‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He is sweaty, as though he’s been exercising in this heat, and his throat and chest are flushed, and his eyes are puffy and red.
She’s too inflamed to stop, now. ‘Sorry? Sorry’s if it’s just once. This is all the time. All. The. Bloody. Time.’
She stabs a finger through the air to emphasise each word. She had no idea she had this aggression in her. Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t have decided running was her best way out of her situation. ‘Do you get it? Turn it down. Turn it the fuck down, or I’ll come in and smash your fucking stereo!’
Gerard Bright just stands there and lets her stab uselessly at the air. There’s a big bruise on his upper arm; fingermarks, as though someone’s gripped him there with a vice. ‘I already have,’ he points out.
‘Oh, don’t give me that. You’ll just turn it straight back up again when I’m gone.’
Her voice rises to a shriek. My God. Where’s all this anger coming from? I’m going to hit him in a minute and I won’t be able to stop myself. ‘Do you hear me? You can hear me now, can you, now that you’ve turned that fucking noise off?’
‘We can all hear you, dear,’ says a voice behind her. ‘I should think they can hear you in Brentford.’
Collette whirls round in the narrow corridor. Vesta stands in the door under the stairs that leads to her flat, wiping her hands on a tea towel.
‘What on earth is going on?’ she asks.
Collette’s rage collapses. Suddenly she feels weak and powerless and foolish, yelling out her frustration at this man who doesn’t care. She opens her mouth to speak, and bursts into tears.
Chapter Twenty-Three
If I had a quid for every girl I’ve had in tears on this settee, thinks Vesta, I could probably have bought that caravan. It’s very strange. They’ve all got mums somewhere. I’ve heard enough about them. But it’s always me, in the end, that they come and cry to – and not just the girls, either. It breaks your heart, how sad so many people’s lives are. How many people they miss, how far they feel from home. You’d have thought we’d have organised it all better, somehow.
Collette is crying her eyes out. Upstairs, she hears Gerard Bright’s door go and his footsteps walk along the hall to the front door. She glances up through the window when it closes and sees his legs come down the steps. Such a strange man. In and out with that briefcase every afternoon and every other weekend going off to sit in McDonald’s with his kids, or wherever it is they go these days, and the rest of the time he’s locked up in that room like a hermit. Barely meets your eye if you meet him in the hall, and I could swear that half the time he looks like he’s been crying, though maybe that’s just his colouring. It’s pitiful, really. So much loneliness in the world, and it’s not like most of them started off meaning it to be that way. A few small slips, a moment of forgetfulness, and before they know it they’re all on their own.
She sits quietly on the sofa and waits for Collette to compose herself. Doesn’t know her well enough to give her a hug, feels awkward doing the Dot Cotton arm pat you see on the telly. So she sits, and waits, and hands her a new tissue from time to time. I’ll give her a cup of tea in a bit. Tea always helps, though from the look of her she might prefer a large brandy.
Crying fits never last for long if you let them play out and don’t add fuel to the flames. It’s an unnatural way to be; too much strain to sustain. Collette sobs for three minutes after Vesta’s helped her down the stairs and got her settled, then her breathing slows and she starts to make those tired little ‘oh’ sounds that precede the onset of calm. She sniffs through her blocked nose, blows it on a crumpled Kleenex and dabs at her crimson eyes. ‘Thank God I wasn’t wearing make-up,’ she says. Then: ‘Sorry. Sorry about that. I don’t know where that came from.’
Of course you do, thinks Vesta. What you mean is you want me to think you don’t know. ‘I should think you’re worn out,’ she says soothingly. ‘It’s a strain, with your mum and that.’
‘It’s this house. I think it’s this house. Don’t you feel it? It’s – oppressive. Like someone’s listening to you, like they’re watching all the time. Don’t you feel it?’
‘Can’t say I do, but I’ve lived here all my life,’ lies Vesta. ‘If it is, I’ve got so used to it I don’t notice.’
But there is, she thinks. There is someone watching me, I’m sure of it. That door didn’t get open by itself. Not twice. I don’t feel safe here any more. But I can’t talk about it. I can’t. I can’t even think about it too closely. Because I don’t have choices. There’s nowhere else I can go.