The One Before the One (3 page)

For some reason, Toby seems to have orchestrated a ‘crisis’ meeting and skidded over next to me on his office chair, which is causing all manner of problems, mainly in the pelvic region, since I can smell him: a clean, just-had-a-shower smell, but made purely of pheromones and mixed with something reminiscent of fresh, sugary bakery goods. Something delectable. Something flutters between my legs.

‘The whole summer,’ I say, pretending to look
conscientiously at my emails, when really I’m picturing Toby, in bed, naked, and me, burrowing my head in his chest hair.

‘What, like July and August?’

‘That’s the whole summer, isn’t it?’

Toby sucks air between his teeth. ‘Oh, Steeley,’ he says, squeezing my shoulders. The something fluttering between my legs is positively flapping now. ‘Sharing your space with a whole other person? How are you coping?’

‘Not very well, actually. There’s stuff all over my flat.’

‘Oh no. Not stuff. In flat?’

‘Piss off!’ I nudge him in the side.

Shona groans. Poor Shona. She’s worked with Toby and I nearly a year now and the constant sexual tension by proxy must be beginning to wear thin.

‘And what about her not leaving the cushions lined up symmetrically? Leaving the tap dripping? Spoiling your one-woman efforts to save the Great Barrier Reef?’

I slap him over the head as he twinkles his swimming-pool-blue eyes at me.

‘You’re so rude! And this morning she dyed her hair in my bathroom – purple dye all over my brand new Italian bathroom.’

Toby bursts out laughing. ‘Fuck, I’m surprised you made it into work.’

‘How old is she?’ asks Shona

‘Seventeen.’

Toby almost falls off his chair.

‘Seventeen?’ Health and Safety Heather swings around and sighs dramatically, but we all ignore her since she does this several times a day. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a seventeen-year-old sister!’

‘Half-sister,’ I correct.

‘That is so cool,’ says Shona. ‘I would have killed my three brothers for a sister when I was a kid.’

Toby and I frown. Shona often saying things that make people frown.

Toby put his feet up on my desk. ‘So what’s she like? Is she a—’

‘Delaney!’

‘God, Delaney,’ agrees Shona.

‘What?’
he says, wide-eyed at the injustice of it all. ‘A student, was all I was going to say. Thanks a lot, you two.’ He stabs at a ball of Blu-Tack with his pen ‘What do you two take me for? I’m a responsible, married man.’

‘Well, since you’re such a fan of responsibility, maybe you’d like to volunteer as a fire marshal? Eh? Clever clogs. Whaddya think about that?’

Our ‘crisis meeting’ – obviously just an opportunity for Toby to laugh at me – is suddenly cut short by Heather, playfully hitting Toby across the head with her Fire Safety manual.

‘Fifty quid for the first three takers and an hour with me, to show you the ropes.’

‘That, H, is a very hard offer to refuse,’ says Toby, as Heather swings back and forth on her court shoes, clearly delighted by her opening gambit. ‘But I think I’m going to decline, on this occasion. It’s more Caroline’s sort of thing, isn’t it, Caroline?’ And then he smiles in a way that makes me want to punch and snog him all at the same time.

So that’s how I get roped into being one of the office’s three fire marshals – me, Heather and Toupee Dom from payroll. I spend the next hour learning how to use the fire extinguisher and sitting in a special chair used to evacuate disabled people from the office, whilst Toupee Dom almost knocks me out with his body odour. I try Lexi several times but, worryingly, get no answer until, finally, around lunchtime – just as I get stuck into my PowerPoint presentation, in particular a very
well-executed pie-chart, detailing what’s currently driving the growth of oral hygiene goods in Asda – comes the shower scene noise from
Psycho.
I immediately grab my phone from the table, but it flips about in my hand like a live trout. There’s a text.

What?

‘Am up town’ is all I can make out. So she’s in town, but where in town? Soho? Shoreditch? The arse-end of Hackney?

I immediately email Toby. He’s got a nineteen-year-old brother. He’ll know what she’s on about.

Five seconds later, an email pings into my inbox.

He emails back.

I email back.

When I get home from work, Lexi’s in the back garden, sunbathing. It’s only when she removes the copy of
Time Out
she is reading to talk to me in comedic deep voice (I am finding she rarely uses her normal one) that I realize she is topless.

‘Afternooooon. You’re early; good day at the office?’

‘Yeah, good, thanks.’ I don’t know where to look, so I take a sudden interest in the doorframe. ‘Very productive.’

‘Great.’ She smiles brightly. Her long legs are stretched out on the sun lounger. She’s wearing bright red lipstick and enormous square shades. ‘So, what do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘My tattoo, you chump!’ She sticks her right arm out in front of her.

I look in horror at the anchor (an anchor?) splat in the middle of her upper right arm. I can’t believe this. Dad will kill me. I have an overwhelming desire to head-butt the wall.

‘You got that done today?’

‘Yes, don’t you like it? It’s like the one Amy Winehouse has, kind of ironic, you know, sailor iconography?’

‘Who did it to you?’

‘A tattoo artist
did
it to me.’ She laughs. ‘A very sexy, Paolo Nutini lookalike tattoo artist, if you must know.’

Who the hell was Paulo Nutini?

‘Where?’

‘Camden Market. That place is awesome. I could have spent a fortune. And guess what? I got a job!’ She sits up on her elbows and I have to look away so it doesn’t look as if I’m leering at her bosom. ‘I met this guy called Wayne.’

‘Wayne?’ I grimace. ‘Unfortunate name.’

‘I know, but he had
the
most wickedest shop – well, it’s not his, it’s his mate’s, but he’s working on it part-time. We got chatting, coz he’s originally from Sheffield and his accent stood out. I said I’d just landed for the summer and he said he needed some help at weekends and occasionally during the week, so …’

‘Hang on. Who
is
this Wayne?’

‘He runs a shop in Camden Market, like I said. And he lives in Battersea!’

‘Where?’

‘On a boat, how special is that? Anyway, do you wanna see the stuff I bought?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ I decide to come back to the Wayne thing later; this was all going way too fast. So then she’s up, padding across the garden, legs as skinny as a stork. She gets hold of my hand.

‘Come to my boudoir,’ she says, which sounds ridiculous in her thick Yorkshire accent, and I follow her, helpless. We go through the lounge.

‘Soz about the mess,’ she says, trampling all over the cushions she’s tossed on the floor earlier. ‘I was trying my new stuff on and was just about to start tidying up when you came home.

‘That’s okay!’ I lie, quickly replacing all the cushions on the sofa.

We get to the guest bedroom.

‘Okay, you stay there,’ she says, hands on my shoulders,
pushing me against the wall. And then she goes inside and closes the door so I am left staring at it, suddenly feeling like a stranger in my own home. Five seconds later, music is on.

‘Ta-dar!’ She flings open the door.

‘Nice,’ I say. ‘What is it, exactly?’

‘It’s a playsuit, divvy. A vintage one.’

‘So when would you wear it?’

‘Anywhere, shopping?’

Not shopping with me you won’t!

‘Hanging out in cafés, in Battersea Park, maybe with some high-heeled sandals,’ she says, doing a funny pose like one of those vintage postcards of ladies in 1920's bathing suits.

‘And I got these …’ She shoves a pair of shoes in my face. ‘And this …’ she puts on a purple trilby. ‘Cool, or what? And there were loads of stalls and some right nutters selling stuff. There was this bloke, right, he came up to me and he was going, “marijuana”, but pronouncing it with a “J” which cracked me up. So he was like, “Do you wan-na, some maru-ju-ana?”’ She puts her hand on her hip and says it with a convincing Jamaican accent, which, despite myself, makes me laugh. A little. ‘Then he was like, “Do you wan-na some Es?” That’s when I texted you.’

Es? At Camden Market? Why was I never offered Es at Camden Market? Well, could be I’ve never
been
to Camden Market …

‘And, guess what? Jerome was there!’

‘Who on earth’s Jerome?’

‘A guy I met on the way here on the train – you know, the one who rang me yesterday?’

So that’s who she was going all coy with.

‘Anyway, he’s somethin’ spesh, he is. Such an inspiring person. He says he wants to photograph me. He says I have a very interesting look.’

‘Lexi,’ I groan. I get that feeling, like stop the train, I want
to get off. ‘You can’t just meet up with randoms off the train and let them take your picture. This is London. A big, scary, dangerous city.’

I’ve been thinking all day about what Dad said on the phone, but it’s only later, when I’ve drunk the best part of half a bottle of wine, that I pluck up the courage to talk to her.

‘So, Lexi …’ She’s slumped on the sofa in the playsuit; laptop open, one eye on Facebook. ‘I think we need to chat.’

‘Wow, sounds serious. Are you about to dump me?’

‘No!’
Sometimes, Lexi strikes me as very sophisticated. Then she says things like that and she sounds about twelve.

I reach over and slowly close her laptop.

‘Look, you know you’re very welcome to stay …’ I start.

‘But,’ she says.

‘But?’

‘There’s a “but” in there, isn’t there?’

‘No, not exactly.’ God, I’m crap at this. ‘It’s just, Dad’s worried about you.
I’m
worried about you. I think we need a plan for this summer, that’s all.’

‘What sort of plan?’

‘A plan, you know? A goal. An aim.’

‘God, now you sound like Mum and Dad. They can’t go to the toilet without a personal goal.’

I resent this comparison. I hardly think me suggesting a few things for Lexi to concentrate on constitutes a ‘motivational talk’ on a level with the talks (that’ll be evangelical lectures) Dad and Cassandra give as key speakers with the Healing Horizons Forum (that’d be cult) that they run. And anyway, it was Dad who insisted I talked to her. I would quite happily have avoided anything of the sort.

‘I made a list,’ I say, finally.

‘Not another one! You’re obsessed with lists.’

‘Oh, that’s unfair.’

‘I don’t think it is. I’ve seen them all over the place. You make so many lists, I’m surprised you have time to do anything on them.’

‘Lists help you to focus,’ I say, grabbing my notebook and opening it at the page that says LEXI’S FIVE POINT PLAN. ‘Number one, your room.’

‘Oh, you’ve seen it?’

‘Yes, and I nearly had a seizure, so please sort it out. Moving swiftly on. Number two, you need to get a job. If you’re not going back to sixth form – which, incidentally is number three, we need to discuss sixth form properly – then you need to know what else you’re going to do. I thought we could draw up your options.’

‘Make a list you mean?’

‘Number four,’ I sigh. ‘You need to call Dad.’

‘I’ll call him tomorrow.’ She shrugs

‘Good, well that’s all of them.’

‘That’s it? That’s the list?’

‘Yup. Told you it wasn’t serious.’

‘But you said there were five points,’ she says, edging closer.

‘Did I?’ I move my hand so that it covers up the fifth point. The bit Dad told me to do. The bit about finding out what’s actually wrong with Lexi.

She uncurls my fingers from the notepad.

‘Find out what’s wrong with Lexi,’ she reads out. ‘God!’ She flops dramatically onto the sofa. ‘Did Dad put you up to this? He did, didn’t he? There’s
nothing
wrong with me, except that everyone keeps
asking
what’s wrong with me, and my parents treat me like I’m depressed, or a total mentalist or like it’s not totally normal for a seventeen-year-old to not know exactly where she’s going or what to do with her life.’

‘Of course it’s normal,’ I say. ‘I’m thirty-two and I still haven’t really got a clue what’s going on with my life.’

‘Liar!’

‘It’s true! It’s just, Dad said—’

‘I don’t care what Dad said. He’s such a moron sometimes. I mean, I love him, but he doesn’t understand me. He and Mum, they’re always like: “You could do anything you want to do, Alexis. The world is your oyster!” But what if you don’t
know
what you want to do? What then?’

‘I thought you said you wanted to be a shoe designer?’

‘Oh, I don’t mean that really. I’m crap at Art A level.’

‘I’m sure you’re not.’

‘I am. I’m crap at
all
my A levels.’

Her face goes bright red and she looks like she might cry.

‘Look,’ I say, realizing this isn’t going anywhere. ‘We don’t have to talk about it now.’

‘Good,’ she says, ‘because there’s no big secret. I just came here to have fun, that’s all. I just want to have a good time.’

So why are you crying? I want to say. But of course, I don’t.