Chapter 1
..shall pass. And this too shall pass. And this too sha..what’s that? Don’t say a fly’s managed to get in? Maybe it’s a motorbike coming from, um, outside?
She focused on the noise, tried to distract herself to prevent her body from overheating, but any snippet of sound she caught was muffled. This shall pass too. Pass this shall too. What are you supposed to recite when you find yourself totally surplus to requirements in a...situation like this? England, my England, that’s it.
She was lying, arms crucified, legs splayed, on a ruby bedspread barely covering a not-quite-a-double grubby bed. The sagging bed was in an equally grotty hotel room that delivered much, much less than its website promised: Claustrophobic and clotted with hues of red that made the room seem to and her head definitely throb as soon as she’d entered.
Two things were guaranteed to make her faint; one was blood. It may only have been a grim hotel room with horrendous flower patterns on the wall and a carpet that was dark red and threadbare, but as soon as she’d imagined it actually dripping in blood, she could feel herself going and stumbled toward the grotesque flowers in an attempt to steady herself. Even then, she’d had to let go straightaway, picturing herself leaving a trail of bloody fingerprints on the spattered walls.
That was fifteen minutes ago. Now her bones were cooking. She tried to summon all her efforts and energies to stop herself from flaking out and adding a third item to the list of things that made her faint. She returned her attention to intrusive insects and half remembered mantras for the soul.
Soul? Ha. Good one. Surely it’s rotten and corrupted by now? Or laid out on ice maybe, suspended somewhere for the...greater good? What was that greater good anyway? In a word: Him. Her heart contracted then plummeted. She pictured him lying there, blissfully oblivious to all…this.
The mattress sank and bounced back up, springing her back into the room. He must have risen quickly from his crouching position at the foot of the bed, though for all she knew he could also have sneaked out and left her lying there; the outfit really did get in the way when it came to seeing anything. And as for moving gracefully, forget it. But, just like those know-it-all ‘they’ bastards always like to point out, if one of your senses stops working then your others have a remarkable tendency to overcompensate. She might well be encased from head to toe inside scratchy plastic and pretend fur, but she was definitely becoming more attuned now to any external noise and activity. If she held her breath and tried really hard, she could make out his ferreting around, followed by the oh-so-familiar click and jingle of a belt being unbuckled.
She exhaled slowly, clammy breath on cheeks. The bottom corner of the bed rose and fell. She shuddered. The rhythm and the rocking increased in urgency. She closed her eyes tight. Tighter.
England my England. England my England.
As she cooked in her own juices, served up like a cheap boil in the bag meal, more motivational, aspirational, complete bollockical quotes came filtering through. ‘Either you choose to get up or you choose to stay in bed, either way you’ll’…actually no, that one wasn’t motivational at all. That particular brain worm came from a misjudged attempt to get into philosophy at fourteen. ‘I want to pad my mind not just my bras,’ she’d haughtily said to her bubble permed friends at the time. Fast forward several existential ebooks later to a brain fried with Danish philosibollocks and French angst.
A cough from outside, followed by, ‘Jermind gebbin uber is?’
She could barely hear him.
‘What?’ She called out and tried to turn her encased head.
No response. She rolled her eyes.
‘Grrrr what, grrr?’, she growled.
‘Do you mind getting over please? Can you turn over?’
Another eye roll, exhalation and a growl, borne of frustration not on demand as she tried to lift herself up and over. She reached out for where she gauged the headboard to be, found it and grabbed it. The tip of her nose knocked against the inside of the costume. Where was the zip for this thing again? Better not be at the back.
More rhythmic rocking, snorting too, like an eager pig snuffling for truffles. She shook her head inside the larger, furry one. Peoples’ erotic proclivities never failed to amuse her. A cheeky bum wiggle? She decided against it. Best just to crouch there, cling on and wait for him to get it over with. Can this thing be dry cleaned? Ha, why even care? He was the one who’d brought it and wanted her to wear it, she’d just put it on. If he wanted to go to a dry cleaners afterwards clutching a stained and crispy costume and with a sheepish look on his face then that was up to him.
Rock, shuffle, knock. That was her head hitting the grotesque roses. Rock, shuffle, rock, rock, faster and faster, culminating in what sounded like a cry for help, and in a way she supposed it was.
The rocking stopped.
Silence. A bead of sweat trickled from her forehead down her left cheek before she heard: ‘Yuggen taygeroff noo.’
Huge eye roll.
‘I’m sorry? What? Grrr…’
‘I said you can take it off now.’
She flexed her fingers inside the paws but it was no use, the padding on the inside and plastic claws on the outside rendered her completely impotent.
‘You’ll have to help me out.’
Again, no reply.
‘Grrrr. You’ll have to get me out. Ggrrr!’
She spun around and plonked back on the bed, hot, blind and helpless. The press of a hand under her chin and a tug of the zip, the escaping heat and stuffiness overpowered by an air of familiarity as unpleasant as it was predictable.
She wrenched the furry head off. Better, slightly, but still Hobson’s Choice. Another regular visitor to her brain.
’Well? Did you enjoy it? she smiled at him, eyes and mouth disconnected. They never noticed.
He stared, face crimson from exertion.
‘Grrrr. Did you enjoy it?’ She repeated. ‘Sorry do I still have to do that?’
He looked as if he was mulling it over, glanced down at his suit trousers still round his ankles, saw it wasn’t just his dignity shrinking.
‘No you don’t. It’s ok’, he replied as he got up from the corner of the bed and hitched his pants up and over his stubby legs. Then, ‘That was great, thanks. Just what I imagined it to be.’ Followed by, ‘Have you seen my belt?’
‘It’s there,’ she pointed to where it lay curled and discarded behind his laptop.
He turned. ‘Oh yeah, thanks.’ He reached out to grab it, almost knocking his laptop off the foot of the bed. She was struck by the difference in his demeanour pre and post emission. Before the, erm, event it was all peacock strutting and the big I am. After the..experience he was a prime candidate to inherit the earth. And with a very tiny ‘I have’ too. His untucked but still buttoned shirt barely covered his rotund belly. He stood up, adjusted the knot of his tie and reached for his jacket. Both hair and hope long since gone, this little man exuded nothing more than a desire to be part of something, even if that meant joining in with a game he didn’t expect to win. Now he just stood there, all of him straining to escape his ill fitting suit. She caught him stealing a glance and glared at him.
‘Can you look away please, I want to get dressed.’
He cast his eyes downwards, turned away and mumbled a sorry.
She wriggled her legs out of the furry outfit as demurely and discreetly as possible, struggled to get her feet out of the plastic claws, until finally she was free of the cumbersome bear costume. She looked at where she’d carefully folded her third favourite dress over the back of a chair. The agreement beforehand had been for him to stay in the bathroom and wait for her to make a loud growl. Then he’d emerge and…do what he had to do. There’d been no discussion on what the etiquette would be after the contractual discharge of the fifteen million plus destined to evaporate. Staring at her in her dark blue and red hot undies hadn’t been part of the agreement. Like the aborted bum wiggle, why should he get a freebie?
What are you doing now? Have you got someone else, or…? He asked with his back to her, clearly trying to make conversation.
I’m just going home she replied, deftly slipping her dress on over her head before he had a chance to turn round.
‘Oh, right. And where’s home?’
‘South London.’
‘I can go that way if you like,’ he persisted. ‘It’d be safer. How old are you if you don’t mind me asking?’
She did mind. ‘Thirty four.’
‘Ah, old then. Still. Where in South London?’
‘Brixton.’ She could have kicked herself.
‘Ah. Brixton. You’d never get me going there. Not with all those coloureds.’
Jesus.
‘Like bloody Africa.’ He seemed to be getting some of his bravado back. ‘If I had my way I’d send them all home.’
She really didn’t want to be there any more.
‘So, do you want a lift or what?’, he pestered, arrogantly. ‘You haven’t seen my wheels have you?’ What came across as cockiness he clearly mistook for charm.
‘No. I’d love to though,’ she lied.
‘Well maybe next time I can take you for a spin before we…indulge our animal passions. Grrrr.’
He laughed. She stared, wanting to kill, noticed the wedding ring on his stubby finger, wondered what he’d said to his wife about where he’d be that evening.
‘How about a drink?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t sorry.’
‘Come on. Just one. Or three. No harm in it.’
‘No. Sorry.’ I’ve really got to stop doing that. People step out of line and she apologises.
He patted himself down. ‘OK, I tell you what. I’ll have a piss and you can think about it.’
She thought about it.
‘You’ve got two minutes’, he said, clicking his fingers and pointing at her as he headed for the bathroom.
OK. Time to go. Shoes? Ah there. Poking out from underneath the bed.
As she reached down to where they were poking out from under the bed she caught sight of the laptop screen. There was Intermittent tinkling and tuneless whistling coming from the bathroom, but she was deaf to it all, her heart pounding before plummeting, bursting out of her rib cage and plopping onto the filthy carpet. It lay there, blended with sticky red carpet fluff, beats slowing and oozing blood.
On the screen and now scalded onto her eyes: an image. She hadn’t clocked it before, didn’t know he must have been looking at it when he was leering over her. A brown bear, half its fur missing, chained to and curled up in the corner of a cage. What the eff? What the effing eff?
She had to leave. Right now. She stood up. Grabbed her coat. The toilet flushed. He reappeared, hands unwashed.
‘Well, have you changed…’
‘No. Sor… I’ve got to go.’ Her fingers on the door handle.
‘Hang on..Simone!’
But she was out. Dashing down the dimly lit corridor, trying and failing to unsee that image. Who would do that? In a word: Him. The human race, what an absolute waste of time.
She shot past the lift. As if. She wouldn’t use lifts at the best of times, and when cortisol was coursing would always default to sprinting in an instinctive attempt to escape real or imagined danger. Or office jobs. Or dickheads. She crashed through the double doors leading to the stairs and took them two at a time, spinning round and continuing her rapid descent. Reaching the bottom, she scurried past the reception, not even meeting the eye of the guy behind the desk, almost broke the rotating doors and fell out onto the street, the gleaming pavements reflecting the harsh streetlights under the dark and heavy sky.
Into the station, onto a tube, earbuds in (eventually), eyes shut and only opened by the hiss and screech of the train pulling into Brixton. She minded the gap, stepped onto the escalator, standing on the right of course, through the barrier and skipped up the steps through the fog of incense that always drifted down into the station and made her gag. A left turn, another left at the chicken outlet with the dealers hanging around outside peddling their own brand of WYSIWYG (What You See Isn’t What You Get).
She reached her gated entrance and pushed the security fob against the gate; it clicked and she overforced it, but finally: her flat; on the first floor and mostly paid for by the state, the shortfall in rent made up by a little entrepreneurial spirit and a lot of undeclared income. Thatcher would have been most proud.
She shot up the stairs, raced up to and unlocked her heavy front door. Apart from the dim light left on in the tiny hallway the flat was in darkness. She slipped into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The night ran in rivulets down her body and drained away. Wet hair: Expertly avoided. Teeth: Briskly cleaned. She grabbed a fluffy blue towel and patted herself dry. A quick drink of water and she padded naked into her bedroom, slid into her own, welcoming bed and stretched out.
An arm came over and rested on her belly. A whispered murmur in the darkness, a kiss and a nuzzle.
‘Hey, Sal. Good night dancing?’
‘It was fine, Liz’, Sally replied. ‘Go back to sleep.’
