One Step Too Far (15 page)

“Come on babe,” says Angel, “Let’s just go for one drink and see how you feel. We’ll have a good time, I promise,” and she takes my hand and smiles a smile of such delightfulness that I find it impossible to deny her. We walk the whole way up Oxford Street (how does she walk in those heels?) and then we cross the road into my street, where I work, where I have a job! I point out the agency to Angel and she says, “Blimey, that’s a bit posh innit?” and then we carry on along Wardour Street and across Old Compton Street and by this time my feet ache and my desire to go home (which home?) is overwhelming. Angel is practically towing me now, and we go down some narrow steps that I would never have noticed and it all feels a bit dodgy, but as we go through the entrance it opens into a gigantic bar, with high ceilings and bare brick walls and colossal chandeliers. Hard core porn is being projected onto a screen which covers the entire back wall. There’s no sound to go with the blown-up images, thank God, just pumping loud techno-music, is that what it’s called? The bar is heaving with beautiful trendy people and I feel embarrassed of my jeans and boring shirt. My eyes don’t know where to look – I’ve never seen such an enormous penis or what he’s doing with it – and so I stand with Angel at the bar waiting for one of the frantically busy yet coolly aloof bar-staff to notice me, and I realise that no-one else is looking at the screen either, it’s as if it’s not there at all. A gargantuan act of sexual liaison – and it may as well be a ranting man with a placard, people are so studious in their ignoring of it. What’s it there for – is it art, is it fashion – and then I wonder why I care. As I wait to order two vodka tonics, I hear across the music a showy sing-song voice yelling, “Angel, dar-ling! You made it,” and I turn to see an immaculately monumental black man, in a tight banana-yellow T-shirt stretched wide across his sculpted chest, embracing her, wrapping her against him like she’s a little child just out the bath. Angel grins and looks up flirtatiously at him, although it’s obvious to even me that he’s gay. I’ve lost my place in the dubious queuing system, and I stand waiting again, convinced now I’m being deliberately ignored. When I’m finally served, by a beautiful young girl with rings through her eyebrows, I order three doubles – Angel’s friend is too far away to ask what he wants and I can’t face coming back. I’m charged an unbelievable amount of money, I had no idea three drinks could cost that much. As I reach Angel through the crowd she says, “Dane, meet my fab new flatmate, Cat, I found her under a bush,” and she giggles.

“Hi,” I say, smiling shyly. “I’m afraid I didn’t know what you wanted, so I got you a vodka.” Dane squeals and says, “Ooh, I’m more of a mojito man myself, don’t worry darling, Ricardo’s getting me one,” and I look over and coming towards us is another divine-looking man, perfectly formed, dark and diminutive, with two frosted green drinks, fancy like ornaments in his manicured hands. Angel takes her drink, and I’m left with two double vodkas. I drink the first as fast as I can, mainly so I can put the glass down, and soon feel a warmth oozing through me. I try to offer the spare drink to Angel, but she shakes her head and says, “You have it, babe,” and within 15 minutes I’ve finished them both. I feel light-headed now, as though I’m not really here, but I do my best to follow the conversation above the head-throb music, try to ignore the unimaginable genitalia, try to forget just how out of place I feel.

I have no idea what time it is. I’m standing on a table (am I somewhere different?) and I’m wearing the silver shirt-dress that Angel stole for me earlier. My feet are bare, I know this because the table is sticky and wet beneath me. Angel is next to me, dancing sexily, while I sway around drunkenly, my long legs bending to the music, my feet planted firmly on the table top. I have just enough presence of mind to realise how ridiculous I must look, before I’m swept away again on the euphoria of freedom and release and alcohol, and I throw my head back and whoop with relief, not caring what anyone thinks anymore, dancing still, vaguely in time to the music.

“Let’s get another drink!” I yell above the noise to Angel, and then I leap Dirty Dancing-style off the table and my legs crumple beneath me. Someone (Dane?) helps me off the floor and then Angel is by my side and they drag me to the toilets, my legs don’t seem to be working now. I lean on Angel and we manage to enter a cubicle and I sit fully clothed on the seat with my head between my legs, and I don’t even feel sick or repulsed by the filth or the smell, I just feel exhausted. All I want to do is go to sleep, today is officially OVER. Angel is slapping me, shaking me, saying, “Come on babe, wake up,” and at long last I rouse myself and I sit up and stare vacantly at her, and then that dreadful image appears in my head from nowhere and I’m crying hysterically again, like I’ll never ever stop. Angel strokes my hair and says, “Come on, babe, I’ll look after you, it’s all going to be OK,” and then she moves next to me and starts doing something on the cistern behind me.

“Have some of this babe, it will help, honest,” she says. I stagger to a kneeling position on the toilet seat and stare blankly at the long straight line. I know what it is but I don’t want to know. I’ve been offered before, at university, but I have never ever been tempted, not even slightly. I’m vaguely aware of my silver shirt-dress, open almost to my navel, my naked feet on the cubicle floor in the worse wet now, my long hair ratty around me, and all I want to do is go home, properly home, to Ben and Charlie and – and what? I just feel so tired. I pull back my hair and take the rolled up note from Angel, my friend, my saviour, I can trust her, surely? My eyes droop towards unconsciousness again and Angel shakes me again. I don’t know what to do. I just want everything to stop. If only I could sleep here but it seems I can't. And so in the end I lean forward defeatedly, decision made, and enter the next stage of my very strange life, the one I'm most ashamed of.

PART TWO

22

The doors jolt open and people flood off, and then more miserable people swarm on like liquid, filling every available gap, pushing right past me, rubbing against my beautifully-cut nude coloured coat. I left the flat earlier this morning and the tube is more crowded than I’m used to. I stand amongst my fellow commuters, moving with the carriage and the crowds from the west of the city to the centre. No-one particularly notices me, I’m just another girl in designer heels, with a hole where her soul used to be. I went “shopping” yesterday, Angel said I should treat myself, and I have a new silk scarf slung gracefully round my neck. The tube is warm and cosy-feeling, despite the sad-mouthed strangers, despite my having to stand – it’s comforting down here after the freezing cold wind of the May morning outside.

I’m determined to be in a good mood today, even though I’m being jostled and squashed, even though it’s a Monday. It's my first day at work since my latest promotion, so I have a duty to be cheerful. In the nine short months I’ve been at CSGH, I’ve moved swiftly from holiday cover temp to permanent receptionist (the old one never came back from Bodrum, she fell in love with a Turkish soldier apparently), to office manager (sweet vacant Polly wafted off to a rival agency), then to Account Exec and now Account Manager! Even I’m astonished at the speed of my rise. Last July I would have thought an Account Manager balanced ledgers, not oversaw the process of making 96 sheet posters and extortionate TV commercials. I guess it’s partly because I’m older, used to be a lawyer (not that anyone knows that of course), so I carry a bit more gravitas than the other Execs – but it obviously also helps that I’m Simon’s little pet. I know people in the agency talk, and they probably think I’m sleeping with him, and I have thought about doing so, it’s true, probably would have done under other circumstances – after all I do find him attractive, I have no allegiance to his bitch of a wife – but I cannot, despite everything else I’ve done, quite bring myself to sleep with someone who’s not Ben. I don’t know why, I’ve been so spectacularly drunk and high enough times to just fall into some stranger’s bed, or have a messy coupling in a dingy club’s toilets, but it’s the one area of my life in which I’ve retained some standards, that I’ve not been prepared to shift on.

As we reach the next stop, more people shove themselves on, no-one gets off, and there’s no room at all now. It’s not cosy anymore, it’s grim and unpleasant, rammed up as I am, over-intimate, against these random strangers. Fortunately it’s just one line, no changes, straight through from Shepherds Bush, so there are only three more stops until I get off.

The flat that Angel and I share is a definite improvement on Finsbury Park Palace. We pay quite a bit more each month and we have a newly white-washed conversion in a large Victorian villa. We have a living room now, nice kitchen (no dodgy bins or Brazilian cooking smells) and the bathroom is newly fitted, completely devoid of blossoming mould and slimy shower curtains. That’s why we went for it, because it’s clean, neutral, the antithesis of our old house, plus it’s handily close to the tube. At last I’ve thrown away my flip flops, and all my toiletries are stacked neatly in the mirrored cabinet above the sink, no longer carted round in my wash bag. Angel and I are happy, in our own ways. She still works in casinos and operates a weird upside down life, she still has a massive shoplifting and cocaine habit, but there again I’m not too far behind myself these days. I’m a million miles from the girl I used to be – maybe snorting coke was the only way I could cope, once the adrenaline of that first agonising week had faded. It’s weird how I seem to have become so like my twin lately, perhaps bad behaviour’s in my genes too. I just never understood before what she obviously knew all along – how drugs and alcohol can numb you, help you forget.

It’s ironic that that was another reason things started looking up for me at work – once I started dressing right, doing the after work drinks thing, the sneaky trips to the toilets behind clients’ backs, and it has made the new me shiny and sparkling, my wit sharpened, almost like Caroline’s, but without so much hatred. It’s hard to fathom, but people find me glamorous now, funny even. In my old life I had quiet confidence, unremarkable prettiness, easy popularity, but now I am super-charged, sleek, seductive. And although I know in my heart I take too many drugs and steal too many clothes I’ve convinced myself it’s OK for now, it’s all part of the process, part of the forgetting. I won’t do it forever.

Although I love our new flat I almost miss my old housemates, no matter that they drove me mad – entrepreneurial Chanelle and flat-pack Jerome, foul-mouthed Bev, the taciturn swarthy boys, giant-baby Brad and even the loathsome Erica. They became like family to me, and, let’s face it, they were no more nutty than my real one, once you get beyond appearances. Although now it’s just myself and Angel we have a constant stream of visitors, so I never get too lonely – Angel’s various dealers; her dear friend Rafael, who she met at the casino; the adonis-like Dane and Ricardo, and sometimes even Angel’s mother too.

Ruth is a remarkable-looking woman. She’s only 47 and looks maybe ten years younger, and she still plays the clubs and has at least one boyfriend on the go at any given time. She lives in a mansion block in Bayswater, council I think, and she turns up every now and again to sleep on the couch, after yet another fight with the latest man in her life. Angel treats her like a little sister or even a daughter and, as with me, she doesn’t judge her mother or try to change her, but just accepts her with the sweetness she has always shown me. I love Angel. It’s almost as if half the love I had for my husband has transmuted into a platonic love of this waif-like beauty with her flawed genes and bad habits. The other half has gone to successful sad Simon, sat in his gleaming office managing tantrums and egos, making expensive commercials for cornflakes and cars. I feel lucky to have them both in my life, they’ve helped me move on from the desolate broken person that left home one stinking hot morning last July, to the successfully still-alive girl I am now.

Despite how close I’ve grown to both Angel and Simon I’m surprised that I’ve never ever been tempted to spill my secret – that I was once blissfully married, had a beautiful little two year old boy with sunshine in his eyes and spun gold for hair, another baby on the way. Until very recently I’d managed to transform my life so dramatically as to put all that firmly in the past; sometimes I’d even forgotten it was ever true.

I’ve never felt like telling Simon or Angel that I’m one half of a set of twins either – the supposedly normal, uncomplicated half at that – and this too has liberated me. Being a twin makes you seem odd in people’s eyes, you’re different, you’re half of a whole, not an individual, you have between the two of you a bond that no-one else can feel or understand. If only they knew the truth! I’m glad to be rid of Caroline, to have finally given up on her at last, she deserves it after what happened.
I hate her now
.

As the tube rumbles eastwards my thoughts go where they like, free of their tracks, although I half-heartedly try to stop them. I find myself thinking of my poor parents, for the last 30 odd years having to manage Caroline’s moods and willfulness, her latest condition (anorexia, madness, alcoholism, she certainly kept them busy), the destruction she has wreaked. With the distance of time it all seems like an episode of one of those chat shows, not real or in any way part of me. I’ve never quite understood Mum’s role in it all, how Caroline got quite so screwed up, but I’m sure it’s mainly to do with her. I was always aware, even when we were tiny, that there was something not quite right between them, even aware that Mum preferred me – it’s only now I’m so far away I can properly admit it. And when they seemed to finally sort their issues out, resolve things, during my sister’s stay in that eating clinic, I guess it was already too late for Caroline, the damage had been done.

I don’t know why, but I’ve rarely tried to analyse any of this before – although I always tried to get on with my sister, she was mainly someone in my life to be wary of, managed, even when we were little. I think I was a bit scared of her, looking back. Even when she almost ruined our wedding I forgave her – after all I still had Ben, he'd still married me – and at the time I was sure she hadn’t meant it, it was par for the course, just “Caroline being Caroline.” But after what she did I’m glad to be free of her, that’s one thing I definitely don’t regret about leaving.

How I feel about deserting my parents is different, and thinking about them from afar, from the safety of a new life makes me feel sad for them both. My poor pathetic father. He thought none of us knew that he’d slept with Caroline’s friend at our wedding, but the look on Danielle’s face the next morning, the bleary bewilderment of Caroline – she must have been in the same room for God’s sake – meant that nothing needed to be said. I think it was that final very public humiliation that gave Mum the courage to leave at last, and after that it all came out, all his grubby exploits that Mum had spent years ignoring. I was appalled, couldn’t believe it of him, I’d adored him so. Mum came to stay with us at first, Ben didn’t mind even though we were only just married, and it would have been fine, apart from that it meant Caroline came around more often, flirting with Ben, and Dad was on the phone
every day,
crying, begging to speak to Mum, although she refused him. Ben was an absolute saint, looking back. He must have really loved me then.

As the train rushes forwards I find my thoughts rampaging backwards even faster now. Out of the blue I’m thinking of pretty much everyone I’ve left behind and wondering what they may be doing right this minute: Ben and Charlie of course, Mum and Dad, my lovely in-laws, Dave and Maria from work (have they got it together yet?), my bridesmaids, my friends from ante-natal classes, our next door neighbour Rod and his ancient hopefully-still-alive labrador, my friend Samantha up the road, the canteen lady who used to make us undrinkable coffee. I keep thinking that exactly a year ago it was still
before
, just about, and I feel desperate all over again.

As the tube storms into Oxford Circus I physically shake my head to rid myself of these thoughts, and my expensively-streaked bob swings into my eyes. I smooth my hair, compose myself, put the past back where it belongs. I battle my way off the train, shuffle with the throng along the crowded platform, glide up the escalator (on tiptoes to protect my heels, mentally practising my cheery hellos all the way) and then I step out into the too-bitter Spring day.

23

Caroline looked at the thin blue line on the white plastic stick and she let out a soft breath of – what? Fear, or anticipation? She was still only 22, but she’d just graduated from St Martin’s, had a flat off Brick Lane, a good-looking boyfriend, a promising job in a designer store. She’d been pregnant twice before, and neither time had felt right, but this time? She wasn’t sure. It surprised her how fecund she’d proved to be, despite having starved her body as a teenager, and she resolved to be more careful in future, she couldn’t keep having abortions. Dominic was taking her out later, maybe she could sound him out then about how he’d feel about having a baby. She put the cap on the pregnancy test and stored it at the back of the bathroom cabinet, then she showered and put on her favourite outfit, she found she wanted to look her best today. She felt close to this starter-baby, unlike the others – maybe because she could see herself loving its father this time, after all he was her boyfriend, not just some random sexual partner where things had got out of hand. Caroline looked down at her belly, beneath the orange pop art T-shirt, and imagined it swelling and rounding with a beautiful little baby inside. Someone for her to love, who would love her back, unconditionally. She found she liked the thought.

Caroline finished dressing and smoothed the silver eiderdown over her bed instead of leaving it unmade like usual. The walls were painted fuchsia pink and were covered in pictures she’d bought off friends from art college: abstract naked women with their legs apart, black and white photos of muscly men wearing sadomasochistic collars and belts, a blood-spattered sunset. She loved that the pictures were so outrageous, and who knows they might be worth something one day. Although the room was nice enough the bed was so huge she would barely fit a cot in there. She'd probably need to move before the baby’s born, she thought. Maybe she and Dominic could get a place together, somewhere a bit more child-friendly, Islington perhaps, or even Ealing. Caroline put on her shoes – gold platform trainers that were almost impossible to walk in – and went into the kitchen. The flat was in the eaves of a converted house, so the walls sloped into her and the cabinets were at crazy angles, but the room was bright and light and Caroline felt blessed, euphoric, as she looked out to the Virgin Mary-blue of the sky. She put some coffee on and went to light a cigarette, and then remembered herself – she was
pregnant
– and so she picked up yesterday’s newspaper instead, and even the bad news seemed good today and she thought about ringing her mother.

No, she'd wait to tell Dominic first, she thought, in fact she'd call him now. She dialled his number, and it rang and rang but didn’t flip to voicemail. She checked her watch, still only 9.30, she’d try him again later. She settled down to watch daytime TV, she didn’t need to be at work until 12, and she flicked channels until she found her favourite show – uncouth people screaming and shouting at each other about falling out with their sister, or sleeping with their mother’s lover, or their boyfriend not being the father of their child. Caroline may have developed a hard persona, a “don’t fuck with me” veneer, but somehow when she watched these shows she always cried, it seemed the distilling of human emotions into these undignified shouting matches moved her in a way little else did. Glen from Sheffield was just about to find out whether or not he was the father of his two year old daughter when Caroline’s phone went and she hesitated to pick up, and then she saw who it was.