Chapter Thirteen
Kate
It’s My Life by Talk Talk
All my life, I’ve done things that scare me.
My first day at school when I walked into a classroom and I was the only Asian kid; I was so scared I didn’t speak to anybody – not the teacher, not another student – for over a week.
The first time I kissed a girl – Isabel Lawson, who wanted to practise kissing with me so she would be good for the boys. I swear I stopped breathing for the entire thirty-two seconds we kissed, and yes, I counted every single second.
The first time I went down on a woman – because Ruby Ashwood was very much a woman, a woman who employed me to work in her café on Saturdays and then drove me home every evening.
I couldn’t tell if I was sweating so much because what we had done together was so hot or because I was terrified my mother would smell her on me.
(I never liked my small stature until we did all the things we did in her Citro?n 2CV on the corner of my street.)
Choosing a career my mother thought was a waste of the private school she’d struggled to pay for. The day I told her I’d registered for nursing college, I threw up my breakfast and my lunch.
I also vomited the day I told her I was bisexual, that it wasn’t a phase.
Moving out at age eighteen and never looking back, but mostly because I didn’t want my mother to see my tears.
Renting a room from an often drunk and always mentally unstable woman in her seventies throughout nursing college, the one advantage of that poor soul’s chaotic state being that she never noticed when I didn’t pay rent.
(I like to think I helped her too; I did her washing, watered down her vodka, cleaned the bathroom and kitchen twice a week and, when I could, filled her fridge with food.)
Saying yes to Tao when he asked me out on a date after I stitched up a gash in his leg from a cycling accident, even though I don’t think I really wanted to.
I was just flattered somebody like him was interested in me.
I saw him for what he was – security, ease, a future where I didn’t have to be alone.
Saying yes when he asked me to marry him six months later, even though all I wanted to scream was, ‘It’s too soon!’
Saying I do in Bromley Registry Office after I emptied my stomach in the public toilets just down the corridor.
Kicking him out a year ago.
Interviewing for the promotion I felt sure I wouldn’t get, but I naively forgot just how few nurses with my experience, or more, would want to be the charge nurse of Princess Diana AIDS Ward.
All those moments – forever seared in my brain – terrified me. But I don’t think I have ever been as terrified as I am in this moment, staring at my reflection in my bathroom mirror.
It’s not a full-length mirror so I can’t see the outfit in its completion but I can see enough to know that I look… ridiculous. I’m a twenty-nine-year-old woman wearing a comic book costume that I designed and made myself.
Fitting close to my body, the purple Lycra jumpsuit was a small nightmare to make and there is evidence of this in the wonky hems and the way the darts on my bosom aren’t quite central.
But the small grey jacket that I wear on top fits much better, thanks in large part to it being made of cotton, a much more forgiving material, and I was able to use an existing pattern I had for the cropped bomber style.
A purple eye mask covers the top half of my face and although Lady Phantom normally wears silver knee-high boots, the spray paint job I did to my old pair of brown, mid-calf length leather slouch boots looks better than I expected.
With my hair pulled back off my face like Lady Phantom does it in a half-up, half-down style, I’ve mimicked her make-up – heavy kohl eyeliner and a deep purple lip – and I don’t think I look terrible.
Ridiculous, yes, but not terrible.
I look enough like Lady Phantom that anybody who knows her will recognise me and possibly appreciate what I’ve achieved with little more than an idea, a sewing machine and no social life.
The problem is, I have to navigate my way across most of Central London in order to get to the room of people who know who Lady Phantom is.
I’m feeling fear because I have to get on the Tube like this.
And I have to walk down my street, stand on train platforms and make my way down Shaftesbury Avenue, which will no doubt be bustling on a Saturday night.
I also have to let Sharon see me like this.
And if I survive that, I have to hope the universe doesn’t decide to shit on me at the very last moment when I present Sharon with the eye mask I made that is exactly like the Director’s.
She doesn’t have to wear it, and I don’t really care if she didn’t follow my instructions to wear a black suit, but I just don’t want her to laugh at me.
I don’t want anyone to laugh at me, but especially not Sharon Goldblatt.
Which is also fucking ridiculous. She doesn’t matter to me.
She’s a patient’s friend and she’s a pain in my backside, most of the time.
It just so happens she’s the only other person I’ve ever met who is as obsessed with Lady Phantom as I am.
And despite myself, I’ve been looking forward to going to this meet and greet with her.
I keep telling myself that it’s simply because I didn’t want to waste a ticket to the event, but I am finding it harder and harder to believe it.
I suck in a deep breath and hold it. Giving myself a steady stare, I speak loudly and clearly for my ears only.
“You are a fucking superhero.” I point my finger at my reflection.
“You literally save lives every single day. Well, some days. You deserve to wear this poorly-fitting home-made costume that you made with a second-hand, or possibly fifth-hand, sewing machine. You deserve to walk with your head high and your shoulders squared. No matter what London thinks of you. No matter what Sharon Goldblatt says. No matter what. You are a fucking superhero.”
I drop my finger and exhale deeply, feeling slightly less ridiculous.
I decide to run with that feeling, literally, and leave the bathroom.
Grabbing the spare eye mask, the two tickets, my lipstick, a small roll of cash and stuffing it all in my bra, I march out of my bedsit, secure all the locks and then walk into the night holding onto my pep-talk like it’s a lifeline.
*****
As it happens nobody laughs at me on the Tube platform, or on the train itself. I hear a few catcalls as I emerge from Piccadilly Circus and cross the road, but that’s nothing unusual. If it happens in my nurse’s uniform, of course it’s going to happen when I’m dressed like this.
By the time I have Kapow Books in sight, I’m starting to feel confident enough to strut a little.
But it doesn’t last. Because as I approach the shop and the queue of people waiting outside, I see no purple, no grey, no silver, hardly any colour at all.
All I see are grey and brown and black and denim jackets.
I see jeans and trousers and at the very end of the queue there is even a woman wearing a long floaty blue and green tie-dye skirt, her hair down to her waist. She turns to look at me at the same time I notice her and her eyes blaze a trail down my body as she assesses me from head to toe.
Fire fills my cheeks and I have to resist the urge to hold my hand to my face to try and hide the blush.
But I refuse to do so because that would only draw attention to it.
Humiliation and foolishness swamps me as I take my place in the queue behind her and I look away when I see her bend her head and talk to her companion, who is wearing linen trousers and a patchwork jacket similar to the ones some of my patients have; the young, trendy patients.
Much to my deep dismay, as I stare into the passing traffic, I feel the heat in my cheeks rise to my eyes. I’m about to cry. I didn’t cry when Tao left me, when my mother called me a whore or when I signed my divorce papers, but I’m about to cry because a wannabe-hippie bitch gave me a dirty look.
“Wow!” A voice fills my ears. And I groan internally.
It’s the last voice I want to hear in this moment.
It’s the last person I want to see right now.
Because of course Sharon is going to laugh at me.
Of course she is going to roll her eyes and never let me hear the end of this.
And there’s no escaping it. There’s no escaping her. I turn my head.
“You’re her!” Sharon says with her hands held out and the widest smile on her face. I’ve never seen her smile like that. It’s strange seeing all her teeth, and her mouth taking up so much space on her elegant oval face.
I look down at my outfit and then back at her. She sees it. She sees me. And she’s not laughing.
Well, she is. But she’s sort of smile-laughing, like she’s really happy. It’s the sort of laughter you find bubbling out of your mouth when smiling just isn’t enough.
I smile back. I smile back until I’m laughing with her.
“You look…” Her eyes drop down my body, and there’s heat with it too, but it’s not like the look Hippie Bitch gave me. It’s the perfect temperature. “Fucking amazing!”
“I made it myself,” is all I can say in response.
She blinks at me and her smile drops. “You made it? But how?”
I’m about to answer but then I look her up and down too. “You wore the suit.”
“Well, yeah,” she says. “I was afraid you wouldn’t give me your spare ticket unless I did.”
I scoff at her. “I wouldn’t have—”
She scoffs back. Louder. “Don’t pretend you don’t know how bossy you can be.” Her eyes seem to change colour in the glow of streetlights and passing vehicles’ headlights. They brighten. “And how effective that is.”
My chest expands. I feel like I grow an inch or two taller. I’m aware of every single toe in my silver-sprayed boots.
I blink at Sharon. She blinks back at me. And then I remember where I am.