LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

an offence to drive away from an accident. He should’ve stopped at the very least to make sure he hadn’t killed you.’

      ‘Yeah, well, he didn’t, did he, so let’s just drop it, OK?’

      She’d finished with the kohl pencil and mascara, and was zipping up her makeup bag. She came out of the bathroom and was peering in at my box room – it had a single mattress on the floor and one of those concertina laundry airers, hung with stiff tea towels.

      ‘You’ve got an extra room,’ she said.

      ‘Think calling it a room is stretching it.’

      ‘Can I ask a favour?’ she said. ‘It won’t be for long.’

      She told me she wanted to stay a while, to get herself straight. I assumed she meant laying off the Lambrini, in which case I wasn’t too sure my flat was her best bet, it being above an entire shop full of cheap spirits and tins of super-strength lager – killing the poor quicker and younger. Carlsberg Special Brew, Tennent’s Super and Skol Super 9%. They used to die at 65, now they die at 45, even though they look 65. But I digress.

      Angel walked to the window in the lounge and lifted the nets, peered out at the street as if she was George Smiley looking for shadowy figures in doorways.

      ‘Are you on the run from MI6?’ I said, as a joke obviously, trying to change the subject away from latent alcoholism. I didn’t actually think she was on the run. I don’t think anyone is on the run in real life, but she turned, sharply, and said, ‘Why d’you say that?’

      ‘You’re acting like you think you’re in The Bourne Supremacy instead of sitting in a flat above the Killy High Road.’ I was going to add, ‘wearing too much eyeliner’ but thought better of it.

      ‘Look,’ she said, still peering out from under the nets, ‘there are people who would like to know where I am, and who I’d rather keep away from. That’s all you need to know. I could do with a place to lie low. I could go, tonight, get a bag of stuff, if you don’t mind me kipping in your box room for a while?’

      I thought about saying, ‘How long is a while?’ But instead, I said, ‘I’ll think about it. Now, I’ve got to open up downstairs or my lovely regulars will be wondering where to get their tramp juice.’

      Downstairs, turning my keys in the lock to open up, I thought about what it would be like later on, watching telly with someone there to pass the odd comment to, making a plate of carbonara for two and not eating it all myself. Asking if she’d like a bag of Frazzles and popping down to the crisp aisle. The drinking worried me a bit. I don’t like drinkers, much as they are my core fan base. I don’t like the feelings of risk and uncertainty they create. That said, we’ve all got our thing, haven’t we – that zone where we’re not in control? I’m quite safe around a bottle of Chardonnay. I’ve been known to yawn in the face of pornography. Show me a shoe shop and I can walk on by. But salty snacks? I will MOW. YOU. DOWN.

      This’ll shock you, but I own Payless. I don’t lease it; it’s not a franchise. About fifteen years ago, when I was in my mid-thirties, this lawyer managed to track me down and told me there was all this money held in trust for me and did I want to collect it, because I’d got to a responsible age when I wouldn’t squander it and he was retiring, so there would be no one left who knew the details of my legacy. I guessed it was money from Mum and Dad’s house, maybe from Nanny Fielding when she died. I didn’t really ask any questions – like why it had taken so long to come to me.

      I was working in Payless at the time, just on Saturdays – the rest of the time I was on the till in Primark and doing the odd shift on a street stall which sold lighters and knock-off Dove shower gel and the like, and so the next time I was in I asked Majid, who I worked for, how much he wanted for the shop and he laughed and laughed and laughed. And then he spoke very quickly in Urdu to his wife, and she split her sides laughing as well.

      Anyway, once they’d stopped laughing, I bought it off them.

      In retrospect, I realise I should’ve bought myself a hairdressers. Firstly, because I’ve always thought I’d make quite a good hairdresser, and second because of all those surveys about professions and rates of happiness. Hairdressers are the happiest people: there’s creativity, but only up to a point (too much, I’ve read, can send you demented; just look at poets). There’s craic – plenty of chat, but not that much intimacy (intimacy being a most overrated aspect of human relationships). And hairdressing also garners a great deal of loyalty. I read that the average woman stays with her stylist for twelve years. The average marriage lasts eleven.

      But primarily I should’ve bought myself a hairdressers because it would’ve limited my access to the crisp aisle.

      Did you know Britain has been voted the loneliness capital of Europe? The Office for National Statistics found we have fewer friends and that we Britons don’t know our neighbours and it’s killing us. Loneliness is as big a health hazard as smoking fifteen fags a day, and not nearly as enjoyable.

      I think it is the English way. We can’t stand too much contact. We don’t know where to look during intimate conversations. The web of connections, which is a comfort to southern nationalities, especially Latin people who love to hug and wail at funerals, pains the Englishman. I remember living with Nanny Fielding and all the kids at school were going on sleepovers or to each other’s houses, but I didn’t. I went home to my gran and we barely exchanged a word. She made baked apple with sultanas and custard and there were lace-edged antimacassars on the arms of her wing chairs. She used to smooth a tea towel across her knees, not sure why, as if she was about to dress a wounded foot or shell some peas. It was just a pointless act of fastidiousness, which annoyed me until I missed it so much. I think this is why I seem so much older than my years – the grannyish house and the solitary ways. I’ve taken in Nanny Fielding and I don’t know any other way to live.

      Anyway, without us having a conversation about it as such, Angel fetched a bag of stuff and installed herself in the box room, which started to smell of Chanel Cristalle because she sprayed it about like it was Impulse. Low-level drinking – she wasn’t bladdered, but she was hugging the Lambrini pretty close. She spent a lot of time on the Internet, saving files and copying Wikipedia pages, and the rest of the time she was standing by the window, lifting the nets and watching the Killy High Road. She was furtive. When I said something, she jumped. And when I called her name, she didn’t turn around.

      I said, from the kitchen, ‘Angel? Cup of tea?’ But I had to walk into the room before she realised I was talking to her. I took it as proof that Angel was a made-up name. The question was why?

      And what was her real name? What was with all the curtain twitching and mystery? And also, if I was going to make up a name for myself, I don’t think I’d pick Angel, d’you know what I’m saying?

      But she wasn’t totally self-absorbed. I could see she was trying to make herself a pleasant house guest. A couple of days later, for example, she stood in the doorway, holding aloft two Sainsbury’s bags and smiling. ‘Thought I’d make burgers,’ she said. ‘I’m assuming you’ve got ketchup.’

      ‘Do I look like the sort of person who wouldn’t have ketchup?’

      ‘You look like the sort of person who wouldn’t have vinaigrette,’ she said.

      We decided to watch The Hotel on telly – one of those documentaries where people act like they’re not aware they’re being filmed, when in fact they’re completely aware but pretending, and the programme’s main aim is the Ring of Truth, as if you’re peeping in unseen. Fixed-rig cameras is how they’re made. Rigged and a fix, I call it. I love those shows. I love watching people without having to spend any time with them.

      Angel and I had a recliner chair each, the sofa being too uncomfortable to spend an evening on. I keep it because it was Nanny Fielding’s. I have always had two recliners; I bought them as a pair from DFS. Don’t ask me why – I think it seemed too sad to buy one. But there’s never been anyone to sit in the second one. Talk about hopeful purchase.

      In The

Скачать книгу