Chapter 44
LENA
Of course I didn’t want to believe Dan. I wanted Simone to be everything I first thought her to be.
So I ignored the warning signs, which were small at first. The odd white lie here and there, silly things mostly, things that could be overlooked, like pretending she’d watched a programme on TV when it later transpired that she hadn’t.
Or saying she’d seen a band and backtracking in front of Dan.
To begin with I found it endearing that she was trying to impress me.
I already had imposter syndrome and felt like a small fish in a very large pond.
I had to think on my feet: the labour ward was so fast-paced and every day was different.
My placement was for six weeks but by the end of the first week, despite it being more exhausting than any placement I’d had before, I found I enjoyed the hectic atmosphere, thrived on it even.
It gave me a buzz and the days sped by. Simone told me she’d been a midwife on the labour ward now for two years.
It was only later I wondered if it was another lie.
By the third week Simone and I were becoming inseparable, spending all our time off together.
I didn’t question why a more senior midwife – my supervisor, no less – wanted to hang out regularly with a nineteen-year-old trainee.
I was at that stage in life where I was trying to work out who I was, while Simone was cocksure and confident.
I hoped some of her vivacity would rub off on me.
Not that I got the chance to see her much at work.
She would come and check on me during the day, but she had her own duties to perform and I was mainly doing dogsbody stuff: running around after the more experienced midwives.
I did get to assist on a few of the ‘easier’ labours, if there is such a thing.
I rarely had to work weekends but Simone usually had a shift either on a Saturday or a Sunday.
That didn’t stop her going out a lot and I wondered where she found the energy, until I saw her pop a pill on the bus on the way to work one morning.
She’d winked at me as she did it, called it her ‘pick-me-up’, and I didn’t ask any questions, refusing one when she offered it.
I was never interested in dabbling with drugs.
Even though we tried out many different bars and clubs together, her favourite was always the humid Camden venue with its sticky floor, sweat-covered walls and dry ice that made my eyes water.
She seemed to know so many people there and, usually, I was stuck talking to Dan at the bar while she went off to some badly lit corner with a random guy.
One night I saw her deep in conversation with a man I hadn’t seen before.
He didn’t look the type to hang out at dingy Camden clubs.
He was older, late thirties, handsome in that clean-cut way and, instead of the ubiquitous band T-shirts and dark jeans everyone else wore, he had on a smart shirt and chinos.
‘Who’s that guy?’ I asked Dan.
‘Her dealer?’ His large-set shoulders lifted half-heartedly, and his eyes, like two currants, wouldn’t meet mine.
‘I dunno, do I!’ But something about the way he avoided looking at me made me think he did know who the guy was and probably regretted what he’d told me on the night I first met him.
He’d tried to backtrack since, by telling me he’d been drunk and that I mustn’t say anything to Simone.
He’d looked scared as he’d said it, which made me wonder if he’d just been trying to make trouble.
Or that he was bitter and jealous, and maybe wanted Simone for himself.
Simone chatted to the smartly dressed man for a good forty-five minutes or so and I was starting to get fed up with Dan.
We’d already run out of conversation and both had stood at the bar, moodily nursing our drinks, for twenty minutes.
For the first time I’d begun to wonder if I should refuse to come back to the club next time Simone asked.
I felt out of my depth with her, as if I was walking a tightrope of danger, which was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.
My feet were aching and the cheap beer was starting to wear off.
I pictured Kerrie and my other housemates in our cosy living room, with the ripped sofas and the ugly carpet, lounging around watching a film on the telly, tucking into a takeaway and gossiping about different people on their respective courses. I missed them and I wanted to go home.
Just as I was contemplating leaving, even if it did mean having to trek back to Walthamstow on my own, Simone came over to me, smiling proudly.
The older man she had been talking to had been replaced by a younger, more attractive guy with an unruly mop of shaggy black hair, tight black jeans and facial piercings. ‘Lena, meet Oliver. My little brother.’
‘Hey.’ He elbowed her in the ribs good-naturedly. ‘You make me sound like I’m twelve!’
I instantly perked up. I couldn’t really see a family resemblance.
Oliver sidled over to me and offered to buy me a drink.
Over more cheap beer he told me he was in his final year at Manchester University studying politics and was just back for the weekend.
Simone wandered off again, but this time I didn’t care.
I was enraptured by Oliver. He had a public-school accent, much like Simone’s (even if she tried to hide it with Mockney), yet he talked like he was anti-establishment and had a piercing in his eyebrow that I found extremely sexy.
When the club closed at 2 a.m. and we couldn’t find Simone he offered me the sofa at his place in Muswell Hill.
‘Shouldn’t we try to find your sister? Something might have happened to her.’
He laughed, as though the prospect of anything bad ever happening to Simone was ludicrous. ‘She’s a lone wolf. She might end up back with Jasper.’
‘Jasper?’
‘Her on–off boyfriend. She sometimes stays with him in Walthamstow.’
She’d told me when we first met that she lived in Walthamstow, near me. And that she had a group of housemates, one who kept stealing her food and whom she had a crush on. Carl, or something like that. Not Jasper. ‘She doesn’t live in Walthamstow herself, then?’
‘No, she lives at home, with our parents in Muswell Hill. She’s saving up, she said. To buy her own flat.’
Another lie.
I agreed to go home with him. He told me his parents would be ‘chilled’ and I could sleep on the sofa.
I didn’t usually go home with men I’d only just met.
I’d never had a one-night stand. In fact, I’d only ever had one boyfriend, but I told myself Oliver wasn’t a stranger: I knew his sister. And his parents would be at home.
‘I love my sister and everything,’ he said, later that night as we sat chatting on the sofa in the dim light of his parents’ living room, ‘but she treats men like shit. Like Jasper. The poor guy is utterly loved up but she won’t commit to him.
She’s nearly twenty-seven but likes to act like she’s seventeen!
She only uses him when she wants to stay in Walthamstow because it’s closer to the hospital.
She’s a bit fucked up, to tell you the truth.
But then’ – he grinned at me in the half-light – ‘aren’t we all? ’
Even then I jumped to defend her, telling him Simone had been good to me. ‘She’s kind, which not all my past supervisors have been.’
He tipped the remnants of the can of beer he’d been drinking into his mouth but didn’t agree.
‘She must be caring,’ I protested, irritated by his silence. ‘She works with babies.’
‘Oh, she fell into that.’ He pulled back the sleeve and showed me his wrist. ‘See that scar? She did that when I was four. She was ten and should have known better.’
‘So, you’re not close? I don’t have brothers or sisters. I don’t get this whole sibling thing.’
He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in closer, as though my words had endeared me to him.
‘We get on well now. But I wouldn’t cross her.
’ He sounded flippant so I didn’t take him seriously, and we started talking about ourselves and our music tastes and our desires for the future, and the whole time he made me feel like I was the most interesting creature ever to cross his path.
We talked until the sun came up, and Oliver made me a bacon sandwich and a strong cup of tea.
As we sat at the kitchen table, our thighs touching, grinning stupidly at each other over our breakfast, I knew I wanted this time together never to end.
We were inseparable for the rest of the weekend, and when he went back to university on the Monday, we promised we’d keep in touch.
On Tuesday, my next shift, I couldn’t help but watch Simone closely.
She was kind and attentive to the expectant mothers, organized and efficient.
Totally different, in fact, from the pill-popping, beer-swigging party girl I socialized with.
I decided that Oliver was just being an annoying little brother, and that Dan had been drunk and, perhaps, jealous when he told me those things.
Simone might party hard, but she worked hard too.
I didn’t have the chance to talk to Simone much during the day, but as I was changing out of my scrubs at the end of my shift I heard two colleagues come in.
I’d worked with one of the girls, Becky someone or other: she’d qualified two years ahead of me.
The other woman was older, a junior doctor.
I realized they couldn’t see me behind my locker door and they were already midway through a conversation.
‘She’s just another in a long line of women he’s shagged,’ Becky was saying. I could hear the rustle of coats and scarves being taken off. They must have been there for the night shift. ‘He’s got a wife and three little kids at home as well.’
‘Hugh Warrington is such a player,’ the junior doctor replied. She had a Scouse accent but I couldn’t remember her name and I’d only seen her from afar. ‘Doesn’t she know he’ll never leave his wife?’
‘Simone’s a smart cookie.’
I stiffened at Simone’s name.
‘They’re always together lately. Have you noticed? They’re not being discreet. I find him so arrogant. I don’t get what Simone sees in him.’
‘He is a good doctor, but his morals are questionable. His wife has only recently had a baby …’
More rustling and the banging of locker doors. I didn’t know what to do, so I stayed quiet, hidden by my locker, and their voices faded as they left the room.
I hadn’t yet met a doctor called Hugh Warrington but I’d have put money on him being the well-dressed, older man I’d seen Simone with on Saturday night.