One Step Too Far (14 page)

“Oh,” I'd said, trying to be polite. “It must be lovely to have a London crash pad and a proper place in the country,” and Simon had looked at me funny, and Polly told me afterwards that he has a whole house in Primrose Hill, he is
loaded.
I wonder how he can make that much money from daft commercials about aftershave and crisps, and how it can make you so joyless. I feel sad for him somehow.

I’m surprised by the Parkland Walk. Although I struggle to find the start of it, once I’m on it all I have to do is follow it straight and I'll get to where I’m going, and that to me is perfect, I wish life could be like that. It cuts a thin green swathe through North London and because it’s summer the leaves are thick on the trees, and I can barely see the backs of the houses that remind me I’m even in the city. Every now and again I pass through a tunnel that is livid with graffiti, or an overgrown playground that nature seems to be reclaiming and is too dangerous now for the little children it was meant for. As I pass some railway arches my eye is drawn upwards and above me is a stone creature, some kind of sprite I think, climbing out the wall at me, like it’s trying to get me, and it gives me the creeps. I suppose it’s meant to be art, but I don’t like it and hurry on.

Today is Saturday and I can hardly believe how far I’ve come in less than a week, how bizarrely simple it has been to start my life all over again, and how maybe I’m going to be all right after all, now that I’ve done it. I’ll be OK as long as I don’t think about Ben or Charlie, and what they might be doing now, on their first weekend alone, or how they’re coping. I try not to acknowledge that what I’ve done is mad, unforgivable – that although Ben may not love me anymore, I’ve still disappeared, he doesn’t know where or how I am, whether I’m alive or dead. Charlie won’t understand properly yet of course, his pain will come later, and the thought kills me.

Instead I concentrate on the business of keeping my feet moving, on everything that’s happened this week – I try not to think of
before
again – and I get lost in the rhythm of the soft soil and the swaddling trees and my steady certain steps, and before I know it I find that I’ve been walking for nearly an hour. I’ve almost reached the end of this tunnel of countryside and it has helped reconnect me to the earth, helped ground me again. The sun must have gone behind a cloud and the colours switch from cheerful yellows and bright new greens, to sullen browns and dullard greys. The temperature drops. I turn right, my steps quietly snapping the dead rotting twigs beneath me, and I walk up the narrow path through the trees, towards the sound of the traffic.

I stand with my back to the lake and stare across the lawn at the vast white Regency house, and I had no idea that London was so beautiful. I’ve walked the whole way here, it must be maybe five miles, and I’ve managed to screen out for the most part all the well-heeled families with their kids and dogs and unbearable innocence I’ve encountered along the way. Maybe I’m starting to forget that I used to be like them, perhaps I’m already easing into my new self, becoming Cat – and I stand here feeling properly alive for the first time in months. There’s a tingling again, where my heart used to be. The day is hot but nicely so, the air feels clean and untainted, the world feels like maybe it’s an OK place to be, after all. I begin to think not only can I survive here in London, maybe I can even dare one day to be happy again. Happy in a different way certainly – but six days ago I was focussing on raw survival, today I’m looking at beauty and serenity as a possible way forward (I’ve forgotten for a moment the horrors of Finsbury Park Palace, the vainglorious CSGH). As I gaze round me in wonder, as if seeing the world for the very first time, I find myself smiling like an idiot, and I want to spin across the lawn in an absurd expression of my relief and joy, that I’ve survived, that I’m here, that I’ve done the right thing after all, that all three of us
will
be OK, one day, and just as I begin to raise my arms skywards I notice there’s someone staring at me. The man looks at me, not as in
what’s that mad woman doing grinning at nothing
, but in that way people do when they’re sure they know you, and he starts to move towards me and smile as if to say hello, and I panic,
I’ve been rumbled
, and so I turn and run, along the fence next to the lake, down over the bridge, through the sun-starved woods, and although I’m blinded and stumbling I don’t stop until my breath tells me I have to.

I’m lost. The heath is enormous, mapless, and I walk for ages, head down, not noticing where I’m going, not caring, as long as I don’t have to see that man again. I finally reach a road and a bus is stood at the stop there and I don’t know where it’s going but I get on it anyway and sit stiffly, staring out the window, anxious, disorientated, until it eventually stops outside an underground station, I’ve no idea where, I’ve never heard of Archway. It’s a tortuous tube route back to Finsbury Park and it takes me ages, but at least I don’t have to ask anyone the way, I feel too ripped apart. At the house I sneak upstairs to my clean white room and lie face-down on the bed and sob and sob for myself and my husband and son, for all our lost lives. I feel worn out, depleted, sick of myself. I’ve made a hideous mistake thinking I could just run away, that it would be that easy, the kindest thing for us all. It’s a relief, when the crying stops at last, to just lie there, quietly and alone.

The knocking stirs me and it’s hours later, and Angel is at the door, in her white fluffy dressing gown. “Oh, sorry, did I wake you babe? Do you still want to go shopping? We need to go soon if you’re – .” She sees my face, it’s like all the pain of the past three months has settled onto it in my sleep, like a misery mask. I don’t know what to do, I'm not sure why the man at the heath has unhinged me but he has. He KNEW me. Is there nowhere for me to hide? Angel sits on the end of my bed, and I sit up and start sobbing again, heaving animal rasps that sound through the house, and for once I don’t care that people can hear, what people think. I lean into myself, bend double and press hard to try to contain the pain, and all Angel can do is sit and watch, and when at last the grief subsides a little she takes my hand and holds it, still saying nothing. We sit like that for a very long while, and then I dry my eyes and say, as brightly as I can manage, “I can be ready in ten minutes, if it’s still OK with you?” Angel says, “Of course, if you’re sure, let’s go babe,” and I’m amazed that she doesn’t try to fix me, just accepts me, flawed and raw as I am.

We head “up West” as Angel calls it, and it reminds me of Eastenders and I didn’t know people really talk like that. I’m trying hard to feel normal, be normal, let the apparent normality of other people rub off on me. We make our way along Oxford Street, past the discount stores and the bemused tourists (
this
is London?) and the chain stores and the mobile shops, until we reach Selfridges and it’s so much bigger and busier than the one in Manchester. Angel seems to know her way round, and we go up the escalator to the second floor and she picks out clothes for me that I wouldn’t dream of choosing myself. Her judgment is good, and despite myself I find I’m looking in the mirror and thinking, yes, maybe Cat Brown would wear that, but I’m still anxious – I feel oddly disloyal for doing something so frivolous, for trying on clothes, and I’m stressed about spending the money I need to survive. The shop assistants are uninterested in us, it’s late, they’re all bored, examining their perfect nails, waiting to go home, and we’re largely left alone. Angel keeps bringing piles of clothes into the little fitting room, it’s one of those old-fashioned ones hidden behind a full-length mirror, Angel knew where to find it. The tiny drab room seems out of place here, a throwback to another less showy time, before there were voluptuous changing rooms with huge ornate mirrors and thick brocade curtains, full of skinny girls in expensive underwear. Angel keeps coming back with more outfits in various sizes for me to try on, and soon the room is stuffed full of clothes, and after my initial reluctance I think to hell with it, and try on everything, whatever Angel brings me, however daring. The sobbing earlier seems to have been cathartic, maybe it’s done me good to let it out at last. And then out of nowhere I remember the last time I went shopping, just
before
, with my mum, and it hits me: my God, I’ve abandoned her as well. I can’t believe I haven’t even thought about her and Dad until now, not even back in Manchester when I was planning it, of how they’ll be devastated too. All I’ve thought about up until now is Ben and Charlie, and mostly myself of course. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I’ve lost the heart for shopping, although perversely I’m worried I’ll offend Angel if I don’t buy anything, she seems so keen to help me. (What about breaking my loved ones’ hearts, shouldn’t I be more worried about
that
?) Angel senses my reluctance, and suggests we go for a coffee and maybe come back later, when I’ve had time to decide what I really like, she doesn’t want to rush me. So we leave the little room, with all the clothes piled up for the shop assistants to sort out (although I try to do it Angel tells me not to be silly, it will give them something to do, she says) and we make our way back down the escalator, through handbags, into perfumes and out onto Oxford Street, and despite all the people I calm down a little, the movement seems to help somehow. As Angel sashays through the throng I notice again how fragile she seems, too tiny and fresh to be a croupier, too innocent to operate in a night-time underworld of hope and fecklessness and loss. She bemuses me. We find a bar nearby – I hadn’t realised what the time was, it’s too late for coffee, too late to go back to Selfridges today, and I find myself worrying what I’ll wear on Monday, as if it matters. I don’t need to ask Angel what she wants, I order two vodka tonics and they’re served long and cool with ice and lime. The bar must be new, it’s expensively decorated, and it has an interior-designed feel to it, as if it’s trying too hard, like me. We sit at the back, near an allium-papered feature wall, on identical shiny chairs, listening to unidentifiable music probably approved by management somewhere, and I mourn proper cafes with rusted Martini signs and mismatched tables and maybe even candles in bottles, naff though they are. Why has the world become sanitised, homogenised, boring? I could be in London or Manchester or Prague, bars like these are all the same.
You should be in Manchester
, says a voice and I suck through my straw, hard, to drown it out. Angel looks pleased with herself, and she rummages in her capacious Mulberry handbag (is it real?) that makes her seem even more diminutive, doll-like, than she really is and hands me a plain plastic bag, under the table. It feels weird, metallic, and when I open it inside is the orange silk dress and denim kick-skirt I’d coveted earlier but been too anxious to buy, along with a blue sequined top and silver shirt-dress that I’d loved but dismissed as too expensive, too daring. It takes me a moment to understand, the tags are still on, and then I look up into her face and I’m appalled.

Angel smiles sweetly. “Oh, babe don’t worry, they can afford it, places like that budget for it.”

“That’s not the point,” I whisper, bundling the clothes back into the foil-lined bag and shoving them under the table. Angel looks hurt.

“I was only trying to help,” she says, and she looks downcast, like a child.

I don’t want to hurt Angel’s feelings, I’ve grown absurdly fond of her already, and so I buy her another vodka tonic and tell her thank you, that I’m touched after all, but inside I’m churning. I’ve never stolen anything, I don’t even know anyone who has – apart from Caroline I expect. Angel realises she’s misjudged me and seems ashamed, so I resolve to keep the clothes – what else can I do with them, what else can I wear on Monday? When we’re on our third vodka a group of men come in and the bar is soulless and empty still, and Angel smiles and giggles at them and before I know it they’ve sent champagne over. I don’t want to talk to them, they’re way older than us, in expensive shirts with fading hair and a look of expectation in their eyes, as if the champagne is a transaction and now we owe them something. I want to leave, but Angel’s enjoying herself, her eyes are flashing with the alcohol and the adrenaline. One of the men is not bad-looking and he obviously fancies Angel, so I sit like a lemon while they flirt with each other, and because I can’t think of anything to say the others give up on me and go back to the bar. Maybe I should go home and leave her to it. Angel tips her head back and exposes her long white neck, which shimmies as she drinks, and I can see for an instant the desire in the man’s eyes, reflected in mine. As Angel finishes the drink, she brings the champagne flute down on the dark wooden table, hard – I think she misjudged it, we’re both quite pissed now – but although the energy shudders through the glass, it doesn’t break.

“Ooops,” she says. “Thanks guys, great meeting you.” And she swings in one motion from the chair, puts her arm through mine, pulls me to my feet and we sway gently across the empty floor towards the door. As I glance back Angel’s suitor looks annoyed for a second, as if he’s been done, but Angel waves flirtily and he smiles acquiescently, devotedly even, and then he goes back to his mates and orders another drink.

Angel suggests we check out a bar she knows in Soho. I’m tired and miserable and want to go home, even though I know she’ll be disappointed, she says it’s her first Saturday night off in weeks. “Please go without me, I’ll be fine,” I say, although Angel is insistent she’ll come back to the house, she’s obviously worried about me, but her phone goes twice and I can tell that someone really really wants her to stay out. I feel awkward now. Even though we’ve become such good friends so quickly – it’s largely because of Angel that I’ve settled as well as I have into that house, this life – it feels different out here in the West End. I’m still freaked by the shopping incident, by the expensive stolen clothes that are hidden in her handbag, and although I admit she’d already told me all that crazy stuff about her brazen scams with her mum’s gangster boyfriend, how she used to steal diamond rings off shiny counter tops while all eyes were on her mother, I thought that was in the past, when she was just a little girl. I find myself grappling in new territory, with someone who’s seen life and lived it, and despite everything that’s happened, until a few days ago I was still just a boring lawyer from Chester. I’m suddenly wrung out from the events of the past week, the past months, and I feel weak with the need to rest.