When I Was Invisible (27 page)

‘You know, a lot of the men who come to my get-togethers often ask if you're available for dates, Ace,' Judge said.

Cold sickness swept through my stomach. I knew where this was going. I should have seen it coming. ‘Do they,' I stated flatly.

‘Yes. Thinking about it, maybe we should give Gina here a night off the dating circuit.' He slapped his hand on the thigh of the redheaded woman, squeezed so hard I could see the agony in her eyes. ‘Maybe you should give it a try.'

I said nothing, kept my gaze on the floor of the car. His feet were huge; his shoes were polished to a high shine, the laces perfectly tied.

‘I know you said you weren't into that, but you might like it. You won't know how much until you try it. In fact, I insist you try it, tonight. You might find the world of dating fun.'

The brunette beside me, whose legs seemed to go on for ever, who injected between her toes – I'd seen her doing it at the last party – tensed. She was probably curling her toes inside her very high shoes and trying to forget what it was like the first time.

‘I might,' I said to him, still with my gaze kept down.

‘And you know, Ace, if you need a little something to help you through, just let me know, I'll help you out,' he said. ‘Gladly. I'll even sub you it.'

I'd been stupid to think I could deal with Judge, that I could manage someone like him, get what I needed and come away. Men like him didn't get played or managed by women like me. All this time, he'd been humouring me, prodding around to find out my weak spot to see what could be exploited. If I had to do this, then I might need the other stuff from him and I would be hooked into him further. That's why I couldn't take any money for tonight. If I did, he'd say I owed him. I knew he paid the others more, so tonight, I could be going away with triple what I usually earned, but if I took a penny, I would owe him – he would tell me that I hadn't been good enough, I would have to earn again to pay him back for the refunds he'd had to give. (I'd heard him say that before.)

I thought I'd only have to do three or four more parties and then I'd have enough to self-finance a room at a homeless hostel for two years when my name got to the top of their waiting list. Self-financing meant I didn't have to sign on, claim benefits, answer any awkward questions about the name I'd left behind. I would have a permanentish address, access to an indoor phone, and I would hopefully be able to find a job.

I pushed play on the music player. ‘Teardrops' by Womack and Womack began to play in my head and like I'd taken a drug, my body relaxed as the melody moved from the player into me. Roni always jumped into my memory when I heard this song. The song, explaining about
the tune, the words, the music not sounding the same without that person in your life
, all conjured her up in my mind. We'd been fourteen, bound together by something other than the same name and a love of ballet, and we'd gone to a club in central London together. This was one of the songs they'd played. I remembered it because we had gone outside for a few minutes, and this was the song blaring out from the open doorway as we'd begged and begged the large skinhead bouncer to let us back in to get our coats. We'd only been outside ten minutes, but in those ten minutes I'd found out what the other Veronica did when she needed to escape.

‘Do you want to go somewhere else?' Marshall asks quietly. He leans across the table, holding his menu against his chest, while his face is a picture of concern.

This restaurant is nice, not too posh, but comfortable, with booths and tables, funky decor, an interesting menu and friendly wait staff. I feel like a fraud, like everyone can see I do not belong here. Since leaving Todd, I could never have afforded to eat somewhere like this, even though it's not Michelin-starred. Normal becomes posh when you have lived as I have; and after the last few years, posh is not somewhere I fit in. The couple at the next table, they're well dressed and unruffled and they fit in. They have a bottle of wine on the go, are waiting for their main meals and constantly touch each other across the table – relaxed and happy to be out together. The parents in the booth to my right belong here: they sit with a child beside each of them, encouraging the younger ones to eat, while simultaneously trying to eat their own meals and hold an adult conversation. The people who I can see over Marshall's shoulder look like old friends catching up over expensive pints and posh pizza – they are obviously used to sitting in places like this. These people, those who are part of the early dinner crowd, are meant to sit in places like this, they belong here. Marshall belongs and so do I. So. Do. I.

‘No, no, it's fine here. In fact, it's great here,' I say to him.

‘You seem really uncomfortable,' he says, still with his voice lowered. ‘We can honestly go elsewhere if you want.'

‘I haven't been to a restaurant in a while,' I say with a smile. ‘I think I've forgotten how to behave in one.'
I feel out of place. I feel like there is a neon sign above my head that points out that I was once a homeless person
. I glance down at the menu, see the words for the different types of meals. My heart rate starts to increase, the air around us feels very close, and I have to concentrate on drawing in breath. Slowly, carefully, I need to push that breath out again.

What will I order? How will I order? Will the waitress laugh at me if I order the wrong wine with my meal? Will she think I'm odd if I don't have a starter? If I do have a starter, will she look down on me because I've ordered the wrong type of main meal? Will everyone around me listen to me ordering and know that I don't belong, know what I used to be, how I used to live, what I did to make money, because I so obviously, blatantly don't belong?

I jump when Marshall's hand covers mine. ‘Are you all right?' he asks. My wild eyes find his kind brown ones. ‘You look absolutely terrified. We can honestly go elsewhere if you want.'

I do not want this to defeat me, but I can't do it. I can't sit here and pretend I fit in, that I am a normal person who has lived a normal life that involves eating
inside
restaurants. ‘Actually, do you mind if we leave?' I say. ‘I, erm, don't think I can stay here.'

‘Of course, of course,' he says and calls the waitress over to get our bill for a jug of tap water and his half-drunk glass of beer.

A bag of chips, a wooden spork and too much salt and vinegar. That,
that
is what I know, what I like, what I feel comfortable with. We come out of the chippie opposite the burnt-out old pier, which stands forlorn and ominous against the navy-blue-grey sky, and we walk slowly to the traffic lights to cross to the sea side of the street.

Saturday night is gearing up in Brighton, swathes of people are moving towards the centre, towards the bars, the restaurants, the neon-lit clubs. We were lucky to get that table in the restaurant, and I feel bad that we gave it up. I couldn't stay, though. I thought I was ready, that I could restart my life as though nothing has changed. I'm disappointed in myself, thought I had more courage, but clearly not. Marshall hasn't mentioned it, hasn't asked what upset me so much, and I'm not sure I can explain it. He was enthusiastic when I suggested we walked down to the sea and got chips. Looking out along the coastline, the road stretches as far as I can see and street lamps on either side look more and more like fairy lights that have been strung up by a kind-hearted giant the further away they get. Brighton is vibrant, full of life, of people. I close my eyes and sniff, relax for a moment into the smell of Brighton, the scent of being by the sea. I used to do that sometimes in Birmingham. When I would be heading towards Bernie's for a coffee, I would close my eyes for just a moment and inhale the essence of my new city. Brighton smells of salt and vinegar; Birmingham smells of coffee and opportunity.

‘Is it Eliza getting to you?' Marshall asks. We are slowly walking towards the pier, away from home. ‘Are you maybe thinking you can't handle it after all?'

‘It's definitely not Eliza,' I say. ‘I'm not used to being in nice places any more, that's all. I'm not really dressed for it, and I felt really out of place. Like everyone was staring at me.'

‘If they were staring at you, it's because you're beautiful,' he says.

I stop walking. It doesn't sound creepy or forced, like he is trying to flatter me or charm me – he sounds like he means it. Like he thinks I'm beautiful. That he's looked at me a few times and the thought has crossed his mind enough for him to say it out loud.

My stare makes him shy all of a sudden: he stops walking too and begins to stare very hard into his bag of chips, prodding around with his spork as though testing the chips for firmness. We stand there for a few moments, silent islands in the noisy seas of a Saturday night in a city centre. The sounds, the people, the blackness of the night flow around us, bending themselves around us so we are not touched in any way.

‘Well, that was a conversation-killer,' he eventually says, raising his gaze to look at me.

In reply, I stand on my toes and press my lips on to his. Briefly, quickly, to see what it's like to kiss someone. To kiss a man I like, who thinks I'm beautiful. I have never done that – I have never kissed someone first. It has always been someone kissing me, touching me, deciding how they want things to go. Before he can react, I step back. ‘I wanted to see if I could do that,' I explain to him. ‘It's been a while since I kissed someone – I wanted to see if I could do it.'

‘You can try out kissing me any time you want,' he says with a laugh.

I smile at him. I'm about to do it again, to lean in and kiss him, to this time relish and enjoy the feel of his lips under mine, when his mobile sounds in his inside jacket pocket. He pulls back, cursing under his breath. ‘It's like she's got an alarm that goes off in her head whenever I do something she wouldn't like,' he says. ‘Eliza. That's her ringtone.' He rubs his hand over his forehead, clearly pained and frustrated. ‘I bet you anything you like she'll have been down and knocked on my door. Because I haven't answered, she will have knocked on a neighbour's door to find out if they've seen me.' The phone stops ringing during his outburst. He angrily spears his spork into a chip and it stands upright like a bare flagpole, while he reaches into his pocket with his free hand and retrieves his phone. ‘Now she's ringing. And if I don't answer …' He pauses then nods his head at his phone as it trills into life again. ‘She'll keep ringing until I do.' He rejects the call. Less than ten seconds later the phone rings again. He stares at the screen for a second or two, then rejects that call with a vicious stab of the finger. Then he turns his phone off. ‘I hate turning my phone off in case my ex needs to get in touch with me about my son, but Eliza's driving me crazy at the moment. I've tried everything – ignoring her, talking to her, letting her down gently – and she won't leave me alone. I don't know what I can do about her short of going to the police. I don't know what her problem is but it's driving me insane.'

I know what Eliza's problem is, I suspected when I first met them, but the bottle of wine and her desperation to get into my flat confirmed it. I know what her problem is, but I'm not sure I can tell him. Firstly, he won't want to know and secondly, I probably shouldn't get any more involved than I already am. But then, maybe I could get away with not saying anything if I hadn't kissed him, hadn't brought myself closer to him.

‘I know what her problem is,' I admit, ‘but you're not going to like it. Actually, you're not going to like it or believe it.'

‘What, she's obsessed with me to stalker proportions? Yes, I'd worked that out for myself.' He's angry, upset and feeling powerless. I know those feelings, how they slowly erode your confidence, force you to make your world small, and bland and unthreatening. Being told the truth of your situation is supposed to set you free, give you a chance to break out while placing you on the path to forging a new way of living in the world. Unfortunately, being told the truth can also keep you chained to the same point in history, can make you too scared to do anything because suddenly your existence is tainted by something ugly and terrifying and incomprehensible. And sometimes, sometimes the truth can make everything far worse than you thought was possible.

No matter how terrifying, though, the truth in this situation does need to be told.

‘No,' I say, ‘Eliza's problem is that she's a drug addict.'

Marshall laughs in my face, tells me I'm wrong and then stares at me with cold eyes. I shouldn't have expected anything less, really. Who wants to believe someone they know is a drug addict when they're relatively normal-looking and ordinary-acting? Who would believe it of a friend when that friend holds down a job and the most you've ever seen them out of it is when they've had a couple too many at Christmas? No, much easier to ask, ‘Why would you say such a terrible thing?' to the virtual stranger who has told you this truth.

‘Because she's a drug addict. I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true. Admittedly, I've only known her a short amount of time, but this is what she is. That's why she's obsessed with you: I bet you're the only person who hasn't cut her off, you probably still lend her money now and then, and you let her into your flat where she can still steal from you. Yes, she's obsessed with you, she wants to protect that relationship you have because you're the only person still helping to fund her habit.'

‘She doesn't steal from me.'

‘Of course she does. I bet you stuff has regularly gone missing from your flat but you've convinced yourself you've mislaid those things, or you tell yourself you had thirty quid instead of forty. I'm sure her other friends stopped lending her money an age ago when they weren't getting it back, stopped inviting her in when things were going missing. She's obsessed with you anyway, but you're also her lifeline to thinking she doesn't have a problem.'