Eighty Days Yellow (6 page)

This violin had travelled across New Zealand, and then across the world with me. It was on its last legs, granted; I’d had to patch it up with tape in two places where it had been knocked about on the long journey to London the previous year, but the sound was still true, and it felt just right in my arms. Finding a replacement would be a nightmare. Though Darren had nagged, I’d never got round to having it insured. I couldn’t afford a new instrument of any quality, or even an old instrument of any quality. Scouring the markets for a bargain could take weeks, and I couldn’t bring myself to buy a violin on eBay without feeling it in my hands and hearing the tone.

I felt like a tramp walking around the station, picking up the coins that had scattered all over, my mangled violin in hand. One of the London transport officers asked for my details, to make a report, and he was obviously annoyed that I could provide him with so little information about the actual event.

‘No great talent for observation, eh?’ he sneered.

‘No,’ I replied, staring at his plump hands as he flicked through his notepad. Each of his fingers was pale and squat, like something that you might be disappointed to find on a plate at a party, attached to a cocktail stick. He had the hands of a person who didn’t play a musical instrument, or interrupt fights very often.

In truth, I hate soccer, though I wouldn’t admit as much to anyone English. Football players, as a general rule, are too pretty for my liking. At least during rugby games, I could forget the sport and concentrate on the thick, muscled thighs of the forwards, their tiny shorts riding up and threatening to expose beautifully firm buttocks. I don’t play any organised sport myself, preferring the more singular pursuits of swimming and running, and weight training alone at the gym, to keep my arms in shape for long stretches of instrument-holding.

Finally I managed to collect all of my takings, bundle the broken pieces of the violin into the case and escape the watchful glare of the London transport officers.

I hadn’t gathered more than ten pounds in coins from the passing commuters before the louts had broken my violin. It had been a month since the mysterious passer-by had dropped the fifty into my case. I still had the note, tucked safely inside my underwear drawer, although God knows how desperately I needed to spend it. I had increased my hours at the restaurant I worked at part-time, but hadn’t had a paid gig for a few weeks, and despite subsisting on cafe food and Pot Noodles, I’d had to dip into my savings to cover last month’s rent.

I had seen Darren only once since we fought over the Vivaldi record, and I’d explained to him, badly probably, that things weren’t working out for me and I needed a break from our relationship to concentrate on my music.

‘You’re breaking up with me to be with a violin?’

Darren had looked incredulous. He was well-off, good-looking and of baby-making age; no one had ever broken up with him.

‘Just taking a break.’

I’d stared at the gleaming leg of one of his stainless-steel designer bar stools. I couldn’t look him in the eye.

‘No one just takes a break, Summer. Are you seeing someone else? Chris? From the band?’

He’d taken one of my hands in his. ‘God, your palms are cold,’ he’d said.

I’d looked down at my fingers. My hands have always been my favourite part of me. My fingers are pale, long and very slender, piano-playing hands, as my mother says.

I’d felt a sudden rush of affection for Darren and turned to him, running my hand through his thick hair, tugging a little on his locks.

‘Ow,’ he’d said, ‘don’t do that.’

He’d leaned forward and kissed me. His lips were dry, his touch tentative. He made no move to pull me towards him. His mouth tasted like tea. I’d immediately felt ill.

I’d pushed him away and stood up, preparing to pick up my violin case and my bag with some spare underwear, a toothbrush, the few things that I kept in a drawer at his flat.

‘What, you’re turning down sex?’ Darren had sneered.

‘I don’t feel well,’ I’d said.

‘So, for the first time in her life, Miss Summer Zahova has a headache.’

He was standing now and placing his hands on his hips, like a mother berating a petulant child.

I’d picked up my bag and my case, turned on my heel and left. I was wearing his least favourite ensemble: red Converse ankle boots, denim shorts over opaque stockings and a skull T-shirt, and as I’d pushed open his front door, I’d felt more like myself than I had in months, as if a weight had lifted from my shoulders.

‘Summer . . .’ He’d run after me and grabbed my arm as I stepped through the door, spinning me round to face him. ‘I’ll call you, OK?’ he’d said.

‘Fine.’ I’d walked away without turning, imagining that he was watching my back disappear down the stairs. I heard the door click on the lock just as I turned the corner to the next flight of steps, out of his sight.

He’d called me regularly since then, at first every night and then dying away to twice or thrice weekly as I ignored all of his messages. Twice he’d called me at 3 a.m., drunk, and left slurred messages on my voicemail.

‘I miss you, babe.’

He had never called me ‘babe’ – in fact, he professed to hate the word – and I began to wonder whether I had ever really known him at all.

For certain, I wouldn’t be calling Darren now, though I knew that he would jump at the chance to buy me a new violin. He had hated my old one, thought it looked shoddy and was not suitable for a classical violinist. He also hated my busking, considered it beneath me, though I knew that for the most part he worried about my safety. Rightly, he would say now.

I stood at the crossroads outside the station, traffic racing by and pedestrians jostling in all directions, and considered what to do. I hadn’t really made many friends in London, other than the couples with whom Darren and I had spent time, going to various dinner parties and gallery openings, and pleasant though they were, they were all his friends, rather than mine. Even if I had wanted to contact any of them, I didn’t have their phone numbers. Darren had organised all our socialising, I just tagged along. I took my phone out of my pocket and scrolled through the numbers in my address book. I considered calling Chris. He was a musician, he’d understand, and he’d be angry if he discovered later I hadn’t called him, but I couldn’t face sympathy, or pity. Either emotion might break me, and then I’d be useless and unable to fix anything.

Charlotte. From the strip club.

I hadn’t seen her for a year and hadn’t heard from her during that time other than a few Facebook posts, but I was confident that if nothing else, Charlotte would cheer me up, and take my mind off the violin catastrophe.

I pressed ‘call’.

The phone rang. A man’s voice answered, sultry, sleepy, as if he’d just been woken up in a very pleasant way.

‘Hello?’ he said.

I struggled to hear over the rush of traffic. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I think I have the wrong number. I’m looking for Charlotte.’

‘Oh, she’s here,’ said the man. ‘She’s just a bit busy at the moment.’

‘Can I speak to her? Can you tell her Summer is on the phone?’

‘Ah . . . Summer, Charlotte would be happy to speak to you, I’m sure, but her mouth is full.’

I heard giggling and a scuffle, and then Charlotte’s voice on the phone.

‘Summer, darling!’ she said. ‘It’s been for ever!’

More scuffling, and then a soft moan through the receiver.

‘Charlotte? Are you still there?’

Another moan. More scuffling.

‘Hang on, hang on,’ she said, ‘give me a minute.’ The muffled sound of a hand over the receiver and, in the background, a man’s deep, throaty chuckle. ‘Stop it,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Summer’s a friend.’ Then she was back. ‘Sorry about that, darl,’ she said. ‘Jasper was just trying to distract me. How are you, honey? It’s been too long.’

I imagined the two of them in bed together and felt a pang of envy. Charlotte was the only girl I’d ever met whose sexual capacity seemed to rival mine, and she was so open about it, something I had never been. There was a ready aliveness to her. She had the energy of the air after a tropical storm, all damp heat and ripe lushness.

I remembered when we had gone vibrator shopping in Soho a few hours before she’d interviewed at the strip club near Chancery Lane. I had felt a little embarrassed and stood at her side uneasily, watching her confidently pick up dildos of all shapes and sizes, and rub them against the soft skin of her inner wrist to check their sensation.

She had even approached the bored-looking man at the counter and asked for batteries, slipping the AAs inside the base of two similar but slightly different Rabbits with a practised wrist. One of them had a flat nose, and the other was split at the end into a sort of prong, designed to encircle the user’s clit as it buzzed. She ran one pulsating toy up her arm gently, then the other before turning to the man standing behind the counter.

‘Which one do you think would be better?’ she asked him.

He stared at her as if she were an alien, arrived in his store from another planet. I felt the earth move beneath my feet and hoped it was the ground about to swallow me up.

‘I. Don’t. Know,’ he said, pausing between each word in case she didn’t understand.

‘Why not?’ she replied, not at all dissuaded by his surly tone. ‘You work here.’

‘I don’t have a vagina.’

Charlotte pulled out her credit card and bought both, figuring that she would soon earn enough money stripping to pay the bill.

We left the store and she stopped abruptly outside one of those spaceship-like public toilets, the sort that open with a push button at the side, and that I suspected were not often used for their true purpose.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said, stepping inside and pushing the door-lock button before I had a chance to respond.

I stood outside, blushing furiously as I imagined her standing in the cubicle with her knickers rolled down to her knees, pushing a vibrator first inside her and then running the tip round her clitoris.

She was out of the toilet, smiling, within five minutes.

‘The flat one’s better,’ she remarked. ‘Want a go? I bought cleaner and wipes. And lube.’

‘No, I’m good, thanks,’ I replied, wondering what the people on the street would think if they could overhear our exchange. To my surprise, thinking of Charlotte masturbating in the toilet had turned me on. I wouldn’t tell her, but lubricant would certainly not have been necessary.

‘Suit yourself,’ she said breezily, popping the vibrators into her handbag.

Despite the broken violin in my case, and the ache in my heart when I thought of it, imagining Charlotte most likely naked at the other end of the telephone, her long, tanned legs spread out carelessly on the bed beneath the watchful gaze of Jasper, aroused me.

‘I’m good,’ I said falsely, and then told her what had happened in the station.

‘Oh my God! You poor thing. Come over. I’ll throw Jasper out of bed for you.’

She texted me the address and within the hour I was curled up on a swing seat in the living room of her apartment in Notting Hill, sipping a double espresso from a delicate porcelain cup and saucer set. Charlotte’s fortunes had definitely been on the up since I saw her last.

‘Dancing is going well, then?’ I asked her as I surveyed the spacious interior, polished wooden floors and large flat-screen television on the wall.

‘God, no,’ she said, flicking off the coffee machine. ‘That was awful. I didn’t make any money, and I got sacked again.’

She wrapped a finger round the handle of her own small mug and walked over to the sofa. I suspected that her now very long and dead-straight brown hair might be the result of extensions, but I was pleased to see that she still didn’t have fake nails. Charlotte was no shrinking violet, but she had class.

‘I’ve been playing online poker,’ she said, nodding towards the desk and large Mac in the corner of the room. ‘Made a fortune.’

A door opened down the hall and steam drifted out, presumably from the bathroom. A languid smile spread across Charlotte’s face as she watched my head turn in response to the sound.

‘Jasper,’ she said. ‘He’s in the shower.’

‘Have you been seeing each other long?’

‘Long enough,’ she replied with a grin as he sauntered into the living room.

He was one of the most handsome men I’d ever set eyes on. Thick, dark hair, still wet from the shower, lean thighs wrapped in loose-cut denim jeans, a short-sleeved casual shirt, all the buttons open to reveal sculpted abdominals and a fine trail of hair running down to his groin. He stood silently near the kitchen, towel-drying his hair with one hand, as if waiting for something.

‘I’ll just see the lovely boy out,’ Charlotte said to me with a wink, and pushed herself up off the couch.

I watched as she took out a wad of banknotes from an envelope resting on her bookshelf and pressed the bundle into his hand. He folded the wad over and slid it discreetly into the back pocket of his jeans without counting.

‘Thank you,’ Jasper said to her. ‘It’s truly been a pleasure.’

‘The pleasure is all mine,’ she replied, opening the front door and kissing him gently on both cheeks on the way out.

‘I’ve always wanted to say that,’ she said to me, dropping down onto the sofa again.

‘Is he an . . .?’

‘Escort?’ she finished for me. ‘Yes.’

‘But surely you could . . .?’

‘Pick anyone up?’ she finished again. ‘Probably. But I like paying for it. Puts the shoe on the other foot, if you know what I mean, and then I don’t need to worry about all the other bullshit.’

I could certainly see the appeal. At that moment, or indeed at almost any other moment, I would have killed for a guilt-free, complication-free, painless fuck.

‘Do you have any plans tonight?’ she asked suddenly.

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head.

‘Good. I’m taking you out.’

I protested that I wasn’t in the mood and didn’t have any suitable clothes to wear or any money. Besides which, I hate nightclubs, full of young girls batting their fake lashes for a free drink and seedy men trying to cop a feel.