Plastic (16 page)

I found myself beneath the London Eye, the cables invisible against the sky so that the rim seemed suspended, an enemy of gravity, its glass pods shining like dinosaur eggs, then followed the Embankment until I had unconsciously returned to the site of the Ziggurat. There were benches on the Thames walk, and I gratefully slumped onto one.

I awoke a few minutes later, my limbs numb. It was colder beside the river. I was still wondering what to do when I heard a movement behind me and turned to see a young man in a fur hood noisily pissing against a wall. When he realised I was there he braked in mid-flow.

‘Don’t let me stop you,’ I said, raising a hand and averting my eyes.

‘You’re the one standing in my toilet.’ A French accent. The young man buttoned his flies and looked me over. He orbited slowly, then wiped his nose on the back of his hand. In any other situation I would have noticed his eyes, brown with black lashes, dirty curls over a single dark eyebrow. ‘You want a glass of wine?’

‘What? No, I just want to sleep.’

‘You can’t sleep out here.’

‘I don’t have to. I’m staying in there.’ I pointed to the great dark building and was going to say
I just want to be left alone
, but I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to talk to strangers who weren’t trying to sell me something. I wanted to touch someone.

‘Actually, I do want a drink.’ I nodded in what I hoped was a positive, uncrazy manner.

‘In France we don’t trust people who refuse a glass of wine.’ Wide mouth, big grin, white teeth like peppermint pellets. He began to walk away, expecting me to follow him.

‘Wait, where are you going?’

‘To find a decent bottle. Come, I’ll show you.’

‘I don’t know your name.’

‘Don’t do formalities, they get in the way. I am Stefan.’ He turned and continued walking backwards, but held out his hand.

‘I’m June.’

‘Juin.’

He stopped before a yellow metal ship’s container I had seen from the window of the apartment, then slipped into the diagonal shadow at the rear. I hesitated. ‘Wait, I don’t –’

‘Oh come on, you must trust some people. Not everyone is out to hurt you.’ He opened a padlock on a dented steel panel and shoved the door back with a ferrous scrape. ‘Wait.’ He disappeared inside.

Candlelight bloomed in the doorway. I entered as cautiously as a cat. The angled yellow container was filled with draped bolts of midnight blue silk and pieces of rescued furniture. Fat mismatched cushions covered a battered low bed. If the room had appeared in
Wallpaper
magazine, its look would have started a fashion.

‘I have some Southern French wines to celebrate the end of the summer. A Chateau Minuty, a Bandol. Very
leger
,
le gout
, you say taste. I do people favours, they pay me in wine. I like your skin, is so pale, is it soft to touch?’ He teased out the words with his hands.

‘You don’t look French,’ I pointed out briskly.

‘French Algerian, and now I am a
Nicoise
. But for a while I live here.’ He pointed to the floor, then smiled again. ‘I’ve been working on the site since they started laying foundations for the building.’

‘You helped to build the Ziggurat?’

‘I put in windows. You see here.’ He pulled up his T-shirt to reveal a belt lined with different drill-bits, like gun cartridges. His stomach was flat and brown. The wine he finally chose was a Saumur, round and rich. I made sure I saw him pull the cork. He filled two glasses printed with gold silhouettes of Cairo. ‘Like this.’ He cupped his hands around the first glass. ‘You have to make it warm.’

‘Do they know you live here, the people you work for?’

‘Yes of course. I pay a man. Nobody minds. You can’t see light from outside.’

‘But it’s illegal to live without a toilet.’

‘It’s illegal to stay without a permit.’ Another smile.

‘If anyone catches you…’ I trailed off lamely, aware that when faced with a man who found me appealing, I had raised the thorny topic of inadequate sanitation. My pathetically English inability to accept a compliment was a habit learned from my mother, who still referred to toilet paper as ‘bathroom stationery’ and who complained about living in a mixed-raced neighbourhood when a family from Scotland moved into the street.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ He raised his glass in a toast.

Perhaps not in your life,
I thought, watching him. A few days ago I had been sitting at home flicking TV channels, sedated with entertainment. Now I no longer had a television.

‘You’re thinking too much, not drinking enough.’

We touched glasses, glinting Cairos. He was watching me with amusement. It was most disconcerting.

‘Are you here on the premises the whole time?’ I asked, sounding like a member of the royal family questioning someone on a walkabout. But I was determined to show a willingness to thaw.

‘All day, every day. Most nights too.’

‘You see the residents arriving and leaving?’

‘I see everyone. I recognise them all. There are not so many of them yet.’

‘You know Madame Funes?’

‘Yes of course. She is a crazy woman. Parisian.
Bof.
’
That explains it.

‘Did you ever see anything weird going on?’

‘Weird?’

‘People coming in late at night.’

‘Everyone in London comes in late at night, that is what it is for.’

‘Have you ever seen a big bald man with a terrible scar right across his head, like this?’ I ran my finger in an S-shape over my hair.

‘No, I’ve never seen anyone like that. I was going to offer you some of this, but maybe it’s not such a good idea.’ He indicated the joint in his hand. He rolled the fat paper tighter and lit it, the leaves crackling like scalded ice.

‘I’ve never smoked marijuana.’

‘It’s all right, we are in Lambeth. It’s almost illegal not to.’

‘I have to learn to relax. It’s difficult after so many years.’

‘Then this is your first lesson.’ He placed the joint in my hand and lifted it to my lips, then waited with a smile of hopeful approval. I blasted him with a paroxysm of violent spattery coughing, but tried again.

‘This time don’t make the end wet.’

By the third hit I had started to crack it. I’d never smoked cigarettes at school because our cycle sheds backed onto the playing field and I hadn’t wanted to get mud on my shoes. I told myself that a joint would help me to forget what I saw. Rough sleepers knew all about blotting out the night. I had a place to sleep, but there was a lunatic in the building. The thought made me giggle, then laugh out loud.

‘I saw someone die tonight,’ I explained. ‘It was funny.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘I’m not sure I do either. Forget it. OK. I have to go. I can handle it now.’ I took another hit, then handed the joint back as it whacked me.

‘Where will you go?’

‘Back to the apartment.’

‘Why don’t you stay here with me, that is if you want?’

‘Thank you, Stefan, but I’m not in control right now, and I think I should go back. I have to deal with a few things.’ I took his hand. ‘Perhaps another time.’ I thought he was going to help me up, but instead he kissed me, really pushing hard.

They’re funny things, lips. Gordon’s were thin and dry. Stefan’s were full and moist. For a brief moment I sensed what I had been missing all this time. Perhaps it was how Gordon felt when he kissed Hilary, although with the amount of foundation she wore I imagined he would have to sprinkle sand on her face to get a good grip.

At some point – later, I couldn’t remember when – Stefan’s shirt came off, and I heard buttons bouncing on the floor. His dark, soft skin smelled of sandalwood and underarm sweat that lingered on my fingers. The base of his erection pressed a denim-clad post against my crotch as he unpinned my arms and guided my hands around his hard buttocks. His chest hair formed a perfect black trapezoid, a ladder of tiny curls tracing to his navel and into the low waistband of his loosened jeans. The wide, dry palm of his hand covered my pubic bone as he slipped his fingers inside my pants. The shock of a young man’s cool bare hand over my sex was extraordinary; I couldn’t recall the last time someone had cupped me so gently, opening me so carefully, as if he was unwrapping a tissue-wrapped buttonhole.

I sank deep into the cushions, my chocolate skirt sliding from my legs. For years I had been constricted by the curse of propriety, strapped into a sensible brassiere and expected to behave as if I was shocked and disapproving all the time, but what was all the respectability for? What had the city given me back, apart from a wider choice of fabric patterns?

I knew I wanted him inside me, and allowed him to push me deeper into musky warm darkness, the muscles in his slim brown arms lifting and widening as he raised his body over mine until I could feel his stomach tense and our raised pelvic bones grate against each other, a cauterising molten centre to our bodies that could light up the little cabin and provide enough electrical power for most of the shops in Oxford Street, plus a few going down toward Marble Arch.

Stefan’s right hand slipped smoothly across my stomach and up to my breast, tapping my nipple as if nudging a fruit machine. The left supported me in the small of my back. It seemed a good idea to move further down the divan, especially as his mouth was still glued to mine and was gently forcing me in that direction. He was so light that I could hardly feel him straddled on top of me. Instead, there was the heated V of his thighs where they touched my hips, his forearms against the sides of my ribcage, and that wide outrageous tongue, coming to rest in the back of my mouth. I felt an unfamiliar warmth settling across my pelvic floor. He was everywhere at once, rolling up fabric, unsnapping elastic, and I was drowning in the divan. My rucked skirt was a suburban absurdity against the elegance of silken Arabic cloth. I was enveloped in perfumed heat, pinned through the lower, hotter heart between my legs, burning with the secret smiles of the night. Dark, flickering flames held me in place. I was somewhere I had never been, but had always desired to be.

It was a seduction conducted backwards, starting with the fierce, hard culmination, his eyes never leaving mine, his body pulling back and pushing in with decreasing connection, penetrate and withdraw, gentler and gentler, resolving to a faint and tender kiss.

Some minutes later, I realised he was sitting beside me smoking. ‘You know where I am,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Come and visit. I will be here.’

Rising carefully to my feet and testing the ground to stop it from rolling, I tried not to lose my balance. I clawed my hair back in an attempt to look sensible and in control, and pulled the container door open a crack as Stefan refastened his jeans and took a slug of wine. I drew in dank river air, trying to work out exactly what had just happened. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘You are welcome,
Juin
.’ That smile, so wide and neon-white and dangerous. I didn’t care how much he had practised it on other women, I liked the idea of being one of the other women. It made me feel normal somehow, part of something. Strangely, I felt more in control than I ever had with Gordon.

It was still the heart of night, but a soft yellow light profiled the skyline of the Thames. Only the Ziggurat stood in sinister blackout. As I made my way across the churned-up quadrangle, the cool night air cut through the light-headed power of the joint. I pushed open the lobby door and tiptoed across the marble space, my pulse lifting as I reached the stairs. It was necessary to feel for the edges of the steps with my bare feet.

With a sobering sense of unease I climbed toward the apartment, scared to think about what I might find, but a little more prepared.

The stairs were laced with ladders of shadow. In darkness the building was a Caligari’s cabinet of disorienting angles. As I paced steadily along the corridor, a fear threshold gently nudged at my stomach wall. The joint had left me hungry and agitated. Winds fluted and scraped across the acute edges of the building, rain tapping like showers of gravel against the far windows.

Armed with the battery light, I examined the corded corridor floor once more. No blood, no marks, no sign of an anguished victim collapsing against the parchment walls.

I tore the events down into minutes and seconds. I had stepped onto the balcony and watched as the bare-breasted girl raised her arms to the sky. I had seen her in the hallway with Stitch-Head. I had entered the bedroom and found her within the strangling collar. She was less a figure of flesh and blood now than a missing frame from a film, an opaque, silvery tableau from a forgotten Victorian ghost story. If there was no body and no-one to come looking for her, how long would it be before she ceased to exist at all?

She would survive so long as I did, which was why her attacker had come looking for me. He’d been watching the building for most of the night, but had given up before I returned. All I had to do now was leave and never come back.

The remaining candles in the apartment had burned out. Propping the battery lamp against the wall, I searched among the jars, packets and tins in the warm refrigerator. There was nothing to eat at the stripped house in Hamingwell, and I couldn’t go begging to Gordon, who was on his way to Amsterdam with his pumpkin-coloured mistress. Saffron had been right, I decided. The door had a lock. All I had to do was stay the night and go the next morning.

The flat was silent, only the whispering of rain against the glass, the bluster outside tearing like rip-tides at the corners of the building. I tried to sit calmly with my eyes shut, but my heart was too noisy. In the bathroom I found cabinets stocked with pain-killers and – Lord be praised – Temazepam, good for at least four hours of slumber. Taking one of the small white pills and making my way to the bedroom, I doused the light to conserve its power and sank into the softest gooseneck-down duvet I had ever felt against my skin. I thought about Stefan, slender and tanned, lying in his casbah container, and my limbs grew heavy.

I was no longer someone’s wife but a woman, sinking into sleep, to be reborn in a giant storybook bed.