We Are All Made of Stars (15 page)

‘I think the song is really getting there, don't you?' Ben says, his arm looped loosely through mine as we head towards the noise and throng of Camden market. Even now, at eight on a November evening, it's still wide open and full to the brim with a teaming mass of life. Considering I grew up down the road, I've never really liked it – never liked the press of people and the sort of underlying fakeness to it all. It's like a girl that tries too hard to be popular. You know the one – laughs even when nothing is funny. That's Camden all over.

Ben is wearing an ankle-length wool coat that flairs out behind him. His black hair is newly shaved around the back, long on top, and sweeps into his eyes. It's not just girls who watch him pass, but men too, straight and otherwise. He always looks so confident in his own skin, with me trailing behind. His old familiar.

‘I think the song is actually really good,' I concede.

‘And today, once you got over yourself, your vocals were really coming on.'

‘Well, I can sing you under a table, any day of the week,' I remind him, and he chuckles. Damn, I fell into his trap.

‘Of course you can. I can barely sing at all,' he says. ‘It's all about attitude, dude.'

He picks up a bowler hat and drops it onto his head, waggling his eyebrows at me. ‘What do you think?'

‘I think it will flatten your hair,' I tell him, laughing as he whips it off again, speedily running his fingers through his carefully crafted do. My lungs creak when I laugh, and the pain is still there, but Stella and, yes, Ben were right. I feel better for being outside, under the lights and amongst the people.

‘You need an outfit, for our debut at open mic,' he says. ‘Maybe something PVC, lace-up? And thigh-length boots? And one of those corsets …'

I ignore him and run my fingers down a rail of poorly made, overpriced dresses. Somehow I let him lead me deep into the labyrinth of the market, where the scent of patchouli hangs heavy in the air. Languages mingle all around me – peoples of the world looking to buy a little bit of hip in exactly the wrong place.

‘Nothing here,' I say. ‘Here is horrible.'

‘I don't think so.' Ben picks up a sort of orange chiffon number. ‘What about this, huh?'

Before I can reply, I am suddenly jerked back, and I realise that someone has pulled my bag off of my shoulder and down to my wrist. Looking up, I see a hooded figure tearing through the crowd. Hastily, I check my bag. My purse is there but my phone is gone.

‘Oh God, my phone. It's not even worth anything,' I say, showing Ben my empty bag. ‘It's ancient, but it's got all my music on it – it's got our recording of song … Ben! Ben, wait!'

Ben is off at full pelt, before I even finish saying his name, running somehow through the mass of people, leaving a small shocked furrow, parting in his wake, which I hurriedly thread my way through. ‘Ben! Leave it, it doesn't matter …
Ben
!'

But he isn't slowing down, and I mutter curses out loud, keeping my eyes on him as I follow him down some steps and onto the canal towpath. I can see him running away from the noise and the lights of the lock, and into the darkness.

‘God, bloody damn you, Ben, it's just a fucking phone,' I say, and I notice how lonely and loud my voice seems. I'm hurrying. I can feel my sore and exhausted lungs rub and scrape with every breath, and I can no longer see any sign of Ben ahead, or the guy that took my phone. No lights, no nothing. I stop and wait for a moment. I'm on my own on a canal towpath in north London in the dark. The only way to tell where the city ends and the sky starts is a few fiercely burning stars, bright enough to pierce the city's glare. Fuck.

It doesn't take long for the canal to take you out and away from the urban fantasy that is the streets of Camden and into an altogether darker and dirtier industrial world, bisected by the rumble of the trains and large empty-looking warehouses overhanging the water. The faint orange glow of the city is reflected in the murky water.

Ben has left me; he's left me, the dickhead. Or rather I followed him, like I always do. I am the dickhead.

And chances are he could be further along the towpath somewhere in the dark, bleeding to death, stabbed by the mugger, who is lying in wait for me, to do us both in together, then shove us in the canal, where we'd drown before we bled to death, choking on dirty water.

Dramatic, I am. Always have been.

I
could
turn around and walk back towards the lights of the market.

But it's Ben. And I still don't know if he remembers that the night he nearly killed me, he also kissed me. And I would really like to clear that up before one of us dies.

So, thinking of Issy, I say all the worst swears I can think of as I walk into the darkness to find him, and some more besides. I walk slowly and carefully, expecting to see his lifeless corpse sprawled across my way at any moment, but I see nothing, just lengths of the uneven path revealed and concealed by the night as I walk. If someone were watching me from the bridge, they'd have lost sight of me long ago. Unless they were following me, that is. I turn around, darkness behind me, darkness ahead. My heart thuds hard and heavy, my chest heaves, my lungs feel raw and my legs tremble. I'm far from the hospice and my fucking phone is missing. I could kill Ben. If I weren't almost certain that some crack-crazed knifeman hadn't killed him first, I would definitely kill him.

But there's something else; I'm out here. I'm doing it, experiencing life.

I knew it was overrated.

Far ahead of me, a match flares briefly in the dark, so that I know that someone else is there, lurking.

What if it's the murderer, smoking over Ben's body as the very life drains out of him? I should turn around and go back, but I don't. Very, very slowly I find myself walking towards the darkness.

Two people, neither of them Ben, are standing side by side. As I get nearer I see they have their arms around each other – lovers. Kissing and smoking with equal commitment.

‘Excuse me,' I say, and the guy looks at me suspiciously. His girlfriend sighs.

‘I've lost my friend, tall bloke, big coat – he ran this way? After this mugg—' I stop talking.

‘No one been along here for twenty minutes,' the man, more of a boy, tells me, slightly warily, probably because he thinks I am a mugger.

‘Oh, right … OK, thank you.' I turn on my heels and hurry back towards the light, expecting them to pounce on me at any second. Either Ben has already been murdered and tossed in the canal by the world's most lacklustre Bonnie and Clyde, or they are telling truth and I just scared myself to death for no reason. But it doesn't seem like a good idea to hang about and find out. The blare and glare of the lock seems surreal as I emerge into it once again, and I turn around and around, catching my breath, looking for Ben, knowing that he wouldn't just abandon me here. Finally, I hear something over the noise, something calibrated just for me, and turning towards the sound, I see him. He must be standing on something, bellowing out my name over the heavy bass.

‘Where did you go?' I demand as soon as I reach him.

He leaps off a bench and presents my phone to me with a bow and a smug little smile.

‘You twat!' I say, pushing him so hard that he drops my phone on the floor, where it skids under the bench.

‘What? You'll break it, you idiot!' Ben bends down to retrieve the phone. ‘What is your problem? I just got this back for you. I thought you'd be pleased!'

‘You chased some mugger, who could have had a knife, who could have hurt you over a crappy phone – that's insured!' I punch him again, quite hard in the arm, and he yelps, backing away from me.

‘He was only about nine, and I was fairly confident I could have taken him, but he just dropped it, anyway, after about three minutes of me chasing him. Where have you been?'

‘Looking for you!' I holler at the top of my voice, so loudly that it seems that for a moment the music softens and everyone in the throng stops and looks at me. That doesn't happen, of course, but it feels that way, just for a second.

‘I thought you'd gone off down the towpath after this potentially murderous killer …'

‘Is there any other kind?' Ben asks me, and I punch him again.

‘And I went after you, to protect you or drag your bleeding half-dead body out of danger, or die from multiple stab wounds to keep you company in the murky depths of the canal … and it was dark, and scary, and you WEREN'T THERE.'

‘Very rude of me not to be dead in a ditch,' Ben said, but a little less scandalised than before. He steps forward and catches my hand, pulling me out of the crowd and down the very steps I'd just emerged from, feeling lucky to be alive. ‘You went down there, in the dark, to battle a knifeman, for me?'

‘I thought about not going, but I didn't know how I'd explain it to your mother,' I told him. ‘Yes, sorry Mrs D., it was too dark, and he bled to death whilst I was getting a policeman.'

Ben's smile is warm, and enticing, but not as all-engulfing as his embrace. Suddenly, I'm encased in his arms and his huge black coat, his chest against my cheek, and the smell of the women's perfume he insists on wearing …

‘You know my mum's been on tranks for most of my childhood. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have noticed the difference, and my stepdad would have let my room out, first chance he got. He's been waiting for me to move out since he moved in.'

‘Why don't you, then?' I ask him. ‘Why don't you move out and get away from him?'

‘Because even though my mum might not have got her act together enough to care whether or not I am alive or dead, I still love her,' he says. ‘And she needs me. My stepdad can't take care of her; he can barely take care of himself. So as long as she needs me, and I've got you to rescue me from maniac knifemen, I'll be there.' He holds me even tighter for a moment, burying his face in the cloud of my hair. ‘It matters a lot to me, you know. That you give a shit about me.'

‘Are you sniffing my hair?' I ask him.

‘A bit. I like it – it's sort of like Dettol and lavender, all mixed up.'

‘Stop sniffing my hair and hugging me,' I say into his chest, thinking of the drunken kiss, and his drunken tongue inside my mouth. ‘It's confusing.'

‘How is a hug confusing?' he says, releasing me into the night air, with that familiar grin reinstated.

‘You don't know how a hug is confusing?' We begin to walk slowly back towards Marie Francis, and I'm grateful to see the familiar dark wooden green door, set into the brick wall.

‘No, I don't. A hug is one of the world's few unambiguous gestures. A hug says, you are awesome, I appreciate you. A hug is the one gesture of affection that comes without an agenda.'

‘Unlike a kiss,' I say, as he opens the door for me to step through. The adrenaline from my not-actual-but-still-feels-like-it brush with death must still be pumping in my veins, because, after fully expecting to spend several years agonising over his drunken kiss and what it means, I've just gone and said something verging on the specific.

On the other side of the door, the world is peaceful again, still and calm, almost as if the high brick wall and the green painted door can keep out not only the noise of the city but also the sensation of the heavy press of humanity that rolls ever onward, crushing underfoot anything that gets in its way. Even the sky above seems clearer, and full of starlight.

‘Well, a kiss is quite unambiguous,' he says. ‘I mean, a kiss on the cheek, on the forehead, a massive great snog …'

‘What about that massive great snog you gave me, the night that I almost certainly caught the bacterial infection that nearly killed me?' I say. ‘What did that mean?'

Ben stops dead and turns around very slowly to face me.

‘Oh,' he says. ‘I was rather hoping you'd forgotten about that.'

‘And now you see perfectly clearly how a gesture of affection can be confusing,' I say, walking in through my patio door, which I left unlocked. My room door is open, and there's something wrong. I know it right away.

Ignoring Ben, I walk out into the corridor. It's almost too quiet here, and somewhere, from Issy's room, there is the sound of sobbing.

I stand there, unable to open her door, unable to move. I wait, with Ben at my shoulder, until the door opens and Stella comes out.

She looks at my questioning face and nods.

‘She's gone,' she says.

I turn around and walk straight into Ben's arms, and everything else seems suddenly so unimportant.

Dear Mummy,

I know you will be sad, I know. But please don't be sad for ever. You aren't all that old. Forty is the new twenty, someone said on
This Morning
the other day. You've had so many years of being sad, and I don't want you to have any more. I want you and Katy to be really happy, all of the time.

Give my hats and scarves to the children's cancer ward at the hospital, and all of my toys and books too. Don't keep any of them, except for Octopus. I want you to give Octopus to Katy.

Will you tell Lucy, Jem and Alice that they are the best friends ever? They never got bored of me, even though I was too tired to be much fun most of the time. They always came to see me, made me those stupid videos that were so funny and that PowerPoint presentation on why they should be allowed to stay for a sleepover. I'm so glad you said yes – that was the funnest night ever. In my jewellery box, the one with the ballerina that goes round and round, there are three friendship bracelets. Will you give them one each? I used their favourite colours so I know they will know which one is which. There is one for that boy in my science set, Jack Fletcher, too.

I think you should get a dog, I really do. Katy wants one so much, and I know you thought it was too much bother to look after a dog and me and her, but people like dogs. And people with dogs always meet lots of people and makes lots of friends. I think you should get a really hairy dog, and call it Kitty, because that makes me laugh, thinking of you and Katy shouting, ‘Here, Kitty, Kitty,' at a dog in the park.