Chapter 6
The very rhythm of the city was shifting, and I felt restless and longing for something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, unable to recognise and name what it was, even to myself.
Fliss was obviously as much in tune to the coming springtime as me, taking more than her fair share of hot water, sloughing off the winter blues before leaving the house in a constant stream of new outfits most evenings during the week.
She’d disappeared altogether one weekend, and I had to push down feelings of envy at her off somewhere with him.
When she wasn’t out, she was busy in her room or the library, arriving back in her Mini only when the library closed and not joining us in the lounge in front of the telly, but heading instead for her room.
Where the four of us had often taken it in turns to cook, cobbling together some version of a jacket potato or pasta dish – spaghetti and a bottle of tomato sauce covered in cheap cheddar was a staple – Fliss now rarely took her turn, or even joined us in the kitchen.
I missed her, missed her energy and humour, missed our conversations.
We’d been so close for over a year, had done everything together and now she was off out most evenings without me.
When she was at home, she was in her room, furiously catching up on her coursework, but often popping out to the phone box down the road.
She seemed to have made up with her dad, going down to London to stay with him for the weekend on more than one occasion.
‘That’s what happens when there’s a man involved,’ Katy said, somewhat snidely and, although I argued the toss, saying Fliss wasn’t like that, it would appear that she was.
The couple of times I’d gone up to her room for a chat, ready to ask her all about Theo and where she’d been with him, she’d just laughed coyly and said it was all a bit hush-hush as he was still involved with that girl we’d seen him about to play squash with and needed to let her down lightly.
I wasn’t impressed with that little observation.
Theo Mandeville was obviously a player. But then, wasn’t Fliss a self-confessed player herself?
Anyway, she was obviously enjoying the chase, had, perhaps, even fallen hard for him and, as the weeks stretched into late March, she either came home very late, in the early hours of the morning, or not at all.
When I asked her if she’d like to come home with me for reading week, she didn’t meet my eye, said she’d have loved to – and to tell my parents a big thank you – but she was so busy… She’d trailed off, not wanting to admit to me, I saw, that she’d fallen head over heels for Theo Mandeville.
And I suppose it was then I recognised my own restlessness for what it was.
I wanted to be in love, I wanted other things to think about than finding a bloody work experience year – which looked like I was going to have to accept something back home in Rothersley after all.
Dad had had words with someone in charge at the NUM headquarters and, with what was kicking off, they’d told him they’d welcome anyone who wanted to come and work with them as long as they were prepared to get stuck in and do their bit.
‘Will they be able to pay me something, Dad?’ I asked in yet another phone call from the rancid phone box on St Michael’s Road.
‘I don’t like to ask that, Anna,’ Dad replied, slightly embarrassed I could tell.
‘Any money union has is to be used to fight Margaret and pit closure, helping us, now we’re out on strike.
And you stay here, Anna, at home with Mum and me and Les, just like you do before you go to Leeds.
When you little girl. But big girl now, working for union!
’ As always, when Dad became animated, his Polish accent came to the fore.
‘But I won’t have a grant for my year out, you know, Dad,’ I said down the phone. ‘I can’t expect you to keep me for the time I’ll be there… What am I going to live on?’
‘You no worry, Anna, we sort it. Mum and me and union, we sort it for you. Yes?’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said, feeling despondent. Fed up. I didn’t want to go back home, back home to the little box room that was my bedroom. I wanted to go to London, to Westminster, to be right at the centre of political thinking and action.
‘Blimey, Anna, you’re lucky to have something,’ Katy admonished when I said as much to her. ‘And with what’s kicking off in Rothersley? In the rest of Yorkshire? You’ll be bang in the middle of it all. History in the making. You’ll be able to write your final dissertation on it all.’
‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘It’s just, I’ve come to uni in Leeds – just twenty miles from home – and it looks like I’m going to end up back there now as well.
I want to see a bit of the world, not be back in my old bedroom with my posters of Dexys Midnight Runners and Culture Club, going down to the Miners’ Social Club with my mum and dad. ’
When Katy saw my face as I peeled potatoes for the shepherd’s pie I was making for the three of us, she patted my arm sympathetically. ‘OK, I get that, I suppose.’ She poked at the pan. ‘What are these things in the meat?’ she asked suspiciously.
Not a brilliant cook, shepherd’s pie was my go-to dish.
Running out of cash and not convinced there was a huge amount left in my account anyway, I’d bulked out the small amount of minced beef I’d bought at the local butcher’s with a packet of ancient red lentils I’d found in the cupboard.
What it would taste like, God only knew.
Plenty of onions, tinned tomatoes and Bisto in the pan, and it’d be fine, I told myself.
‘Don’t suppose Fliss will be joining us?’ I asked now. ‘Have you seen her today?’
Katy shook her head. ‘She didn’t come home last night. Again.’
‘Stayed over in Theo’s room at Bodington Hall, I guess.’ I felt that flush of envy again. I really had to get over this bloody silly crush I appeared to have developed on Fliss’s boyfriend. Theo Mandeville, the player.
‘I’ve not spoken to her for days,’ Clare said, coming into the kitchen. ‘Shall we treat ourselves and have a bottle of wine?’ she asked. ‘We can pinch the electricity money.’
‘Oh, bugger it, let’s,’ I said. ‘I’m so fed up, I need alcohol.’
I carried on cooking while Clare pulled on her jacket and set off to the Co-op and Katy went to have a shower. When Clare came back with the wine, fifteen minutes later, she said, ‘I don’t get it.’
‘What?’ I looked up from tearing kitchen towel for napkins. ‘The wine? Didn’t you have enough money?’
Clare took the bottle of red from her carrier, holding it up. ‘Fliss’s Mini is down by the Co-op.’
‘Oh? And was Fliss in there?’ I brightened, pleased. ‘Is she on her way back home? Did you tell her to come back and eat with us?’
‘No, no,’ Clare said. ‘Just her car parked and, to be honest, looked as if it had been there for a couple of days.’
‘Oh? How do you know?’
‘The Mini had a total flat tyre – the back one. And there was a parking ticket on the windscreen.’
‘Well, she’s had plenty of parking tickets before,’ I said. ‘Are you sure it was her Mini?’
‘I know Fliss’s Mini when I see it.’ Clare was slightly put out. ‘And, you know how she’s always cleaning it, always polishing it? Well, it looked dirty… abandoned to me.’
‘Who’s abandoned?’ Katy was back in the kitchen, hair wrapped up in a red towel. ‘I’m starving. Can we eat?’
‘Fliss’s Mini. Down by the Co-op,’ Clare explained once more. ‘It looked abandoned. Had a flat tyre.’
‘Well, did you look inside?’
‘Course I did. And tried the doors. All locked.’
‘She probably parked it there to go to the Co-op, found she had a flat tyre and got lover boy to pick her up in his Mini. There wasn’t a black one there as well?
’ Katy laughed, wandering over to the oven and peering inside.
‘You know – “a tale of two Minis”.’ She laughed again, air-miming the words.
‘How would she have told him?’ I frowned, trying to picture it.
‘Told who?’ Clare asked, pulling a face in turn.
‘Theo. Theo Mandeville.’
‘Well, she probably got a taxi up to his place,’ Katy said. ‘She always reckons her dad keeps her short of money, but, you know, that isn’t the case, especially as she seems to be on friendlier terms with him recently. He’s obviously bought her a load of new clothes…’
‘But why leave it there?’ I interrupted. ‘How long ago was the ticket left, Clare?’
‘Two days – I looked. In fact…’ she delved into her jacket pocket ‘…I took it off the windscreen and brought it back with me.’
‘Is that legal?’ I asked.
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Katy was irritable at the attention once more on Fliss, who’d never been her favourite housemate; she had actually argued the toss against Fliss moving in with us.
‘Bit flaky, don’t you think?’ Katy had opined, when Fliss had come round in her yellow Mini, sporting expensive designer jeans and Ralph Lauren shirt.
‘Maybe she’s actually here? In her room?’ I asked. ‘Maybe she’s ill; got flu or something and not been able to get out of bed?’
‘Oh, don’t be so daft, Anna,’ Katy scoffed. ‘We’d have heard her, heard her get up to the loo. She’d have been banging on your door asking for the hot water bottle, demanding Lucozade and aspirin.’
‘I’m going up to check,’ I said stoutly, annoyed with Katy’s cavalier attitude towards Fliss.
‘I’ll come with you.’ Clare jumped up from the table.
‘Well, I’m having a drink.’ Katy sniffed, turning to fetch glasses and open the bottle of cheap red Clare had brought back with her.