The Girl Below(30)

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.

Sitting on my suitcases at the Barbican station a couple of hours later, I looked so forlorn, so raggedy, that a businessman threw fifty pence at me with an admonishment not to spend it on grog. Not for the first time, I thought of the check my father had offered me, and how different my situation might be if I’d accepted it. Then again, it was entirely possible that I would have frittered it all away on clothes by now, and I’d be no better off.

Alana arrived an hour later than we had arranged, and didn’t apologize, though she did help drag one of the suitcases along three blocks of crooked pavement to her flat. “I haven’t had a roommate since I moved here,” she said. “Living by myself is the best.”

I was surprised to find that Alana lived in one of those sixties council towers that you see on TV being detonated before they collapse one day on top of their inhabitants. At least she lived on the ground floor, far below the suicidal balconies crammed with washing lines and dustbins.

“I was on the waiting list for years before I got this place,” she said, letting me in. “It’s nicer on the inside than it is from the street.” She was right, it was nicer, cozy even, and I envied the amount of space she had for herself, space she evidently wasn’t too keen on sharing.

I handed her a plastic bag of groceries I’d salvaged, not stolen, from Willesden Green, and she inspected the contents warily and stuffed them into a low cupboard. The bottle of wine I’d bought got a better reception, and I opened it while she put a frozen pizza in the oven. I told her about Mike and his flurry of texts, though I’d meant not to. Alana picked up where she’d left off outside the toilet stall, demanding to know how I was so sure I didn’t like him when I didn’t even know him. “Because there hadn’t been a spark,” I told her, but she wouldn’t let it go, and I sensed she was annoyed with me in a more general way that had nothing at all to do with Mike.