Hold My Hand (3 page)

“Oh.”

He has no idea how desperate she is for this job. How much she is prepared to cede, simply to get away from where she is, from the whole situation, from Kieran and fear and the urban poverty which is far, far worse than the rural kind. I could grow vegetables, she is thinking, and perhaps I can pick up some home work to fill the evenings. This would be a new start, a new chance. Imagine my little girl growing up in a place like this, all that space to run in, a school where she won't learn to respond to everything with “fuck off”. Being able to sleep through the night without fear of what might come to the door. Please don't let me blow this, please.

“I’m pretty handy,” she assures him, following him past another panelled room – book-lined, presumably with the stuff the family hasn’t wanted to read again – and up a dark oak stair to the first floor. “I can do most of the basic stuff. Washers and plugs and fuses and things. Basic carpentry: you know, shelves and mending things, hinges…”

And this, at least, is true. I’ve had to. There’s been no-one else to do it for me, even when I
did
have a man about the place. I learned pretty early on that asking for that sort of help was nagging, and leaving it was neglect, and both were corporal offences.

“Are there many other applicants?” she asks, and is unsurprised when he hedges about the answer.

“Well, I suppose…” he says “there are people, after all… plumbers and the like…”

“I’m handy with a telephone,” she attempts to lighten the atmosphere.

They are standing in a narrow lath-and-plaster corridor, doorways on either side and a Persian runner, the longest she’s ever seen, vanishing into the distance. “Perhaps you could supplement your income a bit by doing the flowers,” he says, suddenly, “for the weddings and stuff. Dances.”

“Weddings?” she can't keep the shock from her voice.

Tom Gordhavo laughs. “Don't worry. There are only a couple a year, and a couple of dances. We get contract gardeners in, and you wouldn’t be expected to clean up after them. Well, not much. Obviously you’d have to do the final sweep. You can never expect contractors to do the job you’d do yourself.”

“Okay,” she says. They are walking down the corridor, pausing to glance into quiet bedrooms. Iron bedsteads, painted boards, heavy chests-of-drawers with bowl-and-ewer sets on top. “Very Homes and Gardens,” she remarks. “I was expecting it to be a bit more four-poster.”

“Well, there’s one in the master bedroom,” he says, “but they’re terrible dust-magnets. This is far more practical.”

“How many bathrooms?”

“Six. None en-suite. You don’t get many complaints about it, except from the Yanks. I think most people understand they didn't build for bathrooms in the Tudor era. Mind you, the Yanks complain about the floorboards being uneven. They don’t quite get the idea of a house that's more than fifty years old. So what do you think?”

“It’s…” she struggles to keep the enthusiasm from her voice. “Well, it’ll certainly be a full-time job.”

“Certainly will,” he says cheerfully. “Think you’re up to it?”

He stands in the doorway of the master bedroom, above the dining room, arms folded, and looks her up and down. Not exactly strapping, he thinks, but she's got the air of a coper. And besides, a single mother can’t be anything but a good thing. Someone with ties is what I need, someone who can’t just up and vanish into the night.

“How soon can you start?” he asks.

Chapter Four

The bailiffs have been again. At least the trip and the early start have spared her from having to hover indoors all day with the curtains shut. Spared her, also, from coming out to find that the car, the only thing of any value she has left, has been towed away. She’s been parking it in the roads off Brixton Water Lane for a while now, in the hope that it won't be identified and swiped in exchange for the water rates.

We’ll need it, she thinks, to live in once the flat gets repossessed. The worst thing I ever did, taking myself off the council list and throwing myself into home ownership. But then again, how was I to know that mortgage payments aren't covered by social security, whatever your circumstances? That the DSS would rather have you living in a B&B than give your child some prospect of a permanent home?

The
Mail
reader in her understands the argument about the mortgage, that it isn't up to the taxpayer to provide scroungers like her with a bricks-and-mortar nest-egg, but it doesn't seem fair, either, waiting until families are on the street before anything is done to help. I’m a statistic, that’s what I am, she thinks. Something to be trotted out at party conferences to cop the blame for the state of the nation's youth.

Nearly twelve hours on the road altogether today, and her fingers and knees are cramped from holding their positions for so long. She should be grateful, she knows, simply to have a car at all in her circumstances, even if it is twelve years old and the seals round the doors have perished, but she misses her little Merc, long since traded down to cover the mortgage for a few more months, with its cruise control and its easy gearbox. She can feel the beginnings of a headache clamping down on the back of her neck. She is unused to long stints of motorway driving, and the combination of her terror of SUVs and worry that the car might not last the distance has turned the muscles between her shoulder blades to concrete. She finds herself pulling herself up the stairs by the banister like an eighty-year-old. She hates these stairs, after years of bump-bump-bumping up and down them, juggling child and pushchair and shopping bags and handbags and change bags.

Thudding jungle comes from behind the closed door of the ground floor flat. It will carry on that way until the small hours, unless the occupants go out clubbing and give them a few hours' respite until they come home at four, five in the morning. The worst thing about jungle, she thinks, is the whole stop-start thing. That, and the fact that it obviously renders those who listen to it deaf. Or selfish. Can music change your personality? She thinks is probably can. The occupants respond to neither knocking on the door or rings on their doorbell. And she's never seen them in the flesh, in the year they've been in residence. Traffic noise, even the boom of the television, can be incorporated into one’s existence, but jungle… those few seconds where it all goes quiet, where you can feel the whole house hold its breath in anticipation that the cessation might be permanent, the palpable sigh of despair when it starts up again.

She sometimes wonders if the music hasn’t been planted by a crafty property developer intent on driving the sitting tenants like Carol out. Only the large number of black bags that appear outside on bin day persuades her that anyone lives there at all.

She's had the heating off all day – every penny, after all, counts – and the flat is cold, with the dankness of neglect. It feels more like a basement than  a second floor. Bridget drops her keys onto the cloth-covered cardboard box that suffices for a hall table since she sold the real one to pay the gas last year, scans the handful of letters she collected from the mat along with the bailiff's card. The usual bundle of worries: Water rates, overdue. Council tax – she feels particularly resentful that she is paying money she doesn't have to receive Social workers' homilies and bugger-all help. TV licence. She pulls a wry face. At least, she thinks, I won't have to pay
that
once the bailiffs have taken the telly away. There’s another one, too: an unfamiliar type. Heavy watermarked cream envelope, longer and narrower than the usual, the address typed onto the paper rather than showing, as they usually do, through a plastic window.

Looks like a lawyer’s letter, she thinks.

Her heart jumps.

Someone’s died.

She turns it over, scans the back as though this will give her some clue as to the contents.

Maybe, she thinks, it’s someone I don't know; one of those distant cousins in Canada you read about, the one who never married but played their what-the-hell-money successfully on the stock exchange and had no-one to leave it to.

Jesus, she thinks. Has it come to his, that I’m hoping someone somewhere has died because it might get me out of this mess?

Maybe someone’s won the lottery and made an anonymous donation. One of my friends. One of the people I used to know, before, who’s heard about what’s happened to us, who wants to help…

She can't face opening it right now. Knows deep in her core that it will be more bad news, that salvation doesn't just appear out of the blue. She feels like she's been running all her life, just to stand still. It seems so random. Time and again, the papers report multi-million pound settlements for trophy wives, and here she is, stuffing envelopes and assembling inserts all night to try to cover the child support her husband won’t pay out of protest at being denied the right to scare the crap out of his daughter.

We live in a two-tier world, she thinks. The rich and the rest of us.

Clunk. She is plunged in darkness as the electricity key runs out.

“Shit,” says Bridget. “shit, shit, shit.”

Why does this only ever happen at night, when the only place to get a top-up is the garage on Streatham Hill, where you’re as likely to get mugged as buy a Mars Bar?

Because, obviously, she tells herself, you use the electricity at night. And it happens often because you never have more than a fiver spare to put into it when you go. It’s not the world conspiring against you, however much it feels like it.

She keeps candles and matches near-at-hand in every room against the electricity, on high shelves to keep them out of little hands. The nearest is in the kitchen, on top of the cupboard. Bridget feels her way along the corridor, stubs her toe on something – probably one of Yasmin's discarded toys – knocks something with a crash onto the stupid slate-tiled kitchen floor she and Kieran installed back in the days before pregnancy, in the days when he seemed like a dream come true, when she thought he was moving in and letting his flat out as a first step up the property ladder. We were going to be out of here and into a house in Clapham in two years, she thinks. I never in my wildest dreams thought that the starter flat I bought twelve years ago would be my prison now. I’m worse off than I was in my early twenties.  At least in my early twenties the only way to go was up.

She feels along the edge of the cupboard door and finds the junkshop saucer on which the candle stands.

In the flare of the match, she glimpses a figure in the corner. Jumps, heart thudding, nearly drops the match. It’s Kieran, of course, always Kieran. Always there, watching over her, making himself seen from the corner of her eye, waiting to jump.

And she’s blinking back tears again, eighth time today, twelve thousandth since the day she met him. And then she puts blows out the match, drops the letter down on the kitchen top and, ignoring the apron which hangs from the hook where it has always hung, goes to fetch her daughter.

Chapter Five

Yasmin hasn’t forgotten her father. Sometimes he comes to her at bedtime, when she feels sleep begin to take her limbs. It’s then that she hears him speak, as well, the way he used to, the way he used to be before. She feels him close to her, feels the quilt tuck in around her, block the draught from the window above the bed, feels his lips brush her forehead, on the temple, at the hairline, his voice whisper, “night night, precious angel”. And half-asleep, she will turn onto her side and mutter “night, Daddy,” and if she’s more awake, she will jump, and shriek, and shout for her mum because he shouldn't be there: he shouldn't be anywhere near them. When she’s awake, she doesn't remember the Nice Dad, the one who used to cuddle her, the one who gave her baths and took her to the swings in Brockwell Park. It's only in her dreams that he comes back: makes her warm and safe and fills her head with disturbing confusion.

Now, sleeping in Carol’s big soft bed, she hears her mother's voice but registers it more as a dream than an intrusion. It’s only recently that she has understood about dreams, though she has many. And she vaguely understands, from the other side of the bedroom door, that her mum is crying, but she cries so much lately that, for Yasmin, the sound is simply an extension of a normal day. She rolls over under Carol's Brixton Market bedclothes, drifts deeper into the dark.

In Carol’s living-room-kitchenette – she lives in the converted attic of the building, in what used to be the servants’ sleeping quarters, all sloping ceilings and eaves cupboards – Bridget hunches on the sofa with a wad of kitchen paper clutched in her hand. “It wasn’t meant to be like this,” she sobs. “It wasn’t meant to
be
like this.”

“Course it wasn’t,” says Carol from the depths of the fridge. “I don’t suppose there’s a single person on this road who thought it was going to be like this when they were kids. I certainly didn’t. I was going to be rich like everyone on the telly. And married. Big house in Esher. Couple of kids. Gym membership…”

“I could see you like that,” says Bridget.

“Couldn’t we all? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen to Air Hostesses before they get pensioned off? I always thought so. So did my Mum. Definitely. It was a good career move when I started out. Best access in the world to Frequent Fliers. Nobody said anything about pensions and mortgages in those days. My pension was meant to come with a wedding certificate attached.”

“Christ, you’re not pensionable yet,” says Bridget.

“Honey,” says Carol, “if you’re forty and pushing a trolley you might as well be sixty-five. Doesn’t go with most airlines’ images, the prospect of varicose veins and cocoa of an evening.”

She finds what she is looking for, emerges brandishing it. “There we go,” she says. “Don’t know why I buy spinach. Takes up so much space I can never find the wine, and it’s not like I ever eat it before it goes off.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Same with broccoli,” says Carol, making with the corkscrew. “I only buy it to make my fridge smell like old bathing towels.”

She fetches the bottle and two tumblers – her sink, with its arching mixer tap, is so small that she’s long since given up buying wine glasses, with their fragile stems – over to the sofa, pours out and waits while Bridget blows her nose and mops the traces of mascara back up her cheeks. “There you go,” she hands her a glass. “Jacob’s Creek. Mother’s little helper.”

Bridget takes the glass, takes a big slug, says “thanks. It should have been me giving
you
wine, really.”

“Don’t worry, darling,” says Carol. “She’s a pleasure, you know that.”

“Yes, but,” Bridget starts to tear up again.

“Stop it, Bridget,” says Carol firmly. “There's no point. Crying’s a waste of energy. It won’t make an smidge of difference to how things turn out.”

Bridget sniffs. “I’m sorry. I’m tired.”

“Right,” says Carol. There is an unspoken agreement between them that all of Bridget’s emotional collapses – and Carol’s own occasional ones – should be written off as tiredness and healed with white wine.

"What happened to me?" she asks, for the millionth time.

"Kieran happened," says Carol. "You know that, I know that. The only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Kieran. You were a proper doll when you first got here. I remember. I remember thinking I'd never get to be friends with you, ’cause you were so... well, it was obvious you were going places. I never thought you’d stay. You could tell you were one of those girls on the way up. He’s sucked the life out of you."

"It’s been years, Carol."

"Mmm," she says. "But you had years of fear before that. People like Kieran, they confuse you, as much as anything. All those flowers and apologies and you-made-me-do-its: you didn’t know what you were thinking for donkey’s years. You can’t expect to get over something like that overnight. Especially when he’s still hanging around, giving you grief."

"But I should have worked it out. I’m so stupid.
Stupid
."

"Yes," she says, "that’s right. You're stupid, like every other woman who’s ever had it done to them. You should have seen through it, even though nobody else did. It took me ages to realise he was wrong ‘un myself, and I wasn’t the one he was Jekyll-and-Hydeing at."

"I should have... I don’t see how I managed to be so stupid. Have I got “victim” written on me in Magic Marker or something?"

"Yes," says Carol. "That’ll be it."

They drink, contemplate.

"You know," says Carol, "A lot of the people in the concentration camps felt the same way. Like it was their fault, somehow. Like they’d done something to bring it on themselves. But that doesn’t make it true. It just means that, if you’re told something about yourself over and over again, you begin to believe it. There are nasty people in the world, Bridget. It’s as simple as that. Some people are just plain nasty, and their lives are dedicated to doing nasty things. You got involved with one of them. End of story."

"But why didn’t I spot it?"

Carol snorts. Lights a cigarette. "Well they’d hardly get away with it long-term if it was tattooed on their foreheads, would they?"

Bridget sighs. Carol changes the subject.

“So tell me about it,” she says. “Apart from the amazing news that Cornwall’s a million miles away. What do you reckon?”

Bridget sighs, stretches her back. “It was – oh, what’s the point? It’s not like I’m going to get the job…”

“Mmm,” agrees Carol. “That’ll be how come he asked you when you could start, then. Tell me about it. What was the house like?”

“God, Carol, it was amazing. Amazing. The sort of place you usually only get to go into if you pay.”

“Big?”

“Yuh-
huh
. Huge. Twelve bedrooms and all the lounges are big enough to fit yours and my flats into with room over. God, you could fit them into one of the
settees
.”

“Crikey,” says Carol. “And that’s a
spare
house?”

Bridget sips: a more controlled sip, this time, now that the edge has come off her hysteria. “I know.”

“How on giddy earth big are the others, if this one’s going spare?”

“I’m not sure. I have a feeling this one’s one of the biggest, actually. The boss lives about ten miles away and most of the family are round about there. All within walking distance of each other.”

“Now,
there’s
incestuous.”

“It is a bit, isn’t it?” says Bridget

“Especially if you've got a twelve-bed house ten miles away.”

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe they like the view better where they are. Or maybe they just can’t afford to live in it when they can get holiday income off it. Even small cottages go for four hundred a week down there in the high season.”

“I bet it’s got ghosts or something,” says Carol.

“Don’t be stupid,” says Bridget.

“Could be.” Carol rests the letter on her lap and, eyes wide and staring, plays an imaginary harp in the air by her ears. “Whoooooo!” she says. “
Whooooo!
”

“Stop it, Carol.” Bridget’s surprised to find that she really means it. “I don’t need putting off, okay?”

 “Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties,” says Carol.

“Don’t talk like that in front of Yasmin. Please,” Bridget, like many parents, uses her child as camouflage for her own feelings. “It’s going to be difficult enough without you putting things like that into her head.”

Carol stops, but she's smiling, now. “Right. So you
are
going, then?”

“I don’t know. I don’t. It would be – God, I can’t even really think about what it would mean if I got it.”

She pours more wine. “It would be the solution to everything, the way I see it,” she says. “Kieran, your debts. Yas growing up to be one of those mini-slags outside the offy. A new start. What’s your accommodation like?

“Gorgeous. Well, a lot better than here, anyway. The top floor of one wing.”

“Wing?”

“Wing?”

“Yes. It has wings. The flat’s got two bedrooms. Like proper, full-sized ones. There are two beds in Yasmin’s.”

She doesn’t notice that she's already started talking about the rooms as though they belong to them. Carol does, though. “And there’s a living room the size of my flat. It’s all panelled out – tongue and groove, bare wood, like the inside of a log cabin. Smells piney and clean. And the kitchen! My God, Carol, you can
eat
in the kitchen!”

“Don’t know what's so special about that,” Carol jerks her head behind her at the Baby Belling in the corner, the tea-towel hanging from the cup-hook over the sink. “I do it every day. So go on, then: what’s the catch?”

“Well… it
is
in the middle of nowhere.”

“Wonderful.”

“The village is two miles away.”

A car alarm begins to howl in the street outside.

“I can see,” says Carol wryly, “how you would miss Streatham.”

“And it’s only tiny.”

“So what’s the nearest town?”

“Wadebridge.”

“Wadebridge is nice. I used to go there with my nan and gramps. Not exactly Nightclub Central, but it’s nice.”

Bridget heaves an exaggerated sigh, clamps her palms to the small of her back. “My clubbing days are long behind me.”

“Oh, I’m sure we can find you a nice
knitting
circle.”

“Yeah,” says Bridget, “you think you’re joking.”

“I’m sure there’ll be discos in the village hall. Maybe you’ll meet a nice farmer.”

Bridget laughs.

A window downstairs goes up. “Shut that bloody thing up!” a voice bellows into the empty street. “Shut it the fuck up!”

The women roll their eyes at each other.

“I don’t know how you can even be contemplating leaving.”

“I know.” She laughs again, though tears are filling her eyes. “The glamour. The fun. The wild social life. By the way. Can you shout me a tenner ’til Friday? Only my leccy’s gone and I’ve spent all my cash on petrol.”

Carol does a good Margaret Thatcher. “The trouble with these people,” she says, “is they have no idea of budgeting. Baked beans only cost 13p at the cash and carry. You should have laid in stocks against the winter, like the squirrels.”