The Devil's Staircase (7 page)

Hamish, Fliss, Cheryl-Anne and I went to Oxford the next day. We got a bus, spent the day in the pub, then came home to smoke some more of Roberto Rainproofo’s most excellent shit.

Esther wasn’t happy when I was declared Employee of the Week. She hadn’t been happy for days. First, because a uniform that fitted me had mysteriously arrived at reception during my third shift. Second, because people seemed to like me. Third, because she was a fuck-face. I saw her snarl as Centre Manager Nathan put my photo on the notice board in the main reception by the gym.

It was a big deal, Employee of the Week. It meant two things: a fifty-pound bonus, and that Esther would hate me even more.

I saw Esther whisper to Kate. They enjoyed whispering, those two. They despised the cheerful demeanour that had helped get me the bonus and a high-five from boss-man Nathan.

Boss-man Nathan wore a suit. He was about thirty-five, new, and keen on team-building, staff appraisal, forward thinking, mission statements and bottom lines. He liked me because whenever his female minions came to spy for him, I was always either scrubbing something, or being polite to customers. Kate and Esther, on the other hand, were either reading or chatting to each other. In truth, my hearing and fitness were better and I had tuned into the creak of the internal door between the steam rooms and the pool. As soon as it began to open, I instantly sprang into action.

I’d never been on a pedestal at work before. At the Craigieburn Mint, I’d gone in each day at nine, sorted paperwork, filed it, and then gone home at five. I had delivered what they’d asked – robotic diligence – surrounding myself with twelve grey filing cabinets. No one knew me very well, and I’d never gotten so much as a Christmas bonus. So I felt excited at my new title, proud of myself. While the job was mostly very tedious, there were things I really enjoyed about it. I liked watering the once-dying bamboo palm beside the reception booth, and seeing how it responded to my love and attention. I liked the satisfaction a clean shower gave me, liked seeing the contentedness of the rich Arab woman who preferred two towels not one, and the smell of a freshly bleached floor. I liked how my skin felt afterwards – smooth and soft from the steam. And I liked that I felt safe, bubble-wrapped in female-only calm.

The day after my elevation to Employee of the Week the atmosphere in the steam rooms seriously deteriorated. Esther had always kept an eye on me, but now she watched my every move, and gave regular whispery reports to Kate. At one stage Mitt-woman even made eye contact with me. She’d never done this before. Her eyes were always down as she walked into her room, down, down as she scrubbed her clients. A snarl, I’d call it, and then a knowing nod to Esther. I tried my best to get on with things, even tried making conversation with the rich Arab woman who liked two towels.

‘You live close by?’ I started.

‘No,’ she replied.

After my shift I escaped to use the free facilities, which was the only real perk of the job, and something I did as often as I could. The pool and gym helped me sweat out the unhealthiness of life in the squat and, even better, made me very toned. In fact, I had recently copped myself cleaning the full-length mirrors opposite the showers and noticed how good my legs looked. Shapely, muscular, like someone else’s altogether. I took to cleaning these mirrors more than necessary in an attempt to convince myself that these very excellent legs actually did belong to me.

I did forty lengths of the pool, got showered and changed, and walked past the gym, where Pete was doing bench presses. He had shorts and a singlet on, and his upper arms and shoulders were covered in tattoos. He caught my eye without flinching and then resumed a grimace-ridden bench press. He scared me.

When I saw Nathan I smiled, but he didn’t smile back, or give his precious Employee of the Week a high-five. He beckoned me upstairs with an unhappy finger then sat me down and fired questions at me.

What time had I left the steam rooms? How long had I been swimming for? Did I remember giving a towel to a rich Arab woman? Did I notice she had a red handbag? A brown leather wallet? Three hundred pounds in cash and three credit cards? Which locker had I used?

Pete came into the room at this stage and sat beside Nathan. He’d just heard about the alleged incident, he said, and wanted to be present during the enquiries. Kate and Esther kept their heads down as I told Nathan that I did not remember the bag and that I had no locker. They almost managed to suppress their smiles when Nathan said he would get a female member of staff to search locker number 78 because Kate had sworn blind that she had seen me put something in it earlier that afternoon.

Frozen in fear, I stood by locker number 78. Kate and Esther watched as one of Nathan’s female underlings opened the door.

It was empty.

Kate and Esther looked at each other, confused. I sighed with relief then shook my head at my accusers. Why had they tried to set me up? What on earth had I done?

‘Are you okay?’ Pete asked as I walked out of the steam rooms and then out of the front entrance.

‘Fine,’ I said, not meaning it, but not wanting to talk to him either.

On the way home, I felt the weight of being alone. If I was charged with a crime, who would vouch for my character?

When I saw Francesco hovering outside the house, I squirmed. I didn’t want him to see me upset and I couldn’t tolerate another barrage of well-deserved insults. But he’d had time to think, he said, and had forgiven me. He even apologised for being so rude, hugged me, and asked if we could maybe start over.

‘Let me take you out for dinner,’ he said. ‘Please?’

Bronny was relaxing in the ground-floor bath and had just finished shaving her underarms, her legs and her bikini line. The date with Francesco was in an hour, and she was excited. Fliss had given her some bubble bath, which she sank into; eyes closed, and listened to the sound of wet nothing.

Thud thud thud. A womb noise, dull and alien. She came out of the water, opened her eyes . . . And there he was again. Standing over her.

‘Jesus!’ She yelled, knees to chin, arms cocooning.

Pete yelled too, then covered his eyes in a pathetic attempt to pretend he hadn’t meant to see her naked. He left the bathroom with a feeble apology.

Bronny dried and dressed herself, then banged on his door. He opened it sheepishly, unprepared for the assault – not only words ‘arsehole’, ‘creep’, ‘police’ – but also a spectacular and well-placed cheek-slap. She then left to prepare her body for the losing of her virginity, which she’d decided would happen tonight.

Francesco was waiting at the wine bar. He was wearing jeans and a striped jumper and was sipping a glass of red wine. He looked different outside the hostel – less attractive somehow, but after Bronny drank two pints of Fosters he got better-looking again. They apologised to each other, and Bronny told him about the noises.

‘You’re from Hicksville,’ he said, ‘Probably just getting used to the big smoke . . . That, or you need to stop smoking ganja.’

They went back to the squat after closing. The others were in the living room watching a repeat of
Eu rot rash
and laughing very hard while taking turns with the bucket bong.

Bronny sat on a mattress beside Francesco and felt his knee touch hers. She found it hard to breathe when he held her hand, even harder when he touched her lower back and rubbed it slightly. Images flooded her. This was going to be it. Could it be happening, really?

He swooped in without any warning at all, like a Kilburn magpie, just suddenly there, pecking. She was taken aback, and found the feeling of his mouth rather odd – were those his teeth? Where did his lips begin and end? She forgot everything Fliss had taught her about how to prevent sloppy-kiss-rash and how to discourage lizard-tongue without giving offence, and began what she had practised on the hand basin next to her Kilburn toilet. Face at 10 or 2 o’clock; mouth half-open; tongue relaxed, wet and wide; tongue movements slow, gentle and irregular; nose-breathing soft or not at all.

But it was hard to focus and at one point she wondered if she had bitten him as his hand reached for a private place. In the end she was so desperate for air that she pushed him away and laughed, looking around the room at the people who were still there. She giggled nervously, expecting him to suggest they go somewhere else, but he didn’t. He pecked her on the lips again then went for the full magpie swoop. Bronny kept her eyes open this time, watching as four people flicked between her first kiss and Channel Four.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Pete said a little curtly from the sofa opposite Bronny and Francesco. Bronny abandoned the kiss, gulped some overdue air and watched as Pete walked out of the room.

‘I’d better be off too,’ Francesco said.

‘What?’

‘See you tomorrow.’

And Francesco left, just like that: without taking his grey and white striped jumper, or Bronny’s virginity.

Oh shit, the darkness. It was lying on me. I sat up when I felt its heaviness on my chest, took some deep breaths, and then went to the bathroom for a glass of water.

When I turned off the tap, it began to shake – huge tremors, deafening thumps. I raced from the bathroom into the hall and upstairs into Fliss’s room where, to my horror, she was having the sex that I was supposed to be having. It was Zach lying underneath her, not strumming his guitar, but something else that made Fliss say pussycatpussycat over and over. They didn’t hear me or see me, so I ran to Cheryl-Anne’s room on the second floor. We linked arms, both of us half-dressed and terrified, and tiptoed down to the first floor. We stopped and listened in the hallway, but the noise had gone.

I must be going mad, I decided. I’d taken a lot of drugs in the last few days, and had little sleep. I’d changed my diet, my routine, my everything. Maybe I was hallucinating.

When Pete’s door creaked open in front of us, Cheryl-Anne and I jumped and screamed.

‘What’s up?’ he asked in his usual monotone.

‘Did you hear the noises?’ I asked.

‘Nope,’ he said, then checked out the first floor and ground floor as we crept behind him.