Ghosting (11 page)

The door opens and as if on cue Linden’s head appears. ‘There you are,’ she says to Luke. ‘There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.’

‘I’ll be right back, Grace,’ he says, standing up and heading for the door. ‘Don’t move.’

She resolves to leave as soon as she can. The memory of Hannah’s sly cruelty has unnerved her. She thinks about that time, around the age of eleven, when she’d caught her tormenting their cat. She’d cornered it at the foot of the stairs, where it hissed and wailed with fierce terror. When Grace had asked why she’d done it she’d replied, with a shrug, ‘I don’t know.’ And, although
she’d said no when Grace asked if she’d done it before, there was no way of knowing for sure.

Them she started faking suicides. Grace would find her collapsed on the floor with a pill bottle in her hand, none of which she ever actually swallowed. She only stopped doing it when Grace threatened to take her to a child psychologist. Then she took to running away instead. The whole family would be out looking for her. More than once the police brought her back, one time after finding her on the hard shoulder of the motorway, thumbing a ride. There seemed no way of controlling her. She did just as she pleased.

The minutes pass, and, fed up with waiting for Luke to return, Grace leaves the office, spotting him straight away, on the other side of the room, talking to a smaller young man in tight black jeans. She makes her way over, and by the time she gets there Luke is bidding the man goodbye. ‘I was just about to come back and get you,’ Luke says to her.

‘How did it go?’

‘He wants me to go over to Berlin and perform at this live art festival in a couple of months. All expenses paid, plus a good fee. It’s a really brilliant festival. I’ve been before, but never to perform. I’m psyched about that.’

‘Will you do the same thing?’

‘I doubt it. I never do the same piece twice.’

A small tattooed girl with a large black beehive appears and announces, as if someone has died, that there is no more wine. Luke introduces Grace, and the
girl kisses her on both cheeks and says, ‘Nice to meet you. I’m Frankie.’

‘I love your tattoos,’ says Grace.

‘Thanks, they love you too,’ she says.

Her strapless dress reveals across her chest a skull and crossbones wreathed in red roses, a scroll beneath it bearing the words
Sapere Aude.
Grace asks what it means.

‘Dare to know,’ Frankie says.

‘Dangerous to know, more like,’ Luke says, placing his arm across the girl’s shoulders.

‘Too right,’ Frankie says, sinking her teeth into Luke’s upper arm and snarling like a dog.

‘Let’s go to the Golden Heart,’ says Luke, downing the dregs of a bottle of beer. ‘Wait here while I collect my bag and tell the others.’

As he walks away Frankie says, ‘Why are all the hot men gay? Such a waste! Mind you, from what I hear
none of that
goes to waste!’ She cackles and Grace smiles, remarking that she likes Frankie’s dress.

‘I used to have one a bit like it. I made all my own dresses when I was your age,’ she says. ‘And my hair was just the same as yours, back then. It’s a bugger to do, isn’t it?’

She remembers how Paul and Hannah used to sit and watch her backcombing her hair; how she’d turn to them when it was spiking out from her head and pull a witchy face and they would squeal and run away as she chased them. The memory makes her smile.

Frankie’s attention visibly shifts to a tall man in a baseball cap who is just that second walking by. ‘See you at the pub, Grace, yeah? Lovely to meet you!’ she says, blowing a kiss as she runs to catch up with the boy.

Luke reappears with Linden, who says, ‘Given’s going to join us there.’

‘I think I should be getting back,’ Grace says, afraid of what might happen if she stays. She doesn’t want to be there when the shit hits the fan. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Nonsense,’ says Luke, holding out his arm. ‘Come for one.’

And before she can resist they’re off, the three of them, Linden taking her other arm.

The Golden Heart is crowded, inside and out. It’s a balmy night, and the sky is only just beginning to darken, revealing stars that seem brighter than usual. Luke and Grace stay outside while Linden goes inside to get drinks. A loud peal of laughter causes a sudden sting of paranoia: perhaps everyone can tell how lovelorn she is. She tries to shake the thought away, but like a persistent wasp it keeps returning.

An hour later she and Luke are walking down the dimly lit backstreets of Hackney Wick on their way to a squat party, with Linden and Given and a band of others closely behind. She feels as though she’s run off to join the circus; the quick, sharp humour bubbling around lifts her spirits. She hasn’t laughed like this for aeons. She feels drunk and in love, and, even though a tiny voice keeps berating her and commanding her to go
home, she ignores it, following Luke like an enraptured child dancing to a piper’s tune.

The party is in an old red-brick garage with a two-storey flat above. They enter through a large covered forecourt filled with old sofas and rugs. Men and women, some, to Grace, looking like no more than children, sit around drinking and chatting. A grey-haired man in a tartan suit approaches Luke and embraces him with a kiss. Next to him is a shorter man with bleached hair, in jeans and a T-shirt. Luke introduces them to Grace as ‘the two Richards’.

‘Or the two Dicks,’ the blond one says with a laugh. ‘I’m Dick One and she’s Dick Two.’

Giving Grace a wild-eyed Joker grin, Dick Two says, ‘Is this the woman we need to thank for your very existence?’

Luke says, ‘No, this is Grace; she’s a friend.’

‘
Enchanté
,’ he says, taking her hand and kissing the back of it.

‘Likewise,’ says Dick One, repeating the gesture.

Dick Two removes something from his jacket pocket, holding out to Luke two small clear plastic bags of white powder. ‘One of these is ketamine and the other’s cocaine but I’m too fucked to tell the difference,’ he says.

Grace’s mood shifts to panic at the mention of drugs. The berating voice inside tells her smugly that she should never have come. She turns a deaf ear to it, determined to stay in a buoyant mood. Showing no sign of her internal conflict, she watches Luke take one of the
bags and tease it open with expert ease. He licks the tip of his little finger and jabs it inside; sticks his finger into his mouth. ‘That’s the K,’ he says, closing the bag and handing it back. Holding up the other, he says, ‘May I?’

‘Be my guest,’ says Dick Two. ‘And count us in.’

While Dick One goes off to get drinks they sit down at an empty table. Grace looks around for Linden and Given and the others they arrived with, but they’re nowhere to be seen. As Luke starts to cut lines of cocaine, Grace once again feels the rub of discomfort, but then Dick One returns with four glasses of punch, and the four of them clink cheers, and she smiles and takes a swig to ease her mood. ‘Don’t use the bogs,’ Dick One says, ‘they’re rank. I went to reapply my lippy earlier and I dropped it, and what I picked up thinking it was my lipstick was in fact a dried-up old cat turd. Luckily I noticed before it actually touched my lips.’

‘Pay no attention to her,’ says the other, ‘she’s taken far too much ketamine. Any minute now she’ll be in Ancient Egypt, thinking she’s Cleopatra.’

Dick One stares at Grace wide-eyed and says, ‘I love your pashmina!’

She looks at his tight yellow T-shirt and reads the slogan across his chest:
Not Gay As In Happy But Queer As In Fuck Off.
She gives him a smile and says, ‘Thank you.’

‘How many lines am I cutting?’ Luke asks, and they all look at Grace.

‘Go on,’ Dick One says, ‘it’s quality stuff.’

‘No, thanks,’ she says, imagining a police raid.

‘Eminently sensible,’ says Dick Two, returning the bag to his pocket.

She watches the three men lean and sniff in turn, and wonders what kind of world she’s tumbled into. ‘Have any of you ever taken heroin?’

‘What do you think I am, a
drug addict
?’ Dick Two says in mock horror, clutching at invisible pearls. ‘I didn’t have you down as a junkie, Grace, but I can get you some, no problem.’

‘I don’t want any! I was just curious,’ says Grace, horrified.

‘Ah, the oysters were curious too,’ he says, running his hand through Luke’s hair and twisting it around a finger. ‘Anyway, Heartface, you were amazing tonight, just amazing,’ he says. ‘I wanted to rush over and lick your wounds – provide succour, if you’d let me.’ He strokes Luke’s face.

‘Behave,’ Luke says, pushing the man’s hand away.

‘So when are you next getting naked in public? I mean, performing,’ Dick Two says with a helium grin.

Across the room Grace sees Frankie chatting to Baseball Cap and for some reason it makes her smile. She feels attuned to all this bright energy around her. It is the fullest, truest smile she’s offered for a long time. ‘What is this drink?’ she says, emptying her glass. ‘It doesn’t half taste weird.’

‘It’s Mandy Punch,’ says Dick One. ‘Has it kicked in yet?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Vodka with mandy in it, innit, babes.’ Seeing the blank look on her face, he adds, ‘MDMA. Ecstasy.’

‘Fabulous,’ says Dick Two, clapping his hands in glee.

‘I don’t take drugs. I’m sixty-four!’
she says.

‘Nonsense,’ he says, ‘I’ve always said Ecstasy should be available free to the elderly. Old age is no place for sissies. That’s when you need them most. Just relax and enjoy the high.’

She stands up, clutching at her handbag as if one of them might try to steal it. ‘Can you call me a taxi, please, Luke?’ she says. ‘I want to go home now.’ She walks away and makes her way out on to the street, panicked and furious. There is no traffic, and the night is still, the only sound the muted beats from the party and the rumble of speech that comes from too many people all talking at the same time.

Luke appears. He says, ‘Grace, are you OK?’

‘What the bloody hell are you doing, giving me drugs?’

‘I didn’t know there’d be mandy in it! You’re OK, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t want to take drugs!’
Drugs killed my Hannah.

‘Listen! Relax!’ He approaches her and wraps an arm around her shoulder. ‘You didn’t have much of it; you’ll be fine, I promise.’

‘What will it do to me?’

‘Well, how do you feel?’

She takes a deep breath. It’s nice to feel his arm around her. Despite herself a smile pushes its crafty way on to her
face.
So this is it,
she thinks.
This is what the drugs do.
For the first time since arriving at the private view she doesn’t feel out of place, or misplaced. She feels aroused and more alive than she’s felt in years, perhaps in her entire life, all her previous anxieties now gone, replaced by an alert and invincible joy. Looking up, she sees a street-lamp’s orange light plash across the grain and mottle of brickwork, and, above that, the full moon pushing through bone-thin cloud. Imagines she can hear its lunar tick.

‘I feel fine, but I think I should go.’

‘Well, if you’re sure. Come back inside and I’ll call a cab. There’s a flat upstairs; you can wait there for it.’

She follows him up an iron staircase on the outside of the building, and through a door at the top. Once inside, he pushes through some large black felt curtains into a dark space filled with loud music and people dancing. She feels overwhelmed by the proximity of other bodies. He leans close to her and explains that they need to get to the other side of the room, then takes her by the hand and pushes slowly through the dancing crowd. When they are halfway across, the music changes and the crowd erupts with cheers as some old disco track Grace vaguely recognises begins to play. A young man grabs her free hand and starts moving her around, dancing with her, smiling and reaching for her other hand, and she reluctantly slides it from Luke’s hold. In a sudden rush of euphoria, brought on by the drugs and the music and the mood in the room, she lets herself be swept away, dancing and smiling and watching him mouth the words,
singing along to a chorus she’s amazed to discover she remembers. When the song ends and a new one begins, the boy drifts away into the mass of bodies and she turns around to see Luke standing there smiling at her.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ he says.

‘God, I haven’t danced in years!’ she says, exhilarated. ‘I used to love dancing.’

On the other side of the dance floor, they emerge into an area with a bar and a queue for what she assumes must be the toilet. Luke waves to a girl behind the bar, who hands him a bottle of beer over the heads of those waiting to be served. He blows the girl a kiss before bounding up an uncarpeted wooden staircase. Grace follows. Upstairs, they enter a quiet lounge area, two sofas arranged around a low coffee table. The music’s insistent thud vibrates the floor beneath their feet.

‘Can I get you anything?’ he says.

‘I could murder a cup of tea,’ she says.

‘Coming right up,’ he says, disappearing into the kitchen. She sits down in one of the sofas, comforted by its softness, feeling much better for being somewhere quiet. She feels strangely euphoric and eager to chat; wide awake and stupidly happy.

When he returns with the tea, she says, ‘So who owns this place?’

He sits down on the other sofa and takes a swig of his beer. ‘It’s a squat, so no one owns it, or at least no one living here. There are about twelve here at the moment, I think. All artists. They throw amazing parties.’

‘Honestly, I’m fine here on my own if you want to go and enjoy yourself,’ she says, noticing his leg tapping to the music as it bleeds up through the floor.

‘I am enjoying myself. I can dance later. Do you still want me to call you a cab?’

‘I’m all right now, actually. I’m so sorry for overreacting like that. I’ve never taken drugs before.’

‘You ever taken Valium?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it’s a bit like that, only better.’

‘I do feel much better. Thanks for looking after me.’

‘You didn’t have that much. You’ll be OK. If you want any more, just let me know.’

‘God, no, I mustn’t.’

His big green eyes sparkle with mischief, and she has the sudden, inappropriate urge to kiss him. Watching him run a quick hand through his hair, she recalls a night with Pete long ago, a fragment from that other life. The flotsam of another ocean.