Chapter 31
Come Friday afternoon, she hadn’t seen Jasper all day. She ignored the nagging disappointment at not being able to shoot the shit with him. She had, however, spent a good deal of time with Tasha, of which he would doubtless disapprove, so perhaps it was better their paths hadn’t crossed.
She was increasingly surprised by what good company Tasha was. The girl was also incredibly resourceful, far more than even she had been at that age. Inspired by the gardening session they’d had that week, Tasha had persuaded Gayle to let her assist in making some raised beds out of old discarded pallets. For once, Simone had brought in suitable clothing for a day of DIY – a tatty pair of combat trousers and an old vest that had seen better days.
‘You could almost pass for homeless,’ the girl joked.
‘Gee, thanks!’ She’d sweated off the day’s make-up, and her damp hair was piled on her head in a messy topknot. Still, they’d made something from nothing, and it felt good.
‘I’m parched,’ she told the girl. ‘Do you need some water?’
‘No. I’m going to start digging.’
‘Okay, back in a bit.’
She’d stupidly left her water bottle in the dining room when they’d had lunch, so she traipsed back there. But when she entered the room, she found it occupied by a motley group of women sitting in a small circle.
‘Oh, sorry, I…’ she hesitated. Should she grab the water bottle or leave them to it? She hovered by the door, indecisive.
‘Are you new here?’ A middle-aged woman stepped forward. Her hair was dyed an unnatural jet-black colour, making her skin look bilious.
‘Yes.’ She supposed two weeks was still relatively new.
‘I’m Mandy. Come in. We won’t bite.’
‘Cheryl might,’ someone else said.
A stick-thin woman with a face like a boxer – presumably Cheryl – growled.
Mandy waved a dismissive hand. ‘D’you wanna drink?’
‘No, really, I’m fine, I was just going to get some water.’
‘Sit yourself down.’ Mandy gently pulled her towards one of the chairs. ‘I’ll get you one.’
Mandy clearly assumed she was here for … whatever this was.
‘You’re very sweet,’ she told her, ‘but I shouldn’t be here. I’m not homeless.’
‘Me neither,’ said Mandy. ‘Not anymore anyways.’
Cheryl tutted. Which must have been hard, because her two front teeth were missing.
‘Still good to come for the sessions,’ said Mandy. ‘This is a safe space.’
Simone pulled away from her. ‘There’s been a mistake.’
‘Hey.’ Mandy took her arm again. ‘We’ve all been there. It’s tough being the new person.’
‘But—’
‘Sit the fuck down, for fuck’s sake!’ Cheryl barked with such ferocity that she immediately sat the fuck down.
‘Cheryl’s not been coming long,’ explained Mandy, ‘but she’ll get there.’
‘I’m fucking angry, not deaf!’ snarled Cheryl, spittle escaping from between the gap in her gnashers.
Mandy shrugged and fetched Simone a water. She was being very lovely for a woman who didn’t understand the appropriate hair colour to complexion ratio. Her brain scrabbled for a solution. Maybe she’d have some of the drink, then make her escape by pretending to need the toilet.
‘We’re just waiting on Doctor Adams,’ said Mandy.
Who was Doctor Adams, and what were these women here for? She didn’t have to wait long for the answer, because at that moment, the door to the dining room opened.
Mandy tapped her on the arm. ‘Here he is.’
There he was.
Dr Jasper Adams clocked Simone. Simone clocked Doctor Jasper Adams. Both of their faces clocked up a compelling WTAF look.
‘Got a newcomer,’ Mandy told him.
‘So I see.’ His mind was clearly going through similar convolutions to the ones Simone’s was.
‘Hello,’ he said uncertainly.
‘Hello,’ she said back.
‘I’ll need to take some details, so if you can perhaps come over to the table for a second.’
Once at the far side of the room, he went through the motions of handing her a form to complete. ‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered.
‘It’s a horrible misunderstanding.’ She took a pen from him. ‘Cheryl shouted at me and I didn’t know what to do!’
‘Shit!’
It was only the second time she’d seen him remotely frazzled.
‘What are they here for?’
‘Anger management. It’s a talking therapy session to get them to deal with their problems without resorting to maladaptive coping mechanisms.’
‘Like aggressively shouting at me?’
‘They have trust issues.’
‘They’ll have even more if they find out who I really am.’
‘Double shit.’
She completed the paperwork. There were audible signs of restlessness behind her: a chair leg scraping across the floor, someone coughing, Cheryl shouting at whoever was coughing to cover their fucking mouth, they weren’t five.
‘I could just leave,’ she said.
‘It’ll make them think they can all go.’
‘So I have to stay?’
‘We’re making really good progress.’
Cheryl was pacing like a caged tiger, ready to rip the innards out of someone.
‘Really?’
‘Shh,’ he said.
‘Okay, Doctor, what do you suggest?’
‘It’s probably best if you stay.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘It’s only an hour. Just sit, listen, and avoid saying anything.’
‘That shouldn’t be a problem.’
And that would have all been fine if, at precisely fifty-three minutes in (she was counting), Cheryl hadn’t become overwhelmingly annoyed at her continued muteness.
‘What about Little Miss Silent over there. What’s your story?’
The women had been describing how they came to be homeless, a depressingly vivid catalogue of abuse, domestic violence and addiction that had been hard to hear. One of the women had been forced into prostitution by her own mother. Each story was a layer of shit in the already massive shit sandwich life had served up for them.
She turned to Jasper, panicked.
‘Now, Cheryl,’ he said, ‘it’s Simone’s first time with us. If she’s not ready to share her story, she doesn’t have to.’
But Cheryl wasn’t taking no for an answer. Even Mandy seemed keen to hear what she had to say.
‘Don’t be scared,’ she said, patting Simone on the shoulder like she was a child. ‘It’s good to talk.’
Jasper cast her a look that she couldn’t interpret.
‘In your own time,’ shouted Cheryl, which tonally she took to mean tell us your sodding story now or you might lose your front teeth too.
She surveyed the women’s faces, uncertain how to proceed. She could very easily make something up; she’d found it easy to improvise in drama at school. And she really didn’t want to be emotionally unbuttoning herself with Jasper in the room. But equally, wouldn’t lying in this situation be a betrayal of these women’s confidences? A further kick in the lady balls from which they already had little protection. She mentally tossed a coin. She was going to have to say something.
‘We didn’t have much money growing up,’ she began. ‘My dad was a trucker, and he was away quite a bit. My mum was permanently dissatisfied with her lot; she wanted a more lavish lifestyle than he could afford to give her. It didn’t help that she was younger than him. I guess I was the unhappy accident that permanently called time on the life she thought she deserved.’
Mandy nodded sagely.
‘At some point she decided I could be her meal ticket. Or that she could live her life vicariously through me.’
‘What the fuck does vicariously mean?’ demanded Cheryl.
‘To do something via someone else,’ said Mandy, who was clearly not as daft as her choice of hair colour suggested.
‘Exactly. So she pushed me to do the things she’d liked to have done. Dance classes. Little acting jobs. Beauty contests.’
Jasper raised an eyebrow at that.
‘If I’m honest, I enjoyed the attention. At first. But then it was like my life wasn’t my own anymore. Because we were always off to some audition, or class, or stupid pageant, I couldn’t hang around with the people I wanted to. Then on my twelfth birthday, she pinched my arm, just under here…’ She grabbed one of her triceps. ‘Told me I was getting fat. So then she started controlling what I ate, making me exercise twice a day.’
‘What about your dad in all of this?’ asked Mandy.
‘She was good at hiding what was going on. And I didn’t want to worry him; it was hard enough for him not being able to provide for us in the way he wanted to. Anyway, one day he came home with a puppy for me. I was thirteen and I think he sensed I needed the company. My mum was apoplectic.’
‘That means really mad,’ said Mandy, who was getting more intriguing by the second.
‘According to her, this puppy was ruining everything: he stopped us from going to bookings at the weekend, he was distracting me, making a mess of the furniture. We argued about it loads. Then one day when I refused to leave him, she picked Bailey up and threw him at me. I wasn’t quick enough to catch him and he must have fractured his skull when he fell. He died. When my dad asked what happened, she said he’d escaped through an open door and had been hit by a car, but he stopped working away not long after. I think he sensed something wasn’t right. He got a job in a warehouse. It was less money, which really pissed her off, but things settled down. Then he died suddenly. I was sixteen.’
‘Ah, mate,’ muttered Mandy.
‘Then we really did have no money, and no other family to help. Things escalated. She had me modelling clothes, then underwear, which paid a lot better. And then … well, then I tried to run away a couple of times, but by that point I didn’t have many’—she laughed bitterly—‘any close friends to call on. I got into a relationship with a photographer; he was a lot older than me, but it was a way out. I moved to his flat in Camden. He kicked me out when he got bored of me, so then it was up to me to support myself. That’s pretty much it.’
Cheryl shifted in her seat, ready for the cross-examination (‘cross’ being the operative word), but Jasper cut across her.
‘We’re going to have to wrap things up. That’s our hour.’
She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Screw the water bottle; she’d collect it next week. She sneaked off to the office to retrieve her phone. It was Friday afternoon; she’d escaped dental rearrangement by Cheryl, and she really, really needed a drink. Thank heavens the girls would be back tomorrow. Only when she checked her messages, Ziggy and Nancy weren’t at the airport awaiting their flight back. Instead there was some rambling text saying they’d decided to stay longer; a whole week longer. Goddammit! She knew for a fact Marcus wouldn’t be available. Great. Just great. She was staring down the barrel of a second weekend watching shit television and drinking wine on her own. She kicked the wastepaper basket near Gayle’s desk, sending empty Pot Noodle pots flying everywhere.
‘Well, that class didn’t work.’ Jasper was at the door.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ She knelt down to retrieve the pots, angrily throwing them back into the bin.
‘I came to say thanks for that in there,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘Going along with it. I take it the acting classes bit was true because that was pretty convincing.’
‘What makes you think it’s not all true?’
‘Because…’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s not, is it?’
It was a mistake to have said anything. She should tell him it was all bullshit, wipe that stupid concerned look off his face. But it wasn’t. It had all happened. And why should she have to make other people feel better by denying her own experience? This was why you should never talk about your feelings, because then you got feelings about talking about your feelings, and before you knew it you were sinking into a swamp of the bastard things. She removed the full bin liner and angrily tied the top of the bag.
‘I had a shitty mum. Big deal. You heard what those women have been through. Mine’s nothing by comparison.’
Jasper ran his palm across his mouth, like he was trying to wipe away a bad taste. ‘It’s not nothing, Simone. It’s never nothing if it makes you feel bad.’
‘It was years ago.’
He gestured to the rubbish she was wielding like a weapon. ‘It’s clearly raised some tough feelings.’
‘This has nothing to do with what happened in there.’
He did that all-knowing look, which was especially infuriating because they both knew he was right.
‘I was meant to have plans for this weekend,’ she said. ‘It turns out I don’t.’
He leaned against the desk. He was turning something over in his head, wondering whether to say it.
‘Don’t you dare say that’s what you get for dating a married man. I don’t need your puritanical judgment, thank you very much.’
He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. ‘Actually, and I will almost certainly regret this, I was going to ask if you wanted to come out with me tomorrow night?’
‘Please don’t take pity on me, for god’s sake!’
Pity was the most demeaning of all the emotions, along with its bedfellow sympathy, which was just condescension with a fancy bow on it. Yet more great reasons not to share anything, with anyone, ever.
‘I’m not taking pity on you, Simone.’
She huffed.
‘I’m fucking not, okay!’ His eyes blazed with exasperation. It was the first time she’d ever heard him properly swear.
‘Okay,’ she said, suddenly contrite. She put the bag down, as if in surrender.
He rubbed his jaw, massaging the tension out of it. ‘The person I was meant to be going out with is sick, so really you’d be doing me the favour. I could use the company.’
‘I’m not known for my favours.’ She sounded like a tetchy teenager.
‘Yeah, well, you’re not known for your company either,’ he said, unblinking.
She laughed, a breathy chortle that bubbled unbidden out of her throat. Jasper laughed too, relieved the tension had been broken.
‘Come on,’ he said.
What would a night out with Jasper even entail? It might be interesting to find out.
‘Please,’ he wheedled.
It wasn’t like there was anything else to do.
‘Alright,’ she said.
His face brightened. ‘Okay. Cool. I’ll come and collect you at eight.’
He was out the door when a thought struck her.
‘How?’ she shouted after him. ‘You don’t know where I live.’
He reappeared, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out the form she’d completed. ‘Au contraire,’ he said with a self-satisfied grin. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night.’