Plastic (34 page)
‘They’re okay if you stay on the right side of them.’
‘Whose flat is this?’
‘It belongs to a friend of mine. I’m looking after the place for a few weeks. Doing it up in lieu of rent.’
‘A friend, eh?’ Gordon walked around, unsure what to make of the airy open space. I knew that in his eyes it wouldn’t count as a proper home because there weren’t enough walls. ‘You’ve got no curtains up. Anyone can see in. I was going to ask if you wanted to come back to Hamingwell for a few days. I felt bad about leaving you broke.’
‘No, it’s okay, it was good for me. Besides, I’m quite comfortable here.’
‘Are you sure?’ He looked uncertainly at the chaos of the room, the half-painted walls and boxes. ‘It doesn’t look safe outside.’
‘It’s the little kids you have to watch out for, they’re buggers.’
‘One of them wanted money for minding the car. He couldn’t be more than ten.’
‘I hope you gave him something.’
‘I certainly did not.’
‘Then I wouldn’t stay up here too long if I were you. Gordon, I saw some of the websites logged on your PC.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘When I stayed at the house overnight. I went on your computer. All those adult sites. Don’t look so innocent.’
‘Oh, those?’ He laughed, but I could tell he was embarrassed. ‘They don’t mean anything.’
‘I don’t mind what you do anymore, Gordon. It’s your life to enjoy as you see fit.’
Gordon looked at me in genuine puzzlement. ‘So you’ve no plans to move back to Hamingwell? I thought you’d stay in the area. You loved it there. Apart from anything else, it’s so much safer.’
He knew that wasn’t true. Only a couple of months ago, some Hamingwell schoolgirls had stabbed a classmate to death and set her body ablaze because she had dissed them on Facebook. It had been in all the papers. Neighbours were busy silting up the street with plastic-wrapped flowers and teddy bears. All kinds of inexplicable things happen in suburban neighbourhoods, but men like Gordon pretend not to notice.
There are a lot of people out there who refuse to help. There are victims who have no recourse to the police, and no-one to protect them. It made me start thinking.
‘What about your little house, your nice garden, all the neighbours you could chat to?’ Gordon asked.
This was particularly insensitive, I thought, seeing as he was sleeping with one of them. The only other neighbour I had ever spent time with fantasised about burning the town down.
‘No, Gordon, it’s really much easier for me to be here.’ I thought of Virginia Woolf’s comment on London, that it takes up the private life and carries it on without any effort.
There was a clatter of paint cans and a cry of ‘
Merde!
’
‘Who’s that?’ asked Gordon.
‘This is Stefan. He’s helping me paint the apartment.’ Stefan came in from the bedroom. He was naked under his overalls and appeared to have tipped yellow paint over his chest. He reached over and shook hands awkwardly.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Gordon stiffly. ‘Well, June, you seem to have everything under control. Your new life must be agreeing with you. You’ve certainly lost a bit of weight. It makes you look ill.’ His attention strayed to the window again. ‘I think I had better go and keep an eye on the car. Well.’ He jangled the change in his pockets. ‘I guess it’s a divorce then. You could have half of the house, save getting messy in court. I hope you’re ready to handle the financial side now.’
‘Yeah, I can handle it. I’m not fussed about buying stuff any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘Once you’ve done it at gunpoint, regular shopping loses its appeal.’
‘Oh. That’s a pity. I bought you these. A sort of peace offering. For old times’ sake.’ He set down the shiny white bag before me like an appeasement to the Shopping Gods. Inside was the pair of beaded evening shoes I had lusted after on the day of my last spree on Gordon’s money. ‘I’m not very good with this sort of thing, as you know, so Hilary chose them for me. She thought you’d like them.’
‘Perhaps you’d better let her keep them,’ I said gently, handing back the bag. ‘I don’t think they’d suit me.’
He looked hurt. ‘I don’t understand you anymore, June. There’s something different about you. You seem colder. Too much like a fella for my taste.’
‘You don’t have to like it. There are a lot of things I still have to figure out. I only know that I don’t miss our old life. It was comfortable, but it made me so spineless.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. You were certainly the mistress of the house. Hilary’s away all the time and I can’t find where she keeps anything. And I never seem to have any clean pants. Don’t ask a man to do a woman’s job, eh?’ His bluff joviality faded. ‘Listen, I know I left you, but for many years you had everything you could ever ask for in Hamingwell.’
‘That’s the point, Gordon. I don’t ever want to have to ask for things again, or sit there making up ways to fill the hours. It’s time to give myself a different kind of credit.’
‘Would it make any difference to say I miss you?’
‘That’s to be expected when you spend ten years with someone. But at some point you have to ask yourself, what was it for? Did we learn anything from each other?’
‘I don’t see how you can talk like that. I looked after you.’
‘I know you did, Gordon. Maybe you protected me a little too much.’
‘Fine, go ahead and live this way, but I think you’re making a terrible mistake. People aren’t nice. They’re out for everything they can get.’
There are a lot more good ones than bad,
I thought,
but you’ll never see it.
I watched from the upstairs window as he left, disappointed and bewildered. He didn’t stop to look up. He checked the Rover for scratches, then hastily hopped inside and started it. He couldn’t wait to get out of the area fast enough.
Me, I like it here, but I won’t stay. I’ll move around. Whitechapel, Hoxton, King’s Cross, Shoreditch, Lambeth, Borough, Pimlico, Deptford, Bayswater, I haven’t decided where next. I’m learning new lists.
I’ve taken a new job, rather an appropriate one. I’ve become a personal shopper for the wives of the wealthy, and I’m damned good at it. The first thing I’m going to do is get Mrs. Rennie to spend her way through her husband’s fortune. How we’ll laugh as we burn a path through the laundered cash of the corrupt. What’s more, I’ll be able to keep an eye on her husband’s mysteriously transmuting network of alliances. So long as respectable people require someone to do their dirty work, he and his companions will continue to make their fortunes. I desperately want to hurt him, to make him pay for what he did, but I no longer know which side I’m on.
I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve faked my death, but changing my name will be the first smart move, and if I ever do get another credit card it’ll have that new name on it. I’ll have been reborn.
My old life as June Cryer has officially ended.
I am a former housewife, an ex-housewife. Like the Monty Python parrot sketch, I have ceased to be. To put it another way, I am one mean mother of an ex-pelmet-hoovering Sainsburys-shopping dishwasher-loading housewife who can no longer remember which leading shower spray gets rid of stubborn limescale and which attacks unsightly soap-scum, and doesn’t give a flying rat-fuck, pardon my French. I’m just glad I came out of my coma long enough to build a new life.
When I finally do have a child – a girl, I feel sure – she won’t be bullied into doing what’s best for her by her parents or her peers, by suitors or salesmen. She’ll be free to choose the life she wants. Of course, I’m realistic enough to know that her choices won’t be mine. You set up home on solid ground and tend it, or you move to shifting sands. It’s a hard decision. The most important thing is discovering you have a choice.
The housewife is dead, but the woman is doing just fine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
B
ORN IN
L
ONDON,
Christopher Fowler has written for film, television, radio, graphic novels, and for newpaper including
The London Times
, for more than thirty years. He is a regular columnist for
The Independent on Sunday
. Fowler is the multi-award-winning author of more than thirty novels, including the lauded
Bryant & May
mystery novels. In the past year he has been nominated for eight national book awards.
For more information visit
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