Chapter 8
EIGHT
I didn’t go to see the house with Orla that day. In fact, I didn’t see it at all until two weeks later. I left her outside the newsagent, taking her number and the address on Damask Square, thanking her and saying that I’d give her a call.
But somehow I couldn’t persuade myself to do that. Part of me – the sensible part, I suppose – told me that she could be crazy, she could be a fantasist, she could be a people trafficker and the next thing I knew I’d be imprisoned in some Soho walk-up servicing twenty men a day, guarded by a Maltese thug with a firearm, my passport hidden in a safe somewhere amid bundles of cash and cocaine.
But there was another part of me that felt differently – a bolder, more adventurous part that told me I was worth more than slinking around people who’d treated me badly, that if I flounced out leaving my deposit to cover one month of my remaining rental contract and Samantha to cover the other, it was no less than she deserved.
So, for two weeks I dithered. For the first week, I kept my head down, went to work, ate my meals in silence at the kitchen table, and went out with colleagues whenever anyone suggested a pint after work. I spent one Saturday night at Emily’s, sharing her double bed after an evening of wine, box sets and pick and mix.
It was only the next morning, over boiled eggs and soldiers – Emily’s hangover cure of choice – that I told her about Orla and the house on Damask Square.
‘Oh my God, you should totally live there!’ she said. ‘It would be amazing! It would be an adventure. It would be so cheap.’
I explained my fears about the Soho walk-up and the sex slavery.
‘What?’ she laughed incredulously. ‘Who are you and what have you done with my rational friend Livvie?’
‘That’s the whole point,’ I countered. ‘It’s not rational. Staying where I am is the rational thing to do.’
‘No, it’s not. Sometimes the rational thing to do is to take a leap of faith. What’s the worst that could happen? It doesn’t work out and you move in here with me once Carl and Hannah have headed off to Thailand.’
The following Sunday morning, I got dressed and headed downstairs, hearing Samantha, Amanda and Gary’s chatter and the clink of spoons on coffee mugs immediately silence when they heard my feet on the stairs. Their three pairs of eyes watched me with cold suspicion as I put on my coat, said a cheery goodbye and let myself out.
As the door was closing, I heard Gary say something and all of them giggle.
Feeling suddenly lighter, as if I was breathing different air from that inside the house, I walked to the end of the street and waited for a bus. I could have walked, as I had before, but this felt more appropriate, somehow – more normal. Less desperate.
Twenty minutes later, I stepped off at the intersection where the two corner shops stood opposite each other. My A–Z was open in my hand, as it had been throughout my journey, although I’d already memorised the route to Damask Square. I turned off the main road into a side street lined with 1960s red-brick terraced houses, two newer grey concrete tower blocks looming above them. Then I turned again, following a path through a small park where children played on swings and slides in the spring sunshine and a group of teenage boys kicked a football over the muddy grass.
Another turn, and the square opened up in front of me. A graffiti-covered street sign confirmed that I’d reached my destination: Damask Square.
I could see how beautiful it must once have been. There were perhaps a dozen tall houses arranged on two of its sides, the third open to the park and the fourth taken up by yet another newer low-rise building. In the centre was a garden bordered by black iron railings, a plane tree laden with acid-green spring foliage shading the grass where daffodils and crocuses bloomed. It must once have been a full square, I realised – probably German bombs had destroyed the rest.
The older houses were tall and elegant, four or five storeys high, taller than the block of flats. Their roofs were grey slate, their fronts white stucco, mostly worn and flaking. Pillared porticos sheltered their front doors and sash windows overlooked the garden – or they would have done, except most of them were shaded with blinds, shutters or in one case sheets of curling newspaper.
Slowly, I made my way around the square, the garden proving inaccessible owing to a padlocked gate. Number five was identifiable only because it was between number four and number six – it was only when I reached it that I could see the faint ghost of less-faded red paint on its door where the brass numeral must once have been fixed.
The door knocker was long gone, too, and the letterbox was an empty gap in the wood, disconcerting as a toothless mouth.
I raised my hand and knocked, the wood hard and heavy enough to bruise my knuckles before they made any significant sound.
Then I waited, feeling the sunshine warm on my back. Behind me, somewhere up in the branches of the plane tree, I could hear a magpie’s cackling call; the voices of the children playing were distant now and the hum of traffic on the main road almost inaudible.
I’d almost given up and decided to send a text when Orla opened the door.
She was wearing what I was almost sure were the same camel-coloured wide-legged trousers I’d seen below her coat the first time I met her, and a bright red jumper in fine wool. There were small gold hoops in her ears and her short hair was tousled, her face free of make-up.
She didn’t seem at all surprised to see me.
‘Livvie.’ She smiled. ‘I hoped you’d come and here you are.’
‘Hello.’ I felt an answering smile over my face. ‘I thought – I wanted to come and see the room.’
‘Of course. Come in. I’m glad you waited, because it’s all ready for you now.’
She turned and I followed her into the long hallway. A flight of stairs rose above us at its end and I caught a glimpse of a black cat sitting watching us, before it darted away.
To my left, I could see a closed door; to my right, another door leading to a room that seemed to be little more than a building site – or a bomb site. Planks of wood were propped up against the walls, cans of paint littered the floor and a ladder stood in the centre of it all like a heron watching over a pond.
‘Don’t look,’ Orla urged. ‘It gets better.’
So I averted my eyes from the room that opened up ahead of us, focusing instead on the stairs – bare wood, scuffed and paint-stained, each one dipping in the centre where centuries of feet had trod.
‘So when did you buy the house?’ I asked as we began to climb.
‘I didn’t.’ Orla’s voice came back to me over the sound of a power tool whirring to life somewhere. ‘I inherited it. It was my grandmother’s. Well, my grandparents’, but he’s been dead more than fifty years. To be honest I barely knew it existed – my grandmother never mentioned it. I think she was distressed by its… by what happened here. I was abroad when she died and not expecting anything to come to me, anyway, so it took a while for her solicitors to…’
The noise increased and I couldn’t catch what she said next, so I answered, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’ Orla led the way on to a landing. More doors opened up off it, and I could see rooms that must once have been grand and spacious but were now poky, divided up by makeshift walls into little more than cubbyholes. There were curling carpet tiles on the floor and suspended tiles on the ceilings, many of them suspended only by a corner.
‘Have you lived here long?’ I asked as she turned and began climbing yet another flight of stairs.
‘It’s been several weeks now. To be honest, I was a bit overwhelmed when I first saw it – I didn’t know where to begin. But then Luke came, and it feels – not achievable, exactly, but not entirely unachievable either.’
‘It’s quite the project,’ I said, remembering the TV show Emily was addicted to watching. ‘A real Grand Design.’
Orla laughed. ‘That’s what Luke said. But we’re a long way from designing anything. Now, here’s the bathroom – it’s one of the better bits.’
She tapped on a closed door, presumably in case Luke – whoever he was – was inside, waited a second and then opened it. I gasped. The bathroom was bigger than my bedroom in the house in Mile End, but almost entirely empty. The floor was bare boards, the walls painted white. Sunlight poured in through a vast window that overlooked the garden – a tangle of brambles and trees, somewhere in which I could hear a blackbird singing. There was a vast claw-footed cast-iron bathtub in the middle of the room with a shower above it, rust staining its surface beneath the taps. Underneath the window was a porcelain washbasin on an ornate stand. Against the wall was a toilet with a wooden seat, a long flush chain hanging from its cistern.
Everything was spotlessly clean.
‘We had to get the basics sorted first.’ Hands on hips, Orla surveyed the room with satisfaction. ‘You’d have to share this with Luke and me for the time being, until we get the next one done.’
‘Is it just the two of you living here?’ I asked, hoping the answer could shed some light on who Luke actually was.
But it didn’t. ‘Us and Maud, the cat. I heard her crying in the street one night and invited her in, and she hasn’t left. Would you like to see your— the room that would be yours?’
‘Yes, please.’
I turned and stepped aside, waiting for Orla to take the lead again. She climbed another half-flight of stairs, this time to a landing with four doors leading off it. All were ajar, but she pushed open the one that I worked out would be at the front of the house, on the right-hand side.
‘Here you are.’ There was satisfaction in her voice – pride, even.
And I could see why. Even bigger than the bathroom, this room had the same wide hardwood floorboards, but these had been polished as well as sanded. Their smooth golden surface reflected the blue sky visible through two more sash windows. The walls were white with cornice mouldings, the ceiling high with a plaster rose at its centre. The smells of sawdust and paint hung in the air.
‘I love it,’ I gasped. ‘It’s beautiful. You must be so proud.’
I could hardly get the words out. Downstairs, the glimpses of dirt and disorder I’d caught had made me decide that this was a non-starter – however intrigued I was by Orla, I couldn’t live in such a place. But now I’d changed my mind completely.
This wasn’t a house that was slowly succumbing to neglect and apathy, sinking into ruin under the weight of forces stronger than I could ever be. I knew what that looked like, and it wasn’t this.
This was a home emerging from a long sleep like a butterfly from its chrysalis, not yet perfectly formed but on its way.
‘You’ll take it, then?’ Orla looked startled, as if this was the last response she’d been expecting.
‘Yes. Yes, I really will. If I can, that is. How much were you thinking…?’
Orla told me. The rent was lower than I’d expected – lower than I’d been paying before.
‘And there’s no deposit, of course,’ she added. ‘We couldn’t charge you for damages – it’s already damaged enough!’
‘Yes,’ I said again, without hesitation. ‘Yes, please. I’ll need to get my things and probably take a taxi over.’
I paused, my mind racing. It was Sunday, almost lunchtime. If I hurried, I could be here by evening, sleeping tonight in this room.
‘Unless that’s too soon?’ I added.
‘I could help.’ A deep voice startled me and I turned around.
In the doorway stood a man who made my breath catch. He was tall and lean with olive skin, wearing paint-stained jeans that clung to his narrow hips. A grey sweatshirt with a hole below the neckline revealed a glimpse of his collarbone. But it was his eyes that held me – grey or palest blue, startling against his dark complexion. When he smiled, the warmth of it reached those eyes and his voice was warm too.
‘I could take you back to your place in my van,’ he went on. ‘Help carry your stuff. Unless you travel light, that is.’
‘I’d love some help,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
Unusually for me, I didn’t hesitate at all. And I didn’t feel as if I was being rushed into something – quite the opposite. I felt as if I was rushing – hurrying eagerly towards a future that might hold anything at all.
Except it would definitely hold Orla – Orla and Luke.
At least, that’s what I believed then.