Chapter 10
TEN
I remember the time before Beatrice arrived as a kind of halcyon period – the calm before the storm. But that’s not really how it was. It was only a week, after all, between me moving in and us meeting her, and the honeymoon phase continued for quite a while afterwards.
Still, that Sunday stands out in my mind like a kind of landmark – a full stop between before and after.
The ‘before time’ began when Luke drove me to Mile End to pick up my things. The drive wasn’t long – only about fifteen minutes, because it was Sunday afternoon and the traffic on the Mile End Road was light. All the way, we chatted. He told me about his card in the newsagent’s window, how he’d studied fine art at university, then briefly worked as a graphic designer.
‘But I hated it,’ he said. ‘Stuck in front of a computer all day. No disrespect to graphic designers, but it didn’t feel like art at all, really.’
So he had slipped back into doing the construction work he’d learned from his uncle. Orla’s house, he said, had seemed like a golden opportunity: free accommodation and a wage that was enough to pay for his other needs, in return for work that didn’t look likely to dry up any time soon.
‘That place is a project and a half,’ he said, his hand lifting from the steering wheel to push back his glossy hair. ‘And I won’t be able to leave her in the lurch before it’s finished.’
‘You’ll be an expert in house restoration by then,’ I remarked. ‘You’ll be able to start your own property development business and make a fortune.’
He laughed, and I saw the flash of his white teeth. ‘God, no. I want to transform buildings in a different way.’
‘What’s that then?’
He hesitated, then said shyly, ‘Street art. You know, like?—’
‘Banksy?’
‘Banksy’s a wanker. All that anonymity and secret squirrel bollocks.’
‘His art’s worth a fortune, though.’
‘Maybe, but… I want to do different stuff. Stuff that properly transforms urban communities. Makes them more relevant and vibrant for the people that live there.’
I glanced sideways at him. His eyes were on the road but he was smiling, as if he was looking at something far more beautiful than the traffic on the Mile End Road.
‘Now I’m sounding like a wanker myself.’ He laughed. ‘I told Orla all this when I first spoke to her – I reckon it’s partly why she gave me the gig. Like she’d rather have a struggling artist working on her house than a proper builder. Anyway, what about you?’
I told him that my degree was in English literature, but because I didn’t want to be an academic or a teacher, I’d taken the first job that was offered to me, which happened to be as a junior HR assistant in the head office of a high street bank.
‘They’ve got me working on the staff newsletter,’ I admitted. ‘Not exactly Shakespeare. Especially as it’s all outsourced to an agency, and all I seem to do is chase people for information, then chase them again to sign it off. We’re still working on the March edition, although we’ll be lucky to get it out before the end of May.’
We’d arrived at the road where the house – my old house, as I already thought of it – was by this point. I directed him to turn right and he found a parking spot.
‘Want me to come in with you?’ he asked.
I hesitated. It would only take a few minutes to pack my things – clothes, toiletries and books. I didn’t particularly want him to see the dirty laundry I hadn’t got around to washing – but also, I felt that he’d act as a kind of bodyguard, protecting me from Samantha’s malice.
And so it proved. When I opened the door and Luke stepped in behind me, she and Gary emerged from the kitchen, saw him and watched in wide-eyed silence as we walked up the stairs together. No snide giggles followed us, and when we returned downstairs ten minutes later, Luke carrying the suitcase holding my clothes, me with already splitting supermarket carrier bags of books in each hand, they stayed silent.
‘I’m moving out,’ I said unnecessarily. ‘You can keep my deposit, but I won’t be paying next month’s rent.’
They nodded mutely. Luke stepped out and I followed him, locking the door behind me then posting the keys back through the letterbox.
‘Chatty pair,’ Luke said, his mouth quirking into that half-smile I was already learning to watch for. ‘Must’ve been a laugh riot living with them.’
‘Like you won’t believe,’ I said, and the two of us burst out laughing.
I couldn’t help wondering whether Samantha and Gary could hear our laughter through the closed door. I hoped they could.
After that, things fell into a routine quickly. When I left for work, Luke and Orla would already be up, Luke scraping away decades of old wallpaper, Orla tackling the forest of weeds outside, Maud the cat perched on what remained of the garden wall watching her.
By the time I returned home, there’d be progress to be shown and comment on: a struggling rose bush uncovered from a net of brambles, carpet tiles torn up from the floorboards in one of the first-floor rooms, a skip outside that had been organised by Luke and paid for by Orla.
We ate together in the evenings, vegetarian food cooked by Orla. The kitchen, as she’d warned me, was one of the worst rooms in the house, the cupboards sagging off the walls, an ancient cooker with spiral hotplates and a rusty fridge its only amenities. But Orla’s cooking was delicious and it felt almost luxurious to sit together at the shabby, Formica-topped table on rickety wooden chairs, eating and talking, Orla or Luke or sometimes both of them with a sketchbook on the table next to their plate.
It felt right. It felt like being a family. It got so as five o’clock approached, I looked forward to leaving the office and coming home.
When Saturday came, I was woken by the sound of Luke’s feet on the stairs –already, I knew his heavy tread, quite distinct from Orla’s lighter footsteps and Maud’s almost inaudible padding. Then I heard him whistling and a low crunching sound as he connected a power tool to a plug socket.
Then the whirr of his drill started up.
For a moment, I was annoyed – I never signed up for this! It’s eight thirty on a Saturday, for God’s sake. But my irritation was short-lived and I found myself unable to get back to sleep, not because of the noise but because I wanted to get up and see what was going on.
I pulled on faded jeans and a T-shirt and left my room. Orla’s and Luke’s bedroom doors were open, both their beds neatly made. I could smell eggs frying and hear the sizzle of a pan when the drilling noise paused.
I descended the stairs to the first floor and found Luke wrestling with a large panel of dry-walling even taller than he was.
‘Need a hand?’ I asked.
‘I’m all good. It’s not heavy.’ His voice was muffled, his face invisible. I could only see his strong, paint-stained hands gripping the edges of the board.
‘Yeah, right. It’s just awkward. That’s what they all say.’
He put the board down and laughed. ‘Go on then. If you could grab the other side, we’ll get this downstairs and into the skip.’
I obeyed, and together we managed to do as he’d suggested, heaving the board up and hearing it crash on to the pile of rubble that already half-filled the skip.
I dusted off my hands. ‘What’s next?’
‘You don’t have to do this, Livvie.’ He smiled at me. ‘Unlike me, you’re paying full whack.’
‘But I want to help.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Course. I’ve done my manual handling training at work. I can carry boxes of photocopy paper without putting my back out, and everything.’
‘Sold.’ He pushed his hair back from his eyes. It was dark brown with lighter streaks that I assumed had been left by the sun, not by a hairdresser. ‘Let’s grab some breakfast first, though. Orla said it would be ten minutes, about ten minutes ago.’
So we ate and then returned to work, and on Sunday I found myself up early, ready to start all over again. That day we spent stripping wallpaper and removing floor tiles, because Luke said he didn’t want to do anything too noisy that would annoy the neighbours. Instead of fried eggs on toast, Orla produced a huge vat of minestrone soup for lunch, with homemade soda bread and butter. Then we began again.
And, at about half past three, I saw her.
I didn’t pay much attention to her at first. All day, a steady trickle of people had been passing the house: the Hossain family, who rented one of the flats opposite; a group of students on their way to the park for a picnic, laden with cool boxes and blankets; a couple of chefs from one of the restaurants on nearby Brick Lane standing in the sun having a smoke break.
But this girl was different. She was walking like she didn’t know where she was going – not strolling aimlessly or striding purposefully but pacing slowly, looking up at the tall houses and sideways at the railed-off square, then down at the map in her hand.
She looked about my age, but there the resemblance between us ended. I was tall and thin, cursed with the kind of boyish figure that was all knees and elbows. She was smaller and curvy, feminine even in her jeans and jumper. My hair was brown and not particularly clean, scraped back from my face with an old velvet scrunchie. Hers was blonde and in the sort of ponytail that involves tongs, back-combing and a tendril of hair wrapped and pinned to conceal the bobble.
Everything about her, from her glowing skin to her perfectly fitting jeans to the diamond stud I could see in her bellybutton between the waistband of her jeans and the hem of her spotless white jumper, spoke of money and time spent on her appearance.
I realised that instead of following Luke back inside the house, I was standing next to the skip, staring at her. As if she could feel my eyes on her, she stopped and looked back at me. Then the cadence of her steps changed and she came towards me, walking purposefully now, as if she knew where she was going when she hadn’t before.
‘Hi.’ She walked up to me, pushing her sunglasses up to reveal china-blue eyes. ‘This is Damask Square, right?’
She pronounced it differently from how I did, the ‘a’ drawn out to almost a drawl. American? I wondered.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I was just looking at the house. Are there any other big houses around here or are these the only ones?’
‘The house?’ I could feel sweat trickling down from my hairline and wiped it away, conscious of my grubby hands. ‘There aren’t any others like this that I know of. Not as big, anyway. But I’ve only lived here a week.’
‘You’re renovating it?’ she asked, not that she needed to, given the skip and Luke emerging once more from the front door, lugging a rusty metal filing cabinet.
‘Our landlady is,’ I said. ‘I’m just helping out. I rent a room here.’
‘A room?’ She took a step closer to me, her expression suddenly eager, as if she was about to push past me and dart up the stairs. ‘As it happens, I’m looking for a room to rent.’
‘Then maybe you should come in.’ The words left my mouth, but for some reason, I felt reluctant to let her in – like I’d have any say in the matter. ‘You could speak to Orla, our landlady.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
She paused, the look of avid curiosity passing over her face again. ‘Orla who?’
‘Orla Clifford.’
‘Oh.’ Briefly, her face fell. But then she smiled and walked past me and Luke, in through the front door.
And in that moment, everything changed for all of us.