Love Me (9 page)

I SHAKE MY
head. ‘I can't believe I agreed to this,' I say to Juliet. ‘It's embarrassing.'

‘Nothing embarrassing about a wallet full of wonga, mate!' she grins. ‘They're only three quid! People are going to
want
to buy them. Trust me!'

We're in the Nice and Friendly, a pub off Portobello, and Juliet's got a sackful of pirated films she's trying to flog to the punters.

‘You said you wanted to eat!' I complain.

‘Exactly. I'm making some lunch money. DVDs?' she says with quiet intensity to a couple who pass by on the way out.

‘Sorry?'

‘D,' she whispers loudly, ‘V, Ds!'

‘You're selling DVDs?' says the guy with ginger dreads and a nose ring.

‘Yeah, that's what I said!' They look at her confusedly. ‘Oh what, 'cause I'm not Chinese?' laughs Juliet. ‘Bit racist, innit?' And then she sells them a copy of the latest Spiderman film.

‘Look, I'm not being funny, Juliet, but can we just eat now? This is ridiculous.'

‘Alright, alright.' She leads us to the bar and says, ‘Don't worry, doss-bunny. I'm paying.'

‘Deep and heartfelt thanks, yeah?'

She orders a Guinness. I ask for a rum and Coke.

‘You're not serious! Don't you think it's a bit early for the hard stuff?'

‘But you're drinking bloody Guinness!'

‘First of all, Guinness has a completely different connotation than a rum and Coke. It's got vitamins. Second of all, you and me are very different people. You have self-destructive tendencies. I, on the other hand, am trying to
live
, girl! Ya gets?'

‘Whatever, man. Get me what you think I should be drinking, then.'

She orders me half a lager. I give her a look and she says, ‘Different connotation.'

‘You're mad.'

‘Very sane, actually.'

We order two portions of fish and chips and sit by the window to wait.

‘So, what you been up to?' she asks.

What should I tell her? Sitting in my room, staring at my mobile, wondering if I should call Zed, deciding not to, then calling him and getting voicemail. Ticking off the days left before he goes home. I say nothing but I'm pretty sure my face says it all.

‘Listen, Eden Sweden,' she sighs. ‘Maybe this disappointment really is a blessing. You guys are too tangled, it's unhealthy. Just him being around seems to twist your head up. How could you be with him? This is your chance to move on and finally get serious about your future.'

‘My future?' I laugh. ‘What bloody future?'

‘Look, stop pretending that you left your job because of the state of the world, man! You left because that brer hurt your feelings.'

‘He's not just some
brer
, Juliet. You know that. Not all of us are cyborgs like you, you know.'

‘Yeah, well if having a brain and using it makes me a cyborg, you can start calling me Robocop if ya like.'

‘Fish and chips with mushy peas?' The waitress gives the
one with peas to Juliet and I take the one without. She tucks in with gusto, attacking her plate with ketchup, salt and vinegar, knife and fork. She hums with pleasure under her breath. I stare at my dinner with the same feeling I get when I cross a train carriage to pick up a stray newspaper – only to find it's in Dutch.

‘Juliet, I'm just . . .' I say, light-headed but too hungry for food. I sip my drink and some of it sloshes over my hand when I replace it on the table. I don't even like beer. ‘I'm not built like that. I wish I was.'

She shakes her braided head. ‘Stop being such an Ophelia. Get on with your photography or something. Maybe it's never gonna make you rich, but it at least makes you happy.'

‘You've never been in love. You don't know what it's like! He won't answer my calls. Can you believe it? I'm not the one who started going out with his friends! Can't believe I punked myself like that. Juliet, I threw my shoes in the lake and they sunk to the bottom, no trace. Had to walk home barefoot through,' I laugh, eyes stinging, ‘horse shit.'

‘Ah, mate!' She winces. ‘You must be in pretty bad shape to start talking in Kate Bush. Didn't get a chance to make any “steps on the water”, eh?'

‘Nope.'

She rubs my arm awkwardly, probably trying to think of something gentle to say. Gentle isn't really her strong point.

‘I know,' she says after a moment, ‘that this is really, really hard for you to deal with right now, but you should try and be positive. Concentrate on yourself. Everything happens for a reason. It's the universe at work.'

‘Tell the universe it needs a staff assessment, then.'

‘Look . . . on a practical note, are you alright? Do you need some copper 'til you get sorted?'

‘What?' I'm thinking, as I often do, of that moment in Zed's living room when we were alone all those weeks ago,
when it all could have happened, and I messed it up. All those wasted, stillborn moments between us flash through my mind in a never-ending slideshow. ‘Sorry?'

‘Queen's head. Sterling. Dinero . . . '

‘Oh right, yeah . . . yeah I know. No, I'm alright, I've got my overdraft, remember? Plus, I think they're gonna let me sign on the dole.'

‘Uh-oh. That's how it starts. Next stop the crane.'

‘Shut up, Juliet.'

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!
go those heavy feet again, crashing down the stairs. I look over at my dad, but his face only registers affection. There are dimples in his clean-shaven cheeks as he fusses over his table arrangement. New plates, real napkins.
Thump thump thump.
Graceful as a war tank she is. I sit and wait for plaster to shake loose from the ceiling, trying half-heartedly to devise a polite escape. But I've spent so much time in my little airless bedroom that the prospects of either third-wheeling it on my dad's romantic night in or going back up to my cage are equally repugnant.

Ms Chanderpaul finally turns up in the kitchen doorway and I'm perplexed, like always. A massively fat woman of three hundred pounds and imposing height, she is not. She's actually quite tiny. Five feet and round as a little ball. I think that her body must be denser than the average human being's. Maybe she's from Krypton, Superman's planet.

And I'm hearing her loud steps around here more and more often. I keep finding her long curly hairs in the sink, her shoes in the hallway, her handbag on the sofa, her heavy perfume tainting my oxygen.

‘Hello sweetheart!' she says, shiny, dark brown face beaming. She's dressed head-to-foot in fuchsia – including eyeshadow. A dark Trinidadian Hindu, with slippery black waves teased and pinned on top of her head. Biggest hair I've ever seen outside Nashville. Well, I've never been to Nashville. But I've seen Dolly Parton on TV.

‘Hey.'

She smears my cheek with garish lippie, close and away. My senses are drowned in lavender.

‘You look . . . well,' she says.

‘Thank you,' I tell her, draining the rest of my juice. ‘Dad doesn't agree. He thinks I need to do something about my tough
,
Brillo-pad hair and trampy clothes. I suspect I'm embarrassing him.'

‘Eden!' My dad looks frozen with shame. Chanders glances at him with a mildly panicked look, then says, ‘I
love
your hair. I think it's wonderful! I'm sure your dad was just trying to be helpful.'

Now she knows better than
I
do what my dad thinks about me.

‘Yeah, I'm sure.'

‘But I think you're a beautiful girl. I used to dress really
weird
too,' she says, trying to be
down with the kids
, ‘when I was a young girl in the seventies.'

I want to say, ‘So not much has changed, then?' But I think she might take that the wrong way.

‘I have a treat for you all!' she says, bending to take a foil package out of the oven. She brings it over to me and peels back the aluminium to reveal yellow, floury flat breads. She looks at me. ‘You like roti?'

‘Yeah, I suppose,' I say, and the truth is that roti is lovely, especially made fresh like that, but we never usually have it because my dad can't make it. I feel inexplicably nervous. Don't you need a curry for the roti, anyway? You can't really just have that with stewed chicken. And there's already macaroni cheese and the rice. Personally I think it's all a bit much. ‘My dad told me about your little romantic getaway.'

Ms Chanderpaul is actually blushing. No, she's too brown to blush. I think it's the fuchsia thing. But she looks all happy and coy.

‘Your father is a lovely man!' she says.

‘Well, not lovely enough,' my dad complains. ‘She won't run away with me!'

‘Oh, Elliot! Don't be silly.'

‘Smart woman,' I manage.

I'm staring at my dad all plump and co-ordinated in neat clothes and his neat smile with his fuchsia girlfriend and the picture shoves me out and backwards. I don't belong in this picture.

‘Listen, you two,' I say, ‘no offence but I think I'll eat upstairs. Don't want to interrupt.'

My father looks thunderous; Chanders is crestfallen.

Before I can feel guilty, I take my plate and slip away.

AND THIS IS
the same house where my mother sat all pointy and pale in the living room, fourteen years ago. She was feline and full of secrets, waiting to pounce on our lives together and shred them to pieces with her slim fingers like the chicken she was eating. My dad did the cooking then, too.

‘I can't do this anymore, Elliot.'

I remember that the chicken made her lips shiny. I remember that her lips were shiny because when she began to speak I thought about her shiny lips and how beautiful they made her look even though it was just chicken grease. And even though what she said was scary and sudden. And I wondered if I would grow up to be that beautiful, and about how much easier it would be on my scalp if I had those loose curls like she did. They were silky black and clasped in a romantic knot on top of her head. She was always saying I didn't really take her complexion.
You're red-skinned
, she would say,
but not light like me
.
My great-grandfather was a white man, you know? Almost.
She'd say it so often, it got on my nerves.
You look like your father.

I was already taller and broader than her and prayed daily I would stop growing. I remember thinking that her unmotherly clothes were tight in all the right places to make her look like she should be on
Top of the Pops
or on some soap opera, like she wanted to be, instead of in our poorly lit living room.

‘I can't do this anymore, Elliot.'

‘Sorry, Marie?'

‘I can't do this.'

‘Do what?'

‘This. Sit in this cold room.'

‘What? You want to waste the heating?'

‘It's not a waste if it stops the cold.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘How can the heating be a waste if it STOPS THE COLD!'

‘WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING?'

‘BECAUSE I AM COLD!'

‘Chu! Turn on the heating, then. We'll see when the bill comes.'

‘No.'

‘No? Woman, you just said you were cold! Turn up the heating.'

‘No. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm leaving. I hate it here!'

‘I don't understand . . .'

My father temporarily lost his grasp on English, even though it was his only language. My mother kept telling him she was leaving him and he didn't get it until she fled up the stairs with me tight on her heels. I stood in the doorway and watched her begin throwing clothes in one of Dad's ugly, bargain suitcases.

And I knew that she wasn't taking me with her.

SO NOW I'M
hanging upside down off the edge of my unmade bed, staring at the damp ceiling and purple paint. At the frameless posters and scribbled Post-its stuck on the walls. Clothes on the floor. CDs, books piled up everywhere. Laptop, pens, pencils, sketchpad strewn over my chequered sheets. And pictures of
him
hiding in a little montage on the wall, pictures of
him
idling in my drawers amongst half-finished packs of paracetamol and lumps of Blu-Tack, pictures of
him
careening through my brain in a never-ending slide show. I don't even know where to begin cleaning up this mess.

Suddenly my feet are vibrating. I lunge for my bag where it's landed at the foot of the bed and dump everything on the floor and it's my mobile screaming its blue scream. Zed.

‘Hello?' I say, breathless.

‘Oy oy! Sleeping already?'

Pause. It's not Zed.

‘Who's this?'

‘It's Max! Ain't heard from you in a while.'

‘This,' I tell her, ‘isn't your phone.'

‘Zed gets free calls, innit? A penny saved is a penny earned! Anyway, how are you?'

‘Fine.'

‘You didn't tell me you were thinking of leaving the job! What happened?'

‘Got fed up.'

‘You sure you're alright? You sound a bit down and that.'

‘Nah, I'm fantastic.'

‘Well, you don't sound fantastic. You sound like shit. Listen, you fancy coming out tonight? I'm going to this party down Shoreditch. It's gonna be—'

‘I think I'll stick with tea and the telly thanks.'

‘Come on! Don't be like that! Have you really got anything better to do? Telly's crap these days. I mean, what are you doing right now?'

‘Nothing.'
Jesus
. I shouldn't have said that.

‘Well then, nothing is stopping you. If it's about your problems with Zed then talk to him tonight and sort it out since you lot have been friends for so long.'