The Mall (26 page)

‘You coming?’ asks Rhoda. She’s already halfway down the corridor. I’m not going to let her get away this time. I trot after her. She smiles – a tired, effortful
smile – peels her boots off and leaves them where they lie.

‘Jesus, that Napumla was a fuckup,’ she says as we jog to the down escalator. ‘You would’ve thought she’d be happy to see some other people from… up there.
Other browns. I don’t know if she was angry or afraid or just fucking embarrassed.’

‘Maybe she just didn’t like being reminded of where she came from. You aren’t tempted to become like her, are you?’

‘I’m already like her,’ Rhoda mumbles, and for a second I wonder if I’ve heard her correctly.

Rhoda stops dead. ‘Fuuuuck,’ she breathes out.

We’ve found it. Off the escalator, two lefts, just like the map said. Inset into an alcove, a door marked LB72.

Rhoda is already thumbing a message into her phone. She shows me the screen. She’s written:

‘Is that cool?’ she says. But she hits before I can answer. ‘You think I should have said please?’

I’m more worried about what lies beyond the door. The Guard ian? Is that what they call that fucking slavering creature? I don’t know if I have the will to go through all that again.
I can’t remember when I last ate or drank, and I’ll need all my energy. Make eating and resting a priority. Avoid the creature rather than confront it. Somehow I’ve been given
another life on this level of this game. I’ll have to be smarter this time; I’ll have to think on my feet.

‘You up to this?’ I ask Rhoda. My phone buzzes silently. I lift it to the mouth of my pocket and peek at it.

I push the phone back down without showing Rhoda the message.

She looks up. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Me neither.’

Rhoda smiles and squeezes my arm. ‘We’ll make it. We’re a good team. Plus I got us some fags.’ She shakes the large tote bag that’s slung over her shoulder.
‘They make them fucking strong here. And look what else I’ve got.’ She fishes in her bag and pulls out the knife.

‘Cool,’ I say. ‘Fags and a knife, perfect health points booster.’

She gives me one of her ‘what the fuck, Dan’ looks. The old Rhoda’s back. Maybe she’s right. Maybe we are going to make it through okay.

Her phone beeps. She hands it to me. ‘I can’t,’ she says simply.

It’s warm from her hand, and for a few seconds I avoid looking at it, bracing myself. But fuck it. I know what to expect. They’re just bullies. It’s just hazing. I thumb the
message open.

I hand the phone back to her.

‘That’s it?’ she says. ‘Fuck.’

‘Napumla said to answer honestly.’

‘And that’s what we’re going to do.’ But she doesn’t make a move to tap in a response. ‘So, Dan. This is it. Are you sure?’

Her eyes search my face, and I can sense that there’s a part of her, some small part, that wants me to say no. That wants to stay here.

I open my mouth to say what I’m thinking, what I’m really thinking, which is that I’m not sure. That I’m tired of running. I’m tired of being scared. That maybe I
should just go back to work.

‘Dan?’ she says. ‘What is it? Yes or no?’

This is it.
Tell the truth
.

‘Yes,’ I whisper. She blinks and I can’t tell if she’s relieved or disappointed.

She types in:

She hits .

The door clicks and swings ajar, a short patch of featureless concrete illuminated beyond. We step through. The door slams behind us with finality. Rhoda pushes against it, but it doesn’t
budge. There’s no going back.

Rhoda flicks her gold Zippo, lengthens the flame. I make out the edges of another door a few paces ahead of us. I try the handle and the door moves. It can’t be this easy, can it?
It’s not the how, it’s the why
.

I pull the door open.

‘No fucking way,’ Rhoda breathes.

I can’t speak. I know exactly where we are, I can feel it in my gut.

We’re home.

PART 2 >>

chapter 23

RHODA

I hesitate for a second before I go in, double-checking that I can still hear the reassuring drone of the vacuum cleaner in the background. Yep. All clear. I’m not too
worried about getting caught. I’d heard Dan’s mother (‘call me Rose’) firing instructions at Florence on her way out this morning, and from past experience she’ll be
gone for at least an hour. Pushing the Rat Dogs away with my foot so that they don’t follow me in, I shut the door behind me and glance around. Rose’s bedroom looks exactly as I
expected it would: an overabundance of throw cushions, peach satin curtains and a carpet so thick you could hide a corpse in it.

The Rat Dogs whine and scratch outside the door, and I crank it open slightly to let the spoilt little fuckers in. Clarissa, the smaller of the two and some kind of inbred miniature poodle,
blinks at me through rheumy eyes before skittering in and struggling onto the bed, immediately infesting the room with her sickly stench. She’s way past her sell-by date; covered in lumps
that I’m pretty sure are cancerous. The other one – Lulu, a less decrepit version, but just as revolting – hesitates by the door, growling softly.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ I hiss at her. She whines again and slinks away, pausing at the top of the stairs. I’m tempted to boot her down them, but it’s not her fault
she’s a racist. Bad upbringing.

Now, where to start? I decide on the bedside cabinet. I have to strain to pull open the drawer – it’s stiff with lack of use – and it springs out suddenly, almost tipping its
contents onto the carpet. There isn’t much here. Just a few old receipts, a couple of HRT patches and a neglected Jodi Picoult novel. No cash, no vibrator; not even a bloody diary.
Boring.

Next, the chest of drawers. Most of Rose’s underwear is of the giant beige figure-control kind, but I unearth one skimpy g-string that still has its price tag attached. Then, bingo! My
fingers find the edges of an envelope that’s squashed beneath a stack of elasticised girdles. It contains several glossy photos of a paunchy white man with a comb-over. I flick through them.
In most of the photos he’s sitting on a couch next to a black Labrador, mugging for the camera. Dan’s dad? I can’t see any family resemblance and, judging by his disastrous
jumper, the photo was probably taken some time in the eighties. Neither Rose nor Dan has mentioned any sort of father figure. Must be some kind of embarrassing family scandal. Mementoes of dead
relatives usually have pride of place on the mantelpiece; they’re not usually stuffed like dirty secrets in underwear drawers.

I move onto the double-door closets. Impressive. Rose clearly doesn’t stint on her clothing budget. I pull out a Christian Lacroix jacket that looks like the seventies has thrown up all
over it, and an Ann Klein skirt that has to be at least two sizes too small for her. I run my fingers over the skirt’s fabric. Nice. Expensive. I hold it up to my body and glance in the
mirror, shaking my hair over my face. A few of the extensions are looking a bit frayed, but they’ll do for now. Behind the curtain of hair, the scar’s hardly visible at all. It’s
the rest of me that looks like a bag of shite. My green silk dress is in the wash at the mercy of Florence, and it’s surprising how much I’m mourning the feel of its expensive material
on my skin. Especially in comparison to what I’m wearing now: a pair of Dan’s black sweatpants that hang on me like clown trousers, and a T-shirt that reaches my knees. I’m not
too charmed by the
Nightmare Before Christmas
logo on it, either, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I decide to take the skirt – Rose probably won’t even miss it. Clarissa whines as if she’s just read my mind.

‘I won’t tell if you don’t,’ I say to her. She cocks her head on one side as if she’s considering this, and the gesture makes me hate her less.

The vacuum cleaner drone cuts out. I shove the skirt under my T-shirt and usher Clarissa off the bed and out into the corridor. I shut the door behind me and tip-toe back into Dan’s
room.

After the diseased dog stink and the cloying perfumed scent of Rose’s room, the stale fag smoke that permeates the space is almost a relief. But
Christ
he’s a slob. The coffee
mug on the window ledge is full of fag butts, and the place is littered with discarded socks, computer game covers and boxer shorts. There’s even a graveyard of cigarette ends carelessly
stubbed out on a CD next to his side of the bed. He’s become a dedicated chain smoker – even managing to out-smoke me. We’ve nearly finished the carton of fags I brought back with
me, and I have to scratch around the room to find a half-empty packet.

I plonk myself down in front of the laptop and quickly scan his Gmail account (there’s nothing of interest – not even spam), and then click onto the missing-children page on Facebook
that I’ve been haunting like a stalker ever since we returned three days ago. Nothing new. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed. For the last three days I’ve been
scouring the news sites and trawling Google, but there’s nothing about a missing white kid anywhere on the web. Dan keeps assuring me that there’s no way rich white folks wouldn’t
kick up a media stink if they thought their kid had been abducted. Still, it’s a total fucker that I can’t remember the kid’s name.

Should I try phoning Zinzi again? I finger the phone in my pocket, but can’t muster up the energy. I tried her when we first got back, but her phone just beeped and then cut out. The bitch
is either blanking me, or letting me know that I’m in serious shit. I know I should just head straight to the flat. But fuck it. Do I really want to deal with a pissed-off Zinzi right now? Do
I,
fuck
. What if she gives me a hard time and I crack? I could still be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, after all.

But that’s bollocks and I know it.

The only thing I’m suffering from is the usual Rhoda insecurity bullshit, and if I’m in the throes of some sort of delayed shock reaction, the symptoms haven’t shown
themselves. If anything, the overriding emotion I’m feeling is boredom.

In fact, coming back has turned out to be a total fucking anticlimax. Even the first few minutes after we stepped through that door and found ourselves back in the real Highgate Mall were
seriously low-key.

You’d think we’d have danced around in glee at our lucky escape, maybe fainted with relief, kissed the travertine tiles and sobbed with joy. That would have been a normal reaction.
But we didn’t do any of that. In fact, for several minutes after we made it through, we just stood numbly outside a shop selling expensive homeware, ignoring the stares of the shoppers and
staff behind the display windows. Finally I nudged Dan and said, ‘You think this is another trick?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You think we’re actually
back
?’

He shrugged.

‘It doesn’t feel… right…’ I said, unable to put what I was feeling into words. Because ‘real life’ looked… different. Not quite how I
remembered it. The people seemed to be… greyer, less substantial almost, as if I was looking at them through misted glass. Dull, featureless, everyday. But that was probably just the effects
of exhaustion and stress.

‘What now?’ I said.

‘Let’s go home.’

‘I don’t have a home.’

‘Yes, you do,’ he said.

And then he’d taken my hand and led me towards the exit door.

It was as simple and mundane as that.

Thankfully his car keys were still where he’d dropped them when I’d accosted him in the parking lot forever ago – hidden beneath the front wheel. Wordlessly we climbed in and
drove away, as if we’d just spent the afternoon buying a pair of new shoes, or comparing prices at the iMac store.

Of course, things didn’t go so smoothly when we arrived at Dan’s place.

I wasn’t shocked that Dan still lived with his mother – I’d been expecting that. What did throw me was the place itself – a double-storey pseudo-mansion, ringed by
razor-wire, electronic gates and a landscaped garden. I’d assumed Dan fell more into the poor-white demographic.

We barely turned off the engine when Rose flew out of the front door, shrieking at the top of her voice, and almost breaking her ankle as she stumbled in her high heels.

‘Daniel!’ she said, throwing her arms around him. ‘Where have you been?’ She stood back to assess him. He looked like utter shit, but at least his hair hid the wound on
the back of his neck. ‘I even called the police but they refused to take it seriously. What have you
done
to yourself?’

‘Mom,’ he said wearily, ‘I’m fine. This is Rhoda.’

Up until that point, Rose only had eyes for her son. There was a short, awkward pause while she took in the full beauty of my smudged make-up, and, of course, the colour of my skin.

‘Rhoda will be staying with me for a while,’ Dan said.

Face rigid with shock, she opened her mouth to say something, but then the two Rat Dogs let rip, dancing and nipping at my ankles.

‘Lulu! Clarissa! Shh!’ she snapped. ‘I’m sorry. They’re not good with strangers.’

I knew what she actually meant: they weren’t good with strangers
of colour
, but I smiled benignly. ‘It’s fine—’ I said, but Rose wasn’t listening.

She turned to Dan again. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I’ll explain later, Mom.’

‘Are you hurt?’ she said. She grabbed his arms, but he shrugged her away.

I put on my best posh English accent. ‘It’s all my fault, Mrs…?’

‘Call me Rose,’ she snapped automatically. ‘What do you mean, it’s all your fault?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Dan saved my life.’

Rose’s mouth dropped open, and even the dogs ceased their hysterics. ‘
What?
’

‘It’s a long story,’ I said.

‘Go on,’ she said, holding my gaze.

‘Mom!’ Dan said, sounding just like a small boy. ‘Can’t we do this tomorrow? I need to sleep.’

‘Dan,’ I said pointedly. ‘Your mother deserves an explanation.’

Dan looked at me in surprise. He’d never seen this side of me: well-behaved Rhoda. Articulate, charming, and utterly full of shit.