The Sisterhood (19 page)

But Steve shook his head. 'It's funky,' he told me firmly, and I shrugged my shoulders, as if in agreement, because I didn't want the hassle of changing it.

Now I decided that I could probably afford a tin of cream paint to make it nice for the baby. It was a small room, but it would be sunny, sometimes, when I changed the colour. When I half-closed my eyes, I could picture a cot in the corner. It was impossible not to be excited, at odd moments like this.

In the meantime, I was trying to be realistic. I was facing an enormous financial crisis, and I needed to use whatever means I had available to claw back a bit of cash from this flat. It was not a nice idea, but I was going to have to face it.

I tidied up my own bedroom, which took a long time. There were clothes and cups and crumby plates everywhere. I held the picture of my mother for a moment, and stroked her face with my thumb. I would have given anything for a memory of her, for the concept of a mother's love. I pushed away the bitterness, the sense of rage at the unfairness of it all. Perhaps now that I was having my own baby, the pain that I had so carefully hidden away for all my life might go away. It had taken me until I was twenty-six before I could even manage to have my dead mother's photograph on display. I had propped up her grandchild's scan pictures next to her. I wondered whether she had any idea.

I made the bed, pulling out all the creases and lumps, even though I knew no one would see my bed but me. Nobody, apart from the baby, and my poor mother, would see it for years. I tried not to dwell on that unpleasant truth.

28 April

I was still living in hostels when I went to see the flat in Kentish Town. This, I thought, was a masterstroke. It had been right there, the first one I looked at when I took
Loot
out of the bin in the park. 'Small bedroom with single bed and wardrobe,' it said. 'Kentish Town. Sharing with two females and one male.' I ignored the rest of the advert, the bit about washing machines and bills, and went to a phone box to arrange to have a look at it.

I arrived early, as I didn't have anything else to do, and sat down to chat to David for a while.

'Sorry, mate,' he said, after a bit, 'but no one's giving us anything with you sat here.'

I realised he was right. I was dressed as I hoped an appealing flatmate might look, in a pink cotton top and a pair of tight jeans, with high heels. They almost hadn't wanted to serve me, in Whistles, as I looked like a homeless person when I wandered in, but I persuaded them with my poshest English voice. I'd even had my hair done again, so I was properly blonde, and rootless, for the first time since That Night with Liz.

I gave David a ten-pound note, and kissed his cheek. I regretted that part straight away, as he smelt bad. I knew all about smelling bad. That morning, I'd queued for ages for a shower.

The flat was round the corner from Matt's café. I checked the patrons carefully through the window, then went in.

Matt was standing there, dressed all in black, looking at me and nodding.

'Have a good look before you make your decision,' he said. An excellent strategy.'

'I was just seeing if I knew anyone in here.'

'And you do that from the outside?'

I shrugged instead of answering. There was something else I wanted to talk to him about.

'You know that sign in your window?' I began.

A week later I was sitting at the kitchen table, in the flat, in north London. The kitchen was the only communal room in the house, and as well as an old table and four chairs, a sofa was crammed in by the window. Battered old kitchen units and an ancient cooker ran down one wall, and I didn't think it was big enough for one person, let alone for Angelika, Ewa, Adrian and me. Luckily, I never cooked. That took some of the pressure off.

I lived in a flat. I lived in London. I was so excited that I said it out loud to myself many times every day.

I sat at the table and opened a letter. I knew who it was from, because he'd told me to expect it, and I knew what it would say. All the same, I was nervous. I scanned it. Everything was there.

'Oh, Helen, Helen, Helen,' I said. It was funny that I was talking to myself, out loud. That was the kind of thing I did, these days. Now that I lived in a flat. Actually, it was the kind of thing I'd done when I lived in hostels, too, except that I'd done it more. 'Oh, Helen,' I said, again. I leaned over and banged my head on the kitchen table, for comic effect. I giggled again.

'You OK?'

Adrian was standing in the doorway, smiling. He was the nerdy one. I knew this because that was how he had introduced himself. 'Hello,' he'd said. 'I'm Adrian, the nerdy one.' I think he meant that he worked in computers, for some big dull company. He wore glasses with invisible frames, so it looked as if he balanced two metal sticks on his ears for no particular reason.

I wanted to shrink away, but I steeled myself and stayed in character. The only way I was getting through this sudden change was by acting. For every moment of every day, I was in character as a kooky, happy French girl. If I pretended hard enough, I could almost believe I was someone else. It was getting easier as I went along. There was a strange sort of cachet to be had from being French. I hadn't expected that.

Adrian was nothing to me, so I had nothing to lose if he thought I was an idiot. The same applied to everyone in Great Britain, apart from Liz, and I hadn't seen her for thirty-seven days.

I blessed him with my sparkly smile.

'Yes thanks,' I told him. 'I'm fine.' I tried to think quickly. What, I wondered, would the adorable foreign flatmate in a Hugh Grant film say at this point? 'You'll have to excuse me,' I improvised. 'I'm just ... I'm coming to terms with the fact that I seem to have accepted a job, and I'm not at all sure I want it!' I laughed my new, tinkling laugh. This, I thought, was good. It was less scary for him than anything else I could have said.

I pushed the piece of paper across the table.

'Mind if I ... ?' Adrian asked, and I shook my head, still grinning. He sat down. He was tall and lanky, and his light brown hair was bushy and rather wild. His breath smelt strongly of toothpaste: I could almost name the brand, from across the table.

I struggled to understand his voice, because he was from Birmingham.

'... Pleased to offer you the position of waitress, immediate start,' he read. 'Café Lumière? Up the road? Handy. What's the problem?'

'Well, in a way you could say that there isn't one.' I giggled. 'They had a sign on the door saying "help wanted". I went in and asked. Matt gave me a form to fill in and now I have a job.'

He laughed. 'And a job is precisely what you've been after. So the headbanging is because ... ?'

I ran through a few potential answers in my head, as quickly as I could. Because I've never had a job before. Because I am amazed and incredulous that I have succeeded at something. Because now, soon, Liz, whom I love and hate, will have to speak to me again and I'm scared.

Because I know I will mess it all up and be fired within a week and I don't want the nice barman to hate me.

The last sounded all right.

'The headbanging, Adrian, is because I've never had a bar or waitress job before and I'm sure I'll get everything wrong and that the nice man will fire me.' I looked at him and realised that he didn't want to know that I thought the manager was strangely handsome and that he made me nervous, so I carried on, quickly. 'It's my friend Liz's favourite bar,' I added. 'So that's good.'

'And of course it's a local for us,' he said, looking casually into the windowpane and straightening his tie. 'So I'll come and order a bevy or two off you as well. And I promise not to complain about the service even though I'm sure French girls have no idea how to pour a decent pint.' He smiled, and I saw that this was a joke.

I was getting by. This was the only way I could survive in London. I was partly modelling myself on the popular girls from school. These girls had never spoken to me, but when they were around people they wished to impress, particularly boys, they shone and sparkled and giggled. They twirled their hair around fingers and looked up, like Princess Diana, through their eyelashes.

I tried it now, to take my character further. I twiddled a strand of hair, and chewed my lower lip, as I looked at Adrian with what I hoped were wide, appealing eyes.

'That would be nice,' I said, attempting a sweet voice. 'Moral support would be lovely. It's a very busy place and I'm not at all sure what to expect. I know I'll screw it up. I mean, you know how new all of this city life is to me.'

He looked at me with something strange in his eyes.
He likes me,
I realised.
This stupid act is actually working.
I wanted to tell Tom, straight away. It's easier than we imagined it could possibly be. It works on Adrian. Now I just have to make it work with Liz.

'You'll be fine, Helen,' he said, and he actually reached out and touched my arm. 'They'll love you. You're so bubbly. You'll make a brilliant barmaid.
And
you're French.'

The flat was dingy and cold, but I'd known it would be. It was cheap, and it was in exactly the right location. I was spending so much on clothes that I felt unable to put an expensive apartment on Papa's credit card bill as well. Although they wanted me to go back to France, I felt sure he wouldn't mind footing the bill for a roof over my head.

I was living on a nondescript street of big old houses, in an upstairs flat, with Adrian and two Polish girls I never saw. I was glad I had missed winter here because all the windows rattled in the breeze. I'd had to tape a long woollen scarf round the side of the window frame in my bedroom, to insulate it enough for me to sleep. My room was beyond tiny. If there was a lesser denomination of bedroom than 'small single', it would have been that. It could have been a kennel. I suspected it was supposed to be a cupboard. Apparently whenever one of the flatmates moved out, everyone moved up a room. This was the new person's room, the initiation rite, and it was always occupied by the most recent arrival. The door didn't open fully because the bed was in the way. The room was exactly the length of a single bed, and less than double its width. I was glad I didn't have much stuff. What I did have was kept in a nasty old wardrobe with peeling varnish, which blocked the end of the room and part of the window.

I could walk from here to Liz's place in six minutes, and I often did. I stood outside, a little way down the street, and made sure there was a car I could hide behind if she came out. Sometimes I would spend half an hour out there, just watching. In thirty-seven days, I had seen her more than thirty-seven times. I hadn't tried to speak to her, because, like Tom said, I was leaving her alone.

As soon as the first credit card statement arrived, the parents noticed I was in London. At first Papa had threatened to come and fetch me, but I'd laughed at him (which was easy to do by email) and said that, in a city of ten million people, he would never find me (and he wouldn't have, because he wouldn't have come to look for me sitting outside Kentish Town station looking like a homeless woman). Then he said he would cancel the credit card. I asked if he would really abandon his only daughter, penniless, in Europe's biggest city. Yesterday, Papa sent one of his gruff emails.

'Ta mère espère que tu vas bien
,' he lied. Mother didn't hope I was OK. He probably did, but only in the same way that he hoped the grapes were growing all right, or probably less. She didn't care. He was always pretending it was her who cared. If she'd cared, she would have contacted me herself, which she hadn't done one single time since I'd been gone. I was annoyed to be ignored by our mother on one side, and by Liz on the other, when I was only trying to bring the two of them together. I knew that they would thank me one day.

I imagined that day, constantly. No one had appreciated me before, but Mother and Liz were both going to thank me for this. It would be the greatest thing I had ever done.

I had almost forgiven my sister, though it was hard work. Every time I saw her leave her flat, every time I watched her walk to the Tube, I felt our connection more strongly. I was angry about the way she had spoken to me, and the anger was festering rather, but I knew I would be able to put it aside, because she was my sister, and sisters quarrelled and then made up.

Unfortunately, I looked rather like Mother. Liz, luckily for her, must have been the spitting image of William Greene. I wondered whether Liz had a photograph of Mother. If she did, would she notice that the stranger she had met on the internet, and yelled at, nastily, in a room full of film critics, bore a strange resemblance to the mother she hadn't seen since babyhood? It was, I supposed, unlikely. I didn't want her to guess. It wasn't time.

'What's your mother like?' I asked Adrian, suddenly. He was pushing a teabag around a cup of milky water with a spoon. He looked up, surprised.

'Mum?' he said. 'She's a hairdresser.'

'What's she like?'

He smiled. 'In what way?'

'Is she nice? Does she care about you? Is she friendly? Can you tell her anything?'

He laughed. 'That's a funny old list of questions.' He counted them off on his fingers. 'Yes, she's nice. Yes, she certainly does care about us. She'd send me food parcels, given half a chance, and she still does us stockings at Christmas.'

I interrupted. 'But doesn't Father Christmas do that?'

He frowned. 'Pardon?'

'Joking.'

'Right. Well, yes, she's friendly. She'd
love you,
for instance. What was the other one? Can I tell her anything? Well, let's put it this way: there are many things I've done that I have no intention of ever telling my mum about. I think that's healthy, isn't it? Why do you ask?'

I waved a hand. 'She sounds nice. Mine's hard work. That's all.'

Adrian drank his tea quickly, and struggled into an overcoat, even though he already had a suit jacket on and would, I thought, have been perfectly warm enough like that.