have heard it call my name a thousand times; heard it whisper secrets, dissect the past, plan gleaming futures; heard it sing this very song. A voice that used to radiate boredom and disdain in equal, practised measure, but is now edged with something else. Something harder, more chemical.

  I look up as I say it. ‘Harry?’

  It is. It’s her. All seven skinny stone of her draped in nothing but an oyster silk camisole dress and an outsized pullover – a man’s pullover – so that the overall effect is of a child playing dress-up in her parents’ wardrobe. And so absurd, so Harry – so you – is this, that I laugh. And as I do, the frown on her face lifts, pulling the corners of her lips with it.

  ‘It is you,’ she says. ‘I thought . . . I didn’t know you were here. In London, I mean.’

  ‘Nor I you.’

  ‘I . . .’ she trails off and her smile slips. Because we both know that’s not the reason for the silence and the stealthy avoidance.

  ‘Do you work here?’ I ask quickly. Because now that I have her, I have to keep her; I can’t let her go with nothing more than a stilted hello.

  ‘I do,’ she says, her smile returning now. ‘Over there.’ She points to a tower to the left of the National Theatre. ‘ITV,’ she continues.

  ‘You work in telly?’ Her too, I think.
Of course her too, because where else?

  She nods. ‘Producing. Well, assistant producing. On After Hours. Have you seen it?’

  I nod. It’s a magazine show – you won’t have seen it, Edie, it was only on in London, and only for a year or so – celebrities on a sofa being asked anodyne questions and a boy band in the studio. Something I caught whilst Jimmy was out and I was flicking channels and couldn’t face Newsnight, couldn’t face watching a political fuck-up that I’d pay for later.

  ‘Oh God. It’s shit, isn’t it?’ she says.

  I shake my head. ‘No, I—’

  ‘No, really, it is. But it’s telly. And Max – he’s the head of Light Ents – he’s moving to national and I think he’ll take me with him. And that means Saturday night prime time. Which, you know.’

  I nod like I know, but in my head I’m thinking ‘Max’ and I’m looking at the jumper – grey cashmere – and putting two and two together and coming up with a perfect score.

  It takes her all of a single vodka and tonic to confess.

  ‘So where is he now?’ I ask.

  ‘Surrey.’ Harry leans back against the worn green velvet of a tired pub banquette. ‘With his wife.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ She pulls the sleeves down on the jumper so that her hands are hidden, wraps her arms around her knees.

  ‘Does . . . does she know?’

  ‘No!’ she says abruptly, as if this is an impossibility. Then clarifies, ‘Not yet.’

  ‘He’s leaving her?’

  She nods.

  ‘When?’

  She shrugs. ‘When the baby’s older.’

  ‘There’s a child?’

  ‘Alfie. He’s ten months.’

  ‘You’ve met it – him?’

  ‘Kind of. They came into work. And she was passing him around. So . . .’

  ‘You held their baby?’

  ‘I know. It’s awful. I’m awful.’ She pulls another Marlboro Light from the soft pack on the table, flicks the Zippo, filling the booth with the smell of petrol, of adolescence, of belief. She clicks it shut, then takes a drag. ‘The thing is, Di, I love him.’

  She stresses the word like it’s magic, like it can conjure away all the badness, make everything right.

  Because it can. That’s the thing, isn’t it, Edie? However messy and inconvenient and even destructive it is, when you’re inside it, love blurs these background images and casts everything inside in a circle of golden light.

  ‘But . . . you’ll be a stepmother,’ I say, as I realize the implications of this.

  ‘Well, we’re not getting married,’ she says. ‘But, sort of.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘So what about you?’ she asks then.

  ‘What about me what?’

  ‘Oh come on, dish.’

  I feel my fingers tighten around the velveteen nap of the bench, feel myself taken back to that monkey, to the tree house, to that town. ‘Jimmy,’ I say.

  ‘Jimmy?’ She pauses, going through a Guess Who flip game of prime suspects in her head. ‘Wait. Not Jimmy McGowan?’

  I nod, pull a face, an apology. ‘He’s different now.’

  ‘He’d have to be.’

  ‘No, he is. He’s . . . grown-up.’

  ‘God. More fool him.’

  ‘We’re getting married,’ I blurt then, a desperate defence of this man I am tied to. Or about to be.

  She grasps my hand, looking for diamonds, but finds only an old silver band, one you once bought me from a bra-less woman with a nose piercing at Camden Market way back when.

  ‘He hasn’t changed, then,’ she says, dropping my hand onto the table.

  ‘It’s . . .’ He was going to buy me a ring. But diamonds and sapphires are flashy, for fools. Better a plain platinum band and true love than H. Samuel glitter and Hallmark fakery.

  ‘So where is it? Walden?’

  I shake my head. ‘Here. It won’t be a big thing.’ Not any more. Jimmy wants it to be just us. So our grand declaration has been whittled down to witnesses drafted from the registry office, has diminished to two people, to four walls; a goading, gloating mirror of my little life, I realize.

  I shoo the thought away and change the subject to books, to work – my work. I tell her that I have edited two Carnegie longlisters, that I may have found a winner, too – a thing of beauty and brilliance that lay languishing for months in the slush pile before I, treasure seeker that I am, pulled it out and declared it a plum.

  I don’t tell her that the company is in flux, about to be taken over, and that my name features high on the list of possible redundancies, a placing brought about not by chance or misfortune, but by a series of Jimmy-related slips that have seen me arriving late or leaving early or not coming in at all. That have left sentences comma-spliced, infinitives split, and, worse, a character reappearing on page 137 having been killed off on 121.

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ she says, then. ‘You always did love books.’

  She stands. ‘Going to the lav,’ she says. ‘Want to come?’

  I shake my head and watch her disappear down the wood-panelled passage at the side of the bar. Seven times she goes to the toilet that evening. And each time she comes back she is brighter, more brilliant, more . . . Harry. And it makes sense now: the words tipped out pell-mell like pick-up-sticks from a jar; the need to forgive me, or at least forget; the fact she stopped on the bridge at all.

  She is high. Of course she’s high. I’ve seen it in Jimmy – seen it in myself too, before the attempts at conception. But now I stick to slimline, even the vodka forsaken for the sake of this elusive child, while Harry, still a child herself, slips through the wooden door with her lover’s cashmere wrapped around her and a gram wrap hidden in her bra.

  Three hours and five double vodkas later she staggers out onto Roupell Street, clings to my arm as she sways along the cobbled bricks, under the damp-dripping railway bridge, then swerves right towards the station.

  ‘This is me,’ she says.

  I look up at the bus stand number, wondering which is hers, and where it leads.

  ‘You could come?’ she says.

  I shake my head. ‘I have to get back,’ I say.

  ‘Of course. Jimmy. Do give him my love, won’t you?’ she slurs.

  ‘I will,’ I say. Then I summon it, this thing that has to be said, the Dumbo that sits on its podium performing tricks, playing to the crowd, pleading for applause, or at least an acknowledgement. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘What for?’ she asks.

  ‘For . . . you know.’ For everything. For not stopping you. For not telling her. For being your daughter.

  She stares at me for a minute, trying to pluck memories out of the ether, to pull them into shape. I see the lurch then – of realization, of remembrance – and for a moment I think she’s going to slap me, or spit, or worse. But instead she just shrugs and smiles. ‘Fucking grown-ups,’ she says. And it is so emphatic I want to hug her, this waif in a nightdress and borrowed wool.

  But she hugs me first, her skinny arms flung around my shift dress. And as I hold her back, I feel the fragility of her, porcelain-thin, her limbs like sparrows’ legs, as if they would snap if I squeezed too hard.

  She stumbles then, pulls away. ‘Here, have you got a pen?’ she says.

  I nod, and rummage in my Mulberry, pushing lipsticks, tissues, a tampon aside before pulling out a Parker.

  She takes it, pushes up my sleeve and presses gently on the pale, translucent underbelly of my forearm, the ink tracing and crossing the blue lines of veins as it spells out a phone number.

  ‘Call me,’ she says. Then she hands back the pen and hugs me again, holding me tightly, not letting go until the bus draws up and performs its do-si-do of passengers. As a man in a black overcoat heaves himself onto the open platform, she pulls away from me and jumps up behind him, holding onto the pole as if it’s a carousel horse and the bus a brilliant, luminous f
airground ride.

  ‘See you,’ she calls above the traffic.

  ‘Wouldn’t want to be you,’ I reply, without thinking. Because it’s the obvious answer. The only answer. The . . .

  ‘Right answer,’ she says. ‘You so wouldn’t, Di.’

  I follow the bus as it disappears down Waterloo Road into the churn of traffic, and all of a sudden I am Alice peering through the looking glass into my Wonderland again.

  And you, Edie? You were there with me, of course you were. At the time I tried to deny it, pretend you weren’t even worthy of being an unspoken guest. But you were in every cigarette Harry smoked, every gesture she affected. You were there in my imaginings as I tried to picture her holding an infant with the artless ease you used to hoist me onto your hip. You were there when we swore, when we sang, when we downed Smirnoff with a ‘sláinte’.

  But you were not there when I got home.

  And Edie, I needed you.

  I am late. Not by minutes, but by hours this time.

  When I get home, I find that he has cooked dinner – an elaborate apology for another verbal attack in a list so long I have lost track of which is the latest or worst.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I blurt. ‘I didn’t think . . .’

  ‘You never fucking do, Di, that’s the problem. Why weren’t you answering your phone?’

  I pull the Nokia out of my pocket, see the eleven missed calls, the six text messages, starting with concern, then escalating to anger before signing off with disappointment and dismissal. ‘Shit, I didn’t hear it,’ I say, fiddling with the volume. ‘Sound’s turned off. Sorry. I’m an idiot.’

  He doesn’t dissuade me. ‘So who were you with?’

  I flounder, try to think of someone, cannot tell him the truth of course, because that would summon the spectre of Tom who still skulks in the corners of Jimmy’s mind. And mine. ‘Jude,’ I say. ‘A work thing came up.’