Can We Still Be Friends (4 page)

‘Well. Time will tell, I guess.’ Art returned to the comparative safety of his paperwork. ‘Let’s wait till we know a bit more before we tell your mother your plans, shall we?’

Kendra left her father to fetch her bicycle from the basement. The tussle to negotiate its frame out of the small side door and up on to the street was familiar but nonetheless aggravating and resulted in a dark smear of oil scarring her jeans. As she cycled through the streets, the cloudless blue sky formed a backdrop to large white houses with their tidy window-box displays of geraniums and violas. Glimpsed
through the large windows were empty rooms, dark against the sun. Kendra’s loose shirt billowed as she pushed the pedals with increasing speed. Leaving the plush streets of Notting Hill behind, she wound north, following the canal towpath up into the dirtier, denser roads of Camden and on to Kentish Town, each push of the pedals increasing the welcome separation from her parents’ house.

She was infuriated by her conversation with her father. How could he understand her so little? How could he suggest that she might work at Britannia? She remembered the last time she had seen Jim McKenzie, only a month or so ago. It was in a small Italian restaurant near their house and he was seated at a table against the back wall with a girl who was certainly neither his wife nor his daughter. She could see his fat legs rubbing up against hers under the table. Kendra had tried to avoid catching his eye, but he’d waved at her. She hated the way men like him played it cool.

He could at least have had the grace to be embarrassed.

‘Hi, Kendra. Do you know Natasha?’ Of course not. ‘Now, how
are
Art and Marisa – two of my very favourite people in the world? Send them my regards – I owe them a call.’

‘Sure.’ Kendra wished herself as far away as possible. She certainly didn’t want to have to work with a slimeball like him every day of her life.

Stopping outside a bookmaker’s on Kentish Town Road, she propped her bike up to consult her
A–Z
street map: Albert Crescent, Albert Grove, Albert Terrace, Albert Way – 58d. Albert Way fell into the stitch of the book, a small cul-de-sac which, it appeared from what she could see, should be a few streets to the right of her.

She wiped the sweat from her forehead and upper lip and retied her thick curls into their elastic band. Now that she had stopped moving she could feel a trickle of sweat from beneath her heavy, braless breasts slide towards her waist. Perhaps she should walk the next few streets. It would probably do her good to cool down a bit before she arrived for her interview, rather than turning up at the door like a soaking rag. Was she looking for a church or a big hall?

When Kendra walked into the Chapel she was at first disorientated by the contrast between the brilliant light of outside and the darker cool of the large deconsecrated church. Wedged between low-rise industrial blocks, the Chapel sat incongruously in one of the many London streets sculpted by wartime bomb damage. Originally St Saviour and St John, locally rechristened the Chapel, the building had survived where its neighbours had not, a pale stone spire reaching above the utilitarian fifties builds. Outside the wide green doors was a clutch of teenage boys who silently watched as Kendra tethered her bicycle to a parking meter. Its shining metal and ladylike wicker basket discomfited her as she sensed their gaze, and she wondered what the chances were of her bike still being there when she returned.

The large room that confronted her was empty. ‘Hello,’ she offered, surprised by how small her voice sounded. ‘Hellooo,’ she repeated, more loudly this time. From somewhere in the room came a reply.

‘Coming – hang on.’ A woman with a deep voice, she thought, although she supposed it could be a bloke. As she stepped further into the room and her eyes acclimatized to the light, Kendra took in guitars and a keyboard placed against one wall, a basketball net hooked up in a far corner, paintings on paper pinned up on the walls, a number of deflated beanbags piled up alongside a big trestle table and dirty-looking plastic chairs.

‘Come next door and we’ll have something to drink,’ suggested the voice. It belonged to a figure silhouetted against the light of a doorway at the far end of the room. Gioia Cavallieri was quite unlike anybody Kendra had seen before. Her olive-skinned face was framed by a head of dark Medusa-like locks of hair bound tightly with flashes of coloured thread. Bracelets climbed up her bare arm from wrist to elbow, an articulation of metals and colours as she offered her hand.

‘Welcome to the Chapel. It’s Kendra, isn’t it?’

Kendra felt an immediate sense of relief. For once, she didn’t need to stoop, to diminish herself, as she so often did on meeting
people. Gioia, unusually for a woman, was taller than her. They looked straight into each other’s eyes, Gioia’s lined heavily with kohl. As the tea bags stewed, she explained that the Chapel was maintained through a mixture of local support, some private philanthropy and a dogged dedication to understanding the labyrinthine grant system.

‘The money’s there, love, it’s just a question of who gets it.
She
’s doing her best to make our lives difficult, but we’re not going to be beaten by her and that lot. Can’t believe she’s still with us. What a country. We could have got her out this year. The bloody Falklands kept her in. What a fuck-up.’

Kendra empathized with Gioia’s condemnation of Margaret Thatcher. She couldn’t believe she’d held on to it, that last election. At university, none of her friends had had any time for Tories, but now, in the real world, it seemed there were thousands somewhere out there posting a blue vote. Her parents were two of them, although she knew they wouldn’t have dreamt of voting Republican if they had still been living on the East Coast. People like them didn’t do Republican, but it seemed supporting milk-snatcher Thatcher was fine this side of the pond.

‘We’ve had some mind-blowing results here. Kids who spent all their spare time sniffing … down the tracks’ – she gestured broadly – ‘now they’ve got into a band, or acting, or at any rate something that means they’re likely to live long enough to see their twenty-first birthday.’ Gioia walked towards the sink under the window and ran some water into a blue china jug. ‘Robbie made this for me. He’s one of my long-termers here. We funnelled him into art, now he’s doing ceramics evening classes. Incredible.’ She pulled down her white cotton vest, which had ridden up to expose her stomach, and its fine dusting of dark hair. Plaits of coloured leather and metal hung from her neck.

‘So, tell me a bit about yourself, love.’ Gioia’s London vowels were cut with some different accent. Kendra wasn’t sure what to say. What could she say that could possibly be relevant to this strange creature? She found herself transfixed by Gioia’s elaborate
eyeliner, her oiled curls. Generally, she was unaffected by styles of dress and immune to the immediate impact of appearance, but Gioia she found … extraordinary.

‘I’ve never done anything like this before,’ she began. Her voice sounded tinny in the space and, for a moment, hearing its weakness confused her. ‘I graduated in sociology, and I’ve been hunting for something to do since. I’d like to feel I was spending my time doing something, y’know, kind of worthwhile. Lots of my year went into banking, property, that kind of thing – even ones you didn’t think would – but that’s not really me.’

‘Have you worked with kids before? Holiday jobs?’

‘Well, no, not exactly. But now I’ve spent some time thinking about what I want, and I know I really want to get into this type of work.’ Kendra decided to leave out the fact that she had never felt the need of a holiday job. Her allowance covered everything.

Gioia stood up briskly and walked over to the kitchen counter. She pulled out a packet of tobacco then some Rizlas from her pocket. ‘Smoke? No?’ She rolled a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply before embarking on further questioning. Eventually, the interrogation ceased. ‘This isn’t bleeding heart stuff, you know. It can be a bloody nightmare, and I don’t know if you’ll have the stomach for it. Banking, property or the Chapel? What makes you think you’ll stick it?’

Kendra felt her face turning red with embarrassment. She’d blown it. ‘I just want a chance to show you that I can do this. If you don’t like me then you can get rid of me any time.’

‘Let’s have a look at the paperwork there. Aha … Notting Hill, huh. Not local then. A levels: Art, English, French. Well, we don’t really care about that kind of thing here. References – your tutor?’ she mocked, before narrowing her eyes and considering the girl in front of her. ‘If I give you the chance, you’ll have to learn quickly. The kids are tough. They make up their mind whether they’re going to deal with people pretty damn pronto. We don’t have any of that growing-into-the-job stuff here. And the money’s £200 a month.’ Hearing the salary, Kendra immediately realized that the
pay was going to make it hard for her to move out of home. ‘Take it or leave it.’

Kendra was trying to decide what to answer when the telephone rang.

‘
Si, si da mi. Non ti preoccupare. Chi vidiamo piu tardi. Ciao, Dad.
’ Gioia’s face, which had the bluntness of a Mayan figurine, lightened as she spoke briefly before replacing the receiver. ‘He’s down from Glasgow – for a few days.’ She shared the information casually with the job applicant.

Kendra was surprised. Gioia, in her extremely limited acquaintance, didn’t seem like the kind of person who would have a dad of any kind, let alone a dad who would provoke that warm smile or that fluent Italian. She tried to focus on the decision she had to make, a decision that, as she looked down at the linoleum floor through the dust motes that floated in front of her eyes, she felt incapable of making. She knew that she was looking for something, but what? Was this it? Sal would tell her to ‘Come on, Ken. Go for it. What’s to lose?’ Her mother would most likely say, ‘Are you losing your mind, darling? For this nonsense we educated you?’ Hearing that voice so clearly decided her.

‘I’d love the job,’ she said.

‘Start Monday – sooner the better. Rest up this weekend. You’ll need it. I’m a grand taskmaster.’

After giving Kendra a brief tour of the Chapel, Gioia walked her out to the street. The boys had gone and the road was empty. Kendra felt embarrassed by the relief she felt on seeing that her bicycle was still where she had left it. She was going to have to change her attitude if she was going to work here. Poor kids, condemned automatically by her knee-jerk middle-class suspicions.

‘Lucky that bike’s still there. They vanish in seconds. Bring it inside next time,’ Gioia said. ‘Nice one.’ She put a hand on Kendra’s shoulder and watched as she rode off towards Camden Town.

‘So that’s a dozen gingham table napkins, two French linen tablecloths, five broderie anglaise cloths, the three blown-glass jugs, a
maple standard lamp, and six blue and white cotton cushion covers. White Horse Studio is sending a car for them.’ Annie repeated the order down the phone for the samples from La Vie Loire.

Tania Torrington Public Relations operated out of a terraced house in Chelsea. Behind the glossy black-painted door was a bustling office handling fashion, beauty and lifestyle clients. Tania had been a successful glamour model in her youth, a stalwart of the
Daily Express
William Hickey column, her energetic love life guaranteed to fill a bottom-left column. When the inevitable happened, and her breasts were no longer of a shape and pertness to feature in newspapers, Tania swapped her transparent cheesecloth blouses and hotpants for the more forgiving camouflage of Issey Miyake pleats. Presciently noting the growth of interest in homes and lifestyle, she started her business, shrewdly calculating that it would be more able to deal with the passage of time than her own body.

Tania staffed her office with attractive young people, harnessing their good looks, enthusiasm and energy into the business of promoting product. Although it was weekly luncheon vouchers that provided food and drink and pay packets were pitiful, if you were part of Tania Torrington you could be working on an exciting new nightclub account, a themed launch of a designer perfume or even shepherding a celebrity through a party or launch as if you were their friend. Tania Torrington, she would often pronounce, shows you how things
happen.

Annie looked at Lee, who was seated across from her. If he hummed that song once more, she thought she might go mad. The operatic pronouncement of Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ was being tattooed on her brain.

‘Lee, please, anything else. How about “Every Breath You Take” instead? Just a break from “I know … this … much … is
true
.”’ Annie drummed her fingers on her dress to highlight the song’s drama.

Lee looked up from the pile of press releases he was stapling together about the opening of a new restaurant nearby called Chelsea Bridge.

‘Don’t know how you can put Spandau and that tosser Sting in the same sentence, Annie. Thing is, you know nothing – no –
less
than zero about this kind of stuff.’ As he talked, the heavy peroxide fringe of his wedge cut fell limply into his eyes, which were framed by lashes tinted with a vivid blue mascara. He had been told more than once that this made him look more like the Princess of Wales than his sartorial hero, the Thin White Duke.

He left the room with the press releases, climbing the staircase lined with framed newspaper cuttings and photographs of Tania in her heyday alongside product coverage organized by the company. A double-page spread in the
Sunday Times
colour supplement of a range of Lycra exercise wear hung next to a black and white photograph of Tania, the white arch of a trattoria behind her and the arm of a grinning, darkly tanned Italian actor around her shoulders. In another she stood in a plunging halter-neck gown chatting to a youthful Prince Charles, and next to it hung the spread of an interview, a decade later, that Tania had orchestrated with one of the British evening-wear designers favoured by his wife, the young Princess of Wales.

The telephone rang again, and Annie heard Tania pick it up in the next room: ‘Oh, love. Yup – yes, OK. Annie can drop them round. Not a problem. Cheers, darling.’ The light on Annie’s phone flashed orange. She picked up, pressing the lit button to connect to an extension.