Tabitha (2 page)

‘Excuse me, you
pushed in the queue,’ Tabitha tried again, quietly. It wasn’t like her to press
a point like this, but she felt
fighty
today. How
could someone flaunt the rules like this? She’d left the standard six-foot gap
between herself and the self-service checkouts. It was the unspoken law. A
decent-sized space to let other shoppers make their way past the queue.
Everyone knew they should do that. Not only had this man strutted over and
stood in front of her as if she wasn’t there – he was also becoming an
obstruction to hurried lunch-breakers, tired mums and frail old couples trying
to get past. Civilisation was lost on this man. Social rules were just flimsy
guidelines to people like him, like dull terms and conditions printed on toilet
paper. No one else in the queue behind her said anything. He was her problem. The
man shoulder-strutted to the next checkout that freed up; the one that should
have been hers. He even glanced back at her then, looked her up and down, and
dismissed her as a lesser female specimen. What annoyed Tabitha more was that
he paid and left so soon, leaving her to use the same checkout. Like she was
left owing him something. She put her basket down at the checkout, and despite
herself she smelled the lingering stink of fresh sweat. He was still pissing
her off, and he wasn’t even here.

‘Approval
needed,’ said the checkout. Tabitha sighed a sigh, tiny and exasperated. Why
hadn’t she scanned the wine last? She could have been bagging the rest of her
things up. She was out of sorts today, as her mum would say. Sunlight spilled
through high windows. Cranky children were stropping with their mum at the next
till along. Shrill screams. Tabitha didn’t notice the short figure standing
beside her.

‘Have you got
any ID love?’ said a smiling perm-lady, appearing from nowhere. She worked
here. A rectangular badge on her large bosom declared that she was BRENDA.

‘I think so,’
Tabitha replied, fishing her driving licence from her purse. It was the purse
with the art-nouveau cat, her favourite. Worn and well-loved. She knew she had
her licence in there, of course, but she didn’t just want to tell Brenda “Yes”
in case it sounded too abrupt. She passed Brenda her licence, and watched her
examine it. Tabitha had always hated that picture of herself. A mess of ginger
hair, curling round a pale face that she wished was someone else’s. Some people
looked nothing like their driving licence photos. Tabitha matched hers exactly.

‘Happy birthday
for last week then,’ Brenda said brightly, looking up from the licence. Tabitha
smiled back, pleasantly surprised. She felt rushed though, conscious of the
checkout queue behind her. She was probably holding everyone up. Brenda seemed
unaware of this risk.

‘23 last…
Saturday?’ said Brenda, giving her licence back.

‘Yeah, that’s
right,’ Tabitha replied happily. It was nice to have someone taking an
interest. She felt like she should get a move on with her shopping, though.
People would be waiting behind her. She hurried her food through the scanner.
Another checkout lady put Tabitha’s DVD through for her, but she wasn’t as
smiley as Brenda. The new woman looked Tabitha up and down for a moment like a
style critic, and all but screwed up her nose in distaste. Tabitha paid the
checkout and snatched her debit card back from the reader, trying not to look
back at the queue. She could feel their eyes on her. She felt them waiting
impatiently to buy their things, and get back to all the jobs they still had.
Tabitha grabbed her plastic bag of emotional first aid and left.

‘Bye love,’
Brenda called to her, while she helped an old lady bag up bottles of vodka.

‘Bye,’ Tabitha
replied quietly, happily. She was definitely coming here again. Top-notch
customer service, it really was. There were too many people around, though.
There were always too many people around. She put her headphones back in to block
them out.

Home was an old rented house on the
seafront. Tall and narrow. Single glazed. Victorian brick. Dark green door. The
small front garden had grown wild in the summer sun. Tabitha stayed clear of it,
especially the bees and wasps that prowled the haphazard flowers. Threatening
as tiny flying tigers. She stepped around frantic ants on the stone steps up to
the door. Mog was looking out at her from the window, a lazy black
fuzzchunk
of feline indifference. Tabitha slid her key in
the door lock and opened up a darker, cooler world inside the house. She shut
the door on the hot bright world outside, vast and full of dangers. It still
smelled of
bolognese
in here. A lingering whiff of
garlic in the air, nose-
grabbingly
pungent.

‘How’s it
going?’ she asked Mog, who was slinking into the hallway from his sleeping spot
on the couch. He sat down by the stairs and studied her with grumpy green eyes.
Meowed at her. ‘Fine, you can have the bag,’ she said, unbuttoning her jacket.
‘Just let me get the stuff out first. Oh, and I lost my job today.’ She sighed
and hung up her jacket, and plodded through the shady old living room to the
bright cheap kitchen. She’d have to tell her mum about her job at some point.
She really wasn’t looking forward to that. Probably best to get it out of the
way though.

‘Why? What did
you do?’ said the mobile phone on her bed.

‘I didn’t do
anything Mum, they just made me redundant,’ Tabitha replied.

‘You don’t need
to shout.’

‘Sorry Mum. I’ve
got you on loudspeaker, while I’m getting changed.’

‘What?’ said the
phone. Tabitha picked it up.

‘I had you on
loudspeaker, I’m getting changed.’

‘Oh right,’ her
mum replied, only half understanding. ‘Well… you can always come back home if
you need to, love.’

‘I know. Thanks
Mum.’

‘Did they say
why?’

‘They’re laying
off a few people, supposedly. They’re not doing well with the business.’

‘Did you ask
them why
you
had to go though?’

‘Not really.’

‘Why not?’

‘There wasn’t
much point, Mum. They’d already decided to let me go.’

‘Well I would’ve
been giving them what for, if I were you.’

‘I know, but
you’re better with people than me Mum.’ Tabitha heard her mum sigh.

‘You’ll have to
start speaking your mind, love,’ her mum replied. ‘There’s a lot of people in
the world who’ll get the better of you if you don’t.’

‘I know,’
Tabitha replied sadly. Numb to the advice. ‘I’m going to go now Mum, I’ve got
stuff to do.’

‘Alright love.
You’ll find somewhere better than that place. Bye love.’

‘Thanks Mum. See
you soon.’

‘Oh, have you
heard from John yet?’

‘No. I don’t
want to.’

‘I don’t blame
you love. He’ll look back one day, and he’ll be sorry that he ever left you.’

‘I don’t really
want to talk about it Mum.’

‘Alright, sorry
love. Remember, time’s a healer.’

‘I know,’
Tabitha said impatiently. ‘See you soon.’

‘Bye love. Oh,
are we still going shopping tomorrow?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Alright then.
Bye love.’

‘Bye Mum. Bye.’
Tabitha wrestled her damp sweaty socks off and sat down on the bed. She dug her
toes into the carpet fibres, and thought about moving away from this town.
Another country maybe. Somewhere she could learn to be
shouty
and passionate, and use her hands when she spoke. Somewhere that fruit grew
larger, fresher, and wine cost normal prices. She looked up and dreamt of
taking a plane up into the blue, far beyond her room’s white ceiling. There was
still a dead fly smear up there. John, her ex, had always left dead flies right
where he killed them. No attempt to clean them up. It was disrespectful to the
fly’s memory, if nothing else. With any luck John was batting flies away right
now, thought Tabitha. Sat on a street somewhere. Homeless and penniless because
he couldn’t afford to keep
Izzy
in designer shoes. Tabitha smiled at the
thought.

‘Seriously
though, I wish both of you the very best,’ she lied, telling it to the empty
room where she and John used to sleep. Now it was her nerd nest, filled with
her favourite clutter to hide the memories of him. Movie posters covered the
walls, brash and beautiful. Books were piled high on every flat surface,
collecting dust and dead midges. Her space-robot speakers blared crunchy
electronica. Crisp molten beats under folding pixel
soundwaves
.
Tabitha felt tears coming at the thought of giving up her house. With no job
though, she couldn’t pay the rent. Decent jobs weren’t easy to come by around
here. She shook the thoughts out of her head, grabbed her glass of wine, and
went downstairs to put her film on. Her pizza would be ready soon. A steaming
floppy slab of deliciousness. A doughy plaster for the soul. Mog would be
waking up too, cleaning and preparing before his afternoon snooze. At least she
still had her cat, Tabitha told herself. He was one good thing to come out of
that job. She’d bought him with her first wages, a dopey black kitten with lazy
blue eyes. She liked cats. No questions, no walks, very little clean-up. Just
badly timed demands for food and affection.

Tabitha felt
Mog’s purrs vibrate his warm body, curled up in her lap while she sat on the
couch. Her new film was loud, explosive. Mog snoozed through it. His soft black
fur had that strange cat smell, faint and oily-sweet. His fur tickled Tabitha’s
nose as she smelled him. She felt his ear flick against her wrist as she
stroked his head. An Olympic
purrer
. Tabitha sipped
her dizzy wine, chewed her steamy pizza, and watched movie stars save the
world. The wine went down easy, and didn’t help a bit. She couldn’t drink
herself back into a job, or back into happiness. Much as she wanted to.

2

Saturday was bright and hot. Tabitha bit
into sweet squishy plum flesh. She hid her mouth away from passers-by in town
as the juice rolled down her chin. What a slob, she told herself. Nobody seemed
to notice though. She chewed the cool flesh slowly,
smushing
the taste into her tongue.

‘I’ll get you
some hair clips,’ her mum fretted, reaching for Tabitha’s tangle of hair. It
was the opposite of her mother’s short, grey, sensible mum-do. Tabitha ducked
her head away from the imminent mothering, and went for another bite of her
plum. A wasp had installed itself in the juicy bite mark. Tabitha dropped the
plum like it was ablaze, and danced away up the high street as the wasp
harassed her.

‘Stop moving
around,’ her mum called up the street. A couple grinned at Tabitha flailing as
they walked past. Tabitha was too frantic to feel embarrassed. That would come
later. Why wouldn’t the wasp just leave her alone? Didn’t it know that she had
enough problems?

‘I think it’s
gone now,’ said a cheery man coming out of the pound shop. Tabitha looked at
him with embarrassment, looked down at the ground, and walked off back to her
mum. Still on edge, she dodged a butterfly on her way back.

‘Let’s go to the
cafe now,’ said Tabitha, taking the carrier bag off her mum. She imagined
everyone on the street watching her. She looked down, away from staring eyes
that weren’t really there. She studied the chewing gum circle-splats on the
pavement. Some old and black; some fresh and white and sticky. Tabitha breathed
deep and straightened out her new green dress, her summery pride and joy. Her
mum was browsing a shop window.

‘Mum? Shall we
go to the cafe?’ she said, itching to get out of the street where she’d
embarrassed herself.

‘In a minute
love. There’s only a few things left on my list.’ Her mum always had a few
things left on her list.

‘…Ok.’ Tabitha
replied, despite how much she wanted to disappear to the coffee shop. She’d
just have to avoid people’s stares, that was all. And it was probably best to
leave the plums in the carrier bag until she got home. Too risky.

‘Who is it we’re
waiting for?’ said her mum. She angled her face up to peer at Tabitha through
her glasses. Tabitha wasn’t listening; preoccupied with how busy it was in the
cafe. It smelled like cake in here, and strong exotic coffee right out of an
advert. It was noisy though. Alive with a crowd of multi-tone voices that
shrieked and laughed too much. Their loud cluttered chatter spattered the
creamy brown walls, and Tabitha didn’t like it. It made her edgy, so much
commotion over nothing.

‘Tabitha?’ said
her mum.

‘
Hm
?’

‘Who is it we’re
waiting for?’

‘Just Emma and
Jen,’ Tabitha replied, slurping quietly at her latte. She checked her phone. No
text; no call.

‘Has Emma still
got that funny hairdo?’ said her mum, right on cue.

‘She does, yeah,’
Tabitha said with a smile. She liked Emma’s hairdo. It was a brash personal
statement. Everything about Emma was a brash personal statement. She did
everything loud, fast, and all of it with a series of comedy faces. One of
those force-of-nature types.

‘Are you alright
love?’ her mum piped up. ‘You’re very quiet today.’

‘Yeah, just
thinking,’ Tabitha replied. Truth was, she just couldn’t relax in here. The
noise was too much. The bee wrestling with the inside of the window made things
even worse. Tabitha glanced over to make sure it hadn’t come nearer.

‘I’ve not seen a
hairdo like Emma’s before,’ said her mum. ‘And that waiter too, he’s got funny
hair.’ Her mum nodded at the smiling barista serving the customers.

‘Mum, keep your
voice down,’ Tabitha said quietly.

‘Well he does
have funny hair. And those glasses are too big for him.’

‘
Mum
.’

‘Hi!’ came a
loud voice across the cafe. Tabitha looked over and smiled at Emma and Jen,
hauling their shopping bags through the door. ‘
Scuse
me, thanks!’ said Emma, bustling through, her volume turning a couple of heads.
She was loud as ever, as if she didn’t care what anyone in there thought of
her. She’d never cared in school, either. Tabitha couldn’t imagine being like
that. Her mum looked over at them, smiled, and looked Emma’s white-blonde
hairstyle up and down.

‘I’m so sorry
about your job,’ said Emma, dropping her bags under their table to give Tabitha
a hefty hug. She stood back and coughed her smoker’s cough, and struck up a
noisy conversation with Tabitha’s mum. Jen stepped in and hugged Tabitha
lightly by contrast, slender and graceful. Emma’s polar opposite. Neither of
them had really changed since school. Jen drew a few glances, willowy and
pretty, especially in her white summery dress. Tabitha noticed her glance
around and smooth her curly hair down against her ear. They’d tried to convince
Jen for years now that people were staring because of her looks, not the burn
scars around her ear. Jen had never really believed them though.

‘How are you doing,
apart from the job?’ Emma asked Tabitha. ‘I like that dress, where’s that from?
What are you drinking?’

‘Too many
questions,’ Jen chipped in, smiling.

‘Sorry,’ Emma
laughed. ‘Who wants a drink?’

‘Pour
vous
, and… pour
vous
,’ said Emma,
setting their coffees down on the table.

‘Oh god, what
happened to your hand?’ said Tabitha, nodding at the gouge beside Emma’s thumb.

‘Yeah, that was
Archie,’ Emma chuckled. ‘He’s one of our new polecats. He’s a nibbler.’

‘A nibbler? He’s
taken a piece out of you,’ Tabitha replied, examining the wound. Emma always
had cuts and scrapes on her hands from the animal sanctuary. Every once in a
while though she’d come back with a big fresh scar.

‘Is a polecat
like a ferret?’ said Tabitha’s mum. ‘I thought they didn’t let go when they bit
you.’

‘They don’t,’
Emma replied, with a proud grin. I had to give him a couple of hard smacks.’

‘Emma, you work
in an
animal sanctuary,
’ said Jen in disbelief.

‘Yeah, so?’ she
replied. ‘If it’s taking my hand off I’ll kill the little bastard first.’

‘Please tell me
you didn’t kill him,’ said Tabitha.

‘No, course
not,’ Emma replied. ‘He won’t do it again though. Anyway, what about your job?’

‘Well no one
ever tried to bite me, they just laid me off,’ Tabitha said with a grin. Jen
giggled. Tabitha hesitated as Emma expected to hear more. What was there to say
about being laid off, really?

‘I always said
she was too good for that job,’ Tabitha’s mum chipped in, and the great debate
began. Tabitha could only watch from the side lines for the rest of the
conversation, drowned out by louder voices than her own. She studied the dry
latte froth that ringed her cup, and tried to get a word in edgeways. She
hadn’t changed since school either.

‘Come out
tonight,’ Emma commanded, looking at Tabitha. Their conversation stopped.
Suddenly Tabitha had all their eyes on her, and she shifted around in her seat.
She’d wanted a quiet night tonight. Just her and Mog, enjoying the last few
days in their house.

‘Please come
out,’ Jen added, between polite hay-fever sneezes.

‘Go on,’ her mum
chipped in. ‘It’ll do you good to get out.’ Tabitha looked around at their
expectant faces. They really wanted her to come out.

‘…Ok,’ she told
them, hesitant, already worrying about how much she was likely to drink.

Emma, Jen and Tabitha headed out into
town later under a balmy evening sky. A bat flitted overhead. They could have
been somewhere in Spain, Tabitha thought, it felt so warm tonight. Apart from the
grey buildings, typically British. And the grease smell of chippies, and the
lager-drunk shouting coming from every pub they passed. Bad music filled the
air.

‘How about the
cinema?’ Jen suggested. Tabitha’s magic word.

‘We’re on a
night
out
,’ Emma protested.

‘Cinema sounds
good,’ Tabitha replied happily. Jen sneezed and sniffled into a tissue.

‘Yeah but she’ll
want to go and see that aliens one,’ Emma piped up. ‘It looks rubbish.’

‘But if you’ve
never seen it, you don’t know,’ said Tabitha. ‘You might like it.’

‘It’s always
just loads of fighting and stuff,’ Emma sulked.

‘I like fighting
and stuff,’ Tabitha replied.

‘Well, it’s
Tabitha’s call tonight,’ Jen said brightly, smoothing her hair down over her
ear as people passed by. ‘It’s National Tabitha Night.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t
realise,’ said Emma sarcastically. ‘
Fine
. Boring alien film first. Then
can we go and have a proper night out?’

Popcorn at the ready, Tabitha watched
the movie with baited breath. A lightshow danced over a sea of faces in the
dark cinema. A wall of sound hit her, drowned out her thoughts. Roaring aliens;
yelling heroes. Laser blasts and unlikely explosions. A different world.
Tabitha’s life outside disappeared now. She drank in the effects, devoured the
plot. Fell in love with everything not-normal-life about it. How could Emma
prefer TV soaps to
this
? Why would anyone want to watch some gritty
drama that they could see for real in the street? Tabitha tangled herself up in
the film, lost to the world. Revelling in it. It was a far cry from the new
romcom
Jen had suggested; a
heartwarming
tale of blah
blah
blah
.
What was the use in a film set that didn’t flood, collapse, explode? What was
the point in a character who wasn’t overly gritty, overly virtuous, or wasn’t
dressed in a
skintight
outfit? Emma had long since
divided her attention between the film and her phone, and had more interest in
the small screen in her hands. Jen was watching though. It wasn’t her thing,
but she was good at humouring people. Tabitha got her movie fix though, and
that was all she really cared about just now. She munched her popcorn, slurped
her cola, and let the hellish fury of million-dollar lights and sounds beat her
brain around the galaxy.

It was a loud night out. The club
smelled vaguely of sweat and strong spirits. The music was even louder than the
movie. A dark sonic world of crashing bass and machine-gun drums, at war with
silence and daylight. Tabitha felt careless and confident, shouting
conversation to Emma and Jen through the music. She even got up to dance, so
she’d definitely had too much to drink. She never danced without a prior
skinful
, and now the club spun hectic when she left the
table. Emma and Jen were smiling in the dark; twisting shapes in front of her
on the dancefloor. Tabitha saw the way men were looking at Jen; sneaky glances
and drunken stares. She felt a vague nausea creeping over her; probably the
shots they’d done. It was only early, too. Why did she always have to drink so
much? Emma and Jen had been buying her shots constantly, as if that could
change anything about her situation. But she’d hardly refused them. She drained
her drink and looked around her; at the sweaty faces swimming in the loud brash
gloom.

Tabitha staggered out of the taxi and
made her unsteady way back to her front door. She waved to Emma and Jen in the
car and half stumbled, half fell when she turned the key in the lock. The taxi
had already pulled away when she turned to close the door. She slammed it shut
without meaning to and sat down on the floor in the hallway, watching the murky
drunken dark spin around her head. She couldn’t even hold herself up straight.
Her neck and shoulders moved of their own accord. She propped herself up with
her hands, swayed, then slowly sank to the carpet. She stroked Mog when he came
up to see her, and lay down when he wandered off. It was just easier to stay
horizontal when she got this drunk. Luckily the room didn’t spin for long
before she started snoring.

Sunday was a grim grey zombie hangover
day, and never really happened as far as Tabitha was concerned. The highlights
were headaches, crying and watching a box set with Mog. And rain.

On Monday Tabitha woke up early. No job
to go to; the king of all lie-ins. The warm sun glowed through the curtains,
and half blinded her when she pulled them open. Dust tumbled in the air,
drifting down in the morning light. Mog wandered in and jumped up on the bed.

‘Morning you,’
Tabitha said softly, stroking his head. Mog was having none of it, and decided
he was in a biting mood today. Tabitha slipped her hand under the bedcover, and
moved it around like a mouse for him to chase. He hunted the rippling shape
frantically, tail whipping as he clawed the covers. Playful and murderous.
Tabitha lifted the sheet up and pounced on him with it, covering him over.

‘Got you,’ she
told him, as he sat still in the duvet cave. ‘You lose. You have to do the
washing up now,’ she told him, lifting the bedcovers back. Mog studied the
moving covers expectantly, hoping for another round. Tabitha watched him and
smiled. She couldn’t refuse her cat.