Chapter 9
It’s sometime in the week, just as I am trying to revitalize a few bits of stale baguette into lunch of some kind for my siblings and me, when the letterbox flaps.
And there it is. Lowe’s letter, on the hallway floor of 251 Palace Road.
It’s a regular envelope, one of those plain ones and it’s an outsider – too clean to be in our house – a feather from a dove that has found itself in a circle of fresh cowpat. My name heavily drawn in pencil lead, all in capital letters, at a slant, scrawled with a certain flare that suggests Lowe would maybe quite like to spray his tag on a railway bridge.
I know what’s inside by its rectangle edges and the way it rattles: the tape.
And so much promise.
This is what Sugababes meant by overload, isn’t it?
My stomach lurches as I hold the letter close to my chest. My beaded bracelets tremble.
I forget about food for maybe the first time in my life and hurtle up the stairs to my messy attic bedroom and close the door behind us. Us being Lowe’s letter and me. My first thought is OH LORD. My second thought is Bianca. This is wrong. I shouldn’t be receiving a letter – OK, let’s go ahead and call it a love letter – from Lowe. It would make me a really awful friend. But so far everything has been very ‘above board’; the lines are clear. I just have to make sure I stay firmly in the friend lane and not get carried away with the idea of it evolving into anything more. I’m pretty sure I can rely on my own insecurities to make sure that happens anyway. And my last thought is my mum would be so mad if she knew. Not because I’m talking to a boy but that I’m allowing myself to get caught up in the romance of it all. Writing to a guy who called me the pretty one. And then laughed. Who called me cute. Who sang to me. And sent me a mix tape. Pathetic, she’d think. Shallow, beneath me. Who wants to be called pretty? That’s not a compliment. Boys that age only want one thing.’
I see him buying the stamp, licking the envelope down with the dots on his wet pink tongue, walking to the post box and pushing my letter inside with all the bills and birthday cards. The thought of him taking the time out of his day for me flips my stomach over a thousand times.
The tape isn’t in a box. It tumbles out onto my lap. I leap back like it’s scorching hot.
I stare at the greying plastic case, the shiny ribbon and spirals. I feel absolutely sick. I’ve never seen an object so beautiful.
‘ELLA!’ Violet shouts up. ‘What the hell are we doing with this bread then?’
‘I’M COMING, JUST WAIT!’ I roar.
‘WE’RE STARVING!’
After barging down the stairs, storming into the kitchen, slamming the stiff loaf onto the table with a tub of butter and a block of stale cheese that has cracks like Dad’s heel after football and blue bits that also don’t look that dissimilar to Dad’s feet after football, I say ‘There!’
I charge out again towards heaven …
‘GAWD, ALRIGHT … ’ Violet digs, ‘Has this got anything to do with why you’re playing Jennifer Lopez on repeat?’
‘GRRR! SHUT UP! And I DON’T listen to J.LO! AS IF!’ I definitely, definitely do.
The letter itself is folded into three sections, neatly, like Lowe’s taken his time and really thought about it. It’s all on blank A4 paper. I rip it open it too fast. I wish I could have slowed down but I have terrible patience. My jaw is slack. I become hot and cold. Very clammy. Very un-calm. Inside are more of the gruff silver lines from the pencil, which makes me think he might have had more than one go at it – a practice letter; aw, he rehearsed. I try and discipline my eyes to not read a word. Not yet. I want to savour every bit.
The first thing I do is smell the letter, of course, to try and capture some kind of essence of Lowe, to breathe him in. I want to get to know him, who he is, what his house smells like.
Cold office paper. Zero giveaways.
It opens TO ELLA also in pencil, so he could rub out mistakes. My name underlined twice. And a firm full stop.
The letter begins with the fact he’s left-handed. Probably dyslexic, he adds. And new to letter writing. He goes on to say that – as promised – here are the songs on the cassette, with a track listing. I want to read that section slowly, for maximum impact, song by song, whilst listening to the music to see if there are any clues about his feelings, why he chose each song – the lyrics, the order, the story he’s telling through the guise of music. Then I will, like a scientist, analyse the hell out of every single damn bit of evidence before me. Hunt for love like a hound.
He says it woz really nice meetin me and c’yin me again and dat he hopes to c me again soon.
OK, all of this can be forgiven. It’s just to look cool.
From Loweand a definite X
At the bottom corner, he’s written his own address: Orchard Road. Which I let my eyes feast on. A garden of fruit trees grows in my mind.
On the tape is a thin white sticker saying FOR ELLA x.
I run my stubby, bitten-down finger over the letters E-L-L-A and put the tape in the player. It’s a fresh tape, one he’s bought maybe? No box though? Risky. He’s too cool for a box. Side A, first. I push my finger down on the Play button, slowly. It crunches robotically, clunks into gear and I hear the muffled sound of something starting …
Ecstasy.
All day and all night I listen to that tape: Side A, Side B. The stereo my life support machine. If the tape ribbon comes loose I panic, like my own heart has stopped beating, and resuscitate, perform emergency open-heart surgery, winding the ribbon back with the end of a pencil. Some of these songs I already know and that must mean we’re destined. It is fate, see? I identify every instrument, meditate on every lyric – I write them out like I’m revising for an exam about them, pressing pause-play-rewind. If the words are unclear, I make up new (probably better) lyrics and sing them out loud. Some of the songs are not about love at all yet it doesn’t take much invention to crowbar myself into believing they actually are. I use association techniques, bleeding the metaphors dryyyyy to make it relate to us. Time – us, home – us, travel – us, nature – us. Death – Duh! Us. Us. US. I bangarang that tape around the cracked walls of our house on repeat. I wear that tape to death.
I dress up. For who? Me. In the mirror, I lip-sync the life out of every word. My bedroom is a stage. My books and the posters on my wall, the crowd.
‘Gross. Get a life,’ Violet sneers but she doesn’t get it. For she isn’t in love.
I know the tape off by heart – the gaps of quiet between each song, the way the music lifts up and dies down.
I FUCKING LIVE FOR IT.
He didn’t ask but it’s my turn to make a tape now. Where to begin? Dad usually has loads of blank tapes. I knock on the door of the downstairs room he hangs out in. With no response, I turn the screw-driver door handle and I’m quite surprised to see he’s created his own little bedsit down here. Maybe because my little brother Sonny sleeps with Mum most nights like a child shaped cock-block I didn’t realize how out of control it’d become? Now it’s the only place in the house that feels tidy and neat – it’s like Dad’s quarantined from our infection. Like an older brother or a down-and-out uncle.
I shouldn’t really just take a blank tape from Dad’s shelf without asking but what better purpose for a blank tape than for his eldest to record her deepest, innermost feelings and then post it to a boy she hardly even knows? I take a few CDs too. This blank tape is really great because it’s in a clear Perspex box with a piece of lined and numbered card to write your track listing on like a legit musician. The other thing I love is the spine. You can make a name for your playlist, so if it was lined up with real tapes, you would see it. Certified. I only have one shot – this is my big gig, these songs my weapons of choice. What will I open with? I don’t want to peak too soon. How do I balance the humour with the emotion? How will I close?
The tape results in a messy collage of Dad’s punk, soul and Motown, my grunge and rock, plus some cool-ish pop (for comedy and irony). Fortunately, I have all the compilation CDs that come free with magazines too to chub it out to make me look eclectic. Some of the songs I haven’t even heard, but I know the band names and maybe they’ll make me sound cool? Other songs, like I imagine him doing, I choose deliberately, with lyrics that will stir something, make him think of me. There’s one song on there that says everything I want to say, the simplicity and the complication. Will he find it? Will he even get that far? Will he listen to the tape with the intensity that I’ve used to make it? (Impossible.)
Now comes the easy bit: writing back. We don’t have a stack of fresh A4, so I tear lined paper from my school ring binder at speed, which takes off half the spring with my eager ripping. I would have preferred a fancy fountain pen but I don’t have one and I’m NOT about to use my school Parker pen, am I? Ew. Not after he’s used this lovely pure pencil. So, I take Mum’s green Biro (Mum’s the only person in the world to use green Biro) and begin.
I make sure not to write anything too cringe or revealing so he can’t use it against me in the future, in case we end up as bitter exes. I draw little cartoons of me listening to the tape and speech bubbles saying words that might sound cool. I tell him some facts about myself – that I ate superglue as a baby, that my favourite drink is Strawberry Ribena. I write: Some people think grunge music is about feeling sorry for yourself but I think it’s about sticking up for yourself. Sorry for being a philosopher. I sprinkle in a flavour of my poetry – Rossetti or Dido could never. I add my phone number at the bottom with an H: for house phone and an M: for mobile like it’s a business card. And then, I spray the whole thing with perfume. I don’t use the Jennifer Lopez perfume because I want this to be a classic romantic love letter – one that will be showcased in museums to celebrate my life once I’m a dead author – Body Shop ‘White Musk’ it is. But the perfume leaves oily marks on the paper as though I’ve reread the letter back whilst eating a bag of chips. Fuming.
I rewrite the entire thing, ensuring I retain the same spontaneity the first letter had. Trying not to sound forced or repetitive. This time I spray the tape case in the White Musk instead.
Then I realize we don’t have a stupid envelope. Or a stamp. Drat. I try out the word to sound like a Victorian poet but no. Fuck is better. I scrounge for coins down the back of the sofa, fruit bowl and in my school blazer.
And by dusk, yes I said dusk, my first love letter is ready to go.
But it won’t be my last.