Chapter 30
30
Liv’s place was a whole house just off Stroud Green Road. Messy and overcrowded, each room occupied by a twenty-something British man, and the hallway occupied by their fixed-gear bikes. No one ever picked up the mail that came through the slot, so you entered on a carpet of mailers and takeout menus and postcard threats about paying the TV license. Whenever I had visited last year, I’d liked it, despite the mess. This was a house where everyone was friendly and warm, where the kettle was always on the boil, where Liv and I were treated like locals, not Americans.
Of course it was a little different when I arrived with my suitcases and bags. Theo’s father’s Range Rover idling in the street behind me, far too fancy for this not-yet-gentrified neighborhood. I couldn’t afford a cab, and Theo owed me a ride, at least, after all his bullshit.
I wasn’t even sure I had a right to feel betrayed, though of course I did. He had shown me, the first day he’d introduced me around to his Highgate friends, that he didn’t have a problem with smoothing over inconvenient truths. I hadn’t minded it then, when it benefitted me.
Liv was not exactly happy to see me, but she took pity on my tearful, homeless state. Andre had told her about the council tax, so she knew about my dire finances. “When he told me how much it was, I knew you’d be in for a time,” she said. Pitying but not absolving me.
Her roommates would be out for the night. I asked if she thought Andre would come to dinner, if we invited him. I’d cook for all of us and even clean the kitchen, which was a disaster zone. “I know he’s furious with me about the council tax. But I really want to see him,” I said.
“He’s not angry, Anna,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s hurt. We both are. You just ditched us, that’s what it felt like. I had to look on Facebook just to see how you were doing.”
“I know. That’s why I need to do this.”
“I’ll invite him,” Liv said. “But are you sure you want to make dinner? Should you be spending your money buying stuff to cook for us?”
“I can cover it. This is more important,” I said. I couldn’t tackle anything else in my life—my tuition, my dissertation, my homelessness, my near-empty bank account—until I’d really made amends with Liv and Andre. I owed them that.
I put my bags upstairs in Liv’s little bedroom, next to the living room with the tawdry tiger-striped couch I’d probably be sleeping on tonight. I sat on her bed and called Muswell Hill Academy. They still owed me the whole fee I’d negotiated hard for—maybe even enough to placate Queen Mary for a while. The secretary said the headmaster hadn’t authorized my payment, and was now out of town, so I’d have to try again next week. I promised I would, in person. This was the third excuse I’d had from her, for the delay.
The gray day had cleared. I walked on the sunny side of the street down to a pawnshop on Seven Sisters Road, where I traded in the brand-new iPhone Theo had given me. I got far less cash than it was worth, but it was something, and my old phone still worked for essentials. Then back up Stroud Green Road to Woody’s, the Turkish grocer a block from Liv’s flat. I got only what I needed, and a pack of sponges. From his stool, the clerk put a small tray of handmade baklava on the belt with my ingredients, just like Liv had said he would, but I shook my head. “I can’t pay for that,” I said, surprised by how little it embarrassed me to admit this. “I’m sorry. It looks delicious.”
He nodded and packed up the rest of my groceries, then dropped the baklava into my bag anyway. “On the house,” he said, then nodded at the total on the register. I thanked him, paid, and left. Hopefully my dinner guests would be feeling as charitable as him tonight. I was in need of forgiveness, but baklava would help. It always did.
I was in the kitchen, so I could see down the hall to the door when Liv let Andre in. “Have you had a cleaner round?” he said. I’d cleared up all the mailers and vacuumed, then moved onto my big project: the kitchen, where every surface seemed to be somehow both sticky with sugar and slick with spattered cooking grease. But after Smith, I practically had a four-year degree in cleaning houses and washing dishes, so I was uniquely qualified for the filth excavation.
“What’re you making us?” Liv asked, coming into the kitchen with Andre behind her. I didn’t know if I should hug him or not, but I wanted to. I stood at the stove, pushing butter around the hot frying pan.
“I thought it was time we made Andre try American pancakes,” I said. “Since he made us the British ones.”
“You’re going to win me over with pancakes ?” Andre said. He stood in the doorway. Waiting for something.
“I’ve got lots of groveling planned, too,” I said. My cheeks had been burning since he buzzed at the door. “Maybe some begging, if there’s time.”
He came into the kitchen and gave me a small, quick hug.“We’ll make time,” he said. A teasing smile, but not his usual, relaxed one. Liv was right; I’d really hurt him, hurt our friendship.
“Liv told you I’m homeless?” I asked him.
He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Yeah, sorry to hear it. Pretty rough fall from grace, Highgate house to tiger couch.”
“That’s not even the half of it,” I said, pouring the first pancake batter into the pan. “Let me get these going, and then I’ll tell you the whole mess.”
I made them just like Mom used to—thick, fluffy, golden brown. The key, she’d told me, was to always flip them right when the bubbles in the batter start to pop. Had she known that I’d be here, someday? Poor enough that pancakes were the best dinner I could muster for the people I loved most in the world?
I was lucky; Liv already had a jug of real, imported maple syrup (in the fridge, fiercely labeled LIV ONLY ). I would never have been able to afford it here. I put the jug on the table with the stack of pancakes and the butter and sat down. Liv and Andre were talking about things at UCL, their common link apart from me. Andre had another year of research there, and Liv was hoping to be approved to start her PhD this summer.
When I sat, they turned to me expectantly. I took a deep breath. “I wish I could take you all out to a nice dinner, or somewhere fun. A big grand gesture, movie stuff. But this is all I’ve got to say sorry.” I gestured at the stack of pancakes and shook my head. “I know it’s not much, not a very impressive apology, but I’m just glad you’re both here.”
“Go on then, let’s hear it,” Andre said, spearing a pancake for his plate.
“Would you like the groveling or the begging first?” I said with a shy smile. Hoping he wasn’t too angry to banter with me in our old way.
“Oh, save that for dessert,” he said, waving me off. “I want the story first. How’d you cock up your free house?”
I put butter on my own pancake, but my stomach was tightening into a hard fist, just below my ribs. “I think I just got in a little over my head, you know? I thought I had to make this Highgate thing work for me. But it sort of blew up. Right in my face.”
I was being too vague. Liv and Andre exchanged a look of apprehension. “Did you amass some enormous gambling debt or something?” Andre said. “Mortgage a kidney?”
I smiled, but I could feel my eyes getting wet again, my throat squeezing shut. So I gave them the quick version, the one I could do without crying.
When I was done, Andre whistled admiringly at the size of my fuckup. Liv shot him a look, but I could tell she was just as shocked.
I shook my head, trying to make it make more sense than it did. “You know, when we watch Chelsea Made , it’s not the fancy parties and beautiful clothes that make it fantasy, for me. It’s how untouchable they are.” I gestured around the table. “The things we worry about here—the things my parents worried about back home—they don’t exist in that world.”
“But that’s not what it was like for you in Highgate,” Andre said. “You just gave yourself more to worry about.”
I laughed. He was right.
“But why did it matter?” Liv said. Her voice was quiet, sad. Sad for me. Probably she’d seen it—the size of the hole I must have in me, if these were the lengths I’d go to to fill it up.
“No background, no budgets, no mess, no problems. When I was with them, I could be that version of myself.” I laughed and wiped my eyes. “I think that’s why I sort of bailed on you. I could never be that version with you guys. You know I’m at least seventy-five percent problems.”
“Call it eighty,” Andre said, but his smile was sympathetic. “So what happens with them now?”
I’d texted Tess a few hours ago, to see if we could talk, but no reply. I’d heard nothing from any of them. That’s not to say it was radio silence, though: my Facebook inbox was full of people telling me I should be ashamed of myself, that I was a slag, a filthy little thief, a classless poser chav who should fuck off back to America.
“Ugh, don’t even look at that shit,” Liv said. “Those people don’t know you.”
“Still, my friends—I guess I can’t call them that anymore—they’ll think the same, won’t they? Probably worse.”
“You were a dick, sure,” Andre said. “But so were they, if they cared about the designer clothes you wore or which postcode you lived in.”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure they would have cared,” I said. It felt like the saddest thing I’d said all night. “I was too scared to find out.” I looked down at my now-cold pancake. “I’m really sorry I’ve been such a shit friend the past few months.”
“A shite friend, Anna,” Andre corrected me, his mouth quirking up, irresistibly moving toward the old smile I knew. “You were bang out of order, darling,” he said, mimicking the low, lazy vocal fry of the Chelsea Made kids. I giggled, despite myself, but he wasn’t done. “You ditched us for greener pastures,” he said, “and now the greener pastures have ditched you. It really is some reality show shit, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Andre,” Liv admonished. “Don’t you think she’s suffered enough?”
He laughed. “As far as I can tell, she’s only been suffering for about twenty-four hours.”
I looked at my watch. “Less than that. Twenty maybe?”
“I guess that’ll do, then,” he said, grinning at me. He waved at my untouched plate. “You gonna reheat that? Or is eating cold pancakes part of your penance?”
Liv put the kettle on and made tea, and we sat at the table with our mugs, catching up long after the food was gone. It wasn’t like old times, of course, and I wasn’t fully forgiven, but it felt so good, just to be there, with them. How long had it been since I’d sat at a table with friends, being completely myself? Where I hadn’t had to censor what I said, or how I acted, or what I revealed? It was a different kind of freedom than the one I’d had in Highgate.
My old phone buzzed, shimmying across the table. Pippa’s name was on the screen. “Oh,” I said, frowning at it. “The lawyer said I can’t talk to her. But I—”
“What lawyer?” Liv said. “You have a lawyer?”
I was still staring at the phone; it was still buzzing. I really wanted to answer it. “The Wilders’ lawyer who turned me out of the house.”
Andre whistled again. “You left that bit out.”
“Fuck ’em,” Liv said. “Answer it.”
I sighed and pressed the green button, put the phone up to my ear. “Pippa?”
“Yeah, hey. Where are you?”
I shook my head, confused by the question. “I’m at my friend’s house.”
“Oh, good,” she said. “I just didn’t know, when they said they’d made you leave. I didn’t know if you had a place you could go.”
My eyes were instantly damp again, ready for another round. Her worry was so much more than I deserved. “I’m okay, thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry for getting you involved in all this. Obviously, I didn’t mean for things to go this way.”
Pippa laughed. “Oh, don’t waste that shit on me. I couldn’t care less what you did with Faye’s old togs. If she cared about them, she wouldn’t have left them in a cupboard in another country for literally years.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“You know she just got jealous. All good fun until she realized Theo might actually like you. Really, now that I’m saying it, it sounds very Gossip Girl , doesn’t it? Classic Blair.”
“Yeah, actually, it does.”
“I’m just sorry she got Mum and Dad all whipped up about it. But you know how she is. She’s a master manipulator. Always working people. That’s sort of why I called.” She paused. I had never once heard Pippa consider her words like this. “I wanted to warn you. They’re going to press charges.”
I looked up at Liv and Andre, who’d been watching me and, obviously, listening to Pippa’s voice through the phone. Their faces were as stricken as mine. “For—for theft?” I asked. I would never be approved for a visa to stay if I was charged with a crime. “I didn’t steal anything.”
Pippa huffed. “Faye convinced Mum it’s actually fraud, you pretending and everything. The solicitor just went along with it. Paid by the hour, isn’t he? He said in the UK you can be charged with fraud even if you didn’t take anything. Just the deception itself is grounds enough, if they can show intent.”
I took the phone away from my ear and looked at it, as if it might show me something that made sense of what Pippa was saying. Peripherally, I saw Liv and Andre look at each other in horror.
“Anna?” Pippa’s voice came as if from a great distance. “Did you get all that?”
I put the phone back to my ear. “Yeah, thanks, Pippa. Thanks for the heads-up. It’s a big help.” It wasn’t, actually—what could I do, get a lawyer of my own?—but she’d been kind to call. To put me on alert.
“I’ve got to run,” she said. “I’m not supposed to talk to you. You know the bullshit. Text me if you want, though, no one will know.”
“Okay,” I said. But that was impossible. If there were going to be charges, there would likely be phone records, text messages. It would only look worse if I was staying in contact with Pippa, a minor, against her parents’ wishes. The best thing she could do was forget about me. “Thank you, Pippa.” I said. “Enjoy your summer holidays.”