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‘Who was that that brought you home last night?’ The question shoots out of my mother, at the same time as she turns another page of the recipe book.
‘Jon,’ I lie smoothly, licking jam off my fingers.
My mother taps her cigarette on the ashtray then looks up at me.
‘No. That wasn’t Jon.’
It was her then, looking out of the window. ‘Okay, it wasn’t.’
‘So who was it?’
Usually when my mother is trying to get information from me about my friends, it’s in a silky, persuasive sort of voice, hoping that I will confide in her. I never do, just as I never brought friends home from school or invited them for sleepovers – especially after I went to All Saints, the private school my parents insisted I went to once they could afford it. It was hard to fit in there, and I chose to stay friends with people from my primary school – Louise and some others – although often it felt like I was tagging along, an outsider. So to ask a friend home became fraught with danger: with my old friends it was fear of being branded a snob, when they saw the size of our house; with the girls at All Saints I knew that one wrong move on my mother’s part would have been disastrous. It’s quite possible that she wouldn’t have touched a drop while they were here, that she would have been all smiley and chatty and laughed with them, and they wouldn’t have met her coming up the stairs with that glassy look in her eyes, the oone that comes after the final few drinks. But I never took that risk, and never relented in the face of my mother’s cajoling.
Today, though, she sounds almost angry. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’
I take a gulp of tea. ‘What does it matter?’
‘It matters. Let’s just say that.’
‘No. Let’s not just say that. Tell me why it matters who walked me home last night. And why you feel you have to spy on me.’
She snaps the recipe book shut. ‘I wasn’t spying. I couldn’t sleep, and I happened to hear voices and wondered if it was you, that’s all.’ I say nothing. ‘It was Steve’s friend, wasn’t it? Steve who works for your father.’
Still I keep quiet, feeling uneasy, as though guilty, with a dim sense that somehow I’ve crossed a line that until recently I hadn’t known was there; that I’ve trodden on my mother’s toes.
‘Well, your silence says it all.’
‘So? If it was?’
She stands up and begins clearing the breakfast bar, clattering pots and plates and banging cupboard doors. ‘It’s not a good idea,’ she says, pouring water into the sink. She adds washing-up liquid and swooshes the water until it bubbles up. ‘He’s too old for you.’
‘How would you know how old he is? He came here once.’ Although, as I picture her pinning him against the wall, I think she probably did get his entire life story.
‘He just happened to tell me; we were talking about big birthdays I suppose,’ my mother says, a little defensively. ‘She turns to look at me. ‘He said that next year he’ll be thirty. He’s ten years older than you.’
My gaze slides away from her as I chew slowly on a mouthful of toast. Ten years. Nearly thirty. Older than he looks, while I look older than I am.
‘And?’ I say.
‘It’s not right.’
I swallow my toast. ‘Not right?’
‘He’d be … taking advantage.’
‘What?’ I laugh. It’s such an old-fashioned phrase, and not one that suits my mother at all. ‘Like I’m some innocent.’ She doesn’t say anything, rattling plates and cups around in the bowl. ‘And anyway, you’re making a big assumption here. He walked me home, that’s all. I haven’t got engaged to him. He just happened to come in the pub and he remembered meeting me here.’ I put the last piece of toast into my mouth, look at my watch, then sling my plate into the bowl. ‘I’m going to get some work done, and then go into town, try a few agencies.’
As I walk out of the kitchen, my mother calls,
‘Are you seeing him again?’
I pause at the bottom of the stairs. On the few occasions that I’ve ever mentioned a boy’s name, my mother has asked that question with a little note of hope in her voice. This time, she is clearly not happy at the thought that Ed is interested in me.
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘You should know he has history. You should know what you’re getting into.’
I walk back towards the kitchen. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s married, left his wife. And there’s a child, somewhere.’
I feel a jolt in my stomach. ‘A child?’
‘Yes. A little boy.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
My mother shakes her head. ‘It was something your father said.’ She’s watching my face. ‘He kept that quiet then.’
I’m suddenly annoyed. ‘I don’t see why you’re telling me all this. It’s nothing to do with you.’ I turn my back on my mother and stamp upstairs, where I start gathering books to take to the library. Halfway through, I stop to stare out of the window, watching a squirrel climb the washing-line pole to get at the bird feeder, and hearing my father’s voice: Damn squirrels, just bloody rats with a tail!
I’m thinking about Ed, having left his wife and child, and trying to work out if that means something or nothing to me. You’d think such a man would be a bit of a bastard, but I didn’t think I could say that about Ed. But then I suppose it’s like burglars. They don’t go round in a striped jumper, holding a bag with SWAG written on it, do they?
***
I have to wait two weeks for Ed to come back to the pub, this time on his own. It’s a Friday, near to closing time again, and the pub is heaving – a fug of heat and smoke and noise. I give him a quick smile as he queues at the bar; after he’s been served by Jon he stands at one end, rolling up. I feel him glance my way every so often, but I’m busy, and we don’t talk until after the bell has been rung and things slow down.
‘I weakened,’ he says, when I go over. ‘I was going to walk to the pub up the road, see if the beer’s better, but it’s too wild out there.’
‘That’s what everyone’s saying. One man said it’s like a hurricane … but then he’d had a few.’
While I wash glasses and tidy the bar, Ed chats to a very drunken man who I think is probably trying to sell him something that fell off the back of a lorry, a man who’s well known in the pub. Occasionally the landlord will exercise his muscle and throw him out, just to let him know he’s got his number, but he keeps bouncing back. Now and then Ed looks across and gives me a wink and a grin, and each time I feel a muted flutter of excitement in my belly. If nothing else, I think, he’s not avoiding me, which if he had I would have quite understood; his friend’s boss’s nineteen-year-old daughter, whose own mother flirted so outrageously with him.
When I’ve finished for the night I fetch my coat and bag from the back, and he’s still there, waiting. The drunk has gone, and the last few punters are draining their glasses.
‘I was just thinking of going on somewhere,’ he says. ‘There’s the casino in town, they have a late bar. I sometimes go with Steve, I’m a member. You could be my guest.’
There’s no ‘if you like’, or ‘it’s just a thought’. This is what I want, do you want it too, is how I hear it.
‘Okay. Why not?’ I use the pub phone to ring home, so my father won’t wonder where I am. It rings for a long time, and then I’m thrown by a strange woman’s voice saying hello on the other end.
‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s Pam.’
‘Hi Pam.’ Whoever you are. ‘It’s Eva. Can you get my dad?’ There’s a long pause. In the background I can hear music and voices, and loud laughter.
‘I can’t see him, love, not sure where he is. Or your mum. I only picked up in case it was an emergency. Is it an emergency?’
‘No. Just tell him I’ll be late, or I might stay at a friend’s house. Tell him not to worry. Will you do that?’
‘Of course I will. You enjoy yourself, love. Ta-ta.’
Outside the wind is as fierce as everyone has said. It makes me stagger at first, and Ed catches my arm to steady me. There are people bent double as they walk into it, or blown along with the wind behind them, and when I try to talk to Ed I find my breath taken away from me, the words lost. I shake my head and give up.
Ed spots a taxi and hails it, and the driver is full of how the wind is still picking up, and that someone has said there’s a tornado on the way.
‘That’s crazy,’ Ed says. ‘We don’t have tornadoes here.’
‘We do now, mate.’
We stare out of the taxi windows, fascinated by the sight of things whirling through the air and skittering across pavements – litter, old newspapers and carrier bags, snapped-off branches from trees, an inside-out umbrella, empty bottles and cans that roll into gutters. On one road a metal dustbin slides right across in front of us – the driver swerves and brakes, and the bin clips the bumper and then bounces and clangs away behind us.
‘Fuck,’ he says, and then, ‘Sorry, duck. I thought that was going to launch itself through me windscreen for a minute.’
He drops us outside the casino. I’ve never been here; it’s a square white building, with a flashing red sign and a big open square in front of it. We lean into the wind to cross this, nearly blown off our feet by a couple of strong gusts, finally tumbling through the door. Once inside the hush is extraordinary, as though someone has wrapped up all the noise of the storm and thrown it away; everything is suddenly soft and calm and quiet. I stare around the plush reception area, thinking how out of place I must look in my work clothes, but the deep-pile carpet under my feet seems to welcome me anyway. The carpet is chequered red and black, and all around there are arrangements of red flowers – carnations and roses – in black glass vases. The staff are colour-schemed too; the doormen wear lounge suits, and at the desk a Chinese woman with sleek, black hair wears a scarlet dress with a sequined collar. The dress has big, Dallas-style shoulders and is stretched tight across her slight figure; everything about her is smooth and groomed. I look down at my rather crumpled self. True, I’m all in black, and at least I’ve got my sheer, lacy shirt on tonight, over a cami, short skirt and leggings. But there’s nothing sparkly about me, and my feet look clunky in Doc Martens rather than elegant in stilettos. Ed’s wearing chinos, and with his leather jacket he’s more in keeping.
‘I don’t think this was a good idea,’ I mutter. ‘I’m not dressed right.’
‘Don’t worry. You look fine. And you’re twenty-one by the way. This is a private club with old-fashioned rules.’
The woman gives me a careful look as Ed signs us both in, but she doesn’t ask for ID. Maybe she thinks I wouldn’t dare to turn up so casually dressed if I really was underage. Ed leads me through to the bar, which is raised above the gaming room to give a view of what’s going on. He finds seats, and goes to get a bottle of red wine. While he’s gone I look down curiously at the tables. I know nothing at all about gambling; the only thing I recognise is roulette, and that’s from watching Bond movies. There are several tables with cards, and I study one game just below where I’m sitting. Each player is dealt two cards, then everyone takes a look except the banker. As the banker works the table, some players take more cards and some refuse, each time with a slight nod or a motion of their hands. It’s clear they’re playing against the banker rather than each other, and they either win some chips or throw their hand in.
‘Is that poker?’ I ask Ed when he comes back.
‘Blackjack. It’s what Steve plays. I’m more for roulette, if I’m in the mood.’
‘And are you?’ I ask, looking round the room, with its lowered voices and faces masked in concentration.
‘I don’t know. I think I just didn’t want to go back to the flat. I needed to do something, go somewhere.’
He drums his fingers on his thighs as he speaks. He seems jittery. I look at him, remembering what my mother told me, and wondering if, and when, he will tell me. But although he talks a lot about his work as a journalist – I picture him sitting in front of a typewriter, hands flying over the keys and only pausing to draw on a cigarette – and although he talks about his childhood in a suburb of Leeds – in a houseful of boys, the things they got up to sounding boisterous and fun and sometimes alarming – he gives away nothing of his recent life. He clearly loves his job, and is good at it, I realise, after I’ve been gently drawn into talking about myself. My childhood, my friends, my ambitions – he spools out questions and reels in the answers.
‘Was it a surprise to you,’ he asks, ‘when you didn’t get the grades you needed?’
I consider this. ‘A bit. I didn’t think I’d done that badly, although I knew I hadn’t worked hard enough.’
‘Too much having fun?’
This time I pause even longer. I’m sick of having to pretend; before I even speak I can feel the relief of saying out loud the things I’ve never said to anyone.
‘I didn’t want to be at home. Evenings are when my mother starts to drink. Well, to be honest, she can start any time. But evenings are when she gets argumentative with my father, and picks fights with him. And then me, if I get involved. And practically every weekend she throws one of her boozy parties and I can’t stand being around all that. It’s why I got a job where I’d be working evenings. The other nights I’d go to friends’ houses, or be out somewhere. So I never did that much revision, you see.’
I turn to look at the nearest roulette table, where a little coo of surprise has signalled someone’s good fortune, a man now grinning broadly as he scoops up a pile of chips. When I turn back Ed is watching me.
‘You’ve not had a good time of it,’ he says.
‘No. But then again, I’ve had a roof over my head and anything I asked for was mine, so it’s not all bad, is it?’ He shrugs. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ I say. ‘I’m not telling you to make you feel sorry for me. It’s just how it’s been.’
‘So how do you manage now?’ Ed asks. ‘The work for your resits?’
‘I go to my classes, and to the library. I’m pretty sure I’ll get through this time. And then I’ll be off.’ Ed raises his glass to that.
We drink the wine and then go on to whisky, another first for me. It makes me grimace, and Ed laughs at my face. Every now and then he rolls us both a cigarette, but I leave mine half-smoked, not used to their strength after the Silk Cut I sometimes buy or cadge. I’m feeling pleasantly drunk now, and comfortable with Ed; it’s as though I’ve pulled him on, like an old sweater.
It’s one-thirty in the morning when we become aware of staff doing the rounds and having a word with everyone. It’s like a hurricane outside, they’re saying. All taxis are finishing for the night, and anyone who wants to get home is advised to get one of the last ones, leaving now. The casino is closing early, they say, and already I can see that the tables are packing up – cards being folded, the roulette wheel stilled, the coloured chips stacked and boxed.
We make our way to the foyer, which by now is crowded with people shrugging into their coats and peering anxiously though the glass doors. The floodlights that illuminate the casino now also pick out things flying horizontally through the air, some of them looking more lethal than earlier. Once, what looks like the swinging bit of a metal shop sign flies past the doors and crashes into the wall at the far side of the square. Suddenly I feel a trickle of alarm. It’s becoming clear that the few remaining taxis won’t be able to take everyone, and we’re at the back of the queue. Some people are muttering about walking home, but it’s at least three miles to my house, and I don’t think I can manage that in this storm. When I say this to Ed he says I can come back to his flat and that he’ll sleep on the sofa, but, apart from any doubts I might have about that, it’s almost as far.
‘I don’t fancy walking anywhere with all this stuff flying through the air. And trees. That’s what kills people, isn’t it … falling trees?’
He doesn’t say anything; he’s staring through the doors at the wild night. Then he looks back at the waiting crowd. ‘Hang on. I’ve got to get this.’
He goes to the desk and talks to the Chinese woman, who seems to argue briefly, but finally searches around and hands him a pen and a pad of paper. I watch then as Ed moves down the queue, asking them questions, nodding as they talk, and scribbling things down; I can guess what he’s doing, and it looks like most people are eager to tell their story. At one point he goes out to a waiting taxi and I see him quizzing the driver, who leans out the window and shouts excitedly, waving his arms around. When he comes back in Ed holds one hand up to me, fingers splayed wide. Five minutes. Then he crosses to the payphone, and joins that queue. I chew on my lip, tapping my foot nervously, while the minutes tick away. The taxis are thinning out alarmingly, and little by little the groups of people either leave in one of them, or decide to take their chances on foot. Should we do that? Maybe we’ll have to.
When Ed has phoned he comes and stands beside me, squeezing into the queue so that his arm is pressed against mine. That’s when I realise I’m shivering.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks, taking hold of my hand, closing his own around it. Suddenly I’m intensely aware of how much I like being with him.
‘Sure.’
‘I just had to phone this story in. It was too good to miss.’
I shrug. ‘That’s your job. Anyway, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Look.’
Outside the two last taxis are pulling away, leaving us and everyone ahead of us stranded. Ed frowns.
‘Where do your parents think you are?’
‘At a friend’s house.’
He nods. ‘Right, let’s be logical. The taxis have gone, and walking home in this doesn’t seem like an option. How about we brave it up to Castle Square and hope to get a cab from the rank up there? It’s not too far.’
I hesitate, reluctant to go out at all, but with no other plan in my head.
‘Okay. Let’s go for it,’ I say.
The first obstacle is getting the heavy door to open far enough against the wind, and then we are practically pushed through it by a burly doorman. After that standing upright is a challenge. It takes all my strength to put one foot in front of the other, and to not pull Ed over with me every time the wind changes direction and throws us backwards or sideways. With each gust all the breath seems to be sucked right out of me. When an empty pizza box slams into my head I yell out loud; I’d never have thought cardboard could hurt so much. After what seems like miles, but is probably no more than a few hundred yards, we reach the square – only to find it deserted, empty of anything, taxis or people.
‘What do we do now?’ I shout, and then jump a mile high as a deafening crash splinters the air. Behind us, the plate-glass window of a boutique lies in pieces on the ground and, as we watch, clothes are being whisked out as if by a giant hand, whirling around in the air like some bizarre fashion show. Finally, the mannequins themselves tumble onto the floor of the window. Some bits of glass still shiver in the frame, all jagged, like little icebergs, and suddenly I imagine them being sucked up, then flying through the air and slicing into my skin.
‘Ed! We need to get back inside. We should go back to the casino.’
I turn, but Ed grabs my arm. ‘No, this way!’ He pulls me in the opposite direction.
‘Where to?’
He doesn’t answer, just tugs me along with him, and as we turn the corner I see where he’s heading. Ahead of us is the Carlton Hotel, its big gilt letters above the old metal canopy the most welcome thing I think I’ve ever seen in my life. Another crash comes from up ahead, and this time the glass from a bus shelter lies in pieces on the ground, twinkling under a street lamp. And then, as we stare, the street lamp goes out, along with all the lights in the square. There’s no moon, and the night is inky black. I feel panic bubbling up in my chest. The town is being smashed up around us, every huge gust of wind is like an assault on my body, and now we can’t even see where we’re going. Ed pulls me to him and we make our way down the street, clamped together like a pair from a three-legged race. The dark is absolute and scary, and I can hardly see where we’re treading, but as we stumble towards the hotel a few dim lights come back on inside. Ed says something about a generator, but I say I don’t care if they’re burning the furniture as long as we can be inside in the warmth and light. We climb the steps, and with amazing luck the door is unlocked; I think if it hadn’t been I would have just sat down and howled. As it is, once inside, I stand in the semi-dark of the foyer, shaking uncontrollably.
